by Bill Alive
Silence. Then Theodore said softly, “She knew, you know. She saw. She told me.”
“Knew what?” Roger snapped.
“That it was you in the restaurant. When she first met Brett. You spilled your drink on your own lap. You tried to get her in trouble. Wouldn’t that have been perfect, for you to make your pitch right there, right after she got fired in public? Like you pitched me at her funeral. Sure, Brett got in your way that first time. But you still got to her in the end. That’s the thing with you, Roger. You always do.”
“I never told that woman to commit suicide.”
“Yes. You did. You filled her head with the toxic shit to do exactly that. Sure, you expected her to kill herself bit by bit, like Yvette or your wife, one zombie minute at a time in your service. But how long do you think your wife or Yvette are going to last when you’re … gone?”
“Gone?” Roger said.
Theodore said nothing.
Roger chuckled.
“Are you threatening me, Theodore? Here? In my own ‘lair’? No one else in the house? You can’t even get cell reception down here.” He cracked his knuckles, and the unexpected pops exploded like gunshots. “It’s a very stupid place to accuse a man of multiple murderers.”
My arm prickled with goosebumps. I looked to Mark to see if we should do something, but he looked freaked out, wincing with pain.
The chair creaked, like Roger was leaning forward, tilting toward Theodore. “Very, very stupid, son. But of course, you could never make a stupid mistake, not our wise and intelligent Theodore. You are so obviously qualified to pass judgment on higher spirituality, when you can’t even hide your own lusts, your distaste for your own mediocre wife. I’m surprised you managed to father a child on that woman. But animal lust will only go so far. We’ll see whether you father a second.”
I was gaping, waiting for the wet thud of Theodore smashing the gun across Roger’s face.
But there was nothing. Total silence.
As if Roger were ranting alone, finally free to bare his rotting soul. I imagined him flushed, eyes wide and glittering, like that one time when he’d slipped up and let me see him mad.
“You hate your wife, don’t you, Theodore? And you come here, and you think, these beautiful young women! Surely they’ll choose me over bald old Roger! But then, ah! The crisis! They see you for what you are … defective. A pathetic excuse for a human being. And the worst part, the extra twist that makes it so excruciating just to be in your presence, Theodore, is your delusion, your unsinkable grandeur … always you have to be the center, the heart of the drama, the hero. You can’t bear your reality, your crushing cubicle life stretching before you for the next forty years. No gifts. Nothing special. If you can’t be the secret lover to a damaged woman to compensate for your impotence, you must be the secret detective to compensate for your idiocy … and to bring down the one real man in your life. Because you can’t stand a real man, can you, Theodore? And yet you don’t even believe it yourself, not even here, alone with the so-called murderer. And why? Because you have no proof. Do you? Do you, Theodore? Do you have proof?”
Not a sound. I had no idea what Roger would do if Theodore said yes.
At last, Theodore said, “No. I don’t have any proof.”
Roger exhaled.
“But you still have to be stopped,” Theodore said.
The gun clicked.
Roger creaked, straightening in the seat. “Theodore,” he said, with forced calm. “Don’t be stupid. That gun is not loaded.”
Softly, Theodore said, “I took care of that. Days ago.”
Roger shrieked.
“Oh my God!” he wailed. “Theodore, my God, oh my God, you can’t kill me!”
“No,” Theodore said. “You’re going to kill me.”
Chapter 42
Roger babbled confused questions, but Theodore said, “Listen,” and Roger shut up.
I was panting now, flashing back to Roxanne pointing that gun at Vanessa. Shit, another nutcase was gripping a gun right there, and what, we were supposed to take a bullet for Roger? What the hell?
Theodore’s voice went calm. Even patient. “If I killed you,” he explained, “you would finally be a martyr. Your holy memory would dominate Yvette and your wife for the rest of their lives. Maybe Vanessa too. Maybe even others … who knows, your wife might get inspired to spread the story of Saint Roger.”
