Living Room
A week after Joanne and the kids disappear, I call Del, my older brother, and ask him to come by to give me a quote on some contracting and design work I want done.
“This doesn’t sound like something my firm would normally do,” Del says.
“It ’s a simple redesign,” I say. “Move a couple walls. Bring in some furniture. What’s so hard about that?”
“I’m not even sure what you want is legal, strictly speaking,” Del says.
“It’s not illegal,” I say, “strictly speaking.”
I’m sitting in my den and looking out the window to the empty street of my gated community. There are seven homes on my cul-de-sac and in the three years I’ve lived here, I’ve never met a single other owner. We wave at each other as we pass, certainly, and there was the time one realtor murdered another realtor in the empty house on the corner and we all gathered on the hot asphalt to watch the coroner wheel out the dead body and fancy gold jacket of Century 21er Rhonda Lefcout, a woman I’d wished dead every time a new calendar with her face appeared on my doorstep, and to whose smile I jerked off once when our wireless Internet went on the fritz, but never once have I had an actual conversation with any of them. There’s no tragedy in this. I value my privacy more than I value a conversation about the heat, or the cold, or the disposition of the HOA’s discretionary fund.
“Look, Jason,” Del says, “I’m happy to meet up and have a few beers with you, talk about the kids, whatever, but I have to advise you that you’re asking for a lawsuit here.”
“I don’t intend to open the house to the public,” I say. I hear Del sigh, and I know that I have him. “How does tomorrow at noon look?”
“This is going to be expensive,” Del says. “Those espresso machines alone run to several thousand dollars.”
“What price happiness?” I say.
Outside, a man and his standard poodle drive by in a golf cart, just as they do every day at 1:00 PM. Where they go—and why—is a mystery, but I know that by 1:30 they will be back, and by 1:45 the man will stand on his front lawn, standard poodle beside him, and he will chip imaginary golf balls out of an imaginary bunker. I find this very odd since we actually live on a golf course, one filled with real golf balls and real bunkers.
After a while, Del says, “How’s Joanne?”
“Gone the way of the large reptiles,” I say.
“Oh, Christ, man, I’m sorry. What happened?”
“I’m not entirely certain,” I say, which is true. One day she and the kids were here, and one day they were not. The kids weren’t mine; Joanne brought them into the relationship like she brought in the duvet covers, stemware, and Meg Ryan DVDs. “Maybe there will be an article in US Magazine and it will all be clear.”
Three years ago, after getting a rather choice divorce settlement from my first wife, I moved to the desert in hopes of finding the personal freedom I thought I deserved. Carolyn and I had met in college and survived several calamities together: my failing out of law school; my failing out of the MBA program; my decision to invest my remaining student loan money into an auction website that was supposed to be just as good as eBay, but which turned out to be nothing like eBay at all, particularly since it was operated by Filipino gangsters and not Republicans; the death of both of our parents; the death of our desire to have sex with each other, that sort of thing. What finally broke us, however, was my decision to go into the pharmaceutical sales industry, which was made easier since Carolyn was a doctor and employed me as her office manager. We had boxes and boxes of prescription pads. Carolyn, bless her heart, thought that I made a poor business choice. The last thing she said to me, after our divorce was finalized, was “I’d appreciate it if you’d make an effort to stay out of prison.”
And yet: a gate, a guard, an elaborate system of laser locks, night-vision cameras, and a guaranteed armed response are at the touch of my fingertips. Joanne, before becoming my second wife, was my real estate agent. She wasn’t like Rhonda Lefcout, however. She never left calendars for anyone. She said that calendars only made people aware of how long they were really tethered to their homes.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Del says. He’s standing in the living room, where I took the liberty of taking a claw hammer to the mirrored wet bar and have done some minor reconstruction on a curio cabinet filled with framed wedding photos.
“Mirrors and cabinets aren’t the flavor I want here,” I say. “I envision this area will have several two tops, three sofas, four or five of those overstuffed chairs in blue or black. I’d even be happy with leather if you wish to deviate a smidgen.”
Del steps through the living room and then walks down the long hallway which leads to the kids’ bedrooms. I follow behind him as he peers into each room. I don’t know what he expects to find. I’ve already cleaned them out and have begun reimagining them. I’ll need plenty of dry storage space, I know that. Plus, I’m required to have at least one large walk-in refrigerator to keep the pastries, the three different kinds of coffee cake, the new freshly made sandwiches and all the Frappuccino mix and whipped cream chilled. I’ve already begun transitioning the den into a break room.
