To Be With You, Doing Crazy
by Vincent Yu
They were running out of everything—gas, food, time. Everything but memory. They were weary bandits, drawing their little circuit through Massachusetts and Connecticut and Rhode Island. Dan drove on most days, with Kelly in the passenger seat, the windows down in their smoke-smelling Corolla, the wind slapping against their skin.
Kelly sometimes snared at his attention, tickling his arm (Dan was helplessly ticklish), grabbing his crotch. And Dan would respond by swerving in wide-berthed figure-eights, sending the car juking across the median, and once, into oncoming traffic—a big eighteen-wheeler barreling towards them, the blare of its horn so much louder when it was coming right at you. They stopped messing around after that.
The days grew shorter, drawing in their wake a reliable sleeve of bright red-orange across the sylvan horizon. The cold pushed down on them like a hydraulic press. They woke up one morning while it was still dark, and, staring at their phones, realized daylight savings time must have passed.
“We don’t need to keep going,” Kelly said.
“We already decided. There’s nothing else to do.”
They’d done their test run at a flower shop (a flower shop!) that sold bouquets of pink peonies and wide-blooming hydrangeas and ripe, velvet-textured tulips in crinkly plastic casings. The flower shop was where all the town’s older ladies worked, where the local kids placed orders for corsages and boutonnieres before homecoming and prom. It was at the edge of a potholed lot, beside a bank and a coffee shop.
They’d parked the car close by and worn handkerchiefs around their faces and beanies over their heads. They’d adopted gruff, poorly-disguised voices. They’d held kitchen knives that jolted in their hands, as if electrified, stabbing in the air.
“Give us the money! Give it! Give it!”
And the poor old woman at the register had nearly fainted right then and there, her arms flabby and flailing as she gathered the money from the rattling till, the skin around her eyes turning red.
“Hurry!” Dan said. “Bitch!”
He was shocked at his own capacity for cruelty. Shocked at how exciting it was to him, hearing the woman whimper and sob, watching her bite her lip so hard that a faint bead-trail of red reached her chin, glimpsing the stream of urine that passed down her leg and exited her floral dress in fat pitter-patters upon the linoleum floor.
How suddenly life could change. How decades of its passing might be reduced to something pea-sized, insignificant, beside the thundering moment of consequence that came to bear upon a warm autumn afternoon.
They counted the total when they were far enough away. Forty-three dollars. Hardly enough to change anything. But the world was suddenly reborn. There came the bloody corona of the setting sun, the tufted clouds like rinds of fat floating towards the horizon.
He felt like a wolf, like a predator.
“That was incredible,” Kelly said, pulling off his beanie, shaking down his long hair and flooding the smoky interior with the smell of their shampoo.
In the adrenaline-soaked comedown, Dan noticed a light spritz of fragrance.
“Why did you wear that?”
“What?”
“The aftershave.”
“If we died, I wanted to smell nice.”
Kelly sometimes snared at his attention, tickling his arm (Dan was helplessly ticklish), grabbing his crotch. And Dan would respond by swerving in wide-berthed figure-eights, sending the car juking across the median, and once, into oncoming traffic—a big eighteen-wheeler barreling towards them, the blare of its horn so much louder when it was coming right at you. They stopped messing around after that.
The days grew shorter, drawing in their wake a reliable sleeve of bright red-orange across the sylvan horizon. The cold pushed down on them like a hydraulic press. They woke up one morning while it was still dark, and, staring at their phones, realized daylight savings time must have passed.
“We don’t need to keep going,” Kelly said.
“We already decided. There’s nothing else to do.”
They’d done their test run at a flower shop (a flower shop!) that sold bouquets of pink peonies and wide-blooming hydrangeas and ripe, velvet-textured tulips in crinkly plastic casings. The flower shop was where all the town’s older ladies worked, where the local kids placed orders for corsages and boutonnieres before homecoming and prom. It was at the edge of a potholed lot, beside a bank and a coffee shop.
They’d parked the car close by and worn handkerchiefs around their faces and beanies over their heads. They’d adopted gruff, poorly-disguised voices. They’d held kitchen knives that jolted in their hands, as if electrified, stabbing in the air.
“Give us the money! Give it! Give it!”
And the poor old woman at the register had nearly fainted right then and there, her arms flabby and flailing as she gathered the money from the rattling till, the skin around her eyes turning red.
“Hurry!” Dan said. “Bitch!”
He was shocked at his own capacity for cruelty. Shocked at how exciting it was to him, hearing the woman whimper and sob, watching her bite her lip so hard that a faint bead-trail of red reached her chin, glimpsing the stream of urine that passed down her leg and exited her floral dress in fat pitter-patters upon the linoleum floor.
How suddenly life could change. How decades of its passing might be reduced to something pea-sized, insignificant, beside the thundering moment of consequence that came to bear upon a warm autumn afternoon.
They counted the total when they were far enough away. Forty-three dollars. Hardly enough to change anything. But the world was suddenly reborn. There came the bloody corona of the setting sun, the tufted clouds like rinds of fat floating towards the horizon.
He felt like a wolf, like a predator.
“That was incredible,” Kelly said, pulling off his beanie, shaking down his long hair and flooding the smoky interior with the smell of their shampoo.
In the adrenaline-soaked comedown, Dan noticed a light spritz of fragrance.
“Why did you wear that?”
“What?”
“The aftershave.”
“If we died, I wanted to smell nice.”
*
They’d met in college, both newly out. They were defensive at first—by instinct—like two boxers trading jabs, sizing up the other’s seriousness, testing the ginger range of feeling. Until they found that time spent together was irresistible.
They made love, they spoke of their childhoods, they met each other’s friends, they found miraculous ways of fitting together. They took jobs, they followed rules. They fought, they recovered, they fucked. They had a house at one point, on a nice road in the nice town whose flower shop they would later rob. They considered children. They did well in their jobs. They came to life through each other.
They went to Señor Brooklyn and got their shots, took their tests—the both of them, and then Kelly alone. Kelly took follow-up tests, many more of them, until it became clear that there was something the matter with him, more serious than anything they could have feared. Something beyond imagination.
“It doesn’t look great,” Señor Brooklyn said.
They’d made jokes up until now about their doctor, who was a tan, handsome man in middle age, with a mustache and no ring and a generous ass. Señor Brooklyn. Like Carlos Danger, but far better qualified.
“It’s everywhere. I’m sorry. It’s like shrapnel.”
Well. No more jokes.
They drove home from that final appointment in thunderous silence along the atherosclerotic freeway, as orange light passed through the crooked jawline of the city.
“I’m sorry,” Dan said first, because there was nothing else for it. Nothing but the staticky consolations of the radio, the fumigated late-summer breeze, the sun-faded billboards advertising personal injury lawyers and the local hospital system’s state-of-the-art cancer center.
“Well. I guess that rules out a threesome with Señor Brooklyn,” Kelly said.
They made love, they spoke of their childhoods, they met each other’s friends, they found miraculous ways of fitting together. They took jobs, they followed rules. They fought, they recovered, they fucked. They had a house at one point, on a nice road in the nice town whose flower shop they would later rob. They considered children. They did well in their jobs. They came to life through each other.
They went to Señor Brooklyn and got their shots, took their tests—the both of them, and then Kelly alone. Kelly took follow-up tests, many more of them, until it became clear that there was something the matter with him, more serious than anything they could have feared. Something beyond imagination.
“It doesn’t look great,” Señor Brooklyn said.
