Richard House - The Kills

He found Mike sat at a table. Geezler had settled an advance of three thousand, enough to pay the most urgent outstanding medical bill and give Mike a little of what he owed.

Mike stood up, squeezed past the table and asked Rem if he wanted a beer.

Rem spoke while Mike was out of the room. Easier to talk without facing him, to speak with a little pep and verve, to make the news sound inconsequential.

‘I found work. It’s a short job, but it means I’ll be able to settle everything.’

‘Short?’

‘Six weeks, guaranteed bonus. No tax, so I can settle with you when I get back.’

Mike stopped at the door, a beer in each hand.

‘No tax, so that’s abroad, right?’

Rem nodded. Mike’s head made a slight jolt. ‘Is this what I think it is? Because you don’t have to do that.’

‘It’s a lot of money. In six weeks I can clear everything I owe.’

Mike set both beers on the table. ‘Rem, if this is Iraq, I mean, we can all wait. What’s done is done. You don’t have to do this. Don’t go on my behalf.’ He scratched the back of his head. ‘You should have just cut us loose. That’s what you should have done. You have this whole thing mixed up. Other businesses fail. It’s not your fault. As soon as you didn’t have the jobs you should have let us go.’

Mike popped the cans open, slid one across to Rem.

‘And then there’s Matt. I don’t see why you helped him out. I don’t see it. You go to Iraq and what does he do? You haven’t saved anything. The end result — I really hate to say — is what? What does Cathy say?’

‘She doesn’t like it.’

Rem took out the money and set it beside Mike’s beer. Mike looked at it and repeated, ‘This just makes me feel bad. I don’t want to hold you to anything.’

‘I promised I’d pay you.’

Mike picked up the money, note by note. ‘I can’t refuse this. You know that. But I don’t like being in this position, Rem. I think I should take this and we should call it quits. You’ve done what you can.’

‘I said I’d pay. And I’ll pay.’

‘You just have to give it up. Sometimes you just have to say enough. ’ Mike shook his head.

‘It isn’t as bad as it sounds. Won’t be much different than Kuwait.’

‘It isn’t just about going, Rem, you know that. It’s leaving here. Leaving Cathy. You two always mess up when you’re apart. You know that.’

‘It’s not the same.’

‘She was sick, and you were away. You think she doesn’t remember that?’

As the light failed, the house became unfamiliar, through all the years Rem had visited it had never seemed so drab.

They spoke in conditional terms about events that were already decided.

‘We might move.’ Mike looked to the kitchen, to indicate the choice wasn’t his. ‘Be closer to her sister in Cicero. It isn’t just the money. The neighbourhood’s changing. On one side the rents are going up, on the other, it’s turning into a place you don’t want to be.’

‘When might this happen?’

Mike pointed to flats of cardboard stacked alongside the wall, boxes, ready to be made up.

‘That soon?’

‘Soon.’

Rem looked hard at the table’s edge. He cleared his throat. ‘About the dog.’

* * *

On the porch, in a cage — nothing more than a rabbit hutch — set on a workbench, a small Yorkshire terrier curled on a folded blanket. Rem bent forward, cooed, Lucy, Lucy, and the dog came up, licked his fingertips through the mesh.

‘It has to go back.’

‘She’s fond of it now.’

‘It’s not right, though.’

‘Eye for an eye.’

‘I can’t be certain.’ The thing is, he explained, you can take all of the facts, mix them around, give them to five people, and you’d have five different versions about what’s going on. Things get so mixed up, you just can’t tell the truth any more.

* * *

Rem wouldn’t hear the news until the next morning. Not until Cathy returned from the hospital.

‘How do I get hold of you?’ she asked. ‘Calling your cell is going to cost a fortune.’

Rem suggested they keep the mobile strictly for emergencies. They could record messages, video or sound, on their phones and upload them. Cathy asked how.

‘Use the library. It’s free. They have a stack of computers. Send emails, use the Yahoo account.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘It’s only six weeks. It’s not that much hassle.’

And here they were, spending money talking about talking.

‘Keep the phone for emergencies. I can pick up messages just as long as there’s a signal. But keep it to emergencies, OK?’

‘That’s the thing.’ Cathy’s voice became hesitant. ‘I’ve news and it’s bad.’

* * *

A call had come from Mike, and at first she couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he wanted her to check out Channel 5 or Fox, it was on both right now, then get in contact with Rem, because Matt had done something so unbelievable he couldn’t credit it, couldn’t begin to express how profoundly disturbing it was: he just couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing.

This is the kind of stunt people used to do on LSD.

Matt had been caught in action by a news team, who just happened to be coming up Lake Shore Drive right at the moment he appeared. The newscaster advised viewer discretion, because, despite the hazy picture quality, you could see a good amount of unpleasant detail. Matt had opened his wrists with a box-cutter, walked with a woozy stride across six lanes of rush-hour traffic in what looked like wet red jeans, then tipped himself off the flyway to land on his back on the grass, one unholy mess. Unlucky in everything.

‘Can’t even kill himself.’ Mike’s voice stopped down to an incredulous whisper.

Cathy watched, stood up, sat down, hands to mouth, as Matt tipped over the balustrade, a full head-over-heels dummy-drop, slam on his back.

She wanted a drink. Needed something in her hands. Ducked toward the TV to make sure that she was seeing this right. Matt. That was Matt? Right? Their Matt? Former neighbour/friend/Rem’s employee, Matty, the man who threw the party when they came back from New Orleans? She watched him amble — what else could you call it — across the expressway, through the fierce downdraught of a police helicopter, just outright saunter across Lake Shore Drive, off his box, to topple ragdoll over the far parapet.

The grass rippled about him, the ground velvet, soft as an undulating sea.

Two helicopters now. Three. One to medevac him to Northwestern, two to monitor. The traffic backed up from Fullerton to Loyola. People were sending images from their cellphones to the network. Matt seen from a passenger seat. Matt taken from the back of a bus. Matt, definitely Matt, curving by a driver, blank-eyed, to disappear, head first, arms at his side, with a heavy inevitability, the man in the car shouting, not even using language, just a bellyful of awe and shock.

Cathy went to the bedroom, dreamy-voiced, like this could be normal, talked out loud, as if the dog was there, or Rem. ‘I’m calling Cissy.’ You watch a former friend (your husband’s one-time best friend, for what, fifteen years?), a deeply compromised person who has caused you unending trouble, someone you hope you might forgive (one day), perform a sloppy unsuccessful exit on prime time and you decide to call his wife, as if for a chat.

Matt’s wife and Cathy had history, and while Matt’s thievery unspooled in a long and ugly fall, Cathy had insisted, at least to Rem, on their friendship.

Cathy couldn’t make the call but sat at the edge of the bed, head in her hands. She couldn’t sit, couldn’t stand, found it impossible not to move, spoke briefly with Mike a second time then paced the hall with the phone saying, Jesus, oh Jesus Christ, as Mike’s voice began to break.