The cops paid no attention to the story-not one of them showed the slightest interest. A crazy girl who tears her eye out, then ends it all by swallowing a box of Kleenex-they visibly couldn’t have cared less. Of course, when I’d stolen the money they’d made a big deal out of it-it was in all the papers, and they threw up roadblocks all over town. But killing her-I could have done it five hundred times and no one would even have gotten up from his desk.
As for me, everything went just fine. How could a real love story end at the police station? A real love story never ends. It’s not as easy as it seems in the storybooks-you must expect to have to fly higher, your brain light as a feather. Anyway, to this day no one has ever come looking for me. No one has bothered me. I was able to get it out of my system in peace.
I took care of the worst of it by turning over a small fortune to the people at the funeral parlor. Despite their frightening faces, I couldn’t complain-they handled all the details with the hospital, I hardly had to do anything. In the end they cremated her. I have her ashes. I keep them close by. I still don’t know what to do with them, but that’s another story.
As soon as I had the time, I wrote a long letter to Eddie and Lisa. I explained everything that had happened, without telling them the decisive role I’d played. I apologized for not letting them know earlier. I hoped they’d understand that I wouldn’t have been able to stand that. I’ll see you soon, I told them, love to you both… P.S. I won’t be answering my telephone for a while. Kisses. On my way to the mailbox I realized that the weather had turned lovely again. The heat and humidity had gone. It was mild and dry. I came home with an ice cream cone in my hand. One.
It seems stupid, but I still found myself cooking two steaks, or leaving the water in the tub for her, setting two places at the table, asking questions out loud. I slept with the light on. It’s the details that are hell-the little things that remain on the branches, like fog, like a gown of tattered lace. Every time it happened, I’d freeze in my tracks, and take my time digesting it. When I accidentally opened the closet and saw all her clothes in it, I almost choked. I tried to tell myself that each time was less painful than the time before. It wasn’t easy to tell.
Still, I didn’t die. One morning I hopped on the scale and saw that I’d lost only six pounds. What a laugh. Letting yourself go once in a while-chewing your fingers to the bone-is not what saps a man. I was not even too far away from looking good. Some people take it with them when they go, but Betty was the opposite. She left it all. ALL. So it wasn’t surprising that sometimes I felt her there, next to me.
I let several days go by without seeing anyone. I had explained things to Bob and Annie-had asked them not to disturb me. Bob wanted to come over with a bottle. I won’t answer the door, I told him. I’d decided to climb back up the hill in a hurry. For that I needed peace-telephone off, television on. One morning I got the proofs of my book to correct, and this made for a change of pace. It was her thing, after all. I took my time with it, and it was probably this that got me back on my feet-morally, I mean. When I went back to my notebooks and found that I could still put two or three good sentences together… when I smelled the eerie beauty that they breathed… when I saw that they were like children playing in the sun, then I realized that, though I’d gotten off to a bad start as a writer, the rest was going to be just fine-it was as good as done.
The next day I was a new man. It started when I stretched out in bed. Getting up, I realized that I was in good shape. I looked at the apartment in a good mood, smiling. I sat down in the kitchen to drink my coffee, something I hadn’t done in a dog’s age-usually I just drank it standing up or leaning on the sink. I opened the windows. I felt so good that I ran out to buy croissants. It was a lovely day.
To get out a bit, I went to eat in town. The cafeteria was jammed to the ceiling, the waitresses already had sweat circles under their arms. We’d had that job, Betty and I. I knew what it was all about. I sat down at a little table with my chicken, mashed potatoes, and apple pie. I watched the people. Life was like a bubbling torrent. I’d say that this was the image I kept of Betty-a bubbling torrent-and to that I’d add luminous. If I had my choice, I’d wish she were still alive, that’s understood-but I have to admit that, to me, she wasn’t too far from it. You can’t be too picky, after all. I stood up, thinking that sitting down should be left to those who really suffer.
I went for a walk. On my way back, I ran into a pretty girl looking in the store window. She was blocking the reflections with her hands, blond hairs glimmering beneath her arms. I put the key in the lock. She straightened up.
“Oh, I thought it was closed,” she said.
“No, why would it be closed? It’s just that I never pay attention to time.”
She looked at me and laughed. I felt silly. I’d forgotten that-what that’s like.
“That must get you in trouble,” she joked.
“Yeah, but I’m going to fix it. I made some New Year’s resolutions. You want to see something…?”
