Dagger Key and Other Stories

He had been hoping Grace would return, but several hours passed and she did not. Around noon, the blue Cadillac roared past the cabin on its way toward Champion, Broillard off to spend the afternoon at the Gas ’n Guzzle, and Shellane headed along the shore toward Grace’s house. He stood on the beach below the place for several minutes, uncertain about approaching. At length he climbed the slope and peeked through the picture window. She was sitting on the carpet with her back toward him, legs drawn up beneath her. Her shoulders were shaking, as with heavy sobs. He had not taken notice of the furniture before—ratty, second-hand stuff in worse shape than the pieces in his cabin. Clothing strewn on the floor. A plate of dried pasta balanced on the arm of the sofa. Piles of compact discs and magazines. Empty pizza boxes, McDonald’s cartons, condom wrappers. Your basic rock and roll decor. He went to the door and knocked. No answer. He pushed on in. She did not look up.

“It’s me,” he said.

She sat staring straight ahead, strands of coppery hair stuck to her damp cheeks.

“Come on,” he said, extending a hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

She did not move; her expression did not change.

He dropped to his knees. “What’s he say to you?” he asked. “That you’re ugly…stupid? That you don’t have a clue? You can’t believe that.”

A damp heat of despondency radiated from her. It was as if she were steeped in the emotion, submerged beneath it, like a statue beneath a transparent lake.

“You’re beautiful,” he said. “You know things with your heart most people don’t have names for. I can tell that of you…even after just one night.” Though he believed this of her, though belief in her had been born in him, what he said rang false to his ears, as if it were a line he had learned to recite and had chosen to believe.

She began to cry again, silently, her shoulders heaving. Shellane felt incompetent in the face of her despair. He wanted to put an arm around her, but sensed she wouldn’t want to be touched.

“Is it guilt you’re feeling?” he asked. “About last night?”

He might not have been there, for all the attention she gave to him. He remained kneeling beside her for a short while and then asked if she wanted him to go.

It seemed that she nodded.

“All right.” He got to his feet. “I’ll be at the cabin.” He crossed to the door, hesitated. “We can get past this, Grace.”

Once outside, he recognized the idiocy of that statement. She was not going to leave with him—he knew that in his bones. Even if she would, he had no desire to drag her along through the shooting gallery of his life. Anger at Broillard grew large in him. Back at the cabin, he paced back and forth, then flung himself into the Toyota and drove toward town at an excessive rate of speed. He parked in the Gas ’n Guzzle lot and sat with his hands clamped to the wheel, telling himself that if he let go he would charge into the place and play an endless blue tune on Broillard’s head. Yet as he continued to sit there, he recognized that his battle to maintain control was pure bullshit. He was conning himself. Playing at being human. If he let go of the wheel, he would do nothing. He might wish that he would act, that he would lose it and go roaring into the Gas ’n Guzzle and drop the hammer on Broillard in the name of love and honor. But he would never risk it. Twenty years in the cold ditches of the underworld had left him at a remove from the natural demands and fevers of the heart. He supposed he had become, like his old crime partners, an affable sociopath who stood with one foot outside the world, a man whose emotions were smaller than the norm. And this being the case, wasn’t what he felt for Grace equally bullshit?

His anger dimmed and, without ever having left the car, he drove back to the cabin and sat on the steps, practicing calm, gazing out at the tranquil blue surface of the lake, the evergreens standing sentinel along the shadowy avenues leading off among them. Still as a postcard image. Soothing in its simple shapes and colors. He recalled how Grace had talked about it. He believed her view of the place to be romantic delusion, but wished he could share in it. The idea of sharing anything, after the years of solitude, filled him with yearning. But he knew he was incapable of it. Those shadows of Hiroshima burned onto stone, those parings of lives. That was him. A thin dark urgency was all that remained.