Over the years I’ve come to crave total silence. There’s something peaceful about it, something so soothing that it almost helps me forget all the bad shit there is in the world.
It’s like a black hole, a void I can crawl into and curl up and just fall asleep. No pain. No suffering. No murder.
A car horn sounds outside, shattering the silence.
I blink, take a breath.
I imagine Zane lying in the bed next to me. He stares up at the same spot of ceiling I’m staring at. I want to turn to him, snuggle into his embrace, hold on to him and never let him go. Before him I’d felt empty, insecure, unloved. He’d helped open my eyes to the world. Helped me understand that behind every façade, every smiling face, there is an evil just ready to make its move.
I imagine him lying beside me and asking, What’s wrong, Holly?
I fucked up royally this time.
Why?
Scooter’s dead.
And it was your fault?
Yes.
No, it wasn’t. Stop blaming yourself.
But I’m scared.
Scared about what?
But I can’t answer him, because before I do I take my eyes off that spot of ceiling and turn my head and find his side of the bed empty. A tear hatches from the corner of my eye and starts to slither down my cheek. I don’t bother wiping it away.
The silence returns and I stare back up at the ceiling.
I think about a lot of different things.
About murder and death and how they’re wedded together, a perfect union.
About two years ago, down in Miami, on that drug lord’s yacht, a fire having already broken out, a number of the bodyguards dead, and my father and I finding the drug lord cowering below deck.
About taking the entire bottle of Valium concealed behind the bathroom mirror.
About dragging the drug lord up to the deck and aiming my gun at him and my dad turning to me and raising his own gun at my head.
About Karen and what she confided in me.
About floating in my tub filled with warm water and slicing the veins along my arms.
About Zane stepping out of nowhere, shouting for my dad to stop, and my dad turning his gun and firing three rounds at Zane’s chest, the bullets forcing Zane to stumble back and fall over the edge and into the water.
About going to the roof of my apartment and stepping up onto the edge and just letting gravity do its magic.
About the dry Iraqi desert.
About shooting my own father, one two three four five times in the chest, screaming as I do it, stepping closer and closer, and then while he lies flat on the deck moving in even closer for the kill shot.
About taking one of my many pistols hiding scattered throughout the apartment and placing the barrel in my mouth.
About the stench of the porta potty, the urine and shit mingled together.
About standing there with my gun aimed at my father’s face and wanting more than anything to pull the trigger, to watch his head explode.
About turning on the oven and sticking my head in like Sylvia Plath.
About opening the porta potty door and knowing who would be on the other side and ducking the punch coming for my face.
About watching my father already lying there covered in blood and knowing that the yacht would soon sink and deciding that for the moment there had already been enough killing.
About just lying here in bed and staring at the ceiling and letting days and nights pass and not getting up, not eating, not drinking, just letting my body waste away until there is nothing left.
About shaking my head at my father before turning and running away, stepping up onto the edge and diving into the water toward the place where Nova was waiting in the powerboat.
About all the people I’ve killed and all the people I’ve saved because of the people I’ve killed.
About the first man I killed, the two of us alone under the clear Iraqi night sky.
About swimming toward Nova as he came toward me and being underneath the water for a few moments at a time, hearing nothing at all, floating in a void.
About Scooter dying in my arms.
About my mother and my sister and her husband and the boys.
About Casey and David, Marilyn and Walter.
About Karen again.
About all the people I’ve killed and all the people I’ve saved because of the people I’ve killed.
About Nova helping me up out of the water just as the fire on the yacht finally reached the gas tank and the entire thing went up, momentarily lighting the night, and how he was shouting above the explosion, asking what happened, what the fuck just happened.
About two weeks later learning I was pregnant.
About knowing I couldn’t keep it.
About taking myself to the abortion clinic and then driving myself home.
About nobody ever knowing, not even Tina.
About Karen, saying in her deep southern accent, Can you keep a secret?
And about how sometimes when I’m in total silence, in the dark void, my unborn child is with me and we curl up together to keep ourselves warm and then just float there, mother and child, safe from everything that is evil.
Twenty-Two
“Holly, Holly, look at that elephant!”
“David,” I say reproachfully, giving him a look.
His smile fades a moment as he works the translation in his head. Then, in a slow, stunted voice, he says, “Regardez … l’éléphant?”
“Très bon,” I say with a nod.
Casey tugs at my shorts. “Can we go see the sea lions?”
She doesn’t ask the question in French, and before I have the chance to give her the same reproach I just gave her brother, David points and says, “Hey, that’s not fair!”
I place a hand to my forehead, try strangling this migraine before it grows any stronger. Another night of little sleep and I didn’t do any running, any exercises, which I know I should have done
