Al Sarrantonio - Cold Night

The constellation Gemini was pushing its autumn stars up overhead. Gemini-the mythological twins Castor and Pollux, only one of whom was immortal. Castor and Pollux, special protectors of warriors.

In the sky, Gemini wheeled north.

Paine followed.

Cold night. The gun, the bottle. For Paine, this time, there was no third choice. No A.A. meetings, no sincere bullshit, no upbeat slogans about "learning to like yourself." No suicide-prevention hot line this time, no cool, calm voices coming out of the phone, trying to climb into the dark crawlspace in his head ("Where are you? What are you doing now? When did you start to feel like this?").

Tonight it was the gun, the bottle.

Hartman's.44 lay on the ground next to him. He sat with his back against the observatory, staring up into a sky that might as well be empty of stars. The telescope was blind, its dome sealed against the intrusion of starlight. Above, the stars of Hercules and Gemini dominated the sky, but Paine was as blind to their inevitable passage as the telescope.

Next to the.44 was the long, square bottle of Jim Beam he had bought in the bar. The bartender had given him an odd look, but the twenty-dollar bill Paine had given him made the odd look disappear. Paine had almost forgotten what a bar smelled like; the distinctive, hidden-alcohol smell. All those bottles side by side, snugly shelved up to the ceiling, enough to make a man drunk for a month or two-all the weight of that potential bender seeping through the bottle glass into the dry close air. The Jim Beam's white plastic twist cap was marred where his fingers had worried it open and closed. He had fought the idea of starting immediately, outside the bar, emptying the bourbon into his stomach and mind, not even waiting to get up north.

He stared at the bottle of bourbon. This is why we are called thinking beings, he thought. An animal would have used the gun or the bourbon by now, and thus made room on the planet for more, better animals. But not man. To the end he was an animal with a plan. He would argue with himself constantly, think about the things that had happened to him, try to feel sorry for himself and the others he had dragged through his life even as he had been dragged through it himself. Man, it seemed, always manufactured choices for himself.

The gun, the bottle.

The gun…

He remembered the first time he had picked up a gun. His father had been cleaning it in his study, and then the phone rang and he had gone to answer it in the hallway. Paine had come running in with his baseball glove to ask if he could go to the ball field with his friends. He saw the door to the study open, heard his father on the phone down the hall. He went into the study, saw the gun lying there, blue chrome steel, a handle like polished mahogany. It looked like a sophisticated toy. The cleaning materials were still laid out around it, but the gun was whole. He picked it up.

It was heavier than he thought it would be. He hefted it in his palm, then closed his hands around the stock, turning it toward the wall and aiming it like Elliot Ness rubbing out the Chicago mob-"Pow!" — then turning it to look down the barrel, his thumb slipping as he turned to see his father there in the doorway, as the gun slipped and he squeezed his grip to keep it from falling, his thumb tightening on the trigger.

The gun said click and his father hit him for the first and only time, his open palm across the back of Jack's head as he shouted, "My God!" as much at himself as at his son.

The bottle.

The bottle was harder to remember, because it had come on slowly. Beers in high school, gradually bourbon in the Army and then both after work with Bob Petty, searching harder as time went on for the place that made him numb, the place where all the bad places didn't go away but at least had a hard time making it clearly through his head…

The gun, the bottle.

Both.

Neither.

Rebecca Meyer's face pushed into his mind. He remembered the hours before sunrise, the dark outline of her sleeping profile. He thought of the swimming seas of her eyes that had trapped and pulled him down into their depths. He wanted to swim there now again.

He looked toward the house, saw the bright light in the window, thought of the empty sea of Rebecca that was left in there.

Emptiness settled into him again. He looked down at the bourbon, remembered the dry, oppressive odor of the bar.

The bottle.

The gun.

He picked up the.44, pressed the cold heaviness of the barrel against his temple. He felt his being flowing into his finger. He was drained, an empty thing, and only his finger was alive. He felt his finger on the trigger, felt himself, the trigger, pulling, pulling-

He brought the.44 down hard, smashing it into the bottle of Jim Beam. The bottle broke, sour bourbon splashing out of it and soaking into the thirsty ground. Paine trembled, his arm rigid, the hand holding the.44 jamming it into the broken bottle. He felt the sharp bright sting of a glass cut on his finger, felt the sensation of it blossom from his finger up through his hand and arm and into his head.

He saw her face again, heard her telling him what he knew in his heart and mind to be true.

"You're right, Rebecca, I can't."

His hand relaxed, letting the.44 go, letting it wash itself in a sea of spent bourbon.

He looked up and saw the stars.

He sat for a long time under the stars and said good-bye to her.

Then he got up and went to keep his promise.

No smiles at the front door this time. Paine managed his way past the first guard, but the desk man in the lobby was the real general. Paine couldn't even see the private elevator from the partitioned area around the man's desk; for all he knew the slim golden door was a wonderland illusion.

"Tell her it's about her daughter," Paine said to the stone face of the desk man.

The stone face spoke into the phone, and then the stone turned to soft wax and he said to Paine, "You may go up."

Paine walked past the desk and walked to the left and found the private elevator set in the marble facade. It was just where he had left it.

The doors opened, he got in, the elevator went up and he got off. The hallway, the right turn, the huge double doors. The ex-boxer doorman with the flat eyes nodded and said his name and the double doors magically opened once more.

Gloria Fulman was waiting for him in the entrance hail. There were a lot of bags packed in the foyer. She must have worked up quite a sweat telling all those maids and doormen where to pile things up.

"Little trip?" Paine asked.

"The other room, please," she said. Paine followed.

No tea sandwiches this time, or little cups of coffee with doilies under the saucers. Gloria Fulman went to one Sheraton sofa and sat down. Paine sat on its twin, facing her, and crossed his legs. The door to the pantry was in his line of sight to the left. The hallway was slightly to his right; another door was to his extreme right, almost beyond his peripheral vision, but he thought he'd be able to handle it if anyone came through.

Paine's right hand rested lightly on the front of his jacket, near his.38.

The coffee stains had been cleaned from the Persian rug. Gloria Fulman continued to glare at him, so Paine spoke first.

"I've been wondering what kind of man your husband is. He must be a lot like Morris Grumbach. He can forget about ever running for President."

"You said something about my daughter, Mr. Paine."

He watched her. He enjoyed watching her, and there was some guilt in this but not much. He was watching her the way she had watched him, the way Barker had watched everyone in his life, the way all people with the big hand watch the loser with the pair of deuces. He watched her wheels turn; watched her go through and reject the options — money, violence, blackmail, murder-and then he saw her come to a dead stop. The wheels rusted. She knew she had lost. The bags in the hallway, she knew, would not be packed into the Rolls-Royce and driven, along with her and her infant daughter and husband, to a private plane in a far and quiet corner of Logan Airport. She would not leave the country for a place without extradition, where her money, safe and available in Switzerland, would soon make her powerful and wanted again. She would not own the colorfully corrupt mayor, the police chief and whatever ministers, civil servants, private maids and thugs she would possibly need. She knew that none of this would happen now, because she was too late.