He got dressed, not really thinking—in fact, he was pushing the act of thought away. He poured some kibble for Cards in the kitchen. As she crunched up her breakfast gratefully, Paul crouched down to scratch her behind the ears. He ate nothing himself. With the laptop under his arm, he walked out to the trees.
It was getting colder. The white winter that they’d been promised at least a month before Christmas had not yet come. His breath puffed out in front of him in huge, white blobs, but still the ground was free of snow. The leaves along his footpaths had all but disintegrated into the dirt, and his footsteps were silent. Again, his thoughts turned briefly to Clancy Miller and the certainty that there was something else he wanted to say to Paul, but hadn’t. Paul now found that he was the one afraid to hear it.
In the center of the forest, in his new office, he sat on the big fallen log, his new desk chair, and the words again poured out in a great stream. Once he started he could not stop. For hours the story came out of him. The sun inched over him in a great slow arc, distant and cold as another universe.
Deeny filled the pages.
The idea of giving in to the unknown assailant was charming. Paul knew what the wife-thing had meant when it talked about the pull. He had been resisting. Without even knowing it, he had been fighting against it. Now that he could identify the feeling of that struggle, he also knew how to stop fighting. It would be as easy as letting go of a cliff face; he could just release his grip and the battle would be over.
But not yet. He would wait.
At the very least he would finish the book.
Paul didn’t notice the chilled tears that periodically streaked his face as he typed.
CHAPTER THREE
AFTER THE WIFE-THING, nothing strange happened to Paul for the next two weeks. That is, of course, if he ignored the bloody manuscript blooming in his laptop. It was the morning of Sunday, November 16th, and Paul was feeling at least moderately okay.
He was ready to pretend nothing out-of-the-ordinary had happened at all.
He and Jen ate breakfast together, something they had not done in a long time, and she agreed to go on a drive with him. Even Cards, who did not usually like car rides, seemed to know they were talking about a drive and yipped once to show her willingness to come along. Paul scooped her up on the way out the door.
It was also Jen’s first time in the new car, and Paul was delighted at her excitement. He had become something of a connoisseur of roads in the weeks since purchasing the car; he’d taken to driving as a form of meditation. He knew many of the country roads, the highways, the scenic drives, the windy drives, the drives that were a bit scary. He decided they could take 150 out to Lost Lake. It would take them about an hour if they drove at a reasonable speed; Paul suspected it would take them a little under forty-five minutes. It was one of Paul’s favorite roads, and he wanted to show Jen before it was closed for the winter. If not for the mild season it would probably be closed already.
Evergreens lined the pavement on both sides. Delicate, rust-colored mountains floated in the distance. The sun didn’t bother them much, mostly keeping tucked behind the trees. Foregoing the classical music he usually listened to in the car, he turned the satellite radio to the Grunge station. They’d each graduated in the mid nineties; he was hoping to engender feelings of youth.
Eddie Vedder assured them through the speakers that he was, indeed, still alive, and Paul began to feel that he might still be alive as well. Perhaps life had not grown so dire as he had imagined. About twenty minutes into the drive, at the end of a particularly indulgent Mudhoney piece Paul didn’t recognize, Jen said, “I wouldn’t mind taking a turn. Driving, I mean.”
He was more than happy to oblige; in fact, he’d hoped she would. If they could have a love of the car in common—something to care for and look after—it might help bring them closer together. He pulled over so they could switch seats. Cards took the opportunity to hop out and let any wild animals that might pass by the side of the road know she’d been there. So far the dog seemed to be enjoying the ride as much as her owners. She mostly stayed quiet, back feet planted on the seat, front paws on the doors, looking out the window. Every few minutes she switched sides, perhaps hoping for something better.
“You know,” she said, “This thing isn’t half bad.”
Paul laughed, “It’s not a thing, honey. It’s an ILX, and I’d have to agree with you. It’s not half bad, or a quarter bad, or even an eighth bad—”
“I get it,” she said. “It’s not a bad car, huh?”
