“It does once you realize that Bernard was more than a criminal, more than a psychopath.” They looked at me in unison. “He was evil.”
“Here we go again with this shit,” Rick sighed.
“You’ve changed your tune since the talk we had at Brannigan’s,” I said. “You were convinced Bernard did this.”
“Yeah, the murder here in town. Bernard had problems, and maybe we didn’t have any idea how bad they really were. Maybe he couldn’t take it anymore and one day he snapped and killed this chick. I can believe that, Alan, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to believe he was some fucking serial killer.” Rick stomped around the room like a spoiled child then stopped suddenly and glared at me as if another thought had just then occurred to him. “And I’m sure as hell not ready to believe all this boogieman horseshit. Bernard was our friend, but he was a huge fucking loser, and we all know it. He couldn’t do anything right. He—”
“Remember Julie Henderson?”
His face turned pale as a corpse in winter. “Yeah, sure, I remember Julie—Brian’s sister. What about her?”
I killed my drink and let the glass rest in my lap. “I went to go see her today.”
* * *
By the time I was finished telling them all I had learned from Julie, Rick had stopped his incessant pacing and taken up position in the recliner. Donald remained on the couch next to me throughout, listening quietly, and now stared down into his empty glass with his usual look of isolated sorrow. I let the silence hold us a while as memories of crucifixes dangling in windows flickered through my mind.
After a while, Donald slowly rose from the couch. “Well,” he said softly, “who needs another drink?”
I handed him my glass and he headed for the kitchen, moving as if sleepwalking. Rick hadn’t moved since I finished talking, and was looking everywhere but at me.
Neither of us said a word until Donald returned with my drink. He remained standing. It was his turn to pace. “You believe her, don’t you?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
The recliner squeaked as Rick pushed himself to his feet. “OK, look, maybe you didn’t hear, but Julie Henderson has some serious problems herself.”
I nodded. “And now we know why.”
“But you’re—you’re putting all your faith in some broad that’s out of her fucking mind, Alan.” Rick looked like he might burst into millions of tiny pieces at any moment. “The bitch is crazy. She’s been in and out of nuthouses for years. Ask anybody in town, they’ll tell you. Julie Henderson’s a loon. She had some kind of breakdown or something and—”
“Have you heard a word I just said?” I stood up. We were all standing now, three grown men trying to figure out what in the hell to do with ourselves. I looked to Donald, but he was staring into space as if in a trance.
“Yeah, I heard you,” Rick growled, “I just don’t believe any of this shit.”
“Why not?”
He moved closer to me in a manner that would have felt threatening had he not been so obviously nervous. “You’re awful quick to sell a lifelong friend down the river, aren’t you? You believe what some girl with mental problems says about ghosts and goblins and demons and whatever the hell else she was babbling about without even stopping to think that it’s probably all in her demented head. She’s nuts, Alan, you understand? She’s fucking insane.”
“You knew, didn’t you.” There was no doubt I had made a statement, not asked a question.
A spasm-smile wrestled with his face. “What?”
“You knew.”
“What are you, serious?”
“He told you he raped Julie Henderson, didn’t he? You two talked about it, fantasized about it like typical hormone-crazed teenage boys, maybe even plotted and planned out how you’d do it. But you never expected him to actually go through with it, and when he did and he told you, then it was too late to—”
“You know what, Alan? Fuck you.”
I took a sip from my drink then placed it on the coffee table. “No, Rick. Fuck you.”
He was on me so quickly I didn’t have time to react. Before I knew it he had grabbed hold of my shirt and pushed me clear across the room. As he slammed me against the wall I grabbed his forearms and tried to loosen his grip, but there was no chance. I could have hit him, but I didn’t want to escalate it into anything more violent than it already was. He slammed me a second time and I heard Donald screaming for him to stop as my head snapped back and slapped the wall. Pain fired from behind my eyes and blossomed across my face. “Who the fuck are you to accuse me? I don’t have to take this shit!”
As my vision cleared I saw Donald trying to push himself between us. Rick let go of me then, pushed his way by Donald and headed for the door.
I regained my balance and stepped away from the wall.
“Are you all right?” Donald looked into my eyes then spun back toward Rick. “Are you out of your mind? What the hell is the matter with you?”
Rick stood near the door looking as if he couldn’t decide whether to leave or stay. Finally he turned back toward us, his anger apparently softened. “How did…How did you know he told me?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I guessed.”
He dropped his head like a reprimanded schoolboy. “Bernard said a lot of things, you guys know that. He lied all the time—exaggerated about everything—made himself out to be more than he was. I never believed half the shit he said and neither did anybody else.” He raised his eyes to meet mine. “He told me he made it with Julie Henderson. He told me that he did it but I didn’t believe him. Why would I? Why would I believe him? I thought it was just more Bernard bullshit. I blew it off, never thought about it again, you see what I’m saying?”
“This is real, Rick,” I told him. “It’s all real.”
“I didn’t know,” he said, the last word catching in his throat. “I swear to Christ, I didn’t know.”
