Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

“This isn’t me,” she told Hank. “Uh-uh.”

Hank continued to stare at her so she amended her wishful declaration: “This isn’t me most of the time. It certainly isn’t who I want to be.”

Shaking now, she went back into the bedroom and studied the IV hook up.

“Fuck,” she said.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

What if?

Experimentally, her Latex-clad finger curled around the back of the blue clamp, her thumb caressed the small white plastic wheel. She listened to Amy’s thready breathing.

Why would she paint her fingernails a dumb color like that?

Her thumb debated, moving the wheel up and down. She saw how simply it worked. Flattening the tubing and cutting off the flow. All comes down to this cheap plastic piece of shit, probably cost eighty-nine cents, probably some nine-year-old kid made it in Singapore or China.

Fuck.

She thumbed the wheel up the track and then down the track. Up, down. She pulled away, nervously puffing on her cigarette, and left the white wheel at the top of the clamp. Off.

For now.

It’ll give me a little time to think.

She went back in the living room and paced in front of the fireplace.

Allen was such a mixture of innocent lamb and cold, efficient operator. And Earl was all smiles, like a big cat who was lying back for the moment, sort of amazed by the machinations of this dazzling killer mouse who’d danced onto the scene. Who was trying to impress her.

And she knew what Earl was thinking: Allen was another loose end, a tricky one, for sure; but he’d have to be dealt with. She turned and saw Hank still watching her like an old billy goat.

“What?” she shouted at Hank’s relentless eyes.

Two blinks.

“Oh Christ, when is this going to stop?”

Two more blinks.

She sat on the edge of the fold-out couch and toyed with the wrinkled sheet of paper that Allen had dropped. This insistent new sound whistled from Hank’s mouth. A jerky panting sound.

Everyone else had; why not me? She started smoothing out the sheet of paper. Amy had this tall, bold way of printing; strong letters, upright, nothing weak about them. She was like Broker, probably-never sick, no flaws.

She could imagine them walking around in the fucking woods, being healthy together.

“Okay, okay,” she said and let her finger linger on the alphabet game. Hank’s eyes snapped from group to group and line to line.

“H”

“I”

“T”

“Hit?” she puzzled. Then she saw the longing in his eyes, shining through the clay of his flesh. Hank always could put a lot into a glance. And she wasn’t so bad when it came to fast reading of a pair of eyes. She inhaled and exhaled in a very exaggerated manner.

Two blinks.

“You want a hit?”

Two blinks.

“Aw, God.” She slid across the blankets, turned, and reclined next to Hank. She wished she could shake out her hair the way he liked. Yeah, well, she wished a lot of things.

“You and me, honey; like in Casablanca , remember, when smoking was sexier than sex.”

She leaned over and, as she kissed Hank on his motionless lips, she felt his breath mingle with hers. Then, she turned her hand so the cigarette fit between his lips and sealed her cupped fingers over his mouth.

Bogey one last time.

Hank sucked in and the nicotine mushroomed in his lungs, invaded the air sacks, and pillaged through his blood, and he could feel his entire circulation system brighten up like a mile of Christmas lights strung through a bombed, blacked-out city. It made the sperm dust jump.

This was the tough lady he’d fallen in love with the moment he saw her walk into that church basement. He’d thought to soak in her like the proverbial fountain, but she was no fountain; she was a Raymond Carver short story when he met her, up to her neck in low-rent heartbreak, with the tatters of her alcoholism not quite tucked all the way in. Now here she was with her growing pains, stranded in a North Woods Crime and Punishment.

His heart began to beat faster. There wasn’t much time left. And she was the only legacy he had.

Jolene lowered her head to Hank’s shoulder and could have cried. But if she were the crying type she couldn’t come out of this on top. Which she fully intended to do, one way or the other. So she appreciated the last hand Hank was playing, having his last smoke before they put on the blindfold. And now he was blinking again.

She removed the cigarette from his lips, flipped it into the fireplace, and held up the paper.

“A”

“L”

. .

“K”

“I”

“L”

“L”

. .

“E”

“R”

“L”

. .

“W”

“A”

“R”

“N”

“What am I supposed to do? This isn’t exactly an ideal situation.”

“G”

“E”

“T”

. .

“T”

“O”

. .

“F”

“I”

“G”

“H”

“T”

. .

“U”

. .

“W”

“I”

“N”

Oh, shit. Hank felt the control slipping away as a flutter of color blotted his concentration. Coming to smother him. He blinked wildly.

“What?” Jolene yelled. The paper was starting to come apart, damp from her sweaty hands.

“S”

“A”

“V”

“E”

. .

“T”

“H”

“E”

“M”

“Easy for you to say,” Jolene said, and then she saw his eyes revert to their loopy aimlessness. She shook his shoulder. “C’mon, Hank, don’t go away now. Christ!”

She got up and hugged herself in front of the fire. Looked past the kitchen, at the hall to the bedroom where she’d paused Amy’s slow-motion Fentanyl toboggan.

Save them . How? Allen had the plan. Earl had the gun.

But Hank was right, it wouldn’t be that hard to get them going at each other.

But Allen was the only one who could fix Hank’s eyes and keep all the secrets safe.

But what if Allen didn’t disable Hank’s eyes. What would Hank say then? See, that was the rough part-she didn’t know.

Staring at the flames, she imagined the opposite of fire. And that’s what was going on out there in the dark. Broker’s body was slowly filling up with ice-cold. The diving-seal syndrome. His fingers and toes would go first, freeze white and hard as piano keys as the blood drained from his extremities and pooled around his heart and lungs. It would abandon his brain and would make a last-ditch stand in the engine room.

Gee, all the neat stuff I’ve learned.

He lied to me .

The bottle of scotch they’d used to marinate Broker shimmered in the firelight, on the desk next to the fireplace. With his fingerprints on it.

She stared at the rubber gloves on her hands. They made her feel removed from life. A ghost. Not really here.

Johnny Walker Red Label.

Festive.

She’d never liked scotch. She’d liked invisible alcohol that didn’t overpower your breath. She’d been a vodka drinker. Sneaky. Vodka Seven. Gimlets. Fruity tastes.

Story of your life with Earl. Sneaky.

The whole idea with Hank was to get away from that.

Look at it, two-thirds full. A color somewhere between piss and raw gold.

How long is it now, Jolene? Fourteen months?

I came to believe that a higher power could restore me to sanity.

A sane, safe little sheep, following Allen and Earl to the chunk of change at the end of the rainbow. She’d get her wish, she’d be a rich wire mother.

Jolene shuddered.

The warm part of her, the cloth mother trapped in the bottle, called out to her. She peeled off the rubber gloves and reached out her hand.