Three more steps and I’ve reached the driveway and wow. This isn’t a cottage, Beck. This is a mansion from a storybook about an evil seaside queen who takes all the township’s money and builds an unnecessarily long driveway, ensconced in shrubbery and emptying like a river into a fuck-you-world four-car garage. The house is two stories, three if you count the widow’s walk. The front yard is a clean sparkling carpet of new white snow and the lights flicker from inside while stars hover above, hoping to get inside. If Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light crossed brushstrokes with Edward Hopper, it would look a lot like this.
And the quiet! I expected to hear the sea, but the ocean sleeps too, and I can hear snowflakes melting, branches tweaking. Am I always this loud? My breathing is too raspy and what if you can hear inside that cottage? I step backward, instinctively. I hear a drop of my blood plop into the weak new snow. I can’t leave tracks; Peach will think her stalker is back and call in the National Guard. I don’t want to scare you, so I head east to case the house next door. We’re in luck, Beck. The neighbors don’t share the Salinger family’s passion for landscaping. This property is lush, overgrown with trees and the snow isn’t a clean sheet for me to disturb. This is a quiet most people will die never knowing.
And then a shriek, Peach yells, “Beck!”
I duck. But I can tell by her screaming that you are heeding the call, running to the west wing of the cottage. This is my chance and I bolt to the east-facing wall and allow myself a look inside the great room. (That’s what rich people call living rooms.) It’s huge. A giant nautical-blue sectional winds like a fat, loving snake. The coffee table is repurposed lobster traps welded together and topped with glass. And it’s aglow thanks to the flames crackling in the fireplace.
When I hear you laugh, I am, at last, sure that I’m not dead. Smoke sails out of the chimney and no wonder Taylor Swift bought a house here. I can hear the Elton John—Peach really is on vacation, replacing her morose, vaguely suicidal running ballad with the slightly cheekier, self-indulgence of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” Oh, and I can smell the marijuana. I crouch as you breeze into the room.
The seaside suits you and God do I miss you. You stand before the fireplace with your legs apart as if you’re about to be patted down—you are lit as the fire, alive—in black leggings and that gray sweater you wore to work the day we had sex. When you bend slightly to warm your hands over the fire, I have an uncontrollable urge to jump through the window and enter you.
But Peach plods into the room and ruins the scene and offers you a glass of wine—typical—and you sip it and she goes back to the kitchen. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a roofie in there.
You miss me. And I miss you. It hurts, seeing you at that fire, giving your hands to the heat, the way I gave my hand to fire, only different. I imagine pushing you into the red abyss and jumping in after you, with you, so we can burn together, forever, a tree of life, light, sex.
And, of course, Peach plods into the room again and tells you dinner will be ready in an hour. She wants to play gin rummy—is she eighty-five years old?—and you obey your hostess and join her on the giant sectional sofa.
My hands are numb and yet aching and it’s too cold to stay here; I’m not an animal, and what is my plan? I realized that I drove here with dreams, not plans. My dream: You text me. I pretend I’m in New York and wait three hours. Then I drive down Peach’s driveway. You run outside before I even have the car in park. You bounce—joy!—you offer me dinner—steaks and potatoes—and then we go at it all night in one of the unrenovated bedrooms.
I don’t have a plan or a backup plan and I didn’t think things through. You’re a good friend, polite and loving. Of course you need your time with Peach. And I’m a serious mess, pained and bleeding. My car is in the trees and I’m not strong enough to walk back to town and break into a B and B. I crouch and make my way back to the neighboring property.
The front door is locked (go figure), and the world is lit by moonlight on snow (God bless), so I make it around back without falling and causing a ruckus. There is a boathouse—go figure—and the door is unlocked—God bless. I sneak inside and wrap myself up in a tarp. My wounds come back to life in the warmth, as if there are invisible dogs biting me, gnashing. I hurt. But rise. You miss me and that thought lifts me above my pain. I settle into the far left corner where the wind can’t nip me with such force.
A cop shines a flashlight in my face. I see his gun and I don’t need a mirror to know that I look like and smell like a zombie. The cop is jacked with a thundering baritone. “State your name.”
I cough up blood before I get my last name out. The cop pockets his piece. Progress. I sit up. Progress. He’s the most American man that America ever made, dark skinned in a white town with white snow. He scans my Figawi hat that he holds in his hands as if there’s a barcode in the Mount Gay Rum logo. It must have fallen off while I was sleeping. He smiles. “You raced in Figawi, Spencer?”
“A couple of times,” I answer and now I know why Stephen King can’t stop writing about New England. I’m bleeding. A deer is dead. I’m squatting. My car is steaming in the woods. And this motherfucker wants to talk about sailing.
He hands me my hat. “Are you a friend of the Salingers? I noticed some activity there. Did you get lost?”
I will die if he says the name Salinger again and I shake my head. “No. I’m lost.”
“Where are you trying to go?”
The questions unnerve me and the stress intensifies my pain. Everything is wrong and my ribs twinge. I wince. The cop is concerned (yes) and he offers a hand (thank you, RIPD). I take it and I hold on. “Officer, in all honesty, I don’t even know where I am. My GPS crapped out a while back. I got lost. I’m a wreck.”
“So that is your Buick in the woods.”
“Yeah,” I say. Fuck.
“Spencer, did you have anything to drink tonight?”
I’m about to ask why he’s calling me Spencer but I remember the name sewn into the hat: Spencer Hewitt. Relief. “No, sir.”
“Did you have anything to smoke?”
“No,” I say. “But you might want to ask the deer that rammed me out of nowhere.”
He smiles and I wince. He radios the station about ER wait times and we have to get out of here now. You are close, mere footsteps away. For all I know, you’re already awake, rubbing sleep out of your eyes, soothing paranoid Peach. What if she saw the cop car? What if the cop used his lights? What if he called for backup? What if you are out there right now giving a statement to the police? I vomit all over the tarp.
“Let it out, Spence.” He has a comforting way. “We’ll get you an ambulance soon.”
But ambulances are bright and loud. I have to be strong for your sake and I manage to get up. “Not necessary, Officer.”
“Fine,” he says. “But I’m taking you to the hospital.”
I’ll go anywhere to get away from you and he helps me hobble outside and toward the car. The trees obscure the view of Peach’s house, so even if you were standing at the great room window, you couldn’t see me. Officer Nico—cool name—didn’t leave his lights on—cool dude—and his cop car is a hybrid—only in LC—and we are driving, relief.
Nico is a good man, friendly, distracting me with tales of his football days at URI. He loves it out here. He’s from Hartford and he comes to life regaling me with stories about nut jobs who come up this way hoping to get a look at Taylor Swift. “As if she’s gonna go out with some stalker, right?”
“Right,” I say.
“Try and get a little shut-eye,” he says. “We got a bit of a drive.”