“Well, I don’t have much time now, but I’ll come back…”
“Whenever you like. I’m here every day of the week.”
It goes without saying that I never saw the girl again-it was just to show how bright things looked to me. That was the day I plugged the telephone back in; the day I shoved my face into a pile of her T-shirts, smiling; the day I finally looked at a box of Kleenex without trembling. It was that day that I learned that you never stop learning-that the stairway goes on forever. What did you think? I asked myself, while slicing a melon before bed. I thought I heard laughter behind my back, coming from the direction of the melon seeds.
My book came out about a month after Betty’s death. My associate was a fast worker, to say the least. He was still a small publisher. I must have come along when he had little else to do. One morning I found myself with a book on my lap. I turned it over in my hands. I opened it. I sniffed the paper. I slapped myself on the thigh.
“Oh, baby, look what’s finally happened,” I whispered.
Bob decided to celebrate. We took a little trip. Grandma watched the kids. Bob and Annie brought me home early in the morning. We couldn’t tell if you were laughing or crying, they told me later. How should I know, I answered. It’s not always easy to know if you’re attending a funeral or a birth. Writers’ brains are no more atrophied than anyone else’s. Despite what I’ve become, I’m still in the same boat as everyone else-I have more than my share of things I don’t understand. There must be a Saint Christopher for writers who are a little soft in the head.
Some guy from a small regional newspaper wrote that I was a genius. My publisher sent me the article. I’m not sending you the others, he said-they’re bad. Applause in one corner, boos and hisses in the other. Still, the summer went by calmly, and I found my pace once again. I got along fine. The store was open. I installed a bell on the second floor that rang when someone opened the door downstairs. It didn’t happen too often. I gave up the idea of moving, though I’d thought it over more than once. Maybe later I wouldn’t be against it, once my book was finished. For the time being, though, I wanted to stay put. The light in the house during the day was great-giant splashes of brightness and shadows; who could ask for anything more? The atmosphere was enough to make you drool. The Rolls-Royce of atmospheres for a writer.
Toward evening, I’d take walks, and if the spirit moved me, I’d go sit at a sidewalk café and watch the eyes go by in the twilight. It got me out of the house. I listened to the people talking among themselves. I sipped my drink slowly, swallowing the last drop fifty times before I decided to head home. There was nothing to rush for, and nothing to hold me.
Once I’d plugged the telephone back in, Eddie called me regularly.
“Jesus Christ, we’re up to our ears in work just now. Can’t come down…”
He said this every time. Then Lisa would take the phone and tell me she missed me.
“I miss you,” she would say.
“Yeah, Lisa, same here.”
“Keep taking good care of her,” she’d add. “Don’t ever forget her…”
“No, don’t worry.”
Then she’d hand Eddie back over.
“Hi, it’s me. Listen, you know that if anything happens we’ll be there in a hurry… you know that… you’re not alone, you know…”
“Of course I know that.”
“Maybe in two weeks or so we can come down…”
“Great. Love to see you.”
“Anyway, in the meantime take care…”
“Right, man. You too.”
“Right… Lisa is motioning to me to say she misses you…”
“Tell her same here.”
“You’ll let me know if anything… you sure you’re all right…?”
“Yes, the worst is over.”
“Right, well, we think of you often. Anyway, I’ll call again soon.”
“Fine, Eddie, I’ll be waiting…”
It was the kind of phone call that made me melancholy. It was like getting a postcard from the other end of the world that says I LOVE YOU, if you get my drift. If there was something not too horrible on TV, I’d just plop myself down in front of it, with a box of candy on my lap. Going to bed would be a little tougher. Don’t forget her, she’d said… Are you sure everything’s all right, he’d asked… The worst is over, I’d answered. This is how a large bed becomes a bed for two again, and I would lie down on it like it was a bed of coals. Later, people would ask me how I managed during this period-what I did for sex. But I just told them, Nice of you to ask, don’t worry about it-why should I bore you with my troubles? Isn’t there something else you’d like to talk about? People always want to know how famous people live, otherwise they don’t sleep well at night-it’s nuts.
All this to say that I began to live normally again-Life, the standard model: highs and lows, part of me believing in Heaven and part of me not. I wrote, I paid my bills, I changed the sheets once a week, I killed time, I took walks, I had drinks with Bob, I stole peeks at Annie’s thing, I kept track of sales, I changed the oil in the car regularly, I didn’t write back to my fans, or to the others; and I used my more peaceful moments to think of her. It isn’t rare that I still find her in my arms. Under such conditions, I never expected anything to happen to me. Especially nothing like what happened. But you should never assume that you’ve made your last trip to the checkout counter. There will always be something you haven’t paid for yet.
