There’s no coffee in this house.
There’s a brand-new coffee maker and an unopened package of filters, but not an ounce of coffee. I’ve searched the whole kitchen at this point—the cabinets, the pantry, even the silverware drawer—but found nothing. Mark used to drink coffee all the time. He’d make a pot before going into work, pour it into a massive thermos, and drink it over the course of the day. In what he left of his house, though, the only signs of that ever being a consideration are the couple things I’ve come across.
Maybe he tried to take it up again. Maybe he was trying to use it to cut back on drinking. Clearly, I have no idea.
Brian’s snoring. The noises come through the floor in low, fluttering waves that fade off just in time for the next ones to arrive. Other than that, the house is silent, so I grab my keys off the counter and walk out the door. There’s a gas station down the street—well, there used to be, at least—where I could get a cup.
I’ve barely made it off the front porch when I freeze, one foot lingering midair above a step, stunned by what’s in front of me.
My Prius is covered in toilet paper. Not just a casual teepeeing, either—it’s wrapped in what must be layers, making it look like some sort of mummified hybrid box. Tucked in between a couple layers on the windshield is a red envelope with my name written in big, thick black letters.
Cars drive by, one after another, seemingly unaware of the scene in the yard. It’s as if this is commonplace in Lafayette, like every day someone’s car is teepeed into a mummy and decorated with a single envelope. The town joke, I guess. I wait for someone to pop out of the bushes and throw an egg or laugh or call me an asshole, but everything stays still.
Maybe they’re waiting for me to make a move. Maybe “they” aren’t here at all. I walk up to my car and look from one side to the other, not sure what to expect but also not willing to write off anything.
I snatch the envelope and rip it open. To my disappointment, the only thing inside is a piece of paper. I expected an explosion, or at least one of those glitter bombs, but nothing flashy happens. Apparently, flash wasn’t on the agenda.
In jagged, pasted letters from magazines, it reads:
Jack Dotson,
Mark wouldn’t want you at his funeral. On his behalf, we’re asking you to leave immediately. You can agree to this by leaving his house and not returning.
Should you choose to stay, consequences will follow. Consider this your only warning.
I look from the letter to the car, still expecting something to happen. Fireworks. A tackle. Anything, really. Another car drives by, and the gust makes the toilet paper flutter, as if it’s trying to run away but can’t, so I fold the letter in half and stuff it in my pocket. My instinct is to rip the paper off and get my coffee—it’s too early to deal with this shit, much less without caffeine—but I can’t do it. Maybe there’s a sign, some sort of mark the mummifier left, or maybe I just want someone else to acknowledge what’s going on. Whatever that is, I’ll figure it out later.
Kenny might know who it is. Beth would have a better idea. It’s the crack of dawn and everyone’s asleep, though, so I head inside and take a seat next to Mark’s comic books. I don’t know what Beth or Brian or whoever has planned, but I’m assuming we’ll have to start going through Mark’s stuff at some point, and his boxes of comics seem as good a place to start as any. I grab a handful out and start making two piles: one to keep, and one to donate. Mark would struggle not to keep all of them; he loved every piece of every story arc and wouldn’t put one over the other. Mark’s dead, though, so I guess I’ll do what I can.
I’m about to set an old X-Men title in the donate pile when I hear a meow from across the room. Jack, sure enough, is pattering across the hardwood in slow, clunky steps, headed my way. He hops into my lap when he gets to me and starts rubbing his head on the X-Men book, almost knocking it out of my hand before I can set it where I want.
I pick him up and set him on the floor. “Stop, dude.”
He meows and hops back up, so I toss the X-Men book in the donate pile and move onto the next one. Hulk, discard. Another Hulk, discard. Thor, keep. An X-Men variant cover, keep. Jack chimes in every once in a while, headbutting a comic in one direction or another, and I let him. After all, he knew Mark more recently than I did.
Jabba’s going to hate this cat. He’s a king-of-the-house kind of dog, one who isn’t going to take kindly to another four-legged creature headbutting its way into his business. I’m trying to work my way through this, how I’m going to introduce Jack to Jabba and Lauren, when I spot the comic. The one Mark and I discussed over pops, ice cream, coffee. The one we spent hours and nights arguing over. Amazing Spider-Man #121.
One thing most people don’t realize about Spider-Man (at least before Mark Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man 2 came out) is that way before Peter Parker fell for Mary Jane Watson, he loved a girl name Gwen Stacy. Spider-Man enthusiasts will tell you she was the love of his life, and that he only ended up with Mary Jane because of the friendship that developed between the two of them after Gwen died. These enthusiasts will also tell you that Peter was responsible for her death.
