Lights Out

Eddie kicked in one of the rear side windows, opened the door, yanked up the floor mat, found the keys. He unlocked the trunk, dropped the backpack inside, closed it. Then he got behind the wheel, started the car, drove out, onto the dirt road.

He drove. That was all he did. Dirt road to paved two-laner, paved two-laner to the turnpike; where he lost himself in the traffic, flowing slowly in the falling snow. Once or twice he glanced in the rearview mirror, saw only the sights of normal commuting life.

Cold air blew in through the smashed window. Jack’s car had a good heater, and Eddie cranked it up to the max, but there was nothing he could do about that icy feeling on the back of his neck.

Outside: Day 8 27

The clouds disappeared, just like that. The sun came out. The skies were blue. The snow melted. It was spring.

Eddie was too busy to notice. He lit a fire in Jack’s fireplace and burned every scrap of paper in the suite. When the fire was at its hottest, he added all the computer disks. Not knowing how to erase the computer’s internal memory, he unplugged it, unscrewed the back panel, tore out everything that would tear out, and tossed it in the fire too.

The rest-clothes, books, pictures, office equipment-he packed in boxes addressed to Uncle Vic. Then he phoned the desk.

“Mr. Nye is checking out,” he said. “What’s the bill?”

“Checking out? But he just paid his account to the end of the month.”

“Change of plan.”

“I’m afraid we have no prorating mechanism for situations like this.”

“Meaning there’s no checking out?”

Tentative laugh. “Meaning there’s no refund. Regrettably.”

Eddie called the Mount Olive Extended Care Residence and Spa.

“The account,” he was told, “is paid up to the thirtieth.”

“What’s the monthly rate?”

“Three thousand dollars.”

“Mr. Nye would like to pay for a year in advance.”

“I’m afraid we have no discount mechanism in situations like that.”

Eddie waited for her to add “regrettably.” When she did not, he said, “Cash a problem?”

“Cash is never a problem, sir. Checks are the problem.”

Then there was nothing unburned or unpacked but the phone and the bottle of Armagnac. Like cognac, Jack had said, but snobbier. Eddie sat by the fire with the bottle in his lap, facing away from the window. He had noticed those blue skies. He didn’t drink, just sat with the bottle in his lap.

The phone rang.

“Hello?” he said.

“Jack?” It was Karen.

“No.”

“Eddie. You sound so much alike.” There was a pause. He could feel her thinking, as though the electric impulses in her brain were somehow feeding into the wire. “Is Jack there?”

“No.”

“When will he be back?”

Eddie searched for the right sort of lie, settled on one, opened his mouth to utter it only to find he physically could not. Something was choking him. He was all right as long as he didn’t speak about Jack. He saw himself in the mirror, completely distorted.

“Eddie?”

“Yeah.”

“I think you and I’ve had a little misunderstanding.”

“Have we?”

“I’d like to clear it up,” Karen said. “Maybe I could see you.”

Eddie said nothing.

Karen said: “Could I come over?”

It hit him then: the desk clerk had called her, told her that Jack was checking out. Why not? She was some kind of cop, and it was an obvious cop move.

“Why don’t I come over there?” Eddie said.

“Over here?”

“What’s your address?”

She gave it to him.

“See you in an hour,” Eddie said.

Eddie called down for a cardboard box, wrapping paper. He opened one of the canvas bags and counted out $230,000. There was a knock at the door.

He opened it. The bellman. “Can you wait a minute?” Eddie asked him, taking the box and the wrapping paper.

“Certainly, sir.”

Everyone was calling him sir all of a sudden, as though money had a smell. Eddie closed the door, leaving the bellman in the hall. He put the $230,000 in the box, wrapped it, wrote Karen’s address on the front, adding, “From Windward Financial Services,” gave it to the bellman.

“I’d like this delivered right away,” Eddie said. “By you.” He gave the bellman fifty dollars.

“Right away,” said the bellman, but there was no “sir.” Maybe fifty wasn’t enough.

The bellman left. Eddie counted out another $36,000, for the Mount Olive Extended Residence and Spa, dropped it in a shopping bag. What else? He remembered Raleigh, and then forgot him.

He counted the rest: $488,220.

Eddie stuffed it into the backpack, threw the canvas bags on the fire, slung on the pack. He looked around the room. He had taken care of Jack’s obligations and destroyed the records of any possible financial impropriety. That didn’t make him feel any better. He hadn’t belonged in Jack’s world and Jack hadn’t belonged in his. Bringing them together had been a mistake. He toyed with the idea that the two worlds had come together within him, due to circumstance, and therefore it was no one’s fault. A bad idea. Jack was dead and the fault was his.