Despite the best intentions to think bigger and bolder, Herbert and Kelley never branched out into robbing industrial facilities. Through trial and error they had learned that if home invasions had proven to be challenge enough, escalating the stakes would inevitably end in failure. People had proven to be unpredictable, and their security systems inconsistent. In fact, the more devil-may-care an occupant’s attitude towards their security, the more likely it was that they were hiding in the bushes out front with a machete, a powdered nose and six crushed cans of Monster.
For that reason they stayed clear of the city proper and continued to rob the suburbs. The people were sleepier, more prone to ennui than psychosis, and liable to take extended business trips or sabbaticals to the cottage. Kelley had never seen a cottage in his life. He had only snippets. Lawn chairs. Tire swings. Sausages strung along the rafters like an COO’s idea of a group hanging. Couples tackling each other in wheat fields. Perhaps he was jumbling his fantasies. It didn’t matter. It was all a part of the same unreality that somehow that most real and put-together people in the world engaged in every calendar holiday. Was he jealous? Yes. He loved cured meats and just staring at things.
And yet even in the sleepy suburbs, it had taken time to work out a reliable system. Like clockwork, the more Kelley knew about the robbery beforehand, the more disastrous the operation. Herbert couldn’t rationalize it, but the result spoke for themselves. In an effort to make sure there were no surprises like at the home of Caroline Devries, Herbert had gone over the building schematics for a two-story house with Kelley, showing him all the best entrances and exits, which security systems were installed, and explaining exactly when and for how long the occupant would be out collecting his heart medication. And yet, not even ten minutes after sneaking his way through an upstairs window, Kelley felt a bottle shatter against his skull and was then chased out and down the road by a Danish nationalist who learned that day his paranoia was well warranted. While the man knew that he was always under surveillance, that week he had felt extra watched, and so on the day he typically left to get his meds, the elderly Dane left the house, parked two blocks down and then snuck in through the back door. He crept up the stairs then hid under his bed, waiting to catch any burglar, government official or any other devil who trafficked in filthy Swedish tricks.
“Why did he call you a rutabaga?” Hebert had said, handing Kelley a bag of frozen peas.
“Look, I don’t know,” said Kelley grumpily, holding the bag to the back of his head. “Just don’t bother me with your plans anymore. It’s a waste of time.”
With their new strategy, their performance increased tremendously. The universe had responded well to Kelley’s carelessness, and so taking it as a hint, he wore a blindfold during the drive to each robbery, removing it only when the van’s engine rumbling subsided. Then Herbert would point him at the right house. Kelley would break in, fill his bag with whatever looked valuable, leave, and then Herbert would drive them away. A classic formula that was not to change until Herbert suggested robbing the home of Bill Watterson. Not only would he not stay in the van, he insisted, he intended on going.
Herbert’s last face-to-face with Bill Waterson was on the night after he had received his bachelor’s degree in molecular biology. They attended the same party thrown for his graduating year. Some shithole bar that despite its protestations, was somehow not shit enough. A corporation’s idea of a dive bar. Beer from breweries with nice logos. Bad Food. Premium prices on premium garbage that came delivered in plastic bags from black trucks with bulletproof windows. Open bar until it wasn’t.
He nursed his fourth or fifth beer while his peers laughed and shrieked and otherwise enjoyed the fruits of their long, laborious years through University. And him? He was seething. What did they have to be so happy about? Why were they so pleased with themselves? They hadn’t done anything. Not that he had done anything either. All they had managed to prove after four long years was that they were capable of throwing up a biology textbook. Big fucking deal. So can goats.
So we know how to read, thought Herbert. So what? Is that something to be proud of? Why were these chimps licking tequila out of each other’s belly buttons like they just stormed the Bastille? Doesn’t anyone have anything better to do? Why am I even here?
He slammed his palm on the table.
“I’d like to say something.”
“Herbert’s drunk.”
“We’re all drunk.”
“Yeah, but he’s nuts.”
