James Smythe - No Harm Can Come to a Good Man

‘So, most predictions have Walker managing to climb another three points in his key demographics today,’ the host says, ‘which, of course, means very little at this stage. Three is nothing: three can be lost by spending time in the wrong place at the wrong time. So how does he hold? Get out.’ The host stands and does a little walk-on-the-spot move. ‘Get out, talk to people. He’s had too much time off, and he lives in Podunk, Nowheresville; he needs to work more if he wants back in. He’s got a big old chunk of the country, catching the more, shall we say, cosmopolitan parts of our great nation; but he hasn’t got a chance in the red states. Not even close. Now, Homme might. He can win some of them, that’s the word. So Walker plays well in New York. So he plays well in Boston.’ (The host does the accent of these cities. That’s his shtick.) ‘So he plays well with core democrats. Big deal! If he can’t play well with big oil, he could lose this before it’s already begun. If they want to go Democrat, they’ll go with Homme. Walker’s going to Texas to try and see what he can do, but I’ll be damned if he’s walking away from there with anything but a suntan.’ He puts on a cowboy hat and climbs a mechanical bull in the corner of the studio, and he moos. Laurence mutes and minimizes it as Deanna walks in.

‘Don’t listen to him,’ she says.

‘I know. But people watch him. They like him.’

‘People like spectacle.’

‘He says I’m not doing enough of that.’

‘Which is why you’re up three points.’

‘That’s nothing. Three points is nothing. He said it himself.’

‘Okay,’ she says. She puts his plate in the dishwasher. ‘Go and wake the girls and say goodbye, would you? They’ll miss you.’

‘They barely noticed that I was back.’

‘Because you were only here for one night. They miss you. I don’t know what else to say.’

‘Lane?’

‘Even Lane.’ She kisses him. It’s everything, these moments: they remember Sean with every single kiss and it doesn’t stop them doing it. He calls for the girls from the hallway. School has just gone back. Alyx comes out and smiles at him in the doorway of her room.

‘Hey, Pumpkin,’ he says. ‘I can take you, if you’re quick getting dressed.’

‘In the car?’

‘In the car.’ The car is a big black cross-country thing that his party has recently leased to drive him around, less conspicuous out here than the town cars, coming complete with low-paid driver and super-strict fuel budget. Laurence knows that budget doesn’t extend to taking Alyx to school, but he doesn’t care. ‘Lane?’ he calls, ‘you up?’

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘I’m off soon,’ he tells her. ‘Want to say goodbye?’

‘Bye,’ she shouts.

‘Look at the college applications,’ he says. She hasn’t decided about what she’s going to do next year yet and they’re not pushing her too hard, in case it scares her off. They mentioned college once and she countered with a desire for a year to find herself. He and Deanna both hope that she likes what she finds. He rolls his eyes at Alyx who has reappeared, clutching her clothes. She starts to pull them on in the hallway.

‘No shower?’ he asks.

‘Later,’ she says, and she runs downstairs, past him and to the kitchen. ‘Dad’s taking me,’ she tells Deanna. ‘Can I have my breakfast to go?’ She says it in a voice that she’s heard on a TV show. Deanna pulls bread from the grille of the toaster and the spread out of the cupboard, and she puts it down in front of Alyx with a thick, rounded knife.

‘You get the honor,’ she says to her daughter, and then she leaves for the hallway and finds Laurence there, at the foot of the stairs. He’s in the lemon tie, and she knows exactly when he was last wearing it. Exactly what day it was. She balks and stands back.

‘What’s up?’ he asks.

‘Nothing,’ she says. If he can’t remember it, she reasons, there’s no point in saying it. The suit still hangs in the wardrobe. He hasn’t worn it since Sean died. He’s blamed it on the weight loss, but she knows that’s not true. She’s told herself that it was because of the connotations. The breast of it still has smears from her eyes on it, the dark tear-runs of her mascara like a print of her face. Deanna didn’t see the point in cleaning it. She thought, instead, that they should just burn it, but they haven’t. She doesn’t know how they go about it without making it seem like ceremony, so it’s inside a vacuum bag at the far end of the closet, beyond the part that you can see when the doors are opened. Out of sight, out of mind. But the tie is the first part of the puzzle to reappear, and he hasn’t realized what it means that he’s wearing it. Somehow it isn’t water-stained. Somehow it doesn’t need ironing.

He doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he adjusts it in the mirror.

‘I’ll take Alyx,’ he says. ‘It’ll be nice to spend some time with her.’

‘Sure,’ Deanna says. She focuses on his neck, his hands up and fiddling with the knot, and she wishes that he would realize what he’s done.

As he hands his bags to driver, he notices that the side gate to their house is open. ‘Shit,’ he says. The trashcan lids are up. He goes to them and peers in. ‘The bags are gone. Assholes.’

‘Again?’ she says from the porch.

‘I know,’ he says. He pulls the gate shut and looks at the cut-through lock that he put on after the last time that this happened, in the weeks following Sean’s death. ‘Can you buy a lock next time you’re at Henderson’s , something that’ll keep it shut, something they can’t cut through? Trent’ll know what sort of thing. A chain or something.’

‘Why do they do this?’ Deanna asks, coming out to look at the fractured remains of the cheap lock. It’s a rhetorical question. She looks at the pieces. Somebody came during the night and they were prepared. Laurence kicks the gate hard enough that it slams shut but swings right back open again, a clang of metal as the hinges meet and bounce against each other.

‘Don’t get stressed about it,’ Deanna tells him. ‘Please.’

‘I didn’t sign up for this part,’ he says. She kisses him, and he breathes out, an exhalation that’s part calm, part relief. ‘Let’s go,’ he says to Alyx.

In the car, Alyx clambers. She presses the window button, making it descend and then rise again, watching the world be taken away by the slick blackness of the glass. When it’s shut, the glass changes tone and shade, allowing just enough light in while still letting them see outside. She coos.

‘This car is awesome,’ she says.

‘I know,’ her father tells her. He puts the seat-back TV set on, flicking through the presets he’s established. Alyx turns her attention to it and the people talking.

‘Are you on here today?’ she asks.

‘No,’ he says. ‘Next week.’ The only time Alyx watches him on TV is when he’s in a one-to-one, because he always does a shout-out to her; always tells the family that he loves them. It’s a recent thing. The cynics, and there are many, think it’s working his personal situation to his benefit. Sometimes he wonders if he’s been that cynical himself and just not realized. ‘What have you got in school today?’

‘We’re reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ,’ she says.

‘That’s it?’

‘I don’t know what else.’ She undoes her seat belt and he sees past her, to the traffic on the streets, the busy morning intersections, the reckless drivers. It’s the route chosen by the computer’s algorithm, the most likely route to get them where they’re going in the most efficient way possible. Traffic is mostly (but only marginally) better thanks to their ClearVista branded devices. But still, you can’t account for other people and human error, Laurence thinks. Some things simply cannot be predicted.