They’d made jokes up until now about their doctor, who was a tan, handsome man in middle age, with a mustache and no ring and a generous ass. Señor Brooklyn. Like Carlos Danger, but far better qualified.
“It’s everywhere. I’m sorry. It’s like shrapnel.”
Well. No more jokes.
They drove home from that final appointment in thunderous silence along the atherosclerotic freeway, as orange light passed through the crooked jawline of the city.
“I’m sorry,” Dan said first, because there was nothing else for it. Nothing but the staticky consolations of the radio, the fumigated late-summer breeze, the sun-faded billboards advertising personal injury lawyers and the local hospital system’s state-of-the-art cancer center.
“Well. I guess that rules out a threesome with Señor Brooklyn,” Kelly said.
*
The next few days elapsed in a haze of incredulity. Each passing sensation, each casual recollection, became part of a cascade that led irrevocably towards decay and finitude.
Yawn, breath, breathing, death. Desk, elbow, bone, death. It was all a ghastly torrent of rediscovery. The inchoate scaffolding of their lives blasted with furnace air from the grinding of the universe. They were like full-grown toddlers, entering a world that remade itself with each step.
“I want to start living, now,” Kelly said, finally, one afternoon.
“How?”
“I want to be as selfish as a person can be. I want to do every possible selfish thing. I want to die by collapsing into myself, beneath the weight of my greed.”
Dan nodded. Kelly had always liked a bit of drama. Some theater to get the heart pumping.
So they quit their jobs. They sold the house, pawned off all but their most basic possessions. They left the nice town with the flower shop and moved to the adjacent city, into an apartment on the twelfth floor of a poorly-lit, poorly-ventilated building.
They found a used car on Craigslist and purchased it from a man who wanted to complete the transaction in the parking lot behind a mattress shop.
“Sounds safe,” Kelly said.
“We can still back out.”
“No, I want to meet him. It could be useful.”
They rendezvoused on a humid afternoon, the lot protruding with hillocks of crabgrass and dandelions. The car seller was there early. He had a fat wad of chewing tobacco tucked dribblingly into his bottom lip.
“Let’s say,” Dan faltered. “Let’s say I also need to get multiple sets of plates.”
The man guffawed. He smelled of burnt rubber and smoke. “That’ll cost you.”
“Fine.”
He spat a fat glob of brown upon the burst asphalt. “I’ll need a month or so.”
“Sure. Fine.”
It was all fine, these risks. All was ripe to jettison, now that they lived in an insistent present, now that each moment was its own mother and executioner.
And it helped that they had few relationships from which to extract themselves: Kelly’s parents were long dead, and had left him and his estranged sister a decently-sized nest egg split evenly down the middle. Dan was the only child of parents who’d moved back to China once he graduated high school.
“I guess I want revenge,” Kelly said one evening.
“Against who?”
“The world, maybe. I want revenge for playing by the rules and getting fucked over, still.”
“I don’t know if you can exact revenge on that kind of scale.”
“Well then I want some kind of restorative justice. I want to be able to do this, is what I’m saying. I’ve always wondered. Just—the feeling, you know? Something really bad. Something that selfish.”
He could feel the shiver of Kelly’s body, always thin, beside him.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Dan pressed himself in closer. He wished he could gather him up, that he might scoop the suffering out of him. He wished that there were a zero sum to the world’s capacity for ugliness, and that a person might be able to endure a certain quantity of horror in exchange for some guaranteed portion of pale and gorgeous beauty.
“Wait. I’m hot now.”
At the very least, he wished he could modulate the fucking temperature to his love’s satisfaction. But the apartment radiator was an irascible opponent, utterly incapable of constancy. It rebelled against the cold evening in great, flaming bursts, then purred shut and died.
He considered calling the landlord, but Kelly shook his head. “We won’t be here much longer.”
Kelly wanted to live eighty years in the months he had left. He wanted it all condensed, the flavor of it, intense and burning and so thickly concentrated that the distinct sensations, the feelings of happy-angry-sad-lusty, were all intermingled and indistinguishable. Like sucking on a cartridge of printer ink, like ingesting a fat handful of caviar.
On the stiff, cream carpet they drew plans. They settled on vague routes and parceled out their savings. They tested voices on each other and burst into laughter. They set up ground rules: to never hit a place with more than one witness, to never take more than a hundred dollars, to never excessively injure anyone.
“Maybe they’ll be able to tell you’re Asian,” Kelly said. “Just from the eyes.”
“Maybe fuck you.”
“I’m just saying. Might make it easier for police. Who ever heard of an Asian robber?”
Dan thought for some reason of his parents—distant, inscrutable people. The two of them like one single, silent, fused being. They could go entire afternoons without speaking to one another. The day he came out to them, his mother had merely nodded, while his father placed a hand on his shoulder.
“I always knew you had a thing for bad boys,” he grinned at Kelly, who was suddenly asleep. His snores purring towards the cosmos.
Yawn, breath, breathing, death. Desk, elbow, bone, death. It was all a ghastly torrent of rediscovery. The inchoate scaffolding of their lives blasted with furnace air from the grinding of the universe. They were like full-grown toddlers, entering a world that remade itself with each step.
“I want to start living, now,” Kelly said, finally, one afternoon.
“How?”
“I want to be as selfish as a person can be. I want to do every possible selfish thing. I want to die by collapsing into myself, beneath the weight of my greed.”
Dan nodded. Kelly had always liked a bit of drama. Some theater to get the heart pumping.
So they quit their jobs. They sold the house, pawned off all but their most basic possessions. They left the nice town with the flower shop and moved to the adjacent city, into an apartment on the twelfth floor of a poorly-lit, poorly-ventilated building.
They found a used car on Craigslist and purchased it from a man who wanted to complete the transaction in the parking lot behind a mattress shop.
“Sounds safe,” Kelly said.
“We can still back out.”
“No, I want to meet him. It could be useful.”
They rendezvoused on a humid afternoon, the lot protruding with hillocks of crabgrass and dandelions. The car seller was there early. He had a fat wad of chewing tobacco tucked dribblingly into his bottom lip.
“Let’s say,” Dan faltered. “Let’s say I also need to get multiple sets of plates.”
The man guffawed. He smelled of burnt rubber and smoke. “That’ll cost you.”
“Fine.”
He spat a fat glob of brown upon the burst asphalt. “I’ll need a month or so.”
“Sure. Fine.”
It was all fine, these risks. All was ripe to jettison, now that they lived in an insistent present, now that each moment was its own mother and executioner.
And it helped that they had few relationships from which to extract themselves: Kelly’s parents were long dead, and had left him and his estranged sister a decently-sized nest egg split evenly down the middle. Dan was the only child of parents who’d moved back to China once he graduated high school.
“I guess I want revenge,” Kelly said one evening.
“Against who?”
“The world, maybe. I want revenge for playing by the rules and getting fucked over, still.”
“I don’t know if you can exact revenge on that kind of scale.”
“Well then I want some kind of restorative justice. I want to be able to do this, is what I’m saying. I’ve always wondered. Just—the feeling, you know? Something really bad. Something that selfish.”
He could feel the shiver of Kelly’s body, always thin, beside him.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Dan pressed himself in closer. He wished he could gather him up, that he might scoop the suffering out of him. He wished that there were a zero sum to the world’s capacity for ugliness, and that a person might be able to endure a certain quantity of horror in exchange for some guaranteed portion of pale and gorgeous beauty.
“Wait. I’m hot now.”
