Dagger Key and Other Stories

He rebelled against the thought, tempting himself with the prospect of Asia, of new possibilities, yet he felt the pull of a more powerful temptation. How easy it would be to surrender. What was he giving up? Paranoia and solitude, hookers and barflies, no plans for the future but those of escape. A life without significant challenge or involvement. An emptiness that would feel far emptier without Grace. He kept expecting that he would resist these arguments, yet the longer he sat there, the more seductive they seemed. He tried to weaken them with doubt. His belief that he could learn to manipulate the doors—wouldn’t death make of him, as it had of Grace and the rest, a befuddled, energy-less soul incapable of functioning? Then he recalled how he and Grace had interacted inside the house. She had been angry, afraid, but full of vitality. Of life. The two of them together might form a battery that would provide sufficient strength to manage an escape. And what if there were more than two? He had seen—what?—fifty or sixty people in the house, and there had to be more. The energy he and Grace generated might infect the rest. Some of them, anyway. They might be able to overpower the uglies. And if they could do that, together they could determine…

That he could entertain these fantasies, a post-mortem revolution, an overthrow of minor-league demons…Fuck! Next he’d be accepting Jesus as his personal savior. He went into the bedroom and pulled his suitcases from beneath the bed. Out of here now. That was the only agenda that made sense. He began to pack, though not in his usual painstaking style. Balling up shirts and stuffing them in. But gradually his pace slowed. The sheets smelled of her. She was real. Nothing could change that. She was real, the house was real. And however frail the foundation supporting his guesswork, everything he had seen and done was real. He had followed a trail of intuitive decisions and they had led him to the lake, to Grace, to this moment and to these speculations, which his instinct judged sound, and though the logic of the world prevailed against his judgments, he could not refute them.

Leaving his bags open, he returned to the front room. Trees and shrubs and shoreline were melting up from the half-dark, and as they grew sharper, shadowy branches evolving into distinct sprays of needles, the margin of the lake defining itself in precise gray etchings, the things of the world came to seem increasingly imprecise to Shellane. Their precision a clumsy illusion, a poor reflection of the simpler albeit more daunting order he had detected in the house, as if death were simply a refinement of life. He settled back into the chair. Noon approached. Soon a blue Cadillac would come grumbling along the lake road. Soon he would cook breakfast, take a shower, make a plan, erecting a structure that had no other purpose than to repeat itself. He saw himself as he had once been. Rock and roll days. Girlfriend sobbing in a corner of that dingy, brain-damaged apartment in Medford. Him yelling, shouting, because he had no self-justification that could be spoken in a quiet tone or a reasonable voice. The quick drug hit of a score, adrenaline rushes and gleefully desperate escapes, and afterward sitting in a nondescript bar with nondescript men, laughing madly over drink at the skill, the guts and brains required to risk everything for short money in the service of greater men who watched them like spiders watching trained flies and smiled at their ignorance. Walking like a ghost through Detroit. Brushing past the world, touching it just enough to envy its unreal brilliance. Was that it? A life like so many bits of rusty tin threaded onto a gray string? These days of Grace cancelled out every moment of that dreary, heatless past. He put his hand on the telephone, let it rest there for several minutes before lifting the receiver and dialing, not because he was hesitant, but rather stalled, lost in a fugue from which he emerged diminished and uncaring.

A man’s voice spoke in his ear. “Yeah, what?”

“You recording this?” Shellane asked.

A pause. “Who’s asking?”

“If you’re not recording, start the tape. I don’t want to have to repeat myself.”

Another pause. “You’re on the tape, pal. Go for it.”

“This is…” Shellane had a thought. A wicked thought, another addition to his Book of Sin. But damned once, damned twice…What did it matter?

“You still there?”

“My name is Avery Broillard,” Shellane said. “I work at the Gas ’n Guzzle in Champion, Michigan. In the Upper Peninsula, about an hour’s drive west of Marquette.”

“No shit? How’s the weather up there?”

“I can tell you how to find Roy Shellane.”

Silence, and then the man said, “That would be extremely helpful, Avery. Why don’tcha go ahead and tell me?”

“It’s tricky…the directions. I’ll have to show you. I work until seven tonight. Can you have somebody up here by seven?”