“Good job,” he said.
“For what?”
“Not getting killed.”
“Today was not a good day to die.”
“None of them are. You learn that eventually.”
34
Lily chopped onions and didn’t cry while she did it, which made her a superhero in my book. She dumped them into a skillet to sauté in olive oil and took a drink of wine. Her eyes flitted between me and the skillet. A pot of pasta bubbled with white foam.
I sipped at my iced tea. Lily didn’t say much when I showed up, but her expression betrayed as much frustration as concern over the fact that my face looked like I’d lost both the battle and the war and then got my ass kicked signing the peace treaty.
“Does this happen often?” she said.
“Define this.”
“People throttling the absolute and mortal fuck out of you, Henry. What else do you think I’d be invoking at the moment?”
“I work not to presume. But to answer your question, it’s a few times a year. I try to time to when we change the clocks, but this year—”
“You put a huge amount of effort into being funny.”
“More than I care to admit.”
“Scale it back for the time being. I’m not sure you get that while I like you, and I care about you, I’ve never been involved with anyone who might be killed as part of their day-to-day life.”
“In my defense, I haven’t tried to hide my tattered, nine-fingered past.”
“No, but I still get to have my feelings about this. For you and me both.”
She reached out and touched my face. Her skin was soft and smelled of flowery lotion. Her fingers brushed across a bruise along my jaw, and I winced and sucked in a hiss of air. She drew her hand back as though she’d burned herself.
“Christ,” she said and threw back the rest of her glass of wine.
“If I tell you everything’s going to be okay, would you believe me?” I said.
“Would you be telling me the truth?”
“Have I lied to you yet?”
“Are we going to go back and forth asking one another questions?”
I smiled. Goddamn but I liked this woman.
She refilled her wine glass then sliced mushrooms and peppers and added them in with the onions.
“Why’d you never get married?” I said.
“No desire.” She took boneless chicken breasts from the refrigerator and cut them into strips. “Most of my options would have been nothing but an acknowledgment of settling. And it wasn’t for lack of efforts on the parts of many. Plenty of my girlfriends wanted me to settle down so they could share the twin agonies of raising snot-nosed brats and having unfulfilling sex with men they couldn’t stand to look at.”
“You paint quite the picture of marriage. I might drop to one knee and propose. I also might never get up, though.”
“Don’t. I have an allergy to grand romantic gestures. I get hives and run in the opposite direction. My parents, their marriage has been a garbage fire my entire life. My mother spends most of her days avoiding my father since he retired. My father hounded me for years about finding the right guy and having him some grandkids. Then he stopped saying ‘right’ and said, ‘Find a guy.’”
“They wouldn’t have a problem with you settling?”
“My parents are tired of their only daughter being a spinster schoolmarm.”
“Is that still a thing?”
“This would be the one place where it is.” She poured the vegetables into a bowl and added the chicken into the skillet. “What my parents can’t accept—or won’t—is that my life is content and full. I don’t need someone else to make my life good because it is already. I have a job I enjoy and I kick ass at, a solid network of friends, hobbies to keep me busy, an endless supply of books, and a plethora of double-A batteries. So whoever the person is that comes into my life, he joins that list; he doesn’t ascend to the top of the pecking order because he’s there.”
“I suspect there’s a theme coming, a thesis statement to all of this.”
She gestured toward me with the knife. “You would be correct. That statement being, if I let this person into my life, I need to know he’s safe and that he’s being safe.”
“You’re worried something will happen to me.”
“Yes; I don’t want you to die. Also, I personally don’t want shot. Which is a thing that happened to someone else you dated, I believe you’ve said.”
“It did.”
“I hope it doesn’t seem bitchy that while I worry about your safety, I also worry about mine. This is a small town, and I’d rather not get kidnapped.”
“I’m not looking to put yourself or me in dangerous situations, Lily.”
“It’s not intentional, but it sure as hell seems to be a side effect of your life. You’re a good person, Henry, and you fight it—that instinct to be good—for whatever reason. I will not ask you to be someone other than who you are. All I will ask is that you keep yourself safe, and if it’s possible, keep those things separate from us.”
“I wasn’t aware there was an ‘us’ yet.”
“I keep inviting you over, and you keep showing up. I hope at some point you don’t mind showing me your place. I’m guessing you don’t sleep in a cardboard box at night.”
“It’s a little nicer than a cardboard box. Not much, but a little.”
Lily smiled. Once the chicken was done, she removed it from the pan, added heavy cream, and made a sauce. She added the chicken and vegetables into the pasta when it was finished and poured the sauce over everything.
I said, “I don’t do this well. The act of balancing things.”
“Hence your divorce.”
“Likely played a role in that, yes.”
“I’m not asking for perfect, Henry. I’m only asking you to meet me halfway there.”
“Why me? Why not someone else? I’m sure there’s no litany of men less broken than me who could garner your interest.”
“Because you’re trying. Not just to be a better person, but to make the world better. Because you’re not willing to sit by and let the world devour someone like Eddie Dolan. And because you do a lousy job hiding how fucked up you are. If you were more together, you’d be less interesting.”
