The Summer Man

Chapter NINETEEN





Darrin Everret heard a soft tap on the door of the west studio and smiled, sure it was Kim. The sculptress usually came by well after dark to avoid being seen by Miranda or any of her minions. Ms. Greene-Moreland frowned on f*cking, it seemed, by her “guests,” and since Darrin wasn’t paying, he had no real choice but to play along. In front of Miranda, anyway…although he had the feeling she’d look the other way in his case. He knew he was the retreat’s darling—he had more talent than any three of the rest of them—and he’d only just discovered a passion, a genius for long, rambling, brilliant monologues about the artistic experience. Almost every day that he worked—which was pretty much all of them, he’d never been so productive—he had an audience now, three or four of them listening to him talk about the process while he was creating. Sometimes they worked alongside him; sometimes they just sat there in awed silence, watching him put lines on paper, listening to his theories and assertions.

He dropped his pencil in the tray, brushed off his hands, and ran them through his hair. He’d been banging the sculptress since their first week. Kim was homely but fantastically enthusiastic in the sack and wasn’t as vapid as she’d first seemed; she read a lot of books, and there was an actual sense of humor behind those myopic brown eyes. A little talent, too. Her pieces weren’t total shit, anyway, like what most of the others churned out.

Darrin was cool with the Kim arrangement, but he also had his eye on Jane, one of the poets. Poetesses. She was boring as hell, her poetry was depressing and uninspired, but she was also much prettier than Kim, better body, face like a cheerleader’s. Jane had become a regular at his daily discourses, along with Kim and Brandon, the collage-mixed-media guy. Brandon had a big, fat hard-on for Darrin, which was funny but also pathetic. He was an ex-Mormon and still half in the closet, but so obviously attracted to Darrin that it was almost painful to watch, to see his longing gazes, his confused, blushing attempts at conversation.

“Yeah,” Darrin called. Maybe it was Jane.

Maybe it was Jane and Kim.

Miranda Greene-Moreland stepped into the studio, gowned in some ridiculous green muumuu, wearing oversize hoop earrings with little dolphins dangling in the middle.

Say good-bye, hard-on.

“There you are, Darrin,” she said. She smiled, showing her stained, unlovely teeth. “I hope I’m not breaking your concentration…?”

“Of course not, Miranda.” He’d been about finished, anyway. The alien landscape in front of him was a forest, the perspective fish-eyed, shades of pencil and charcoal creating a sense of oppression. The crowded leaves in the forefront confused the eyes, creating a trap, pulling the viewer down to the base, primal immediacy of the hungry, fleshy trees.

She stepped closer, peering at his strange trees. She raised a hand to the base of her throat, an oh-my expression if ever he’d seen one.

Extraordinary, he thought.

“Darrin, this is just…the perspective, the way the leaves crowd in…”

Extraordinary. Amazing?

“Astounding,” she said, and he chuckled. She wasn’t predictable, not at all.

“No, really,” she added, as though he’d been disagreeing, and went back to gazing at the drawing. “Just extraordinary.”

Darrin bobbed his head in acknowledgment, properly humble. He was fully aware that his work had progressed from good to f*cking exceptional since he’d come to the Greene-Moreland retreat, but Miranda and her dud husband were paying the bills. He knew better than to snap at the hand that was stroking him.

“So, what brings you out this way so late?” Darrin asked. “I thought you were an early-to-bed person.”

Miranda smiled. “I am, usually. But I’ve been thinking about some of your ideas, and I wanted to talk about them a little more.”

“My ideas?” Darrin’s impromptu philosophy discussions covered everything from religion to best types of pencil. Miranda had sat in once or twice, but the days had been blurring a little lately—he hadn’t been sleeping well—and he couldn’t remember what he’d talked about when she’d been there.

“For revenge,” she said, and her smile turned slightly wicked. “For getting the crazies back.”

Darrin stared at her for a beat. Crazies?

“Oh, the survivalists,” he said. “The…Jessups?”

“Cole Jessup, that’s right,” she said, and leaned against one of the dusty stools by the wedging table, where Kim and the other sculptors worked their clay. The sculptors had more room in the big studio, where the pottery wheel was, but Kim had pretty much moved all her tools and shit here, to be where he liked to work. There was dust all over the place, and dried bits of clay always crunching underfoot. “I think Mr. Jessup and his friends could use a little lesson, after all.”