At the very least, he wished he could modulate the fucking temperature to his love’s satisfaction. But the apartment radiator was an irascible opponent, utterly incapable of constancy. It rebelled against the cold evening in great, flaming bursts, then purred shut and died.
He considered calling the landlord, but Kelly shook his head. “We won’t be here much longer.”
Kelly wanted to live eighty years in the months he had left. He wanted it all condensed, the flavor of it, intense and burning and so thickly concentrated that the distinct sensations, the feelings of happy-angry-sad-lusty, were all intermingled and indistinguishable. Like sucking on a cartridge of printer ink, like ingesting a fat handful of caviar.
On the stiff, cream carpet they drew plans. They settled on vague routes and parceled out their savings. They tested voices on each other and burst into laughter. They set up ground rules: to never hit a place with more than one witness, to never take more than a hundred dollars, to never excessively injure anyone.
“Maybe they’ll be able to tell you’re Asian,” Kelly said. “Just from the eyes.”
“Maybe fuck you.”
“I’m just saying. Might make it easier for police. Who ever heard of an Asian robber?”
Dan thought for some reason of his parents—distant, inscrutable people. The two of them like one single, silent, fused being. They could go entire afternoons without speaking to one another. The day he came out to them, his mother had merely nodded, while his father placed a hand on his shoulder.
“I always knew you had a thing for bad boys,” he grinned at Kelly, who was suddenly asleep. His snores purring towards the cosmos.
*
Time barreled forward, giving the occasional squirm of hope, as when Dan shut his eyes around nighttime and dozed for an indeterminate while and awoke to find it still dark out, the evening still abounding with the winged filigree of city-sounds, as if no time at all had passed.
He thought that if he experienced enough of these moments he might begin collecting evidence of temporal inconsistency, just enough to foster hope.
Dan had never believed strictly in karma, but the same part of him that was capable of love, that saw clouds and trees in a sheet of paper, that appreciated symmetry and open space and the breath-catching image of some gentle thing enveloped in pure enormity, had always believed that good people had no reason to expect catastrophe.
While lying low in their apartment, they saw a brief news item about the flower shop robbery (“Quick. Turn it up! Not too loud!”). The report listed no identifying features, no leads or suspects.
“The two thieves stole a whopping fifty dollars in cash. Officials are uncertain why they targeted this specific establishment, when there was a bank only a few feet away.”
And the two of them cackling, then roaring, with laughter. Caught up in their giddiness, falling into each other, making love, until Kelly began to cry.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“No matter what, know that I love you,” Kelly said. “And if I start to act strange, if I start acting unlike myself, just, know that this is what I want. To be with you, doing crazy shit.”
He thought that if he experienced enough of these moments he might begin collecting evidence of temporal inconsistency, just enough to foster hope.
Dan had never believed strictly in karma, but the same part of him that was capable of love, that saw clouds and trees in a sheet of paper, that appreciated symmetry and open space and the breath-catching image of some gentle thing enveloped in pure enormity, had always believed that good people had no reason to expect catastrophe.
While lying low in their apartment, they saw a brief news item about the flower shop robbery (“Quick. Turn it up! Not too loud!”). The report listed no identifying features, no leads or suspects.
“The two thieves stole a whopping fifty dollars in cash. Officials are uncertain why they targeted this specific establishment, when there was a bank only a few feet away.”
And the two of them cackling, then roaring, with laughter. Caught up in their giddiness, falling into each other, making love, until Kelly began to cry.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“No matter what, know that I love you,” Kelly said. “And if I start to act strange, if I start acting unlike myself, just, know that this is what I want. To be with you, doing crazy shit.”
*
They took their old kitchen knives, their set of throwaway license plates. They took to the billowing road, Donnie and Clyde, their muscular hearts exploding open and closed.
“I don’t want people to call me brave,” Kelly said one afternoon. “It’s just a different shade of pity. There’s nothing brave about persisting in the face of something unavoidable.”
Dan frowned. “Well there’s still the manner in which you endure it. There’s a selflessness to it.”
“Well then I want to be a coward. I want to be entirely self-centered. And then I want to be forgotten.”
East along the Mass Pike, forty miles from their starting point, they pulled into a gas station convenience store and snapped on their blue nitrile gloves. They tied their handkerchiefs around their faces and slipped beanies atop their heads.
The shop’s windows were splattered with dirt and mud and soap scum, its door jangled limply as they walked in and rushed the old man behind the counter.
“Give us your money!” Dan barked, brandishing the knife, slashing the air before him to ribbons, as the elderly man laughed—laughed—behind his register.
“Son. Don’t try.” His accent had a playful lilt, full of challenge and disbelief.
Dan looked at Kelly, whose bun protruded lumpily from the back of his head. Eyes wide with uncertainty.
“Just don’t,” the man said. “It’s not worth it. Trust me.”
Years seemed to pass before they both finally backed away, tasting something bitter, like humiliation, at the backs of their throats. They fled the shop, hearing the derisive jingle of the door, watching the leering man at the register, and returned to their car.
They bore east in silence. The world felt full of latency and delays. It seemed to make itself in the wake of their passing through it. The roads were flanked for miles by trees bereft of leaves, the bare network of their branches so intricate that they resembled upright tumbleweeds.
Only when the GPS chirped its next set of instructions, to turn onto Route 146, did Kelly finally speak:
“Let’s stop,” he said.
“What? Already?”
“I was stupid. I wanted to be selfish towards everyone but you. And instead it’s you—you have to bear it all. I was too stupid to see at first.”
Dan looked at him. His stars, his sweet. “I can handle being mocked by convenience store owners.”
“You know what I mean. I don’t want you to ruin your life on my account.”
“But I wish you’d let me.”
They drove along a stretch of mountainous highway that passed over tremulous waves of trees blazing orange. They were stunned by the violent beauty of it, the sensation of being brought back to a simple, savage time. To be sharing a vision with people long dead.
“We’ll need a gun,” Dan said. “Not to actually use. Just to threaten with. I want people to take us seriously. I want to feel the fear.”
“Are you just going to ignore what I said?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind.”
Kelly snarled and pulled off his beanie. His lustrous hair tumbled down his shoulders, so immaculate, so heart-bruising and beautiful. It was all Dan could do not to weep. The love of his life, shot through with death. A shell exploding in slow motion, snaring and mangling its way through all that gentle viscera.
Your heart was always playing tricks on you, he thought. Tricks involving beautiful things. Your heart made you believe that something beautiful had a greater claim to eternity. Or perhaps that was merely what beauty was—the illusion of lastingness. Perhaps you were supposed to know better.
“I want this, too,” Dan said. “I want this just as much as you do. So please don’t feel bad.”
They stopped at diners with enormous folding plastic menus that served the same array of cheese omelets and steak sandwiches and chicken tenders. They ordered the greasiest items they could find. They ate with no heed for the future.
He took time to wonder in the mornings, when Kelly was stranded by exhaustion and he was anxious with the weight of grief, what life might be like when he was alone.
Prison, probably. Although they were doing the smart thing: striking in different states, and never enough to bring any serious resources to bear upon them. So maybe he could disappear for a bit, tumble like a blood cell along the arterial interstate, and resurface somewhere like California or Oregon. There was a chance, in doing this, that he might be able to kill the old self, the person who couldn’t possibly live without Kelly.
Dan remembered, as a child, once, seeing his parents make love. Their bedroom door was open a tiny crack, and he’d seen his father burrowed inside his mother, her neck arched, her face wracked with a look that was at once universal and traumatic. Their skin moonlit and pale-blue.
