Q: So you saw Ovid with the bomb?
A: Yes.
Q: What did you think about her actions at that time?
A: I wasn't quite sure what to think. It was certainly peculiar.
Q: Why did you follow her?
A: Curiosity, I suppose. Whatever was happening, it seemed very compelling to her.
Q: And you didn't know who she was at that time?
A: Never saw her before in my life.
Q: You'd never been to her shop?
A: No. I visit the German Village only very infrequently.
Q: And yet you were there that day.
A: Yes.
Q: You know, some might call that fate.
A: Call it what you will, it makes very little difference to me.
Q: Do you believe in fate?
[pause]
A: I believe that the universe as a whole is supremely indifferent to what we laughingly call intelligent life. The notion that some all-seeing force governs our actions is so egotistical as to be offensive. [pause] I suppose that's a "no." [smiles]
"Are you coming?"
"In a minute!" he called, his lips voicing the response automatically.
"You said that half an hour ago!" Her voice was partly amused, partly annoyed...but mostly annoyed. "Uh...in a minute!" he repeated, too distracted to formulate another answer. He didn't hear the footsteps coming up the stairs and was only vaguely aware of the door opening.
Maia Overstreet crossed her arms and watched her husband for a few moments, caught between two impulses...one: shout at him for making her and Robin wait and two: go over and brush that errant curl away from his forehead and kiss his temple. He was pounding away at the keyboard with the singlemindedness that he usually got when he was struggling. If the day's writing was going well, he was less determined about it, but if he was having trouble he always felt like he had something he had to prove.
"Luv, it's an hour drive and we're late already," she said quietly, but the annoyance was still there. It was a gathering in their honor, for the love of God...the least they could do was not to be late.
He looked up at last, an expression of irritation crossing his features in spite of himself. The sight of it wiped away any amorous thoughts Maia may have been having in a big hurry. "I said I'd be there in a minute!" he said.
Maia stomped over to the desk and turned his chair away from the screen, leaning over him. "Connor, we are going to be at least half an hour late already. You know how much I hate to be late, you know it. Your work will keep...you've said it yourself, sometimes a few hours away helps." Connor cast a wistful glance at the computer, knowing he wouldn't be seeing it again tonight. "I know it's just my family and therefore far less important than the work of the Great Samurai Novelist but you could at least pretend to care that they've gone to all this trouble." She straightened up. "I'm going to collect Robin and my bag and get into the car. If you don't climb into the driver's seat within five minutes I'm going to switch and leave without you...and if you make me do that you won't like the wife that returns to you tonight." She stalked out of the room, her skirt swishing around her legs.
Connor sighed and powered down his monitor, feeling sheepish.
**********
He steered the BMW onto the highway, flicking his eyes to the rearview mirror. Seven-year-old Robin, securely belted into the backseat with her headphones on, flashed him a bright grin and returned to her book. She'd learned to read very early and was by now on to what she called "big people books." He and Maia had discussed at length between themselves whether Lewis' Narnia series was too scary and adult for her, but had eventually decided to let her have at them. Robin was an unusually self-possessed child, and if the books began to unnerve her she would tell them so, and then probably decide on her own to put them aside for a few years. As of yet she'd had no trouble, and was already up to "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader." It tickled her to no end that C.S. Lewis had been a professor at Oxford, just like her very own daddy, even though Connor always had the vague sense that Robin felt secretly betrayed that he wrote humor-laced mysteries and spy thrillers instead of voyages into fantastically magical lands. They'd driven past the house where Lewis and his brother had lived, and Robin always grew wide-eyed and awestruck in the presence of ground where such greatness had walked.
Maia had not spoken since they'd left the house and Connor could feel the resentment radiating off her in waves. His wife was a very even-tempered and cheerful woman, much in contrast to himself (he'd tried since college to curb his moodiness and periodic irascibility with little success), and she held a grudge when someone forced her out of her usual good temper.
"I'm sorry," he said finally, under his breath.
She fetched a deep, long-suffering sigh that would have been amusingly melodramatic under different circumstances. "You just don't think, Connie. Sometimes when you're working you don't think about anything or anyone else. I know thatŐs part of the job, but today was special. I'd think you'd want to respect that."
He nodded, honestly ashamed of himself. He hadn't intended to work at all today. Maia's parents and some of her other relatives were throwing a congratulatory party for them at the family stomping grounds in Birmingham. Connor's fifth novel, "Running with Bradshaw," had just topped the London Times' best-seller list and was poised to do the same for the New York Times' list...and his agent had been getting calls from Hollywood producers wanting to option the screen rights. He'd been a successful writer before, but this was his first trip to the really big time, and everyone was excited. Maia, his parents, his brothers, his in-laws...his agent was practically doing handsprings in the street and his editor wasn't even whingeing about the drafts he'd sent her of the new book. Connor, on the other hand, would rather not have paid it any mind.
