“What’s happening here?” I asked. “It feels different.”
“Something is brewing,” he said, speaking with an energy he hadn’t had in a very long time. “Some sort of power struggle. Realignment. Today, Abe, here. Joe and Nick out west. Whoever that was in Seattle. Everyone has an agenda. It’s starting to make sense.”
“Is it?”
“I think they’re all jockeying for position, taking what they can grab,” he said, ignoring my question. “And there’s lots to grab. Presidential last year, now mid-terms in November. I wonder who’s left. Someone’s head is missing, somewhere, and everyone is playing king of the hill. And with that game, there’s only one guy on top at the end of the day.”
“Or girl,” I said. But I suspected he was picturing himself on a throne made of skulls.
“It’s political. Like it was, before it wasn’t. Someone is trying to take charge, trying to clean things up so they can start the engine again. This is why it feels different. Because it is different. Something is changing. And there will be carnage. I wish I knew more. Wish I was still in …”
I nodded and listened as he went on and on. And when he at last fell asleep, I got up and made some tea and watched some “fake news” as I cut and dyed my hair and began packing, because we were going to have to run.
I thought about Abe and Nick and wondered if someone had been helped by their deaths, or hindered. I thought about what was going on in the world, the elections, the wars, the social change. I thought about how deep this rabbit hole might go, and—if I ever fell in—how much it might hurt if I hit the bottom. Mostly, though, I thought hard about how Edison hadn’t answered my question. When I’d asked about what was happening, I wasn’t wondering about them.
I was wondering about us.
Threshold
08/16/2018
The lights flicker and die, something far off and electrical failing. Hopefully, wherever Xtian is shopping still has power. It is bad enough we have put off running for almost an entire day. I am fairly certain there are no more of them lingering nearby—or at least no more of Abe’s crew—and we have covered our tracks. But we have nosy neighbors, and at some point someone is going to ask about the girl from the restaurant, and the old man she ran away with, and things will get back to us. We need to be gone by the end of the day. Weather notwithstanding.
One forgets thunderstorms on the west coast, they come so infrequently. Here in the east—at least this summer—they have come more readily, and unexpectedly. Sun at noon, rain by six, muggy all night. Any by itself might be tolerable, but in sequence they become something greater than the sum of its parts, something that sets me on edge and makes my skin crawl.
But weather is the least of my problems.
Has it been ten years? Nearly so. How many things thrown away, decisions altered, chances wasted, offers ignored, opportunities lost, bones broken. All because of a single decision I still cannot explain after all this time. She has guessed at it many times over the years: because I was lonely, because I wanted a child, because I pitied her. Because, because, because. At the time I imagined it was because I saw something of myself in her, and still do, possibly more so now than ever, since last night, since I watched her emerge and become the very thing I always wanted her to be, the very thing I feared most. Feared, because it meant it was over.
Though it pains me to use this analogy because I hate that plaque and want to beat someone over the head with it every time I see one, she has at times held my hand and walked beside me, and at other times I have carried her, and lately she me. We have never been closer, more alike, than right now. We are both stagnant. Wasted. And perhaps that is why I am most able to do this, right now.
I stare at the dark television set for a while, then wander the apartment. Change into blacks, pull on hard boots, walk outside to feel the wind in my hair. Feel strong, for a change. I’ve healed more than I thought, and I’m certainly stronger than Xtian suspects. Just like she turned out to be stronger than I thought. There are things that will never be the same—my arms are always going to ache—but most of what matters is in order. I am well enough to fly.
I stand motionless on the threshold for a while, idly flipping the useless kitchen light switch on and off, watching rain sluice down off the corner of the roof, etching a long, deep gouge in the mud, excavating worms. As the long minutes go by, I cannot help thinking it into a grave. Whose, though? It does not matter, I think. In the end there is no difference. It is all force, from somewhere. Liquid, gaseous, kinetic, electric, emotional. Just some forces we cannot see, irresistible though they are. At least, until they meet immovable objects.
• • •
“I’m back,” I said to the blackness as I entered, arms full of bags, wondering briefly and too late if this was more of them. I set my burden down, pulling the 92FS from the small of my back as I flipped the light switch, but the only one in the house was Edison, who immediately came in with an LED flashlight he’d just screwed the head onto. No longer necessary since the power was clearly working just fine now.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“Kroger.”
I set my gun on the table beside his, peeled off my wet blouse and tossed it in the sink, then switched on the TV out of habit.
“I told you to get supplies,” he said. “Not groceries.”
“Road food,” I said, wriggling out of my jeans, leaving them where they lie. Changing one last time on the way out of town. If we were setting fire to the place on the way out anyway, no sense cleaning up. I stepped forward to get dry clothing, leaving a trail of water through the kitchen, and he shifted himself to the opposite side of the table, said something.
“Clif bars, sunflower seeds, bottled water, jerky for you. The not-spicy kind. And I got ice cream from UDF, but we have to eat that now. What did you say?”
“I said you need to leave,” he repeated.
