The Bleeding Season (26 page)

“Yeah, how thoughtful.”  I needed another drink but stayed where I was for fear she wouldn’t follow me if I slipped back into the kitchen, and the conversation, such as it was, would end right then, right there.  “So I guess you need it.”

“Yes, just for a while.  I need some time away, some time to think.”

“Oh, but after your time at the think-tank you’ll be back?  Well, there’s some good news after all.”

Toni closed the suitcase.  The sound of the zipper sealing went right through me.  “You’re obsessed with this Bernard business, and you’re getting in over your head.  You’re becoming involved in things you’re not equipped to handle.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“You need to get some help, Alan.”

“Is that what your boyfriend suggests?”

“You’re such a child sometimes.”

“You’re right.  The mature move is to go fuck someone else.”  I saw her wilt, as if the words had physically injured her, and for a brief instant, I felt a rush of satisfaction.  I wanted to share the pain.  “I never had any idea you hated me so much.”

She dropped the suitcase to the floor with a deliberate thud, and I pictured the patrons in the pizza parlor downstairs all gazing up at the ceiling.  “I don’t hate you, Alan.  The only thing I feel right now is sorrow.  There’s no room left for hatred or anything else.”

I steadied myself against the doorway, maybe because I’d had too much to drink at Donald’s, maybe not.  “Have I really failed so horribly?”

“We need some time apart right now.  I need—”

“You know I think I could handle this if you just let me have it, both barrels,” I said.  “If you just called me an asshole or a lousy husband or a fucking loser.  But this ‘I need some time apart’ bullshit just makes me want to puke.  Don’t make this out to be anything other than what it is, Toni.  You’re having an affair and you’re leaving to lessen your own fucking guilt about it, to make yourself feel better, because if you leave, well then we aren’t together anymore and then it isn’t really cheating is it?  At that point you aren’t betraying me, and that just feels so much better than feeling like a spineless conniving whore.”

She folded her arms over her chest.  “Finished?”

“No.  Fuck you for doing this.  Now I’m finished.”

“Feel better?”

“Not particularly.”

“Well maybe this’ll help.  Fuck you right back, Alan.”  She picked up her suitcase and started to leave the room, but hesitated once alongside me.  “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe there is no affair?  You believe what you should question, but never question what you should believe.”

“Yeah, OK, who are you, Confucius now?” I laughed lightly, but it was merely a defense, an attempt to prevent myself from imploding, from crumbling and collapsing into myself.  “If you leave, don’t come back.  You leave tonight and that’s it, you hear me?  It’s done.”

“You don’t want to play it that way.”

“Oh no?”

“No.”

“Then what the hell do you want me to do?  You want me to ask you not to go?  You want me to beg—what?  What do you want from me?  Tell me and I’ll do it.”

“I’m tired, Alan.  I’m tired and sad and even a little frightened, but I need to do this.”

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I love you.”

“Then why do you need to get away from me so desperately?”

“Because right now love alone isn’t enough.  It seldom is.”

“You’re wrong,” I said.  “Love
is
 enough.  If it’s real, it’s enough.”

“I want—”

“Yes, by all means let’s make sure we attend to what
you
 want.  The world is in fucking flames, everything is going to shit and right in the middle of it, right when I need you the most, you bolt.  That’s your solution, to go run and hide.  Fine.  Go.”

“You may not want to admit it,” she said, speaking in a loud whisper, “but right now this is best for you too.  It’s something we both need.”

“So that’s where we are then?  Just like that.”

“For now.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“We need some time apart.”  She approached me slowly, and until she raised herself up on the tips of her toes so her lips could reach my forehead, I hadn’t been certain if she’d planned to kiss me or strangle me.  Her mouth lingered, warm and soft against my skin, then she dropped down to her natural height.  “That’s what it means.  And that’s all it means.”

*   *   *

I heard her descending the staircase, struggling with the suitcase, bouncing it against each step as she went, and felt guilty for not offering to carry it down for her.  The guilt vanished the minute I heard her car start.  Until that moment, when I heard the car pull out of the space and saw the headlights glide past the windows, the engine sound slowly absorbed into the night, the authenticity of the situation hadn’t quite hit me.  But she’d done it.  She’d really left.