It was a day like any other, except that I’d gone to the trouble of making myself a nice pot of chili. I’d gotten up out of my chair several times during the afternoon to taste it. It made me smile. I hadn’t lost my touch. I just had to make sure it didn’t stick to the bottom. When the writing was going well, I was always in a good mood… and with chili as a reward I was practically in paradise. When I had chili I heard her laughing.
When I noticed it getting dark, I closed my notebook. I got up to pour myself two fingers of gin with a few necessary ice cubes. I set the table without letting go of my glass. There were still a few red streaks in the sky, but it was the color of the chili that interested me, and a lovely color it was.
I served myself a big helping. It was a little too hot to eat, so I sat back peacefully with my drink and put on some music. Not just any music, but “This Must Be the Place,” which I love so much. I closed my eyes. Everything was copacetic. I rang my ice cubes like little bells.
I was so into it that I didn’t hear them come in. I couldn’t have been more relaxed. The house was flooded with the smell of chili. The blow to my arm paralyzed it. The pain made me fall over in my chair. I tried to grab onto the table but all I did was tip over half my plate, falling down on the tile. I thought they must have used a crowbar on me. I yelled. A kick in the stomach took my breath away. I rolled over on my back, drooling. Somehow, through the fog, I managed to see them. There were two of them, a big one and a little one. I didn’t recognize them right away they weren’t in uniform, and I’d long since forgotten the episode.
“Scream again and I’ll cut you into little pieces,” the fat one said.
I tried to get my breath back, but it was like someone had doused me with gasoline. The fat one took his front teeth out of his mouth and held them up in his hand.
“Perhapth you recognithe me better like thith,” he thaid.
I curled up slightly on the linoleum. I couldn’t take it-not this. The fat one was Henry, the one whose big toe I’d shot off, and the little one was my lover boy, the one I’d enchanted, the one who wanted to go away with me. For a second, a vision of myself running across the fields with a purse full of bills passed before my eyes-only now the scene took place in twilight, filmed through a frozen lake. Henry let out a little whine as he put his teeth back in, then he came at me, all red in the face. I got his foot in my head. Had it been twenty years earlier, when men wore heavier shoes, I would have woken up in a hospital. Today my aggressors wore tennis shoes. The shoes had plastic soles on them-I’d seen them on sale at the supermarket-they were worth about the price of a pound of sugar. All Henry did was give me a slight cut on the side of my mouth. He seemed very agitated.
“Shit, I can’t let myself get too worked up,” he complained. “I’ve got to take my time…”
He grabbed the bottle of wine off the table and turned to the kid, who was staring at me.
“Come on, let’s have a drink. Don’t just stand there like a jerk. I told you he wasn’t a woman.”
While they were drinking, I sat up a little. I had practically gotten my wind back, but my arm was useless. There was blood running down my clean T-shirt. Henry emptied his glass, smiling at me out of the corner of his eye. “I’m glad to see you’re getting your strength back,” he said. “So we can talk a little.”
That’s when I saw what he had, slipped through his belt suddenly I couldn’t see anything else. With the silencer, it made a hell of a big gun. I knew he had used it to smash my arm. I nearly hiccuped. I felt as if I’d just swallowed a toad. I wished I were invisible. The young man looked like he’d been struck by lightning-he hardly touched his drink. Henry poured himself another. His skin was shiny, like the skin of someone who’s just wolfed down three pepperoni sandwiches and half a dozen beers on a stifling summer night, electricity in the air. He came and stood in front of me.
“So… aren’t you amazed to see me?” he said. “Isn’t this a nice surprise?”
I preferred to look at the floor. He grabbed a handful of my hair.
“I told you you’d signed your death warrant, remember? Thought I was kidding? I never kid.”
He slammed my head into the wall. I heard bells.
“Now,” he went on. “You’re probably thinking, what took me so long to find you? I have other things to do, you know-I only worked on this during weekends.”
He went back and got another drink. On his way, he stuck his finger in the chili.
“Hmmm… delicious,” he said.
The other one hadn’t moved an inch. All he could do was stare at me. Henry shook him a little:
“What the fuck is wrong with you? What are you waiting for-search the place!”
He didn’t seem to be feeling well. He set his half-full glass on the table and turned to Henry.
“God, are you really sure that’s him…?”
