“What the fuck?” I protested, but my vehemence lacked conviction. “I don’t even know you.”
“Andy said you were looking for me. I guess I just hoped it was true.”
I nodded then. “Oh, you’re a friend of Andy’s. That makes sense.”
She cheered slightly. “Does it?”
“Andy’s fucking crazy. Documented crazy in the Wall Street Journal and everything. Of course his friends would be crazy, too.”
Her glow dimmed.
Goddammit, Amy, we’re not kids anymore …
I want a smattering of that old-time romance …
Claire leaned in closer, put her hand on my thigh. Unbelievably, my pulse quickened. I swallowed hard.
“You’re running out of time, Jefferson Paine.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Time for what?” I wheezed.
“Time to tell the truth.”
I shook my head sadly. “Do you really believe that the truth has ever saved anyone?”
“There’s not enough time to save everyone, Jeff. People have a tendency to act too rashly for any number of guardian angels to keep up. You have to remember they’re not accustomed to the constraints of time. But the truth will set you free, whether it saves you or not.”
“Claire.” I didn’t know what was wrong with me. This weird, black and white old woman with the blue eyes, was suddenly, somehow, the most beautiful person in the world to me.
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“It’s too late for me,” I told her.
“Do you know why women love doorways?” she asked me. Is there a correct answer to that question? Do women love doorways? I didn’t know that. Maybe I don’t know women. But the only women I ever wanted to know were my mother and Ada.
My mother.
I’d been standing in the doorway of the hospital room when she died.
Twenty-six down: four letters, a period of time
My father had been panic-stricken, I remember. I have no idea what he was saying―I don’t think I knew then. I do remember the sound of his voice, running up and down the scale as it never had before, a ceaseless outpouring of timbres that made no sense to me.
As I walked out one morning … back to the place we used to live …
I had dropped my mother’s hand. It had been warm in mine, and I was terrified of what would become of me if I felt it grow cold against my skin.
I played sad songs, on the minor key, of a broken piano …
My mother was a creature from whom I backed away. She was that heap of flesh huddled in the cold white sheets. She was not this thing taking shape in her place.
She was not the coldness that would take the place of heat.
She was not the stillness standing where passion had breathed.
… you did not join in harmony …
I had backed all the way into the doorway, when I felt her last breath.
It was an exhale.
That was important to me. Somehow, it seemed it would have been particularly awful if the last breath had been an inhale. Inhalation necessarily begets expectation. Hope. But maybe all last breaths are exhalations. Maybe that’s just a biological imperative. Letting go. Emptying out.
Still, it was a comfort to me.
Impossible as you may think it, I did feel that final sigh brush past me. A passage that exceeded me, traveled through the doorway where I stood transfixed.
My father had stood up and moved toward me, no more tangible than a ghost. Shattered, pale, transparent. Where was his strength, his vigor? In that moment, he was more dead to me than my mother.
Light as paper, his hand drifted to my shoulder.
“Women are the doorways of our life, son. We walk through them to reach this place.”
I had no idea what he meant.
What it means to me will eventually be a memory of a time …
* * *
Oh, thank God. I hadn’t even noticed when the jukebox switched from Frank Turner to Linkin Park.
For we are the doorways of life and must choose what goes in and comes out. – Marge Piercy
I re-centered myself in time and space, locked onto the Long Tall as my location.
I looked at Claire, clenching my teeth. “You know I won’t give up.”
“I know that you already did. This is all epilogue, Jefferson Paine. Just make sure you don’t forget what the real story is.”
She pushed her daiquiri toward me after just one sip. I looked at it, imagining the sweet burst of strawberries and rum on my tongue.
“What real story?” I didn’t mean to touch her, but I found her forearm under my palm, its wiry strength greater than I would have thought.
“It’s all right,” she said softly. “He’s going to help you.”
“He?” I was completely confused.
“Andy. He’s going to help you. Just don’t miss your moment.”
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“What moment?”
“The most harmful lies and the most helpful, always contain a grain of truth,” he said. “But nevertheless, lies they remain.” – Robin Jarvis
“Jefferson Paine.”
Her voice was gentle, a river running under the rambling babble of the bar.
“This is all nearly over. When you see the doorway, walk through it.”
I thought of my mother, lying there alone in the tubes and blankets and needles.
“Walk through it.”
I pulled the last onion off the toothpick with my teeth, swallowed the gin and vermouth. I wrapped my fingers around Claire’s ice-and-strawberry-filled glass.
“All right.”
I pulled in a long, sweet draught of fruit and rum.
“I’ll walk through. When it’s time.”
Claire leaned forward. Her long silver hair brushed my shoulder. Her lips pressed against my cheek.
The moon is whole all the time, but we can’t always see it. – Alice Sebold
“Don’t miss your cue,” she murmured.