I had the conversation again, this time alone of course, and I caught myself mumbling my lines aloud as I stood in the newfound silence of the kitchen, numb and unsure of exactly what to do with myself.  I wondered if we’d ever be all right again, if we’d ever be whole again.  The two of us.  All of us.  Any of us.

I found an unopened bottle of whiskey in the liquor cabinet, stared at the label a minute, then grabbed the phone and dialed Donald’s number.  I figured if I could catch him before he finished the vodka at his house I could convince him to drive to mine.  “Hey, it’s me,” I said.  “I’m going to get really shit-faced, you want to join me?”

“What’s wrong now?”

“What isn’t?  Come on over, let’s get trashed.”

“Call me psychic, but I don’t think Toni would be too thrilled with that idea.”

“Yeah, well she’s not here.”  I held the phone with my chin, broke the seal on the bottle and poured a glass.  I could hear Donald breathing through the line.

“Where is she, Alan?”

“She moved out for a while.”

“Oh, God, I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Come on over and get drunk with me.  Bring ice.”

“I’m already too drunk to drive,” he said guiltily.

“OK,” I sighed.  “I’ll catch you tomorrow then.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

Our roles had switched it seemed, even if only for a night.  “Too early to tell.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you ever think about him?  About what he might do if he was still here?”

“Bernard?”

“Tommy.”  He said it like it should have been evident, like I should have realized he couldn’t have been referring to anyone else.  “I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately.”

“I miss him too.”

“Sometimes it seems like we lost him only yesterday, but other times it seems like it’s been a hundred years, doesn’t it?  Sometimes it seems like it couldn’t be possible he’s been gone for so long.”  Ice cubes clinking glass echoed through the phone.  “But he would’ve known what to do, don’t you think?  Tommy would’ve known what to do.”

Donald was right, of course.  Somehow Tommy—or at least our memory of him, the teenage version, the version that remained forever young, forever frozen in perfection even when I remembered him dying along the side of the road—
that
 Tommy would’ve known what to do, would’ve gathered us all together like the natural leader he was and made everything all right with a cool, collected sentence or two.

I started drinking.  If Donald wasn’t coming over there seemed no reason to delay the inevitable.  “Yeah, Tommy would’ve known what to do.”

“Maybe he’s guiding us.”

A comment so lacking cynicism sounded peculiar coming from him.  “Let’s hope so.”

“Do you ever…do you ever feel him around you?”

“Right after he died,” I admitted.  “But not for a long time now.”

“Sometimes I do.  Or—well, at least I think I do.  Probably just wishful thinking.”

I heard him swallow, crunch some ice.  “Everything’s changed,” I said.  “Anything’s possible now.”

“You’re right.  If we’re expected to believe demons exist then why not angels too?”  His voice cracked.  “I loved him, you know.”

“Me too, man.”

“No…I
loved
 him, Alan.”

I poured another drink.  “I know.”

“And I don’t know if I’ve ever quite recovered from his death.”  Although when he spoke again he had done his best to collect himself, I could tell by the cadence of his breath he’d been battling sobs only seconds before.  “Christ, maybe Bernard was right when he said we’re all a bunch of clichés and don’t even realize it.”

“Bernard was wrong.”

“Yes, well Bernard may very well have been the Devil.”

“No, just
a
 devil.”

“Maybe he was right about me.  I’m a lonely, pining, overemotional, self-loathing, alcoholic gay man—gee, there’s a new twist—never seen
that
 characterization before.  Could I be a little more ’70s formula, please?  Lip-synching to Diana Ross records in a bad wig until the wee hours of the morning can’t be far behind.”

Even under the circumstances, his sense of humor was contagious.  “Far behind?”

“OK, I’ve done that too.  Apparently my political incorrectness is terminal.”

“And I’m a huge loser with no job.  And my wife just left me.  What’s your point?”

