“No,” she said, “I like having it.”
She didn’t. She didn’t like having it at all. It sat in her hand like dead vermin that might spring back to life. Its power to stop a life with the flexing of a finger was suddenly one of the ugliest concepts she’d ever considered. And she’d pointed it at a friend. Was, even now, pointing it generally at him.
“Could you put the safety on?”
“That would add an extra step in case I have to pull the trigger.”
“But you’re not going to pull the trigger. It’s me. And you’re you. Do you get how ridiculous this is?”
“I do,” she said. “It’s ridiculous for sure.”
“So now that we’ve agreed you’re not going to shoot me—”
“We haven’t agreed on that.”
“But I’m driving,” he pointed out, his tone falling somewhere between helpful and condescending. “So you’re going to shoot me and—what?—sit in the passenger seat as the car goes flying across the expressway?”
“That’s what air bags are for.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“If you try to take the gun from me,” she said, “the only choice I’ll have is to, you know, shoot you.”
He jerked the wheel and the car lurched into the next lane. He smiled at her. “Well, that felt unpleasant.”
She could feel the power dynamic shifting and she knew from the housing projects and the ride-alongs and the long nights in Haiti that when power shifted it stayed shifted unless you grabbed it back immediately.
His eyes were on the road when she flicked the safety on. It didn’t make a sound. She shifted in her seat, leaned forward slightly, and slammed the butt of the pistol down on his kneecap. The car lurched and swerved again. A horn blared.
Caleb hissed. “Holy fuck. What is wrong with you? That fucking—”
She did it again, exactly the same spot.
He jerked the car back out of a third swerve. “Enough!”
They’d be lucky if another car on the freeway wasn’t calling 911 right now to report a drunk driver, giving the operator Caleb’s license plate number.
She flicked the safety off again.
“Enough,” he repeated. Riding his vocal cords along with the anger and attempt at authority was a clear timbre of anxiety. He had no idea what she was going to do next, but he was definitely afraid of the possibilities.
So now the power had shifted back.
He exited the freeway in Dorchester, in the southern tip of Neponset. He headed north on Gallivan Boulevard, stayed right at the rotary, and at first she thought they were crossing the bridge to Quincy, but instead he headed for the on-ramp back onto the expressway. At the last moment, he turned right, and drove down a street badly in need of repaving. They bounced along until he turned right and took them into a blocks-long stretch of bent, weather-lashed houses and Quonset-shaped warehouses and dry dockyards filled with boats that ran to the smaller side. At the end of the street, they found the Port Charlotte Marina, something Sebastian had pointed out to her a few times on their sails through Massachusetts Bay their first few summers together. Sebastian, showing her how to steer and navigate at night by the lights in the sky. Sebastian, out on the water with the wind in his Nordic hair, the only time she’d ever known him to be happy.
A restaurant and yacht club sat just past a near-deserted parking lot, both buildings looking freshly painted and hopeful for a marina in which there were no yachts. The biggest boat moored at the dock looked to be a forty-footer. Most of the others looked to be lobster boats, aged and constructed of wood. A few of the newer ones were fiberglass. The nicest of those was about thirty-five feet long, the hull painted blue, the wheelhouse painted white, the deck a honey teak. She paid attention to it because her husband stood on it, bathed in their headlights.
Caleb exited the car fast. He pointed back at her, told Brian his wife was not taking things well. Rachel was happy to note Caleb limped even as he speed-walked to the boat. She, on the other hand, moved slowly, her eyes on Brian. His gaze barely left hers except for the occasional flicks in the direction of Caleb.
If she’d known she’d end up killing him, would she have boarded the boat?
She could turn around and go to the police. My husband is an impostor, she’d say. She imagined some smarmy desk sergeant replying, “Aren’t we all, ma’am?” Yes, she was certain, it was a crime to impersonate someone and a crime to keep two wives, but were those serious crimes? In the end, wouldn’t Brian just take a plea and it would all go away? She’d be left the laughingstock never-was, the failed print reporter who’d become a pill-addicted broadcast reporter who’d become a punch line and then a shut-in and who would keep the local comics stocked with weeks of fresh material once it was discovered that Meltdown Media Chick had married a con man with another wife and another life.
She followed Caleb up the ramp to the boat. He stepped aboard. When she went to do the same, Brian offered his hand. She stared at it until he dropped it. He noticed the gun she carried. “Should I show you mine? So I feel safer?”
“Be my guest.” She stepped aboard. As she did, Brian caught her by the wrist and stripped the gun from her hand in the same motion. He pulled his own gun, a .38 snub-nosed revolver, from under the flaps of his shirt and then laid them both on a table by the stern. “Once we get out into the bay, sweetheart, you let me know if you want to walk five paces and draw. I owe you that.”
“You owe me a lot more than that.”
He nodded. “And I’m going to make good on it.” He unraveled a line from the cleat, and before she’d even realized she could hear the engine, Caleb was under the standing shelter with his hand on the throttle and they were chugging up the Neponset River toward the bay.
Brian sat on the bench on one side of the deck and she sat across from him, the front edge of the table in between them.
“So you own a boat,” she said.
He leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. “Yup.”
Port Charlotte receded behind her. “Am I ever going to get back off it?”
He tilted his head to the side. “Of course. Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because I can expose your double life for starters.”
He sat back, opened his palms to the idea. “And where will that get you?”
“It won’t get me anywhere. Get you in jail.”
He shrugged.
“You don’t think so.”