recognizing that familiar likeness he had encountered throughout the years — stock-still with arms hanging at its side, expressionless yet vigilant — that time-ravaged twin who wasn't ever meant for this life: a long, unkempt gray beard flowing from its haggard, wrinkled, and stooped body, dressed as always in jeans which had grown ragged and frayed, worn-down leisure shoes, a moth-eaten T-shirt, and a soiled, once bright blue Windbreaker. “I guess I was seeing things, it's nothing.” For a second Hollis wondered if he should not simply head in a different direction, but upon reaching the ninth hole green he let go of Lon's hand and continued forward. Unaware of Max's lingering proximity, Lon accelerated his pace and brushed past the spectral figure, tiredly waving a hand in the air as he proceeded downhill, almost slipping again while hurrying for the sidewalk.
With long, limping strides Hollis walked directly toward his weathered counterpart, fixing on those vacuous eyes which were, somehow, his own eyes. You'll go, he thought. You'll disappear. However, Max didn't fade from sight or vanish in a blink, and Hollis was now closer to it than he had imagined possible; one stayed put while the other charged headlong without hesitation, both on the verge of collision and unwilling to relent. You'll go, you'll disappear: Hollis winced when passing right through himself, but just beforehand he saw the movement of Max's blistered lips, emitting a parched whisper which entered his own lips and exited at the base of his skull. And then it had communicated to him; it had, in their brief merging, addressed him for the first and only time, simply uttering, “Bye.”
Hollis immediately stopped, peering back over his shoulder. Max wasn't there. For a moment he thought he glimpsed a wavering of light where it had stood — then all he could see was snow and land and the crisscrossed trail. Impossible, it can't be, he said to himself and shuddered. No, he was not mistaken, it had spoken. He had heard its parting message and, too, he had felt the word reverberate inside his head. Turning around, he searched for Lon but saw instead the remaining few yards of golf course, the sidewalk beyond, his Suburban parked in the golf lane — and nothing or no one else. The city seemed abandoned, the streets were deserted, and it would have been natural for him to enjoy the solitude, but now he suddenly harbored an immense sadness for himself and everything which lived or had yet to grow beneath the sun; and with that a feeling of complete isolation came upon him, a deep-reaching sensation of also having been abandoned which constricted a knot of desperation in his gut. Here is the sum total of my existence, he thought and resumed limping. This is it for me.
Then somewhere high above the grid patterns of Nine Springs the wind raced like the currents of a river; and the invisible sheets of ether fused within the sky were in perpetual tumult, bending westward then southward while clouds swelled and moved accordingly. The great breaths of the planet blew farther still along the hemisphere and the wind shifted and shifted. Effortlessly buoyed by the rushing waves of air, itself a dark shape gliding horizontally among the flux, a crow circled what lay far below — that insubstantial island with square plots and tiled rooftops and one inhabitant climbing into a sport-utility vehicle — before changing its direction and flying out across a limitless ocean of open desert.
After Hollis eased the Suburban into his driveway, turning the vehicle off, he sat there for a while with the radio on, listening to the local news and then the statewide weather report. A freak winter storm had shut down various stretches of Interstate 10, the generic-sounding broadcaster stated, but tomorrow things would warm up, the skies would be clear from Tucson to Flagstaff. Upon hearing that, he pulled the keys out of the ignition — and if anybody inside the neighboring homes had been looking through windows, they might have spied his bulky form exiting the Suburban, half limping in muddy leather boots and made even bigger by the padded jacket, perhaps wondering where it was he had traveled to on such an unreceptive morning. Yet no one would catch a glimpse of the dread he was harboring within him-self — as he shuffled, carefully, over icy patches on the concrete and moved toward the house.