See, early in Spider-Man’s career, the Green Goblin captured Gwen (knowing she was Peter’s love interest) and threw her off a bridge before Spider-Man’s eyes. In an attempt to save her, Spider-Man shot a string of webbing, which connected with her back before she hit the ground. It’s a terrible scene, really. Spider-Man jumps to her all proud, thinking he’s saved her, only to get down there and find out she died anyway. At first glance, it’s easy to assume that the fall killed her—probably a result of a heart attack or some other scare—and that Spider-Man got to her too late. When you examine the art in the panel, though, it becomes clear that Spider-Man’s web snapped Gwen’s neck. See, in the panel where the web hits, there’s a small “snap” by it, making it pretty apparent that the webbing itself, not the throw, killed her.
I run my fingers over the cover, and I can see Mark hovering over those panels, dissecting every detail of the scene. He wasn’t the type to believe that Spider-Man failed. To Mark, these heroes didn’t screw up like you and me. They were larger than life, gods who committed to their cause, saved the girl, and received the key to the city. They were, well, super. The thing about that Spider-Man story is that he tried to save a girl and killed her in the process. He never had a chance to apologize or make it right, and Mark hated that.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out. Lauren’s smiling face is staring at me from the screen. I freeze for a couple seconds, already struggling to explain the amount I spent at Double Dragon or the letter I just received, and decide to slide it back into my pocket.
Jack meows and jumps out of my lap, knocking the comic out of my hands. I look down at the cover—a bright yellow thing, Spider-Man swinging across it, his spider sense telling him someone’s going to die—then push myself up and follow Jack down the hall and up the stairs. I might have missed my chance to get on good terms with Mark, but that doesn’t mean I’ve blown my chance with everyone else.
I knock on Beth’s door.
“Yeah?” she says, not opening it.
“It’s me.”
Her footsteps make their way across the floor, creaking as she gets closer, and eventually stop. She pulls the door open a couple inches, leaning her head on it in a way that lets me see only a sliver of her face. Behind her, blankets are pinned up over her windows, leaving the room dark.
“Can I come in?”
She blinks. “I think this is okay.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For prodding. It’s none of my business.”
“It’s fine.” She sighs, leaning into the door, and I can almost feel the weight on her shoulders. “I get that there’s stuff between us that we never tackled, but this isn’t the time. I just can’t.”
There are a lot of things I’d like to say, questions about the engagement and if she ever thought about me, but she’s right. “Yeah,” I say, swallowing them down. “That’s fair.”
She pauses, eyes wide in surprise, as if she thought I would have made the wrong decision. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” I tell her. I pull the letter out of my pocket and hold it up. “If it makes you feel any better, though, someone’s out to get me.”
She’d started closing the door, but she stops. “What?”
I hand her the letter. “See for yourself.”
She opens the door and unfolds the letter so quickly I expect it to rip. “Jesus Christ.”
“Any idea who it is?”
“None,” she says. Her eyes move from one side to the other, scanning the words. “Is this a joke?”
I shrug. “It sounds like something I’d expect out of this place. The Society for Advocates of Mark, a trashy group that meets at the diner on Teal Road every Sunday for brunch and collaging threatening letters. They wear monogramed S.A.M. hoodies and everything.”
Beth looks up, so I stop. “Mark didn’t have a lot of friends after you guys.” She pauses, and the words punch me in the stomach. “He drank with people and stuff, but I can’t imagine any of them doing it. It’s kind of hard telling with you, though. People weren’t all that thrilled with you after everything went down.”
This doesn’t help.
She folds the letter back up and hands it to me. “Kenny might know. Is he up?”
“Not yet.” I put the letter back in my pocket and force a smile. “I’ll check with him later, though. And sorry to wake you up—I wasn’t really thinking. Just wanted to say sorry.”
She smiles, the edges of her lips held up by little more than willpower, but it’s something. “Thanks.”
“I’m going to sort through some more of his comics. See if there’s anything we can get rid of.”
She nods, and her arms twitch in a way that makes me think for a second that she’s going to hug me. I look for a ring on her left hand, but there’s nothing. Just the faint tan line of where one once was. “I’ll be down in a few,” she says, stuffing her hands in her pockets. “I just want to hang out in here for a while.”
“No worries,” I tell her, and she closes the door.
On my way downstairs, I try to call Lauren back. The phone rings on and on, just like it has the last couple times I’ve tried calling, before going to her voicemail. I hang up without leaving a message. By the time I make it to the couch, though, my phone screen’s lit up with a fresh text. At breakfast with a coworker. Can’t wait to hear how your trip’s going! xoxo
Three dots appear on my screen—you know, the three that show up when someone’s typing—then disappear. I wait for another message to arrive, then wait for the dots to show back up, but, after thirty seconds or so, realize nothing’s coming. I create a reminder to call her tonight, and just after I save it, Jack walks back into the room, meowing as if he’s determined it’s time for everyone else to wake up. I can’t say I blame him for it. Between the wood-paneled walls, the mid 2000s décor, and the pulled-shut blinds, it’s a lonely place to sit by yourself.
I reach down to pet him, and he hisses and bats at my hand before running away. Today’s going to be great.