It was later than usual when Laraine finally pulled into her driveway. This time her car was followed by a black SUV. The man who climbed out of it appeared to be several years younger than her. He walked with a cockier step than most, swung a bottle of beer from his left hand, even paused outside his car to survey the neighborhood and take a long look at the pale gibbous moon. It seemed to DeMarco that the man actually wanted to be seen standing there on the edge of an older woman’s midnight lawn, that he conveyed none of the furtiveness of his paunchier predecessors, maybe even wanted Laraine to take note of his insouciance, consider herself that much more fortunate for his attention. Laraine was already inside her house, the front door standing open, before the man deigned to cross the yard.
This time, DeMarco did not wait for the usual signals that she and her new friend were on their way upstairs. He climbed out of his car and walked briskly to the front door and knocked. Soon she opened the door and stood there looking at him with the same practiced expression on her face, the same clouded eyes.
He told her, “You know the kind of man I am. When I make up my mind to do something, I do it.”
Her face remained a blank, a cold and beautiful stone.
“So I just want you to know. I’m done letting you do this to me. And I’m done watching you do it to yourself.”
For just a moment, her brow furrowed.
“I really don’t know if you think you’re punishing me or yourself or both of us. All I know is that I’m not going to participate in it anymore.”
She kept her mouth tight but he could hear her breathing now, the sibilance of controlled inhalations. He believed too that he could hear her heart beating, a soft thrumming in the night.
He touched her cheek. Its warmth startled him and drove a long splinter of heat through his chest. “Good-bye, sweetheart,” he told her. “I’m sorry for all the pain.”
He walked away then and struggled against the urge to look back. If he looked back and she was still standing there, he would return to her. But he did not look back after he had climbed into the car and he did not look back as he drove away.
A few minutes later, on the interstate and heading south, with no music playing and the only sounds the hum of metal speeding over concrete through the chill black air, he pulled to the side of the road and sat with his foot on the brake as he tried to catch his breath.
When his breath finally slowed, he reached for the pack of antiseptic baby wipes in the console, took one out, and cleaned his palms, then wiped each finger one by one. Then he crumpled up the little towel and tossed it to the floor. He stared into the darkness ahead.
Then, acting on impulse, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. About that rain check… he typed, and hit Send, and sat waiting.
And just when he began to wish he could pull the text back, erase it, go home and be alone, and live alone with all his misery just as he deserved, his screen lit up with Jayme Matson’s text: Saturday night. Bring flowers. Wear a jacket and tie. You’re taking me to the most expensive restaurant in town. Try not to be an ass.
Twenty seconds later, he pulled back onto the highway and brought his vehicle up to speed. Only then did he give in to the need to take a long look in the rearview mirror. Behind him, the lights of Erie appeared to be underwater now, a twinkling city sinking into an indigo sea.
Reading Group Guide
1. The character of Thomas Huston, a writer, was named as an homage to Hemingway and his novel Islands in the Stream, whose main character is Thomas Hudson, a painter. Can you discern any other Hemingway influences in Two Days Gone?
2. The novel is divided into four sections, just as Thomas Huston’s novel-in-progress was intended to be. Why did Silvis structure Two Days Gone this way?
3. Are there any other ways in which Two Days Gone parallels Thomas Huston’s proposed novel D?
4. Many of the characters in Silvis’s novels are, as the Washington Times noted of his first mystery, “extraordinarily literate.” Is it necessary to be familiar with all the literary allusions in Two Days Gone to be engaged by the novel?
5. At what point did you become certain of Huston’s innocence or guilt?
6. Silvis has said that one of the themes of this novel is what happens to men when they lack, in Thomas Huston’s words, “the annealing effect of women.” Did the absence of a prominent female character detract from your enjoyment of this novel?
7. What other themes and motifs do you see at work in this novel?