Full Dark, No Stars

toothless, husbandless, and unable to smel anything—dropped into a deep depression. Streeter thought that demonstrated her basic sanity. If she had gone around whistling “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” he

would have advised Tom to lock up al the sharp objects in the house.

A plane carrying two members of the rock band Blink-182 crashed. Bad news, four people died. Good news, the rockers actual y survived for a change… although one of them would die not much

later.

“I have offended God,” Tom said at one of the dinners the two men now cal ed their “bachelor nights.” Streeter had brought spaghetti from Cara Mama, and cleaned his plate. Tom Goodhugh barely

touched his. In the other room, Gracie and Carl were watching American Idol, Gracie in silence, the former Emerson student hooting and gabbling. “I don’t know how, but I have.”

“Don’t say that, because it isn’t true.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, ” Streeter said emphatical y. “It’s foolish talk.”

“If you say so, buddy.” Tom’s eyes fil ed with tears. They rol ed down his cheeks. One clung to the line of his unshaven jaw, dangled there for a moment, then plinked into his uneaten spaghetti. “Thank God for Jacob. He’s al right. Working for a TV station in Boston these days, and his wife’s in accounting at Brigham and Women’s. They see May once in awhile.”

“Great news,” Streeter said heartily, hoping Jake wouldn’t somehow contaminate his daughter with his company.

“And you stil come and see me. I understand why Jan doesn’t, and I don’t hold it against her, but… I look forward to these nights. They’re like a link to the old days.”

Yes, Streeter thought, the old days when you had everything and I had cancer.

“You’l always have me,” he said, and clasped one of Goodhugh’s slightly trembling hands in both of his own. “Friends to the end.”

2008, what a year! Holy fuck! China hosted the Olympics! Chris Brown and Rihanna became nuzzle-bunnies! Banks col apsed! The stock market tanked! And in November, the EPA closed Mount

Trashmore, Tom Goodhugh’s last source of income. The government stated its intention to bring suit in matters having to do with groundwater pol ution and il egal dumping of medical wastes. The Derry News hinted that there might even be criminal action.

Streeter often drove out along the Harris Avenue Extension in the evenings, looking for a certain yel ow umbrel a. He didn’t want to dicker; he only wanted to shoot the shit. But he never saw the

umbrel a or its owner. He was disappointed but not surprised. Deal-makers were like sharks; they had to keep moving or they’d die.

He wrote a check and sent it to the bank in the Caymans.

In 2009, Chris Brown beat the hel out of his Number One Nuzzle-Bunny after the Grammy Awards, and a few weeks later, Jacob Goodhugh the ex–footbal player beat the hel out of his bubbly wife

Cammy after Cammy found a certain lady’s undergarment and half a gram of cocaine in Jacob’s jacket pocket. Lying on the floor, crying, she cal ed him a son of a bitch. Jacob responded by stabbing her

in the abdomen with a meat fork. He regretted it at once and cal ed 911, but the damage was done; he’d punctured her stomach in two places. He told the police later that he remembered none of this. He

was in a blackout, he said.

His court-appointed lawyer was too dumb to get a bail reduction. Jake Goodhugh appealed to his father, who was hardly able to pay his heating bil s, let alone provide high-priced Boston legal talent

for his spouse-abusing son. Goodhugh turned to Streeter, who didn’t let his old friend get a dozen words into his painful y rehearsed speech before saying you bet. He stil remembered the way Jacob had so unselfconsciously kissed his old man’s cheek. Also, paying the legal fees al owed him to question the lawyer about Jake’s mental state, which wasn’t good; he was racked with guilt and deeply depressed. The lawyer told Streeter that the boy would probably get five years, hopeful y with three of them suspended.

When he gets out, he can go home, Streeter thought. He can watch American Idol with Gracie and Carl, if it’s still on. It probably will be.

“I’ve got my insurance,” Tom Goodhugh said one night. He had lost a lot of weight, and his clothes bagged on him. His eyes were bleary. He had developed psoriasis, and scratched restlessly at his

arms, leaving long red marks on the white skin. “I’d kil myself if I thought I could get away with making it look like an accident.”

“I don’t want to hear talk like that,” Streeter said. “Things wil turn around.”

In June, Michael Jackson kicked the bucket. In August, Carl Goodhugh went and did him likewise, choking to death on a piece of apple. The companion might have performed the Heimlich maneuver