He paused, like he was imagining the mushroom cloud of the spreading cult.
“But if you kill me,” he said, “if you go down as a murderer and rot in jail where you belong … that might just snap them out of it. It’s worth a try.”
“How can you hate me so much?” Roger moaned. His voice seemed to wail from the depths of an entirely different person. Not seeing him, I had trouble imagining it even was Roger; he sounded like a weak, terrified teenager. “You’ve known me for less than a month!”
“You fucking killed Olivia!” Theodore shrieked. Then he forced himself to sound calm again. “I keep forgetting. You really don’t give a shit.”
“Theodore, listen to me,” Roger pleaded. “You can’t fake your own death.” Abruptly, the weakling switched out and Stern Roger took over. “And I swear to you, I will hunt you down.”
“Roger, please,” Theodore said. “There’s nothing to fake.”
“But … you can’t…”
“This is your gun. With your fingerprints. In your bomb shelter. Right now.”
“Oh God…” Roger wailed. He creaked up, rising.
But Theodore barked, “STAY DOWN!”
Roger crashed back into the seat. I’d startled too, shoving Mark again by accident.
This time, my arm came away slick.
He was bent double, straining, his bare scalp prickling with blood.
Please work, I thought. Please, please work.
I should have been worried for Mark, that he might blow his brain up trying to mind blast Theodore into submission. But Theodore was freaking armed and crazy.
And all Mark’s straining wasn’t doing a thing.
“Unlike you, Roger,” Theodore said, “I’m willing to get my own hands dirty. That, at least, I can do.”
“Theodore … please … it won’t work … I … I can wipe my prints…”
“I’m expecting you to crap yourself and faint,” Theodore said. “But it doesn’t matter. I made sure Louise overheard your little phone rant the other day, when I pitched you that story about Yvette. And on my way over tonight, I put a nice long letter in the mail. To the police.”
Roger moaned.
“It’s a great letter, I hope you get to read it. I outline my whole ‘delusional’ theory, as you put it, and if they read a little between the lines, they might sense that you’re starting to scare me. But I also let them know that since I can’t really believe you did it, I’m going to come over and talk to you myself. Share my concerns.”
Roger moaned harder.
Mark was rocking now, the blood was oozing hard. He really could blow a brain vessel right here.
“Mark?” I whispered.
“He’s … shielding,” Mark whispered. “Against … Roger.”
“Crap. What do we do?” I breathed. “You can’t do this, you can’t kill yourself trying to save that idiot!”
Roger’s wails were coalescing into words. “Theodore, what about your wife … your daughter…”
“My daughter?” Theodore snapped. “My daughter’s going to have a father who managed to do something. One damn thing. I’m fucking thirty, Roger. When Steve Jobs was thirty, he had already founded Apple and gotten kicked out. He wrote this letter fighting to get back in, and he says, ‘I am but thirty.’ I am but thirty. What the fuck do I have to show for my twenties, Roger? Nothing. Exactly like you said. Just one more unbearable mediocrity, a pathetic shit who couldn’t even stop a needy cultist from killing herself.”
“Theodore, I didn’t mean to say that you—”
“SHUT UP!” Theodore
yelled. “You think I’m going to spend another fifty years getting fatter and balder and meaner and poorer? I am already thirty, and if I haven’t managed anything by now, it’s never going to happen, it can’t happen, I can’t ever go back and have a brilliant Young Genius story because guess what? I was scampering from crap job to crap job, blowing the one youth I had, totally missing the connections and networking and achievements that could have made me into an actual human worth being. It’s done, Roger. It’s over. But the one thing I can do is not consent.”
Roger quavered, “In the light of eternity…”
“Do you want me to shoot you first?” Theodore barked. “Listen to me for once. I want you to get this. I want you to understand how thankful I am that at least I will never be you. Not even the non-cultist but equally pathetic version, the fat dude at fifty who is finally minor famous — ‘I’m just so proud I worked so hard for thirty years to be slightly less pathetic for my adoring old-people more-pathetic fans’ — fuck that, Roger. Fuck finally getting a convertible and the younger second wife and dyeing my combover and telling myself there’s still time because there isn’t, it’s already way too late, if I was going to be anything I would have had a million views when I was seventeen. It’s not in me, I can’t be me … and the least I can do is take you down on my way out.”
