He turned his attention to the convenience store again. Two cars at the pumps. One man pumping gas, the other car empty. Passengers in the store. He waited and watched. Soon the first car drove off. Several minutes later, a teenaged boy and girl came out of the store laughing, each carrying a large plastic cup, sipping from straws. She climbed in behind the wheel, the boy on the other side. Engine noise, headlights, little blue car moving away and down the street, happy lives continuing.
As far as he could remember, he had never been inside this store, always bought his gas at the BP close to home, did his shopping at the big Americo’s on the edge of town, went there nearly every Saturday morning, he and Claire, on their weekly shopping date, each with a cart or a basket, communicating across the store with their cell phones. How he loved that hour together wandering through the banked displays of fruit and vegetables with the misters erupting every now and then like little fountains while the music of André Previn, John Tesh, or Yanni wafted overhead. The olive bar, the bins of bagels and croissants, the racks of hard-crusted baguettes and artisan breads, the cases of Stilton and Shropshire Blue, the Asiago and fontina, the b?cheron and pecorino. The deli and meat cases, the thirty kinds of seafood on their beds of sparkling ice. And Claire, beautiful Claire, her voice on the cell phone: “These Dungeness crabs are huge!”
He loved the sensuality of it, the anticipation, the sensory assaults from all directions. And when gone came into his head now, all gone, it struck like a hammer blow so vicious and sudden that he fell sideways against a tree and sobbed and whispered “Claire” again and again, his cheek scraping, abrading against the bark…
Time passed…
He breathed…
He could not will his heart to stop.
The convenience store across the road. Cold lights, cold asphalt. He watched the vehicles come and go.
Christ, how he ached for the snuggery of his office, the familiar building. There were vending machines in the basement, a coin changer. This was Tuesday. He could live on crackers and candy bars until Thursday, couldn’t he?
But no, the keys to Campbell Hall were on his key chain and his key chain was hanging from the peg by the kitchen door. And the police, he told himself. They’ll be watching the building, won’t they? And everybody will know, the whole town must know by now.
This is Tuesday, he told himself. It happened Saturday night.
Every time Saturday night came back to him—and it was never far away now, always crouching in the nearby shadows—every time it came back to him, it was worse than a hammer blow, it was alive and ferocious, sprang out like a lion, ripped him to pieces.
For a long time, he stood against the tree and could not move, tried to will his heart to cease. But it would not work, it never worked. So he had to keep going for a while yet. He had to live a while longer.
Get some food, he told himself. Do what you have to do.
He watched the convenience store. A pickup truck at the pumps now.
He wished the numbness would come back, that strange sense of watching himself from a distance. But it had abandoned him for some reason, the two selves coalescing. He knew now that he was not a fictional character clinging to a fictional tree, waiting for his creator to tell him what to do. It was Thomas Huston standing there on the edge of the woods, Thomas Huston dirty and hungry and cold. He had only to look at his hands to confirm it. They were filthy and scratched now, but they were Thomas Huston’s hands, the hands of a writer and professor, callus free, hands made for typing, for wielding a pen or a stick of chalk. Hardly a semester passed that some coed did not say something complimentary about his hands. In response to his question “What did you like most about this course?” on the end-of-semester evaluation form, one of them had written, “Your hands. Your voice. Your butt in tight blue jeans.”
Those hands in front of him now, yes, they were his, but he detested them, wished he could cut them off, wished he had cut them off a week ago. Had they ever really held a pen or had Saturday night erased all that? Had they ever stroked the hair of a sweetly scented woman? Ever traced a circle of desire on her breast, felt the soft rise of her stomach, the slow curve of her thigh? Had this hand ever lay in her velvet cleft of heat, ever felt the undulations of her muscles ripple and tighten around his fingers?
He wanted Claire’s body against him again, wanted her breasts crushed against his chest, wanted his dick in her mouth, wanted to taste her pussy and to feel her body rocking against him wave after wave. He wanted all of it and he would never have any of it ever again. Only a man like Thomas Huston deserved those things. Who he was now, he did not know. And the whimpering noises rising from his throat now, these were not his sounds. He had never heard such sounds before.
Christ, why did you ever leave her bed? he wondered. You and your fucking writing. You and your fucking words.
Again he could not breathe. There was no air. Breathe, he told himself. Inhale. Exhale. Nothing came naturally anymore. Nothing happened of its own accord.
He sagged against the tree, clung to it, pushed hard against the horrible images while he chanted to the bark, She is a dark-haired woman, green eyed and dusky with secrets. Her mouth is sensuous but sad, limbs long and elegant, every movement languid…
Seventeen