10

Since the day he’d torn into Stefan’s essay and sent the abusive email, I’d developed a mental image of Stone angrily typing away in some dank New York basement apartment like an unsavory conspiracy theory blogger afraid that his coffee pot was bugged. Sure, I’d seen some publicity photos of him, but I imagined him grungier, unshaven and smelly, like he slept in his clothes and rarely showered. That was clearly a fantasy. Six feet tall like me, but rock star slim, Stone looked annoyingly hip in a tight white shirt with the short sleeves stretched by his ropy biceps, loosened skinny black tie, black jeans and black crocodile slip-ons with no socks.

Just moments before, the world had seemed large and open; now it was very small and cramped, a tunnel with me at one end and Stone at the other. As he approached, he whipped out his key fob and pressed it. LED lights unexpectedly came on all around the car—including the door handles and rearview mirrors—in some complex sequence that was like a bomb being armed in a sci-fi movie. I was startled and distracted by the light show—which was what he intended, I’m sure—and turned partly away from Stone. That was a mistake.

He rushed me and grabbed at my left shoulder. I whirled around, clamped my hands on his arms, pinning them to his sides, and shoved him hard against the side of his Cadillac, which did not start yowling. It may have sophisticated security lighting, but it did not seem primed to deal with a vengeful college professor. Not that I cared if an alarm went off outside my head; inside I felt all the clangor of fire trucks and ambulances rushing to a blaze. More noise wouldn’t have bothered me.

My face was hot, my senses so alive it was hallucinatory. I could smell his fear as intensely as I could smell his Cool Water cologne. I could see it. It sounds crazy, but I could have sworn I even felt the blood rushing through the veins in his arms.

Even though I was easily thirty pounds heavier and more muscular than ever before from swimming laps five days a week, he struggled and tried to knee me in the groin. I blocked his leg and stomped on one of his expensive shoes, grinding my sneakered heel into it.

“You’re fucking crazy!” he yelled. “I’m going to get a restraining order on you. I’m going to sue your ass and crush you.”

Stone was practically foaming at the mouth and I could smell the coffee he’d been drinking, even the artificial sweetener he’d used. I wanted to hurt him more badly than I already had, head butt him or punch him in the stomach till he passed out or puked or both. I had never felt such an onrush of violence in me before—and I loved it.

Each time he tried to struggle, I grabbed him tighter, feeling like a vigilante cornering a thief. I understood in those moments the thrill of being a bully, of dominating and humiliating somebody weaker than yourself—and I wasn’t remotely ashamed of what I was doing. It was new, it was amazing, it was revenge for having been so powerless.

Despite his rage, or maybe because of it, I could tell he was surprised that I’d manhandled him. His deep blue eyes were scared, and they were very guilty eyes; there was no other way to read them. I was dead sure of that.

We were alone in the sunny parking lot, and tightening my grip even further on his muscled forearms, I said, “You’re a liar and a thug. You’ve been following me, harassing me and Stefan. Admit it! And you set us up for the SWAT team invading our house. I know you did.” What would it take to get him to confess?

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You’re delusional!”

“You’re driving a black XTS. I’ve been followed by a black XTS.” At least I thought so.

“And there’s only one of these in the whole fucking state? Are you on crack or something? Why the fuck would I follow you?”

“Because you hate Stefan.”

“I hate all lousy writers!”

“No, you’re jealous of him.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Publishing is full of losers like Stefan. Give me a break.”

“Stefan’s a loser? His memoir was a best seller.”

“Right. Christian nut jobs bought his book,” he sneered. “That’s a great audience. He’s a fucking joke. He was a nobody before his memoir, and now he’s a clown. His book is crap, it’s wishful thinking, sentimental noxious crap.”

If our confrontation had swept me up like a roof in a tornado, I was suddenly dropped to earth. I let Stone go, stepping well back. I’m not sure why. He shook himself like a dog emerging from a bath.

I suddenly felt disgusted with myself, as if the contempt on his face had been painted there by me, as if he were some dark aspect of myself I was getting too good a look at. I wondered what the hell I was doing there not just roughing somebody up, but arguing now about a book. A book! That was truly bizarre.