“I’m not drunk,” said Herbert, looking around for who was heckling him. Though he recognized the faces, he only remembered maybe one or two names. “Okay, maybe I am but that has nothing to do with anything.”
“Shut up!”
“I haven’t said anything!”
“Keep at it! Don’t ruin a good thing.”
“This is a good thing?” Herbert said, waving his hands around. “This is something worth giving a shit about? What are you all so goddamn happy about?”
“We graduated. We made it. Even you.”
“Made what? We haven’t made anything.”
“I’m sure we’ll all have our profound discoveries and inventions one day,” said Bill Watterson, rolling up and injecting himself into the conversation. “Just not tonight, okay buddy? What is your problem?”
“You know what my problem is, buddy.”
“Jesus,” Bill looked around the crowd with his smug, piggy eyes. Herbert wanted to grab one end of his beard and pull it off with one clean tear, leaving his skin with dark smudges from the makeup he used to fill it in. “Did you guys know that Herbert hates me because I use computers?”
“I have no problems with computers. I take issue with transhumanists.”
“No one knows what you’re talking about.”
“I read your thesis about brain chips, okay Bill? I think the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone is getting tricked into an everlasting, artificial prison because they’re scared of death. You want everyone to become a cyborg and all I want is for people to not lose their souls to technology.”
“Great, we have a luddite with a degree in molecular biology”, laughed Bill. “This is the way civilization is headed, whether you want it to or not.”
“You have no reason to believe that besides that you’re a coward and you want it to happen.”
“Really?” said Bill. “Think of how many different worldviews have funneled into our own in the last hundred years alone. Think of Spengler and his notion that civilizations center around the fulfillment of a single metaphysical idea. The Ancient Greeks and their culture built around “the body”, the Egyptians and their well preserved architecture suffused with the idea of “stone”, The Chinese and their “wandering way”, and now us here in the West with our calculus and our exploration of “infinite space”. But what then? Where does one go from here? Well, isn’t it obvious? It should be, because we’re already doing it! As the Faustian fire wanes, what we see is a civilization bored with “infinite space” and desperately looking for anything else it can latch onto to stoke its flame. And what it sees is not just one thing, but everything that came before it! A synthesis. A civilization built around the principle not just of “the body” or “stone”, “the wandering way”, or “infinite space”, but some combination thereof, thoroughly chewed and digested and ready for the new world. A body built to last, wandering this way and that in a realm of infinite possibilities, a mind capable of exploring each and every one in its own infinite time. Our architecture has already shown what’s in our hearts. Think of two skyscrapers sitting face-to-face, reflecting each other in an infinite hall of metal and glass. If that doesn’t describe a cyborg, then I don’t know what would.”
“Yeah, that describes a cyborg I guess. But it also describes a kid smashing toys together and hoping they fit. The thing that your “body” and “stone” and “infinite space” have in common is that they have nothing in common. The pattern is that every civilization has entirely different metaphysical ways of viewing the world. When has a civilization ever, at its core, been two or three different worldviews haphazardly smashed together?”
“You don’t get it. This is the endgame. The final synthesis and the last civilization. Where do you go when you have a body that never dies and a mind that can go anywhere and everywhere? That’s it. Last stop. Everybody off.”
“Bullshit.”
“It sounds like you know I’m right, but you don’t have an argument.”
“My argument is that everything you say is imitative and artificial, which is probably why you like machines so much. They reflect your lack of imagination.”
“Do you have some kind of point you’re trying to make?”
“My point,” said Herbert, sneering, “The future is and will always be organic. Machines can try to imitate the adaptability of a real organism, but they lack inspiration. Organisms grow and adapt because they want to. They not only have the desire to live, but also something far stronger, the desire for their species to live up to some biological potential that they don’t understand yet still strive towards because their understanding is irrelevant. It is not by accident that animals all look so distinct.”
“It is actually. If you think there’s anything beyond environmental pressure and random mutation, I suggest you take the healing crystals out of your ass.”
“And if you think that the only purpose of life is to breed and pass on your genes in some parasitic means of “living forever”, then I hope every woman in here keeps that mind when you’re feeding them that line about how ‘we’re all made of stardust’.”
