by Joe Hart
“Ass. I haven’t called because you sounded angry in your last text.”
“You texted me at four in the morning!”
“I was just leaving a party—horrible ordeal, by the way. I haven’t had such shitty food since St. Cathy’s. And the condo it was being held in was atrocious. I can’t fathom why these celebrities insist on going to an obscure location and having a fucking cocktail party in a second cousin’s living room.”
Lance listened to his friend rant as he gazed out at the lake, which held streaks of the setting sun among its rippling blue waves. “I’m sorry you had a terrible time at a get-together with the who’s who of Hollywood while I’m up here alone in the wilderness.”
“You’re the one who was ostentatious and bought a house without consulting anyone else first. I’m not going to feel sorry for you.”
“I don’t expect you to. Besides, the place is really growing on me. I’m getting settled in here. I’ve even met some people.”
“I don’t believe it for a second. You don’t meet people, they run into you and realize they’ve read your books and want to be friends.”
“Not up here. There are some people that have read my stuff, but mostly I’m an unknown.”
“Yeah, an unknown from out of town that shows up and buys an enormous house in the middle of the community.”
“It’s not enormous. And how would you know, you haven’t even been here,” Lance said, leaning forward in his chair with a bemused smile.
“That’s actually why I was calling. I’d like to come up and stay for a couple of days. Maybe read what you’ve written so far?”
“Oh, I see. Checking up on me so you can throw the wolves at the door a bone?”
“No, I’ll tell them to get fucked, which is exactly what I’ve been doing since you up and disappeared.”
“Thank you for giving me some space. It was much needed. You don’t know how great it feels to be writing again.” Lance rose from the chair and meandered through the living room, toward the front entry. He had heard the now-unmistakable sound of John’s truck approaching.
“Don’t mention it. So can you text me directions, or does this weekend not work?”
“It works great, I’d love to see you, my friend. I’ll send you directions in a bit.” The two men said their goodbyes, and Lance opened the door just as John was getting out of his beat-up truck.
“Hey there, young man! Beautiful afternoon, isn’t it?” John said, stepping onto the apron before the entryway.
“It sure is.”
“Get your work in for the day?” John asked, motioning toward the alcove.
“Yes, I did, and actually I wanted to ask you, would you be interested in swinging by tomorrow evening? My friend from the cities is coming to stay for the weekend and I thought it would be nice to have a get-together.” There was only a half-second pause before John’s smile lit up his lined face.
“That’d be great, son. Need me to bring anything?”
“No, just yourself and an appetite.” John nodded and smiled again as Lance unconsciously stretched his jaw, which snapped audibly. John looked at him, concern wrinkling his brow.
“Just an old injury. Broke my jaw when I was younger and it never really healed right.” Lance smiled reassuringly, but the troubled line above the other man’s eyes didn’t recede. John looked away at the ground and seemingly searched for an overgrown patch of grass that needed trimming. When none presented itself, he looked back at Lance.
“No more problems?” John asked, tipping his head toward the house and raising his bushy eyebrows.
“No, none to speak of,” Lance said, and almost continued with and no more dreams, either. Although John had become a welcome addition to his very short list of friends, Lance still played his psychological concerns close to the chest.
“Good, good.” John’s eyes looked into the distance, across the blazing expanse of lake, and grew filmed-over. Lance watched the old man stare into something that he couldn’t see, and finally had to ask him about it.
“What do you see out there?”
John smiled sadly, and at last brought his attention back to Lance. “Just the past, son. Memories of years gone by.” A funny look flitted across John’s face, the simple caretaker’s veneer scratched by something within, although the surface remained the same. “If I can tell you one thing, son, it’s this: we are our choices, nothing else. Every decision that’s made builds a man, mortar and stone rising up out of the earth. Intentions don’t mean squat, only what we do.”
Lance tilted his head, his eyebrows drawn down. When John looked at him, he merely grimaced.
