Godspeed

by Nickolas Butler

  There was a longish pause before he heard her sigh deeply, like a mother annoyed by her son’s childish ways.

  “Don’t be foolish,” she said. “First of all, you’d lose any chance you might still have of securing your bonuses, and with less than a month away.”

  “Yeah, well, the situation’s changed, now, hasn’t it?” he found himself saying. “So we’re gonna need another hundred thousand dollars on top of that bonus if it’s gonna mean a damn thing.”

  He hadn’t premeditated this demand. The words just leapt out of his mouth. But he did not regret them. What did he have to lose? What did any of them have to lose? Bart’s fingers were surely worth more than a hundred thousand dollars, weren’t they? And what about those dirty deeds, drowning José in the river, or the fear that clawed around his heart upon finally inspecting Bill’s dead body? What was that worth?

  He heard Gretchen cluck her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

  “Fine,” she said breezily. “You get the house done by Christmas morning, I have no problem paying your firm an extra hundred thousand.”

  “Per,” he found himself saying. “Per man.”

  Now she outright laughed.

  He didn’t wait to hear more, just hung up his phone and set it on the dashboard, wondering if he’d just made an incredible blunder. He was almost panting for breath, his fingers wrapped tight around the wheel, his chest practically heaving. But he had sensed weakness in her, and on the off-chance that this deadline was actually meaningful—seriously meaningful—he figured he might as well capitalize on that timing. He reached into the glove box to shake out a cigarette, light it, and cradle its warm ember of temporary solace.

  The minutes ticked by. . . . Five, ten, then fifteen . . . Twenty minutes later his phone rang.

  “Fine,” she said quietly. “But know this: I will be standing in that house on Christmas morning, and if one fucking outlet cover is missing or a door isn’t hung properly, I’m going to have your balls, do you understand me? Your fucking balls, Cole.”

  “Yeah,” he replied flatly, understanding in that moment that any delusions of romance he had once harbored were like the cigarette smoke drifting away from him out into the mountain air.

  “Yeah?” she repeated. “Are you taking my food order at a McDonald’s, Cole?”

  He actually straightened up in his chair and took a last drag of his cigarette, flicking it out the truck window.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he offered with more conviction. “You bet, Gretchen.”

  “Do not play fucking games with me,” she said. “Do you understand me? And don’t talk to me about personal injury attorneys, you moron. Bill told me about Bart, about his meth use. I could destroy your pissant little firm. I could bring power raining down on you like you couldn’t imagine. Bleed you to death with countersuits or crush you under the weight of thousands of letters and petitions. I do hope you can grasp that, Cole. Threatening me . . . Finish my house and finish it well, you fucking nitwit. Good day, sir.”

  And with that, the line went dead.

  31

  When the garage was finally cleaned and there was no sign of any carnage whatsoever, Cole began frantically calling subs, namely the cabinetmaker, the countertop installer, the tile fitter, and the plumber. The painters would no longer take his calls, claiming to have moved on to other jobs. But so much was already now done: the flooring, the electrical, heating and cooling, most of the plumbing. The appliances were en route: the Sub-Zero refrigerator and Wolf range, hood, and double oven; the microwave. Teddy would meet the delivery trucks at the highway and usher them up the driveway. He and Cole had gone so far as to borrow a pair of snowmobiles, in case the driveway became impassable, so they could load the appliances onto sledges and haul them all the way up to the house.

  And so, while they waited for their subs, Teddy and Cole painted. They began on the top floor, by painting the bedrooms; first coating the ceilings white, and then the window trims and baseboards. Then they taped all the trim and baseboards and painted the walls in the warm and subtle spectrum of grays and off-whites Gretchen had laid out for them.

  It was true, neither of the men liked painting—not one bit. It was the sort of job, like drywalling, that they were happy to farm out to some crew of trustworthy if fume-damaged men, all clad in paint-spattered white jumpsuits and well-worn Converse sneakers. There is a pecking order in construction, with painters ranking toward the bottom. The thing is, if an electrician fails at his profession, a house may catch fire; a homeowner might be electrocuted. If a plumber makes a mistake, a house may flood, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. But if a painter is sloppy, well, the worst that can happen is that a room looks poorly finished, slapdash and amateurish. And that can always be fixed by someone even just slightly more competent.

