“You really do not like this character, do you?” Wade had said.
Chloe had paused then, her face stilling as if the question had sent her unexpectedly inward. After a moment she’d replied quietly:
“I do like him, actually. In some ways I feel very close to him. That’s partly why I’m so confused. There’s some kind of strange connection between us. I’ve always felt that. I often have dreams about him, not sexual but intimate. As if we’d known each other in another life. It makes me want to help him.”
“Really? Because he sounds kind of irredeemable the way you describe him.”
Chloe grinned.
“Nobody’s irredeemable, Wade, not even you.”
Grollier had laughed.
“You’re a piece of work, sugar. You really are.”
“I’ll see you in a week,” she’d said, leaning down to kiss him goodbye.
At the door she’d turned back.
“By the way, you forgot to lock up before.”
“I did?”
“You should be careful. There are some sketchy characters in town. Every summer there’s a break-in somewhere. ’Bye, Wade.”
“Bye, sugar. I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too.”
Meatspace, he thought now. It had been like a forcible induction into the meatspace of the real.
Wade blew out the candles and carried his dishes into the kitchen, dumping them with a clatter in the sink and then noisily urinating in the bathroom. After that he slid the bolt on the back door open and shut again, returned to the darkened living room to lock the front door and finally retired into the bedroom. The bedroom light snapped off and after a creak or two of bedsprings there were no further indications of movement.
Meatspace… Or not an induction, exactly, since it had left Matthew more confirmed than ever in his wariness of that particular realm. But a vision of it at its most vividly carnal, glistening with the redness of betrayed intimacy, of deep bonds being torn asunder, every fiber bleeding.
Outside, the fireworks were going off in steady succession. He could see them through the skylight: white chrysanthemums flaring blue at their tips, sequined purses spilling golden coins, the slam of each explosion reverberating off the mountains.
Meatspace… And yet even in the midst of it, to have heard her affirm precisely the most hoped-for, uncertain, purely speculative of those bonds; the ones linking her not to Charlie but to himself! As if we’d known each other in another life… The words rose in his agitated spirit once again like some immensely soothing substance. He was right. He hadn’t been imagining things. There was something real, objective, fueling the compulsions that had drawn him into this strange situation.
The thought, however, intoxicating as it was, brought him back to the more prosaic question of how he was going to get himself out of this strange situation. He’d realized at this point that whatever difficulties might be entailed in leaving while Wade was still in the house, it was not going to be possible to spend the whole night crouched up here in the loft. For one thing, his bladder was already uncomfortably full and it was inconceivable that he was going to be able to delay emptying it until the morning. For another, the boards creaked, and sooner or later Wade was going to hear something.
His first thought was to wait till the small hours, when Wade could be presumed fast asleep, then scramble down the ladder, unlock the front door and run. Even with the noisy boards, it seemed a reasonably safe plan. It was no distance from the ladder to the door, which would take only a second or two to unlock. Even if Wade did wake up, there’d be time to disappear into the shadows of Veery Road before he got to the door.
But as Matthew started focusing on the details, dangers he hadn’t considered began to present themselves. What if Wade called the cops, or tried to rouse the neighborhood? The fireworks would be long over by then, and there’d be no crowds in which to lose himself. By the same token, he wouldn’t be able to drive off unnoticed even if he made it to the truck. No: better to get out while people were still around.
The explosions of the fireworks, which were coming thick and fast now, merged with their own echoes to form a continuous roaring. The display must have been approaching its climax. This was the moment to do it. Immediately, without giving himself a chance to reconsider, he unfolded his stiffened limbs and let himself down the ladder. The living room was almost pitch-dark, but he’d seen the ledge where he’d placed the key. He found the ledge without difficulty, and ran his hand along it. But there was no key there. He checked the floor below-maybe it had fallen after Chloe picked it up-but it wasn’t there either. Wade must have put it somewhere else when he locked up, or else taken it with him into the bedroom. He’d have to leave through the back door instead. Restraining an impulse to run, he crept quietly toward the rear of the house. Bursts of blue light in the sky gave a flickering glimpse of the back door and he was able to position his hand directly on the bolt without fumbling for it. He slid it back and grabbed the door handle. But the handle wouldn’t turn. He tried again, twisting as hard as he could: to no avail. In the next flash of blue he saw that the round black knob had its own small keyhole at the center. For a few seconds of panicked alertness he searched frantically for a key-over the doorframe, under the doormat, behind the sink. He was groping along the counter when he heard a voice directly behind him:
“Mister, I have a gun pointed at you. Don’t move.”
He closed his eyes.
“Don’t move, okay? I see you move, I’m going to have to shoot you. You got that? You can nod your head.”
Matthew nodded. He felt oddly unafraid, calm almost, as though experiencing some peculiar natural law whereby fear diminished in proportion to the closeness of its object, vanishing entirely at the point of convergence.
“Now. You’re going to hear me look for my phone, which should take all of about four seconds, and then call the police, but I’ll be pointing my weapon at you while I do that and I will shoot you if you move a muscle. It’s a semiautomatic Ruger, just so you know, single-action, so really, don’t make any kind of a move. Okay?”
Matthew nodded again, but less in acknowledgment of Grollier’s question this time, than of his own sense of what was going to happen. It didn’t frighten him at all. In a way, it was a relief. He thought-such was the strange lucidity inside him-of the words from his father’s Pascaclass="underline" All men seek happiness. This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves. He’d often dreamed of being placed in a situation where survival was simply not an option; where the small part of him still obstinately clinging to the little knot of pain and unhappiness that made up most of his existence would finally have no choice but to defer to the other, larger part, that craved only oblivion. It seemed very clear that he was there at last. Only a little courage was required.
Slowly, conscious of having long ago brought to mind every argument in favor and every objection against, he began turning toward his executioner. “Mister, I told you,” he heard, “do not fucking move!”
There was something unexpected in the tone; an aggrieved, almost querulous note. On completing the turn, Matthew saw why. Wade, who was naked again, had been bluffing. His hand was empty.
The two of them peered at each other in the flickering blackness for several seconds.