Alissa Nutting - Tampa

“Does he want to talk to me?” Jack whispered. I took my shirt back off; it seemed like the best course of action.

“Put your hands on my breasts,” I instructed. “I have to tell you something traumatic and you need to be reminded of all the good that’s here in the world for you to enjoy.” Wordlessly, Jack clutched his palms onto my breasts and swallowed.

“I’ll stop beating around the bush.” I sighed. “Your father had a heart attack.”

Realization crossed his face like a time-lapsed shadow. He ran out of the room but I stayed behind for a moment to collect his two cell phones, secret them in my purse, and prepare myself for the possibility of a heated debate. I flipped through his personal phone for at least a minute, trying to find the photo he’d taken of me and delete it, but it wasn’t anywhere obvious and there wasn’t time to waste. It was the only solid evidence that linked the two of us, and Jack certainly wouldn’t offer it up to authorities. This was a triumph I was intent on maintaining—on Jack’s dresser, for example, there was a plate bearing a hardened scrap of pizza crust, a relic that held the small and perfectly imperfect indentions of Jack’s bite marks, his right incisor slightly askew. I had the urge to place this inside my purse as well; the prop of something his supple mouth had gnawed upon might come in handy in the days ahead if Jack chose to be upset with me and I had to fantasize about his lips. But I knew I couldn’t ever have anything related to Jack in my possession, no matter how organic and disposable.

In the hallway Jack was kneeling over the body and crying silent tears. When I first laid my hand upon his shoulder, he sat down Indian-style and began rocking gradually back and forth. “We’ve got to call 911,” he finally whimpered.

“You will.” I nodded. “Later, when I’m gone.”

Jack shook his head but continued to talk to me instead of attempting to go get the phone. I was, after all, the adult in the situation. “We should start CPR,” he added, somewhat forcefully. But was I wrong to detect already a flat note of resignation in his protests—the knowledge that even if it were possible to revive Buck, it wouldn’t be in our best interests to do so?

I sat down next to Jack and took his hands, which made him cry harder, and with volume now. “He isn’t breathing, Jack.” I spoke slowly and evenly, doing my best impression of a medical professional on television. “When the brain loses oxygen, cells begin to die. If they even could bring him back, he’d be a vegetable. We don’t want that. Your dad wouldn’t want that. We need to wait before you call the paramedics. We need to be sure.”

“Be sure?” Jack cried. Mucus streamed out from his nose and began to mingle with his lips. His tears and high-pitched cries had a way of making him seem pleasantly preadolescent; in the moment I was not opposed to intercourse.

“Be sure?” Jack asked again. “No.” His head began to shake. “We have to try. What if they can bring him back? What if he’ll be fine if we just get someone here soon?”

Leaning my topless chest in toward him so that my breasts fell just below his chin, I gave Jack a look that told him he was being silly and wiped his face with my fingers. “Jack, he isn’t fine. He’s dead and that’s terrible. But at least he won’t have to be tube-fed on some machine for three months before they pull the plug anyway…” I paused, not wanting to be blatant, but I did need to close the deal. “And you and I can stay together,” I whispered.

Jack’s face broke apart in a convulsion of tears. I wrapped myself around him and comforted him the best I could, holding him in a crouched position just inches away from his father’s corpse. Eventually the hallway began to darken as the sun set. “Let’s go sit down in your room and have a talk,” I told him. He allowed me to help him up, to guide him to his bed. He moved like he was sleepwalking.

I figured that if I made an advance on him now he’d push me away, but I began anyhow—he seemed so dependent and clung to me with such maternal need that it was easy to channel Jack’s embrace into sexual action. I sat him on the edge of his bed and kissed up his thigh, pulled down his shorts and began sucking. I heard him start to cry again but also felt his fingers wind into my hair, grasping my skull tightly. When he came in my mouth he let out a protracted wail and covered his face with his hands. I wiped my mouth on his comforter, then wrapped the blanket around his shoulders to try to quell his shaking.

A glance at Jack’s alarm clock showed that it was truly getting late. I needed to move the conversation forward; the logistics of my exit required planning. “Is your father’s car an automatic? Can you drive it?” I had to ask several times before Jack finally responded.

“I’ve practiced a little bit with my stepbrother.” His voice sounded inhospitably distant, beamed in from somewhere dark and cold through patches of static.

“Your dad’s car is parked in the middle of the driveway. Do you think you could pull it out into the street so I can back out, then put it in the garage?”

“I think so,” he said. After several beats of silence he amended his answer. “I don’t know.”

“I need you to try. Take a quick shower while I wait,” I offered. “It’ll help wake you up. You don’t have to wash anything, just stand beneath the water.” I went to start it for him, then escorted his shaking frame into the bath, supporting him as though he had a geriatric injury as he stepped inside the tub. For a moment I remained there and watched him, the way the water was hitting his face but his eyes remained open. It was disconcerting; I pulled the shower curtain closed.

Walking down the black stretch of hallway toward the corpse, I was resolved to check for any final quivers of life but in the end didn’t even feel compelled to grab his shoulder and shake: Buck Patrick’s death mask was unmistakable. His bottom and top lips had experienced a violent pull to opposing directions that made the shape of his mouth nearly rhomboid. I had a slight urge to look through his wallet and pilfer any cash—there would be a triumphant feel in buying something with money offered up by Buck’s dead body, no matter how minuscule the amount. I imagined purchasing a candy bar and savoring it in my car, the way its sugars would combine with the knowledge that Buck had taken my secret to the grave to form a flavor of extravagant complexity.

Assured that Buck could no longer be revived, I replaced all the phones except the cell I’d given Jack, then went to check on him. Back in the shower, Jack hadn’t moved at all except to drop his head; a wet brim of hair covered his downcast eyes completely. I shut off the water and opened a towel to receive him in, then dried every inch of his body with gentle care as he sat slouched on the closed toilet seat. “Here’s what you’ll do,” I said, toweling at his feet as though he was a businessman I was giving a shoe shine to. “You’ll wait another half hour or so after I leave before you call 911. There might be trouble if someone notices me pulling out one minute and an ambulance pulling in right after. When the medics arrive, tell them you were playing video games and found your dad when you took a break.” Jack’s cold nipples looked like tiny eyes fixed open with shock at the situation. I went out to gather some fresh clothes for him to wear, raising my voice to continue talking at him from the bedroom. “There’s nothing unnatural about the death; they aren’t going to question you much. You’re bewildered and consumed with grief. If anything they’ll be trying to comfort you.” I walked back into the bathroom to deliver Jack’s clothes but wanted to relay the last of the pertinent information while he was still naked and hopefully more vulnerable to suggestion than he might be with his genitals covered. “The last thing is that I have to take your secret phone with me.”