  But under the circumstances, Cole and Teddy could not risk the appearance of slovenliness, and so they moved very slowly. Now that the calendar had flipped to December, the days were shortening, the sun mostly stuck behind the mountains, and the men were exhausted. It wasn’t just the pace and precision of their work either, though that would have exhausted any builder; it was the weight of their crimes.

  Cole had begun to wake up in the middle of the night, thrashing and screaming inside the trailer where he bunked each evening. And sleeping did not come easy to begin with. He was having a difficult time coming to grips with the deaths of Bill and José. He could still feel the young man’s dead weight in his arms, in that frigid river, as he tried to knot the ropes around his corpse; these brute physical facts of the murders were something he just could not push away. Surely the sheriff could feel it, too. Surely it was only a matter of time before they were arrested.

  And yet, he knew the bodies were gone, that they were free and clear—weren’t they? There were only three people who knew the whole truth: Teddy, Bart, and himself, and they were all implicated, weren’t they? Of course, Jerry knew plenty, and the veterinarian knew enough. . . . But really, it was Bart and Cole who were most imperiled. Bart had killed Bill, and Cole had killed José. . . . As for Teddy, well, he hadn’t done anything wrong. All he’d done was save Bart’s life; he hadn’t harmed anyone; hadn’t directly hidden anything either; hadn’t paid off Jerry or transported the bodies. Most everything was Cole’s doing.

  When they finally retired every day around eleven at night, he’d lie in bed for a couple of hours before popping an Ambien and then crashing. Only the sleeping pills made him sluggish in the morning; once, he spilled a nearly full can of paint on a bedroom floor. Another morning he fell asleep inside the Porta Potty for a full forty-five minutes, and, despite the cold, waking only when Teddy pounded on the door.

  Late one evening, after tossing and turning in his bed for hours, Cole stood and shuffled over to the dresser, where he supposed Bart kept his meth stash. After rummaging around in the drawers for several seconds, his hands brushed a fat hardcover book; Bart didn’t read. Sure enough, it felt suspiciously light when he lifted it, and when he cracked it open, there it all was: Bart’s pipe and meth. He cradled the pipe in his hands as if examining some alien artifact. Simply holding it felt . . . dirty, forbidden. He didn’t really want to hold it, but he couldn’t quite put it down either, and turning toward the house, there was the sense that he sure as hell couldn’t sleep, and maybe he ought to be back up there, working. . . . His life was like an eighteen-wheeler barreling down a mountainside with bankrupt brakes and bald tires nearly on fire. Holding the pipe in his hands, he saw it all—the bottom of the mountain, his life come completely off the rails, lying in some obscure valley, smoldering and broken. Or was that fear? They had just three weeks now.

  Cole had begun to feel Teddy looking at him with suspicion. Or was it concern? Something like sympathy? One afternoon, when Cole surprised his partner, coming up behind him after several hours of patient detailing, Teddy had taken three quick steps backw
ard, as if Cole were some deranged jack-in-the-box, and he supposed he looked that way, too: sunken eyes, pallid skin, scratches and bruises lining his arms. Because of course he’d earned those.

  Sitting on the tiny bed, he loaded the pipe, touched the lighter beneath the glass bowl, watched the crystal begin to smoke . . . then brought the pipe to his lips and . . . inhaled—

  FFFFFFuuuuuuccccccKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!

  His skull, for a moment, felt as if it might, might, might flee his shoulders, like a ROCKET, like a blasting ROCKET, like a SATURN fucking missile! Oh!!!!!! His bones—could feel every one, every one of them, every one of his bones, like they were people in a village that was him, and his hairs, each of those, the hairs, like trees in a forest, for example, or individual—FUCK—individual—FUCK—individual strands of grass, fucking beautiful blades of grass—FUCK!—swords of grass, on the prairie, but his skin was the prairie and his hair, see, his hair was the grass on the prairie.

