Gregg Hurwitz - The Survivor

Given his own experience joining the Guard to pay for college, Nate had always sworn he’d work until Cielle’s education was squared away. Pete’s arrival had seemed to take care of all that. Until now.

She glared at him. “Oh, c’mon. This isn’t your concern. Any more than anything else has been these past nine months. Or three years, for that matter. You just … what? Moved on? Got over it?”

“No. I never got over it.”

A cynical snicker couldn’t quite hide the hopefulness. “What then?”

He studied his hands. “I always thought there would be time.”

“There’s never time. There’s only right now. And you suck at right now.”

He was running numbers in his head, but there weren’t many to run given the anemic state of his bank account. “Maybe I can help with the tuition-”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“What can I do, then?”

Once again she showed him her back. “Die somewhere else.”

The words left a clean hole through him where his stomach used to be. He sat for a while and watched her shoulders, the back of her head. She was ostensibly reimmersed in homework.

His joints ached as he stood. “I wish I could’ve done better by you.” He heard the faintest sniffle, but nothing more. “For whatever it’s worth, I’m proud of everything you are and everything you’ll be.”

He took care to ease her door shut silently behind him. Janie and Pete were where he’d left them downstairs by the sink, the salad plates sitting unmoved. Janie asked, “You wanna stay for dinner?”

He thought of his date with a handful of pills in the quiet dark of his apartment. Those inked fingers curling through the Town Car’s window. “Nah. I have to get back.”

The look of relief in Janie’s eyes about killed him.

“I’m sorry to hear about the investments,” Nate said.

Pete tensed a bit. “We’ll figure it out. You have enough to worry about. Don’t worry about this, too.”

Janie added quickly, “She’ll be fine in public school. We were.”

“Okay.” Nate wanted so badly to raise a hand to her cheek, to feel those lips one last time, but instead he tipped his head. “I just wanted … I just wanted to say good-bye.”

Pete said, “If there’s anything we can do…”

“You know what I like about you, Pete? You’re a decent guy. And you’ve never let the fact that we don’t get along mess anything up.” Nate lifted his eyes, indicating the thunderous silence emanating through the ceiling. “Take care of her. When … you know, I can’t.”

They shook hands, and Pete pulled him into a hug. Janie said, “Honey, I’ll just see him out,” and Pete said, “Of course.”

Janie walked Nate to the porch, and they stood there. Nate crouched and fussed with the loose goddamned brick. “There’s a mortar bag in the garage with a little left over.” When he stood, he saw that she had tears in her eyes again, and he said, “Janie.”

“I want to say something comforting, but I don’t know if it’s for me or you. So I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

Afraid of what his face might show, he looked at his waiting car. “C’mon. It’s not that bad. You still get to go to the opera next week with Pete the Fun Vacuum.”

“You’re a menace.”

“I want you to know,” he said, “there was never anyone else for me, Janie.”

Her lips trembled, and then she nodded once, turned, and hurried inside. He walked to his car. He had the keys in the lock when he heard from behind, “ Fuck you.”

He turned, and Cielle was standing there, her sweater sleeves pulled down over her fists, her face flushed. “I loved you so much. ” She spit it, like a curse. “I lit candles when you were away at war, and then, when you left us, I lit candles that you’d come back. ‘Dear God, please bring my daddy back to me safe.’ And even when you were with us, you were busy with your stupid job taking care of everyone else except for the people you were supposed to be taking care of.”

“Cielle-”

“You can’t have my sympathy. You can’t have it. You don’t. I don’t care if you’re dying.” Despite her best efforts, tears were leaking.

He stood there, still, his heart coming apart for her. More than anything he wanted to go to her, but he knew if he took so much as a step, she’d bolt like a deer.

“You can’t die yet,” she said. “You didn’t earn it. You left us, and now you get to die before I can get even.”

When he trusted his voice, he asked, “How were you gonna get even?”

“I was gonna have a great life and get married and be successful and keep your grandkids from you. But you’re dying and trying to make me feel … make me feel…” Her face wobbled all around. “Why’d you come tell us anyway?”

“I wanted to say good-bye to you. I wanted to have a chance to set things straight.”

“Why now, Nate ?” His proper name, like a projectile. “I mean, you found out months ago. And you’re not sick yet. I mean, you still have months left at least, right?”

The weight of his bones pulled at him. “It might be sooner than that, Cielle.”

She staggered a bit. Encased in her sleeves, her fists tightened. “Does Mom know that?”

He shook his head.

“Then why are you laying it on me?”

“It’s too late for me and your mother.”

She swiped at her cheeks angrily with her sleeve. “It’s too late for me and you, too.”

He watched her all the way up the walk, hoping for a final glimpse of her face, praying she’d turn around one last time.

She didn’t.

A scattering of envelopes waited on the doormat outside Nate’s second-floor Westwood apartment. His mind flew to that dark sedan; were these written threats from the man attached to the tattooed hand? Not to worry-Nate was a handful of pills from being safely out of anyone’s reach. Crouching, he saw the network logos brightening up the flaps and let out a thin breath of relief. Letters from a bunch of local news affiliates, requesting interviews about his “heroic” role in the bank robbery. Kicking them aside, he scooped up the morning paper.

Standing in the hall, he folded the Los Angeles Times back to the obituaries, as was his recent habit. There was Mary Montauk, a professor of linguistics who had helped design the first spell-check program. Gwendolyn Dawson, born crocheter and special-ed teacher. Arthur Fiske, heir to a textile fortune, World War II airman, and benefactor to the Getty. Nate pictured the man in a canary yellow sweater, reclining on a puffy down bed bleached with ethereal light as he drifted off, a faint grin touching his lips. He’d had plenty of time to adjust to the temperature, Arthur had, to ease his way into a place of nostalgic contemplation, a prince’s view back over a life well lived. As always, Nate’s eye snagged on the last line:

Arthur is survived by Pamela, his loving wife of sixty-three years, four sons, and eleven grandchildren.

Good on you, Arthur, he thought.

Entering his apartment, Nate dumped the paper and letters in the trash. Three years later IKEA labels remained stuck on the furniture, arrows and letters to aid assembly. He sank onto the foldout couch he’d bought in optimistic hope that Cielle would spend the occasional night. Two thumbtacked photos livened up the opposing wall. A candid, blurred shot of Janie and him from the wedding, dancing and laughing into the embrace of a private joke. And Cielle at six, all broad smile and crooked teeth, crouching with a soccer ball at her knee. On the coffee table before him sat the signed divorce papers and his suicide note. He lifted the note to the light.