Don't jinx it, he told himself. It'll all fall apart if it's too good. These thoughts recurred with a superstitious persistence that he couldn't shake. Privately, though he was scarcely aware of it, he'd always thought of luck as cumulative, like one's bankbook...except here, good luck put you in hock. Good fortune is never free, and the price would come due sooner or later. The deeper in the red you became, the greater the likelihood that the bill collector would come calling at your doorstep and demand payment in full. At the moment Connor felt deeply in the red indeed. The success of "Running" was yet another debit against his books, and he didn't care to tempt Fate. Why call special attention to his rise to the top of the list? Just let it pass by unremarked.
"I can be an insufferable git, Maia," he said quietly. "I don't know how you stand it."
"Don't do that. Don't try and defuse me by playing the mayrter. And you know how I stand it. I love you, Connor. Just because you can be an insufferable git doesn't change that, and it never will."
He blinked, then smiled. "Thanks."
Her angry face finally softened and she smiled back. "You're welcome. Now can we try and have a nice day please?"
"Absolutely."
"Good. Then I'll give you the drive to think about the new book. No talking." This was often a point of contention between them. Connor did his best thinking while driving, but Maia was a chatty passenger. The friction between his desire for quiet contemplation and hers for passing the time with conversation had sparked more than one wildfire. Luckily Robin shared her father's affinity for silent car trips.
"Thanks!" he said, surprised. It was quite a concession for her to make. Usually he was the one to resign himself to discussion during a car trip.
"Don't thank me, it's purely selfish. If you get in a good forty-five minutes of thinking you won't be distracted during the party."
"How well you know me."
"Ha!" She winked at him and pulled a book from the glove compartment. She settled back in her seat to read and Connor fixed his gaze on the road, his eyes and hands going on autopilot while his brain turned back to the chapter he'd left unfinished back at the house.
**********
not sure about the transitional paragraph there...how can I possibly...
"...that lorry's looking a tad unstable..."
if I move the train-station scene into the next chapter that'll throw off the entire...
"...good lord i think he's going to..."
but the inspector has to see the hideaway in the alley before he questions her...
"...connor you'd better..."
i really don't want that plot point so late in the story, maybe i should...
"Connor LOOK OUT..."
Her scream brought Connor back to the present, as well as the clutch of her fingernails through the tweed of his jacket. His heart leapt into his throat, adrenaline shooting through his veins with a near-audible sizzle of nerve endings. Up ahead a lorry had blown a tire and was spinning out of control. Cars were veering safely out of the way to the shoulder of the road...but he hadn't seen it in time to do the same. He had been in 1960's Bristol with his characters, and the side of the still-spinning lorry was looming ahead of him.
Connor reacted without thinking, whipping the wheel around and slamming on the brakes. His action was impulsive and exactly the wrong driving technique, for it sent the BMW into a spin as it hurtled towards the lorry.
He could hear Maia screaming and was vaguely aware that she was twisting around in her seat trying to protect Robin. His fingers gripped the wheel so tightly that later the police would find his prints pressed into the leather; the blood was pounding in his ears. He saw the side of the lorry ahead; it looked easily the size of the Great Wall of China. It was approaching with a stretchy taffy-pull slowness, as in a dream where you try to run but it always feels as though you're running through water and you have to grab things and pull yourself along to get away from the monster or the haunted house or whatever horror your brain had conjured up except he wasn't running away he was sliding towards the horror and his brain hadn't made it up it was real and it was coming towards the car and the world was spinning and it spun his eyes away from the truck and then he was looking across the median towards the other motorists stopped on the side of the road and Maia was screaming and screaming and he was screaming too...
The BMW slammed into the lorry still spinning, the huge grille crunching the sedan's passenger side inward like a soda can.
**********
Connor stood by himself at the funeral, his eyes riveted by the sight of those two coffins side by side...one big and one small, so small. One of them was draped in the Union Jack, two uniformed officers standing close by at attention. Maia had been a decorated commander in the British Navy but had retired from active duty when she became pregnant with Robin; her current duties were...had been, dammit...largely administrative. Her funerary requests specified a civilian service, but certain military honors were still being observed.
Not that Connor cared much. The minister's words droned on but he scarcely heard them. They were not meant for Maia and Robin, or for him for that matter. A funeral is but a courtesy for the living, but at that moment he could scarcely count himself among them.