“Jason,” Del says, quietly, “I can’t be a part of this.”
“You’re the only person I trust,” I say.
“You have no reason to trust me,” Del says.
“But I don’t blame you for anything, either,” I say. “That makes you an exclusive party in my life.”
Del cracks open what was once the cedar-lined hall closet where Joanne kept her furs. I’ve already filled it up with napkins, cup sleeves, straws, and stacks of Bruce Springsteen, Al Green, Joan Baez, and Alanis Morrisette CDs.
“What happened to you?” Del says.
Nothing just happens.
It takes a week, but a member of the HOA’s architectural committee finally shows up. Though Del has not been working in the house himself, he’s hired a staff of twenty men and women to do the job, working in alternating twelve-hour shifts all day long. I’ve been sleeping in the backyard in a tent, and, in hopes of not annoying the workers too much, I’ve taken to urinating on my putting green and defecating into the fountain Joanne installed in our courtyard. The gentleman from the HOA catches me just as I’m zipping up on the green.
“Pardon me,” he says, “but are you the owner of this home?”
“I am,” I say. I’m not sure I know this man. He looks familiar to me, but I’m not sure I can accurately place him, so I decide that he might be one of those nameless people I see in my dreams, the neurological character actors who look on while I fuck realtors or jump off skyscrapers or eat handfuls of sand on the moon.
“Yes,” he says. “Well. It appears you’re doing some renovations. Would that be correct?”
“That would.”
“Yes. Well. You see, you haven’t filed the proper paperwork with the Association, and the bylaws clearly state that before any architectural improvements can take place that paperwork must be filed in a timely manner.”
Two of the workers—Chet and Vince I call them, though I don’t actually know their real names, my sense being that if I’m paying them to work, I can call them whatever I choose for the twelve hours they’re in my home—come outside with a stack of blueprints and lay them across a sawhorse. This concerns me. Chet and Vince aren’t part of the design team. They are strictly movers and shakers and lift-with-your-legs men.
“Is there a fine?” I say.
“Yes,” the man says. “And I’m going to need your work to cease immediately.”
“That’s not possible,” I say. Chet and Vince are twisting the blueprints around in circles, and I hear Vince say something about Del indicating the need for recessed lighting near the periodical stacks and that they’re gonna have to rewire the whole fucking garage.
“Is it my understanding that people are working here twenty-four hours a day?”
“How could I ever possibly know what you understand?” I say.
Before the man from the HOA can respond, the UPS truck pulls up for its daily drop-off and half of my staff piles out of the house to help bring in the delivery. Today it’s the sofas, the flip-top glass refrigeration unit, twenty crates of beans, and a set of uniforms.
“What are you building?” the man asks.
“A Starbucks,” I say. The UPS truck hauls away, and out on the street I see the golf cart and standard poodle both waiting patiently for their master. I look at my watch. It is exactly 1:00 PM.
“That’s against the CCRs.”
When Joanne and her kids—were there two or three of them? I can’t seem to remember now—moved in, she demanded to read the CCRs. When I asked her why, she said that she wanted to know which rule to break first, because she wanted to be the kind of neighbor other people gossiped about, or else she’d go crazy living on a golf course guarded by fat men with guns. “Normal people don’t live in vacation homes,” she said. That night and for the next 1,094 nights, she parked her car on the driveway, left the garage door open whenever she felt it prudent, and cheated her way toward the Ladies Bunco Tournament title. Someone loved the pilgrim soul in her. I loved the charlatan and the grifter.
There were three kids. I’m almost certain of it.
“Let me ask you a question,” I say. “Do you remember seeing any kids living here?”
“Sir, I’m sorry if this is a bad time for you,” the man says, “but you must understand that we all live here to avoid just this sort of willy-nilly construction. Don’t you like living here? Isn’t it beautiful?”
“There were two girls,” I say. “I know that much, but I’m not sure if I’m confusing one of them with Joanne. So there might have been one girl and one boy. It seems like it’s right there on the tip of my tongue. You ever get that? Sort of like a sense of perfect clarity, and then you just can’t wrap your mind around it? You ever get that? Like when you’re outside pretending to play fucking golf when there’s a golf course in your fucking backyard? Or when you and that genetic fucking mishap of a dog go out for your thirty-minute battery-powered drive? You ever get the feeling that absolute truth is one fucking imaginary golf swing or thrilling bit of bestiality away? You ever get that?”
The man looks at me for a long time without speaking. Not hours or minutes or even really seconds, but like he’s frozen in front of me and time is stopped, and I’m the only one who is still aware that time should be moving and people should not be frozen.
