All This Life

Could he email his parents about Tracey? Was that allowed?

It wasn’t; he knew that. Knew that but he thought that maybe it was okay, too. He typed in his father’s email, his mother’s.

The subject was simply: Tracey.

He stared at the blank body of the message, having no idea what to say. Should he imbed a link to the video? Should they get to see it for themselves, salvage the opportunity to witness her final minutes, or would that be too much for them? Noah didn’t want to hurt them, didn’t know what would help and what would throb with misery so he sat there.

Cursor flashing.

Stomach growling.

He wanted to get drunk.

His hands were feeling better.

He changed the subject to this: I’m sorry.

But he never typed text in the body.

There would be a phone call but not till later. He needed to find a way to peel himself from this desk, needed to summon the strength to go home. To walk in there. To be there.

He took a taxi home, the driver wanting to chat but Noah not really participating. The driver’s eyes darted from road to rearview mirror. Noah asked the driver to let him off at the liquor store a block from the apartment. He bought a bottle of vodka and thought of it as a futures commodity that he’d never traded before. Numbness. This was what his future was going to need, and he’d pay anything for it.

Noah needed to be anesthetized before he saw reminders of her scattered everywhere, too many to tally. He had two long pulls off the vodka bottle and climbed the front stairs.

The sound his key made opening up the front door was horrid and loud. He could feel each scrape as the key hit the tumbler. He turned the knob and stood there, in the doorway, and didn’t move.

He walked to where he saw her last, sleeping on the couch, where he saw her chest move with every breath. The spilling blanket. He saw the grapefruit, uneaten. He saw the toast, the hummus hardened into a brown meringue. There was one bite taken out of it. He could see her teeth marks. Even in the dark, Noah911 would swear that he could see each individual contour on the bread left by every sovereign tooth. He could see her so clearly.

He could also see the note he left her, Make sure my sister eats this, okay?

He opened up the vodka bottle and had a huge swig.

He fished his laptop from his bag and lay down on the couch. In her spot.

He watched the video clip many times. It’s all that he had left.

Noah911 made another hurtful and necessary click on replay.

Taking it all in another time.

As the video started, Noah didn’t see anything treacherous. They were normal people playing instruments.

Until the moment they weren’t.

7

Sara would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge a certain pleasure in Hank’s impulsive and violent reaction to Felix kicking her car. It was beautiful medicine, watching her brother being protective of her. Especially after the sex tape. Especially after being suspended from the restaurant. Especially after hearing Felix cussing and screaming at her and bringing a boot to her car. She needed to know there was someone alive who would defend her, someone who cared for Sara even when she couldn’t fathom caring about herself.

That was Hank. Her brother was stunning in his simplicity. He had no mind to do anything he didn’t feel like. Hank would hit the gym religiously. He’d go to work when he had to. Besides those actions, he sat around watching MMA clips and drinking beer and doing pushups and playing darts in his room. A sound that Sara associated with a cruel lullaby. She tried to sleep through it nightly, each dart’s thwunk into the board, the rip as Hank pulled it back out. So often she lay there staring at the cinderblocks, counting thwunks and rips, thwunks and rips.

Yet Hank could get his ire up fast. So when she came in the house four minutes ago and found him at the kitchen table cutting his fingernails, he looked up and witnessed the emergency on her face, the wide-eyed panic, and Hank said, “What happened?” and she leaked the whole story out. Well, not the whole tale exactly. Omitted were some need-to-know details. Redacted were the juiciest morsels. Hank had no investment, Sara figured, in the beginning of her day. His question, “What happened?” really meant Tell me why you seem so upset this instant? and thus she snipped the account to what she deemed the meat of the story, cleaving the fat to the butcher’s floor.

The sex tape, the work suspension, even the fact she sped up the street and almost hit Felix — these were amputated particulars.

Sara’s story was remixed in a way that emphasized the vulgar and unprovoked malice of the road fisherman, Felix going batshit for no reason and Sara scared that he was going to hit her in the face and he kicked her car, Hank, he ruined her mirror, Hank, he damn near took a swing.

“He almost clocked you, huh?” Hank said.

“He lost it.”

“Did he now.”

“I’ve always hated him.”

“Keys,” said Hank.

“Huh?”

“Give me your keys.”