  He stopped. Blllllleeeeeewwwwww on his right forearm.

  Now he felt the wind coming down from the Rocky Mountains, coming down from the Rocky Mountains, racing down from the Rocky Mountains, down over the foothills, and through the cities, down through the wide avenues and canyons of steel and glass, out onto the prairie and caressing, caressing, caressing those leaves of grass, those prairie grasses, hundreds of miles—HIS body—could it be that HIS body was the prairie, this biome, this prairie, all kkkkkkiiiiiissssssssssssed by stormy lightning, and then erased by wildfire? But he itched those fires. ITCHED! Itched those fires right out. OUT.

  He stopped. Breathed. Felt like the trailer was the Millennium Falcon, looked out into the inky night and at Gretchen’s house, out there, like a gigantic spaceship, the falling snow in between like stars, racing, like this was what TV shows and movies all agreed was “hyperspace,” whatever the fuck that meant. OR—maybe that was it! He was flying in hyperspace!

  He sat down, he sat down. Held his elbows in his hands. No, no, no. He shook his head. Closed his eyes. His eyeballs felt on fire, like two egg yolks in a Chinese hot pot. Oh, oh, oh. No, no, no.

  How did Bart, did Bart—HOW did Bart {corral} this? Bart! How, how, how, how, how?

  He steadied his breathing, even as his heart felt like, felt like, inside his ribs, behind his ribs, like a separate caged animal, a frightened rabbit, a flopping fish, his heart—calm the fuck down. . . .

  “Channel this,” he whispered to himself, his eyes still closed. “Ride this lightning.”

  He looked at the house, took a deep breath, and walked back to it all, to the work still awaiting them. Three more weeks.

  Now the painting was like playing music and he could feel each stroke, could feel the silkiness of the paint upon his brush as it slicked across the wall. He stuck out his dry tongue, wedged between his teeth, and tasted the paint fumes in the air. Sweet, sweet fumes. The house was filled with jazz: In a Silent Way by Miles Davis. And where has this album been my whole life? With a brush he trimmed around the ceiling and his strokes were surgical and clean, and afterward he took up a rolling brush and painted the room in wide swaths, imagining the paint as the progress of a great harvester, making whole tracts of wheat fields disappear.

  Teddy arrived just before dawn, holding two cups of coffee and a bag of doughnuts. Cole had already finished the top floor and begun taping around the trim and baseboards. Teddy said nothing as he stood in the doorway, and it took everything in his being for Cole to restrain a flood of words, all of which would certainly betray the fact that he was high as a kite.

  “All-nighter, huh?” Teddy asked, his brow furrowed in wonder.

  It was with some difficulty that Cole met his friend’s gaze, and with even greater difficulty that he nodded his head once, rather than a thousand times, the way he used to flick a door stopper in his childhood room, that spring that would accept the sometime violence of a door with nothing more than mute acceptance.

  32

  Even as she tried to slink out of her office, even as she so desperately tried to pass on file folders and forward client emails and phone calls, her decades of work, her matrix of thousands of clients, began to take on the quality of an elaborate net, each client a strong knot, in a great circuitry of unbreakable fibers that would not release her. Some of those same partners who just two weeks prior had applauded her now dropped new work on her desk with all the fanfare they might have offered a summer intern. She even opened her sent-email folder to verify that she had in fact sent her resignation letter, that it had in fact been received and even responded to many dozens of times over.

  “We could use your eyeballs on this,” one of them would say, dropping a two-hundred-page contract on her desk calendar.

  Or, “The Zabriskie deal closes in March . . . any chance you could mentor your replacement in the new year? Just, like, a day or two in the office each week? Or even just a few conference calls? Look, Gretchen, nobody knows this material the way you do.”

  No one ever seemed to notice that she was fading away, that she often winced in pain, or that her clothes no longer even fit her.

  Still, she attacked this work just as she always had: by arriving at the office early and staying late, closing file folder after file folder, resolving issue after issue, and then sternly directing her paralegal to stop all incoming matters and close whatever it was she was wrapping up.

