Vaporware (42 page)

Eric
stopped, and I stopped with him by default. “Are you OK to stand up?” he asked
me.

I
nodded, and slipped myself out from under his arm. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Good,”
he said, and held out his hand. “I hate to do this, but, uh, Ryan? You're
fired.”

“About
damn time,” I said, and started laughing.

After
a minute, he started laughing, too. But I don't think his heart was in it.

Chapter 30

When
I finally staggered outside, there was a car waiting. I rubbed my eyes for a
minute before I finally figured out whose it was.

Leon’s.

He
rolled down his window and leaned out. “You need a ride, man?”

I
nodded wordlessly and hobbled to where he sat idling at the curbside. “I
thought you were pissed at me.”

“I
am. Doesn’t mean I can’t help a brother out. Get in.”

Slowly,
agonizingly, I made my way around to the other side. He leaned across and
opened the passenger door, and I heaved myself onto the seat. I sat there a
moment, and then he shot me a crossways look. “Seatbelt. The way your night’s
going, you need it.”

“Yeah,
yeah.” I strapped myself in. “Jesus. What time is it?”

Leon
tapped the clock on the dash. “Coming up on four thirty.”

“Is
it late?”

“No,
it’s early.” We both laughed for a second, then let it die.

“I’m
glad you’re here, Leon,” I said after enough silence had gone by. “I wanted to
say I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,
well, Shelly told me to get my ass over here. That you might need some help.
And pissed as I am at you, bro, she said it was serious trouble, and I don’t
mess with serious.” He looked around. “Course, if I’d gotten here sooner, I
coulda been some real help. Maybe I shoulda just called you a cab.”

“But
then I couldn’t have told you what a dick I was to you.” I rolled down the
window and let my arm dangle. “Take me home, OK? Just take me home.”

“I’ll
take you to your house, man,” he said. “I dunno if I’m taking you home.”

*  
*   *

He
dropped me off in front of the house and made sure I could stand up before
peeling out. We’d exchanged promises to sit down and talk, really talk about
what happened, but the thought of it seemed insubstantial. What mattered was
that I’d admitted fault to him and that I’d told him I was sorry. If there was
penance to be borne after that, I’d take it with good grace and appropriate
humility.

I
watched his car diminish until he turned a corner and vanished. I stared down
the street a few moments longer, delaying the inevitable and the climb up the
too-steep driveway that went with it.

The
door was locked, but the window Shelly had punched out was still gone, so I
reached in and unlocked the deadbolt. The door swung open easily. My feet
crunched on shattered glass as I entered.

“Ryan?
Is that you?” Sarah’s voice came from upstairs. She sounded weak but feisty,
which was better than I’d hope for after the evening’s events.

“Yes,”
I said and started climbing stairs. “Did Shelly bring you home?”

“She
did.” I heard a drawer slam shut and another one open. “She kept apologizing.
Which was nice of her, I guess.”

I
tromped up the last couple of stairs, leaning heavily on the banister. “She
feels awful, and considering the circumstances under which…things happened,
she’s maybe blaming herself more than she should.”

“And
who should she blame?” Sarah came out into the hallway, and looked at me. She
was a mess. Stitches. A big fat gauze pad taped to her forehead. A sling on one
arm, and God knows what else.

Then
again, I didn’t exactly look like a prize at that moment either, and the
whistling sound that came out every time I tried to breathe through my nose was
equal parts annoying and worrisome.

“She
should blame me,” I said, hobbling forward. “But maybe not in the way that she
thinks. By the way, I just got myself fired.”

Sarah
nodded. “Good.”

I
stopped. “Good?”

“Good.”
She turned around and headed back into the bedroom, talking back at me over her
shoulder as she went. “Did you really think you were going to be able to
function in that building after what you went through?”

“Well,
no,” I admitted as I followed her. “Besides, I sort of had to beat the crap out
of Terry in order to take care of business. And I wrecked some systems. And a
bunch of company property. On the bright side, nobody’s going to press
charges.”

“That’s
good, too.” She sounded like she was going to pin me up on the fridge with a
magnet to show off what a good job I’d done. “No matter what, though, I think
it’s for the best that you’re out of there. And not for my sake. For yours.”

“You’re
probably right. I don’t know anymore,” I said. I edged my way into the bedroom.
If anything, it was more of a mess than we were. All of the evidence of the
evening’s crisis was there in drab, unpleasant detail. Splintered furniture,
broken glass, blood spatters on carpet and walls—it gave the room the
appearance of a set from the third act of a Scorsese movie. It certainly didn’t
look like a place anyone would want to spend the night. There was a burned and
decapitated teddy bear on the floor. Goodbye, Linus, I told it silently. Thank
you for trying to protect her.

And
in the middle of the room, on the bed, was the thing that caught my attention.
It was a suitcase, and from where I stood, it already looked to be about half
full of clothes.

Sarah
caught me staring at it, and stared at me in turn until I looked away. “Yes?”
she said. It was about as much a question as I was an All-Star centerfielder,
which was to say not one at all.

“You’re
packing a bag,” I said, and slid down against the wall to rest on the floor.

“Yes,”
she said again.

“You’re
leaving?”

“No.”
And she crossed to my dresser and pulled open a drawer, then reached in and
grabbed a handful of t-shirts. None that I’d gotten from the studio, I noticed.
None I’d gotten from trade shows. Just concert tees, an old Carolina Mudcats
grounds crew shirt, a souvenir t-shirt from a long-ago trip to Chicago—these
she put in the suitcase. Then, and only then, did she turn to me. “You are.”