Darrin gave a tentative smile, not wanting to appear too eager. She’d been pretty clear about her thoughts on the matter…although he’d considered carrying out some guerilla retaliation on his own, after the cat tails had been laid out behind the kiln. That shit was just asking for it. “Anything in particular you have in mind?”

Miranda laughed. “I don’t really think along those lines. I’m not a planner like that, you know? I’m emotional. And honestly, I don’t think I should be directly involved. You know, with the details. If you’re asking me, though…something humiliating would be best, don’t you think?”

Darrin grinned. Now she was talking. He’d get Brandon and Kim to help him, maybe Terrence; he had a decent sense of humor (what queen didn’t?). A few drinks, a midnight recon and attack…he’d always liked that kind of thing, papering trees on Halloween, unscrewing salt shakers at restaurants, although he’d thought he had outgrown most of that shit. Thinking about it now, though, considering the possibilities, knowing he had the go-ahead from his stick-up-the-ass, selfimportant patroness…

Epic; this is gonna be epic, he thought. “When should we do it?”

“Oh, you should wait a bit,” Miranda said. “The Event is coming up next week. I don’t want anything to, to distract our community before then.”

He could hear her capitalize the E in event. Some dorkass open poetry night she’d scheduled for mid-July, which everyone at the retreat would be forced to endure. Waiting sucked; he didn’t want to wait that long, but he wasn’t about to argue with her. “Right, yeah. Of course.”

“And you’ll be careful, you’ll take someone with you as a lookout, won’t you?” She gave him such a stern, motherly look that he almost laughed. “It could be dangerous.”

Darrin nodded soberly. “Don’t worry, I’m all over it. You know, when I was in high school, some guys I knew used to go out and do stuff like this, and this one time—”

“Only don’t take Terrence. He crumples under pressure.”

“Oh, ah, sure.”

“You don’t think me a hypocrite, do you?” Her frown deepened. “After all my talk about being an adult, for me to even condone this kind of thing…it’s inappropriate, isn’t it?”

“No, not at all. I mean, what they did to your pets. I love animals, their…” He reached for the turn of phrase she’d used more than once, telling her boring stories over dinner. “Their essential innocence, you know? How they’re so completely themselves.”

“That’s exactly what I always say,” she said, her eyes wide.

“And for those a*sholes—I’m sorry, excuse me, but it’s so infuriating—for them to murder them, and then…then taunt you with it.” He shook his head, playing the offended sensitive artist that she believed him to be, though actually, he f*cking hated cats. Disgusting animals. “They deserve a little payback for something like that.”

“Still, you won’t tell the others, will you? That it was my idea? Only I’d feel terrible if word got around that I’d encouraged conflict, of any kind.” She gave him a sweet smile, and for just a moment, he could see what she’d looked like thirty years younger. “I have my reputation to think about.”

“Hey, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t know anything about it,” Darrin said.

Miranda seemed to relax, her puckery old face softening. “You would do that for me?”

“Consider it done.”

“And you’ll let me know, the night you choose,” she said. “So I’m not surprised by anything.”

Talk about control freak. Darrin smiled warmly at her. “Absolutely. I’ll take care of everything, you just focus on the, ah, event.”

She brightened. “Five of our community members will be reading,” she said, “not including myself. It’s going to be a wonderful night for all of us, for the town. For some of the locals, it will be the cultural highlight of the season.”

Miranda Greene-Moreland happily chatted her way out the door. It wasn’t until after she’d left that it occurred to him to wonder what had changed her mind about retaliation against Jessup and his crew…and to decide that event or no, he would be paying the survivalists a visit in the next night or two. He wouldn’t “distract” any of the artists; he’d do his first run solo. Nothing too creative, just broken windows or slashed tires. He’d want it to look like kids, but effective. And it was certainly due. Miranda was pretentious and dull, but Jessup and his people were f*cking a*sholes; they needed a beat-down.

Kim showed up before his planning went any further, a lascivious smile on her uninviting, flat face as she locked the studio door behind her. For the sake of his newly burgeoning erection, Darrin stopped thinking about Miranda Greene-Moreland.