“Theodore! No! My God!” Roger wailed.
Beside me, Mark shouted.
“Theodore! Don’t!” he yelled. “Seriously!”
I stared at him, stunned.
He gave me rueful smile and shrugged. “Kind of ran out of options.”
“What the hell?” Theodore called. “Who is that? Stand up!”
I wouldn’t have minded extracting an assurance or two first, but Mark crawled out and stood, hands up. I crawled out after him, and for a moment, the relief of uncramping was too wonderful to notice anything else.
Then I turned.
The gun sucked my gaze, the insane realness of it. I flashed to car accidents, bridge railings, edges of cliffs, all those times I’d been one quick wrong moment from ending. I could barely breathe.
Theodore made a guttural noise of surprise, and I wrenched my focus away from staring at the gun. Theodore was messed up, his eyes bulging and bloodshot, his face white and taut and quivering and ghastly.
He frowned at Mark. “God, what’s wrong with your head?”
“Oh, sorry,” Mark said. He tried to wipe his scalp clean with his jacket sleeve, but the blood just smeared.
“Leave it!” Theodore barked. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Same as you,” Mark said, gentle and calm. “Trying to take down Roger.”
Roger croaked, “I knew it.” He had scrunched into one corner of the wall seat, as far from Theodore as he could get, like a kid recoiling from a bulldog. His eyes were wild, and his face was twisting with terror and rage and impotence.
Mark said, “So let’s do it, Theodore. Pete and I do have proof. We can do this the easy way.”
Theodore stared at us. Calculating.
At last he said, “Okay. Plan B.”
“Really?” I said.
He turned and pulled the trigger.
The shot exploded in that closed tank. My eardrums ached like they’d torn. Someone roared with pain.
Roger.
He was moaning, rocking, clutching his shoulder. A dark red stain seeped between his thick fingers. “You shot me!” he choked. “Oh my God!”
Theodore’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “That must have been shrapnel,” he snapped. “It’s only your damn shoulder. I was shooting the lock.” He bent to examine the door, and nodded with satisfaction.
The deadbolt handle had been sheared off. We were locked in.
“What are you doing?” Roger shrieked.
Without a word, Theodore lunged toward him.
Roger squealed and scrabbled in his seat. But Theodore bent past him, and grabbed something from the bottom wall shelf behind the seat.
“Oh God,” Mark said.
“What?” I said, with a spike of panic. “What is that?”
But I could already see. A small metal canister, about the size of a fire extinguisher. Warning symbols glared along the side … fire, poison, death…
“Don’t worry,” Theodore said. “This won’t even hurt.”
Chapter 43
Theodore faced us, gun leveled, his back against the locked door. He leaned the canister carefully against the metal wall.
“Carbon monoxide,” he said, with an air of deep satisfaction. “We’ll just drift off to sleep. Like a classic failure in a Great American Short Story, turning on the gas.”
Mark said, “Dude,” and took a step toward him, a step across the ten feet that felt like a mile.
“Get back!” Theodore barked, and Mark froze. Theodore darted for another shelf and seized a huge wrench. “I break the valve and that’s it, there’s no turning this off. This entire bunker is airtight, since that’s kind of the point with a bomb shelter. And don’t even think about the air filter.” He gave the whimpering Roger a withering glance. “I cut the wire and grabbed the battery.”
“And you call me a murderer,” Roger moaned.
“Yes! I fucking do!” Theodore yelled. He jabbed toward Roger with the gun, like he might just end him now.
“We’re here too,” Mark said quietly.
“That’s not my fault!” Theodore snapped. “This was my backup plan if things went sideways. Mutual suicide.”
