Dennis Lehane - Since We Fell

He offered her some peanuts and she shook her head, feeling numb to all of it suddenly, feeling as if she’d stepped into a virtual-reality booth and this was the set onto which she found herself projected.

“And your real father?”

“Never really knew him.” He shrugged. “Something we have in common.”

“How about Brian Delacroix? How’d you come up with that identity?”

“You know, Rachel. You know because I told you.”

And she did. “He went to Brown.”

Brian nodded.

“And you were the pizza delivery guy.”

“Delivered in forty minutes or less or you get it for half price.” He smiled. “Now you know why I drive so fast.” He shook some more peanuts into his hand.

“Why,” she said, “are you sitting there eating peanuts like nothing’s changed?”

“Because I’m hungry.” He popped another one in his mouth. “It was a long flight.”

“There was no flight .” She clenched, then unclenched her teeth.

He cocked an eyebrow at her and she wanted to tear it off his face. She wished she hadn’t drunk so much. She needed to be clearheaded right now and she wasn’t even close. She had wanted to have all her questions lined up in perfect sequence.

“There was no flight,” she said, “because there’s no job and you’re not Brian Delacroix, which means our marriage isn’t even legal and you’ve lied to me about...” She stopped. She could feel the dark all around her and all inside of her. “Everything.”

He slapped the peanut dust off his hands and pocketed the empty plastic sleeve.

“Not everything.”

“Really. What’s real?”

He waved his fingers between their chests. “This.”

She mimicked the gesture. “ This is bullshit.”

He actually had the temerity to look hurt. The balls. “No. It’s not, Rachel. It’s as real as anything.”

Caleb joined them on the deck. “Tell me about the camera shop, Brian.”

Brian said, “What is this, bad cop/bad cop suddenly? You’re both gonna grill me?”

“Rachel says she followed you to Little Louie’s.”

A heartless cast found Brian’s face. He’d worn the same look when he’d slapped Andrew Gattis, wore it when he’d walked out of the Hancock Tower in the rain, and it had flashed across his face during a fight once, for just a second. “How much did you tell her?”

“I didn’t.”

“You told her nothing?”

For a second, she thought Brian’s voice sounded funny, like he’d bitten his tongue or cut it somehow.

“I told her we were actors.”

“Nothing else?” His voice sounded like his own again.

“I’m right here,” she said.

Brian looked over at her and his eyes were dead. No, not dead. Dying. The light bled from them. She felt infinitesimal in them. He swept her body with them in a way that was clinical and lustful at the same time, the look of a man watching pornography when he wasn’t even sure he was in the mood.

Caleb said, “Why’d you go to the camera store, Brian?”

Brian held up a finger to Caleb, his eyes still moving up and down Rachel, and Caleb’s face seized with the dismissiveness of the gesture.

“Don’t fucking hold your finger up to me like I’m the help. Are the passports ready?”

Brian’s jaw tightened even as he chuckled. “Oh, ho, ho, my man, let’s not push me tonight.”

Caleb took a step toward Brian. “You said they wouldn’t be ready for another twenty-four hours.”

“I know what I said.”

“Is this about her?” Caleb pointed at Rachel. “Her and her bullshit? People could fucking die because—”

“I know people could die,” Brian said.

“My wife could die. My child could—”

“A wife and child you shouldn’t have.”

“But it’s okay for you?” Caleb took two more steps. “Huh? It’s okay for you .”

“She’s been in war zones,” Brian said. “She’s battle-tested.”

“She’s a shut-in.”

Rachel said, “What are you two—?”

Caleb stepped to Brian, pointed a finger in his face. “You lied about the fucking passports. You put us all at risk. We’re gonna fucking die because you can’t see past your dick.”

As violence always did in her experience, the next few things happened very fast.

Brian slapped Caleb’s finger out of his face. Caleb whacked the side of Brian’s head with a hastily clenched fist. Brian rose half out of his seat as Caleb took another swing at him, half connecting with his neck. Brian buried his fist in Caleb’s solar plexus. When Caleb doubled over, Brian punched him in the ear hard enough that she could hear the cartilage crunch.

Caleb stumbled sideways. He dropped to one knee and inhaled desperately for a moment.

She said, “Guys, stop,” and the words sounded ridiculous.

Brian rubbed his neck where Caleb had hit him and spit off the side of the boat.

Caleb used the table to push himself to his feet. Then he was holding her gun in his hand. She watched him thumb off the safety, and she couldn’t make sense of it at first. It characterized the surreal quality that had marked the entire day. They were Brian, Rachel, and Caleb, regular people, boring even, not the kind of people who brandished firearms. And yet it was she who’d forced Caleb to drive her here using the same gun.

And now he was pointing it in Brian’s face. “Hey, tough guy, tell me where the fucking—”

When Brian struck Caleb’s gun hand, the gun went off. It wasn’t as loud as it sounded on the range, with partitions on either side of her. It sounded like a desk drawer being kicked shut. Judging by the muzzle flash, the bullet passed in her general direction. But she didn’t scream. Brian swiped the gun out of Caleb’s hand and swept Caleb’s legs out from under him with the kind of ease that again suggested he’d had some wrestling experience. Caleb landed on his back, and Brian kicked him in the chest and abdomen, kicked him like he was going to kick him to death.

“Point a gun in my face ?” Brian screamed. “Fucking kidding me?”

With every sentence Brian delivered a kick.

“Try to fuck me?” Brian kicked him in the stomach. “Talk shit about my wife?”

A blood bubble popped from Caleb’s mouth.

“Try to fuck my wife?” Brian kicked him in the groin. “You don’t think I notice the way you fucking drool over her? Stare at her? Think about her?”

When the kicks started, Caleb had begged him to stop. Now he just lay there.

“Brian, stop.”

Brian turned toward her, his eyes narrowing at his gun in her hand. She couldn’t remember picking it up, but she could feel its weight, so much heavier than hers, which, in Brian’s hand, looked like a toy.

“Stop?” he said.

“Stop,” she repeated. “You’ll kill him.”

“And why would you care?”

“Brian, please.”

“What in your life would change if he was dead? If I was dead? Or just gone? You’ll do the same thing — sit inside and look out at the world. But you won’t engage it. You won’t affect it. I mean, forget about him. What difference would it make if you’re in the world or not?”

The words seemed to surprise him as much as her. He blinked several times. He looked at the lightless sky and the black bay. Looked at Caleb. Looked at her again. And she could see a realization take root — if he returned to land with an empty boat, no one would be the wiser.

He raised her gun. At least she thought he raised her gun. No, he did. He raised it. Raised it from his knee in a sweep, bringing it up and toward the center of himself, his right arm half-crossing his chest.

And she shot him.

She shot him as she’d been taught — center mass. Bullet straight to the heart.