“That is meant to be a compliment, right?”
“It is.”
Lily and I ended up in her bedroom. I moved with cautious steps, partially because I was out of practice and mostly because I ached from the variety of beatings handed out to me recently. At some point it hit me that the last time I had gotten laid had been after getting the shit kicked out of me, too, and I wondered if there might have been a deeper reason I was so reluctant to become intimate with someone. I thought about it long enough for Lily to get me out of my boxers.
We did those things adults do, and Lily demonstrated you should never underestimate what a teacher can still show you after forty. She was rougher than I needed, but endorphins kicked in and things fit together the way they were intended to, and she put a few points on the board by the time I scored, and afterward we lay there breathing heavy and smiling.
“What’s your recovery time?” she said.
“I can probably pull something together by the end of the month.”
She pressed her face against my neck and kissed me. “Bullshit like that is why women buy things that pull power from the grid and lights in the neighborhood go dim.”
“You said you have a lot of batteries.”
“I do.” She pulled her body close to mine. “Can’t cuddle with batteries.”
“You could, but it would be weird.”
“Henry?”
“Yes?”
“Shut up and enjoy the moment.”
I ran my fingers through her hair.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I didn’t have a toothbrush at Lily’s, so I said I should go home. A lousy excuse, and I’ll own it, but I wasn’t comfortable yet with the idea o
f Lily needing to deal with me by the dawn’s early light. Included in all of this was my own need for self-sabotage, and I could have stopped myself, but I didn’t, and I drove away with Lily’s silhouetted face looking through her front door window, her confusion contained to biting her bottom lip and drinking wine.
Most days, I didn’t miss Maggie, my ex-wife. Don’t confuse that with not thinking about Maggie. You can’t check off that many years with someone, then get told to leave, and not find your thoughts lingering on that person. Sometimes at least.
Maggie’s life had moved on, however. So had mine. But it didn’t make certain things—emotions, feelings, whatever—easier. And when those things became difficult, I needed to make a run for it.
I hoped Lily would still talk to me tomorrow. I’d left her asking if she had done something. Of course not. At least, nothing more than be decent. If she walked away, I deserved it.
My life in a nutshell, really. The struggle to determine what, if anything, the fuck it was I deserve.
Fire trucks zoomed by me as I came through town. They sped away, headed in the same direction as I was—back home.
No one wants to follow fire trucks to their house, and when you realize that’s what’s happening, a knot drops in your stomach you can’t move.
The knot didn’t get better the closer I got to home, or when I saw the flames lighting up the night sky, or when I pulled up behind the trucks and watched my trailer, consumed by fire.
I sat on Billy’s porch and smelled the smoke of everything in my life burning into ash.
Billy brought me out a cup of coffee. “I’m sorry, son.”
I didn’t say anything. Didn’t drink the coffee. I held it in my lap and hardly noticed its warmth. The heat of the flames was enough.
Izzy was okay. She had been how Billy figured out about the fire. He had the TV on when he heard something banging at his door. He found Izzy scratching and knocking, and then he saw the first bit of flames cutting their way through the trailer roof, and an SUV spun dirt and gravel pulling away from the trailer.
The trailer was old, and a tinderbox anyway, so it went up fast. There wasn’t much left except charred sheet metal and smoldering, melted chunks of pink insulation by the time I got there. The firemen were hosing everything down, working to keep the fire from spreading.
Izzy trembled in the light of the fire. I caught a whiff of her. Her fur was wet. She had been lying in a puddle of her own urine. In the flickering flames, I saw cuts and gashes across her face and the top of her head. Fresh, and not ones healed from her earlier life.
Whoever burned down my trailer also chose to beat Izzy. She hadn’t put up a fight. She possessed nothing in the way of a sense of self-preservation. Ignore she was big enough to pull a car from a ditch. I’d seen her be chased a hundred feet by a squirrel. No one hit her because she attacked them; they did it because they could.
I sat cross-legged on the porch floor and let her cuddle me. Her urine-soaked fur seeped wetness through my blue jeans, but I didn’t care. I held my dog close, rocking her. She whined a little, whimpered, and pressed her head next to my chest and fell asleep in the flickering light of the fire.
35
Woody showed up the next morning with a box of donuts, food for Izzy, and a bag of clothing from Goodwill.
He handed me the clothing. “I didn’t take style into consideration, so there may be polo shirts with alligators on them, a ‘Kerry for President’ T-shirt, and a Member’s Only jacket in there.”
“I was unaware they still took applications.”
“I doubt the requirements are very stringent; all you needed was fifty bucks and a nearby mall.”
My body, already stiff and unyielding, hadn’t been pleased about me sleeping on Billy’s couch, and it revolted when I made it move. Woody poured food into a bowl for Izzy as Billy made coffee. I showered and dressed in camo cargo shorts and a T-shirt with three wolf heads silhouetted against a nighttime sky. It was the ugliest goddamn shirt I’d seen in my life.