“I’m sorry, I get carried away thinking sometimes. Call it getting old. Don’t get too old, son, it’s hell on the body and mind.” John turned from Lance and headed toward his truck door. “Don’t think I’m feeling up to workin’ today, if you don’t mind,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll be round about five tomorrow if it suits you.”
Lance stood, dumbfounded, on the stoop, watching John climb into the pickup and start the engine. The caretaker’s change of mood had shifted like an unexpected tide in calm waters. Lance wondered if he’d said something to set John off, but couldn’t recall anything disturbing. Dr. Tyler’s voice floated to him out of the storage bins in his mind. Everyone has their cross to bear, Lance. Whether you can see it or not, it’s there.
The next afternoon, Lance heard the crackle of gravel in the front yard and looked at the clock above the stove in the kitchen. It was a few minutes after two. He walked into the entry and saw the flash of silver steel, as the Audi zipped out from the trees and rounded the drive, sliding to a stop in front of the house.
“Early much?” Lance said, as he watched the figure behind the wheel fumble with an object in the center console.
After John left the previous day in a cloud of dust and ambiguity, Lance had called Stub at the gun shop, making good on inviting the giant out for beers. Stub sounded pleased and promised to be there with bells on. Stuffed chicken breasts were already waiting in the fridge, along with two dozen beers and several bottles of wine. Although Lance felt the old apprehension of having several people in his home settling over him, he was still excited nonetheless.
The door to the Audi opened and Andy stepped out into the bright sunlight. His eyes were shaded behind three-hundred-dollar sunglasses, and he wore dark slacks along with a white long-sleeved shirt open at the collar. Lance mused that his friend couldn’t look more out of place in this part of the world if he had stamped Citiot on his forehead in red ink.
Andy stood looking at the house, the edifice reflected in the twin mirrors of his shades. The agent looked rigid, like a cardboard cutout of himself. A breeze ruffled Andy’s hair, breaking the illusion, but the man remained motionless. Lance had never seen his friend so still. Normally he exuded a frenetic energy, suggesting that there were other things to be done and the present couldn’t be dwelled upon for more than a few seconds.
Andy turned from the house and grasped the door handle to the car. Lance watched him, thinking he had forgotten something inside. To his surprise, Andy slid into the seat and slammed the door. Lance stepped out of the house and into the light of the day. The movement caught Andy’s attention and Lance saw his friend’s head turn in his direction. They looked at each other through the tinted glass of the car until Lance began walking toward the passenger door, feeling a heavy ball of unease growing inside him. When he reached the Audi’s door, the window slid down and revealed the interior of the car. He could feel the coolness of the air conditioning sliding past him. Andy sat looking at him from behind his sunglasses, and only then did Lance notice the car’s engine humming beneath its sleek hood and his friend’s hand playing across the shifter.
“Leaving already?” Lance said, leaning into the frigid air of the car. Andy just stared at him, his right arm shaking, as if it longed to throw the lever into gear.
“I’m … yeah. I think I might go home,” Andy
managed in a whisper that just made it across the gap between them.
“What? You just got here,” Lance said. The unease he had felt earlier expanded, speeding up his heart and weakening his muscles. Andy made no attempt to reply, and only stared at him. Lance opened the passenger door and leaned into the car. He could smell Andy’s cologne and the well-treated leather of the car. He reached out and grasped the bow of the other man’s sunglasses and removed them from his face.
Lance had been wrong. Andy wasn’t staring at him. His colorless eyes were trained over his shoulder, locked on the tall structure of the house.
“Andy,” Lance said, snapping his fingers several inches in front of his friend’s nose and eliciting no reaction. “Andrew!” Lance had used his friend’s full name only a few times throughout the years. Andy had never revealed much about his own broken past prior to their meeting at St. Catherine’s, but the response that followed the use of his full name seemed to be tied to it. Lance had once seen Andy attack a teacher who had refused to call him by the shortened version of his name, resulting in a broken nose for the teacher and a suspension for Andy.
