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  Regina is the person who called the police when Ed went missing, two weeks after Bobby’s trip to the ER. Evidently, she expected Ed to check in each night. Me? I expected him to be writing his book.

  “Regina,” I said, as I opened the farmhouse door that day. Then, as the officers strolled up behind her: “You’ve brought friends.”

  Of course they weren’t my friends. Regina wasn’t my friend. Yet they allowed her to take Bobby to play in her yard while they asked me their questions. Regina has no shame.

  “Someone has to look for Ed,” she said as she turned to go. “You should have called the police days ago.” She looked around, took in the curtains drawn over the windows. Then she was gone. And I was left with two officers in their sturdy square shoes weighing down my farmhouse floor.

  “She’s fucking my husband,” I said, when they asked where Ed was, why he hadn’t been heard from for days. When they said nothing, didn’t register even a hint of surprise, I foolishly offered the truth.

  “He’s disappeared,” I told them. “One day Ed was here, the next day he wasn’t.” I’ve repeated the same story ever since.

  The officers asked other questions. Bobby’s injury came up. I did my best to explain how the knife slipped. They nodded, took notes, then politely asked to look in Ed’s office.

  The light was shining in the east window as I opened the door to his study. Ed’s typewriter sat idle on his desk, papers stacked in a neat pile beside it. A lone sharpened pencil lay on the blotter. His chair was tucked in. There were vacuum marks on the carpet.

  Clearly, Ed hadn’t been there all day.

  The officers stared at the desk, taking it all in, before turning back to me. That’s when their gaze drifted from me to the door itself, to the busted, scratched doorknob. Someone had obviously removed the knob, then reattached it.

  Someone had broken in from the hall.

  Shortly after, I was escorted away.

  Now, when I see Regina across the laminate lunch table, I ask why she’s come. Under the fluorescent lights in the visitors’ center, even her delicate skin looks cantankerous. Yellow.

  She feels a responsibility for me, she says. For what she did to my life. “To your children’s lives.” She pauses. “To Ed’s.” She always says the same thing. “It’s the least I can do.”

  Finally: “Jane, I’m truly sorry.”

  My enemy is my last friend.

  * * *

  In this place I have no dreams. I thank Ed for that. Sometimes Cheryl. But mostly my friends lithium, Lunesta, and Seroquel. After supper I dress for bed, accept my Dixie cup dosage when the nurse stops in for bed check #1. I have one hour before she returns, one hour to write down my thoughts before the meds kick in. Right on schedule, she returns for bed check #2 and dims the lights. By then, I’m beginning to drift into the shadows, my mind closing down like a city shop door at dusk, eyelids growling for the floorboards. After that there’s no going back. Eight hours later the lights creep back up, and so do I. There’s no night anymore. The stars fail to align. I can’t remember bed checks #3, 4, and 5. The nurses sidling in with their stale breath and rubber-soled shoes.

  There are signs. My bathrobe has shifted on its chair. A small plant on the sill has been turned toward the light. The vent cover is awry on its half-stripped screws. I am not the first to hide keepsakes behind it: a ChapStick, a wad of soft tissues, a small red leaf carried in on Dr. Kirkbride’s shoe.

  The nurses keep track of our secrets. It is part of our therapy. We should have what they call “reasonable” secrets.

  But we should not have dreams. Dreams lead to unreasonable secrets. Dr. Kirkbride doesn’t need to tell me that.

  If I can’t dream at night, I will dream in the day. A dream that is common, simple, even true. A dream of everyday life. A dream at a window over cracked concrete. The staff’s collection of rusty, dinged cars. Beyond, a scruff of young trees.

  A dream of supermarkets and shoe stores. Banana peppers and crabgrass plots. Of post office clerks. Dental hygienists. Cavernous, slush-filled potholes cratering lost strip-mall parking lots. The places I once spent my time, trafficking clamshelled toys and canisters of apple juice. With the kids. Their noses in an unruly state of secretion. Demanding this toy. This treat. This ride.

  This. Now. Please.

  Where was Ed? Nowhere to be seen. My daydream accounts for this too.

