All My Colors

by David Quantick

  “Fuck,” said Todd. Behm looked at him curiously, but Todd didn’t elaborate.

  Yeah, that story.

  And when she’d told me the whole thing, she cried in my arms, and made me promise I would never, ever tell it to anyone else.

  I promised. How could I hurt Helen? When she’d been hurt so much already.

  After that, things were different. Helen was different. It was as if she’d revealed the most secret part of herself and without that secret part, she had nothing. She kept saying, “I wish I’d never told you.” And no matter how often I said that I’d never tell, no matter how much I crossed my heart or swore on my own life, she kept on saying it.

  It drove me crazy, I guess. I stopped seeing her as this beautiful, damaged woman who had fallen in love with me, and started to view her as a kind of albatross, clinging around my neck and making us both miserable.

  “I wish I’d never told you.”

  I wished the same thing too.

  I suppose that’s why I started cheating on her. I couldn’t stand the reproach. I mean, I’d done nothing, right? I’d been faithful to my promise and told nobody Helen’s story. But all I was getting in return was misery. Dark looks. Sideways glances.

  I started staying away from home. I started seeing other women. You could say Helen and I drifted apart. Like two sailors shipwrecked on ice floes. I could see her floating away into the Arctic night. Still giving me those reproachful looks. I was getting hell for something I hadn’t done. And one day I woke up and I thought I might as well get hell for something I had done.

  I got up one morning, I put a piece of paper into the typewriter and I started writing. I changed the names to protect the record, and I altered a couple of facts, and I wrote it. God forgive me, I wrote her story, and I called it All My Colors, and I sent it to my publisher, and he loved it.

  I wish now I’d never done it, but what good is that? I wish now I was living in that apartment still, with no money and no food, with the bones of our love to gnaw on. I wish she was still here.

  The day I came back from New York, the day I signed the contract, was also the day it happened. I came in and there she was, in the bedroom. She was packing. She didn’t have to tell me why.

  She picked up her case—it was the same cardboard valise she’d moved in with—and she walked out onto the landing. I stood in her way.

  “Please move,” she said, not even looking at me.

  “We need to talk,” I said. “You owe me that.”

  “We talked,” she said. “You made a promise and you broke it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “I found your manuscript,” she said, and even though I had been expecting this moment for weeks, months even, a chill ran through me like a rod of ice.

  She looked me square in the eye. “I knew this would happen,” she said.

  “You made it happen,” I said.

  “I did nothing!” Helen shouted. “It was you!”

  She shoved me in the chest with the case, and I staggered backward. I grabbed her, without thinking.

  “Get away from me!” she shouted, and shoved me again.

  This time I can’t say I did what I did without thinking. I grabbed her hard. I was so angry. All I’d done or tried to do for her, and all she’d done was drive me away.

  “Fuck you!” I said.

  The last words I ever said to her. Fuck you.

  She took a step toward me and I kicked her feet out from under her. I didn’t mean to do it—did I?—but I did. Helen went backward down the stairs, hit the banister, flipped into a forward roll and crumpled at the foot of the stairs.

  I ran down after her. She lay there at a crazy angle. Her neck was broken. But she was still looking at me.

  After unpacking her valise, I got out of there. When I came back two hours later, I called the police and told them I’d found her at the bottom of the stairs when I came back in. They suspected me all right—they’d be crazy not to—but the autopsy was inconclusive. Because I’d unpacked the valise, they didn’t know she was leaving me. Because I was clearly distraught at her death, and because people knew how much I loved her, I got away with it. I was lucky, or so I thought.

  After the funeral, I went in the bedroom and I saw something under the bed. I thought it was maybe a farewell note. I was about to burn it, when I noticed that it had been typed, on my typewriter. It was the last paragraph of All My Colors. She must have typed it out herself. I couldn’t imagine why.

  For those of you who are familiar with the book, I reproduce those lines now. Maybe you can make sense of them, work out why Helen felt they were worth typing out. I know I can’t.