Henry squinted.
“Look, do what I say and don’t get on my nerves-you get me, little pal?”
The little pal nodded and left the kitchen, sighing. He wasn’t the only one who felt like sighing. Henry dragged a chair up next to me and sat down. I think he must have had a thing for grabbing people by the hair. He didn’t stand on ceremony-it was like he was determined to pull it out by the roots. It wouldn’t have surprised me if half of it had stayed in his hand. He leaned toward me. It no longer smelled like chili in the house-it smelled more like hemlock.
“Hey, have you noticed that I walk with a slight limp? You seen that? It’s because I don’t have a big toe anymore, see, it makes me lose my balance…”
He sent his elbow into my nose, thus adding it to the ranks of my useless arm, my split lip, and the huge bump on the back of my head. It was not very late, and he didn’t seem anxious to go home to bed. I wiped at the blood running down my chin. He didn’t let me recover. It wasn’t that I was suffering so much, it’s just that the pain came from all over at once. It was as if I’d been plunged into a bath that was slightly too scalding. I couldn’t analyze the situation coolly. I couldn’t do much of anything.
“Okay, now I’ll let you in on how I found you. Tough luck for you, it was me you were dealing with-I was a cop for six years.”
He let go of my hair to light a cigarette. He’s going to put it out in my ear, I thought. He blew a few smoke rings at me. He looked like he’d just won the lottery, his eyes in the air.
“First, I asked myself why you went out the back way, and why nobody heard the car start. It bugged me. I said to myself, that bitch couldn’t have come here on foot, she must have parked her car far away to keep it from being spotted. You dig how the Wonderboy’s mind works…?”
I nodded. I didn’t want to piss him off. I wanted him to forget about the cigarette. I bitterly regretted having done that to his foot. I regretted that all this had to happen to me on the night I was about to dig into a bowl of chili-a night when life seemed almost gentle. He was not the kind of person I could have asked to let me finish my novel.
“So I took a stroll out in back,” he went on. “Running it through my brain, I climbed up onto the railroad track. And what do you think I saw, buddy boy? THE SUPERMARKET PARKING LOT! Yeah, you got it. And I got to tell you something that was pretty clever. I walked down there tipping my hat to you. My foot hurt, but I had to give you the parking lot!”
He flicked his cigarette butt out the open window, then bent over me, sporting a horrible, sexual grimace. I didn’t deserve a death whose face was so hideous. I was a writer, interested only in Beauty. Henry shook his head slowly.
“I can’t tell you the feeling I had when I came across your little Kleenex tissues. They were all in a bright little pile, calling out to me. I picked them up, but I’d already figured it out. I said to myself, for a broad, he sure has some balls…”
I wished he would talk about something else, that he wouldn’t all of a sudden get obsessed with that part of my anatomy-you never know what goes through the mind of someone like him. I heard the other one pulling drawers out in the apartment. It had taken me a long time to rebuild the pieces of my life-but I’d been sent these two to remind me of the fragility of all things. Did I need to be reminded?
Henry mopped his brow, never taking his eyes off me. The grease came back almost immediately, shining like a quartz field in the moonlight.
“You know what I did next? Well, tough luck again, the supermarket manager is my wife’s cousin, and I never let him forget it-he can’t refuse me anything. So I got the names and addresses of everyone who’d paid by check that day, then went to see them all, one by one, asking if they hadn’t noticed anything fishy in the parking lot the day in question. You bastard, I almost lost you there…Just then we were even-steven… I thrived on it, you know… the chase…”
He turned around and took the wine off the table. What I wouldn’t have given for a big glass of water and a handful of sleeping pills. I wasn’t particularly interested in how he’d found me-I’m not a detective-story freak. But what else could I do, except listen? I breathed out of my mouth-my nose was plugged with blood. He drained the last drop of wine, then stood up. One of his hands plunged into my hair.
“Come over here,” he said. “I can’t see you where you are.”
He dragged me over to the table and sat me down on a chair under the lamp. Three drops of blood plopped into my bowl of chili. He walked around the table and sat down in front of me-he pulled out his gun. He aimed it at my head, leaning both hands on the table for stability. His fingers were knitted around the butt, except for his index lingers, which were wound around the trigger. They didn’t have much room to move-I hoped he wouldn’t sneeze. Each second that passed made me happy to be alive. He smiled.