Andy’s eyes finally focused on Lance’s face, which hovered less than a foot in front of his own. He blinked rapidly and expelled a breath that had been held in his chest like a caged bird. “What?” Andy said, as he looked around the interior of the car, gathering his bearings.
“What’s the matter with you?” Lance asked, relief setting in.
“I don’t know, I guess I just daydreamed for a minute.” Andy threw a look over Lance’s shoulder at the house again but didn’t hold it; instead, he shifted his attention to the grounds beyond the windshield.
“You feel okay?” Lance asked.
Andy exhaled again and shook his head like a dog tossing water from its ears. “I’m fine, don’t know what that was.” Andy looked back at Lance and smiled. “I’m fine,” he repeated.
The two men exited the car, Andy popping the trunk on his way to retrieve an overnight bag. He still seemed shaken as they approached the house, but didn’t falter when Lance led him inside.
“I’ll give you the grand tour,” Lance said, shutting the door behind them.
Andy set his bag down and looked around the open interior of the house. “That’s fine, but first I think I need a drink.”
Laughter echoed off the stony arms of the bay. The water, as flat as glass, still reflected the dying embers of the sun as it slid below the eastern horizon. Twin trails of white smoke slithered up into nonexistence from beneath the black grill’s hood on the deck, where the four men sat around a table strewn with bottles, bowls, plates, and silverware.
“So I said, ‘Mr. Jackson, I’d be happy to drive you home, but you need to put on some fucking pants before you get in my car.’” Andy’s face remained deadpan as he finished the story to the raucous laughter of Stub and John.
Lance sat back, grinning, in his chair, a glass of wine held loosely in one hand. He had heard the story so many times that it didn’t elicit the same hilarity as when it was fresh, but it endeared him to his friend all the more each time Andy told it.
Stub’s large frame shook with mirth and the big man wiped away tears from the corners of his brown eyes. “That’s the funniest story I’ve ever heard,” Stub said, still chuckling. John sat nodding his agreement beside him as he sipped a beer.
Lance had worried earlier that morning about how Andy and the two small-town men would get along eating together at the same table, but after several hours in their company, he realized his fears had been needless. Initially Andy had cursed him for not letting him in on the fact that they would be dining with strangers, his anger fed by the disorder that made his cool business sense thrive and stripped him of the ability to interact comfortably on a social level.
“They’re just regular guys, you don’t need to worry,” Lance had assured him earlier in the afternoon before the guests had arrived.
“I wasn’t prepared for this, you should have told me you were having other people over,” Andy said, as he shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot in the kitchen, a glass of wine sloshing dangerously close to the rim.
“You deal with people every day, it’s your job,” Lance argued, knowing full well how his friend’s mind worked.
“That’s different. I prepare myself every day and everything’s planned out.” After nearly a bottle of Merlot and an hour of reassurance had passed, Andy grumbled his assent at the situation.
John and Stub arrived shortly before five, both dressed nicer than Lance had seen them previously. Conversation flowed well over dinner, and was lubricated by another bottle of wine. Andy finally relaxed and, from all Lance could tell, seemed to actually enjoy himself.
Currently, the discourse had subsided, each man sipping at his beverage and looking out at the vista of the lake before them.
“Sure is a nice evening,” John said.
“Yes, it is,” Stub said. All the men nodded.
“Stub, I’m curious about your former career. There’s got to be a ton of stories that pop up in that line of work,” Lance said, sitting forward and smiling at the big man across from him. Stub laughed, setting his half-finished beer onto the tabletop and folding his ham-sized hands over his considerable stomach.
“Oh, there’s a few. I once caught a pig farmer who’d skipped bail on a battery charge down in Indiana. Followed him to a farm that bordered his own. Turned out to be a friend of his who was hiding him and about fifty crates of illegal firearms in an outbuilding. I found him face-up in pile of pig shit with nothing but the whites of his eyes showing!” Stub slapped his knee and a new round of thunderous laughter issued from beneath the man’s tangled beard. “Turns out they heard I was coming and decided that was the best place to hide.” Stub shook his head in wonder, while John chuckled into his beer.