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It was ten o’clock before I made it to the office on Saturday. Claire had simply stood up and walked away from me that night, her blue eyes becoming grayness becoming blackness, just like Ada’s had. I wasn’t sure if her appearance had been a function of my madness or my drunkenness or if she was exactly what she appeared to be.
Regardless, she was gone, and I was still here. In spite of all my longing to the contrary.
People do exactly what they want, in the end. Human beings possess the rare benefit of self-awareness, and possessing such, act almost without exception in advance of it. Which meant that my persistence was the manifestation of my own indulgence, and nothing more.
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I want someone to hurt you, make you die the way I do …
Really? Gary Allan? How do I even know that name?
Today was going to be one of the endless days.
Sami and Delores had already gotten me their stories. I focused on puzzle pieces, story blocks, dropping in words inch by inch to fit the shape of journalism I’d been given years ago. I was still waiting on Jack’s stories. He always slipped in just under the wire. I honestly think it added to the excitement for him. Retired English teachers, even those who try their best to cast themselves in the mold of John Keating, crave the rush of a deadline nearly missed. Or so my small experience would prove.
It was almost ordinary.
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Almost. Ha. See, silver linings. Some good must proceed out of every tragedy.
‘Tis an ill wind …
Suddenly, fiercely, I missed the shape of words. I missed holding them in my hands, turning them over, examining every divot and curve. I missed matching them up side by side, taking the time to feel their weight in my palms. Writing. I’d done it once. Committed myself to its order, fitted its trim white collar to my neck. But my feet had since taken a heretical course, a path beyond meaning, a path that defied inference and implication with equal impunity.
It was raining. I didn’t expect that. It was supposed to be cold―frigid―for weeks yet. At least in the high country.
Claire’s voice resonated in my ear, low and clear.
Don’t miss your moment.
She had to know my moment was long past. Why else would she have come at all?
Opening the office door, I extended my hand. Rain filled my palm.
Golden sand that ran across my flesh, waking every nerve ending with a tingling of pleasure.
Cathedral light that sifted through stained glass windows, becoming every color.
Silver hair that puddled in my hand, soft as silk and strong as cord. Black hair twisting in my fingers, binding me, chaining me fast.
I thought of rain in the mesas, pouring across the shelves and ridges of hardened snow, revealing every secret, every mystery, that winter had thought to hold.
“That’s the thing, Claire,” I murmured slowly to no one at all. “I don’t want to make my cue. My moment passed weeks ago. I’m ready for the damn storm.”
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It did finally come. Seconds might stretch to hours, but they could go no further than that, after all. Sunday came.
I thought of Andy, hiking alone on some remote trail recommended by a real estate agent in high heels and red lipstick.
I thought of Willis Randolph, leading his congregants in some broken rendition of a hymn no one understood, in a church that stood sanctuary to a homeless old man who only wanted freedom.
I thought of soccer moms, pausing in the gas station to cast a glance at a headline―Body Uncovered In Grand Mesa―and throwing in an extra dollar to pick up a copy.
I thought of Ada’s blue eyes―brittle, blue robin’s eggs, fading and dimming in the winter sun.
Sixteen down: four letters, noun, wet swampy ground. Verb: to involve or entangle; to besmatter
I opened my front door and walked down to the sidewalk. Crouched down there on the curb and just waited.
I wanted to go talk to Chief Joe. I wanted to go to Crumbly’s. Maybe old man Whithers would let me buy him breakfast. Something besides sugar and grease. Crumbly’s sold a mean croissant sausage-and-cheese sandwich, too. Pair it with a nice strong, hot coffee, and it was practically real food.
I wanted to slip in the back of the Baptist Church and listen to Willis Randolph tell lies that he absolutely believed. My hair was sticking to my head already, soaking wet, channeling water down my collar and into the small of my back. This rain was cold, wretched, unrelenting.
I would have preferred a storm, a tempest of fury and heat and power that recalled all the passion and fervor that marked everything else Ada did. This cruel, casual chill was too grim, too gray, to be borne of her. This awful wet was all my own.
The streets were empty, of course. No one else would venture out in this weather.
I could go to the office and wait there. I could call Dayla. Belichek. Make arrangements. Do the responsible things that a decent citizen would do. Ooh. I could create one of those automatic emails that send a response to everyone.
Jefferson Paine is out of the office. He will not get back to you. He will not be coming back to the office.
I giggled.
What can I say? It struck me funny.
The editor has an appointment with the electric chair. He will not be responding to your message.
That was nonsense, of course. There was no electric chair in Colorado. Practically speaking, there was not even a death penalty. The governor suspended the whole dang thing, considering it inhumane even in the case of the man who had shot up a Chucky Cheese full of children and parents.