He remembered thinking how strange it seemed—the tender violence, the act of possession, that lay at the bottom of romance. How selfish it was, coming to life through someone else.
“I want to be buried in the ocean,” Kelly said suddenly, awake.
He turned. “What?”
“I want to walk into the water. I don’t want any fuss. I don’t want you to have to deal with my body, I don’t want you to see me dead.”
The trees outside their damp, boxy motel room were flushed with yellow and flickers of orange. The sun’s golden angle made morning seem like late afternoon.
“And what about me?”
“You’ll die at eighty. Your second husband will be so distraught he’ll have to drop out of college.”
They drove down single-lane roads separated from the forest by crimped, galvanized rails. They drove past abandoned construction lots and gaudy car dealerships, past crowded clapboard homes and paltry lawns guarded by loose chain link fencing that rattled against the wind.
They drove until they were tired or queasy or both and paid cash at cheap motels whose blankets were like soft cardboard. When they were sick of diner food, they ate bags of cheap snacks—big, sugary, salty, perfectly tasty, crunchy, handfuls of them, until they were disgusted with themselves.
“At least you aren’t losing your hair,” Dan said, one evening.
Kelly smirked. “I didn’t do any chemo, you idiot.”
“Oh. Right.”
They spoke about their lives as if they were debriefing, as if they were living in an epilogue.
“Did you ever cheat on me?” Kelly asked, passing him a low-quality joint they’d bought off a teenager in a parking lot.
“No. You?”
“Never.”
“What was the angriest you ever were at me?”
Dan knew right away. “You said my parents were shitty for having gone back to China. You said they were abandoning me. That they never really cared about me.”
Kelly closed his eyes and sighed. “I remember. I’m sorry.”
“You said that they were incapable of feeling normal emotions, if they were willing to do something like that.”
“Again, sorry.”
“The thing is, I was tempted to believe you. They had such a strange way of loving. It was so intense and private. Sometimes it didn’t feel like love at all, but it was. I felt it. I knew it was.”
“And when did you fall in love with me?”
Dan shrugged. He was hardly conscious of such things. Love was something he’d realized—a bulb that grew and flowered in him until it was ineludible, until it demanded air and sun and space. He was always catching up to his own feelings.
“We were just hanging out. We weren’t really doing anything. It was nighttime, it was cold. I was looking at you and I realized it.”
From outside their window came the clap of a car door, the rustle of garments. Someone else checking in.
“Isn’t it funny?” Kelly mumbled, nodding into the crook of his arm, pressing up close, his joints so sharp and pronounced.
“What?”
“Just, all the different things you can be, and not even be aware of.”
And then his light snores. As Dan stayed up, sensing the hundred moments that were about to reach their crises in him. Sick with dread and love and the inexorable tide of heartbreak.
“I don’t want people to call me brave,” Kelly said one afternoon. “It’s just a different shade of pity. There’s nothing brave about persisting in the face of something unavoidable.”
Dan frowned. “Well there’s still the manner in which you endure it. There’s a selflessness to it.”
“Well then I want to be a coward. I want to be entirely self-centered. And then I want to be forgotten.”
East along the Mass Pike, forty miles from their starting point, they pulled into a gas station convenience store and snapped on their blue nitrile gloves. They tied their handkerchiefs around their faces and slipped beanies atop their heads.
The shop’s windows were splattered with dirt and mud and soap scum, its door jangled limply as they walked in and rushed the old man behind the counter.
“Give us your money!” Dan barked, brandishing the knife, slashing the air before him to ribbons, as the elderly man laughed—laughed—behind his register.
“Son. Don’t try.” His accent had a playful lilt, full of challenge and disbelief.
Dan looked at Kelly, whose bun protruded lumpily from the back of his head. Eyes wide with uncertainty.
“Just don’t,” the man said. “It’s not worth it. Trust me.”
Years seemed to pass before they both finally backed away, tasting something bitter, like humiliation, at the backs of their throats. They fled the shop, hearing the derisive jingle of the door, watching the leering man at the register, and returned to their car.
They bore east in silence. The world felt full of latency and delays. It seemed to make itself in the wake of their passing through it. The roads were flanked for miles by trees bereft of leaves, the bare network of their branches so intricate that they resembled upright tumbleweeds.
Only when the GPS chirped its next set of instructions, to turn onto Route 146, did Kelly finally speak:
“Let’s stop,” he said.
“What? Already?”
“I was stupid. I wanted to be selfish towards everyone but you. And instead it’s you—you have to bear it all. I was too stupid to see at first.”
Dan looked at him. His stars, his sweet. “I can handle being mocked by convenience store owners.”
“You know what I mean. I don’t want you to ruin your life on my account.”
“But I wish you’d let me.”
They drove along a stretch of mountainous highway that passed over tremulous waves of trees blazing orange. They were stunned by the violent beauty of it, the sensation of being brought back to a simple, savage time. To be sharing a vision with people long dead.
“We’ll need a gun,” Dan said. “Not to actually use. Just to threaten with. I want people to take us seriously. I want to feel the fear.”
“Are you just going to ignore what I said?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind.”
Kelly snarled and pulled off his beanie. His lustrous hair tumbled down his shoulders, so immaculate, so heart-bruising and beautiful. It was all Dan could do not to weep. The love of his life, shot through with death. A shell exploding in slow motion, snaring and mangling its way through all that gentle viscera.
Your heart was always playing tricks on you, he thought. Tricks involving beautiful things. Your heart made you believe that something beautiful had a greater claim to eternity. Or perhaps that was merely what beauty was—the illusion of lastingness. Perhaps you were supposed to know better.
“I want this, too,” Dan said. “I want this just as much as you do. So please don’t feel bad.”
They stopped at diners with enormous folding plastic menus that served the same array of cheese omelets and steak sandwiches and chicken tenders. They ordered the greasiest items they could find. They ate with no heed for the future.
He took time to wonder in the mornings, when Kelly was stranded by exhaustion and he was anxious with the weight of grief, what life might be like when he was alone.
Prison, probably. Although they were doing the smart thing: striking in different states, and never enough to bring any serious resources to bear upon them. So maybe he could disappear for a bit, tumble like a blood cell along the arterial interstate, and resurface somewhere like California or Oregon. There was a chance, in doing this, that he might be able to kill the old self, the person who couldn’t possibly live without Kelly.
Dan remembered, as a child, once, seeing his parents make love. Their bedroom door was open a tiny crack, and he’d seen his father burrowed inside his mother, her neck arched, her face wracked with a look that was at once universal and traumatic. Their skin moonlit and pale-blue.
He remembered thinking how strange it seemed—the tender violence, the act of possession, that lay at the bottom of romance. How selfish it was, coming to life through someone else.
“I want to be buried in the ocean,” Kelly said suddenly, awake.
He turned. “What?”
“I want to walk into the water. I don’t want any fuss. I don’t want you to have to deal with my body, I don’t want you to see me dead.”
The trees outside their damp, boxy motel room were flushed with yellow and flickers of orange. The sun’s golden angle made morning seem like late afternoon.
“And what about me?”
“You’ll die at eighty. Your second husband will be so distraught he’ll have to drop out of college.”
They drove down single-lane roads separated from the forest by crimped, galvanized rails. They drove past abandoned construction lots and gaudy car dealerships, past crowded clapboard homes and paltry lawns guarded by loose chain link fencing that rattled against the wind.