“You’ve lost enough people you loved to know there aren’t any second chances,” he said softly, his tone serious again.  “You and Toni were made for each other, Alan.  Don’t let her go.  Do whatever you have to do, but get her back, because it’s a terrible thing when someone’s gone—really gone—and you’re left wishing you could say all the things you feel, all those things you need so desperately to say.  And you
do
 say them, trust me, you do.  Only by then, no one’s there to hear it.”  The sound of a hissing match was followed by a slow, deliberate intake of breath.  “Get her back, Alan.”  Then release.  “Just get her back.  You need her.  Hell, we all do.  Toni’s our den mother.”

I laughed lightly.  Toni would have loved that description.  “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Don’t get too drunk.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, though I could no longer be sure of anything.

I hung up the phone and turned back to the bottle.

Let the demons come, I thought.  And I knew damn well they would.

But this time, they’d come on my terms.

CHAPTER 19

A while later I found myself sitting in the den, a Robert Johnson CD playing on the stereo as I worked at finishing off the whiskey.  The glass no longer necessary, I had taken to occasional swigs directly from the bottle while rummaging once again through Bernard’s planner.  I studied the photograph of the mystery woman for a while then slipped it behind the lip of a pocket on the inside cover.  I wondered if she could be another victim, but that seemed unlikely.  Still, he’d known her—he didn’t have her photograph for no reason or by coincidence—I was certain of it.  There had to be some connection.

I flipped through the remaining pages of the planner, and just like the times before, found nothing unusual.  In one of the plastic storage pockets I noticed a few business cards.  All were people I didn’t know, and I assumed they were most likely customers he had met while at work.  The only other card belonged to one of the salesmen Bernard had worked with.
Chris Bentley, Sales Representative
, it read.  The dealership name was emblazoned above his name, and a telephone number was listed beneath it, followed by the italicized phrase:
Nobody Beats Our Deals!
  I pulled the card free and stared at it.  I remembered Bernard mentioning Chris Bentley now and then.  He was one of the few people he worked with he ever talked about, and from everything I could recall, if Bernard’s side of it was to be believed, they had a decent working relationship.  It was a long shot, but I didn’t have much else to lose, so I figured I’d pay Mr. Bentley a visit in the morning and see if he could shed any light on anything.

I closed the planner and put it aside, pictured Toni sleeping in Martha’s cottage—maybe somewhere else—then thought of the woman in the newspaper.  Her face faded, replaced by Tommy’s.  “Here’s to you, man.”  I raised the bottle, took a long pull.

The room tilted and distorted as Robert Johnson’s mighty Blues riffs echoed and slurred; his haunting voice singing of hellhounds on his trail and the Devil’s relentless pursuit sounding like it was coming to me from the far end of a tunnel.

As my drunken stupor gave way to something resembling sleep the ghosts ended their silence, slipping memories to me piecemeal like a demonic slideshow from the past.

Behind the curtain separating then from now, I saw Tommy sitting on a big boulder out in Potter’s Cove woods.  The same boulder we’d all congregated around now and then in years past.  Tommy, with that knowing smirk and…I had to think for a moment what color his eyes were.  Why couldn’t I remember something so basic about him?  Gray.  I remembered them as a kind of light gray.  He sat atop that old boulder, smiling down at me, sunlight breaking through the trees and shining against his blond hair and fair complexion, casting him with an angelic aura.  Like some wise forest prince, he looked down at me from that boulder and smiled.  But now, unlike when he was alive, there was nothing to it, nothing behind it.  Blood dripped slowly from his hairline, trickled along his cheek.  He seemed disinterested.

And while he sat bleeding, Toni and I leaned against the base of the boulder, our arms around each other the way young lovers constantly cling together so desperately, sharing a beer while Donald stood a few feet away with a can of his own, laughing and talking with Bernard.  Bernard—much younger than I remembered him—dressed in fatigues as counterfeit as he was, spinning tales about the Marines and his ill-fated early return, drinking his beer and laughing with the rest of us.  We’d all gone to that spot in the woods to celebrate Bernard’s homecoming, taking along a couple six-packs as we’d done for years, knowing this could be the last time now that adulthood had caught up to us, now that spending Saturday nights out in the woods drinking like a bunch of high school kids would no longer do.