“You’re exhausting. Why don’t you give it a rest, okay Herbert?” sighed Bill Watterson. Herbert could hear it in his voice. That insufferable tone that said he was going to be the better man, and because he was the better man, he was willing to let things go. Bill continued.
“Everyone’s worked very hard, and now they just want to relax and celebrate and not engage in your tiresome debates. You’re not making any friends this way. And you’ll need friends if you’re going to get anywhere in our field. You can’t go it alone. How far do you think you’ll be able to see without standing on the shoulders of giants?”
Herbert took a sip of his beer.
“Farther than you, shortass.”
Hearing that, Bill Waterson leapt over the table, his tiny arms grasping at Herbert’s collar. Unexpectedly, Herbert found himself delighted and began to laugh. Then Bill dug his fingers under Herbert’s glasses which bothered him enough that he started slapping at Bill’s hands and grabbing his hair.
Money started to exchange hands as two groups formed around them.
“Look at him, he’s not even trying. Probably never been in a fight his whole life!”
“And Bill’s got the weight advantage.”
“Yeah, but he has no reach.”
Eventually the crowd was pushed aside by the bouncer, who escorted them out of the bar as if by the scruff of their necks. They continued the fight outside for a short period of time, but without an audience they didn’t have much fight left in them. They were tired. Fighting was hard. And even behind the numbing power of booze, their wrists hurt. And so they went home, walking several blocks the same way before they remembered they lived in the same residence. Not a word was said the whole way back.
Herbert had no hard feelings about the fight. In fact, it was the one time that he could truly say he liked Bill Watterson. Where his resentment stemmed from was that from that day, and everyday thereafter, Bill Watterson had become increasingly successful, while Herbert spent his weekends sniffing around the backdoors of ill-reputed colleges, hoping for the vaguest, half-rotten whiff of a grant. And so when he had told Kelley that he was going to join him for this specific robbery, he was pestered to explain, on threat of Kelley bailing from the job entirely.
“It’s important that I go because I just don’t like the guy, okay?” he admitted. “But don’t worry about that. It doesn’t concern you. After this job is done, you’ll never have to rob another house again if you don’t want to. This is the heist to end all heists and the most important night of your life”
That night, the neighborhood around 17 Ramneses Drive was as still as a lake. They sat smoking in the van while waiting for the sun to plunge behind the horizon. When the hands on Herbert’s watch struck nine, the streetlights came to life, illuminating the row-upon-row of barbie dream houses, most of which they suspected were entirely empty. There was no one walking around. In places like it, it was a rarity to see someone on a stroll. There was nothing suspicious about it. It was just what these places were like.
Hebert stopped the engine. Untying his blindfold, Kelley reached into the glove compartment to pull out a blue baseball cap. Liberty Cable Inc. was written across the front in white font.
“What is this?”
“You’re an internet and cable provider offering service and repairs.”
“Oh,” said Kelley. “So that’s why you told me to wear a polo shirt.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, better get to it.”
Though the house looked no different than the others, it had slight differences that made it clear someone lived there. Slight chipping on the door frame. Small chunks of mud and rock cradled in the fibers of the welcome mat. A shovel peppered with rust leaning off to the side next to a rolled up hose. Even the door paint had less of a shine, as if simply by being observed more than the others it had lost its sheen. Kelley knocked. Waited. Knocked again, then took out his phone and pretended to have a conversation in which Bill Watterson invited him to squeeze down the narrow alley on the side of the house, his back against the wooden fence that separated the neighbor’s wall from Bill’s. With a little effort, he scaled the fence and dropped down into Bill Watterson’s backyard.
The second floor windows glared disdainfully over the sad excuse for a garden. A recycling bin overflowing with crushed aluminum cans and jaundiced grass wheezed for just a drop of lager to whet their dull blades. A stone angel stood on a podium above an empty pool, rouge sloppily applied to the angel’s cheeks and its lips lined with a glossy black lipstick. He checked the backdoor. Locked. He figured as much.