They drove until they were tired or queasy or both and paid cash at cheap motels whose blankets were like soft cardboard. When they were sick of diner food, they ate bags of cheap snacks—big, sugary, salty, perfectly tasty, crunchy, handfuls of them, until they were disgusted with themselves.
“At least you aren’t losing your hair,” Dan said, one evening.
Kelly smirked. “I didn’t do any chemo, you idiot.”
“Oh. Right.”
They spoke about their lives as if they were debriefing, as if they were living in an epilogue.
“Did you ever cheat on me?” Kelly asked, passing him a low-quality joint they’d bought off a teenager in a parking lot.
“No. You?”
“Never.”
“What was the angriest you ever were at me?”
Dan knew right away. “You said my parents were shitty for having gone back to China. You said they were abandoning me. That they never really cared about me.”
Kelly closed his eyes and sighed. “I remember. I’m sorry.”
“You said that they were incapable of feeling normal emotions, if they were willing to do something like that.”
“Again, sorry.”
“The thing is, I was tempted to believe you. They had such a strange way of loving. It was so intense and private. Sometimes it didn’t feel like love at all, but it was. I felt it. I knew it was.”
“And when did you fall in love with me?”
Dan shrugged. He was hardly conscious of such things. Love was something he’d realized—a bulb that grew and flowered in him until it was ineludible, until it demanded air and sun and space. He was always catching up to his own feelings.
“We were just hanging out. We weren’t really doing anything. It was nighttime, it was cold. I was looking at you and I realized it.”
From outside their window came the clap of a car door, the rustle of garments. Someone else checking in.
“Isn’t it funny?” Kelly mumbled, nodding into the crook of his arm, pressing up close, his joints so sharp and pronounced.
“What?”
“Just, all the different things you can be, and not even be aware of.”
And then his light snores. As Dan stayed up, sensing the hundred moments that were about to reach their crises in him. Sick with dread and love and the inexorable tide of heartbreak.
*
They reached Providence. They drove through its bright, Bostonian city center.
They tried to go skating on the big outdoor ice rink, but were turned away for lack of a reservation (“I didn’t know this was the line for the fucking French Laundry!” Dan shouted at a fatigued security guard). They walked around the salt-scuffed, red-brick park that sat adjacent to a river that was still as snow.
They watched, at sunset, as a series of bonfires were lit across the water’s surface. A small crowd had appeared along the waterfront. They cheered as the lights went up.
“I guess Providence will have to be our Paris,” Kelly said.
Dan nodded, feeling Kelly’s head against his shoulder. The sharp, sebaceous smell of motel shampoo. Providence would be their Paris, New Haven would be their Ibiza. You bore what life gave you, and what it took away. He felt a warm, wet spot on his chest. Kelly’s head shaking.
“Oh God, I’m going to die.”
“Please. Baby.”
“I’m really, really going to die.”
“You won’t be missing out on much,” Dan said, gnashing his cheek, ceding his own composure. “After we finish all this.”
They tried to go skating on the big outdoor ice rink, but were turned away for lack of a reservation (“I didn’t know this was the line for the fucking French Laundry!” Dan shouted at a fatigued security guard). They walked around the salt-scuffed, red-brick park that sat adjacent to a river that was still as snow.
They watched, at sunset, as a series of bonfires were lit across the water’s surface. A small crowd had appeared along the waterfront. They cheered as the lights went up.
“I guess Providence will have to be our Paris,” Kelly said.
Dan nodded, feeling Kelly’s head against his shoulder. The sharp, sebaceous smell of motel shampoo. Providence would be their Paris, New Haven would be their Ibiza. You bore what life gave you, and what it took away. He felt a warm, wet spot on his chest. Kelly’s head shaking.
“Oh God, I’m going to die.”
“Please. Baby.”
“I’m really, really going to die.”
“You won’t be missing out on much,” Dan said, gnashing his cheek, ceding his own composure. “After we finish all this.”
*
They found an empty beach the next afternoon. It was cold and blustery, the sun well past its warming point. The sand was stiff and damp, like wet cement, with broken pieces of shell pressed into its surface, and the water so bright and beautiful it must have charged a thousand different tragedies merely to exist this way.
They held hands, they stood at the beach’s edge.
Dan wondered if they were truer to themselves, now. He wondered if standing alone before the water, with the wind through their fingers and the briny surf in their toes and the sun’s glinting across the choppy ocean made them any more authentic or capable of asserting their existence to the world.
Kelly was coughing. Seagulls circled above them like noisy, seafaring vultures. Dan looked at him, suddenly remembering.
“Don’t worry,” Kelly said. “It won’t be at this one. Not here. We should keep moving.”
They saw stately white houses so close to the water’s edge that spumes of ocean licked their clapboard sidings. They saw sheer, sediment-crusted cliffs that stared like grim faces over the water.
They would have gotten married. At dinner or something, one of them would have brought it up, and the other would have nodded, and they would have smirked at each other, at the casual familiarity between them.
“You would have had to wear red,” he said to Kelly. “I don’t think my parents would have come unless you wore red.”
“Does that make me the girl?”
“Just imagine me in a red suit.”
“Imagine me in one!”
They would have saved up enough money to adopt a kid. They would have filled out their days in one or another routine, would have watched television together and made love to each other and argued over petty things and wept and laughed and been bored (oh, so bored at times!). They would have come to life through their children.
They left the beach at sunset. They drove in the darkness, the road unfurling before them ten feet at a time.
“Hey look,” Kelly said. Something in the near distance.
They slowed down on approach. A deer was caught in a spasm of indecision, its face turned towards them, full of humanoid innocence. The road was empty. They stopped the car, bumped the horn, until it pranced back into the overgrowth.
They held hands, they stood at the beach’s edge.
Dan wondered if they were truer to themselves, now. He wondered if standing alone before the water, with the wind through their fingers and the briny surf in their toes and the sun’s glinting across the choppy ocean made them any more authentic or capable of asserting their existence to the world.
Kelly was coughing. Seagulls circled above them like noisy, seafaring vultures. Dan looked at him, suddenly remembering.
“Don’t worry,” Kelly said. “It won’t be at this one. Not here. We should keep moving.”
They saw stately white houses so close to the water’s edge that spumes of ocean licked their clapboard sidings. They saw sheer, sediment-crusted cliffs that stared like grim faces over the water.
They would have gotten married. At dinner or something, one of them would have brought it up, and the other would have nodded, and they would have smirked at each other, at the casual familiarity between them.
“You would have had to wear red,” he said to Kelly. “I don’t think my parents would have come unless you wore red.”
“Does that make me the girl?”
“Just imagine me in a red suit.”
“Imagine me in one!”
They would have saved up enough money to adopt a kid. They would have filled out their days in one or another routine, would have watched television together and made love to each other and argued over petty things and wept and laughed and been bored (oh, so bored at times!). They would have come to life through their children.
They left the beach at sunset. They drove in the darkness, the road unfurling before them ten feet at a time.
“Hey look,” Kelly said. Something in the near distance.
They slowed down on approach. A deer was caught in a spasm of indecision, its face turned towards them, full of humanoid innocence. The road was empty. They stopped the car, bumped the horn, until it pranced back into the overgrowth.
*
They drove past soaring rock faces pierced with sharp daggers of ice, past frozen caps of snow perched like wave foam. They saw schist outcroppings many miles away, distant screes at the bottom of some primordial tumble.
“Do you think people would still love each other if no one ever died?” Kelly asked.