“I knew you were man enough to understand.”
She smirked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Paul just smiled. They saw, briefly, two deer in the trees beside them. They bounded together away from the road, into a dark patch of the woods.
She said, “I’m just confused about one thing.”
“And what’s that?”
“Why not a Corvette?”
“Bah!” he said. “Overrated. This is a nice car. Not too flashy, but not too common. It’s perfect.”
Paul thought Jen seemed to think this phrase deserved some thought, because she went silent. After a few miles she said, “Paul… what’s been happening with us lately?”
A few seconds passed, then he said, “I don’t know.” Nirvana had been working through Lithium. The yeahs were over, and now Cobain was explaining the complicated relationship between love and murder and how a person kept from cracking.
Paul said, “I just… I know I don’t want to lose you.”
She seemed unreasonably relieved. Didn’t she know he wanted her—needed her—even if he didn’t often say it?
She said, “I don’t want to lose you either, Paul, but I don’t want to live here. I don’t. Not unless I can have a family to take care of. I know they say you shouldn’t make ultimatums or these kinds of demands in a marriage, but you need to know how I feel about this.” Both her hands gripped the wheel. A bright blue car passed and then they were alone on the road again, trees flying past them in a brown-green ribbon.
He said, “I know what you want. And it’s what I want, too.”
“Do you mean that? Do you actually mean that?”
He propped his head on his arm, which rested on the door. He said, “I don’t know. I think so.”
“What is the problem? Wasn’t this always the plan? Make money, have kids, in that order? We have the money, Paul, now where are my kids? Are you afraid you won’t know how? To be a father, I mean? Because that’s normal. Nobody knows how to be a parent until they do it.”
Paul was struck by how the mood had swung from polite and amusing to desperate in less than two minutes. He said, “Yes. That was the plan. That is the plan. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” And then, still feeling unable to tell her the truth of his hallucinations, wanting to believe they were over forever, he said, “I don’t know what I’m afraid of.”
Her speed crept over the 100 mark on the speedometer. Cards wasn’t looking out the window anymore. Perhaps sensing the mood shift, she had hopped down to the floor mats in the backseat. She looked like she was pretending to sleep.
Jen said, “Are you going to fight me, or are you going to give in? Is that what this comes down to? A battle? You know this isn’t the way I expected our lives would go! I thought we were going to start a family five years ago. I have nothing to show for my life, Paul, nothing.” Now she was crying. “At least you have your books. People can look at your life and say, well, at least he didn’t totally waste it. But what will people say about me? Nothing. No one will even know who I was once I’m dead.”
The car was still screaming along as she wiped tears from her face with the sleeve of her tight sweater. Paul thought they might run off the road at any second, but said nothing. If they died, they died. Cards whined briefly, then quieted.
Paul didn’t know how to respond without destroying her or committing to have a child. He was prepared to do neither, so he kept his mouth clos
ed. Long minutes stretched out as the car covered miles of empty road. Where was everyone anyway? Paul had never seen the road so empty.
He wished he could turn the radio off—Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun had never sounded as strange to him as it did then—but he felt even a hint of movement on his part might break the spell of his silence.
She got her tears and speed under control and said, “I’m sorry. I know it’s not right to try to force you into having a child with me, but it breaks my heart that I even have to try to convince you.”
“Okay,” he said without giving himself time to back out, “Yes. I want to.” He put a finger up to her mouth before she could object. Her lips felt wonderful under his finger, a source of power and love. “And not just because you’re crying. I mean it. I feel the same emptiness as you. I want to fill this thing inside me, this hole. I don’t know what I’m scared of, but let’s just go for it. Let’s have a child.”
She pulled the car over without dropping their speed enough. They slid on the gravel but not far enough to really be dangerous. Before they’d even come to a full stop, she collapsed on the steering wheel. The tears came back in full force. Paul wasn’t stupid enough to think these were tears of joy. These were tears borne of confusion and exhaustion and anger and self-consciousness. But when she looked up he saw there was some happiness on her face, a ghost of the Jen he used to see all the time before he had reduced her.