“So, to finish the story,” he went on. “I came across this woman who had written a check for her ironing board, and she told me: ‘Oh yes, Sir, I did see this blonde woman, loitering in a yellow car. I even noticed that it was a yellow Mercedes, with a local license plate, and even that she was wearing sunglasses.’ Well, I can tell you… it was a Sunday afternoon, not too late, and I went and sat down at a sidewalk café, thinking of you-thanking you very much for the help. I’m the grateful type, see. Cars like yours… there aren’t a whole lot of them in these parts-in fact, there’s only one.”
I jolted ridiculously-the kind of jolt I’d tile under Taking a Kick at the Great Wall of China. I tried to play coy. I shook my head.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I’ve had that car stolen from me twenty times…”
Henry got a big kick out of this. He grabbed me by the T-shirt and yanked me onto the table. I felt the tip of the silencer against my throat. I was putty in his hands. It might have made a difference if I had tried to defend myself, who knows-he was older than me and was starting to get pretty drunk. Maybe if I’d really gone nuts I could have turned things around-it’s not impossible. But I knew that I didn’t have it in me. I couldn’t have gotten my motor to turn over. Try as I might, I couldn’t get mad, I just couldn’t. I was too tired-more tired than I’d ever been. I would have been right at home on the side of the road somewhere, a small lukewarm sunset for my nightlight, a few blades of grass, and basta.
The young one came back just as Henry was starting to say something. He threw me back in my chair so hard that I tipped over backward and sprawled out on the tile. I was like a bump on a log with my dead arm. I went down hard, like at the end of a fifteen-rounder. I decided to stay down for the count. Nowhere was it written that I had to stand up and go calmly toward the torture chamber. I didn’t budge, I didn’t even move my leg, which remained twisted in midair, my heel coming to perch on a leg of the overturned chair.
I asked myself if the light bulb that hung from the ceiling wasn’t a 200-watter-if that wasn’t why I found myself blinking, or was it perhaps the satchel that the young one was holding in his hands. He looked rather pale. He lifted it up slowly, though it wasn’t very heavy. It took quite a while for him to maneuver it onto the corner of the table. We wondered what the hell was wrong with him, Henry and I.
“I found this,” he murmured.
Suddenly I felt sorry for him-he seemed to have lost his faith in everything. He seemed sad. Henry didn’t try to console him: he grabbed the sack of bills and opened it up wide.
“Oh, Jesus…!” he said.
He shoved his hands into it. I heard the crinkling of bills, but what he took out were my falsies and my wig. He held them up to the light, like a river of diamonds.
“Oh my God in Heaven!” he wheezed.
I couldn’t tell you why I’d kept those old things, or why I’d decided to put them back in the satchel. I assume I’m not the only one who does things he doesn’t understand, for whom things seem to organize themselves to their own ends, dizzying him, pulling him by the hand and God knows what else. Had I been able to dig myself a hole in the kitchen linoleum, I certainly would have.
“It’s Josephine…” the unhappy fellow sighed.
“No shit, Sherlock!” said Henry.
All at once the kitchen changed color-it turned all white. My ears started ringing at full speed. Before I could get my leg out of the way, Henry took aim at my big toe and fired. The pain went up to my shoulder-I saw blood spurting from my shoe like a poison fountain. Oddly enough, it was then that the feeling came back into my arm. I grabbed the chair leg with both hands, pushing my forehead into the floor. Henry jumped on me and turned me back over. He was breathing heavily, sweat beading in his eyebrows and dripping onto my face. His eyes were two baby vultures with their beaks open wide. He grabbed my T-shirt.
“Come here, pretty boy, come here, baby… I’m not finished with you yet!”
He picked me up and threw me onto a chair. He was smiling and grimacing at the same time. He was really into it, running his tongue over his lips and talking to the young man:
“Okay, now we’re going to take him for a ride. Find me something to tie him up with…”
The young one shoved his hands in his pockets, looking like a beaten dog.
“Listen, Henry, I think this has gone far enough. Let’s just call the police…”
Henry made an obscene noise with his mouth. I was looking at my foot-the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
“You poor kid,” he said. “You’re really a little jerk. You don’t know me very well…”
“But Henry…”
“God damn it, you asked to come with me, now do what I say! I’m not about to give him over to the cops, so he’ll be out in three months. Jesus Christ, after what he did to me… Jesus Christ! You must be kidding!”