He looked around at the sad faces...Maia's family and friends, mostly. His own parents were dead and what was left of his family was scattered and distant. The only mourners here on his behalf were his sister Judith, to whom he hadn't spoken in over a year, and his best friend Gerald, standing quietly behind him like a golem.
He was grateful for Gerald's presence. Gerald wasn't an academic, or a writer, or an intellectual of any kind. He wasn't refined or dignified or well-bred or any of the other thousand things by which Connor was daily surrounded and often, he felt, stifled. He was a tall slab of an airplane mechanic that Connor had met at a college reunion, the husband of one of his classmates. The two had met over the punchbowl and struck up a conversation involving the dearth of individuals present who might dare to spike said punch and had been fast friends ever since. Gerald was the kindest, most intelligent man Connor knew, and he loved him in that heartfelt way that straight men reserve for those of their own sex who remind them of what they themselves wish they could be.
But at this moment, not even Gerald's reassuring presence made much of a difference. He was numb. There was no other way to describe it. He felt like one-third of a person...no, less. Surely no vestiges of humanity still lived within his skin. He had lost the two women who had made him a whole man, and he had killed them just as surely as if he had shot each of them through the heart. He hadn't been paying proper care and now they were dead, it was incontrovertible. This was scarcely a minority opinion. His wife's relatives looked at him as if they'd like to chop him into little pieces and eat him. Her father had all but told him he had no right to even be here when his carelessness has murdered Maia and Robin.
He closed his eyes, but it provided no escape. Every time the darkness inside his head descended he saw it all again. Those moments replayed themselves over and over in his mind with relentless ferocity and a kind of total recall he could almost believe was the result of some kind of curse or unnatural feedback loop in his brain.
...He opened his eyes, the side of his head throbbing. He touched the lump rising there and his fingers came away bloody. He shook himself all over...everything seemed to be working, but his right side was covered in blood; he saw with horror that it wasn't his. He turned wide, staring eyes towards the back seat and the abyss yawned out beneath him as he saw the crushed body of his daughter sitting upright in the seat, still securely belted in place. A low keening sound escaped his throat and he turned his eyes towards his wife. She was bleeding from numerous wounds, half-pinned beneath the grille of the truck where it protruded through the car door, but her eyes were open and seeing. Heedless of the pounding in his head he scrambled out of his seatbelt and leaned over her. "Maia," he whispered. "Be still..help is coming..." Blood bubbled from her lips as she tried to speak. "Shh, quiet now. You'll be okay," he said, managing to sound calm.
"Robin..." she rasped.
Connor swallowed hard and pushed the image of his daughter away. It was too late for Robin and soon enough he would have to find a way to deal with it, but right now he had to try to help his wife if he could. "She's okay, just try and stay still."
He looked in her eyes and saw that he wasn't fooling her. "We'll...be waiting..." she breathed, then slumped over, her eyes glazing over...and the abyss swallowed him.
**********
Gerald drove him home after the service, walked him into the house, removed and hung up his overcoat and sat him down in a chair. Connor went along with his friend's guidance, offering neither resistance nor assistance. Gerald sat down in the facing chair and stared at his friend's lifeless face, wondering what he should do. He wanted to help him, but he was well aware that no help would be adequate. He wanted to reassure him, but it would only make him mad. So he just sat silently, not speaking. Connor didn't move.
They sat like that, still as statues, for a good half hour. Finally Connor stirred in his chair. "Thank you," he whispered.
"What for?"
"For not saying anything."
Gerald just nodded. They lapsed back into silence, Connor marginally comforted by his friend's mere presence, and sat there as the light outside the window faded and fled the earth.
**********
September, 1997
Gerald ran down the hospital corridor towards the critical ward, anxiety blooming in his vision like fireworks. He saw Dr. Parsons, the head of Connor's department, standing at the end of the hallway. Parsons recognized Gerald and came towards him.
"How is he?" Gerald asked, out of breath.
"He'll live," Parsons said coldly. Gerald fought off an impulse to throttle the man. He'd never had much sympathy for Connor's situation, dismissing his loss as something a real man should have been able to get over within a week. Gerald wondered if the sanctimonious prick had ever in his life loved anyone or anything...if he had, surely he would have been more sympathetic. As it was he viewed Connor's continued depression as merely a smear on the good name of his department, an embarrassing scandal to be hushed up as if a man's life weren't at stake. "This is the third attempt, Mr. McGurk. Dr. Overstreet's...difficulties...are becoming a serious matter for the University."
