One more sip and he’ll come. She is rocking and sucking on the cognac; if he comes in drunk all I have to do is touch that thing and he’ll beg me to drop the trip and stay with him. Even though it’s too late, she plans: I’ll pull him into this chair and vulgar as it is, I’ll show him around the world.
Time dies. Resentment catches fire. Forget me, will you, well, I’ll show you. Pills she needs in the pocket of her robe. He’ll come in and find me and then we’ll see who’s who and what’s what. Right, it’s logical, if not inevitable. Sitting with his hands open on his knees, Dan falls into her bitterness: Take the pills and when he finds me with my tongue out and my eyes rolled back, it will serve him God damned right. Resentment twists in her belly and ignites. Damn you, Harold Archambault. God. Damn you.
Something changes. She cries out in Dan’s voice: ‘What are you doing here?’ His head comes up so fast that his neck snaps. There is somebody new in the room. Astonished, Lorna hisses, You.
Dan lurches to his feet, blinking. He can’t see, but he hears:
Get out.
Shuddering, he calls, ‘Who! Who?’
How did you get in? She’s frightened. She’s furious. What are you doing here? Dan cracks his mouth wide, listening, but there is no hearing the other side of this dialog. His gut cramps as the old lady’s entrails knot. You have no right to be here. How dare you come here, making demands? Disappointment boils in her belly. Instead of Hal. There is shouting: not hers – someone else.
Troubled, Dan hears only Lorna, screaming, Get out. Shut up and get out. What are you . . . my God! Livid, rocking and furious, she sees it coming.
Whatever it is.
Dan doesn’t know. Then he does. In this room, someone else cries: ‘Dear God, watch out!’
She rasps, I will die before I let you take . . .
Someone who shouts, ‘It’s too late!’
Here in the room.
His voice. Whoever he is. ‘God damn you, old woman.’ The room shakes.
I’ll see you dead. Words boil out of her, leaving Dan riven and shaking. I’ll see you in hell. And in a plume of flames, she imagines it. She sees me writhing and howling in the heat. But who am I. Who am I? Rigid and furious, she envisions the murders – Hal, once she starts there will be no end to it, Eden Rowse. You. The ball of heat inside her grows; in the unlikeliest of cavities it flickers, getting brighter as she seethes in the depths of her recliner, unaware and unprotected, roaring, Who’s sorry now? Furious, she is too angry to comprehend the fire inside her, any more than she will know the exact moment that her soul explodes and flies out in a shower of sparks. By the time her body splits and flames shoot up there is nothing left of Lorna Archambault but the chair she sits in and the shell of her body in its melted shreds of lavender that she put on especially for him; everything else is consumed from within, everything but the husk. For a few seconds she flames brilliantly – gorgeous, Too bad Hal can’t see, and then collapses inward. What little is left of her curls back on itself and fuses with the melting fabric of the ruined chair. Only rage remains, a nugget of distilled evil so powerful that Dan yelps in pain.
The guilt.
Whose? ‘God.’ He lunges for the door.
‘God!’
The guilt is terrible.
How did this door close? Did I shut myself in? Did she? Drenched and shaking, he grapples with the knob and finally breaks out. He’s free, but the knowledge follows him out of the room. Changed by forces he doesn’t recognize and can’t name, he hurtles downstairs and out into beginning night.
12
The guys
It’s a nice enough day out here on the water, but it’s getting late. Not that Stitch Von Harten and Buck Coleman want their afternoon on the water to end. Every Friday they find ways to back out of the office – Stitch from Von Harten Printing, which his dad founded, and Buck from Coleman Chrysler, where he shows up only reluctantly because his father hung the business around his neck like a stone.
Every Friday they come out here with a couple of six-packs, whether the grouper are running or not. Stitch knows it sounds cheesy, but it’s