“Well, love is supposed to be forever.”
“Forever in the face of certain death. I think, when you know you’re going to die, love is both a refuge and a revolt.”
They stopped at another gas station, just outside Connecticut, full of a wilder determination.
“I want to do it for real this time,” Dan said. “Like at the flower shop.”
Kelly nodded. “Fine.”
But the clerk was a gruff, bristly-mustached man who saw them right away, who reached beneath the table and produced a pistol—plain black, with a mottled grip.
And before he could stop himself, Dan lunged forth, his belly sliding across the counter, slashing the man’s arm, feeling the blade slide smoothly, unimpededly through the shirt fabric, guided by fat and sinews, and the blood that rushed through his head was of a piece with the thick, near-black river of it pouring from the man’s arm.
He took the gun. “Go! Go!” They ran out, the keys slippery in his fingers, his bloody handprints on the wheel.
They drove quickly, their breath making sails out of their handkerchiefs. He pulled over at the next rest stop and, with a clumsy screwdriver, changed the license plates.
Kelly was crying when he got back in the car.
“That was fucked up. We weren’t supposed to hurt anyone.”
“Kind of extenuating circumstances,” he said. “Shit. We forgot to take any money.”
“No. No. I definitely don’t want to do this anymore.”
“We have a gun now, though,” Dan said, feeling the surprising heaviness of it in his jacket pocket.
“I don’t want you to die.”
“Everyone dies.”
“I don’t want you to die because of me.” Kelly looked at him, full of entreaty. His gorgeous, cosmic eyes. The celestial depth of his pupils, the interstellar space webbed with veins. And the bloom of red around his nose and eyelids, their amniotic vulnerability.
“I want you—to please—imagine a life—beyond me,” Kelly said through hiccups.
It felt like a joke that a body capable of such miracles, such exquisite precision in its expression of feeling, was also capable of such betrayal. As if the instinct to persist were a storming locomotive borne along a weedy length of track, which was liable at any moment to dive back into a heap of ballast.
“There’s no life where you and I aren’t together,” Dan said.
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“This was what you said you wanted.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I know it’s selfish to do that, maybe it’s cowardly, but I’m telling you: I don’t want this anymore.”
“So then, what?” As the blood formed flakes on Dan’s dry, cracked skin.
“I go back to being a straightforward, brave dying person,” Kelly said. “And I know for certain that I’m leaving you behind, that I’m relinquishing an existence worth yearning for.”
They crossed the border into Connecticut in silence. They pulled into another motel parking lot, at an inlet off the freeway, and let the car idle. The evening was silent but for the neon drone of the “vacancy” sign and the distant, dying sibilation of insects.
Kelly coughed up a wet coin of blood in his hand.
“I want to try it at least once with a gun,” Dan said.
“What’s the matter with you? Seriously?”
The stars beyond them, pressed against a thick black sky, gave the illusion of flatness. A scatter of varying brilliance from which to imply billions of years’ worth of cosmic events.
“I want to be with you, doing crazy shit.”
“But I’ve told you—”
“—Nothing is going to happen to me. I’ll have a fucking gun. Nothing will happen. Please.”
They parked the car and walked in silence towards the dimly-lit motel office. A middle-aged desk clerk behind a glass partition gave them both flirty eyes as they checked in. When she slipped the key through the bottom slot she feathered her nails over Dan’s fingers.
They went to bed without speaking.
“Do you think people would still love each other if no one ever died?” Kelly asked.
“Well, love is supposed to be forever.”
“Forever in the face of certain death. I think, when you know you’re going to die, love is both a refuge and a revolt.”
They stopped at another gas station, just outside Connecticut, full of a wilder determination.
“I want to do it for real this time,” Dan said. “Like at the flower shop.”
Kelly nodded. “Fine.”
But the clerk was a gruff, bristly-mustached man who saw them right away, who reached beneath the table and produced a pistol—plain black, with a mottled grip.
And before he could stop himself, Dan lunged forth, his belly sliding across the counter, slashing the man’s arm, feeling the blade slide smoothly, unimpededly through the shirt fabric, guided by fat and sinews, and the blood that rushed through his head was of a piece with the thick, near-black river of it pouring from the man’s arm.
He took the gun. “Go! Go!” They ran out, the keys slippery in his fingers, his bloody handprints on the wheel.
They drove quickly, their breath making sails out of their handkerchiefs. He pulled over at the next rest stop and, with a clumsy screwdriver, changed the license plates.
Kelly was crying when he got back in the car.
“That was fucked up. We weren’t supposed to hurt anyone.”
“Kind of extenuating circumstances,” he said. “Shit. We forgot to take any money.”
“No. No. I definitely don’t want to do this anymore.”
“We have a gun now, though,” Dan said, feeling the surprising heaviness of it in his jacket pocket.
“I don’t want you to die.”
“Everyone dies.”
“I don’t want you to die because of me.” Kelly looked at him, full of entreaty. His gorgeous, cosmic eyes. The celestial depth of his pupils, the interstellar space webbed with veins. And the bloom of red around his nose and eyelids, their amniotic vulnerability.
“I want you—to please—imagine a life—beyond me,” Kelly said through hiccups.
It felt like a joke that a body capable of such miracles, such exquisite precision in its expression of feeling, was also capable of such betrayal. As if the instinct to persist were a storming locomotive borne along a weedy length of track, which was liable at any moment to dive back into a heap of ballast.
“There’s no life where you and I aren’t together,” Dan said.
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“This was what you said you wanted.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I know it’s selfish to do that, maybe it’s cowardly, but I’m telling you: I don’t want this anymore.”
“So then, what?” As the blood formed flakes on Dan’s dry, cracked skin.
“I go back to being a straightforward, brave dying person,” Kelly said. “And I know for certain that I’m leaving you behind, that I’m relinquishing an existence worth yearning for.”
They crossed the border into Connecticut in silence. They pulled into another motel parking lot, at an inlet off the freeway, and let the car idle. The evening was silent but for the neon drone of the “vacancy” sign and the distant, dying sibilation of insects.
Kelly coughed up a wet coin of blood in his hand.
“I want to try it at least once with a gun,” Dan said.
“What’s the matter with you? Seriously?”
The stars beyond them, pressed against a thick black sky, gave the illusion of flatness. A scatter of varying brilliance from which to imply billions of years’ worth of cosmic events.
“I want to be with you, doing crazy shit.”
“But I’ve told you—”
“—Nothing is going to happen to me. I’ll have a fucking gun. Nothing will happen. Please.”
They parked the car and walked in silence towards the dimly-lit motel office. A middle-aged desk clerk behind a glass partition gave them both flirty eyes as they checked in. When she slipped the key through the bottom slot she feathered her nails over Dan’s fingers.
They went to bed without speaking.
*
Kelly was waking up later and later, still exhausted. He was coughing harder, his voice growing hoarser. There was blood in his stool. They made love one night, and Dan was shocked at how easily he could be maneuvered, how suddenly pale and thin his legs were.
“I think we should find the closest beach,” Kelly said.
“No, no way. Not yet.”
His eyes lit up with disgust. “I don’t understand why you’re so obsessed with the original plan.”
Dan didn’t quite care to explain. He was angry at Kelly’s carelessness, angry at him for not realizing that behaving bravely made other people feel cowardly, and that behaving selflessly made those who loved you feel selfish.