Gerald's ruddy face went purple. "For the University? Did I hear you right, you stone-balled bastard?" Parsons frowned slightly at the language. "That poor tortured man has attempted suicide three times in as many months and it's a serious matter for the bloody University?"
"Oh please, don't be overly melodramatic. You know that we have done everything we could to help him through his loss."
"Oh yeah, you're a regular Mother Teresa, you are. You sent him to a bloody quack headshrinker who told him just to get over it and stop his blubbering and then you tossed him right back to the wolves without so much as a by-your-leave! Is it any wonder he thinks he doesn't deserve to live?"
Parsons sobered, and a look of what might have been regret came over his face. "Perhaps you're right, sir. Perhaps we have failed in our empathy. If I have inadvertently contributed to his state then I am sorry for it...but the fact remains that his condition doesn't seem to be improving." He looked around as if hoping for an angel of mercy to drop in and take over this conversation for him. "If he wishes to take a leave of absence to recover himself then I have no objections." He said this as if bestowing a great favor.
"Oh, that's bloody marvelous. His teaching is the only thing keeping him going, and it's a pretty piss-poor substitute for Maia and Robin. Now you want to chuck him out of that, too?"
"Honestly, Mr. McGurk, I have no idea what to say to him that will not invoke your ire further."
Gerald leaned closer. "How about 'I'm sorry for your loss, Connor'? Or perhaps 'We're all praying for you?' A little sympathy? It's not so hard...you ought to try it sometime." He stalked away towards Connor's room leaving Parsons standing in the hallway.
He wasn't blind, he knew that part...or even most...of his anger towards Parsons and the rest of the faculty stemmed from his own inability to help his friend out of the quagmire of depression that seemed to have swallowed him whole. Nothing he tried helped. Connor just drifted further and further away from the land of the living...and then, a month after the funeral, he had made his first attempt on his own life. Gerald had come in with a six-pack and a few videos to find him in the bathtub with his wrists cut, lying half-conscious in sickeningly pink bathwater. Connor had recovered, but if Gerald had been much later...he didn't like to think about it. Three weeks later he'd taken pills and been found unconscious by his housekeeper. These attempts had been what Connor's therapist called "half-hearted." Traditionally, men who resolve to commit suicide do it in the most final and decisive ways possible...they shoot themselves in the head, they hang themselves.
Gerald stood at the foot of Connor's bed for a moment, looking down at his pale, wan face. This time he'd nearly drowned. He'd gone swimming and the undertow had gotten him. This incident might not have been categorized as a suicide attempt save for the fact that Connor had gone swimming in the middle of the night fully clothed. His eyes opened and he saw Gerald...then they cut away, embarrassed. Gerald cleared his throat and spoke.
"I don't know what to say anymore, Connie," Gerald said, some of his anger at Parsons slipping easily into anger towards Connor. "I don't know what to do to help you that I haven't already done." He thumped heavily into a chair with a sigh. "What's with you? If you're gonna do it, then bloody do it already. Blow your brains out. Drive your car over a cliff. Just don't keep putting us all through this over and over again."
"Us? You're the only one who seems to care."
"All right then, don't keep putting me through this, you happy? I mean really, when does it stop? How much until it's enough?"
"Until I'm with them again," Connor said. His tone was flat, the words were rote.
"Oh, sod it. If you really wanted that you'd already be there."
A single sob tore from Connor's throat. "You're right," he breathed. He met Gerald's eyes again. "Gerald...all I want in the world is to be with my family again. It's my fault they're dead...no, don't deny it. It doesn't matter. If I were any sort of a man I would blow my brains out." He turned his face towards the rainy window with a sigh. "But I haven't the nerve. Poetic justice, I guess." Gerald didn't say anything. The silence stretched and stretched until Connor spoke again. "I have to get away."
"Marvelous!" Gerald said, excited. He'd been urging him to take a vacation for some time. "Go to Scotland, or Australia..."
"No, I mean away for good. I can't stay here, live here as if there's some reason to do so. If I haven't the guts to do what I should then I've got to find a place where I can live without wishing for it every second of every day. Someplace strange, someplace new...someplace with no memory."
**********
November, 1997
"Well, Dr. Overstreet. Your curriculum vitae is impressive."
"Thank you."
"A bit too impressive, if you catch my meaning." Professor Davies folded her hands on the blotter. "If you'll pardon my speaking plainly, we're not used to getting applicants of your caliber here in...Ohio. You're a bestselling author and the holder of not one but two PhDs in literature and writing. Eton, Cambridge, Oxford...quite the pedigree."