Stone rubbed his arms, shaking his head at me. “You’re a pathetic wannabe,” he said. “All you academics are the same. You think teaching can fill you up. Nothing can. You live with a writer because you’re a parasite. Too bad the writer you live with is emptier than you are.” He picked up the key fob he had dropped when I grabbed him and limped quickly around to the driver’s side, opened the door and slipped in, driving off before I could say anything or even think of what to say. I watched him disappear, wondering if he was going to find the police station and report me. Should I stay there? Would leaving be seen as “flight” and make me guiltier than I already was?

I couldn’t believe it. Just a few days ago Stefan had been taken away to jail for something he hadn’t done, and now I might be really jailed because I was a criminal. I was guilty of assault, and who knew what other legal charges the cops could throw at me.

I trailed back to my own car, sweating and mortified. I got in slowly, awkwardly, started it, but didn’t go anywhere, turned up the air conditioning and pointed every possible vent at my face to cool off. I’d never lost control like that before in my life, never. I had never hurt someone deliberately and enjoyed it, reveled in it. Had I already become what I hated? Had being victimized by cops turned me into a monster so quickly? What I had just done was reprehensible. There was no sugarcoating it, no excuse. It was assault. If he did sue me and take me to court, how would I defend myself ? I couldn’t prove any of my charges, and even if I could, that didn’t give me the right to attack him.

The SWAT team had made me completely slip my moorings. Stefan would be furious, and rightly so. And I couldn’t imagine what my parents would say if this incident came out, or Sharon, or anyone who liked and respected me.

But in the midst of my recriminations, something else bubbled up: Why had I backed off ? Was it what Stone had said about Stefan’s literary standing that had made the difference? Was that a claim I couldn’t contest, something I half-believed myself ? I had told Stefan I loved his memoir when I read the early drafts, but that was when his conversion was so new that I felt off-balance, hesitant, and even threatened. I don’t know if I could have read it with a clear mind and honest intentions. I didn’t want to say anything negative that might push him away since I was worried enough that his becoming a Catholic would separate us.

Whatever the subject, if you live with a writer, can you ever truly judge their work? Be objective? You’ve seen the struggle behind the book, the career anxieties and disappointments, the external pressure to produce, the more insidious internal pressure to make people notice this new book if the previous one has somehow been slighted. Puzzling over all this, I started to feel worse than I had been feeling already.

I’d been exposed. Stone was insidious, and his charge about Stefan’s book wasn’t haphazard. He had intuited my doubts and gotten under my skin as readily as if I’d confessed them to him, drunk at a bar one night, and forgotten all about it the next morning. Only a sociopath had that uncanny ability to manipulate people’s weaknesses. And here I thought roughing him up had given me the advantage, had made me a winner, however briefly. He’d probably expected me to get overly physical as soon as he’d discovered me near his car, and had played me as easily as he’d switched on all those pretty lights on his XTS. What a moron I was.

And then something even more terrible hit me: What if I’d backed off because I was starting to have doubts about Stone being the culprit?

I probably sat there a good fifteen minutes before I was calm enough to drive to the condo. I had to tell Stefan what I’d done, and I dreaded his reaction, fearing a look of contempt as corrosive as Stone’s.

I was about to call you,” he said, when I let myself in. He was sprawled on the couch, looking more contented than he’d been since before our lives were pulled inside out by the police.

I didn’t delay by making coffee or fixing us drinks or asking if he wanted to go out for a tapas dinner. I sat down at the other end of the couch and told him what had just happened with as much detail as if I’d been giving a deposition. When I was done, Stefan was grinning at me so broadly, I was worried.

“You’re amazing,” he said. “You’re the last person I’d expect to go postal.”

“Come on, it wasn’t that bad.” I hadn’t shot or killed anyone. There wasn’t even any blood that I could see.

“Given who you are, it was. And I love it.” He shook his head admiringly. “We don’t need a bodyguard, we have you.”

“You’re mocking me.”

“No way. I’m proud of you.” He got up to give me a warm hug, but there was a hard edge to his voice that troubled me. Did I want him to be proud of me, did I want him to relish my stepping over the line? Where were we headed?

Sitting next to me, Stefan made me retell the whole story of my “fight.” What was I, Othello home from the wars? But I complied, because it made him happy and the last few days had been beyond hellish for him. And I was relieved to see that he was no longer shell-shocked—or at least not right then. Why not enjoy it—who knew how long this would last?