  The treeless plateau outside a big-box store was heaven then. The smell of tar rising from the pavement in summer. Hot gum on the soles of my sneakers. A squeaky, broken-wheeled cart. Bobby used to ride on the back. Hanging on by one finger, hair in his eyes, he was a shoelaced peril, while the baby hiccupped and squirmed in her seat as I pushed. Her eyes on me. Always on me. Making sure I was there.

  Back at the car, I strap them in. Check all the latches and belts.

  “Here,” I tell Bobby. “This is for you. Because you are my first, my good boy. Because you are fierce, and my joy.”

  He rolls his eyes. Then takes the package from my hands.

  In a moment, the plastic is in his teeth. He rips and tugs—his canines have evolved for this—and eventually peels from the transparent shell a remote-controlled plane. A car that talks. A BB gun. A bow and arrow. A puppy. A personal robot. A bounce house. A battery-powered car. A rocket booster. A ray gun. My bright shining love.

  The baby, meanwhile, chews on the ear of her new super-soft bunny.

  Behind us, all the cars are gone. And so are the people. It’s just the kids and me and a shopping cart with four new wheels on the perfectly repaved parking lot.

  “Bobby,” I say, looking at the cart, unbuckling him as though we’ve just arrived.

  I don’t need to say more. He’s already by me, already sailing. Pumping his lean, strong legs, running and screeching and hopping on the front of the cart as it flies, his T-shirt aloft. The strip mall, our island, in the vast dark sea around us.

  A sound in the hall pulls me back to Ward E. Pulls me away from these children who no longer exist. They are older now, no longer know me.

  They no longer want to know me.

  Children never remember their parents’ care. Our delicate footfalls. The stacks of warm washcloths. All the cool hands on fevered brows. It takes just a few years.

  My children no longer remember my love.

  Outside my window, a mown lawn. Trees. City houses. The lake.

  On clear days, I can see all the way to Toronto. On days like today, when the sky falls and meets the gray water, I see only myself in the glass. Backlit. A smoky afternoon.

  The clouds rolling up my eyes.

  * * *

  The halls are empty now. Many rooms are empty now. But I am here, still, roaming Ward E. A few like me remain because we cannot leave. We no longer have the will to leave. Desire takes too much energy.

  I watch the construction begin. How the men shout. Repointing the sandstone. Resealing the floors. In the foyer, the table saws whine.

  Ed is still with me. He won’t leave me alone.

  A marriage is always complete.

  It’s Only for Forever

  BY TOM FONTANA

  Niagara Street

  This all happened a long time ago, back when Fatima’s Bar and Grill was on the corner of Breckenridge and Niagara, before the joint burned to the ground. Now, I’m not saying the fire had anything to do with what happened to me. It didn’t. At least, I don’t think so. In any case, Fatima’s is where the problem started. Problem? Catastrophe. A balls-in-your-throat catastrophe.

  I was a pretty average guy before that night. Regular job, regular girlfriend with regular sex, regular apartment with regular rent, an okay car. A good life, which could have been better, but wasn’t too bad. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  I was at Fatima’s, having a drink with Bart, my best friend for aeons, my best friend in the cosmos. I’m serious, he and I discovered the best of the best together: street hockey, chicks, deep-fried Mars bars, jerking off. He was mor
e my blood than my brother.

  That night, after a couple rounds, a couple shots of T, I told him I was going to ask Lizzie to marry me. Between shots, I’m going on and on about how much I love her, her tits, her ass, her sense of humor. The way she can manage a checkbook. And Bart’s giving me major shit. But in a good way. Like best pals do.

  Then I say—don’t know why, maybe the booze—how much HE means to me. That I hope my marriage to Lizzie doesn’t become a roadblock for him and me. Y’know, not queer or anything, but still from the heart.

  He says, because he always had to one-up me, “If you got killed tomorrow, I wouldn’t be at your funeral. I’d be laying low in Mexico after killing the motherfucker who killed you. We ride together, we die together . . .”

  What a mind-blowing, beautiful thing to say. I nod, “Me too . . .”

  He says, “Naw, you don’t mean it.”

  “I do. I swear, I do.”

  “Swear on your mother’s grave.”

  I swore on my mother’s grave. And my father’s too, just for effect.But Bart was a hard nut to please. He kept shaking his head, not believing me.

  He makes me write out the words on a paper napkin, then sign my name. With a cheap plastic pen, in red ink.