“Yes. Well,” the man says. “I do hope you’re not considering a drive-thru or any kind of amplified music.”
I interviewed fifteen candidates but finally settled on Zack. He had the most prior experience and seemed to understand the project the best. Plus, there were never any ice particles in his Frappuccinos and his mochas were always double pumped.
“You understand that you’ll be expected to live here,” I say. We’re sitting across from each other in overstuffed chairs, the New York Times spread between us, Al Green singing about times being good and bad, happy and sad at a reasonable volume through the house speakers, and two pieces of crumble coffee cake have been placed discreetly on perfect white plates. My living room has never looked better.
“You got it, buddy,” Zack says.
“Eventually we’ll get you a few co-workers,” I say. “Maybe even a woman. Maybe two or three. But the first month is a probationary period, you understand, just to make sure it’s a good fit.”
“Whatever it takes,” Zack says. “That’s my philosophy.”
“Refreshing,” I say. “When can you start?”
“When would you like me to start?”
I like Zack. He’s a smart kid. Though I guess I’m not sure if he’s actually a kid. He could be thirty. He could be nineteen. He has a goatee and floppy hair, and he wears a leather necklace with an interesting pendant around his neck. He has a very discreet tattoo of a sunburst on his left forearm. He smells vaguely like patchouli, which I find comforting.
“Now sounds good,” I say.
“Well, all right,” Zack says, rising. I stand up as well, and Zack shakes my hand vigorously. “Let me just get set up behind the counter, and we’ll get it going for you.”
“How much time do you need?”
Zack runs a hand through his mop of hair and exhales through his mouth like he’s really contemplating. “Give me ten minutes,” he says.
I head off to my bedroom and place a call to Del. I’ve kept my bedroom fully functional in the belief that everyone needs a haven, even if home is paradise. God had the Garden of Eden, after all, and as I lay on my bed waiting for Del to pick up, I believe his only mistake was not eating the apple Himself.
Del answers on the tenth ring.
“Hello Jason,” he says.
“I’m calling to invite you over,” I say. “I’m having a soft opening this afternoon.”
“I’m not free today,” he says.
“Well, then I’ll have a soft opening tomorrow, too,” I say.
“Is there any reason why Joanne’s mother would call me?” he asks.
“Joanne?”
“Your wife, Jason,” Del says. “Your wife. You remember her, right?”
From the living room I can hear the sounds of milk being frothed and Bruce Springsteen doing an acoustic take on “Born To Run.” Zack has changed CDs, which is fine. A little advanced warning would be nice, but that’s why it’s a soft opening.
“Are you there?” Del asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Joanne. Lovely woman. And all of her kids. They were simply divine little creatures. All four of them. Three of them. Whatever, right?”
Del clears his throat, and I wonder what took him so long to answer the phone. Ten rings! Who doesn’t have voice mail that picks up after four? Was he standing there staring at his caller ID and just counting? Did he decide ten rings was an appropriate number of rings for his only brother to sit through?
“Jason,” Del says, “listen. Joanne’s mother is worried. She hasn’t heard from her in over a month.”
“That makes two of us.”
“She says you won’t pick up the phone when she calls.”
“I’m a very busy man,” I say. “Do you know how much time goes into opening a Starbucks franchise? They don’t just pop up overnight. And let’s talk about not picking up the phone. You let the phone ring ten times yourself, so don’t go running around passing judgment on people, all right? Ten rings equals inconsiderate. Terrible customer service. Someone ought to rewrite your company’s handbook, Del. It could be a systemic problem.”
“Please, Jason,” Del says, but I hang up before he can finish his sentence. No one is going to ruin my first day of business. Not Del. Not Joanne. Not Joanne’s mother. Not ten goddamned rings. Nothing.
Zack greets me with a broad smile when I step into the living room. He’s casually wiping off the counter with a damp white towel. “Hey, bud, how you doing today?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I say.
“Great day out there today, huh?”
“Yes,” I say. “Top five all time.”
Zack chuckles and shakes his head. “Man, I was just saying that. Top. Five. All. Time! Hey, is there something I can get started for you?”
I crane my neck back and stare at the menu affixed to the wall. “I’ll have a, uh, venti double-pump mocha,” I say.
“You want that hot?”
“Always,” I say.
“Always,” Zack says, nodding. “Can I get you a pastry? Maybe one of our new brownies?”
“Crumble coffee cake.”
“You gonna eat that here?”