“Ever go after anyone real dangerous?” Andy asked. Stub’s laughter subsided and his eyes squinted as he took another sip of beer. Lance could see him struggle with something internally and, after a moment, make a decision.
“Went after a guy down in Florida once. Real piece a work. He was in and outta jail since he was sixteen. Last charge he pulled was rape, young woman barely twenty. Beat her half to death ’fore he did what he wanted with her. Lawyer got him out on bail somehow, and by the time I went after him, he’d disappeared pretty well.” Stub stopped and sighed.
“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” Lance said, his stomach tightening. Stub shook his head in dismissal.
“Not sayin’ it doesn’t make it untrue. I had a hunch after I’d been after him about four days. Went to the gal’s apartment that he’d raped. Found him sitting there in her easy chair, surrounded by what was left of her. He cut her into so many pieces, if I wouldn’t of known it was a person there on the floor, I woulda never guessed it. Pulled my gun on him and it took all the power in my body not to put a bullet between his eyes. He just sat there, smeared in that young lady’s blood, smiling like he had a secret that no one else knew.”
Lance felt his heart pounding in his ears and glanced over at Andy, who had turned a pale shade of gray. John seemed unsurprised; perhaps he’d heard the story before.
Stub continued, “There’s evil in this world without reason or purpose, my friends. It just is. And God help you if you ever run across it.”
The rest of the evening slid away from them like the sun behind the trees. More drinks were poured and more stories told. When the clock in the kitchen read 10:00 and the shadows had condensed into full darkness, Stub and John said their goodbyes. Lance and Andy watched the taillights like disembodied eyes disappear down the drive until they’d winked out.
“Good people,” Lance said, piling dishes onto the counter as Andy went and sat in the alcove near the computer.
Andy nodded as Lance began to wash the dishes, his head buzzing pleasantly from the wine. “Mind if I read?” Andy said over his shoulder as he opened the Word document that now numbered in th
e hundreds of pages.
“Looks like you are,” Lance said. The house became quiet besides the clink of dishes and the intermittent swish of water washing suds from clean utensils.
Just as Lance placed the last plate in the dish-holder to dry, he noticed Andy saunter in and sit at the counter. His face held its color again under the kitchen lights as he poured himself another glass of wine.
“So?” Lance asked, leaning against the counter and drying his sodden hands.
Andy took a gulp from his glass and swallowed loudly. “It’s the best thing you’ve ever written, by far.”
Lance felt the familiar glow in his chest. He had worried that he had misjudged the story and his talent, but now he felt validated; Andy always told him what he thought, honestly and truly.
“You think so?”
“Yes. It’s powerful, and I like the way you’re swaying the main character between damnation and redemption. Well done.” Andy raised his glass in a toast. Lance lifted his own in return, and both men drank deeply. “Now I just need to figure out how I’m going to pitch this to those bastards in New York.”
They retired shortly after finishing their wine. Lance had prepared the guest room upstairs for Andy, and as they walked upstairs, he watched his friend for any sign of the distress he had shown in the driveway. Andy only seemed tired, and after saying good night, the house became dark, its sounds reflecting the cooling temperature outside.
Lance lay awake for some time after he heard Andy’s soft snores from down the hall. Stub’s story still hung in his mind like a ghoul, circling him until his back was turned, and then pouncing. Stub had been right—there were some things that were so awful they defied logic. As Lance drifted off, he pictured the man Stub had described sitting in the chair, covered in gore. But when the man looked at him, instead of a stranger, he saw his father’s face.
Something woke him hours later, his mouth dry and his throat parched from the alcohol he had consumed. He inhaled, the sound loud in the empty room. His eyes searched the space around him; deep shadows clung to the corners, contrasted with milky light that leaked in through the open door. He listened, searching for the source of the sound that woke him, not sure that it had been a sound at all. He reached out, feeling in the darkness for the smooth stock of the Mossberg he knew was there. His palm touched it, and he drew it to his side as he stood from the bed.