“Ah,”
I said, and realized I’d been expecting this. I also discovered that I agreed
with her. The house, at the moment, was not a place I should be. “Is this a
permanent thing, or a temporary one?” I kept the hope out of my voice.
Honestly, I had no idea which side of the equation it would have dropped itself
on.

“I
don’t know,” she said, then stopped and hugged herself. “God, Ryan, after
tonight….” She looked at me for a minute, then tried again. “Look. I know you
didn’t assault me tonight. I know that you risked a lot, that you did…things
that you didn’t have to do, that you got hurt trying to rescue me. I know that
a lot of couples have come back from a lot worse than what you and Shelly did.
But I’m still mad at you, Ryan. You cheated on me. And you may not have hurt me
tonight, but it’s because of you that I got hurt. That’s powerful, Ryan. It’s
hard to look at you without wondering what’s going to happen next. Without
being a little afraid.”

“There’s
nothing left,” I said, and I meant it. “I’m done, in so many ways, Sarah.”

“That
doesn’t matter,” she said softly, and eased herself down onto the floor next to
me. “I still love you, Ryan. At least, I’m pretty sure I do. But right now I
don’t want to be with you. You make me angry and you make me afraid and you
make me hurt, and I don’t want any of those things right now.”

“It’s
our house.”

“After
what I went through because of you, I think I’m entitled to it a little more
than you are, at least until we figure things out.” She wasn’t crying, but her
eyes were bright, too bright. “Oh, God, Ryan, I told you a hundred times to
quit that stupid job. Why didn’t you listen? Why didn’t you listen?”

I
put my arms around her, awkwardly. “I don’t know,” I said, and meant that, too.
“It was just what I did.”

“I
hate you,” she said, and put her arm around me to pull me closer. “You stupid,
stupid man. Look what you did to us.”

“I
know,” I told her. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s
our fault,” she finally said, and then neither of us said anything for a while.

We
didn’t cry. Neither of us. I’m not sure we had any tears left after what we’d
gone through. Instead, we just sat there and held each other until the sun came
up and made rainbows on the floor as it danced through the broken glass.

She
pulled away finally, slowly. I just sat there and let her go.

“You
should get going,” she said, and levered herself to her feet. “I’ll call you in
a couple of days. That will give us both some time to think.”

“All
right,” I said, using the wall to lift myself up. “Do you think I can handle
that suitcase?”

She
swung it off the bed and dropped it at my feet. “I think you can handle just
about anything, Ryan. You just have to decide you want to.”

“I
love you,” I propped the suitcase up on its wheels. She didn’t say anything,
just followed me as I thumped it down each step in turn. The hard plastic of
the wheels did a great job of ignoring the carpet on the stairs and resonating
with the staircase underneath.

When
I was at the door, she stopped, three steps up. “I know,” she said. “That’s not
enough anymore.”

I
walked out the door and closed it behind me.

My
car was in the driveway. It only took me three tries to get the suitcase into
the trunk. Once it was in there, I popped it open. Sarah had been very thorough
in her packing, as well as deliberate. Everything of mine that mattered to me,
with one exception, was in there, but then again, she was the reason I was
going. But books, DVDs, my flash drive—all the things that would make up the
lines of a sketch of me, she got right.

Then
again, she usually was.

I
thought about the flash drive for a minute. Where it had come from, what was on
it, whether I'd ever have any need for it again. I thought about dropping it on
the concrete of the driveway and grinding it into powder. Blue Lightning had
done as much to herself. Surely I could do it now.

In
the end, it went back in the bag. Just in case, I told myself. Just in case.

I
got into the car and turned the radio on—no plugging in the iPhone, not for me
right now. The radio was tuned to the local classic rock station, which had
been the 80s station, which had been God knows what before that, but for the
moment I liked it where it was and what it was playing. It fit my mood, or what
was left of it.

I
started her up and threw her into gear, backing down the driveway and into the
street. Sarah didn’t come running out to tell me to stay. She didn’t press her
face against an upstairs window and gaze out at me longingly. She didn’t do
anything melodramatic or stupid or grandiose, and that was one of the reasons
I’d loved her.

Part
of me wished that just this one time, she would have.

But
no, she was right. Space was a good idea. Space, and time for healing and for
figuring out next steps. She’d call, or she wouldn’t, and if she never did I
wouldn’t be able to blame her.

The
song ended. Another one kicked in, Pink Floyd’s “Dogs of War.” I thought about
changing the station, then found myself grinning like a fool and turning it up,
until my windows were rattling. “The hell with it,” I said, and tore out along
the street. The sun was up now, blinding in my rearview. It kept me from
looking back.

Really.

It
did.

The End

Writer, game
designer and cad, Richard Dansky was named one of the Top 20 videogame writers
in the world in 2009 by
Gamasutra
. His work includes bestselling games
such as TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL: CONVICTION, FAR CRY, TOM CLANCY’S RAINBOW
SIX: 3, OUTLAND, and the upcoming SPLINTER CELL: BLACKLIST. His writing has
appeared in magazines ranging from
The Escapist
to
Lovecraft Studies
,
as well as numerous anthologies. The author of the critically acclaimed novel
FIREFLY RAIN, he was a major contributor to White Wolf’s World of Darkness
setting with credits on over a hundred RPG supplements. Richard lives in North
Carolina with his wife, statistician and blogger Melinda Thielbar, and their
amorphously large collections of books and single malt whiskys.