“And what time should I go?”
“I kind of think I need to do this alone.”
Ben’s eyes narrow. “I kind of think you don’t.”
“I appreciate that, but I need to talk to him myself.”
“So you want me to lurk in the bushes?” He doesn’t seem pleased with this option.
“Bradford is cagey. If he so much as suspects that anyone is with me, there’s no way he’ll talk to me.” It isn’t that I’m not frightened of Bradford; I am. But it needs to be just me in there. “I want you to wait for me here.”
“Here?” Ben is incredulous.
“Here.” I am pleading.
“So I was just the ride, is that it?”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Then why am I here?”
Because I need you. That’s the truth. And it’s almost as frightening as what awaits me down the road. But that’s not what I tell Ben. “Because you’re wrapped up in this too.”
Recoil.
“So that’s what this is about?” His voice is hard, flat, angry, like the day he came for the T-shirt. “In that case, there’s no fucking way I’m letting you go see this guy. I already have Meg’s death on my conscience. I’m not adding yours to the pile.”
“He’s not going to kill me.”
“Why not? He killed Meg. Isn’t that what you’ve been saying all along?”
“Yeah, but not like that. He’s not going to pull a knife on me or anything.”
“How the hell do you know that? How do you know he doesn’t have an arsenal of shotguns? How do you know the suicide shit isn’t some side project? How do you know he doesn’t have a dozen bodies buried in the backyard?”
Because Bradford Smith uses a different type of weapon, and leaves you to do the dirty work yourself. “I just know,” I say quietly.
“You know what, Cody? You don’t know shit.”
I don’t know shit? I look at Ben and it’s like: Who the hell are you? I know where you came from too. We crawl in the same muck, Ben McCallister. I’m angry now. But that’s good. Angry is better than scared.
“Wait for me here,” I say.
“No way. You want to be like your friend and walk right into a trap? I’m telling you: don’t. I’m telling you, this guy is dangerous, and going to see him is a fucked-up idea. I never warned Meg, but I’m warning you. That’s the difference between you and me: I learn from my mistakes.”
“Ben, the difference between you and me would fill up a book.” I’m not sure how these words can feel so good and so false at the same time.
Ben gives me one last look, shakes his head, and then he walks away.
x x x
There’s no time to contemplate Ben’s desertion, which I think I’ve been expecting all along. It’s just me and Bradford. As it needs to be.
He lives in Unit J in a completely nondescript complex. White door. Levolor shades in the window. I can’t see inside. At the unit next door, a couple is out on the patio, drinking beer. They don’t so much as look at me, but it’s reassuring, knowing they’re there.
I ring the bell.
The man who answers has white hair and a beard. He’s wearing a pair of shorts and an oversize Hawaiian-print shirt that hangs over his gut. He’s grasping a large sweating glass in his hand, full to the top, the ice not yet melted. I’m not sure whether I’m relieved or disappointed. Because this can’t be him. This guy looks like a sloppy Santa Claus.
But then he says, “Can I help you?” And the voice: soft, guarded, familiar.
It takes me a second to find my own voice. “I’m looking for Bradford Smith.”
I can see something—suspicion, strategy—pinging across his face. “What’s your business here?”
What’s my business here? I had a story to tell him, a way to worm myself inside. But it vanishes from my head, and I can’t think of what to say except to blurt out the truth. He’s always had that effect on me, this person I’ve been lying to.
“You’re my business.”
He squints. “I’m sorry, but do we know each other?”
My heart is thudding so hard and fast, I swear he must be able to see it through my blouse. “My name is Cody.” I pause. “But you probably know me better as Repeat.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Do I need to repeat myself?”
“No,” he says calmly. “I understood. You oughtn’t be here.”
He starts to close the door. And all I can think is: I invited you to help me die, and you’re shutting the door in my face. It fires up my anger. Good. I need it now.
I wedge my foot in the doorway. “Oh, no, I should be here. Because I also know someone named Meg Garcia. You might know her as Firefly. Did you know her real name was Meg? That she had a best friend named Cody? A mother? A father? A brother?” The speech I rehearsed during the long drive is coming back to me.
Now that I’ve shown my hand, I half expect him to slam the door on me, but instead he steps outside. One of the beer-drinking neighbors throws an empty beer bottle into a garbage can; it clanks and shatters. Bradford appraises his neighbors, lips pursed. He looks at me and opens the door behind him. “Perhaps you’d better come inside.”
For half a second I think of Ben, the arsenal of guns, the buried bodies. But then I go in anyway.
It is spartan, and neater than any of the houses I clean—after I clean them. My legs are shaking, and if I sit, he’ll see my knees knocking, but if I stand, they might buckle. I split the difference and lean against the plaid couch.
“You knew her?” he asks.
The look on his face is peculiar. It’s not sinister at all. It’s almost eager. And that’s when I realize that he doesn’t know the gory details—and he wants to. I don’t say anything. I refuse him that satisfaction.
“So she did it,” he says. Of course he knows this now. My coming here gave it away. I gave him the satisfaction anyway.
“Because of you. You killed her.”
“How could I have killed her?” he asks. “I never met her. I didn’t even know her name until just now.”
“Maybe you didn’t actually do it with your hands, but you did it. . . . You did it the cowardly way. What was it you said? ‘The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity.’” I make air quote marks with my fingers. I have this part planned too. “I’d say the opposite of bravery is you!”
I sound so brave myself when I say it. No sign of the chickenshit I truly am, about to collapse on my jelly legs.
His mouth twists, like he just tasted something a little off. But then he composes himself again, and his smile is two clicks away from benevolent. I hear a high-pitched whine in my ear as sweat breaks out on parts of my body that don’t normally sweat.
He’s looking at me now, running his thumb across his fingers. His nails are neat and trimmed, much better kept than mine, which are ragged from scrubbing sinks and toilets.
“You lost the better part of you,” he says. “That’s what you wrote. It was her. Meg. Your ‘better half.’ And you’re trying to redeem yourself, because she left you out of the decision.”
He has my number. He always has. Even when we were corresponding over a message board, he saw through me. All at once, the folly of my plan, of “catching” him, drains out of me, and so does the remaining strength in my legs. I sink onto the couch. “Fuck you,” I say, because whatever script I came up with is useless now.
Bradford goes on in this almost gentle voice. “Except maybe you don’t mean she was your better half. Maybe she was your other half.” He takes a sip of his drink. “Sometimes we meet people and are so symbiotic with them, it’s as if we are one person, with one mind, one destiny.”
He’s talking to me the way he would on the boards, circular, so it takes a minute to understand what he’s suggesting.
“You’re saying I want to die, like Meg?”
“I’m just repeating your words.”
“No! You’re putting your words into my mouth. You want me to die. Like you wanted Meg to die.”
“How did I ‘want’ Meg to die?” he asks, now making air quotes himself.
“Let’s see: you told her how to get poison. How to write a suicide note. How to keep it from family. How to alert the police. How to erase incriminating emails. You told her not to go on antidepressants. You told her not to keep living.”
“I told no one any of this.”
“You told her all of that! You told me that!”
He stares at me. “Cody. It was Cody, wasn’t it? What exactly did I tell you?”
My mind spins as I try to recall the specifics, but I can’t think of anything except for a collection of stupid quotes.