  “He ran across the road. It was after him. He didn’t know what it was, but it was after him. The road was clear. No cars, nothing. He stepped out—and a wall hit him. It crushed him, it flattened him, it pulled him to the ground and it mangled and broke him.

  The last thing he heard as his lifeblood seeped from his smashed body was a voice, a whiney voice, saying again and again, ‘He just stepped out right in frunna me! Right in frunna me!’”

  “But that’s not how it ends,” Todd said.

  “That’s all there is,” said Behm.

  “No,” said Todd, and got up. He pulled his copy of All My Colors from his case.

  “Look,” he said, opening the book. Behm looked at the last page.

  “Yeah,” he said, “it’s different. So what? It’s a different book. Same name, different book.”

  Behm looked at Todd, as if realizing something.

  “Is that what all this is about, Milstead? The book?”

  Todd didn’t hear him.

  “You’re right,” he said, and there was a wild tone in his voice. “You’re right. It’s a different book.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, you don’t get it. It’s a different book.”

  “Okay…”

  “If this—” Todd jabbed at the book. “—is different to that, to what he wrote, then—then there’s a chance.”

  “A chance of what? Mr. Milstead, you’re losing me.”

  Todd grabbed Behm by the shoulders.

  “There’s a chance I can change things!”

  “Let go, would you?”

  “If the books are different, I can write my way out of it! I can move the shapes! Behm, I can move the shapes!”

  “Milstead…”

  Behm’s voice seemed to be coming from far away. Todd barely noticed that his hands were no longer on Behm’s shoulders.

  “Behm!” he shouted, and his own voice filled the world. “Behm! I can do anything! There’s a—”

  Todd laughed. “There’s a spirit inside me! It’s like when I wrote the book! A spirit! Guiding me. Guiding my—”

  A thought occurred to him.

  “Behm, what happened to Turner?”

  There was no reply save a sick groan. Todd looked at his hands. They were tight around Behm’s neck. Behm’s head was lolling in his grip like a fucking cauliflower thought Todd wildly. He let go, and Behm’s lifeless body thumped to the floor.

  Shit, Todd thought. Fucking shit.

  He sat on the floor next to the corpse. Behm’s body had fallen onto the yellowing pages. Todd looked down. One of the pages was different to the rest. It had a handwritten scrawl in red pen at the bottom, maybe written by the bookstore guy or whoever had found the confession. Todd picked it up.

  Jake Turner died two days after writing this, said the note. He walked onto the highway and was killed immediately by a speeding truck.

  Todd made a pile of the books, heaping them at Behm’s feet like a sacrificial offering. He found a book of motel matches, lit one, and dropped it onto the books. It went out. Todd ripped up some newspapers. He tore up Turner’s confession and scattered it over Behm.

  He went out to Behm’s car. In the trunk he found, as he knew he would, a can of gasoline (Behm was, or had been, a prepared kind of guy
). He brought it inside and sloshed it all over the carpet. Then he put everything he needed inside a pillowcase and threw that outside.

  Todd lit another match and dropped it onto the carpet, which caught alight with a woomph. Then, before the flames got too high, he dropped his own copy of All My Colors into the fire and walked out, closing the door behind him.

  The Volvo pulled out of the parking lot, just as smoke started to pour from the motel room’s windows. In the distance he could hear the sirens of fire trucks.

  After a few miles, he turned off at a White Castle and got something to eat. He hadn’t felt hungry for days and, judging by the horrified look on the face of the girl behind the counter, he hadn’t eaten for days either.

  “Give me a box of sliders,” he said. “And a Coke, and fries.” Damn, he was hungry.

  Todd barely made it back to the car before finishing the box of tiny burgers. He crammed a fistful of fries into his mouth, gulped some Coke down, and was about to start the car when he saw it in the rearview mirror.

  A black Harley-Davidson, headlight on, pulling into the parking lot.

