“You told her nothing?”
For a second, she thought Brian’s voice sounded funny, like he’d bitten his tongue or cut it somehow.
“I told her we were actors.”
“Nothing else?” His voice sounded like his own again.
“I’m right here,” she said.
Brian looked over at her and his eyes were dead. No, not dead. Dying. The light bled from them. She felt infinitesimal in them. He swept her body with them in a way that was clinical and lustful at the same time, the look of a man watching pornography when he wasn’t even sure he was in the mood.
Caleb said, “Why’d you go to the camera store, Brian?”
Brian held up a finger to Caleb, his eyes still moving up and down Rachel, and Caleb’s face seized with the dismissiveness of the gesture.
“Don’t fucking hold your finger up to me like I’m the help. Are the passports ready?”
Brian’s jaw tightened even as he chuckled. “Oh, ho, ho, my man, let’s not push me tonight.”
Caleb took a step toward Brian. “You said they wouldn’t be ready for another twenty-four hours.”
“I know what I said.”
“Is this about her?” Caleb pointed at Rachel. “Her and her bullshit? People could fucking die because—”
“I know people could die,” Brian said.
“My wife could die. My child could—”
“A wife and child you shouldn’t have.”
“But it’s okay for you?” Caleb took two more steps. “Huh? It’s okay for you.”
“She’s been in war zones,” Brian said. “She’s battle-tested.”
“She’s a shut-in.”
Rachel said, “What are you two—?”
Caleb stepped to Brian, pointed a finger in his face. “You lied about the fucking passports. You put us all at risk. We’re gonna fucking die because you can’t see past your dick.”
As violence always did in her experience, the next few things happened very fast.
Brian slapped Caleb’s finger out of his face. Caleb whacked the side of Brian’s head with a hastily clenched fist. Brian rose half out of his seat as Caleb took another swing at him, half connecting with his neck. Brian buried his fist in Caleb’s solar plexus. When Caleb doubled over, Brian punched him in the ear hard enough that she could hear the cartilage crunch.
Caleb stumbled sideways. He dropped to one knee and inhaled desperately for a moment.
She said, “Guys, stop,” and the words sounded ridiculous.
Brian rubbed his neck where Caleb had hit him and spit off the side of the boat.
Caleb used the table to push himself to his feet. Then he was holding her gun in his hand. She watched him thumb off the safety, and she couldn’t make sense of it at first. It characterized the surreal quality that had marked the entire day. They were Brian, Rachel, and Caleb, regular people, boring even, not the kind of people who brandished firearms. And yet it was she who’d forced Caleb to drive her here using the same gun.
And now he was pointing it in Brian’s face. “Hey, tough guy, tell me where the fucking—”
When Brian struck Caleb’s gun hand, the gun went off. It wasn’t as loud as it sounded on the range, with partitions on either side of her. It sounded like a desk drawer being kicked shut. Judging by the muzzle flash, the bullet passed in her general direction. But she didn’t scream. Brian swiped the gun out of Caleb’s hand and swept Caleb’s legs out from under him with the kind of ease that again suggested he’d had some wrestling experience. Caleb landed on his back, and Brian kicked him in the chest and abdomen, kicked him like he was going to kick him to death.
“Point a gun in my face?” Brian screamed. “Fucking kidding me?”
With every sentence Brian delivered a kick.
“Try to fuck me?” Brian kicked him in the stomach. “Talk shit about my wife?”
A blood bubble popped from Caleb’s mouth.
“Try to fuck my wife?” Brian kicked him in the groin. “You don’t think I notice the way you fucking drool over her? Stare at her? Think about her?”
When the kicks started, Caleb had begged him to stop. Now he just lay there.
“Brian, stop.”
Brian turned toward her, his eyes narrowing at his gun in her hand. She couldn’t remember picking it up, but she could feel its weight, so much heavier than hers, which, in Brian’s hand, looked like a toy.
“Stop?” he said.
“Stop,” she repeated. “You’ll kill him.”
“And why would you care?”
“Brian, please.”
“What in your life would change if he was dead? If I was dead? Or just gone? You’ll do the same thing—sit inside and look out at the world. But you won’t engage it. You won’t affect it. I mean, forget about him. What difference would it make if you’re in the world or not?”
The words seemed to surprise him as much as her. He blinked several times. He looked at the lightless sky and the black bay. Looked at Caleb. Looked at her again. And she could see a realization take root—if he returned to land with an empty boat, no one would be the wiser.
He raised her gun. At least she thought he raised her gun. No, he did. He raised it. Raised it from his knee in a sweep, bringing it up and toward the center of himself, his right arm half-crossing his chest.
And she shot him.
She shot him as she’d been taught—center mass. Bullet straight to the heart.
She heard herself say, Brian no Brian no. She heard herself say, No no no please.
Brian stumbled backward and the blood bloomed on his shirt and then fell from his body in drops.
Caleb looked at her with a mix of horror and gratitude.
Brian dropped her gun. He said, “Shit.”
She said, “I’m sorry,” and it left her mouth like a question.
And there was so much love in his eyes. And so much fear. Words left his mouth accompanied by a spoonful of blood that spilled down his chin. And she couldn’t compute what he was saying to her because of the blood and his fear.
He took a half stumble-step backward, his palm to his chest. He fell off the boat.
And she heard clearly now what he’d said to her, what had gotten lost while the words fell from his mouth with the blood. “I love you.”
Wait. Wait. Brian, wait.
She could see his blood on the deck and a small splatter of it on the white foam cushion of a bench by the rail.
Wait, she thought again.
We were supposed to grow old together.
III
RACHEL IN THE WORLD
2014
23
DARK