Coffee was served and donuts consumed as I shambled into the kitchen. Billy said, “That one of them shirts from those movies with the sparkly vampires?”
Someone had already left me a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. I threw sugar and milk into it and took a long slurp. “You been watching the Twilight movies?”
“They’re on all the time. I never get why that girl wants the vampire so much. The Indian kid who turns into a werewolf, he seems like a much nicer guy. And how that last one ends—”
“Spoilers, Billy,” I said. “What if Woody’s not caught up?”
“I read the books,” Woody said.
I made no effort to mask surprise. “You did?”
“Everyone else was reading them.”
“Did you like them?”
“I’ll say I’m with Billy on this, that I’m firmly Team Jacob.”
I rubbed my temples, which started throbbing. “Next thing you know, you two’ll start comparing notes on Taylor Swift.”
Woody took a donut from the box in the center of the table and ate a bite. “I expected Gillespie would offer you money for the paperwork and the cell phone. That seems to be the way these fuckers handle their problems.”
“Gillespie isn’t the ‘pay to make it go away’ type as much as he’s the ‘burn everything to the ground and salt the soil afterward’ type. His goon squad doesn’t play.”
“There’s a smoldering pile of ash and embers out there to prove this point.”
“What about that phone we found? Any word from Rooster on it?”
“Still working on it. Rooster’s good. Obviously Gillespie’s thirsty enough for it that he’s willing to invest considerable time and resources to fucking you up seven ways to Sunday to get it back.” He finished his donut and licked the glaze off his fingers. “Can I presume now is when we go and start killing people?”
“We’re not sure who to kill quite yet.”
“Got nothing to do with anything. There’s always someone somewhere who needs killing.”
“How very Texas of you.”
Billy grabbed his coffee cup and stood. “I’ll be in the other room not listening to this nonsense. I don’t wanna know nothing I might need to testify about later.” He disappeared around the corner and into the living room. The TV clicked on, and I heard several voices talking over one another, bitching about the president’s Twitter account.
Izzy looked toward the living room, then at me, then back to the living room.
“Go on,” I said.
She released a small sigh and went to join Billy.
I drank coffee. “I hope it never comes down to a choice where she has to pick who to save: me or that old man.”
“It’ll be tough for Billy to watch you die.”
“I hope he can live with the despair.”
“I hope he can afford to keep feeding Izzy.”
“Let’s get back to who we need to kill.”
Woody gestured with a raised finger. “The important stuff. Seems obvious that when the first pair didn’t get the paperwork out of you, Gillespie sent another bunch to try. I’m guessing that since you weren’t here, and they couldn’t find it, they opted just to destroy the joint.”
“And to beat my dog.”
Woody sipped his coffee. His face took on a hard look. That expression had surely been the last thing a fair number of folks had ever seen.
“At least you have the money,” he said.
“What money?”
“The ‘my soul and honor can be redeemed’ check from Dagny.”
I sighed. “About that.”
“You hadn’t cashed it yet, had you?”
“I was living too high on the fantasy of the money. Reality would have ruined it."
“It seems like the fire ruined it for you. You plan to ask her for another one?”
“Since everything I own in the world right now, you handed to me in a Goodwill bag, I might not have much choice.”
Woody rapped his fingers on the table. “What we have is knowing Gillespie’s party to do a whole shit-ton of not-good dealings, that Robert Charles is neck-deep with him, and that neither are all that inclined to want their names involved in this.”
“I can’t imagine it would go well, the public finding out two of the county’s biggest businessmen are pulling off a massive real estate scheme.”
“Much as it hurts me to say, you’re right. There’s questions here not getting answered.”
“You think Gillespie and Charles will answer ’em?”
“I think we may need to press a little on your bestie Robert Charles.”
The doorbell rang. A moment later, Billy said, “Henry, get your ass out here. It’s for you.”
Woody cracked a grin. “Must have been like The Courtship of Eddie’s Father with you two when you were growing up.”
“All we were missing was Billy possessing empathy or compassion, and a Chinese housekeeper.”
Cyrus Thompson waited for Woody and me on the front porch. He smoked a cigarette and stared at the soaking wet pile of ashes that had been my home. When the sum of your physical possessions was reduced to a 2001 Pontiac Aztek and a T-shirt with three wolf heads, you had to re-evaluate your position in the universe.
Cyrus was the chief of the volunteer fire department. He was a tree stump with a crew cut, wider than he was tall, dressed in coveralls and work boots. God had not shined a kind light on Cyrus, with a flat, upturned nose and jowls that flapped when the wind blew big enough. I suspected that he had joined the fire department because he had been married for decades and was too ugly to find someone else to fuck, so it gave him an excuse to get out of the house.
He flipped the cigarette butt out into the yard and shook my hand.
“Goddamn shame about your place there, Henry,” he said.
“It had been something to behold. I hope the insurance will cover the Fabergé eggs and the Picassos.”
Cyrus scratched at his face and spit into the yard. “You had insurance, didn’t you?”
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