Once beyond the front door, Hollis entered what seemed to be a timeless but vacuous domain, a place in which past or future concerns were no longer permitted, and where the present was now forever sustained like the drone of an unending chord. He didn't, though, remove the boots, or the jacket, or the mitt on his hand; instead, he went forward, pausing for a time at the gap between the dining and living rooms — like someone contemplating directions when stepping into a maze — with his head pivoting from left to right, right to left, his gaze alternately framing those two dimly cast, static rooms: each fractured by refined beams of angled sunlight, where the rays only brightened either the middle of the dining table or the three canvas-printed orchid photographs hung above the couch, as they would a bowl of fruit in a still life. Among the shadows of the living room were the brown-oak bookcases, the television cabinet, a black steel-coated wall clock, the tempered glass-top coffee table covered with library books — and in the dining room, also shaded, were the glass chandelier-like pendant lamp, the antique clear-lacquered pine chairs, the buffet with top cabinets which held white plates and bowls and cups and pitchers. But in the slow aquatic tumbling of radiant dust motes, everything felt submerged to him, peacefully settled somewhere beneath water; and he was there, too, among wreckage which had, surely, sunk so calmly as to leave so much intact.
Before proceeding farther, Hollis exacted his stare, holding it on the living-room clock. He waited until the second hand had cycled the full duration of a minute; at which point he walked directly through the house — tracking dirt across the carpet, the kitchen's vinyl flooring — and headed out the back door to tend his snowbound gardens: calculating and recalculating the hours, the approximate minutes, since he had comforted Debra in his arms, kissing the side of her face as she breathed heavily against him, kissing her when her breathing had grown shallower and, like a subtle, gradual transition into the stillest of sleeps, eventually became unapparent. Ten hours, he estimated. Ten hours and twenty-two minutes, give or take a minute.
At the end, by the time Debra was ready to go — to take the mystery ride, as she had begun saying — there had been almost nothing asked or required of Hollis; she had, using what little remained of her failing health, done all the preparations on her own, researching the best methods available, going about it with the same fixity of purpose which had driven her while making interior-design choices for their home. In businesslike fashion, she determined a mixture of two barbiturate drugs — Seconal (4.5 grams) and Nembutal (3.0 grams) — would not only do the trick but would double the lethal dose; as such, Hollis would be spared the last task of placing a plastic bag over her head once she had fallen asleep — something she felt certain he couldn't actually bring himself to do, something she didn't much like the idea of anyway. Then in accordance with Debra's wishes, a sympathetic Dr. Langford agreed to prescribe the drugs; and, too, the doctor would, when everything was finished, handle the postmortem details — signing the death certificate herself, stating that Debra had died due to complications resulting from ovarian cancer.
The grocery shopping and errands, however, became Hollis's main responsibility, his mission. Without voicing protest, he picked up the prescriptions for her at Walgreens; he also bought what she had listed on a Post-it note — chocolate pudding mix, a bottle of Glenfiddich, Dramamine — items which seemed better suited for a holiday than, as Debra had called it, a self-deliverance. There were other instructions for him as well, another list she had written on a legal pad, several after-life issues they would discuss beforehand: the letter she had recently composed to her younger sister was folded inside the P. D. James hardback on the living-room coffee table — it should be addressed in an envelope and sent via Priority Mail within a week of her passing — while the P. D. James novel should be returned to the library by month's end; her credit cards should be canceled; her clothing and shoes should be donated to Goodwill, her wigs given to Gilda's Club; she didn't want a funeral, or a memorial service, or an obit of any sort placed in a newspaper; most important, her body must be cremated. “That way I can once and for all rid myself of these cancer cells,” she explained. “I want my body purified,” and then Debra wanted the circle of her life completed, asking that her ashes and bits of bone be scattered on the property of the old What Rocks house where she had been born — the closing of a larger circle in which a smaller circle would have already been sealed; for, they both knew without saying it, a death had brought them together and, in turn, it was somehow fitting that a death would draw them apart. The pursuit of happiness, he had begun to understand, didn't come without a heavy price.
And so, last evening, Hollis dutifully heeded the final directive of his mission while snow cascaded outside the kitchen windows. On a serving tray, he gathered and organized those things Debra had needed — a bowl of chocolate pudding, a mug filled with Glenfiddich, one Dramamine pill in a spoon, the plastic vials of Seconal and Nembutal, a cup of green tea, a slice of toasted whole wheat bread — feeling no desire to hurry, running his eyes diligently over the items once everything was in place. When he finally brought the tray to their room — pushing the aromatherapy bottles aside so he could set it on a corner of the bedside table — Debra was propped up in the bed, the orthopedic pillow behind her neck and the comforter bunched about her, seemingly pleased by how well he had