That was obvious, I thought. But something about the tone brought me back out of the bedroom in red underthings and bare feet like Robin the Girl Wonder. I resisted the urge to put my hands on my hips and strike a pose. For once, he didn’t look away, caught my eye and kept it.
“What?”
“You. Are leaving. Now.”
“Well, obviously—“
“Without me.”
I was speechless for a second, but it didn’t take very long to realize what he meant.
“Just—”
“Just like that, yes.”
“Okay. Well, I don’t want to.”
“You have no say in the matter.”
“The hell I don’t.”
“We can’t keep this up,” he said, gesturing with both hands. Talking faster, more intensely as he went. “They’ll keep coming. This won’t end. Not now, not with this, not especially after what just happened. There are things happening. Big things, things you can’t even see. It’s got layers of obfuscation, nothing in the middle but noth—”
He was starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, becoming incoherent.
“Slow down and—” I tried.
“No. No! That’s the thing we can’t do. That’s when they get us. When we stop. I don’t want to go out like this, them coming in the front door some day, me in my easy chair. Not in a retirement home, or a wheelchair, or a hospital bed. And not a pathetic victim, a … wage slave, a welfare leech, a useless nothing. I don’t want what I’ve become. We.”
“So you kicking me out will fix that?”
“Yes. Perhaps. Not my problem.”
“Oh, isn’t it? And where the fuck would I go?”
In response, he reached over to the kitchen table and picked up a yellowed piece of heavily-folded paper, held it out to me. I didn’t move.
“What is that?”
“Take it.” And when I still didn’t move, he balled the paper in his fist and threw it at me. I let it hit me in the stomach and fall to the floor. “Or don’t. I don’t care anymore.”
�
�Did you ever?”
He didn’t answer, turned away. I gave in, knelt down and grabbed the paper, uncrumpled it as I squatted and stared at a scribble of numbers. Ten digits and nine, ten digits and nine, over and over again, row after row. Each sequence was spaced out, three and three and four, then five and four. All but one of the rows was scribbled into oblivion in different shades of blue ink but the one at the bottom was in black, clear and recent. Ten digits and nine digits.
Phone number and zip code.
“What is this?” I demanded.
“Your father,” he said. “It’s your father.”
• • •
She stares at the paper for a long while, then at me. Takes it in one hand and half-crumbles it into her fist. I think of the coins, the coins.
“This is my father’s number.”
“As far as I know. Been a few months since I checked.”
“A few months?”
Weeks, possibly. I let the statement stand, though.
“How long have you been doing this?” she demands.
“It doesn’t—”
“It does.”
“Since the day I took you.”
She goes quiet, then. Very quiet. Rocks forward and to one side, sitting on the kitchen floor, filthy with whatnot. We have never bothered to clean it.
“You kept the receipt,” she says. I say nothing as she pushes herself across the floor until her back is to the wall. She stares me in the eye. I want to look away, but I dare not. “You kept the fucking receipt. In case you ever wanted to take me back. You were never sure.”
“Yes. No.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Now, a tear, perhaps several. “Give me a choice.”
“You wouldn’t have used it.” I shrug.
“Bullshit. All those times? When you asked me why I wouldn’t leave. You know why? It was because I had nowhere else to go. You were all I had. All I knew. Know. You wanted to just be rid of me in the gutter.”
“You know everything I know. Everything that matters, anyway. You will eat them alive. That last man, you killed without a thought. No hesitation. With that, you can do anything you want. Just not with me.”
Quiet, long and hard. The rain picks up outside. Tears on the roof, making up for the scarcity in here.
“This is for both our goods,” I say. “Either way I lose. This way I lose less.”
“You need me.”
“I do not. Needed, once perhaps. Not now.”
She shakes her head. None of this should come as any surprise, but she does not want to hear it. I have a hard time believing any of it is actually getting through right now. It might be for naught.
“So that’s all I am, then,” she says. “Past tense.”
“Or future imperfect. Simply not present.”
She looks up. “Oh, I’m not present?”
She stands, unfolds like a crane and steps too close, and for the first time I realize we are the same height, see eye to eye, and she standing in socks, white at the ankles, black with grime underneath. Two sides to everything.
“Tell me you never loved me,” she says.
“I never loved you.”
She steps even closer, face next to mine now.
“I don’t believe you,” she says.
I don’t move as she leans in, then, grabs my face and kisses me on the lips. Our first. It’s not a polite kiss. When she moves away, nails gently raking down my cheek, I reach out and slap her in the jaw.
It’s not a polite slap, either.
• • •
I wanted to hurt him back, tell him I lied, tell him I gave him up in Seattle, throw it in his face. Maybe even to prove to him that we could live with a lie, had been, and that it was not so bad. We could keep playing pretend until gradually it felt real and then was real. But I couldn’t do it.
“So it’s over,” I said.
“It was over ten years ago, Xtian. We ended before we began. Me most of all. Look at me. Look at what I’ve become.”
“So keep becoming. Change. Why end this now? We have time.”
