“You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Never been better. Just wanted to take a minute to appreciate what a nice night it is.”
Tariq smiled. I could have walked all the way home, that’s how clear and calm the map of the world was, now that I could control the tornado of sense impressions that had threatened to destroy me.
Even the memory of the boy who’d smiled in my direction made me feel strong, powerful, a member of a secret tribe instead of a lonely freak. My people are out there. Someday, I will be ready to join them.
“Give me some more of that,” Tariq said, drunkenly pawing me in search of the bottle, while we waited at Bedford Avenue for the L train. He had been sweating a lot, down in that basement. He was drinking the scotch like it was water. He couldn’t see my smile when I handed it over.
It would be so easy to end him, I realized. The slightest of motions, and I could pivot his body onto the tracks as the train pulled in.
But I still needed answers. I needed to know what happened. What he did, or they did. Then I’d be able to take the vengeance that was rightfully mine.
And I was still so intoxicated by the moment, by my discovery—I wanted to savor that moment. And I wanted to be clear of distractions when the time came to savor his destruction. . . .
RULE #18
Your body doesn’t know the difference between its hungers. It responds the same way to hate as to love. This is why Lex can’t get enough of Superman. Why Batman just won’t quit The Joker.
This is why every great revenge story is indistinguishable from a love story.
DAY: 13, CONCLUDED
. . . and maybe I wouldn’t have to wait too long before his destruction came along.
“Why’s it so coooooold,” Tariq said—or something like that—back in Poughkeepsie. He was trying and failing to unlock his truck, and I saw for the first time how drunk he was, and how long a drive we had, an hour of winding roads and twisted turns, and Tariq too drunk to say words let alone get us home alive.
Once he had the car unlocked, I didn’t get in right away. The smart thing to do was to snatch his keys, make him sleep it off in a hotel room or the bed of his pickup, because to get in the car with him was way too likely to result in both our deaths.
But so what if I did die? Taking Tariq out would give my sister healing, maybe bring her home. My own death was just icing on the cake, sparing my mother the shame I’d bring her one way or the other.
Suicidal ideation, the words flitted through my brain. It is a persistent little sonofabitch. And quite the opportunist.
“Matt, you’re a good guy,” he said, hands and forehead resting on the wheel. “I wish everyone wasn’t so mean to you all the time.”
“They won’t be,” I said, and he chuckled, either missing the malevolence in my voice or amused by it. “Not anymore.”
“No more scotch?” he asked, starting the truck.
“Couple drops,” I said, handing the bottle over.
He sucked it dry, then threw it out the window. “Tariq, you shouldn’t litter,” he said in a deep accented voice—his father’s voice—and then burst out laughing.
He picked our way through Poughkeepsie’s silent streets with an excessive, paranoid caution. Once he made it to Route 9, however, he floored it. The truck groaned and lurched as it hurried us north. Hunger had me gnawing at the inside of my cheek, and pretty soon I tasted blood.
“I’m drunk,” he said. “I shouldn’t be driving.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said. “You’re an excellent driver.”
He saluted. “Thank you, sir. You are an excellent passenger.”
He rolled down his window, maybe hoping that the cold might sober him up.
His father was in the car with us, summoned by Tariq’s lighthearted impression. I could hear him, echoing in the air, in Tariq’s mind. His presence was dark and terrible. Maybe I could use it.
“Tell me about your father,” I said, my voice a howl above the roar of cold wind from the open window. “What does he do for a living?”
“Runs a Christmas tree farm,” he said. “Jutkowski’s, out on Spook Rock Road?”
“I’ve gone by there a million times!” I said. “But your name isn’t Jutkowski.”
“No, he was the one who founded the farm. My father worked for him, for years. When old man Jutkowski retired, he sold the place to my dad. Figured changing the name to Murat’s might weird people out.”
We took a turn too fast. My stomach swung in zero gravity for a second, and I liked it. The fear. The freedom of letting go of that fear. Of embracing what might happen next. “There’s no . . . religious problem, with doing what you guys do?”
“No. Just don’t tell Allah.”
“Look at you,” I said, “a wealthy Arab whose money comes from selling Christmas trees to infidels.”
Tariq laughed, but his laugh was sad, and I had no idea what piece of my sentence had saddened him. I had a whole line of further Father Questions, intended to shake him, but now I didn’t have the heart to ask any of them. He had crested the wave of happy intoxication, and was crashing down hard into depression. I savored the taste of blood in my mouth, and was about to swallow it when I wondered whether even that minimal nourishment might take a tiny edge off my hunger.
How many calories are in blood?
I spat it out, into the night. And then, swift as a snake strike, I asked: “What was up with Ott and Bastien and my sister?”
“What was . . . up?” he asked, his voice slurring nervously.
“Yeah.” My instinct was to spin stories, dazzle him with words, trick him into letting something slip, but silence was far more tantalizing. People will tell all kinds of secrets just to fill an uncomfortable silence.
Tariq looked genuinely confused.
“I don’t know. I don’t think anything was.”
The road wobbled underneath us. It never felt like all four of his tires were touching the earth at once. His headlights showed us sheer rock faces, diners shut down for the night. At least it was late, the roads were empty, we’d probably hurt no one but ourselves when we crashed.
Was he lying?
Drunk, tired, disoriented—seeing through him should have been easy. But I couldn’t. Did that mean he really didn’t know about Ott’s and Bastien’s part in whatever happened? Or did it mean that there wasn’t anything there? That he was the only one involved?
“We stink,” he said.
“Speak for yourself,” I countered. “You moshed for, like, hours. I only did it a little.”
He took a deep breath through his nose. “Nope. You stink, too. And I think maybe we’re going to die,” he said and giggled, after he swerved to avoid hitting a deer that turned out to be a low-hanging tree branch.
“Everybody does,” I said.
A sudden, sharp pain distracted me from the prolonged ache in my stomach. My fingertips, bleeding again. I’d been gnawing them without realizing it.
And yet, this here is the weirdest part of the whole weird thing.