  Then, and only then, does Bart smile. He raises his glass and we toast our undying, unconditional friendship with another shot of T.

  The morning after next, the cops find Bart’s body.

  I call Patrice to tell her the news. Did I mention that Bart had gotten married when he was very young? A girl we went to Lafayette High School with. Her real name is Patty, but after going to France the summer between junior and senior years, she came back Patrice. Bart dug it. I thought she was a pretentious c—.

  Well.

  He got her preggers in the locker room at school during the senior prom and married her and they lived together in a tiny apartment over on Linwood until she threw him out because, she said, he drank too much and was too immature and had lousy friends.

  But I had to let bygones be gone. Bart was dead and I figured she’d want to know. I call her and she sighs and hangs up.

  Bart’s father is in rehab and his mom’s living in Pasadena banging some clown who owns a miniature golf course, so both parents are useless.

  Which leaves me to make the funeral arrangements. Now, this was something I had never done before, because when both my parents got mangled in the car accident, my brother and my two sisters took charge, deciding this and that, everything really, including which hymns were going to be sung at the requiem Mass. I was glad about them doing that, y’know, because who wants to deal with that kinda shit?

  But here I am at Amigone Funeral Home, dealing with exactly that kinda shit.

  I take Lizzie with me and she’s great, so loving, so supportive. I mean, I’m a basket case, right? My best friend in the whole world is a slab of meat on a cold morgue table and the cops haven’t yet told me how or why he died. I’m crying nonstop, like a two-year-old on an airplane, as the amazing Lizzie and I walk into a room filled with caskets. I feel the same way I did standing in the showroom the day I bought my first car. (I got a Nissan Stanza and lived to regret it.) The undertaker, very gentle, very white-haired, talks about different kinds of woods and linings. Who knew? I’d always thought that a casket was a casket. An oblong box that people see for two, three days, then never again. Did Bart really give two shits if he was in mahogany or cypress? Shit. Maybe. How the fuck would I know?

  The undertaker drones on, asking about flowers and funeral cards and limos and . . .

  Lord God in heaven, I have to make choices (silk or satin inside the box) and I have to make them fast, but my brain is in some weird vapor lock or something.

  Then Lizzie says—this is why I loved her, why I always will—“Honey, pick any coffin, any lining. It’s only for forever.”

  I laugh. We go back to my place and fuck in the bathroom. Wait. Why am I’m telling you this part? It’s got nothing to do with the rest.

  While I’m dealing with the details for the wake and the burial and the “reception” (at Fatima’s) afterward, the cops are supposedly investigating. But they have no clues, no evidence, no witnesses, no, no, no, no, no. They release the body from the morgue and the undertaker paints it up to look almost human and we plant Bart in the ground like a petunia, over at Mount Calvary, near the expressway.

  Rest in peace. If you like the sound of traffic.

  By this point, the fucking cops rule Bart’s death a suicide, a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the heart. Bullshit. Even I know he couldn’t have held the gun that far from his chest for the trajectory to work. Buffalo PD. Lazy fucks. (Okay, not all of them: once this uniform, a black guy, got my bicycle back from some asshole junkie.)

  I head over, with Lizzie, to Bart’s apartment to clear out his stuff. I am amazed at how neat the place is. Bart was not, by nature, neat. But even his bed is made. Almost as if Bart knew he wasn’t coming back.

  We give most of his belongings to the Salvation Army. There wasn’t much, I mean, he wasn’t some Saudi prince. I kept his catcher’s mitt and a cashmere scarf that I’d always coveted. I sent his dad an old family photo of the three of them at Allegheny State Park. I sent Bart’s mom a set of salt and pepper shakers that he’d bought when he was twelve on a trip with his Catholic Academy class to New York City. I never heard back from either of them. Not that I expected a thank you. I wasn’t doing this for them.

  Oh, and Bart had an overdue library book, Hunter Thompson fearing and loathing something, which I return and pay the fine. I didn’t even know that Bart had a library card. Who still has a library card?

  On the way back home, on an impulse, I drive over to Broderick Park. I want to see the spot where Bart died. The yellow crime scene tape had snapped and flapped in an angry wind. On the grass is a trickle of blood. I light a cigarette and stand there until the sun disappears, sinking behind the Peace Bridge.

