Gun Church

“Believe me, that is succinct,” I said, sipping my coffee. “Everything has changed. Let’s walk.”

“Walk? You used to take a cab to go to the bathroom. Do you have a fever? What have you done with my ex-husband and who are you?”

“Cut it out, Amy.”

“Fine.”

“I even run these days. Well, not for the last month, but I’m getting back to it this week.”

“Not if it keeps snowing like this you’re not.”

We’d both heard the forecast for a lot of snow, but I guess we both sensed that we needed to get this first get-together over with as soon as we could. It was easy to ignore the snow before it started falling. Now, it was fairly impossible to ignore.

We turned south toward Tribeca, snow falling pretty heavily as we walked. There was already more snow on the sidewalk than the combined snowfall in Brixton over the last year. New York City is beautiful in the snow, but it’s a very transient beauty. Nothing stays pure very long in the city once it touches down.

“That night at the Algonquin, when you just showed up like that, what was that about?” I asked.

“I miss you. I’ve missed you.”

“Ain’t memory grand, how time sands off the bitter edges? But you couldn’t miss the Kipster, not really. In the beginning of us, I acted like a sex- and drug-addicted fool because that’s who I was. At the end, I was doing it to hurt you, to make you push me away.”

“I know.”

“So, I don’t get it. I get why you dumped my ass. Best thing, really, but why marry Peter fucking Moreland?”

“I married Peter for several reasons, all good ones, I thought at the time, but none of them having to do with love. He was stable. He understood my work and-”

“-he wasn’t me.”

“Exactly,” she confessed. “He wasn’t you. I married him to punish you.”

“Yeah, and how did that work out?”

“Somebody got punished.”

“Not somebody, everybody.”

She stopped in her tracks, playfully pulling my coat sleeve so that I’d turn to face her. “Okay, this is the last time I’m going to ask: What have you done with my ex-husband?”

“I told you, everything’s changed. Weird thing is, most of it happened in the last few months. I got straight a long time ago, after my second trip to rehab. But I hadn’t really started exorcising the Kipster until about a year ago. I finally got sick of all my old bullshit. In Brixton, I’d had a long series of one-night stands and loveless affairs just like at all the other schools. I had this one terrible affair with a colleague named Janice Nadir. One afternoon, we were lying around in bed in one of those motel rooms with mirrors on the ceiling and I was staring up at myself. I was thinking about you, wondering what you would think of me there doing what the Kipster always did.”

“And what did I think?”

“You were sorely disappointed, but not surprised. I imagined you shaking your head and saying, ‘Same old Kipster.’ I got this notion in my head that I wanted to earn back your respect whether or not you ever knew about it. I didn’t think I would ever write again, but I thought I could at least start acting like a grownup. Your unknowing respect became the central theme of my boring life in Nowheresville.”

Amy stepped close to me, slowly worked her arms around me, and rested her head on the wet, snow- covered shoulder of my jacket. She let her tea fall to the ground. I dropped my coffee too. We didn’t kiss. I didn’t take off her cap and stroke her hair. She didn’t brush her hand against my cheek. We didn’t even move much. We just stood there like that, her head on my shoulder, ten years of hurt and longing condensed into a silent, snow- covered moment on the street.

Then a strange voice broke the trance. “You guys wanna go get a room or something?”

The first thing I saw when I turned around was his badge. The first thing he saw was the panic in my eyes.

“Yo, buddy, relax,” he said. “I was only busting your chops.”

“Sorry, officer. You startled me.”

“No problem, but I think you and your girlfriend better get going anyways unless you wanna become Mr. and Mrs. Snowman. It’s coming down pretty good. S’posed to get at least two feet.”

“Thanks.”

“And you might wanna pick up these cups. Love ain’t an excuse for littering. You know what I mean?” He winked as he walked past us. “Have a nice day.”

We watched his dark blue figure disappear into the snow. Finally breaking our embrace, Amy scooped up the cups and threw them in the corner trash basket. I used those few seconds to get my heart out of my throat. My breathing was almost normal when Amy got back to me, but she wasn’t fooled.

“What was that about, Kip? You nearly jumped out of your skin when you saw the cop. I could feel your heart pounding through your coat. You’re not carrying, are you?”

Carrying? I panicked again, then realized she was talking about drugs, not guns.

“I told you, I’ve been clean for a long time.”

“Then what? You can’t tell me that reaction was nothing. You were scared to death.”

See, about a month ago, I killed a man. Shot the motherfucker right through his heart in front of witnesses.

No, somehow I didn’t think this was the appropriate time or the place for that confession, but I had to tell her something.

“This sheriff’s deputy in Brixton used to harass the shit out of me because I slept with a woman he was hot for. It was years ago and it didn’t last, but he could never let it go. So when he found out I was moving back here, he promised to make sure the bullshit would follow me north.”

“Same old Kip. At least you’re consistent.”

That cut me, deep. I don’t know what I expected her to say. I told her a lie I knew she would believe and she did, without question. I realized then it was going to take more than her missing me or one embrace to make her see the Kipster was really dead. She did, however, seem to read the hurt in my eyes. I think she apologized. Her mouth was moving and she hung her head slightly, but I was too distracted to hear her. My focus had already shifted elsewhere.

Just like that night at the Algonquin, I heard a noise I thought I recognized. Jim’s truck. I was sure I heard Jim’s truck. I’d been in that old pickup nearly every day for four months and knew its idiosyncrasies like I knew my own. Its exhaust system had come loose. Jim had jerry-rigged a clamp by twisting together a few wire hangers, looping the hangers around the pipe leading to the muffler, and then hooking the makeshift clamp over the rear axle. When the truck accelerated quickly, the pipe kind of rattled and scraped against the hangers. I snapped my head around, but the snow was now coming down in blinding, wind-whipped sheets. I caught a glimpse of a taillight disappearing around a corner, the snow turning its glow from red to pink.

Was it Jim’s taillight? Of course not. Just like with the Mabry kid’s death, it was the Kipster’s narcissism rearing its ugly head once more for old times’ sake. Amy and I were right by the Holland Tunnel and even in a snowstorm, thousands of cars poured out of its exits, spilling onto the cobblestoned Tribeca streets. I was already off balance from being with Amy, from holding her again, and I was still reeling from the scare I got from the cop. I didn’t know that I would ever be able to see a cop again without going into full fight or flight, or thinking of Stan Petrovic’s body moldering in a grave somewhere in the backwoods of Brixton.

“Kip, are you all right?” Amy asked, pulling me along.

“I should have worn a hat.”

“Come on, my studio’s only three blocks away.”

But even as we walked towards Amy’s warm, dry studio and all the possibilities it had to offer, I could not help but play Lot’s wife and look behind me.