Swinging his duffel bag back and forth, he tossed it up to the roof of the second floor. Then he re-scaled the garden fence, trapezing across it before hopping onto the roof himself. He tried the window to the bathroom. To his surprise, it opened. He felt disappointed. He had wanted to try the hacksaw.
Peering inside the gloomy little bathroom, he imagined being caught, the door opening as Bill Watterson entered for his late night shit.
“I’m here to fix the cable, Mr. Waterstone. Oh, that’s not you? I might have the wrong house. But maybe not. How do you feel about liberty? Can you ever really have enough? Sure, take your shit. Think it over.”
Something like that. But no one showed up. Just the grainy haze of a room left alone for too long. Staring at the empty toilet roll holder, he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Turning around, he saw in the garden a pallid and mangled corpse twitching between mange-like grass patches. Sickly wet face struggling to breath. Thin strands of hair glued to his forehead.
“You should kill yourself,” said a voice in his head. It belonged to the corpse. Kelley’s upper lip curled. The drowned, the burned, the carved out and the mangled. As a child, they used to frighten him. It had been shocking to see an eyeless face suggest that he die. Now they just seemed pathetic. He had assumed that they just wanted him wherever they were, and this was the only trick they had left to drag him to hell. It was depressing. At least demons and worms had teeth and hooks.
Herbert waited by the front door, knocking every few minutes before pretending to look annoyed at his empty clipboard. Walking past the living room, Kelley noticed a graying sticker for Iron Temple Security on the inside of the window. What a cheap cunt. Iron Temple Security was a xerox machine run out of a storage unit downtown. Though they did make good stickers.
He opened the door to let Herbert in, who then pushed past him, heading straight for the second floor.
“Unbelievable,” Kelley heard him mutter under his breath as he fingered the railing. “Not even the right kind of wood. Probably paid a fortune.”
Down the hall they found Bill’s study, a red painted room with cupboards neatly organized and walls decorated with all manner of soviet memorabilia and medieval icons.
Kelley raised an eyebrow, “None of this stuff looks worth stealing. Everything looks cheap.”
“It’s supposed to look cheap. It’s some weird, ironic nonsense. I don’t pretend to understand it.These are meant to be “symbols of the past”, and he keeps them around so he can feel enlightened and progressive.”
“You sure?” said Kelley, staring at a poster of a skeleton-legged Christ sitting colon deep on an orthodox cross. “Maybe he just likes the aesthetic.”
“It’s just a brand. He has no real convictions. Just topics and platitudes that he thinks will make people like him. He’s a crowd pleaser.”
Kelley nodded as Herbert inspected a cloth mural of an obese deacon being clung to by a crowd of starved peasants. Finding it suspiciously low to the ground, he flung it aside to reveal a safe.
“Aha!”
Hebert took to his knees, removed his glasses and then began to play with the dial, looking back at his notepad for every failed combination.
“Do you need me for this?” asked Kelley.
“Not really.”
Kelley wandered the room. He grabbed a flashy faberge egg off a cabinet and began tossing it into the air.
“That’s not worth anything,” said Herbert, turning around. “It’s fake.”
Kelley shrugged, “Says you. I can sell anything.”
“Well you’d have to sell it to a real idiot.”
“No skin off my back.”
For an hour, Herbert struggled at the dial, occasionally ripping out another page from his notebook and stuffing it into his back pocket. Kelley leaned against the desk and played catch with himself. There was a tiny crack in the wall, and he couldn’t help but stare at it, wishing his hardest that it would open up and something would crawl out. Then he wondered how Helen was doing. He was still avoiding her, having come no closer to figuring out who Philip was, nor how he would control him. She was probably pissed. Oh well, he would figure something out. Flowers. He had never bought flowers before. Did women like flowers, or did they just pretend to? Herbert sighed loudly and shoved his head in his hands.
“Hand me my thermos, Kelley. We might be here a while.”