“But it’s like you said,” Mark said. “What if the cops think you did it? You’ll make Roger a martyr.”
“It’s still better. At least he can’t hurt anyone else.”
Roger’s face had contorted with pain, and he suddenly hissed with pure rage. He looked so distorted with hate, it was like yet another Roger was bubbling to the surface. “I could have saved thousands of souls,” he croaked. “Now they’re going to burn. For all eternity. And every single one will be on your head, Theodore.”
Mark arched an eyebrow at him, then turned back to Theodore. “Look, I grant that you do have a point about this guy.”
“Mark!” I said. “I don’t want to die!”
“Why not?” Theodore said. “What is it you do again? Gift shop retail? By your age, Zuckerburg had already launched Facebook. You think he would have settled for your mediocre job? The mediocre wife you’re going to settle for? Your long slow humiliation—”
“At least you have a wife!” I said.
“I have a nonstop badge of failure,” he spat. “A silent scream, day in and day out, that I was too scared to get someone real. I only asked that cow Louise out in the first place to try to get close to Jivanta.”
“Really?” I gasped.
Theodore’s face hardened. Oops.
“Theodore, listen to me,” Mark said, sharp and stern. “You ever actually seen anyone die? Trying to suck air while their lungs implode?”
A flicker of uncertainty passed over Theodore’s face.
“Because if you had,” Mark said, “you’d know that when you’re actually dying, not thinking about it, not planning, but actually dying, you’d do anything to live. Just to be. Just to pour your favorite cereal in the morning and make the coffee extra strong.”
But Theodore snarled.
“Fat, dumb, and happy, right? At least this way I’ll keep my self-respect.”
Now Mark lost it. “You damn arrogant jackass! How the hell do you know? What if you don’t just vanish? What if you’re about to look like an idiot forever? You really can’t deal with getting fatter and more boring for another fifty years before you get to fly?”
“You don’t believe that shit.”
“I do right now,” Mark said. “You really think that with seven billion people, the Big Solution is to be a Super Special Household Name? One-tenth of one-percent get to be Truly Happy, and the rest of us are honor-bound to endless self-hate? Who do you think wins, with everyone holding themselves hostage till they nev
er make it big? Imagine the horror if we ever had a planet full of people who were thrilled just to be alive, to exist, to get to taste their ordinary food and love their ordinary friends and have their ordinary sex and grow their ordinary kids? If we could ever work up our damn stunted imaginations past the demented celebrities they plaster everywhere, what if what we already have is more than we could ever get?”
Theodore hesitated.
I thought, Mark, you are freaking amazing.
But even as I thought that, Mark lunged forward.
Too late.
Theodore scowled. He lifted the wrench like a guillotine and smashed off the valve.
Chapter 44
Chaos.
Roger screamed. He lurched up and staggered to the door. With the hand of his good arm, he rattled the handle, then he pounded the metal, smearing bloody fist prints and screaming for his wife.
Theodore sagged back against the wall, drained but exhilarated.
The canister was hissing hard. Roger grabbed it, shoved it against his belly, stretched his shirt to try to wrap around the lethal hole.
“Too late, Roger,” Theodore said. His voice was distant and superior, like he was watching it all from a box seat. “It’s like ideas. You can’t take them back.”
Roger was jabbering, calling on saints and spinning up promises, swearing he would fast, pray, whip himself, build a cathedral, anything. Tears were spurting in his eyes and voice.
Theodore watched him like a python, swallowing every moment.
My head was starting to feel light. Panic flared, but I shoved it down. We were not going to die in here. No way.
If we could just get help. I fumbled out my phone. Crap, I’d turned it off. I thumbed the button, and the phone dragged itself into a slow boot.
I forced myself to focus on solutions. Poison gas. Okay, that meant vents. This thing had to have vents.
“Mark!” I whispered. Both Theodore and Roger seemed to have forgotten us, but Theodore was still clutching that gun, and I didn’t want him to look my way. “Mark, we’ve got to find a vent.”