  Todd adjusted the mirror so he could see better, but he didn’t really need to confirm what he was looking at. It was her. Of course it was. Who else would it be?

  Todd peeled out of the lot as fast as the Volvo would let him. He ran a red light in his haste, and decided to slow down in case a cop pulled him over. I am, he thought, technically a murderer on the run. For some reason the word “technically” made him giggle, and he almost had to pull over in case he choked from laughing.

  Calm down, he advised himself, stealing a look in the mirror again. A few yards behind, he could see the bright white circle of the Harley’s headlamp.

  Todd kept driving, he wasn’t sure where to, but even in his current state, he knew that a Volvo estate was no match for a Harley-Davidson. He kept looking for exits where he could lose her or side roads where a sudden turn might throw her, but there were none.

  So he just kept going.

  He didn’t feel like a guy being pursued by a maniac on a motorcycle. He felt lightheaded, if truth be told. He opened a window and took a sip of Coke. He turned on the radio. Music filled the car. The radio told him that he was a wayward son, but not to give up. Not that Todd felt like giving up. He felt alive, and energized Let the bitch try and catch him. He was ready for her. After all, wasn’t he Todd Milstead, best-selling author of All My Colors?

  He turned the radio to another station, which told him not to look back.

  “Darn straight,” said Todd, and turned it up.

  * * *

  It was night but Todd had no sense of being part of time anymore. Cars flashed past, headlights on, in a constant slipstream. Lights changed, pedestrians crossed, the night came in, and Todd scarcely noticed. He was a driving machine now, with one aim: to shake that bike and its rider.

  It wasn’t going to be easy. The Harley never came near enough to overtake or for Todd to get a really good look at the rider’s face, but also it never fell back far enough for Todd to make a sudden swerve and lose it. Once he contemplated making a U-turn, but a truck passed and Todd remembered what had happened to Jake Turner.

  Night in the Midwest could be a circular thing, Todd thought, especially when you got out of town. There would be a red barn, and a water tower, and a few miles later a church. And then farther down the road, another red barn. Then maybe a water tower, a red barn and another church. It was like God had run out of ideas for things to put into America.

  Todd drove past the barns and the churches and the water towers, occasionally letting out a “Well, hey there” when he saw a roadhouse or a gas station put there by the Lord in a rare moment of inspiration.

  Where the fuck am I going? he thought. Behind him, the Harley’s headlamp followed like a bright persistent star.

  The night went on. The song about the wayward son had long passed, to be replaced by songs about something that was more than a feeling, or cold as ice, or hot-blooded, or the spirit of radio. Todd drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and sang along when he knew the song.

  Suddenly the song – it was about two kids who died or something – ended. A squall of guitars, a rumble of drums. The roar of an engine. Like a motorbike. Like a—

  Like a bat out of hell.

  As if on cue, the Harley revved up. Todd could hear its engine roar and flare like someone opened a furnace door. Before, it had just been toying with him following him, but now it was coming at him, surging up roads at Todd, falling back, surging up, almost passing, and falling back again.

  Todd saw what was happening: the fucker was shepherding him.

  He turned off the radio and looked out the window. He was on the outskirts of a small town. Todd put pedal to metal, swung a left, and headed for Main Street. The Harley did the same, but luck was with Todd, as a pickup truck nosed out from a four-way crossing and forced the bike to slow.

  They were on Main Street. Todd didn’t have much time until the Harley caught up with him. New plan. Todd slung the Volvo at the curb, braked it, killed the engine, and leapt out onto the sidewalk.

  Now he was running down an unlit alley, away from the bike. And yet there it was, coming right at him, engine gunned and headlight glaring in his eyes.

  Without thinking, Todd jumped into a doorway.

  Silence. Nothing. Todd stepped out of the doorway. From nowhere, the bike charged at him.

  Todd stumbled back into the doorway and banged on the door.

  “Let me in!” he shouted.

  And then, just as the Harley was on him, the door opened and Todd fell inside.