Kelley put down the egg and reached into the duffel bag. Taking his eyes off it for a second, the egg rolled off the desk and shattered into a million pieces as Kelley watched its trajectory with all the passion of a cat watching the news. He should have caught it, but he also wanted to watch it break. The duality of man, he thought, not knowing what he meant. He brought out the thermoses.
“Thanks,” said Herbert as Kelley gave him his.
“Are you sure Bill’s not coming back tonight?”
“Yes. He’s accepting an award on behalf of the Ecological Institute. In four hours he’ll be three sheets to the wind and trying to knuckle some poor woman’s cervix.”
“Jesus man, I’m drinking coffee.”
“Sorry.”
“What’s the award for?”
Herbert waved his hands, “Who can say? For masturbating, I think. That’s what science is all about now. Who can jerk off who the hardest.”
“Can you stop?”
“And somehow,” Herbert said, tapping the safe, “through this perverted game of patty cake, he convinced some poor sap to lend him fifteen kilograms of Palladium. Do you know how much that costs?”
“A lot?”
“To put it mildly.”
“How’d you know he had it?”
“Like I said, he’s a braggart and a socialite and he drinks too much. Everyone and their mother knew— FUCK!”
He crumpled another leaflet like a dejected origami piece and banged his fist against the steel door, letting a quiet scream squeeze out through his teeth while he nursed his hand.
“Can I try?”
Herbert tossed his notepad against the wall.
“Fine. Go ahead. I don’t get it, I tried everything. Birthdays, important dates, even threw in some Bible verses. He’s into that sort of stuff. Ironically, I mean.”
“Uh-huh,” said Kelley as he sat down cross-legged and began to fiddle with the dial.
“He thinks it’s impressive to quote the Bible because he doesn’t believe in it. He thinks it makes him look better than the people who do. You have no idea how mad his success makes me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He has no interest in science. He never did. It was always about scamming venture capital. Not even for the money, mind you. Just to soothe his petty ego.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And the worst part is–” The sound of a click fell like a penny down the well of Herbert’s cochlea, interrupting his train of thought.
“Hey,” said Kelley, turning back and smiling. Lustrous metal twinkled inside the safe. “I got it.”
“You–What? How?”
“It’s like, uh, there’s a little less friction on your fingers when you get the right number. So you keep turning to find the rest of them. If it takes more than one rotation, you haven’t found the first one. The rest is easy. You can do it by feel. To be honest, it’s not a very good lock.”
Digging into his back pockets, Herbert retrieved a fistful of crumpled paper, trying to flatten the pages while pushing them in Kelley’s face.
“Was it any of these? Which number was it? Was I close?”
Kelley shoved him by the shoulders.
“I don’t know,” he said, irritated. “I don’t look at the numbers. You don’t have to. You’re overcomplicating things.”
“You should have said something!”
“I didn’t know what kind of lock it was! You’re the one who told me to wait!”
Herbert sighed.
“Let’s just get this stuff packed.”
“What made you think you could guess the code?”
“There’s a tenant in some psychoanalytical circles that–”
“Psychoanalysis?” scoffed Kelley. “I guess I should be grateful you weren’t hunting for the code at the bottom of a tea cup.”
“I don’t need to hear that from you.”
They didn’t bother to clean up the scene. Scattered murals and shards of glass eggshell remained where they lay. Duffel bags in toe, they walked to the front door. Home free. Bill wouldn’t be back until Monday. And yet, when they opened the door they stood facing a startled man holding a stack of papers.
“Who are you?” said the man, furrowing his brow. He looked to be late 50s. Kind eyes. A face carved from wood.
“We’re friends of Bill,” said Kelley quickly, shoving himself in front of a stunned Herbert who couldn’t quite figure out how to close his mouth. “He’s away on a trip, so he lent us his keys so we could deliver some equipment to the lab while he’s away. Who are you?”
“Oh no. Boys. You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
The man’s eyes took on a pained expression.
“Bill’s dead,” he nodded.
“What?” Herbert said, a little too loud.