“I wish I’d been there,” he said.

“To watch?”

“To finish him off.”

I waited for him to chuckle or somehow indicate he was kidding, but his face was now set and grim, and his eyes distant.

“I thought you were detached from Stone, you’d gone all Zen and Let it Be.”

Stefan shrugged. “I thought so, too. But man, the picture of him practically pissing his skinny jeans—”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to. People like that are weasels, they’re cowards, they’re scum. They’re like that pathetic car salesman in True Lies who pretends to be a spy so he can get laid, but ends up freaking out when he meets a real spy.”

I wanted to tell him to chill, but who was I to get all directive? I’d said worse things about Stone. Besides, I was the one who’d hurt him.

Stefan jumped to his feet. “Let’s go out and celebrate.”

“Aren’t you worried about running into people from the writing workshop, the organizers? They’ll be angry you said no to being part of it, but you’re here in town.”

“Fuck ’em,” he snapped.

It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it fit. We took a soothing fifteen-minute walk over to the Jamesport Brewing Company, a big, relaxed, high-ceilinged bistro-ish restaurant off the main drag that was always crowded and always friendly. The door was enormously heavy and shrieked when you opened it, but the food inside was great. They gave us our favorite, curtained four-person alcove table where we had privacy to talk, and to do all the people watching we wanted to. Stefan was as ravenous as if he’d run a marathon in record time, a race he’d trained long and hard for, denying himself all his favorite food and drink. He ordered pecan-crusted perch and I watched him chow down, wondering if there wasn’t something manic about the way he gobbled each mouthful.

“Aren’t you hungry?” he pressed.

I shook my head and took a sip of my Amstel Light. I’d ordered their cheese ale soup, but hadn’t eaten much. I’d become anxious each time the door opened, expecting police to come and drag me off for assaulting Stone. I imagined the headlines, because there was no way a story like that wouldn’t transfix a little town like Ludington.

“What if I’m wrong?” I asked. “What if it isn’t Stone who’s targeting us, or orchestrating it, or involved in any way at all?”

Before Stefan could answer, he muttered, “Look who’s here,” and I turned to see Stone weaving from the bar toward us, limping slightly. He was all in black now, and looked shifty.

“You know,” he said in an undertone when he reached us, “I once asked Christopher Hitchens why he never wrote anything about your memoir.”

I had no idea Stone was friends with the late atheist author of God Is Not Great.

Stone leaned toward us, “He said it wasn’t worth his time because Stefan was so obviously deluded, anyone with sense would see the desperation.”

Stefan didn’t even look up from his fish, and I expected him to explode, tip over the table and wrestle Stone to the ground. Or maybe that’s what I wanted to do. The people at tables closest to us, sensing the confrontation, had stopped talking, but Stefan just kept eating.

“I’m not done with you,” Stone said flatly and headed off.

When he was out of sight and presumably out the door, Stefan looked up at me and winked. He was actually ebullient. “That was supposed to flatten me? Hitchens was a great writer, I loved his essays. But I didn’t write my memoir for him, so who cares what he said to Stone?”

“If he even said anything.”

“Right. Too bad Hitchens didn’t attack me, though, if the story’s true. We could have sold twice as many books.”

Stefan was right. Controversy, even the fake kind, was great PR for a book.

“Nick, have the rest of my fries, they’re still warm.”

I finished them, marveling at how unpredictable life with an author could be. Writers can be so thin-skinned, even a compliment phrased in the wrong way can feel like an insult to them—but then a bad review can unexpectedly make a writer laugh. Or a review he didn’t get. How crazy was that?

“Stone wasn’t kidding when he threatened you,” I said, convinced once again that Stone was our man.

Stefan nodded. “His eyes,” he said. And now his face dimmed. “Did you see them? Cold. Hard. He was not kidding, you’re right. Maybe you got the better of him in the parking lot, but it won’t end there.”

“Why do you think he didn’t report me to the police?”

Stefan shrugged. “It gives him an edge, or he thinks so, anyway.” Then, speaking so softly that I might have missed it if I’d turned away, Stefan said without looking at me, “If I had the chance to kill him right now, right here in town, and get away with it, I’d do it.”