“Hey, Mr. Carr. I saw your wife and kids earlier,” she said. She dragged his purchases over the sensor. Diapers: $12.99. Motrin: $8.49. Looking at twenty-year-old tits: priceless. He didn’t need his glasses to see those.
Paula had nursed Cameron until he’d turned two, just a month before they’d realized she was pregnant again. And now she was going on eighteen months with Claire (though she’d promised him she’d stop after a year). They’d both come to see her breasts as something utilitarian, the way they came out of her shirt without a second thought as soon as Claire started fussing. Gone were the lace push-ups and silky camisoles. Now, if Paula wore a bra at all, it had this snapping mechanism on the cup to unlatch, so the baby could nurse. Tracie Trixie-Trudy was probably wearing something pink and pretty, her breasts like peaches, no baby attached sucking away her sexiness.
“You’re so lucky,” the girl was saying. “You have such a beautiful family.”
“It’s true,” he said. He looked into his wallet. No cash, as usual. He stared at the tops of seven credit cards peeking, colorful and mocking in their leather slots. He couldn’t remember which one wasn’t maxed out. “I’m blessed.”
With a smile he swiped the Platinum Visa and held his breath until the signature line showed on the electronic pad.
Kevin knew what the girl saw when she looked at him, why she was smiling so sweetly. She saw the Breitling watch, the Armani suit, the diamond-studded platinum wedding band. The sum-total cost of the items hanging off his body was greater than what she might earn in half a year. When she looked at him, she saw money, not the mounting, uncontrollable debt his purchases represented. That’s all people saw, the glittering surface. What lay beneath, what was
“Did you remember your reusable sack?” she asked. She gave him another beaming smile and shook a finger of mock admonishment at him.
“No, I didn’t,” he said. Playing her game, he tried to look contrite. “That’s all right, though. I don’t need one.” He picked up the two items and headed for the door.
“You saved a tree, Mr. Carr!” she called after him. “Good for you.”
Her youthful exuberance made him feel a hundred years old. Just as he stepped from beneath the overhang, it started to rain, hard. By the time he’d climbed into the car, he was soaked. He tossed his purchases onto the seat beside him. Then, looking in the rearview mirror, he ran his fingers through his dark hair, smoothing it back. He grabbed a towel from the gym bag on the seat behind him and mopped off his suit jacket, the raindrops on the leather all around him.
He turned on the engine and started to shiver. It wasn’t even that cold. He just felt a familiar chill spread through his body. He sat, blank for a moment. He just needed a minute, this minute of quiet, before he put the mask on again. He was about to back out and head home. Then, on a whim, he reached under the passenger seat and retrieved the small black bag he kept there. He just wanted to check, just wanted to see it.
He’d had it under there since they drove to Florida and took the kids to Disney over the summer-a trip that cost Kevin more than three thousand dollars between the park, the hotel, and the meals. The whole venture had been a masquerade of normalcy. The endless ride down south was a chaos of Goldfish crackers and juice boxes, the manic sound tracks of Cameron’s DVDs, Claire’s eternal crying and fussing. They spent their days at the park; Cameron had a good time. But the baby was really too young; what with the incessant heat and the slack-jawed crowds, Claire fussed constantly, driving him nearly mad. He plastered a smile on his face and pretended that he didn’t feel like his head was going to explode. When he’d met Paula, she was young and hot, smart and vital. Now she was a mom at Disney, two full sizes bigger. When had her legs gotten so thick? It was then that he realized he had to get out. He couldn’t live like this. Of course, divorce was not an option. What a cliche.
He’d gone out one night to bring in a pizza and stopped at one of the many gun shops he’d seen around.
“This is the most popular handgun in America,” the dealer had told him. “The Glock 17 fires seventeen nine- millimeter Luger rounds. It’s lightweight, perfect for the home. Hope you never need to, but you’ll be able to protect your family with this, even without much gun experience.”
The dealer, who looked to be in his twenties and had an unhealthy enthusiasm for his work, also sold him a box of ammo.
A couple of days later, the night before they were about to head home, he stopped back and picked it up. Kevin could hardly believe that he was able to walk out of the shop with a gun and bullets, carried in a small canvas bag. In the parking lot, he’d stashed everything under the passenger seat. And there it had all stayed for the better part of six months. Paula never drove this car. Even on the weekends, they always used her Mercedes SUV, because that’s where the car seats and diaper bags and all the other various kid gear-strollers, sippy cups, extra wipes-were kept. You’d think she was planning to go away for a month with everything she had back there.
Now he unzipped the small duffel and removed the hard plastic case, opened it. In the amber light shining into his car from the parking-lot lamp above, he looked at the flat, black gun in its case, its neat lines and ridged, ergonomic grip. He could hear the tapping of the rain on his roof, the muted sound of a woman talking on her cell phone as she walked to her car.
The sight of the gun gave him a sense of comfort. He felt his shoulders relax and his breathing come easier. Some of the terrible tension he carried around all day seemed to dissolve. He couldn’t say why. Even if someone had asked, he wouldn’t have been able to say why a blessed sense of relief washed over him at the sight of that gun.
chapter one
Jones Cooper feared death. The dread of it woke him in the night, sat him bolt upright and drew all the breath from his lungs, narrowed his esophagus, had him rasping in the dark. It turned all the normal shadows of the bedroom that he shared with his wife into a legion of ghouls and intruders waiting with silent and malicious intent. When? How? Heart attack. Cancer. Freak accident. Would it come for him quickly? Would it slowly waste and dehumanize him? What, if anything, would await him?
He was not a man of faith. Nor was he a man without a stain on his conscience. He did not believe in a benevolent universe of light and love. He could not lean upon those crutches as so many did; everyone, it seemed, had some way to protect himself against the specter of his certain end. Everyone except him.
His wife, Maggie, had grown tired of the 2:00 A.M. terrors. At first she was beside him, comforting him:
His wife believed it had something to do with Ricky’s leaving. “A child heading off for college is a milestone. It’s natural to reflect on the passing of your life,” she’d said. Maggie seemed to think that the acknowledgment of one’s mortality was a rite of passage, something everyone went through. “But there’s a point, Jones, where reflection becomes self-indulgent, even self-destructive. Surely you see that spending your life fearing death is a death in and of itself.”
But it seemed to him that people didn’t reflect on death at all. Everyone appeared to be walking around oblivious to the looming end-spending hours on Facebook, talking on cell phones while driving through Starbucks, reclining on the couch for hours watching some mindless crap on television. People were
“Lighten up, honey. Really.” Those were the last words she’d said to him this morning before she headed off to see her first patient. He
Jones was raking leaves; the great oaks in his yard had started their yearly shed. There were just a few leaves now. He’d made a small pile down by the curb. For all the years they’d been in this house, he’d hired someone to do this work. But since his retirement, almost a year ago now, he’d decided to manage the tasks of homeownership himself-mowing the lawn, maintaining the landscaping, skimming the pool, washing the windows, now raking the leaves, eventually shoveling the snow from the driveway. It was amazing, really, how these tasks
