Look Closer(74)

I keep walking, happy to end on that last text from Simon. He’s right. This isn’t over.

But it will be in twenty-four hours.





70

Simon

Three in the morning. Technically Halloween. Vicky’s down for the count, sleeping peacefully in the bedroom. Me, I can’t sleep, I’m too amped up. I need to run, but it’s too early, even for me.

I stare at the green phone. No, not here, not now.

I don’t want to wake Vicky, so I go downstairs and pace through a dark house. I shiver from the cold, or probably nerves, I don’t know but I’m so cold, like some invisible wind is whipping through me.

I pace, rubbing my arms, and think. Or at least I try to think. I can’t keep settled.

Deep breath. Calm, Simon. Deep breath.

The phrase “It is what it is” is the only sentence we speak where we could, but don’t ever, ever use contractions. Nobody says, “It’s what it’s.”

Deep breath.

The phrase “only choice” is an oxymoron.

“Laid” is pronounced like “paid” but not “said” and “said” is pronounced like “bread” but not “bead” and “bead” is pronounced like “lead” but not “lead.”

Deep breath.

No. No. The old tricks not working, not working at all. I can’t make my mind do anything but remember. Remember your words, Lauren, nineteen years ago, and the look of pity on your face when you said them.

“I assume you weren’t planning on us getting married,” you said to me.

And then you laughed, a small chuckle, like even the slightest possibility of a relationship with me was humorous, obviously so. It was a joke to you. I was a joke to you.

You didn’t care. It didn’t even bother you.

Then, after swinging your wrecking ball, you left. At least you had the decency to leave.

And I was willing to let it go. It took a long time, it was hard, it was brutal, actually, but I said okay, let it go, put it behind you, and I did, Lauren. I put you behind me. I never forgot about you, not for one day, but I put you behind me.

But then you came back. And you didn’t even tell me. You just came back here like it didn’t matter, like nothing you did back then made one bit of difference, and you could just stroll back here and, y’know, fuck it if I lived in the next town over. And that club, that motherfucking country club, no I don’t give one shit about that place and I never go, I’m just a legacy member, but you knew my family belonged there and you had to think you might run into me there but that didn’t stop you from going, did it, Lauren, going every day, because you didn’t care, did you, Lauren? Because it’s all about you. It was never about anyone else but you.

I wish I hadn’t seen you that day in May. Five seconds, Jesus, five seconds different that day and I probably would’ve missed you, I would’ve never known you were back.

I twist the gas starter on the fireplace in the living room, sit close to it as the fire pops on, burns the firewood with a cackle. I put out my hands. But I can’t stop shaking.

I pick up the marriage certificate. Acta de Matrimonio, the act of marriage. Nombre Simon Peter Dobias. Nombre Victoria Lanier. Fecha de Registro 2012-11-3.

Vicky made me better. I would have loved her forever if she could’ve loved me back.

I pull open the metal curtain and toss the marriage certificate into the fire. Watch it blacken and bend and disappear into ash.

The green journal. I hate that journal. I’m so tired of that journal. I leaf through it, the heat blazing on my face now. I read through it, all those days over the spring and summer and fall.

“Would you like to see me again?”

I rip out the page and toss it in the fire.

“Do you want me to be your whore, Professor Dobias?”

Rip it out and toss it in. Watch it burn.

Are you my addiction, Lauren? Am I barreling toward a cliff?

Burn.

I have become the man I despise.

Burn!

“I want us to get married.”

Burn, burn, fucking BURN—

Burn it all. Burn everything. Burn the cover. Burn every last scrap of its existence and scoop up the ashes and walk outside into the backyard, the shrubbery and trees blanketing me in privacy, in pitch dark, and throw them into the wind like you discard the ashes of the dead.

Then go down to the basement, into the small room with the safe that came with the house, that was here when my father and mother bought this house thirty years ago.

I turn the combination to the right, 9, to the left, 19, to the right, 81, and pull open the safe. I almost need two hands to do it, heavy and creaky as the door is. The safe is built into the floor, one of these massive old things that looks more like a furnace than a storage unit for valuables. Drop a bomb on this house and the safe would still be intact. I’ve used it for tax documents and some vital records, but not anymore. Now it holds only two things.

One, stacks of money. A million dollars in cash. Money I withdrew this summer from the trust fund, filling up most of the safe.

And two, Vicky’s gun.

A Glock 23, she said, whatever that means. I don’t know very much about guns. But I know enough. I know they fire bullets. I know they kill people.

I put the gun against my temple and close my eyes.