Gun Church

the one hand, everything was exactly the same. On the other, everything was exactly different. It’s fucked up and a little hard to explain because if you were looking from the outside in, from the vantage point when crystal clarity just begins to soften at the edges, you wouldn’t have noticed the spectrum shift.

I got up early, wrote, crawled back into bed with Renee for a few minutes, went running with Jim, taught my classes, went shooting with Jim, came home and wrote, ate with Renee, wrote, fucked, and went to bed. That was pretty much my routine before I left for New York and it was my routine when I returned. The transition felt seamless, like the perfect pass of a baton during a relay race. I had handed off the baton on my way out of town and grabbed it back on my way in. I don’t think I could have adequately expressed to Renee how happy I was to be, for lack of a better word, home.

But something had changed and, at first, I could only describe the symptoms of the change, not what they meant or what had caused them. Renee seemed pleased enough at my return, but she wasn’t herself, or more accurately, she was like her old self. The fucking between us, which had undergone a steady transformation from ferocious and hungry to delicate and soulful, had turned back again. Since I’d gotten home, she had insisted on me taking her from behind and urged me to do it harder and harder still. When I’d crawl into bed with her in the morning, she wanted me in her mouth much more than she wanted my arms around her. She was back to making up and dressing like the St. Pauli Girl. Lots more makeup. Lots less clothing. It was almost as if she were trying to make me conscious again of just how young she really was and to make me wonder what it was we were doing together. If that was her intent, it was working.

Initially, I put it down to me. That I was sending out weird vibes because I regretted my decision not to take her with me to New York and worse, that I felt guilty for kissing Amy while I was there. Can you even believe it, Kip Weiler feeling guilty for kissing another woman? It was my ex-wife, for fuck’s sake, and it wasn’t like I initiated it. Compared to some of the Kipster’s past antics, kissing Amy was like an act of atonement. Still, it felt like a betrayal. I’d never understood what that word meant before now, but I knew it wasn’t the kiss that was the betrayal. It was the way I reacted to hearing Amy’s voice on the phone, the way I got hard at the brush of her hand against my cheek.

I came around to see that it wasn’t all me, that Renee had a little residual anger and resentment over my not taking her with me. Probably more than a little. But when I tried to discuss it with her, she either denied it or put the onus on me. “It’s in your head,” she’d say and give me a dismissive kiss. Whether it was her or me or both of us, at least I got to a point where it made some sense. None of that, though, could explain away Jim’s behavior.

Jim’s I-know-all-about-you-Kip-Weiler smile made an unwelcome comeback. I can’t say that I liked it either, not for a second. I wasn’t sure what had caused him to start flashing it again. I was pretty certain he hadn’t noticed me pilfer the Smith amp; Wesson before I left for New York, and I made quick work of slipping it back into the Colonel’s duffel bag the first chance I got. But even if he knew I’d nicked the.38, I couldn’t really see him getting too bent out of shape over it. In fact, given the basics of Brixton logic, he should have been proud of me. Of course, he might have been a little less proud had he an inkling of how close I’d come to getting into a gunfight with an off-duty cop. But it was more than just his smile that caught me off guard.

When we got up into the woods that Monday, he had some unexpected news for me that was more unwelcome than his smile.

“Time to move up to a real weapon,” he said, handing me the.45 Browning. “You’re good with the.38. Better than I thought you’d be. Let’s see what you can do with this.”

I wasn’t ready. I was barely used to the.38. I’d fired the Browning a few times over the last several months with very mixed results. It was a lot of gun for me. Even with sissy loads in the clip, it had wicked kickback. Jim was great with it, but he was great with anything he put in his hand. And if what Jim had said before I left was still the plan, I was about to step into the chapel wearing only a vest for protection, with an unfamiliar gun in my hand.

“But I haven’t really gotten good with the.38 yet.”

“Modesty doesn’t sound right coming out of your mouth, Kip. You were good enough with it. Sometimes good enough is good enough. It’s time to move on.”

“Says who?”

I saw something in his eyes and in the shape of his lips that looked more cruel than wounded, but he caught himself.

“You know how it is,” he said. “This isn’t a democracy. Things get decided for you when we shoot in the chapel. You just have to trust we know what we’re doing. We’ve been right so far, haven’t we? Someday you’ll be deciding things for yourself. Just not yet. I thought you understood that for us the chapel is life and we need the rules and rituals. It’s what separates us from each other and from the rest of the world. I get that it isn’t your whole world and that someday you might leave and not come back, but you can’t be treated specially or it takes the meaning away for the rest of us.”

He kept saying we and us, but it felt an awful lot like the decisions were his and his alone. I mean, fuck, I was already edgy enough about shooting with only a vest and this sudden shift in weapon gave me no comfort at all. Nor was I reassured by his vague promise of future choice. I’d have to live long enough to exercise that franchise.

Jim saw the apprehension on my face and was quick to reassure me. “Don’t worry about it, Kip. I’ll be in there with you and I won’t let you kill me. You’ll be fine like you always are.”

I was glad he was so sure because I wasn’t. After seeing him clip the maintenance guy in the arm, my faith in Jim’s guarantees had been shaken a bit. So I took our practice sessions in the woods a little more seriously. They became a lot more businesslike and a lot less fun. Still, the potential danger of it gave me some wicked rushes.

The most unnerving moment since coming back to Brixton came in the dark and quiet of my bedroom. It was Friday night. Renee and I had just finished fucking our brains out. We were just lying there in the dark, me staring up at the ceiling, Renee still shuddering slightly. Soon she’d get up, go into the shower, and I’d follow. But that Friday night, Renee didn’t immediately get up to shower and her shudders weren’t the quiet little aftershocks of orgasm. She rolled over to face me. She was crying, her tears pouring onto the bed. I reached out to hold her, but she slapped my arms away.

“What is it?”

She said, “I love you and I know you don’t love me.”

I wanted to lie to her. It would have been hard not to want to lie to her, even for the Kipster, but I couldn’t. “Being with you these last few months has been wonderful. Our time together has been the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had, but I don’t suppose that’s love. I understand that that’s not enough for you.”

“Kip, please go back to New York. Tonight. Right now! I’ll send your things after you. Just get in your car and go before it’s too late.”

“Too late?”

I reached out for her again, but she was already rolling out of bed, heading for the shower. I stumbled after her, but she’d locked the bathroom door. Eventually, I went back to bed and passed out.

When I woke up early Saturday morning, she was gone. Renee hadn’t packed up her things or left a note. It wasn’t anything so dramatic as all that. By the next day, by the time I returned from my morning run with Jim, she was back. I tried asking her about what she’d said, about my leaving before it was too late, but she acted as if I were mad, that I must’ve dreamed it. I might have very well been mad. Still, I hadn’t dreamed it.

Twenty-Eight

Terrible Twos

More had changed than the shifts in the tide among Renee, Jim, and me. Gun Church had taken a dark turn. Whether it was playing Cutthroat, Fox Hunt, my trip to New York, or the need to self-destruct, I couldn’t say. Maybe the fear over having gotten the deal and the need to actually deliver a manuscript had pushed me over the line.

McGuinn’s notebook was filled with bomb diagrams, drawings of booby traps, plans for ambushes. There