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It's so good to learn that right outside your window
There's only friendly fields and open roads
And you'll sleep better when you think you've stepped back from the brink
And found some peace inside yourself; lay down your heavy load
It gets alright
to dream at night
Believe in solid skies and slate blue earth below
But when you see him, you'll know
--The Mountain Goats, "Never Quite Free"
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Alana brings the dogs the next day, along with orange pill pot of Vicodin. "I'm not sure I should let you have this," she says.
Will grunts. It hurts to get out of bed, it hurts to stand, and it even hurts lying down, but he's not sure he'll take them. He's not sure he wants anything to stop hurting just yet.
Alana also jumps his car. Will is astonished by how good it feels to be back behind the wheel, headlights glaring against the snow.
"Thanks," Will tells her. "For everything."
"You know." Alana leans against the side of Will's car. "I'm afraid Applesauce is going to be lonely."
Will cranes his head out of the window.
"She's used to having all these other dogs around now, and I haven't been home much," Alana said. "And I don't think that's going to get much better. There are some changes coming up. In my life."
"I think Jack might need a dog," says Will.
"Just think about it," says Alana. "Let me know."
She chunks through the snow back to her car, leaning on her cane.
Will needs to drive the car, so that the battery can properly recharge, and so he goes to the supermarket. He wanders through the produce section and past the meat counter and the dairy case. It isn't until he's in the coffee aisle that he looks down in his basket and realizes that he's filled it with butter, onions, garlic, carrots, celery, heavy cream, a carton of eggs, and a beef tenderloin. He stares in his basket for far too long and, with great care and purpose, drops a canister of Folgers instant coffee crystals in on top.
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That weekend, Will opens his closet and rummages through the hangers. He drops the Versace shirts on the floor, followed by the Dolce & Gabbana suits. He takes a certain vicious delight in picking them up in violent fistfuls and shoving them into black garbage bags without care for wrinkles. He dredges up his canvas shirts and corduroys from their temporary graves in the back of the closet and under the bed, and folds them and places them in their rightful places in the dresser drawers.
This activity takes most of the morning. Will pauses for lunch and makes himself a grilled cheese sandwich, standing over the stove with spatula in hand and flipping it when the bread is an even golden brown. He eats it over the sink, and crumbs drop from his lips to scatter over the stainless steel. He leaves them there.
His breath frosts in the air as he wrestles two black garbage bags into the back of the Volvo. The dogs whine. "I'll be back soon," he tells them. His ears are cold, but he's not sure where his hat is. The one that's not in one of those garbage bags. He gets in the car and drives to the nearest Goodwill according to his GPS.
The employees don't look up and don't ask any questions as Will unloads the bags into the donations bin. Since he's there, he figures he'll take a look at the merchandise. He flips through a few racks without seeing anything much of interest: a lot of shirts like the kind he owns already; trousers with worn seams that aren't even worth trying on; accessories that he doesn't need. And then, in the menswear: a Burberry coat.
Will bites his lip as he fingers the lapel. The handwritten tag hanging from the sleeve reads $25. He slips it from the hanger and shrugs it on. It doesn't quite fit like a glove, but close enough. He could get it tailored. It's warm, well made, with hardly any wear. He looks at himself in the mirror and looks away again.
"Looks good on you," one of the employees remarks.
He buys it.
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Will chooses a bouquet of lilacs and roses based on their fragrance and drives into the cemetery with them wrapped in cellophane on the passengers seat beside him. He goes slowly, ticking off the plot numbers as he passes. Once, he makes a wrong turn and has to reverse back to the fork to take the other path.
When he arrives, at last, at plot number 73, he encounters a young woman, cradling a wrapped bundle of flowers while trying to wrestle out the old bundle from the flower holder. Will kneels and holds the plastic cylinder down so that she can fish out the old flowers, lay them aside, and plunge the fresh bouquet into the water.
"Thanks," she says. She has dark hair and wind-chafed skin. Will swallows.
"Did you know her?" Will asks.
The girl shakes her head. She's dressed casually, in windbreaker and Converse tennis shoes and blue jeans. She's probably still in high school. "I work at the florist," she explains. "Someone called in a while ago, I guess, and put down a bunch of money, and said that we were going to deliver flowers to this grave every week until the money ran out. People do that sometimes," she adds. "Like if they live out of state or something and can't come themselves."
Will has stopped breathing. He puts his own bouquet down on the green turf, swallows, and wipes his hands against his thighs. "Do you remember his name?"
"I hadn't even started working there yet. But Tina, she's the owner, she said he left, like, thousands of dollars. Like, flowers for the next 20 years, if we're even still around."
