“Asshole,” Sunny says, putting ice into his glass, breaking open the whisky. “I want cocaine.”
“What am I? Drug dealer? I don’t have.”
“So get some.”
“From?”
“One of those pricks in the ballroom. It’s all mine anyway.”
* * *
—
While Eli hunts the coke, Sunny drinks down a large glass of whisky. He intends to get to the very knife-edge of oblivion, then bring himself back with a massive line.
The force of the coke will be like coming up through waves.
* * *
—
By the time Eli returns, he’s on his third glass.
“You killing yourself,” Eli says, sitting beside him.
Sunny stares at the floor, glassy-eyed. “I don’t care.” He looks up. “Where’s the coke?”
Eli fishes a baggie out of his top pocket, places it on the table.
“Do you know what I had to do for this? Some guy tried to shoot me with a crossbow.”
Sunny holds the bag up to the light.
Nearly a full gram in there.
“Assholes.” His movements are sluggish. He slurs his words. “Get me a mirror and a card.”
“Please . . .”
“Fuck you.”
“How about thank you?”
“Fuck you.”
“You know something,” Eli says, fetching what Sunny needs, “you cannot talk to people this way and expect to survive.” He points to his chest. “I take shotgun for you. I lie in hospital. I lie to your father. I hide your secret. I do everything you ask. Not once you say thank you.”
He wipes the mirror down with a Kleenex, tips out the coke, cuts three huge lines, rolls a note.
“Fuck you,” Sunny slurs.
“Why you do this?” Eli says, handing him the note. “You know when someone talks like this to me, I cut their tongue out.”
Sunny smirks. Bends down to take the first line with one eye closed. Misses it.
“You think I’m fucking joking,” Eli says. “But no, I serious. I do it. Cut out their tongue, stick it back down throat. Watch them choke on it. No problem. Sleep just fine. Dream of kittens.”
Sunny sets himself up just right this time. Pulls the whole line.
“But you,” Eli goes on. “With you I don’t do nothing. You know why?”
Sunny looks up at him with the false clarity of a brain exploding with coke.
“Why?”
“Because you already fuck yourself.”
Sunny sits back, closes his eyes.
Eli says, “I know suffering when I see it, my friend.”
“You can go now.”
Eli walks toward the door. “You know something, I think you used to be good guy.”
Sunny shakes his head. “You don’t know who I am.”
* * *
—
Now, in his hand, he holds the sonogram of his unborn child.
He holds the report.
Patient name: Neda Kapur.
One last thing, one piece of doubt.
He has to know.
He takes out his phone, dials the mobile number listed on the report.
* * *
—
She has her phone on the table in front of her.
The cigarette burning down in her hand.
When it rings—unknown number—she answers right away.
Clairvoyance.
Despair.
Puts it to her ear.
Hears the silence of a sealed room, a sealed mind. And all these fucking years.
What if he’d called once? Just once?
She hears him breathing.
Heavy but regular. So brutal.
The ocean, the sand, the fire.
“Sunny,” she says.
The last thing she wants to do is cry.
She forces a false smile. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
Nothing.
She waits.
Waits.
He keeps breathing.
Is he going to stay silent after all these years?
Then he speaks.
“I need you to tell me something.”
His voice so measured, so clinical.
She feels like she’s going under again.
The anesthetist’s needle in her vein.
Her insides pulled out.
She puts her cigarette out, gets up and walks to the freezer, places the phone between her shoulder and ear.
She retrieves the ice-cold vodka. Brings it to the table with a shot glass.
So unexpected, how life goes.
She swirls the bottle, releases the vodka into the glass. Drinks it down.
“What do you want to know?”
Pours another shot.
“Did you kill my son?”
The abruptness, the impropriety of it.
It makes her laugh.
“You think it’s funny?” he says.
“No,” she cuts him. “It was never funny. None of it.” She walks to the window, looking out on the wet street, the orange lights. The N55 bus passes, early workers sit gloomy below, a few ravers up top. She knocks back the shot once more. “Is this really why you called? On your wedding day?”
“Did you kill him?”
Silence. She gathers herself.
She feels the vodka burn, her belly slowly becoming warm.
“You should have told me.”
Incredulous.
“Fuck you,” she says. “I should have told you? I should have told you? Fuck you. You abandoned me. After everything we did and said and went through. You abandoned me. I thought you loved me. I really thought it. I thought you didn’t need to say it because it was true. And what did you do? You left me there.”
A pause.
And then a flat, callous voice.
“I didn’t know.”
“Listen to yourself.” She returns to the kitchen, finds a rocks glass, sits at the table, and pours the vodka. “I’m tired, Sunny.”
And his voice reveals the smallest crack.
“I didn’t know.”
She closes her eyes.
So it’s true.
The shock in this moment is profound.
But it passes.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she says. “But when did you find out?”
The rain trickles down the window.
He doesn’t answer.
She lights another cigarette.
“She’s pretty, your wife.”
“Tell me one more thing,” he says calmly. “Did he make you do it?”
She’s been through this a million times.
“Did he force you?”
“You want to put this on someone,” she says, “I understand.”
“Did he make you? Was it him? Or was it you?”
She can hear him pulling a line.
“What does it matter?”
“My son is dead.”
“My son is dead too. We all have to pay somehow.”
“Was it him?” he says. “Did he make you do it?”
“Let’s play a game, Sunny. An answer for an answer. I’ll tell you what you want to know. All you have to do is tell me one thing too: was it worth it? Everything you’ve done, the life you have, all the people who loved you who you threw away, lurching from one thing to the next, always finding someone to blame. Showing your broken heart, showing what was done to you, then doing it back to them. In the balance of things, was it worth it?”
“Him or you?”
“You seem to think it hinges on this. Who made the choice, him or me? Him or me? Which one of us killed our son. Are you sad, Sunny? Are you lost? Will knowing close the wound? Well, here’s my answer, Sunny. Here’s the truth.” She looks up to see Alex watching her from the doorway, but it’s too late to stop. “Your father didn’t kill our son. I didn’t kill him either. You did, Sunny. It was you.”
* * *
—
In the emptiness of his room, Sunny stares into his phone.
Takes a moment. Composes himself.