“Always,” I say.
“Always,” he says. “Cool. Can I get your name, bud?”
“Jason,” I say, and Zack scribbles it on the side of my cup.
“All right, that’s $5.01, Jason.”
I hand him six dollars and tell him to keep the change. “Always,” I say.
“Let me get that order right up for you, bud,” Zack says, and then he fires off one of his smiles again, and I think that he looks familiar to me. Like Joanne’s son. Or maybe her daughter. The one I liked, anyway. It doesn’t matter, I suppose, because Zack is happening now.
After two weeks, Zack and I begin to understand each other’s rhythms. I’m not a morning person, so Zack figures out that he doesn’t have to be at work at 6:00 AM. He can sit in the casita I had built for him and do whatever it is he does until ten, at least, but he’s usually up and doing side-work by nine. I allow him to close at 8:00 PM as caffeine after 8:00 PM usually gives me insomnia, and insomnia is not a condition I especially need right now. If friends are coming over, not that they have, or if I think I’d like a fruit and cheese plate or an apple caramel bar after hours, he’ll leave the pastry fridge unlocked. It is my house, but I like Zack to feel like he has his own workspace. I know how important being your own boss is, and I wouldn’t want to make Zack feel like he’s being watched in his own office—even if I were watching him, which I am. Today, however, has been rather trying. The guard at the front gate keeps calling to inform me I have guests who want to come in, despite the fact that I’ve told him I’m not expecting guests. He tells me that these aren’t invited guests, that they are men in uniforms, and that they’re fairly adamant in their desire to see me. I tell the security guard that unless they have a warrant or a battering ram, I’m not interested in entertaining this afternoon.
I decide to go out for a cup of coffee, see if I can’t sort through this issue.
“Hey, bud,” Zack says when he sees me in the doorway. “How’s it going today?”
“Fine,” I say.
“Fine? That’s awesome.”
“Yes,” I say. “Everything is fine. The world is fine. The air is fine. The stars, the fucking moon, the fucking sun, all the pieces of dull cutlery in every dirty kitchen drawer, frozen yogurt, toasted sandwiches, all of it is fine.”
Zack tosses his hair back and gives me a grim nod of the head. “I’ve been there, bud,” he says. “I’m beginning to think that life doesn’t really hold the same meaning for me that it used to. Some days, seriously, I wake up and it’s a wonder I don’t hang myself with dental floss.”
“Would that work?”
“Oh, yeah,” Zack says. “Sure, sure. You have to wind it up some. Really get it into almost like a rope, but that stuff is tough. It’ll slice right through your skin, sever a couple arteries, and then you’re just chum for the flies.”
“That sounds painful,” I say.
“Well,” Zack says, “it sure isn’t the way to enlightenment, but it’ll get you to that next stage eventually. Hey, is there something I can get started for you?”
I give him my order and for a while I just watch him work the espresso machine. He’s a fine boy, really, lots of energy and panache. At night he often leaves the house and meets a friend named Skylar for a drink. She’s a pretty girl, nice teeth, a tattoo on the small of her back, also of a sunburst, oddly. Zack has had her over for dinner a few times. They’ll barbeque steaks on the small grill he has on his patio, and then they’ll sit outside talking or laughing or not speaking at all. She spent the night yesterday, and when I woke up in the morning I saw her out in my garden, stooping to smell the roses Joanne planted last season, only now fully in bloom. I wonder if Zack would like me to hire her for the second shift. I wonder if she has another friend, perhaps a girl slightly older, someone without any tattoos, who might be interested in working on the weekends. It would require more casitas. Or not.
“Here you go,” Zack says, handing me my venti double-pump mocha and a piece of crumble coffee cake in the center of a white plate. “You have a great day, Jason.”
“Tell me something,” I say. “Do you have a family?”
“Everyone has a family,” Zack says. “Am I right, or am I right?” He turns his back to me and begins wiping off the counter around the espresso machine with a damp white towel. “You have a good one, now, okay?”
“Sklyar seems nice,” I say.
Zack stops cleaning the counter and slowly turns to face me. “Excuse me?”
“Sklyar,” I say. “The woman with the tattoo on her back. The woman who spent the night last night. The woman who was outside this morning smelling my roses. Skylar.”