“I’m sorry boys, I ought to introduce myself. I’m Bill Watterson, no relation. But please call me William. I’m the other Bill’s trustee. Listen, I didn’t want to be the one to break this news to anybody, I just wanted to do my part and take care of the estate. I’m not one for all this emotional, you know, work. Though I’m sure with his disease you’ve probably already had some time to make your peace.”
“Disease?” said Herbert in a small voice.
“You didn’t know? Bill had terminal lung cancer. Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” said Bill Watterson sadly. “I wonder if I was the only one he ever told. He kept these things pretty close to the chest.”
“And he died from lung cancer? I don’t understand. I thought he was at a convention. That’s why we’re here.”
“Well, no.” The man rubbed the back of his neck. “As luck would have it, he was on the bad end of a hit and run. Flew three feet in the air and broke every bone in his body when he hit the pavement. However he may have suffered, it was brief. We can thank God for that.”
Herbert put his hand over his mouth.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“That’s alright. You take your time.”
“This is a lot to take in,” said Kelley. “I don’t know how to feel. It’s weird, but all I want to do is to bring this equipment over to the lab. It was the last thing he ever said to us, and now I feel like it’s my duty to get it done. Even if he won’t be there to see it.”
He pulled the bill of his cap over his eyes.
“Science has no time for grief.”
“That sounds like something Bill would say,” said Bill Watterson. “Alright, you boys get going. I have a lot of work to do. I have no plans for the funeral yet. When I do, I’ll let you know. What did you say your names were?”
“I’m Tom. Tom Johns. And this is my cousin, Phil Henry. And thank you, William.”
“I’ll remember those names. You have a good night now.”
“And you. Be safe.”
As they started to walk away, Bill turned around with an inquisitive look on his face.
“Liberty Cable Inc, huh?” he called after them.
“That’s right,” replied Kelley.
In the van, Herbert released a massive breath. He had been holding it in since they left the house.
“Jesus, I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”
“You seem a little bothered.”
“I mean, that guy saw us.”
“He saw Tim Jones and,” he paused. “I don’t even remember what other name I used. What is he supposed to do with that?”
“Yeah,” said Herbert, nodding. His lips were tight, looking a little like Bill Watterson when he spilled the bad news. Hands shaking at the wheel. “This is going to be big. This money is going to change everything.”
He turned to Kelley.
“What are you going to do with your cut?”
Kelley didn’t move his face from the window.
“I don’t know.”
“This is a turning point for me,” Herbert continued. “After this I can forget about money forever and focus on my work. I’ve been on edge lately, so worried about how I was going to get on. I was scared that I’d spend so much time trying to raise funds I’d forget what it was all about. Or worse, that I’d be too burnt out to do anything else. But now I’m safe. I can lose this filthy obsession with money and focus on Judy.”
He patted the duffel bag on his lap.
“Things are finally looking up. Even without the Palladium, I invested in this upcoming pharmaceutical company that’s about to blow up. I’ve already quadrupled my investment.”
“How much did you invest?”
Herbert grinned, “Everything.”
“Sounds pretty risky. Do you really trust it that much?”
“No risk involved, Kelley. That’s where the Palladium comes in. No matter what, I’ll never have to work for anyone’s benefit even again. We’re free.”
“I don’t feel free. I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“You have to let freedom grow on you. Like moss. You’ll see.”
“So now you’re going to spend all your time creating your homunculus?”
“I’m going to help my homunculus create itself. Organic matter isn’t like code. You don’t build it. You cultivate it.”
“I see.”
They drove in silence for a while. Lampposts whirled past with lights like ribbons. Kelley fixated on the power lines, picturing current passing through the aluminum wires. If he concentrated, he could almost hear a crackling. Then he lost it. It always happened. The moment things started getting good, he lost focus. Fresh from his trance, he looked over to see Herbert on the brink of tears.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Herbert. He paused, scrunching his face in pain.
“This isn’t the way I wanted to win.”