“No one has time,” he said. “Time has us.”
“You’re just a coward,” I said. “A fucking coward, afraid of change. Death afraid of dying.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Oh, I’m afraid? No. I just prefer what I know, here, to the shit out there. You know why the caged bird sings? It’s safer in the fucking cage.”
“You’re afraid.”
“And you’re afraid of me staying.”
“Then I guess we have the same problem. You.”
I didn’t want to do this. I was tired. Exhausted and mindless. I wanted to be in the car, listening to the radio as he rambled on about whatnot and nonsense, bare feet out the window stung by rain. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to fight. I just wanted to sleep. To wake up and have this all be back to what it was, a day ago, a year ago. Ten years ago, even.
I collapsed into the chair opposite him, elbow on the table supporting my soggy head. Not defeated; disgusted.
“Look at us,” he said, trying to talk me off of a ledge. Or maybe over the edge. “You really want this? This is mediocre and mundane. We’re both better than this. Not both. Each. And you’ll be better off without m—”
“Oh my god. Stop. Just stop. Listen to yourself. I don’t need your … emotional … fucking cupcakes. Stop with the clichés and be real for once.”
“I’ve nothing to give, real or otherwise. I’m done giving.”
“Oh, sure. And you’ve been so generous these past few years. You really expect to live long without me, huh? It’s me that cleaned you when you had broken arms. Me that helped you in and out of the tub when you couldn’t stand without crying. And it was me that did all the work yesterday while you were hiding behind a fucking planter like a child.”
I immediately regretted it. All of it. And then, almost immediately thereafter, I regretted regretting it. Some things just need to be said.
Especially truth.
• • •
And she has it right, exactly. I cannot be a doting grandfather, she crawling about the floor in diapers, and neither can I be the one in diapers. I will not be old, ruined with arthritis and tinnitus. Or Alzheimer’s, Xtian tacking up signs around the house to help me remember: “Do not leave the water running. Do not leave the toilet seat up. Wipe yourself after you go. Do not wipe yourself on the laundry.”
This must end here. For both our goods. The broken scarecrow gets his brain back, and the little girl flies home. The fucking end.
“I will give you a choice,” I say, coldly.
She folds her arms on the table, collapses her head atop them, then looks up at me across the crumb-filthy wood. I step forward and shove my 941 across the table; it does a slow, lazy half-turn and strikes her in the right forearm as I pull her own gun towards me.
“What are you doing?” Head off the table.
“We are going to end this right now. One way or another. I will not live like this. So either you pick up that gun and end me, or I will end you.”
She looks anything but confused. Disappointed, perhaps. Or resigned.
“You coward,” she whispers.
“Call it what you want. Whatever word you use, it is absolutely preferable to the slow, lingering gut wound we have been living.”
“Is that what I am? A gut shot?”
“Yes. You are a festering wound that will not clot. A tragedy that will never fucking end.”
“You bastard,” she says. “I should have let you die in Seattle.”
“You should have. You have every reason in the world to pull that trigger. I tried to kill you. Nearly buried you alive. Took you away from everything you had. Put you in the hands of people who … I did it. It was by my hand. So many reasons for you to kill me. But only one matters right now: I do not regret any of it. I would do it all again. All of it.”
And the next part hurts, it hurts to say, hurts to think
, and it hurts me that it hurts, because I do not want to feel it. But it has to be said, because sometimes things just need to be said.
“I would let them take you, and hold you down, and ruin you. All over again.”
Her face is a porcelain mask, but I can feel a shift nevertheless, electric.
“You would,” she says, and it is not a question.
I nod, take a half-step back away from the gun, and drop my hands to my sides. “And I will do this, too. So if you will not end this, I will end it for you.”
And my fingers ache, my wrist, my elbow, from my efforts the other day, from Seattle, from before even that. And somewhere deep inside, something not made of bone likewise hurts. Because I know that everything I have said is true.
I reach for the gun, and the moment I do, the very moment my aching bones stir into action, the microsecond the electrochemical reactions reach my muscles, she is no longer here and now, she is ancient and deadly and eternal, she is kaishakunin, second to the dishonored samurai, and she does not wait for the sword in the belly, the pain and anguish, she does not react to the motion, or the action. She reacts to the intent, the will. She knows me.
Before my hand can even clear the table, rise above my waist, she reaches out and in one unbroken, inevitable motion picks up the gun, aims at my head, and pulls the trigger.
I do not flinch.
Neither does she.
Chiburi
08/17/2018
Just after midnight, now. Nearly time for me to go. For both of us. She is cradling her knees in the living room, staring out the window. Short black hair, shorter and blacker than ever before, still wet from the shower. Wearing her tan chamois jacket over a black velvet top descending towards slit blue skirt atop black fishnets rammed into ankle boots. Everything locked together, like armor. She is motionless, but for a single finger stroking the trigger guard of the gun in her hand—her own, now. Wondering, perhaps, if she should pull that trigger, too. After all, she knows that gun is loaded. There is no point, though. And she knows that, too.
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