"Hmm. I'm not sure whether to be flattered or insulted."
Davies chuckled. "No insult is intended, I assure you. We've discussed the applicants amongst the committee and we all feel that we'd be thrilled to have you on the faculty, even if we don't really understand why you've chosen Ohio State when you could probably find employment at any university in the country."
"I have my reasons, Professor Davies."
"Of course you have. It's none of my business, of course." She stood up and extended a hand over the desk. "Welcome to the faculty, Dr. Overstreet."
He shook her hand. "Thank you. And please, call me Connor."
**********
April, 1999
"So this is Ohio, eh? Bloody flat."
"I can't argue with that. It is lovely for bicycling, though." Connor and Gerald were walking on campus towards Mirror Lake, a small reflecting pool nestled in an out-of-the way corner of campus. It was one of Connor's favorite spots, picturesque and tranquil...if one picked the right time of day to visit, when the place wasn't overrun with sketching art students, joggers and dog walkers.
Gerald had arrived in Columbus the day before for a visit, and so far he felt as though both of them had been reading from script pages. How are you? Fine, thanks. Enjoying the new job? It's lovely...how are things back in England? Oh, as usual...bloody cold and foggy. He was still waiting for his friend to show up...or perhaps he was waiting for himself to show up.
At last he got tired of waiting. He motioned to a nearby bench and they sat, contemplating the fountains that sprayed water into the air to fall in a shower back into the reflecting pool. "All right, old boy. We've talked about everything else. How are you, really? And don't bloody bullshit me, you hear?"
Connor nodded. "I'm not going to sit here and tell you I'm all right, Gerald. I could say I'm fine, marvelous, the change of scenery has magically cured all that ails me."
"You're not dead, that's a start."
He snorted. "I guess." He cast Gerald a sidelong glance. "I still wish for it, though. Every day I wake up and I lie in bed and I think about it. I think about just...the nothing. Sometimes that's the most enticing thought of all. The nothing. And then even just the possibility, no matter how remote or unlikely, that I might wake up and find Maia and Robin there...well, at times I have to slap myself in the face to keep from just lying there and willing my heart to stop beating."
Gerald sighed. "Do you have any clue how bloody crazy that sounds?"
"I know. I know I sound like I'm ready for the nuthatch. But it's...better here. There are days that I don't think about it. I get up in the morning, I go to work, I try to teach my students as best I can." He smiled vaguely. "The best times are when I read their assignments and their exams. I live for those times...sometimes I worry that I'm overburdening my students just so I'll have more of their work to read. It's their youth and their endless wellspring of creativity...and how they pour it out of themselves onto the paper with no reservations, no fear, no boundaries. Just hope that they'll be able to make me see what they're seeing, that I'll feel what they feel. Sometimes I do...and when I do, they get an A."
"What about you? Are you writing?"
"God, no. I can't touch it. I'm afraid of what'll come out." He looked at his friend. "I can see your worry, Gerald, and I appreciate it...and you might be right to worry." He stood up and shuffled his feet, his hands shoved deeply into his pockets and his shoulders hunched up in his peacoat. "Here's the facts." He met Gerald's eyes squarely. "I will never recover from Maia and Robin's death, never. I've accepted it. I hope for death every day; this life has nothing to hold me. No joy, no fear, no hope or future. I know I sound like a bloody Friday night serial, but I'm only standing here because I'm a selfish cowardly git and I can't seem to give up the taste of a good ale or stand to miss the next season of 'ER.'"
Gerald sighed. "I'm sorry, Connor."
"What for?"
"I'm sorry I can't give you what you want most." He fell silent, then chuckled, then laughed, then began to bray loud hysterical laughter. Connor smiled bemusedly.
"May I ask why you find my plight to amusing?"
"I'm sorry," Gerald gasped. "I know it's morbid, but..." He gulped air and tried to regain control. "I just have this weird image of you becoming some sort of twisted anti-hypochondriac, going to the doctor every week and asking hopefully 'Do I have cancer? I think this mole is getting bigger!'"
Connor's smile widened and he snorted brief laughter. "'How do I go about catching smallpox?'"
"'If I eat a lot of rotten food can I give myself appendicitis?'" Gerald spluttered. He sobered, catching his breath. "Oh well. Not too practical. But cheer up, old boy...you could be hit by a bus tomorrow."
Connor turned away, looking up towards the rising moon. "I only wish, Gerry. I wish someone would come along and take it out of my hands." The moon only stared back as if to day Sorry, Connor...no asteroids or nuclear strikes or tragic housefires.
Not today.