Cape Cod Noir - By David L Ulin Page 0,51

valued—the suits, the cars, the houses—were forever out of reach.

First, though, he had to wait, just a few more hours, just until the afternoon. He went back upstairs, through the living room, to the second floor. At the top of the landing was the room in which he’d slept that summer, with two single beds and a pair of dressers, the same as when he’d been a kid. Standing at the door, he was aware of a low buzzing in his stomach, not exactly nerves or anticipation, but something almost like dread. What makes you think you can do this? What makes you think you have the stones? The words were his father’s but the intonation was his own. So that’s what happens now? he thought. We blend together? That would be the cruelest fate of all. The closet door was to his right, and he moved to it as if drawn. Inside, the space was tighter than he’d remembered, which made the whole thing somehow more unbearable, more treacherous, a small boy huddled in a narrow space, as if he were trying to remove himself from the world.

But no, he recalled now with a flash of recognition, that wasn’t how it had happened. Yes, he’d been trying to remove himself, but only from his father, not from the world. After the door slammed, he had unfolded and drifted down the hall. From the bathroom, he had climbed onto the roof, slipped down to the woodshed, and quickly dropped to the ground. The day had been silent, except for the buzz of insects and the shushing of the surf. And the gasping of the wind in his ears as he ran for the jetty, where he’d spent the rest of the afternoon.

He looked in the closet again. He could almost see himself, but the image refused to coalesce. Good, he thought. No more time for ghosts. No more time for anything. But that wasn’t true, not exactly, and in the few hours left before he went to Chatham, he knew where he wanted to go. He went downstairs, peered out into the morning to make sure no one was around. Satisfied, he let himself out of the house and headed for the beach path, to walk the jetty again.

Chatham was cold, and the old man’s house overlooked the harbor, which made it colder still. He had timed it just right, disembarking at the rotary at five-fifty, full dark, staying to the shadows as he walked the empty streets. There were more year-rounders here, but that was fine; in a bigger town, it was easier to be anonymous. When he found the house, he walked right up to the front door and pressed the buzzer, not sure what he would do if no one answered, not sure what he would do if someone did.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter because it was the old man who came to the door. They stared at each other, near mirror images of surprise. “Excuse me?” said the old man, as if he couldn’t place him, as if he weren’t sure of who he was. Until then, there had been a conditional quality to the whole operation, as if, in spite of everything, he could turn around and take the RTA back to Harwichport, or even to Hyannis, and then another bus to Boston, leaving all of this—his plan, the vision, the bitter ghosts of that summer, of his father—behind. Now, as he watched the old man, smaller in corduroys and a sweater, he felt his anger catalyze. Laid me off, downsized me, and he doesn’t know me? Without even thinking about it, he took the knife from his jacket pocket and pressed it into the old man’s guts.

“You’re coming with me,” he said.

For a moment, it seemed as if the old man might cry out. Then he looked at the knife, gleaming in the lamplight, and steeled himself. “What is this?” he said. “What do you want?”

“Get your car keys. We’re going for a ride.”

The car was a Jeep Grand Cherokee, leather seats and all the extras, four-wheel drive and GPS. He gestured the old man into the driver’s seat, keeping the knife against him, directed him back to the rotary and then east on Route 28. Along the way, they passed minimalls and seafood shacks, deserted as if summer would never come again. Just across the Harwich town line, a Chatham patrol car passed them going the other direction. He saw the