I had never seen such emotion from him, and wasn’t sure what to do.
“Of course you didn’t,” Donald said for me. “Alan only meant—”
“I shouldn’t have…” Rick reached out as if to touch me, but he was too far away. “Look, man, I…I’m sorry. Are you OK?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Yeah, don’t worry about it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“This’ll destroy us if we let it.”
“Well then we won’t let it,” Donald said quickly. “We’ll get through this. We’ll stick together and we’ll get through this.”
“I’m as scared as you guys are, but we can’t deny what’s happening here.”
Rick shook his head. “But Jesus Christ, dude, demons?”
“It’s just like Julie said. You can’t see evil, but you know it’s there. Maybe I’m the only one who had visions, but we all had the nightmare. We all experienced it. We all felt it. You gonna stand there and tell me we’re all crazy, Rick?” I grabbed my drink and powered it down in one swig. “I’m telling you right now, there’ll be more bodies, more death, and more darkness. Bernard may be gone, but the evil he used isn’t.”
Donald lit a cigarette. “Let’s go with the fantastic then and assume it’s true, that this evil is real. What’s the solution?”
“We find it,” I said, surprised at how calm my voice had become. “We root it out, get it out of the shadows, into the open and into the light where we can see for ourselves just what in the hell it is we’re dealing with.”
“And then?”
“We kill it.”
CHAPTER 18
In an instant, life can change. Sometimes it is reduced to fragments, disjointed shards of a once larger and intact whole, strewn about like pieces from a shattered vase. And those things once striking and beautiful are suddenly rubble, as without warning, existence changes, sometimes irrevocably, sometimes not. If we’re wise, or even just lucky, these experiences remind us of who we are, and why. If we’re unlucky, we fade to black. No exp
lanations, no condolences.
When I got home, Toni was packing, transferring neatly folded items from her bureau to the suitcase without looking at me, without saying a word. I stood in the doorway to our bedroom and watched, helpless. “What’s all this supposed to be?” I said. She shot me a quick, oddly neutral glance, and continued her duties with motions so repetitive and studied they seemed more robotic than human. “Great timing. This is the last thing I need right now.”
“The last thing you need.”
“Come on, Toni.” She stopped then, a tan silk blouse I’d bought her as a birthday present a few years before dangling from her fingers. “I remember when I got you that,” I said. “The clerk wanted to know if it was a gift, and I said it was, so she offered to wrap it for me. I told her—”
“No. You told her no.”
I nodded. “Even though I can’t wrap for shit. Never have gotten the hang of it. I told the clerk I always wrapped your presents myself anyway.”
Toni pursed her lips to prevent them from trembling. “And what did she say?”
“She said that was very sweet, that most men would jump at the chance to have a gift wrapped for them, especially men with no talent for doing it themselves.” I wanted to reach out and pull the blouse from her grasp, or maybe to just hold it with her. “I told her I wasn’t most men.”
A glint in her eye told me that despite it all, she still believed the same thing. She turned away, folded the blouse as neatly as her shaking hands would allow and slipped it into the suitcase. “When I got home from work today, instead of coming right in I went over to one of the benches by the water and watched the ducks and swans for a while.” She pushed some hair from her face and even smiled a little, though not at me. “I sat there and smoked a cigarette, and for a little while everything—all the noise and the bullshit—seemed to soften a little, like somebody had lowered the volume. It was so nice. There was that feeling in the air—you know the one—when you can actually feel the change in season, you can feel spring slowly becoming summer. The air changes, the light, everything. It’s new, but it’s familiar, and I started to think about how spring used to last so much longer when I was a little girl. Remember when it was more than just a couple weeks? Nothing stays the same—not even the seasons—yet nothing really changes. Maybe that’s the whole point. I watched this one swan gliding along the water and I thought, I could stand up, get into my car right now and drive away. Just…drive away. No one would kill me or put me in jail. I could just slip away and no one could stop me. If I wanted to do it, I could. I could, and the world wouldn’t even notice.”
“The world never does,” I said.
“It made me wonder why we do what we do, you know? Why we stay. Do we do it because it’s the right thing to do, or because we’re afraid of the consequences?”
I found it interesting that she hadn’t included love as a possible reason—on either side of the argument. “Regardless, you’re leaving town, is that it?”
She shook her head, disappointed. “You’re such a literalist.”
“Oh, sorry about that. I figured packing your bags was pretty fucking literal.” I’d mustered as much sarcasm as I could, and it hardly seemed enough. “So you’re not leaving town then. Just me.”
She looked genuinely surprised. “Do you want me to?”
“No.”
“Then what do we do?”
“Am I supposed to leave? I mean, is that what I’m supposed to do? I’m not sure how this kind of thing works.”
She gave a little shrug. “Me either.” She looked so beautiful I could’ve killed her.
“I can’t believe you think this is the way to—”
“You know the little cottage Martha has down by the beach, the one her parents left her? She said if I needed it for a while I could use it, which is nice of her since she could easily rent it for the entire summer.”