  Christmas was two weeks away, and though she was communicating much less with Cole by telephone, she had signed off on the penultimate draw, pleased to see that despite Bart’s apparently awful injury, they appeared both on schedule and on budget. Cole had even texted her a half-dozen photos of finished rooms before she politely asked him to stop; she wanted to save all that—the sensation of stepping into the completed house for the very first time, like experiencing the grandeur of an ancient cathedral, or the awe of spelunking into a vast cave network, a new hidden and wondrous world. . . . She wanted to be able to feel it all in situ—the early-morning light of that house—how it danced through the windows and onto the walls; how the hot springs would condense on certain glass or siding; she wanted to have the pleasure of wondering where she would keep her future falcons. In the garage? Or perhaps she would need a new outbuilding or shed? It was not something she wished to rush. Least of all over the very medium she was trying so desperately to shake as she counted the days until she could leave this firm for good.

  And then her collapsing body would remind her of time, of how little time was likely left. Pain had begun to inhabit her now, and she often found herself grimacing under its pincers. Her appetite was gone, her clothing looser than ever. This is a marathon, she’d tell herself. Just get to Christmas.

  Abby was a godsend, and the more time Gretchen spent with her, the more forthcoming and candid the young woman grew. She fixed dinner in the evening and prepared a hippie-dippy breakfast of instant oats that she packed into a Mason jar for Gretchen to take with her to work, oatmeal loaded up with butter and cream and laden with organic berries and maple syrup and flaxseed. It was tasty. Tasty enough that Gretchen could actually finish half the jar.

  One night at the steakhouse, Gretchen was pushing her food around a plate when Abby asked, “Uh, I don’t know how to say this, but . . .”

  “Go on,” Gretchen said.

  “Do you think maybe you need to visit the hospital again?”

  “I’m not going to back to the hospital,” Gretchen said flatly.

  “But last night,” Abby almost pleaded, “you were groaning in your sleep, and—”

  “And what?”

  “It, well . . . it sounded like you were . . . god, Gretchen, I don’t know if—”

  “Spit it out, child,” Gretchen said.

  “It sounded like you were crying. Like you were whimpering.”

  Gretchen nodded her head and sipped at her wine, felt the alcohol blossoming in her chest like a dark purple dah
lia.

  “Does it hurt?” Abby asked, leaning forward.

  “Of course it hurts,” Gretchen spat. “It’s cancer.”

  “You have to stop going to work,” Abby whispered, leaning farther across the table. “There’s no point. We have to get you to your house. That’s where you should be.”

  “I can’t,” Gretchen breathed.

  “Why not?”

  “Because this is who I am,” she said simply.

  “What do you mean?” Abby asked, leaning back against the leather of their booth.

  “It’s impossible to explain,” Gretchen said, making a deliberate effort to lean into her salad and fill her mouth with food, despite lacking the slightest appetite. How could she convey the fact that for her, work was a compulsion, a craft, even sort of a religion; a kind of code that she had committed her life to, even as she understood that the firm promised nothing but money as a reward, no afterlife, no moral legacy, not even much in the way of comfort or community. Still, there was pride in doing a job in an exemplary fashion, in rising each morning and donning one’s suit, looking trim and polished and professional, ready once more to accomplish high-level work. Surely this meant something.

  “I’d like dessert,” Abby said.

  “Of course—whatever you’d like,” Gretchen said. “You know that, I hope.”

  “You should order something, too, though.”

  “Abby,” Gretchen began, “I’m just . . . not that hungry, I’m sad to say.”

  “Trust me,” Abby said. “Please. Just order something. Anything. We’ll take it to-go.”

  * * *

  —

  An hour later they sat on the narrow terrace of Gretchen’s penthouse, wrapped in Hudson blankets, their feet tucked under them, passing a fat joint, sipping hot tea, and eating from their takeaway containers of decadent dessert: an apricot cheesecake for Abby; and for Gretchen, a chocolate ganache. Ella Fitzgerald crooned out of a cordless speaker as they stared over the shimmering city and the foggy bay beyond.