Georgia Duray stood in her small, neat kitchen, watching a grilled cheese sandwich burn on the dented griddle on the stovetop. She wore a grin that she wasn’t really aware of…nor was she aware that her hand kept drifting up to touch her hairline, where blood had dried to a sticky film after Nick had beat her with one of his battered cowboy boots. Her husband of almost six years was drunk, of course, passed out upstairs in front of their ancient TV, but the black smoke starting to rise from the burning sandwich would take care of that quickly enough…she thought she had maybe two or three minutes until the smoke alarm kicked on.

Georgia had known when she’d married him that Nick had a problem with his temper, much like her own father had, and knew from the talk shows that he’d probably watched his dad beat on his mother when he was a kid. He didn’t talk about it, but that kind of thing was generally learned behavior—so said the sincere-faced doctors on those afternoon shows—and would continue to cycle from generation to generation until someone made a conscious effort to stop it. Georgia touched her lower belly, where she imagined her jelly-bean-size baby was curled up sleeping, and again felt the rightness of what she’d decided to do; since Nick obviously wasn’t interested in changing—he’d gotten worse, in fact, since she’d announced her pregnancy only a month earlier, drinking and then picking fights practically every other night—it was up to her to break the cycle. She’d changed, though. Quiet, sweet little Georgia, five foot two and a hundred pounds, timid to the point of transparency, had become responsible for a life besides her own, and she meant to protect it. After the last beating, three days prior—a series of shoves and slaps and pinches that had finally culminated in a silent, spiteful rape, all because she’d forgotten to unload the dishwasher—she’d had an idea, a dark, breathtaking idea, and that idea had blossomed into a plan.

The smoke from the burning bread and butter was thickening, had begun to pool at the ceiling. Georgia watched cheese ooze out of the sandwich, sizzling when it touched the scratched surface of the pan. It was time.

She pulled her silky pink flowered robe tight around her body, turned, and walked out of the kitchen to the front hall. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, the scuffed tile cold against her bare feet, looking up to the open doorway of their bedroom. Inconsistent blue light from the television played across the wall and the carpet, and she heard screams and gunfire from whatever movie he’d passed out watching. The basket of laundry and a pile of folded towels sat on the landing at the very top of the stairs, and with the lights down, the fishing line she’d stretched between the rail and the wall—some previous owner had installed a safety gate at the top step, and the screws were still sticking out of the wainscoting’s base—was invisible, at least from where she stood. Nick, drunk and angry as she expected him to be, would never see it. He wouldn’t take notice of the things on the lower three steps, either, a place they regularly put things to take up later—the stack of library books, the box of picture frames she was going to store in the attic, a bag of hangers. Why would he? There was nothing unexpected there.

The burning smell was strong, smoke trickling out of the kitchen, rising toward the second-floor landing. The smoke wouldn’t wake him up—she knew for a fact he’d consumed almost half a fifth of the cheap bourbon he liked, the one with the medal on the label—but she was pretty sure the alarm would. She placed her hands on her soft belly, an inch or so beneath her navel, not nearly so nervous as she’d expected. She noticed her grin and grinned wider. She was a smart, nice person, and she was going to be a good mother. Nick was a bad man, everyone knew it; they knew he was a drinker and an abuser. He’d go to hell for what he’d done to her. Maybe there had been love, once upon a time, but that didn’t change the obvious fact that the world would be a better place without him. He didn’t deserve life…and the baby didn’t deserve him for a father.

The sensor finally caught the first whiff of smoke and started to sound, urgent, demanding attention. Georgia waited, going over her list of things to do. The list was very short, which seemed best; she’d kept the plan simple, sure that she would mess up anything too complicated.

After what seemed an eternity of the piercing alarm, she heard Nick in the bedroom, a muffled curse. She heard him get off the bed, heard his stumbling footfalls, and there he was, leaning against the bedroom door’s frame, his hair sticking up, an ugly expression on his bleary face as he stared up at the smoke detector. He couldn’t reach it, she knew, without a chair or a footstool.

He took a single step forward—and then stopped, finally noticing the smoke. He looked down, saw Georgia.

“What the f*ck you doin’? Did you burn something?”

Georgia didn’t answer.

“Jesus, Georgia, get the f*cking stepstool up here!” He staggered to the top of the stairs, the ugly expression just for her, now. “Stupid bitch. What the f*ck are you cookin’ this late?”