If I met Joanne today, I imagine she might look a bit like this Skylar. Though I suppose women have always looked the same, it’s the clothes and the body ink and the scars that change them. That and children. You keep another human inside you for nine months, and I think it’s fair to assume you might leave the experience slightly different. It’s such an alien thing: a beast that grows inside you until it crawls out bloody and screaming. If sperm came out of men like angry rainbow trout hooked through the lip, I believe we’d be less cavalier about the whole subject matter. I imagine Skylar might be the kind of woman who wouldn’t want to be invaded in such a way. Zack is lucky to have her.
“I need to go on my lunch,” Zack says abruptly. “Is that all right?”
“I’ve offended you,” I say. “I didn’t mean to.”
“No, no, you haven’t offended me,” Zack says, but I can tell he’s lying. You don’t practice medicine—or at least pretend to practice medicine—without being able to spot obvious self-delusion. “No worries at all, bud.”
“I’d like to make you permanent,” I say. “I’d like to wave the next two weeks of probation. I’d like to give you a raise and begin paying for your medical insurance. I’d like to do that now.”
“Sure,” Zack says. He undoes his apron and sets it on the counter, locks the register, and turns off the light inside the pastry display. I grab a copy of the New York Times and sit down in one of the overstuffed chairs and pretend to drink my coffee while Zack turns off the machines. “Do you want me to keep the interior lights on?” he asks. I look up but don’t see him, so he must be in the back.
“Please,” I say.
“What about the CD?”
“Yes, please. I’d be happy to hear the Rolling Stones rarities,” I say. “Or Lucinda Williams. Either one would be fine.”
Zack doesn’t reply, but a few moments later I hear the opening strains of Lucinda Williams singing about changing the locks on her front door. I try to get invested in a front page story about the president ordering the torture of some prisoners, but it’s impossible. I know that I’ve offended Zack, and it makes me heartsick in a way I haven’t felt since . . . well . . . since the last time I felt heartsick. Almost two months now.
“All right,” Zack says. He’s standing by the front door dressed in his non-work clothes: jeans, a T-shirt fashioned with an iron-on of Clifford the Big Red Dog, an LA Dodgers baseball cap. “Good-bye.”
“You have a great day,” I say, and just when I’m about to add his name to the salutation, it completely escapes my memory. So instead I say, “bud.”
When Zack doesn’t show back up after seven hours, I decide to slip into his casita to see if he’s sick or if he’s fallen in the shower or if he’s hanging by a noose made of dental floss. But all I find is his tightly made bed. He didn’t even bother to leave a note with a forwarding address. Just like that, he is gone forever.
You never get used to people disappearing. It’s not the lack of closure precisely, but the sense that perhaps you’ve played a role you weren’t aware of initially. With Joanne and the kids, the signs were there: the packing; the airline tickets to Hawaii, Australia, and Burma purchased on my credit card; the strange way Joanne kept telling me to stay the fuck away from her or she’d call the police; the way she called the police; the way she and her three kids (I’m almost certain there were three of them now—I’ve counted the bedrooms and it makes sense) were here one night and then that next morning they weren’t. I remember waking up and feeling like the house was listing to one side and that the living room was about to crack in half. Something had to be done, obviously.
I spread out on Zack’s bed and close my eyes. I imagine I am Zack. I imagine that woman I saw in my garden this morning, the woman with the sunburst on her back, is above me and that she is leaning down and whispering into my ear. I want to imagine she is Joanne, but I can’t conjure her face, can’t smell her skin, can’t quite tell myself what it is I’m doing at all, if any of this is happening. Because if you think about it, it’s all a little preposterous that I’ve turned my house into a Starbucks, but the facts of life are that we only get to live for a small amount of time—I mean really live, not that diaper period on both ends of the spectrum, or the acne era, or any time when life gets broken up by making photocopies, or sitting in meetings, or listening to music in elevators, or shopping for groceries, or waiting for that certain someone special. How much real time is that? Maybe 1,095 days. Maybe. And anyway, this living I’m doing inside the house now feels moored and solid.
Tomorrow, I decide, I will put an ad in the paper for a new employee. Or wife.
Part of being a good boss, I’ve learned reading the Starbucks franchise handbook, is an ability to perform all of the remedial tasks you expect of your underlings. Corporately it’s referred to as the reverse plane-crash theory. I prefer to think that it’s simple survival instinct, though I suspect I’d have a difficult time killing a wild boar or skinning a cougar if it came down to it. Working for Carolyn, I learned a great deal about medicine, or at least which drugs people really wanted, which ones made people happy, which ones made people angry, which ones made people irrational and suspicious of the black helicopters. So that when a patient would call and Carolyn was busy, I’d occasionally dispense my own diagnoses and even call in prescriptions, though the majority of my business was handled outside of the office, certainly. I would have been an excellent doctor, and I am sure many people believed I was one.