Somewhere west along I-95, they saw a loose V of migratory birds cutting through the sky. One of them, at the tail of one leg, fell out of position and dove towards the distant, imperceptible shore. They followed its path, tumbling, see-sawing, caught up in the turbulence of its own plumage, until it disappeared in a puff of impact.
“I hope it didn’t know,” Kelly said. “I hope it had a heart attack and was already dead as it fell. Otherwise—otherwise, I can’t imagine.”
They stopped at a decrepit gas station just outside of New Haven. Brittle chunks of salt popped beneath their wheels as they pulled in.
“Shouldn’t you get rid of the ammo?” Kelly asked
Dan got out without acknowledging. He had the safety on. His finger was far from the trigger.
They burst in. The woman at the register reminded him of the one at the flower shop, but clad in a shabby corporate uniform, with sallow, smoker’s skin. Eyes enormous.
“Give us the money!” he bellowed.
She picked up a phone. He took out the gun. “Give it to us! Put the phone down!”
She looked terrifiedly at him, the phone shaking, her wrist gyroscopic. He shook the gun at her. “Put. It. Down!”
How could he have predicted it? That the woman would scramble over the counter, towards him? And that the gun would go off. That there would be an explosion, louder than anything he’d ever heard. A brutal, cosmic sundering. And an eruption of black smoke, the curl of it from the gun’s hot muzzle, the smell of metallic char, the entire world shuddering, his wrist sore and whiplashed, bright dots in his vision.
He shook his head, he blinked. He saw her fall back, dark purple erupting from her cheek, her blood pooling quickly in a hand shape upon the linoleum. Her eyes were fat, blank spheres, come to a spinning stop, like lottery balls.
“Go. Come on. Let’s go,” Kelly said, grabbing him, bursting out the door and nearly slipping on the wet, salted asphalt.
They drove for several seconds or hours. Dan turned into a scenic pull out and vomited. The contents were bitter and curdled. Half-digested junk food.
“We killed someone,” Kelly said.
“I killed someone.”
“I never wanted—I never wanted this.”
“She was old,” he said.
“We. Killed. Her!”
“I killed her. You didn’t do anything. None of this is your fault. It’s entirely mine.”
Yes, she was old, Dan thought. Very old. And on the heavier side. How much more life did she really have? Although why would someone so old and so heavy be working unless she had someone who depended on her? Or perhaps she, herself, had no one to depend on, in which case this was only a step or two away from a mercy killing, although who was he to decide these things? Who did he think he was? A bandit, a villain, chaos wrought human, a malignant little something spreading across the Northeast.
The high-pitched whine of silence, the sudden thudding of his heart in his ears, a telescoping gale of wind, and Kelly’s soft voice rushing back in. “You know, I suddenly feel a lot more at peace with dying.”
Dan snarled at him. “That is an incredibly fucked up thing to say.”
“I just mean, we have blood on our hands now.”
“NOT YOU! ME! I HAVE IT! JUST ME!”
They were quiet, driving somewhere nowhere. In the dark, sunny nonhour of a nonday’s collapse. And wasn’t this exactly what they’d asked for? An extremity of feeling that made them want to vomit? A lifetime of regret and shame and horror and love and fear and exultation packed to dying-star density, collapsing into themselves, into nothing?
They stopped at a particularly run-down motel and fell exhaustedly into a room that smelled of piss.
Dan was dismayed at how quickly it became morning, how bouts of unconsciousness were not subject to the sensation of time passing.
“What should we do?” Kelly said softly.
He shivered and shrugged.
“Well we need to do something. We need to do something to make this right. If we don’t make this—if we don’t—I won’t be able to die at peace unless we can do something.”
“Now you’re worried about dying in peace?”
You tried to hurt the world, tried to find some kind of revenge against its injustices, and every path you took wound circuitously back to yourself and the people you loved.
“This was my fault,” Kelly said. “I know you did it by accident. You wouldn’t have been in that place, you wouldn’t have had the gun, you wouldn’t have been in that whole fucked up situation, if it weren’t for me.”
Oh, he was selfish, Dan thought. Kelly was so very selfish in the way he hoarded blame. Selfish with other people’s agency, other people’s stories.
“Let’s turn ourselves in, then.”
“If I can take on a big enough punishment, something for both of us, then you can go on. You can live a full life.”
“The surveillance camera will still show two guys.”
“So you’ll just be the accomplice.”
Dan tried hard not to make the face he knew Kelly would recognize as intransigence.
“You said you wanted to do this. You said that thing at the beginning, about crazy shit.”
“I was wrong. There’s still plenty to live for when you’re dying.”
“I’d much rather go out in the same blaze as you.”
“I can’t let you.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“You know, I just wish for once that you’d fucking give me one,” Kelly said, voice rising. “I wish you’d realize how much it would mean to me if you just left me alone.”
“Well then I can drive you to the ocean,” Dan said quietly. “If that’s what you still want.”
“Let’s figure out a way to get the rest of our money to her. Or someone in her family.”
They reached the border of Massachusetts. Nearly one full circuit. In the motel, Kelly started coughing and wheezing so hard that his fist blazed with dark red beneath the pale, sickly moonlight. The sight of it made Dan nauseous with guilt.
He stared up at the wretched ceiling, at its blooming water stains (although the motel had only one floor), at the sheared-angle figures of water bottles and wallets and pistol cast against the far wall like the atomic shadow of some long-extinct civilization, while Kelly snored lightly.
Nothing became anything unless it had something to be against, he thought. Every action—even the tenderest and most considered—was a kind of disturbance, and therefore a sort of violence.
He turned and brushed a tongue of Kelly’s hair behind his ear. He flinched.
“I think we should find the closest beach,” Kelly said.
“No, no way. Not yet.”
His eyes lit up with disgust. “I don’t understand why you’re so obsessed with the original plan.”
Dan didn’t quite care to explain. He was angry at Kelly’s carelessness, angry at him for not realizing that behaving bravely made other people feel cowardly, and that behaving selflessly made those who loved you feel selfish.
Somewhere west along I-95, they saw a loose V of migratory birds cutting through the sky. One of them, at the tail of one leg, fell out of position and dove towards the distant, imperceptible shore. They followed its path, tumbling, see-sawing, caught up in the turbulence of its own plumage, until it disappeared in a puff of impact.
“I hope it didn’t know,” Kelly said. “I hope it had a heart attack and was already dead as it fell. Otherwise—otherwise, I can’t imagine.”
They stopped at a decrepit gas station just outside of New Haven. Brittle chunks of salt popped beneath their wheels as they pulled in.
“Shouldn’t you get rid of the ammo?” Kelly asked
Dan got out without acknowledging. He had the safety on. His finger was far from the trigger.
They burst in. The woman at the register reminded him of the one at the flower shop, but clad in a shabby corporate uniform, with sallow, smoker’s skin. Eyes enormous.
“Give us the money!” he bellowed.
She picked up a phone. He took out the gun. “Give it to us! Put the phone down!”
She looked terrifiedly at him, the phone shaking, her wrist gyroscopic. He shook the gun at her. “Put. It. Down!”
How could he have predicted it? That the woman would scramble over the counter, towards him? And that the gun would go off. That there would be an explosion, louder than anything he’d ever heard. A brutal, cosmic sundering. And an eruption of black smoke, the curl of it from the gun’s hot muzzle, the smell of metallic char, the entire world shuddering, his wrist sore and whiplashed, bright dots in his vision.
