Jess Walter - Land Of The Blind

I heard a sound from the bathroom like a sick person moaning. I looked over. The bathroom door was closed.

"Dana had a lot of wine. Tommy's in there with her."

I tried the door. It was locked. I pounded.

"Go away, Boyle," said Tommy. "We'll be out in a minute."

"Stop it," I heard Dana say, muffled, from the other side of the door.

My shoulder hit the door and I was surprised at how easily it opened. I suppose I hadn't hit anything that hard since I nearly killed the cheerleader during the basketball game. Inside, Dana was on her knees, bent over the bathtub, moaning and spitting, having just thrown up. Tommy was standing behind her, trying to pull her dress up.

"Hey, Mason," said Tommy, his eyes drunken slits. He smiled.

I pulled him out of the bathroom and pushed him across the room. He crashed into the bed and fell to the floor. As I stalked toward him, Eli slid past me into the bathroom.

Tommy was laughing. "Come on, Mason. She was giving me the eye, man." He looked at my collapsed lid and smiled. "Oh, sorry."

I pulled him up by his tux shirt and pressed him up against the wall. He pushed me back and I nearly lost my balance. "Come on. She don't like that fuckin' geek." He pushed me again, harder, and I staggered back, against the bed.

I grabbed him by the shirt and flung him across the room, and he knocked the television from its stand. It crashed to the floor next to him. "Jesus, Mason. What the fuck's got into you?"

Just then a key turned, the hotel room door opened, and in came the same desk clerk that I'd seen downstairs. He still had that stony look on his face, the most overwhelming case of boredom I'd ever seen. He looked around the room: One girl passed out on the bed. One boy on the floor next to the TV. The eyeball boy standing in the middle of the room. One girl getting sick in the bathroom. Another boy standing helplessly behind her. Empty wine bottles everywhere.

"Out," he said quietly. "Get out of here before I call the cops."

Tommy pulled himself up. "My dad rented…"

"I don't care if your dad owns the fuckin' hotel, kid." He said it like he was quoting us a price. "Get your things, get your girl, and get out of here."

Tommy walked to the bed. He pulled Amanda's dress back up over her bra and then shot me a glare. He wrestled with Amanda and got her to her feet. "I'm on TV!" Amanda chirped, then she slumped in his arms. Tommy staggered under her weight.

"I'll help," I said, and stepped forward.

"Don't come near me, you fuckin' one-eyed freak," Tommy said.

Eli came out of the bathroom and helped Tommy stand Amanda up. They carried her out of the room and toward the elevator.

"Get the other one and get out of here," said the desk clerk. Then he turned and followed Eli and Tommy and Amanda, who chirped, "What channel is this?"

In the bathroom, Dana had gotten to her feet and wiped her mouth on a towel. She smoothed her dress in back and turned to see me. "That's not very good wine," she said.

She fished around in the medicine cabinet until she found a small tube of toothpaste, put some on her finger, and rubbed it on her teeth.

"I was going to kick him as soon as I finished puking," she said. "But thank you."

"Sure," I said.

"Where's Eli?" she asked.

"Helping Amanda to Tommy's car."

I could hear engines growling and tires squealing on the street below. I checked my watch. It was midnight. The dance was over.

Dana looked out the window at the glittering skyline of Spokane. I've always thought it a strange city that way: a city of illusion, at night its downtown big and sparkling, but during the day small and decaying, with big gaps between the buildings. At night, you can imagine great things here. But daytime in Spokane is cold and real.

Dana reached out and touched the window. "Do you have any idea how many kids like me sit at home on Friday nights and fantasize about this, about what people like you and Susan and Amanda and Tommy are doing? Everything we want is inside rooms like this." She turned and smiled. "It's sad."

She picked up her wrap and draped it over her shoulders.

"Thank you for coming to this dance with Eli," I said. "I think it really meant a lot to him."

She got a faraway look. "You're welcome," she said.

I stepped forward and gave her a small hug and we separated.

"God," she said, and reached up to touch my face. "Your eye."

I don't remember much after that, how we ended up on the floor or when my hand found the neckline of her dress and one of her fine, new breasts, or how long we chewed on each other's tongues and ran our hands over each other's legs and sides and ribs and shoulders. What I do remember is the realization that someone was in the doorway watching us. And I remember being glad we hadn't gotten any further when I looked up from the floor and saw Eli Boyle – saw that look on his face that would remain with me forever, that look I would see again this week on his dead face, his eyes round and helpless, taking in more than they could bear.

I wish I could tell you how we all got there. Or what was said afterward. Honestly, I don't remember much beyond the look on Eli's face. I remember the carpet smelled like wine. I remember that Dana Brett's skin was a revelation. And I remember that it was just after midnight, the beginning of another cold, real day.

It's the ex-wife. It dawns on Caroline as she reads Clark Mason's bitter divorce records, as it also occurs to her that this nice philosophical, theoretical discussion of crime may in fact refer to an actual crime – messy, banal, and ordinary, a new pile of old shit: Woman bangs everyone but her husband. Takes all the money from the divorce. Remarries before the ink is dry.

So he kills her.

Clark or Tony Mason – whatever he calls himself – why should he be any different from any of the slag-headed, short-tempered men who end up here? Most murderers kill someone close to them, and most murderers are men and most victims women – the unrequited, the girlfriends, the wives and ex-wives, women who spurned or cheated or simply didn't get dinner on the table in time. Caroline had wanted this to be different, wanted him to be different. But that's what happens when you go trolling for meaning in the truth. Fables are for children, parables for priests. All true stories are melodrama. Or noise.

The noise in these divorce papers is deafening. Caroline winces as she flips through the charges and countercharges recounting the three-year matrimony and acrimony of Clark A. and Susan A. Mason: Complainant was unfaithful… Respondent forced complainant to quit her profitable job in Seattle and move to Spokane… Complainant hid joint money in private accounts… Respondent irresponsibly spent couple's savings, mortgaged their home, and liquidated stock to run for Congress… Infidelity… Impotence… Emotional abuse.

From the dissolution papers, Caroline learns that Clark and Susan were married in December 1999 in Seattle and divorced in January 2001 in Spokane. It was his first marriage and her third. There were no children. In 1999 they left Seattle and moved to Spokane, and bought a swanky, sizable house on Manito Country Club – with cash. Caroline can imagine it. Stories like this seem apocryphal in Spokane, because they never happen to anyone from Spokane. It's always a cousin in Seattle… or a friend in the Bay Area.

Clark's story starts like all of those: Guy sells stock holdings right near the high-tech peak. Sells a house in the inflated Seattle market. Pulls a few million from investments and a million more out of a waterfront condo. Comes to Spokane with enough money to buy half of downtown, so it's a cinch to pick up a top-of-the-line $500,000 house abutting the city's best country club – with cash.