Del, of course, always knew the truth. He always knows. So when he shows up at my front door the day after my full page want ad runs in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and USA Today, I fire up the espresso machine to show him how much I know.
“What can I get for you?” I ask.
“I’m not here for coffee, Jason,” he says.
“No charge,” I say.
“Fine,” Del says. He looks up at the menu, and I can tell he is impressed. Unlike most Starbucks, I have all the seasonal drinks available year-round. “Just give me a latte.”
“Nonfat? Whole milk? Soy? Eggnog?”
“Jason, look, it doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me,” I say.
“Fine. Nonfat.”
“Great,” I say. “Can I get you a pastry or something? I even have the classic coffee cake. No one has that. I challenge you to find it anywhere else.”
“Yes, fine, that would be fine.”
“Great,” I say. “Why don’t you have a seat, and I’ll call your name when your drink is ready.”
“Jason,” Del says, “have you heard from your wife?”
“Take a seat, sir,” I say, “and I will call you when your drink is ready. Please, help yourself to a New York Times. They are complimentary.”
Del ignores the newspaper but takes a seat on the blue crushed velvet sofa and stares out the window to the street. From the way the shadows bounce on the walls I can tell that there is some activity outside, but since it is just after 1:00 PM, it may well be that man and his enormous poodle. Or maybe that woman with the sunburst has come over to have a cup of coffee. Maybe Joanne and the kids have returned. I would welcome that, truly, because the house has started to sag at the corners again. The casita in the back is nearly gone entirely.
“Venti latte on the bar for Del!” I call out. Del stands up carefully, and I note that the tilting of the house is really becoming pronounced. I’m amazed Del can actually walk without pitching downhill toward me, but he makes it to the counter without any problem.
“I want you to listen to me,” Del says.
“You have a great day,” I respond, sliding Del his cup.
“Joanne’s mother has gone to the police. They want to come in and take a look around. No one is saying you’ve done anything, Jason, okay? They just want to look around. Will you let them do that?”
“Zack is missing,” I say. “So is the girl with the sunburst.”
“Skylar,” Del says.
“Yes,” I say, “that was her name. She came around quite a bit, and then when Zack left, well, I guess it became uncomfortable for her. She liked Joanne’s roses. I saw her outside smelling them one morning.”
“Jason,” he says, “we’ve been through this before. I want to help you, but you have to let me. The police just want to talk to you. That’s all.”
“You have helped me,” I say. “I couldn’t have accomplished everything here without your help. Have you taken photos for your portfolio? I can’t imagine that I’m the only person in America who wants a Starbucks in their house. I saw on MTV that Tommy Lee has a very small one, but he also has a stripper pole, which I think is excessive. It’s about comfort and customer service, and you’ve really accomplished that. I just can’t get any decent help.”
Del rubs at his eyes with the palms of his hands. When we were kids, our mother admonished Del to never do that, because she said it led to bags under the eyes, loose skin on the cheeks, and a general hangdog appearance. It never stopped him, and I’m proud to say he looks nothing like a hangdog.
“Zack and Skylar have been dead for two years,” Del says. “You need to wrap your mind around that.”
“Have you noticed,” I ask, “how the house seems to be sagging?”
“Are you hearing me, Jason?”
“Perhaps I should just have my bedroom removed. I’ve found that I spend most of my time in here anyway.”
“In five minutes,” Del says, “a police officer is going to come to the front door, and I’m going to let him in. You’ll have two options then: you can tell him where Joanne is or you can go to jail, and if you go to jail, they’re going to want to ask you questions that you’re not going to want to answer. They’ll talk to Carolyn eventually, which will then lead to other questions about things you’ve lied about. Do you want that, Jason?”
“She’s in Burma by now,” I say.
“Good,” Del says. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What is she doing in Burma?”
I tell Del all about the fighting, the plane tickets, the calls already placed to the police. I tell him that sometimes people you love disappear and that, through no fault of your own, they stay gone. And sometimes they reappear. I tell him that Zack and Skylar certainly are not dead, that they were both here not a week ago, and that after they left, that’s when I noticed things really starting to get weird around here with the foundation of the house. I tell him that I might move. I tell him that I might just try to get back into medicine. I tell him to get the orders from the men at the door, to find out if they want hot drinks or cold, if they would like pastries, if they would like to take a seat while I get busy making them whatever they’d like. And when Del steps away from the counter to open the door, I tell him to have a great, great day.