I never went to Colorado or participated with either side of the trial.
That night was Lana’s last night of work. I told her that I could cover the rent until she delivered and after that I’d get a job.
I felt secure in the presence of the Russian’s ferocious love. I didn’t understand it and I couldn’t share its intensity most of the time. But its power was like a great beating heart that protected me.
After she’d fallen asleep, I dozed off sitting there next to her.
I had a dream.
I was with Barbara Knowland on a blue couch that stood upon a white shag carpet. We were having quite vigorous sex. I remembered, somewhere outside of the dream, that when I was drunk or high I could really enjoy sex. Barbara was looking up into my eyes, her whole body shuddering every time I slammed into her. She screamed but not in pain or pleasure. And then someone grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to my feet.
It was a big guy wearing a greenish leather jacket and a cowboy hat, the stranger from my medieval dream.
He said something in the dream that wasn’t clear but I knew that he wanted me to go outside with him.
The next thing I knew, we were out next to a barn near a woodpile. I was naked, standing in the mud, and he was Illy dressed. The rain was coming down.
“Let me tell you what I’m gonna do, son,” the white man said to me in a frighteningly calm voice. I was drunk and nude — as vulnerable as you could get.
“I’m gonna beat you to the ground and then I’m gonna shove your head in with one’a them there logs.” He hit me then, hard. I went down and he turned to get the log to kill me with. I jumped to my feet and leaped on his back. He twisted around and hit me twice. I fell again. He turned again. I struggled up and got him in a bear hug from behind. I was begging him not to kill me.
“You should’a thought about that before you broke my window,” he said.
“I’ll pay for it,” I cried.
“You sure will,” he promised.
He twisted around, breaking my grip, and hit me three times. I tried to hit him back but he had pugilist training. He made it to the woodpile that time and hefted a log that had to weigh twenty pounds. I ran at him and he threw the log at me. It hit me with a glancing blow to the head. I went down but the fear of death kept me from going unconscious.
There was a length of steel pipe next to me. The cowboy had turned back to the woodpile. And then, for one brief moment in eternity, I became the soul of human perfection. I grabbed the pipe and willed myself to a standing position. I staggered forward as he was hefting an even larger log. As he turned, I swung and the pipe landed perfectly on his right temple. I remembered the feel and the sound of bone crunching. And then I remembered nothing until it was night and I was coming awake in the muddy yard.
I didn’t see his body, didn’t really remember it. I went to the house and found my clothes. The pipe was still in my hand. I dressed, took the pipe to my car, and drove for hours. Somewhere along the way I threw the pipe down an embankment. A little after that I parked and drank from the last whiskey bottle in my trunk.
By morning all I had to remember the past day was a cut on my scalp along with a few bruises, nothing out of the ordinary. There had been a woman and a fight, but by the time I was back home, those memories might as well have been dreams.
The sleeping vision woke me up. It was just after three in the morning and Svetlana was asleep. I wondered if I should call Winston Meeks. Star was innocent. She hadn’t killed anyone. But she did steal his money and his car. She had left me to shift for myself in the company of Sean Messier’s corpse. And she had tried to build a case against me with the Colorado D.A. and in Diablerie.
I looked down at my young girlfriend and a feeling of love rushed through me. I kissed her temple and she smiled. It occurred to me that the emotion I was feeling went far beyond Svetlana. It had little or nothing to do with Star Knowland’s self-demolition or the lucky break I got with the Colorado courts. There was an exhilaration in the dream I had. I was the killer. I had taken Sean Messier’s life. It wasn’t murder. It was most certainly self-defense, though I could have never proven that. But I didn’t need proof.
My whole life I had felt naked and defenseless, under the authority of a force much greater than me. When Messier dragged me out into the yard and explained to me how he was going to end my life, I felt that this had been the place I’d been coming to since I was a child. I gave up, accepted death, and then went through the motions of trying to survive.
The memory of my victory gave me a feeling of elation, but not only that: The emptiness in my heart was suddenly Ned. I was a whole man lying there next to that Russian child. I was a complete person — flawed, guilty, craven to a degree, but still these things and my victory made me whole.
I got up out of bed and sat in my favorite maple chair, naked. I was leaning forward with my elbows on my knees and my fingertips all touching. The dream I had was like a vision for Joan of Arc or some other religious zealot. It was like a deity touching my mind, awakening my imperfect humanity.
The path I’d traveled was strewn with victims: my wife and daughter, Sean Messier, Grant Timmons, and Star Knowland, even my mother, who stood in the shadows while my father beat me with love in his heart. My brother, I felt, was my victim too. I thought back over my many crimes and misdemeanors. But I felt no remorse, only a giddy happiness. I’d been waiting for this moment with no hope of ever achieving it. I hadn’t even known that I was my own hero, that I stood up to my death. And though I approached this test begging and whimpering, I still won.
These thoughts were part of a long train of ideas that passed through my mind that late evening. The sun began to rise and Svetlana reached out in her sleep. When she didn’t find me there, she sat up.
“Ben?”
“Don’t ever call me ‘Benny’ okay, honey?”
She blinked at me and nodded.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Thinking that maybe we should stop smoking,” I said. “It’s really not good for the baby, you know.”