That night, Kelley drifted in and out of green fields under a cat’s eye copper moon. He felt himself smeared and dragged across the night sky. Then he was himself again. At the end of the field, a pale man with slithering black tattoos stared at him. An arm resting against his knee. His voice swept around Kelley as though it were the wind.
“I am losing my patience.”
“What’s your hurry,” said Kelley, closing his eyes and focusing on his breath. “She’s not going anywhere.”
“When?”
Kelley ignored him.
“Fine,” said Philip, rising to his feet. “I will tell you when. I do not like being taken advantage of. The time is now. This night no longer belongs to you.”
The grass beneath Kelley flickered like a dying flame before giving away and tossing him down a hole of red clay. Everything he grasped collapsed at the touch and the hole thinned and narrowed until he became lodged at the hips. Then the earth above him began to squeeze as well, his hands crushed between clay and cheekbone. At the top of the hole, he could make out a speck of stars. And then a single, dead, black eye and a lecherous melody of bubbles.
I am Kelley Lestes, said the stretched skin of his own face staring back at him from the end of the hole. A drop of saliva dripped from his own dead lips and splashed Kelley’s nose.
Kelley’s hands twitched as the walls pressed in further. A tongue unraveled from the skin mask of January, sliding down and licking his fingers.
I wonder how I will taste tonight.
Kelley woke up trembling. He felt nauseous. There was nothing to throw up, just air that he dry heaved again and again off the side of his bed.
He picked up his phone and tapped it. 3 AM. He hadn’t even been asleep for a couple hours. Peeling off his sticky t-shirt, he let it fall to the floor. Fuck. It was now or never. He couldn’t postpone it any longer. He called Helen. To his surprise, she picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me. Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“No, it’s fine,” she paused. “I wasn’t sleeping. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know how to explain. But I need to see you tonight.”
“What?”
“Meet me at the bridge in half an hour. Please, can you be there in half an hour?”
“Kelley, it’s late.”
“Then don’t come. But that’s where I’ll be.”
“Kelley?”
He hung up. Please don’t be there, Helen.
On his way out, he fingered the dried blood on the banister. It would probably stay there forever. Then he heard a clattering from the kitchen.
Past the dimly lit living room, he saw his mother dancing to swing music from a faulty radio speaker. Half a batch of broken cookies law strewn across the floor. In the corner, a mouse nibbled on a fat chunk of chocolate chip.
“What are you doing?” asked Kelley.
“Kelley!” His mother spun around with a big smile, an empty cookie tray in her mitted hand. “Come in, I’m making cookies.”
“Are you drunk?”
““I can’t have a drink in my own house?”
“Where’s your vitamin water?”
“You told me to stop taking that stuff, and now you’re going to ask me where it is?” she yelled, the tray crashing to the floor. The mouse eating chocolate jumped. Another one ran from underneath the stove and began to nip at him.
“Mom,” Kelley pointed with his eyes. “There’s mice.”
“So what?” She picked up a spatula and smacked it against the counter.
“I made something nice and someone’s eating it. I try to do something nice for you and you look at me like I’m rat shit.”
Something in her eye turned nasty.
“You wait until your father comes home.”
“He’s not coming back, Mom.”
She burst into tears, cookie crumbs flying as she stomped her foot.
“Why are you so cruel to me? Why do you punish me for loving you?”
Kelley’s eyes glazed over. When he talked to his mother it felt like he was watching himself from three feet away. He could never be sure of where he was.
“Goodbye,” was all he said before he left.
His mother threw the vodka bottle at his departure, startling both mice and accidentally slicing one of their tails.
“It hurts to look at you these days,” she told the empty house. Somehow she knew he did not intend to return. She wished she could cry. She would feel better. But of course she couldn’t. It ran in the family.
Near the bridge above a vast forest, Helen sat on a chest wall made of weathered brick. She waited patiently, tapping the mossy stone with her heels. She was used to it. She could never not be early. She looked up as Kelley approached, her face half lit by golden lantern light. Something was off in her eyes. It was hard to explain, but they looked uneven. Like the night they had buried her father.
In her hands she cradled a small wooden box.