  * * *

  The next Tuesday, I’m oversleeping, my alarm clock in pieces on other side of the bedroom, when I get a call from a lawyer, Mickey Greene, saying that I’d been left something in Bart’s will. Bart had a will? Bart had a lawyer? Right then, right there, I should have known that something was fucked, that I was fucked.

  That afternoon, I arrive at the offices of Greene, Muscarella, and Jefferson. Mickey Greene, who looks about twelve and speaks really fast, hands me an envelope, with the words TO BE OPENED AT MY DEATH scrawled on the front in red marker.

  Red. Sure. Bart had a sense of humor, though I didn’t realize the joke until I tore open the envelope.

  Inside was a US passport for a guy I’d never heard of. And, folded in half, a paper napkin with the words, If you got killed tomorrow, I wouldn’t be at your funeral. I’d be laying low in Mexico after killing the motherfucker who killed you. We ride together, we die together. And at the bottom, my fucking signature.

  Yeah, you got it.

  Oh, sure, of course, before I do anything, I take the passport to the cops and tell them that this fat, bald guy in the passport, name of Rolin Rivers, might have something to do with Bart’s untimely demise. That Bart had left an envelope for me, TO BE OPENED AT MY DEATH. Naturally, I don’t mention the napkin.

  I’m insistent that they at least talk to this joker Rivers. I’m insistent because of what’s at stake: justice for Bart and—fuck me—the promise I’d made, which I did not want to fulfill. Finally, the cops say they’ll interview Rivers. They practically shove me out the door. In their defense, Bart’s was the second suspicious death in two weeks and the department was getting plenty of heat.

  I wait and wait for the phone to ring. I gotta admit, by this point my nerves are rattled. I’m starting to get yelled at a lot at work. Lizzie seems constantly pissed off at me. I’m waking up at Fatima’s, at dawn, facedown on a table of dried beer and potato chip shards. Christ, the stench of the human body, alive or dead.

  * * *

  Days later, having still
not heard a word from the cops, I go back to the homicide unit. Yes, they’d interviewed the guy whose face was on the passport, Rolin Rivers, but he had an alibi for the night Bart died. He was at a Bills game with the pastor of his church. (He was Episcopalian. Catholicism without the guilt.)

  “Did you talk to the pastor?” I ask.

  “Sure, he confirmed that they were together the whole time.”

  “The whole time? Rolin Rivers never went to buy a soda or take a piss?”

  “Even if he had, how fast could he have gotten from the stadium all the way to Broderick Park and back without the good reverend noticing?”

  “Okay,” I say, “but Rivers could have hired someone to shoot—”

  One of the detectives, a barrel-chested goon with brown teeth, suddenly giggles in a girlish way, “You watch too much TV.”

  Yeah, you got it, you know what’s next.

  I track down Rolin Rivers in Getzville. I study his every move, morning to midnight. I wait, with the calm of a Vegas card dealer shuffling a deck. I wait until one evening when Rivers is leaving his house. I’m in the garage when he slides his fat ass into the driver’s seat. I make him drive me to Broderick Park, to the spot of green grass. I tie him up. I light a cigarette, an American Spirit, and use the edge to burn his pale, sweaty skin until he talks.

  Boy, does he talk. I can’t shut the bastard up. He babbles, like a car without brakes, about what Bart had done and why Rivers hated him and why he’d had Bart killed. I’m not going into the specifics, but let me just say that the guy Rivers described was not Bart. No way. Not my best friend. Not my brother in life. Rivers was wrong, he had the wrong guy. I’d known Bart since the beginning of time. No way.

  I’m well aware that the confession Rivers has made to me is inadmissible in court (yeah, too much TV) and that, if I let him go, I’ll be the one facing prison time.

  Shit, in for a penny, in for a pound.

  I pull a car jack out of the trunk of the Chevy. I swing. There’s a lotta fucking blood. And a lotta silence.

  I walk away, slowly, in a daze. I do remember dropping the car jack into the canal. And wondering whether I should find the guy who had actually fired the bullet into Bart’s heart. A professional hit man or some local punk? Either way, I decide, I’ve done enough. I’ve killed the man responsible. This is all the justice that friendship requires.