“Yeah, how thoughtful.” I needed another drink but stayed where I was for fear she wouldn’t follow me if I slipped back into the kitchen, and the conversation, such as it was, would end right then, right there. “So I guess you need it.”
“Yes, just for a while. I need some time away, some time to think.”
“Oh, but after your time at the think-tank you’ll be back? Well, there’s some good news after all.”
Toni closed the suitcase. The sound of the zipper sealing went right through me. “You’re obsessed with this Bernard business, and you’re getting in over your head. You’re becoming involved in things you’re not equipped to handle.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“You need to get some help, Alan.”
“Is that what your boyfriend suggests?”
“You’re such a child sometimes.”
“You’re right. The mature move is to go fuck someone else.” I saw her wilt, as if the words had physically injured her, and for a brief instant, I felt a rush of satisfaction. I wanted to share the pain. “I never had any idea you hated me so much.”
She dropped the suitcase to the floor with a deliberate thud, and I pictured the patrons in the pizza parlor downstairs all gazing up at the ceiling. “I don’t hate you, Alan. The only thing I feel right now is sorrow. There’s no room left for hatred or anything else.”
I steadied myself against the doorway, maybe because I’d had too much to drink at Donald’s, maybe not. “Have I really failed so horribly?”
“We need some time apart right now. I need—”
“You know I think I could handle this if you just let me have it, both barrels,” I said. “If you just called me an asshole or a lousy husband or a fucking loser. But this ‘I need some time apart’ bullshit just makes me want to puke. Don’t make this out to be anything other than what it is, Toni. You’re having an affair and you’re leaving to lessen your own fucking guilt about it, to make yourself feel better, because if you leave, well then we aren’t together anymore and then it isn’t really cheating is it? At that point you aren’t betraying me, and that just feels so much better than feeling like a spineless conniving whore.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Finished?”
“No. Fuck you for doing this. Now I’m finished.”
“Feel better?”
“Not particularly.”
“Well maybe this’ll help. Fuck you right back, Alan.” She picked up her suitcase and started to leave the room, but hesitated once alongside me. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe there is no affair? You believe what you should question, but never question what you should believe.”
“Yeah, OK, who are you, Confucius now?” I laughed lightly, but it was merely a defense, an attempt to prevent myself from imploding, from crumbling and collapsing into myself. “If you leave, don’t come back. You leave tonight and that’s it, you hear me? It’s done.”
“You don’t want to play it that way.”
“Oh no?”
“No.”
“Then what the hell do you want me to do? You want me to ask you not to go? You want me to beg—what? What do you want from me? Tell me and I’ll do it.”
“I’m tired, Alan. I’m tired and sad and even a little frightened, but I need to do this.”
“Do you love me?”
“Of course I love you.”
“Then why do you need to get away from me so desperately?”
“Because right now love alone isn’t enough. It seldom is.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “Love is enough. If it’s real, it’s enough.”
“I want—”
“Yes, by all means let’s make sure we attend to what you want. The world is in fucking flames, everything is going to shit and right in the middle of it, right when I need you the most, you bolt. That’s your solution, to go run and hide. Fine. Go.”
“You may not want to admit it,” she said, speaking in a loud whisper, “but right now this is best for you too. It’s something we both need.”
“So that’s where we are t
hen? Just like that.”
“For now.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“We need some time apart.” She approached me slowly, and until she raised herself up on the tips of her toes so her lips could reach my forehead, I hadn’t been certain if she’d planned to kiss me or strangle me. Her mouth lingered, warm and soft against my skin, then she dropped down to her natural height. “That’s what it means. And that’s all it means.”
* * *
I heard her descending the staircase, struggling with the suitcase, bouncing it against each step as she went, and felt guilty for not offering to carry it down for her. The guilt vanished the minute I heard her car start. Until that moment, when I heard the car pull out of the space and saw the headlights glide past the windows, the engine sound slowly absorbed into the night, the authenticity of the situation hadn’t quite hit me. But she’d done it. She’d really left.
I had the conversation again, this time alone of course, and I caught myself mumbling my lines aloud as I stood in the newfound silence of the kitchen, numb and unsure of exactly what to do with myself. I wondered if we’d ever be all right again, if we’d ever be whole again. The two of us. All of us. Any of us.
I found an unopened bottle of whiskey in the liquor cabinet, stared at the label a minute, then grabbed the phone and dialed Donald’s number. I figured if I could catch him before he finished the vodka at his house I could convince him to drive to mine. “Hey, it’s me,” I said. “I’m going to get really shit-faced, you want to join me?”
“What’s wrong now?”
“What isn’t? Come on over, let’s get trashed.”
“Call me psychic, but I don’t think Toni would be too thrilled with that idea.”
“Yeah, well she’s not here.” I held the phone with my chin, broke the seal on the bottle and poured a glass. I could hear Donald breathing through the line.
“Where is she, Alan?”
“She moved out for a while.”
“Oh, God, I’m—I’m sorry.”
“Come on over and get drunk with me. Bring ice.”
“I’m already too drunk to drive,” he said guiltily.
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