me alone.
It was dark by the time I got home. I walked around the cabin before I went in. I wasn’t sure what I might find. It just seemed like the right thing to do. Inside, I looked at the machine still hooked up to the phone. I picked up the walkie-talkie, turned it on and listened to the static, turned if off. These things weren’t going to do me any good now. I was surprised that Maven hadn’t asked me to return them. He must have forgotten. He’s probably at home right now, I thought, sitting in front of the TV, slapping himself in the head. Damn it all, he’s saying to his wife, I forgot to make McKnight give back the phone machine and the radio. That stuff is police property.
The gun was still on the table next to the bed. I picked it up and held it. There was nothing more I could do, except sit here in this cabin and wait. It was all up to Rose now.
I sat on the bed for a while, but then I realized that was a mistake. Too easy to fall asleep. I got up and sat in one of the hard wooden chairs at the kitchen table. The time passed slowly. I looked at my watch. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet. I got up and looked out the window, saw nothing but my own reflection. I turned off all the inside lights and tried again. The one light I had outside above the front door didn’t do much good. I could only see the edge of the road, my truck, the woodpile, the first few pine trees. Beyond that, the forest stretched in all directions. The moon was just a rumor behind the clouds.
It was quiet. The crickets were long gone, the tree frogs asleep for the winter. No wind. The trees were still.
I sat back down in the chair. Before long, my head started to feel heavy. Uttley was right. I needed to sleep. I should have let him come over for one night.
Maybe I can still call him. Maybe I can call Uttley. The phone. Get the phone. Pick up the phone and call him. I’ll pick up the phone now.
I saw myself picking up the phone. There was blood on it. I looked at the blood on my hands. There was a pool of it on the floor. Blood everywhere.
This is a dream. I must wake up. I cannot sleep now. I cannot sleep.
I raise my head from the table. I am not in my cabin. There is a window in front of me. I rise and go to it. There is a great courtyard. Four great walls around it, a thousand windows. In the center of the courtyard there is a man. I can barely see him, the courtyard is so big. His back is to me. He is hunched over something.
He turns and looks at me. Out of a thousand windows, he knows that I am right here. He is looking right at me. I see that he has been sharpening a knife on an old-fashioned turning stone. He caresses the knife while he looks at me.
I run. I am in a hallway. It is the hallway in the apartment building in Detroit. I run past a hundred doors and then I open one. Franklin is lying on the ground. He is covered in blood but he is looking up at me. Don’t leave me here, he says. The walls are covered with aluminum foil.
I close the door. I hear Franklin calling to me even as I keep running. My legs will not work. I cannot run fast enough. The hallway will not end.
Finally I open another door. Edwin is there, lying on a white table. He is wet and covered with seaweed. I look down at him and say that I am sorry. He tries to open his eyes. But he has no eyes. The fish have eaten them.
There is a pounding on the door. Edwin grabs at me. He cannot see but his hands find my arm. He is pulling at me while I try to back away from the door.
More pounding. Hard enough to break it down. He will be here soon. I cannot hide from him any longer.
I woke up.
I was sitting at my kitchen table. There was no sound except for my breathing and the faint ticking of a clock.
And then the pounding on the door.
I jumped out of the chair. My gun. Where is my gun?
More pounding.
Goddamn it, my gun. I don’t know where it is. Not on the table, not on the bedstand. Where the fuck is my gun?
Pounding, pounding.
There, under the kitchen table. It was in my hand when I fell asleep. Down on my hands and knees, get the gun. Check it. Ready to go. Get back up. Go to the door.
The pounding stopped.
I stood there by the door, listening.
Silence.
I waited. Nothing.
I raised the gun and unlocked the door. Opened it a sliver and looked out into the night.
Sylvia looked up at me. “Alex.”
She had the same clothes on, the sweater I saw her wearing as I watched her from the window that day. It was dry now, but she still wasn’t wearing a coat. I could feel her shivering as I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her inside. “What are you doing here?”
She didn’t say anything. She just stood there and looked around my cabin. All the time we had spent together, she had never been here.
I grabbed a blanket and wrapped her up. “Sit down,” I said. “I’ll make you some tea or something.”
She sat down at the table, in the chair where I had just been sleeping.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said as I put some water on the stove. “You should be home with Edwin’s mother.”
“She’s gone,” Sylvia said, looking down at nothing.
“What?”
“She went back down to Grosse Pointe. She said she couldn’t stay here another minute.”
“But what about… I mean, what if they find him?”
“Then they’ll send him down there,” she said. “That’s where the service is going to be.”
I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there watching the water. The cabin was silent until the water finally started to boil.
“Where’s Uttley?” I said.
“I sent him home,” she said. “I don’t like him. How can you work for him, anyway? He reminds me of a used car salesman.”
“Sylvia, goddamn it all.”
“What, Alex?” She finally looked up at me. “What?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry about?”
“Everything,” I said. “About everything.”
She started to say something but just shook her head and looked down again. I made her tea and put the cup on the table in front of her.
“He’s gone,” she said. “He’s really gone.”
“Yes.”
“It’s just what I wanted to happen,” she said. “I wished for it every night.”
“Sylvia, don’t talk that way.”
“It’s true, Alex. I wanted him to disappear forever. And now he has.”
“You didn’t make it happen,” I said.
“I think I did, Alex. I think I wished for it so hard, it finally happened. And you know what the funny thing is? I don’t feel a thing. If I was a bad person, I’d be happy. If I was a good person, I’d feel guilty. But I don’t feel anything either way. I’m just… I don’t even know what. I just feel nothing.”
“You’re still in shock,” I said. “You’re going to need some time.”
“And you’ll be here to help me through it, right? Is that what you’re getting at? Now that he’s gone? Now that I’m not your friend’s wife anymore?”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“The hell you didn’t,” she said. She threw the blanket off her shoulders and stood up. “Why did I come here,