“Grilled cheese.” She knew her grin was back and didn’t care if he saw it. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the alarm, but that was all right. “I was dizzy, see, after you hit me. After you hit me with your boot. And I started the sandwich, because you told me to make you one, and then I guess I passed out. I didn’t even hear the alarm.”

He stared at her, blinking, his hands clenching into fists. “You can hear it now, can’t you?”

Georgia shook her head, which still ached, badly. “I’m unconscious, Nick. I can’t hear anything.”

“You are so f*cking stupid,” he said, and started for her—

—and his foot caught the line, and down he came. It happened fast, his arms flying out, his expression turning from ugly anger to ugly surprise. His head hit the wall, his foot slid on the pile of towels, and then he was crashing down, limbs slapping against the rail, and she heard a snapping sound and one of his legs seemed to turn sideways. He somehow managed to miss the books, but the heavy box of frames was in just the right place. Glass broke, and the bag of hangers seemed to explode like a jangling bomb, and then he was at her feet, his right leg twisted under him. There was a bleeding gash in his throat, and the way he held his chest, the gasping, spluttering breath he took and the way his eyes rolled suggested that maybe he’d punctured a lung, or at least had some internal injuries. Serious ones, probably.

He panted, let out a groan, panted more. The alarm continued its bright serenade, although there seemed to be less smoke now; it was hard to say.

“Help,” he gasped, and sounded weak, like he was badly hurt. It was going better than she’d even hoped.

The box of frames had been overturned and crushed, shattered glass and broken wood sticking out everywhere. Georgia bent down and used the edge of her robe to pick up a long, jagged shard of thick glass from the floor, careful not to cut herself, careful not to touch the glass with her bare fingers. She leaned over her husband. The cut on his throat was bleeding heavily, but not quite heavily enough.

“Help,” he whispered, she could barely hear him over the bleating alarm, and she nodded, and inserted the glass into his wound, and pushed.

Nick screamed, but the sound was too raspy, too broken to be very loud, and he flailed his arms. He belted her hands away, hard enough to hurt, but the pain didn’t bother her. That seemed fair. The glass stuck out of his neck, bobbing and weaving, and as he dropped his arms, gasping ever louder, she leaned in and kind of slapped at it, with the heel of her hand, still wrapped in the robe. She was surprised how easily it cut. There was a brief resistance but then a kind of tearing feeling, and then he was gurgling blood, grabbing at the piece of glass, jerking it out. It fell on the tile by his head and broke.

He tried to scream again, and then he tried to speak, and then he grabbed his bleeding neck and tried to roll over, but there was nothing for him to do. The blood from his throat continued to pulse out, and she saw a spreading stain on the front of his ratty T-shirt a bit lower down, another piece of glass poking through his shirt near his stomach. She watched as a pool of red formed on the tile around his shaking upper body, watched as the panic, the awareness of what was happening brightened his muddy eyes. Not much longer, she thought. She stood and stepped over him, watching her feet. It wouldn’t do to get blood on them, or glass, and she didn’t want to disturb the mess on the stairs. She cautiously moved up each step, remembering the night after her best friend’s bachelorette party when he’d called her a stupid slut and pushed her into the heavy kitchen table and she’d dislocated her shoulder…then she was grinning again. Not as stupid as he thought. She unknotted the fishing line and carried it to the bathroom, dropped it in the toilet, flushed. Back down the stairs, she warily stepped over her husband—he was unconscious or dead now, and the pulse of blood had become a drool, and the puddle had become a lake—and headed back to the kitchen. The smoke had definitely started to thin out, but that was all right; the alarm would keep going for a while. By now, the neighbors were probably starting to wonder.

The grilled cheese, solidly burned to the pan, was still smoking. Georgia picked up the spatula, took a deep breath—and then let herself fall, dropping the utensil, staggering a bit as she crashed to the floor so that it would look right, should someone find her before she “woke up.” The story would tell itself, she was pretty sure. If the house caught on fire, she would come around just enough to crawl to safety, but she thought rescue would occur before then. Their closest neighbors, the Desmonds, were retired and nosy; they were probably already calling the police to complain about the noise or headed over to see what was happening. They knew that Steve drank, and likely knew that he smacked her around sometimes…but she had no doubt that she’d be able to produce a few tears if any questions were asked. The baby had lost his or her father, after all, and that was sad.

Georgia closed her eyes to wait, thinking of baby names.