some other man: he just saw the two red lights and the bright strips that were Bud's and nothing else in the universe.
Then Lamar saw a problem up ahead. It just came, all of a sudden, from nowhere. Bud signaled a left just as his truck was moving into yellow. Lamar would never make the intersection before red, and he knew if he blew through the light, he might be spotted by a cop or even Bud. You can't be too careful.
Lamar calculated quickly, figuring the least risky of two very risky courses in a split second. He took his left now, down -a side street that he didn't even know went through.
Out of Bud's sight, he hit the pedal, raced wildly, swerved by a slowpoke who honked, frightened two women back on the curb, wheeled right up another street, and came to the street Bud had turned left down. There was a steady stream of traffic.
Shit!
Where was he?
He scanned the lights disappearing down the road, goddamn it, and saw nothing, and felt a raging emptiness.
“Lamar, I don't—”
“Shut up, Richard, Daddy's working.”
Then he saw it, the small jot of red reflected light under a taillight that signaled Bud. Lamar gunned his Trans Am, slid through the traffic, darted through two left-hand passes, and soon enough fell in a hundred yards back in the right lane.
“He ain't seen shit,” he said.
“Hot damn.”
Bud pulled up outside the little house, now glowing in the dark. It looked merry and friendly. The black kid with the trike was nowhere to be seen. He climbed out, waited by his car for a second.
That goddamn house. She moved here to be with you and now you got to do this goddamn thing. You're going to hurt her so. You will hurt her and hurt her and then walk out.
He tried to put a nice spin on things. It was better for her.
Really, she deserved a fresh start, not some half-life with a retread full of lead and freighted with kids and guilt and his own memories of a betrayed wife and a dead partner, who was her husband. She deserved so much. A little frog worked into Bud's throat as he looked at the house.
Then it was time and he went in.
He walked up the walk. It was only eight hours since his last trek up the walk. What it had led to that time was sex with her. Smoke rose in his mind as images came to him.
There was the business in the living room, on the sofa; and then the business on the steps; and the final business in the bedroom. They had stretched it out, moving from room to room, as if to celebrate the freedom they now enjoyed after so many motel rooms. Interesting things happened in each room, but the stuff on the steps—he didn't think they'd done anything like that before.
Gone, all gone.
An enormous sense of loss suffused Bud.
Had to do it, he thought. His sons. His wife. His family.
This was hard, the hardest thing yet, but he could do it and save his family and win it all back.
He climbed the steps and before he could reach the door, it popped open.
“Well, howdy there, Mr. Bud Pewtie himself,” she said.
“Hi, Holly.”
“Well, get you in.”
Bud walked in. Same house, same Holly smell in it.
“Do you want a beer?”
“No, I don't think so.”
“Bud, you have that do-I-have-to-go-to-church? look on your face. Why don't you spit it out so’s we can get to the nut-cutting part.”
“Oh, Holly.”
She sensed the remorse in his voice. A grave look came across her, as if she'd been slapped. She knew, instantly.
He could tell.
“Bud, no. We're so close.”
“We're not close.”
“Bud—don't do this to me. Please, sweetie.”
“Holly, I—” He stopped, stuck for words again.
“You what?”
“I never meant to hurt you. That was the last thing I ever meant. I wanted everybody to be happy.”
“But everybody can't be happy.”
“No, they can't. Holly—Jeff's found out. My son is in so much pain.
I'm going to try to put his life together again.”
“Bud.”
“Holly, you are a young and beautiful woman. You can have your whole life. You can have anything you want.”
“Bud, I want you. I want us. I want what we said we'd have together.”
“I can't give you that. I'm sorry.”
“Bud—”
“Holly, I have to be a better father to my son than mine was to me. Without that, I ain't shit, and I know it. I took something from him. I want to give it back.”
“Bud, it's not an either-or thing. You can have both. I'm not saying it'll be easy, but you can have both.”
“Holly, I'm setting you free. Goddamn, you can have anything.
Anything. You just wait. Your life is going to turn out swell, you'll see. You get through just this little bit, and then the good times start.”
She stared at him furiously, and after a bit began to cry.
He wanted to go to her and comfort her. She had given him such comfort over the months.
She sat down.
“I don't see how you can live a lie. You go back, and it's some kind of fake thing where you're pretending to be noble, and then I'm gone, and you're stuck with a wife you don't love. So then what have you got? You'll end up with nothing.”
Bud himself sat down. Now she put her head in her hands and began to sob.
Help her, he thought. Stop her hurting.
Her face smeared and swelled and turned red and patchy.
Her nose ran. Quiet, racking shudders raced through her shoulders.
He'd seen women cry that way on the turnpike when they looked at the carnage that had been their husbands or their children. There was nothing you could do for them except hope that they healed and went on.
“Bud, I love you.”
“Holly, it ain't about love. My son can't get another father and I can't get another family.”
“Bud—”
“Holly, I can't be the kind of man who runs away. That's where all this crime comes from—everybody cutting and running. I can't be that kind of a man.”
“You lied to me. So many times.”
“Maybe I did. But I lied to myself, too. I thought we had a chance. I ain't the man to give you that chance. You deserve the man who’ll give it to you.”
“It's so easy for you.”
“No ma'am, it's not. It's not anything like easy. Holly-I love you.
Don't you see that?”
“Oh, Bud,” she said.
