Killer Move

It was after seven when we got to Longacres and the light was fading. As I drove into the community a phrase popped into my mind: entre chien et loup. I knew this was a French idiom for this time of day—“between the dog and the wolf”—and realized that I must have heard my father speak the language after all. Muttered under his breath probably, in some long-forgotten twilight, scooped up by childish ears on the prowl for adult indiscretion to be parroted with eerie accuracy at the least opportune moment. I must have asked what he meant—hoping it was really rude—and he’d told me. Enthusiastically? Matter-of-fact? In the vain hope I’d be intrigued? I couldn’t recall. We walk through an endless sandstorm of experience, but in the end our lives boil down to those few grains that happen to stick to our clothes.

I jammed the card against the access point across the private road, and it let me through, the gate lifting with its familiar slow confidence, the stolid gravity of an object performing a job for humankind. I was ludicrously relieved, as if I’d been expecting that even this part of everyday experience would have broken over the course of the day.

“Nice,” Emily said as we drove in.

I didn’t say anything. I was busy adding to a mental list of stuff to take with me to the hospital, and then beyond. (Where? I didn’t know. A hotel or motel, somewhere to sit tight for a couple of days before coming home again to a life that had been corrected in the meantime.) Discovering that even Janine had taken part in what had been done to me made it difficult to take anything for granted. Were my neighbors involved in the fun? Had someone knocked on the Mortons’ door and made a donation to their church? Had sweet Mrs. Jorgensson been offered an envelope of used bills and thought, Well, seems like harmless fooling, and it would mean bigger Christmas presents for the grandchildren, so why not?

Did I know any of these strangers, really?

Did I know anyone at all?

“Nobody here is in the game,” Emily said, disconcertingly. “At least, not that I’m aware of.”

“How did you know . . .”

“You think loud.”

Yes, I thought bitterly. Maybe I do, and maybe that’s it. Perhaps it was the naive and brash self-evidence of my desires and ambitions that made me the perfect target for the game in the first place.

He’s a wanter. He has designs above his station. Let’s take that and twist it. Let’s show him how things really work behind the scenes. Let’s break his little dreams apart.

I parked in the driveway. “You want to stay here?”

She shook her head. “Think I’ll come wash this mess up, see what I’m dealing with.”

“I’m taking you to the hospital regardless.”

“So you keep saying.”

The house was quiet and dark. I led Emily to the kitchen. My note to Stephanie was still on the counter there. The problems of the man who’d written it seemed trivial now. I pushed it to one side.

“What do you need?”

“Paper towels, antiseptic if you have it. Painkillers would be good. Got a home medical kit?”

“Somewhere.” I went to the big cupboard at the rear of the room. As I rootled through it, wanting to get Emily set up so I could run upstairs, she wandered away from the counter, looking around.

“Nice,” she said again.

“Is that irony? Just, I’m not in the mood.”

“No,” she said. “You have a nice home.”

“You don’t seem the type to want this kind of thing.”

“Everybody wants it,” she said. “Just some of us know it’s unlikely to happen in this lifetime. So we pretend the white-bread life sucks.”

I stalled, still shifting things around in the cupboard, trying to find the first aid kit. Was I really going to run from all this, even temporarily? Okay, I’d wanted more, bigger. But this was a nice house, and I’d earned it. Steph and I repainted it. She’d found nice things to put in it. It was ours. It was mine.

Was I going to let a bunch of assholes force me out, when I hadn’t done anything? Running is a deep instinct, but isn’t it better to turn and fight, defend your corner? No—I have a good cave, and no asshole is going to take it away from me, for even a day.

“Christ, here it is.” I turned, opening the first aid box and pulling out a roll of bandages to see what else was inside.

“Bill.”

She’d walked to the far end of the room and was staring through the doors into the pool area. Her voice sounded strange.

“What?”

“Fuck,” she said. The middle of the word stretched out for a long time.

I went to stand next to her. There was something floating in the pool. Something else was lying beside one of the loungers. Emily reached behind for her gun, found she couldn’t begin to hold it with her right hand. She got it with the left instead. It looked awkward, heavy. I opened the screen door.