“Yeah, but Henry, we’re not authorized to…”
Henry went crazy-I thought he was going to start beating on him. They argued, but I couldn’t understand all that they were saying-I had just noticed a small stream of lava spurting out of the west flank of my shoe. It burned so much that I couldn’t get near it with my hand. I don’t know what they decided, but when I lifted my head back up Henry was putting the falsies on me. He got a little worked up over the hooks in back. The other one was standing in front of me. We stared at each other. I sent him a silent message. Help me, I told him. I’m a doomed writer. Henry screwed the wig onto my head.
“So… now do you recognize him?” he shouted. “This the little whore, or what? Is this what you got all weak in the knees about? This?”
The young one bit his lip. I just stayed there, not moving. There was obviously nothing that could get me angry-l wondered if there ever would be again. Just then, though, I felt myself flowing toward the waves, sinking into the ocean. Henry looked like an oil well on fire. His fury had turned him red-orange. He grabbed my last-hope’s arm and threw his head between my breasts, then started throttling the two of us.
“All right, God damn it!!” he screamed. “Is THAT what you want? Is that what you had in mind, you fucking little creep…?”
The young guy tried to get away. His hair smelled of cheap cologne. He whined and cried in a smothered voice. I was afraid he was going to step on my wounded foot. Then Henry pulled him backward and flung him into the table. The chili almost went all over him. The kid was on the verge of tears, red splotches all over his face. Henry put his hands on his hips-a horrific smile on his face, and his stench permeating the room.
“So, asshole…” he said. “You going to go get me that rope now?”
Henry held his forearm up in front of his face. A bullet, however, goes easily through a forearm, then continues through the skull, and if there is nothing behind it except an open window, goes right on whistling over the rooftops, disappearing in the night on its way to Bullet Heaven. Henry slid to the floor. The young man put the gun back on the table and slumped into a chair. I’ve never seen hide nor hair of the kind of silence that came down on us then.
His elbow propped on the table, he looked at the floor. I took my wig off and tossed it in the corner. I popped the hook of the bra-it fell onto my lap. I was exhausted. I had to stop to catch my breath. The kitchen was a block of translucent resin, shot in the air and endlessly spinning. I never knew that I loved life so much-this is what I thought as I sat there rubbing my busted lip. It hurt a little. You really have to love it to keep on going against all the suffering-to have what it takes to reach out and grab a few aspirin tablets.
There was a bottle of them in the drawer. I always keep aspirin nearby-this shows that I’ve been around. I put three of the little white jobs on my tongue.
“Want some?” I asked.
He shook his head without looking at me. I knew what he was thinking. I didn’t insist. I breathed out heavily, then bent over toward my shoe. The general sensation was one of having left my leg in a campfire, smoldering in the coals at dawn. I grabbed the rope sole and slipped my shoe off delicately, as if I were undressing a sleeping dragonfly. I had to admit that it was a miracle-I’d call it that-a bullet that goes right between two toes, leaving only a bit of torn skin, a little slice of destiny. I stood up, straddling Henry without feeling a thing, then went and drank a tall glass of water.
“I’ll help you carry him downstairs,” I said. “Take him as far away as you can.”
He didn’t move. I went around behind him and helped him stand up. He wasn’t in good shape. He held onto the table without saying a word.
“You and I would both do well to forget this whole affair,” I suggested.
I took a few handfuls of bills out of the satchel and stuffed them in his pocket. He had two or three hairs on his chest, tops.
He didn’t argue.
“You got to learn how to open the door when opportunity knocks,” I said. “Take his legs.”
We dragged him. It was like dragging a dead whale down the stairs. No one outside-minimal moon, small wind. Their car was parked right in front. We jammed Henry into the trunk. I went back upstairs as fast as I could, grabbed the gun with the bottom of my T-shirt, then limped back down. He was already sitting behind the wheel. I knocked on the glass.
“Open the window,” I said.
I slipped him the gun.
“When you’re done, go bury this at the North Pole,” I said.
He nodded, looking straight ahead.
“Drive smart,” I told him. “Don’t get noticed.”
“Yes,” he muttered.
I sniffled, both hands on the roof of the car. I looked up the street.
“Remember what Kerouac said,” I sighed. “The jewel-the real center-is the eye within the eye.”
I gave the fender a slap as he pulled away. I went back upstairs.
I took care of my foot. I cleaned the place up a little-the urgent things. To tell the truth, it was almost as if nothing had happened. I put the chili back in the saucepan over a low flame. I put the music back on. The cat came in through the window. The night was calm.
“I saw the lights on,” he said. “Were you writing…?”
“No,” I said. “Just thinking.”