David Gates - Preston Falls

Eventually he notices the sky out the window is reddish. If you don't even go out and look at the sunset, then what the fuck is the point? So he goes out and looks at the sunset and what the fuck is the point? Orange cloudbanks, pulsing gold at the edges, and Willis standing there regarding them, with all his bullshit that he can't drop for a second. He goes back inside, the sky still blazing away. It occurs to him that he hasn't checked the answering machine for God knows how long. Shit: the son of a bitch is blinking. One blink. He just knows.

He hits Play, and Jean's voice says, "1 need to talk with you." So he did know. Which is scary just by itself. It's too late for her to be in her

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office; she must be home. He goes into the kitchen and dials. She picks up on the first ring.

"Hi, it's me," he says. "I just got your message. When did you—"

"I can't talk now."

"Sorry," he says. "When would be—"

"I'll call you later." Dial tone.

Fine. Fuck you too, lady. May he remind her that she asked him to call? Though on the other hand, she's obviously in the middle of putting together a dinner, vetoing unsuitable tv shows, listening to Roger piss and moan about how Net Nanny blocks him off too many Web sites, starting subtly to steer the evening toward a quiet bedtime. All the shit he should be there to help with. It's the end of their first week of school, and he hasn't so much as spoken to his children. Though wasn't he forbidden to? Okay, what you don't want right now is to start thinking about when you used to read to them, Mel always on your left and Roger on your right, both in flannel pj's, a child's head resting against each shoulder. But hey: there they are and here you are. And isn't this the way you wanted it?

He puts on VPR and starts fixing oatmeal. They're playing some generic nineteenth-century piano shit. Schumann? He stirs in raisins, and it turns out the old ear's still good: the piano goes into fucking Trdumereiy so this must be Kinderscenen. And that's enough of that. He kills the boombox and eats his oatmeal while reading the part of Our Mutual Friend where Noddy Boffin starts pretending to be obsessed with misers; then he takes his bowl and spoon out to the kitchen and steps outside into the warm, breezy dark. Stars and a half-moon. He just can't get his head around it that each of these things is like the sun and that some could be whole fucking galaxies. Well, not really at the top of his list.

By eleven o'clock Jean still hasn't called back, and he starts coffee. (What would be great is some cocaine.) He's halfway through his first cup when the phone rings.

"I was starting to wonder if you'd gone to bed," he says.

"No. I've been busy. What happened at your thing?"

"What, the court thing?"

Jean says nothing, which he takes to mean yes.

"It went okay," he says. "Fifty-doUar fine."

"Well, Good for you."

He says nothing.

"So now what happens?" she says.

"In what sense?" he says.

She says nothing.

"Listen," he says. "I agree that things haven't been going well."

"Oh, so you agree with that."

"That's not helpful, Jean."

"Well, what do you think would be helpful?"

"I don't know," he says. "Maybe having this time apart?"

"Oh," she says. "So you come back at the end of October and everything will be fine."

"Why are you—"

"We could go somewhere as a family again and not have it end up you being taken away in handcuffs'}''

"That wasn't completely my fault," he says. "As you know. But I understand that I should have controlled myself. And Fm incredibly humiliated that you had to see it — and especially that the kids saw it."

''You were humiliated? Tell me something. Have you thought about trying to get some help in controlling yourself? Or with any of your other problems?"

"Like what other problems?"

"I don't even really know anymore," she says. "Whatever it is that's making you so dissatisfied."

"Well, I'm hoping that I can use this time away to get a handle on some of that."

"But since you already spend as much time away from us as possible, I don't quite see how this is supposed to help."

He says nothing.

"You're due back at work when?" she says.

"October thirty-first, Halloween. Appropriate, wouldn't you say?" Whatever this means: probably something as witless as Witches are had and so is going hack to work.

She says nothing.

"That's a Monday," he says.

"Then I guess we'll see you that Sunday night."

"This feels so terrible." He takes a sip of coffee, which has gotten cold.

"Listen," she says. "It's eleven o'clock, I'm exhausted, I've just gotten the kids to bed, and now I have approximately half an hour to myself. In which I can either wash my hair and clean the downstairs

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bathroom or I can do what I feel like doing, which is have some scotch and feel sorry for myself. What I don't feel like doing is trying to think of something to say that will make you feel better about yourself. Because I don't actually think you should."

"Isn't Carol there?" he says. Damned if he's going to let her bait him.

"No."

"But I thought she—"

"She'll be here sometime next week. She stopped off for a couple of days in Taos."

"I think I'd better come down there," he says.

"As someone who wishes you well, I wouldn't."

"Would not}'' he says.

"You'd be coming back to someone who would not be fun to be with. And who would probably not snap out of it at the first kind word."

"Well," he says, "maybe you need this time too."

Silence.

"I have to go now," she says.

"Wait."

"For what? For me to break down weeping? Or for you to? So you can get your little jolt of feeling for the night?"

"Jean, you're not actually telling me anything about myself I don't know."

"Good night," she says.

Dial tone.

Well. Okay, so whatever that was about, he guesses it wasn't a summons to Chesterton. Unless it's up to him to figure out that it was. Willis unplugs the phone to prevent a hysterical callback: he didn't like the sound of that thing about the scotch. The coffee's starting to brighten him up, though, so maybe he'll play some guitar. But maybe instead of punishing his ears with the electric tonight, he should get out the J-200, which he feels sorry for because it never gets played anymore. He fetches it in from the woodshed and opens the case: the strings are rough with rust. There should be steel wool under the sink; he looks, then remembers it's still in the bathroom with the plumbing shit. He loosens each string in turn, pinches and rubs the steel wool along it until it squeaks, then tunes it back up. Shit, great-sounding guitar. A crime that it never gets used.

I

By Saturday night, Wrayburn has married Lizzie and Rokesmith is still dodging Lightwood, who could finger him as Julius Handford. Willis sets the alarm so he can go to church in the morning — not because of this devil shit, especially, though it is weird to have so many dreams about the devil. Though you could dismiss that as a father thing, probably. It's because he just feels sort of out there. But won't it make him feel even more out there to watch himself going to church for the first time in however many fucking years? Since he was thirteen, probably, during his mother's Unitarian phase. Still: if shit like the Lord's Prayer makes AAs feel better — ^look at Marty Katz — then dot dot dot. It's like he doesn't want to get into magical thinking but he's almost at the point where it's sort of that or get somebody to put him on Prozac. What he wants, really, is more cocaine, which is probably the worst thing for this, whatever this is. Tonight it takes two three-finger jolts of Dewar's to put him under, and he dreams that the devil is sitting on a tall throne that's also sort of the electric chair, except the devil's own energy is powering it.