Dry Fire
Part Four
This crap is going to interrupt those plans.
He was coming home early, on her day off, so he could convince her to get all gussied up, so they could go to that sea food place she likes, the one where they pretty much charge you a service fee just for walking through the door. The sort of place reserved for birthdays or anniversaries. Sure, she would be ready for a set up right from the get go but he wasn’t going to bring the house down on her over the desert course. He wanted to bring her home and maybe eek out one last night of passion. A last kindle of old flames, little did he know he was the only one still left burning there.
He was never going to tell her about it. He was going to wait until the weekend. Every once in a very great while he still went fishing and that was a perfect excuse. He always went with Barry, or Dave from down the street and he had already planned to use Dave as an excuse. “Dave wants to go down to the lake Saturday; I couldn’t say no.” He was going to take dad’s old pistol out with him, tucked into his tackle box. He was going to get out on the water and just be done with it. Let him be lost for good, let it be called a freak accident, otherwise if they did find him, let it go as unsolved and so be it. She could live with that.
He knew she could handle, “Your husband is gone, we don’t know where.” Likewise, she would manage on “Your husband took a boat out and swallowed a bullet.” She wasn’t the “in sickness or health” type. He knew that because he wasn’t either and they had talked about it rather glibly over a pitcher of margaritas at one of her carefully planned parties that hardly anyone showed up for. They hadn’t exactly made a pact to leave one another when the going got rough but they both admitted that they couldn’t imagine the indelicacies of adult care.
During his examination the doctor that walked in, for a grand total of about thirty seconds, was candid and frank and as much as he hated the son of a bitch for handing it out like that, he was glad no one tried to bullshit him except for the worthless pamphlet with its picture perfect family on the cover. “The cancer has progressed to a stage where we wouldn’t suggest surgery. Some patients have seen substantial improvements through chemotherapeutic trials but those are costly.”
He didn’t want to play the cliché card. He didn’t want to fold up and ask the doc how long he had left. He knew it was all bullshit, asking a doctor how long you had left to live was about as useful as asking a psychic for winning lotto numbers. He did inquire politely about his chances if he took out a second mortgage and threw the mother of all garage sales, what would chemo really do. “Well Mr. Richards, I’ll be honest with you because you look like you are ready to hear it. Chemotherapy is a crap shoot for the kind of cancer you have, it’s a long shot. If it does the trick it might buy you a few months, maybe a year.”
That was the end of that consultation. A diagnose and an acceptance of death. Who the hell needs to read “Dealing with Grief” after a talk like that?
Now though. Now. There would be no last candle lit dinner, no final night of anything. She packed her pills and a few days’ worth of cloths and that was that. Calling her at her sister’s house wouldn’t bring her home. Calling there and telling her he had the big C would be nothing but a sympathy plea. He didn’t need a mother he could stick his dick in. He didn’t need a place to call home. He didn’t want it to be all about him, not before and not now. Still though, this crap is going to interrupt those plans.
Barry?
He puts the unfolded piece of paper down on top of his night stand and flattens it out. It makes for the best note he could ever leave. It says it all, or as close as can be spelled out in doctor speak. He thinks for a second longer and takes one of the pens from his drawer and circles the place next to the extra long word where it says “inop.” Maybe that will drive the point home.
He takes the pistol in his right hand and considers how best to hold it. There was a movie he watched where the protagonist explained how you could really fuck things up by shooting yourself in the temple. Maybe you miss and wind up blowing yours eyes out but little else. Maybe your wrist jerks and you wind up a vegetable on life support. Under the chin, wasn’t that the way?
He pushed the small barrel flush underneath his chin and let his finger dance around the guard until it slipped over and around the trigger.
What if she doesn’t come back tomorrow? What if she waits a couple of days? What if she waits until after the weekend when she assumes that he’ll be at work? What does any of that matter? Imagine turning the key on the front door of your house and finding a body. Imagine walking in on that scene. Brains and blood and gore all splattered and fanned across the walls and up into the popcorn ceiling. Clinging to it and hanging stubbornly. He didn’t hate her, not all, no matter what she had done, and certainly not enough to leave her with that kind of surprise.