“Okay,” she said. “let’s do it.”
He smiled and said, “Not here though, someone might see us.”
She tried not to, but laughed anyway and gave him a playful punch.
“Shut up,” she said, smiling.
That night they made love for the first time in a month. To Paul it felt like being born again.
2
Afterward, Paul waited for Jen to use the restroom. He lay in the darkness and marveled at the strangeness of life. The unpredictability of it. The danger. She came back into the room, made her way under the covers, and curled her bare body against his. Whenever she was dressed for work, she was a professional woman through and through. She had about her a fiery corporate stare to rival the best of them. In a designer pantsuit there was no doubt she could ascend the ladders of business with pragmatic deftness. But naked… she was young and ancient at the same time, almost otherworldly. Pragmatism meant nothing to her exposed smooth skin and fragile bones, her hair set free from its normal variety of cages, framing her face and shoulders. A fairy, he thought, still drowsy from sex. What she looks like is a fairy.
He pulled her tight, grabbing her legs behind her knees with one hand and cradling her back with the other. He held her almost as he would a child. She reached up with her own hands and squeezed his neck and back, burying her head in the space between his shoulder and chest. She shook, and he knew she had begun crying.
He wanted to say, I promise I promise I promise I promise I promise…
But he only held her close.
3
The next day Paul had the house to himself again. Jen had left for work, and it felt as if she were an illusion—altogether too good for his reality—that had now disappeared.
He was shocked to feel the forest book (the Deeny book) work its way into his thoughts. It seemed a matter of course that his reconciliation with his wife would have banished Deeny and any thoughts of Deeny to Hell, but the book was still there. He wanted to write it as it came out of the forest and through his hands, but he heeded the sinking feeling in his gut.
Instead, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and his supremely comfortable bathrobe, he went to his office and pressed the button on his desktop computer. It hadn’t even been turned on for three weeks. He checked his email, and found nothing but the expected “encouraging words” from his agent. He procrastinated a bit on the BBC News site—he’d found it much more reliable than any of the US news stations’ sites—and then opened the Word file for Scott’s Anaconda. He also opened the corresponding research folder he’d compiled for it. Scrolling through what he’d written already (about twenty pages of actual novel), the story started to come back to him.
He got to where he’d left off and thought, Screw it. Let’s just see what happens. He started typing, letting Captain Jeffs explain the complications of an upcoming battle to a woman in the camp, Valerie Hardstetter, a woman he wouldn’t admit he was falling in love with.
He typed, and it was actually working.
At first Paul couldn’t believe it; he thought it must be some kind of fluke, but no, two hours and thirty ounces of coffee later, he had four pages. He wasn’t moving at the speed of the forest book—nor would he ever work with that kind of speed on a war novel—but that was still a good, brisk pace.
The office seemed normal to him, too, not as utterly foreign as the house had seemed just one morning before. It made sense for them to have moved here. If they did have children, this would be a good place for them.
He hit a wall in the writing, but it didn’t deter him. This was just one of the many aspects of his work. He didn’t know how Jeffs would respond to the invitation Valerie had just made to read a smuggled journal from one of the Carolinas. She was from the north, but had some sympathies with the Confederate army. She wanted Jeffs to understand more fully the complexity of their slave situation, how it was tied in a hundred ways to their sense of self, place, and family. Now, in the story, Jeffs was fondling the book, reluctant to open it, but curious as to what she thought might be of value inside. Paul kept a variety of trinkets in a drawer in his desk. During these times of reflective thought, instead of forcing the words to come, he would take one or two of the toys out and inspect them, pass them from hand to hand, and the answer always came in time. He grabbed a tiny, detailed clay horse and a heavy brass bayonetted-rifle letter opener, even though neither of them had to do with the scene at hand. After a few minutes he thought he had an idea of where to go, and set both of the items back in the drawer.
