I buy two bottles, practically jogging all the way home, because now that I’ve decided to be bad, I don’t want to waste a moment of it. I crack open the first liter, drinking straight from the bottle. One sip down, I nearly cough up a lung. I’ve never been a big drinker, not even as a teenage slacker. I’ve forgotten just how badly whiskey can burn.
“Jesus Christ!” I gasp. But I keep at it. Oh, I keep at it.
Half a dozen swigs later, my belly is nice and warm and I already feel calmer, loose even. Perfect for what I gotta do next.
I go into my closet. Cast off all my clothes, and there it is. A giant metal locker. The object I’m pretty sure Officer Blondie found earlier and now wants to ask me lots of questions about. Let her. Just let her.
I pick up the locker, last piece of my old life, and stagger with it out to the back yard. Night’s cold. I should put on a sweatshirt. Something other than my usual ugly white tee. I drink more Maker’s Mark instead. That’ll warm you to your toes, yes sirree, Bob.
I crack open the locker. It’s filled with notes. I don’t know why Jerry didn’t toss them. My best guess is that Rachel grabbed the box, maybe that very afternoon. She carried it away. She saved it for me.
And somehow, some way, one afternoon while I was out working at Vito’s garage, she left it on the front step of my apartment for me. I came home, and boom, there it was. No packaging. No note. Not even a follow-up phone call. I guess it had to be her, right, because who else would do such a thing? And it made me consider that she would be seventeen now, old enough to drive, fearless enough to brave the trip from Portland, Maine, into the big city of Boston.
Maybe she’d discovered my address on the checks I sent to Jerry. Maybe once she realized where I lived, she had to pay me a visit. See how I was doing.
Did she read the letters? Did it help her understand why I did what I did?
I went through the contents often the first few weeks. Best I could tell, every single letter I ever wrote was there, including the rough drafts of bad poetry, the get-well card I made when she had mono, the bits of verse I tried to write when really I oughtta stick to tuning engines. I searched for responses she might have scribbled in the margins, maybe hints of lipstick, a greasy print from the palm of her hand.
One night, in a fit of inspiration, I sprayed the letters with lemon juice, because I’d just watched a MythBusters episode where they used citric acid to uncover disappearing ink. Nothing.
So I waited for her to return, day after day after day. Because she knew where I lived, and God, I hoped, I prayed to see her again. Just to have five minutes to tell her something, to tell her everything. Just to… see her.
The waiting game has proved to be a lot like the searching-for-scribbles-in-the-margin game. All these months later, I got nothing to show for it.
And I wonder now, as I wondered every single fucking night in prison, did she ever love me at all?
I toss back another hit of Maker’s Mark, and then, before the burn can leave my throat, I flick the match and watch the world’s most expensive collection of love letters start to burn. I sprinkle them with whiskey for good measure, and the fire roars its approval.
Except, at the last moment, I can’t do it. I just can’t do it.
I’m reaching in with my bare hands. I’m grabbing whatever little scraps I can even as the fire licks my wrists and melts the hair on the back of my hands. The pieces of paper are curling up, disintegrating to the touch, floating away as burning embers.
“No,” I cry stupidly. “No, no, come back. No.”
Then I’m chasing floating pieces of fire around the back yard, as my forearms burn and my legs wobble unsteadily, and suddenly for the first time, it comes back to me: sound.
You never forget the sounds of prison.
And I hear prison sounds right now, coming from the other side of the yard.
My hair is on fire. I don’t notice it at the time, and that’s probably what saves my neighbor’s life: me, tearing around to the front of the house, my arms waving wildly while my hair begins to spark bright orange flames.
I come careening around the corner and three guys look up at once.
“Aidan,” the first one says stupidly. His name is Carlos; I recognize his voice immediately: he works at the garage.
Then they simultaneously glance down at the black heap on the sidewalk. “Oh shit,” the second guy says.
“But if he’s Aidan,” the third guy starts, clearly not the sharpest tool in the box. He has his booted foot on the downed man’s back, and he’s bent over with his right arm drawn back, captured mid-punch.
I realize at that moment that I’m still holding the Maker’s Mark bottle, so I do the sensible thing and smash the bottom on the corner of Mrs. H.’s vinyl-sided house. Then I hold the jagged remains above my head, and hyped up on cheap whiskey and unrequited love, I launch into the fray, screaming like a banshee.
Three black-clad figures scatter, Carlos leaping out to an early lead, his arms pumping. Bachelor number three proves once again to be slow and stupid. I catch him across the upper arm with my impromptu weapon, and he screeches like a cat as I draw blood.
“Shit, shit, shit,” guy number two keeps saying. I jab him in the side. He jumps clear. I slash down and catch part of his thigh. “Carlos,” he’s screaming now. “Carlos, Carlos, what the fuck?”
I’m wild. I’m drunk and pissed off and tired of being a doormat in the game of life. I’m swinging at Stupid Slow Guy, I’m slashing at Screeching, Oh Shit Guy. I’m going nuts and the only thing that saves them is that I’m the world’s worst brawler when I’m sober, let alone when I’m drunk. I’m all fire and no focus.
Soon enough, the two dudes manage to pull free from my wind-milling madness and bolt down the darkened street in Carlos’s long-gone wake. That just leaves me, lunging at shadows and roaring obscene death threats until finally I realize my skull is screaming in agony and I smell something terrible.
Next thing I know, I’ve dropped the shattered whiskey bottle and I’m hopping up and down in the middle of the street, trying to suffocate the embers smoldering in my melted hair.
“Shit. Oh shit, shit, shit.” My turn to be the doofus. I pat frantically at my head until it feels like the worst of the heat has subsided. Then, breathing ragged, as moment passes into moment, I realize the full extent of my crime spree. I’m drunk. I’ve singed off most of my hair. My arms are riddled with black soot and fresh burn blisters. My whole body hurts like hell.
The black heap on the sidewalk is finally groaning his way back to life.
I cross to the man, roll him over onto his back.
And meet my neighbor, Jason Jones.
“What the fuck are you doing out this time of night?” I demand to know ten minutes later. I’ve managed to drag Jones inside my apartment, where I got him propped up on Mrs. H.’s floral love seat with one ice pack on his head and another against his left ribs.
Guy’s left eye is already half-swollen and there’s a bandage that suggests tonight hasn’t been his first beating of the day.
“Are you a fucking idiot?” I want to know. I’m coming down off my adrenaline high. I pace back and forth in front of the tiny kitchenette, snapping at the green elastic and wishing I could crawl out of my own skin.
“What the hell did you do to your hair?” Jones croaks out.
“Forget my fucking hair. What the hell are you doing skulking around the neighborhood dressed like a suburban ninja? Isn’t the freak show at your house enough for you?”
“You mean the media?”
“Cannibals.”
“Given that I’m one of them, and they’re clearly feeding off me, an apt analogy.”