Andrew Gross - Eyes Wide Open

“You see nothing, you stupid, drugged-out worm! You wouldn’t know God if he was with you now.”

“He is,” he said, ignoring the taunts. “I can feel him. He’s-”

“Then let him save you,” the woman said. She threw her weight against him, forcing him toward the edge. His heart started to race. He tried to gain his balance, stumbling over a rock, his right foot coming out of his shoe.

“Dad!”

“Your daddy isn’t up here,” the woman said. “Just me. That’s all.” She pushed him again. This time he tried to grab on to her and spun his arms, teetering.

“You want your parents, little boy? You’ll be with them soon enough. Tell him that, Evan. When you see God. Tell him Mommy and Daddy are on the way.”

She taunted him again. He tried to latch onto her, the angel he had trusted, but found only air.

He stared down at the bottom, terrified. “Mom!”

She pushed him one last time, and he spun, seeing clearly now that the lights weren’t candles at all, but streets, homes, cars, and that the choir below wasn’t angelic voices, but waves crashing, hitting the rocks.

Yet, instead of fear, something else entered his heart as his arms fluttered, unable to stop his fall.

Something welcoming. For the first time, a kind of attachment.

Everything seemed to reach out to him in a friendly way.

Mom, Dad…

He reached out, trying to grab on to them.

But it was only the night he held, the endless starry night.

“Y ou killed him! ” Gabby stared uncomprehendingly at Susan, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You killed my son.”

“I merely did what the gutless little shit didn’t have the balls to do himself,” Susan Pollack replied. “I showed him the way.”

I heard this, pressed against the front door, having crossed the courtyard to Charlie’s apartment. Susan Pollack’s spiteful re-creation of Evan’s death, and Gabby’s heartbroken reply.

I had the dead officer’s gun with me.

The curtains were drawn, but the door was still slightly ajar, and I could hear what was happening inside. I prayed that the cabbie had done what I’d begged him to and called the police. Through a slit in the curtains, I saw Dev and Susan Pollack holding guns on Charlie and Gabby.

I was the only one who could help them now.

“You’re not an angel,” Gabby said, her gaze blazing like a furnace bursting with hate. “You’re a monster. You killed him. You’re the one who should die. This monster killed our son, Charlie…” She was starting to lose control. “I cannot live with that.”

“Dev, please! ” Charlie turned to him. “You’ve got what you came for. Here I am. Can’t you see she’s suffered enough? She’s done nothing to you. Let her go.”

“Let her go? ” Dev cockily wagged his gun. “That’s where you’re wrong, old friend. She’s done everything to me. She’s your wife, Charlie. She’s the mother of your son.”

Helpless tears ran into Charlie’s gray beard. “ Please.”

Dev just shook his head. “Sorry, mate. No can do.”

“I waited thirty years,” Susan Pollack said with a gleam in her eye. She raised the gun to Gabby’s face. “You want your little boy so bad…” She cocked it with both thumbs. “Be sure and tell him hello from me.”

I couldn’t wait any longer. I burst through the door.

Susan Pollack spun, surprised.

I trained my gun on Dev, who sat there with neither shock nor real concern on his face. More like amusement.

In front of the hearth, Susan Pollack’s gun had fixed on me, her hands shaking.

My problem was, I couldn’t just start shooting.

They had Maxie.

“Drop the gun, ” I said to her, the dead policeman’s gun trained on Dev.

Dev just sat there, his gun dangling nonchalantly against his thigh, actually facing Charlie. “ Gonna kill me, doc? Bad policy, wouldn’t you say, all things considered…?”

“Get out of here, Jay,” Charlie said. “Please. Get out now. This is our fight.”

“It is my fight, Charlie. They’ve got Maxie. The police are on their way.” I looked at Susan, not knowing if she would respond to reason. “There’s no way out. You shoot me, I shoot him.”

“Loosey-goosey, huh, doc?” Dev grinned. “That’s how you want to play it? Well…” I saw him firm up his grip on the gun. “Just the way I like it, I guess…” He shifted toward me. “Though I was thinking, surely a guy with such a fancy degree would be smart enough to have been a long ways from here by now…”

There was a kind of chuckling, almost fatalistic quality to his tone, and it made me worry. Almost as if he sensed he had the upper hand.

We both knew I couldn’t shoot him dead.

That was when Gabby turned to Charlie, her cheeks tearstained, a kind of finality on her face. “I am sorry, my husband…”

Fear in his eyes, he suddenly realized what she was thinking.

“I am sorry…” She shook her head. “But I cannot live in this hell anymore.”

“Gabby, no, no!”

She lunged, surprising Susan Pollack, who brought her gun back in a defensive gesture. Gabby barreled into her, driving her back into the stone mantel with the fierceness of an enraged animal.

Susan uttered a horrific, garbled scream as she went backward. Her mouth parted in a frieze of disbelief and horror.

Her throat impaled on the jagged neck of Charlie’s guitar.

I heard the muffled blast of a gun firing, Susan’s gun, but not before Gabby wrapped her hands around Susan’s throat, forcing her harder and harder against the hearth, the splintered wood ripping through her larynx like a sharpened lance.

The gun fell to the floor amid her twitching, guttural rattles.

“You killed my Evan! ” Gabby kept her hands on Susan, her eyes ablaze, squeezing the remaining life out of her, looking directly into her face.

We all just stood there frozen.

Gabby finally let go, Susan remaining upright for another second or two against the fireplace. Then she slid, her rattles ending, to the floor.

Gabby turned, holding her abdomen, blood on her fingers.

That’s when everything went crazy.

Dev whirled and the next thing I knew, his gun went off, and I felt a scorching pain in my abdomen.

I looked at a bloody, jagged hole in my shirt.

I spun against the wall, my gun seeming to fire on its own. Three times.

One bullet tore into Dev’s shoulder. Another found its way into his thigh, causing him to double over and cry out. The last shot shattered the mirror behind him.

He looked at the hole in his thigh, blood seeping through. His wounds seemed only to make him madder. He looked back up at me, his eyes ablaze. “ You fucking sonovabitch! ”

He raised his gun toward me.

I heard Charlie yell out, “ No…”

He threw himself into Dev, Dev’s gun firing off wildly, Charlie’s eyes widening.

They struggled for a few seconds, the gun kicked away, my brother’s face twisted with pain and rage. I pointed my gun, tried to tear them apart, but I couldn’t get a clear shot at Dev and I was fearful my next shot might kill him before he told me where Maxie was. There was blood around, but I couldn’t tell from whom.

I tried to pull my brother off and get my gun on Dev, but Dev grabbed an iron poker from the fireplace, hurling me against the wall, and swung it against Charlie’s head. Then he pulled himself to his feet, turning his gaze on me. “I gave you every fucking chance in the world.” He swung the poker at me and I dodged it, my ribs on fire. I wanted to kill him more than anything I’d ever felt, but I couldn’t.

Not until he told me what I needed to know.

He was like some savage animal made even stronger by being wounded. He charged at me, grimacing. Then he hurled himself on top of me. He grabbed my arms, trying to wrestle my gun away.