  * * *

  The darkness was total, cold and soft like fog. Todd breathed it in. The door clicked shut, but he didn’t notice. He moved farther inside, looking for a light switch. He ran his fingers along the wall, found something, and flicked it.

  Instantly globes of yellow light snapped into existence across the ceiling, waking one by one with an irritable clicking sound. Todd was momentarily blinded. He looked up. The ceiling was pretty high. Below it were shelves. Hundreds of shelves. And on those shelves were books, thousands of them.

  What is this, some kind of warehouse? thought Todd. And then he realized. He was in a library.

  The library was massive. The ceilings were high enough to need ladders (Todd imagined a store clerk wobbling at the top of one of them, as if in a silent movie), and the walls were huge. The entire stock of Legolas Books would have fitted against one of these walls.

  He wandered through the shelves, the Harley forgotten. There were famous books here, classics of English literature—and French literature, and Russian and German literature, and even Chinese and Arabic literature. There were science books and art books and children’s books. But mostly there were novels. Some he knew well, and some he’d never heard of. Some were new, and some were so old the gilt had worn off the spines. Todd had a feeling that if you had time, you could find any book you wanted in here.

  Todd stopped by a shelf and pulled a book out at random. The Poor Man and the Lady by Thomas Hardy. Not one he’d heard of. He pulled out another. A Brilliant Career: A Play by James Joyce. Joyce wrote plays? he thought. Another one, much older. Adam Unparadised by John Milton. Love’s Labours Won by William Shakespeare.

  Todd was starting to feel pretty ignorant now, and a little bit annoyed. It was like the books were conspiring to make him look stupid. He slammed one more back into place—Gibbon’s History of the Liberty of the Swiss—and decided that he’d had his fun, and now it was time to find the exit and get out of here.

  The library was a maze. Yeah, I get that one, thought Todd, as he tried to make his way out through the towering shelves. But the farther he went, the deeper into the library he seemed to go. It was as if the paper in the books had remembered its origins and was trying to become trees again. Todd was seriously thinking of looking for some thread to mark his path when he found himself in what he couldn’t help but think of a
s a glade.

  The shelves had parted to make a kind of square. Empty shelves loomed above him. He knew he was in the middle of the library. He listened for a moment. No motorbikes. Todd had been walking for—minutes? hours?—and decided it was time for a break. He sat down on the floor.

  Then he noticed that he’d been wrong about the shelves being empty. There was something on the bottom shelf. Unsurprisingly, it was a book. Todd went over and picked it up.

  All My Colors. By Jake Turner.

  “Typical,” said a voice, so suddenly that Todd nearly dropped the book. “They never have the book you want, right?”

  Todd turned around. A man about his own age was standing there. He was wearing a longshoreman’s jacket and blue jeans.

  “Evening,” said the man. He stuck out his hand. “The name’s Jake Turner.”

  EIGHT

  Todd couldn’t speak for a moment. Then he said, “I thought you were dead.”

  “You read the confession, right?” said Jake. “Yeah, I’m dead. Happens to all of us in the end, right?”

  “You were hit by a truck,” Todd said, almost accusingly.

  “Is that right?” said Jake. He didn’t seem too concerned about it. “I guess that’s what they call ‘dramatic irony.’”

  Jake looked at Todd quizzically. “I guess you know what that is, being a writer.”

  “How’d you know that?” said Todd.

  “Why else would you be here?” said Jake. “Jesus, look at this.”

  He took the copy of All My Colors from Todd’s hand.

  “This was gonna be it, you know,” he said. “Reviews, sales, everything. I poured my fucking life into it.”

  “You poured her life into it,” said Todd.

  “Thanks,” said Jake. “Nice to be reminded. At least I fucking wrote it, know what I mean? Yeah, I took someone else’s life—literally, as it turned out—but I did the writing, pal. Helen told me her story and I used it as the raw material. I shaped it, I gave it a structure and you know what? I gave her a voice. They should have given me an award for what I did. Instead—truck.”