He ignored the pressure in his bladder as long as he could; he didn’t want to lose the momentum he was building. It was a battle he had fought many times before and it made him feel good to have some of the old routine back, but as it always did, the bladder won, and he headed for the master bathroom, still tossing about ideas for Captain Jeffs’ next move.
He watched his urine splash into the cream-colored bowl and thought again about how he hoped none of the reviewers would make a Freudian joke about the title, Scott’s Anaconda. As he finished up and pulled the polished wooden lever, the distinct smell of methane filled his nose. It was so bad that he started coughing.
Then a loud fart sounded from behind the shower curtain, and another rush of odor filled his nose. Paul’s heart jumped forward a step, and he shouted, “Hello? Is someone there?” His eyes watered in response to the powerful stench, now even worse. His mind supplied him with explanations of the noise that weren’t even close. A pipe. The roof settling. A car backfiring somewhere far away. None of these things sounded like a fart, and that’s exactly what he’d heard. “Hello?” he said again, bunching a part of his robe over his mouth, trying to get a full breath through the thick fabric, trying not to panic.
“Oh. Excuse me,” a gravely, snorting voice replied. “Excuse me.”
Paul could see the wide, round figure moving behind the opaque curtain.
Time slowed and Paul began screaming in his mind, No no no no! This is over! This part is done! No more hallucinations! I’m not facing this, I’m not doing this, no no no no no…
“Who are you?” Paul said again, still reeling from the smell.
The curtain was pulled and light seemed to drain from the room. No, it wasn’t as if the light were leaving, Paul thought it was more like the room began to fill with some kind of darkness-smoke. It couldn’t be seen, but it made everything else harder to see. Despite the sunlight blazing in through the window, Paul could barely see the man standing in the empty shower. Even though he couldn’t see him well, Paul knew who it was
. He’d been writing about him so often lately, he felt as if he already knew him.
“Hi, Paul. My name is Deeny, and you woke me up. Thank you.” Paul could see enough to make out the wink in the dark fog.
“Now let me return the favor.”
4
“You really will have to excuse my gas,” the huge figure in the bathroom said. “That was not quite the entrance I was hoping to make. But that’s one of the things I love about life, unpredictability.” The darkness crept along the mounted dressing-room lights like a living thing. It spread across the floor, and dripped down the walls, obscuring everything. “Like the cop told you, I do have a sense of humor. I like to play.” The anti-light fog filled the room along with the awful smell. The grotesque fat man stepped out of the tub. “But I will only play for so long. It’s just a way to pass the time until you stop resisting. I know it is hard for you to understand this, but once you give in, things will be so much better for you.”
Paul had collapsed on the floor near the drawers under the sink. The man, Deeny, leaned over him in an impressive display of girth. He grinned. A nightmare grin, full of vaguely pointed teeth and vicious intelligence. The kind of grin one might expect to see peaking out from under a doctor’s facemask worn by a murderous clown in a surrealist film. The grin said, more completely than any combination of words could hope to: I know something you don’t know.
“You have never killed anyone, have you, Writer? No, of course you haven’t. And in a way, neither have I. But I have seen it. I have felt it. Always remember: to kill is sublime. And you are not like the others, the one in Rockport who buried me here, whoever that was! Nor are you like the other one who came here, a long time ago.” He laughed. “You have a wonderful mind. I think that for the first time it is going to be fully real to me, because of your mind.”
In the stillness of the moment, time seemed nearly to have stopped. Or, more accurately, to have lost all meaning. The other creatures—the Unborn, as the one in Jen had said—had also mentioned his mind, hadn’t they? With everything else they represented and threatened, this had slipped past him, but now it seemed paramount. They told him that he was wanted because of his mind, the power of it. Absurdly, Paul felt a twinge of pleasure at this. He felt as if he were, in some sick way, truly being recognized for the first time as a man capable of massive and powerful thoughts.
Tomorrow I Will Kill Again Page 6