Given my complete indifference to the notion of suicide, that left a hopeless anticlimax as the only possible scenario.
You’d think a writer, even a failed writer, could have come up with a more dramatic ending than this.
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On the bright side, it was a banner day for Brisby’s small police force. They couldn’t have handled it better.
Two cars pulled slowly up on either side of where I was sitting on the curb. I wished I had a cigarette. I like to think how much cooler it would have looked, all black and white and dramatic, with the killer calmly waiting on the sidewalk, a cigarette dangling from between unconcerned lips.
A fedora would have been a nice touch, too. Dammit. I should have planned this out better.
Chief Joe and Santiago. Morris, our Cop Number Three, was probably creeping up behind me even now, stationed between the close-set houses with a gun trained on my back.
Chief Joe was clearly taking the Criminal Minds approach to bringing me in without bloodshed. He eased out of his car, keeping the vehicle between us just in case. I figured he was too smart to actually adopt their signature move―holstering the weapon. Still, he didn’t bring it into plain view, maintaining the illusion of camaraderie even in the glow of flashing lights.
“You know why we’re here, Jeff. Let’s do this the easy way.”
Santiago was holding fast to super-cop mode. He had his weapon pointed at me over the top of the passenger car door.
“Si, si.” I winked at Santiago and held my hands over my head. “No problem, señor.”
Almost imperceptibly, Santiago’s lips tightened. He gave a tiny shake of his head.
“Get down on the sidewalk for me, Jeff. On your stomach. Keep your hands out to your sides.”
I’d exhausted my meager supply of Spanish.
“Dammit, Chief Joe,” I protested. “Aren’t I wet enough?”
“Exactly,” he rejoined, unperturbed by my stall. “A little more water won’t do you any harm. Come on now, Jeff. You’re making these boys nervous.”
I was right. Morris was around here somewhere. I resisted the urge to turn my head.
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“Have you figured it all out, Chief? Or did a newspaper article send you here?”
Chief Joe shook his head. “I’m old enough to know I’ll never get it all figured out. But I do have enough to take you in for a few questions. Now get down on the sidewalk before things get more serious. We have a lot of nervous neighbors keeping an eye on us.”
“All right, all right. Santiago isn’t going to shoot me when I stand up, is he?”
“Not as long as you get right down on your belly.”
Weirdly enough, I found I still had enough curiosity left to play along. I stood up and went down to my knees before lowering myself to the concrete. Water immediately soaked through my shirt and into the front of my jeans.
“How’s the healthcare system in prison, Chief? I’m going to have to hold you responsible if I catch pneumonia.”
For all his heft, the chief moved fast when he was motivated. My arms were seized firmly as cold steel wrapped around my wrists. The edge of the cuffs bit into the bone, uncomfortable but not painful. The chief grabbed my shoulder and helped me up. His big hand was warm through the cold, wet cotton.
Getting arrested was a novel experience, as was being treated like a dangerous person. I was determined not to miss a detail.
Twenty-six down: three letters, fin
Sure enough, the chief put his hand on my head as he tucked me into the back seat of his car. It felt oddly solicitous. I wondered if he even remembered anymore that he did it, or if it had become as second-nature as, say, locking a door behind yourself.
I leaned forward so that my cuffed hands wouldn’t bite so awkwardly into my back. As I’d thought, Morris was standing there in the easement between my house and my neighbor’s, holstering his weapon. He kept staring at me through the car window, almost as if confused by my presence. I figured the anticlimax had to eat at them even more than at me. Small town cops didn’t get the chance to arrest a lot of murderers. They had to have been amped up for something much more exciting than Chief Joe’s conversational confrontation. Poor guys would probably be waiting a long time for another chance like this one.
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“Going straight to county?” I asked through the grate. I thought I sounded pretty hip, as if I were an old hand at getting arrested.
Chief Joe shook his head as he pulled away from the curb. “We just need to get a few questions answered. But given the front page story this morning, I’m sure you can understand a few precautions.”
“Sure. No worries.” My lips curved with satisfaction at how well I was maintaining congeniality. Contributing to everyone else’s vertigo was keeping me pleasantly balanced.
Bonnie Mac kept her head circumspectly lowered as Chief Joe, Santiago, and Morris escorted me into the station. That surprised me. I opened my mouth, intending to proffer a cheerful greeting, but subsided at the last moment. Bonnie Mac possessed a tender streak that didn’t deserve prodding by me.
Once seated in the tiny interview room, I leaned back in the metal folding chair, grateful for the gap through which I could slip my manacled hands. Santiago and Morris had disappeared; it was just me and the Chief now.
“Gotta read you your rights, Jeff.”
I nodded. “Shall we say them together?”
His brows knit together over his leather-braced black eyes. “I ran your record, Jeff. Clean as a whistle.”
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