He shook his head, he blinked. He saw her fall back, dark purple erupting from her cheek, her blood pooling quickly in a hand shape upon the linoleum. Her eyes were fat, blank spheres, come to a spinning stop, like lottery balls.
“Go. Come on. Let’s go,” Kelly said, grabbing him, bursting out the door and nearly slipping on the wet, salted asphalt.
They drove for several seconds or hours. Dan turned into a scenic pull out and vomited. The contents were bitter and curdled. Half-digested junk food.
“We killed someone,” Kelly said.
“I killed someone.”
“I never wanted—I never wanted this.”
“She was old,” he said.
“We. Killed. Her!”
“I killed her. You didn’t do anything. None of this is your fault. It’s entirely mine.”
Yes, she was old, Dan thought. Very old. And on the heavier side. How much more life did she really have? Although why would someone so old and so heavy be working unless she had someone who depended on her? Or perhaps she, herself, had no one to depend on, in which case this was only a step or two away from a mercy killing, although who was he to decide these things? Who did he think he was? A bandit, a villain, chaos wrought human, a malignant little something spreading across the Northeast.
The high-pitched whine of silence, the sudden thudding of his heart in his ears, a telescoping gale of wind, and Kelly’s soft voice rushing back in. “You know, I suddenly feel a lot more at peace with dying.”
Dan snarled at him. “That is an incredibly fucked up thing to say.”
“I just mean, we have blood on our hands now.”
“NOT YOU! ME! I HAVE IT! JUST ME!”
They were quiet, driving somewhere nowhere. In the dark, sunny nonhour of a nonday’s collapse. And wasn’t this exactly what they’d asked for? An extremity of feeling that made them want to vomit? A lifetime of regret and shame and horror and love and fear and exultation packed to dying-star density, collapsing into themselves, into nothing?
They stopped at a particularly run-down motel and fell exhaustedly into a room that smelled of piss.
Dan was dismayed at how quickly it became morning, how bouts of unconsciousness were not subject to the sensation of time passing.
“What should we do?” Kelly said softly.
He shivered and shrugged.
“Well we need to do something. We need to do something to make this right. If we don’t make this—if we don’t—I won’t be able to die at peace unless we can do something.”
“Now you’re worried about dying in peace?”
You tried to hurt the world, tried to find some kind of revenge against its injustices, and every path you took wound circuitously back to yourself and the people you loved.
“This was my fault,” Kelly said. “I know you did it by accident. You wouldn’t have been in that place, you wouldn’t have had the gun, you wouldn’t have been in that whole fucked up situation, if it weren’t for me.”
Oh, he was selfish, Dan thought. Kelly was so very selfish in the way he hoarded blame. Selfish with other people’s agency, other people’s stories.
“Let’s turn ourselves in, then.”
“If I can take on a big enough punishment, something for both of us, then you can go on. You can live a full life.”
“The surveillance camera will still show two guys.”
“So you’ll just be the accomplice.”
Dan tried hard not to make the face he knew Kelly would recognize as intransigence.
“You said you wanted to do this. You said that thing at the beginning, about crazy shit.”
“I was wrong. There’s still plenty to live for when you’re dying.”
“I’d much rather go out in the same blaze as you.”
“I can’t let you.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“You know, I just wish for once that you’d fucking give me one,” Kelly said, voice rising. “I wish you’d realize how much it would mean to me if you just left me alone.”
“Well then I can drive you to the ocean,” Dan said quietly. “If that’s what you still want.”
“Let’s figure out a way to get the rest of our money to her. Or someone in her family.”
They reached the border of Massachusetts. Nearly one full circuit. In the motel, Kelly started coughing and wheezing so hard that his fist blazed with dark red beneath the pale, sickly moonlight. The sight of it made Dan nauseous with guilt.
He stared up at the wretched ceiling, at its blooming water stains (although the motel had only one floor), at the sheared-angle figures of water bottles and wallets and pistol cast against the far wall like the atomic shadow of some long-extinct civilization, while Kelly snored lightly.
Nothing became anything unless it had something to be against, he thought. Every action—even the tenderest and most considered—was a kind of disturbance, and therefore a sort of violence.
He turned and brushed a tongue of Kelly’s hair behind his ear. He flinched.
*
Dan awoke to the sound of sniffling, to the vague shiver of plastic parts clacking together. There was Kelly, standing over him. The gun’s barrel charred and scratched.
“Honey?”
“I can’t let you do this anymore.”
“So you’re going to kill me?”
“No. No.” Kelly’s eyes and nose and mouth were pulled tight towards the center of his face. The sounds of mucous squelching, pulled violently up through his sinuses, the draw strength of his sobs, his hiccups.
“I gave up everything for you,” Dan said. “I gave up my future.”
“And I told you I didn’t want you to! I told you!”
“But you didn’t stop me.”
“I’m doing it now. I’m saving you.”
His words were a puff of feathers on impact. Quiet and final upon the cold, frost-charred ground.
“You’re going to stay here,” Kelly said. “I’m going to turn myself in and tell them it was me. Just stay here. Please. I’m going to tell them the entire thing was my idea and I forced you to join me. I’ll tell them I was holding the gun. I think that’s the fairest thing. I’ll die in prison, but at least you won’t get to see it.”
“Baby. Put it down. Put the gun down.”
“I’m giving half the money to the woman and the other half to you, when you get out.”
“Don’t you trust me? Don’t you trust me to stay put?”
Kelly shook his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, swiveled the gun, and again, the earth-cracking explosion, the smell of hot smoke. Dan felt a sick, blinding soreness in his lower leg, as if he’d been punched there very hard, and then a burning, which was so white-hot it leapt across the spectrum and became strangely cold. Cold and wet and warm and achy and incredibly, incredibly sad.
“Are you okay?” Kelly said.
“The fuck do you think?”
“I love you. I’m sorry. I love you.”
He threw open the door, pushed against the cold and the wind and stood for a moment in the parking lot, looking back at him, smiling through tears, before driving off.
“Honey?”
“I can’t let you do this anymore.”
“So you’re going to kill me?”
“No. No.” Kelly’s eyes and nose and mouth were pulled tight towards the center of his face. The sounds of mucous squelching, pulled violently up through his sinuses, the draw strength of his sobs, his hiccups.
“I gave up everything for you,” Dan said. “I gave up my future.”
“And I told you I didn’t want you to! I told you!”
“But you didn’t stop me.”
“I’m doing it now. I’m saving you.”
His words were a puff of feathers on impact. Quiet and final upon the cold, frost-charred ground.
“You’re going to stay here,” Kelly said. “I’m going to turn myself in and tell them it was me. Just stay here. Please. I’m going to tell them the entire thing was my idea and I forced you to join me. I’ll tell them I was holding the gun. I think that’s the fairest thing. I’ll die in prison, but at least you won’t get to see it.”
“Baby. Put it down. Put the gun down.”
“I’m giving half the money to the woman and the other half to you, when you get out.”
“Don’t you trust me? Don’t you trust me to stay put?”
Kelly shook his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, swiveled the gun, and again, the earth-cracking explosion, the smell of hot smoke. Dan felt a sick, blinding soreness in his lower leg, as if he’d been punched there very hard, and then a burning, which was so white-hot it leapt across the spectrum and became strangely cold. Cold and wet and warm and achy and incredibly, incredibly sad.
“Are you okay?” Kelly said.
“The fuck do you think?”
“I love you. I’m sorry. I love you.”
He threw open the door, pushed against the cold and the wind and stood for a moment in the parking lot, looking back at him, smiling through tears, before driving off.