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The barn is still littered with greasy sail cloth, discarded boat motor parts, scraps of rope. Will rents a dumpster to put it all in. And now that there's a dumpster here, he hauls out more: disused fishing equipment; grimy tools; ancient car tires that aren't even for a Volvo. His muscles stretch and bulge under his skin as he lifts and heaves, and a box of Christmas decorations follows a rusty bicycle and lands with a rattling thump.
The dumpster is three-quarters full when Will takes a break to mop the sweat from his face and neck. Dust and grime sticks his hands and arms. Steam rises from his skin as he stands outside and pulls the tab on a can of beer. He can't remember the last time he felt a good, honest weariness in his bones, the muscles of his back and shoulders stretched and loose. He sips his beer and surveys the remains of the one-time barn, now a garage. There's actually room for his car in here now. Hell, there's probably room for two cars.
Then there's the matter of the ice chest.
Too long in the freezer to be good to eat, says a voice in his head. Will closes his eyes and takes a long pull from his can. You should have done it while the meat was still fresh.
Will drags a stack of old newspapers out of the back of the barn and cuts the twine. He stacks around it all the wood that's sat for too long, some of it half-rotted and some of it too dry and brittle. He lights one match, and then another. The wood burns too fast and smokes badly, but Will doesn't care. He stands upwind and feeds the pieces of Randall Tier's remains into the flames, one by one, until it's gone.
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Wolf Trap is home to a run-down independent movie theater that shows indie films, second run movies, classic films: anything but whatever big blockbuster everyone actually wants to see. Will likes it because the tickets are cheap.
Will likes the movies. There's no intermission during which Will needs to mingle; no awkward cocktail hour before or after. He only needs to buy his ticket, go in, and select his seat, and then he can sit in the dark for two hours and not converse with his neighbor. It's a bonus if he likes the movie.
It's Sci-Fi Saturday, and the theater is showing The Fifth Element. Will remembers liking it, though he saw it a long time ago, maybe on television or maybe at a friend's house. Bruce Willis, aliens, space explosions: what's not to like? He skips the concessions stand in favor of finding a good seat in the very back row.
He thinks nothing of it when the movie mentions opera singer. He becomes a little tense, maybe, when Bruce Willis puts on a tuxedo and enters the opera house. Then the alien woman begins singing, eyes closed, mouth open to reveal a pink and hollow gleam, and Will's fingers dig into his armrests. His teeth grind against each other until his jaw hurts.
One minute, two minutes more, and Will stands and fumbles his way out of the row. There's no one else in the back, so at least he doesn't have to mumble apologies. He blinks and squints in the too-bright lights of the lobby and ducks into the bathroom. No one is there to question why he's splashing water on his face. He stays bent over the sink for long moments, his hands braced on the edge of the counter, and finally just leaves the theater.
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Will walks through his memory palace, closing doors.
The door to Hannibal's office closes easily, cutting off the sight of raining papers, the flickering fireplace, Hannibal seated at his desk sketching Greek tragedies. So does the door to the Norman Chapel, where Hannibal's broken heart drips on the antique floor.
Here is where Abigail died the first time; here is where she died the second. Will closes the door to Hannibal's home in Baltimore, now filled with nothing but queer echoes. He closes the door to the crumbling Lecter Castle. A small, winking firefly follows him down the hall and fades as Will closes the door to the offices of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. He has to put his shoulder to the door to make sure it latches.
At last, he is left with his home in Wolf Trap: dog beds in the living room, fly fishing equipment in the corner, dresser drawers against the wall. Out the back door is the river. Out the front door is the field where he can look back and see the lights of his home. Will stands in the middle of the living room and feels the walls press in on him. There is the chair where Mason Verger sat and fed the dogs his face; there is where Hannibal stood while they discussed Mason's fate.
Will walks out the back door and lets it bang shut behind him.
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A woman comes to see the house. "I like it," she says. "It's far away from the neighbors."
"Yeah," he says. "That's why I liked it, too."
"Why're you selling?" she says. And then, "Oh, you have dogs! Oh, you have a lot of dogs."
Will whistles at the dogs, but the woman says, "Oh, don't worry, I love dogs!"
He tells her all their names, and she calls each one by name and scratches their backs and behind their ears. Winston rolls over for a belly rub, and the woman gets down on her knees to really give it to him. Will feels his face crack.
"Bad memories," he says at last.
"What?" She looks up at him. Her blonde hair falls over her shoulder.
"That's why I'm selling," he says. "Bad memories. Sorry, what was your name again?"
"Molly." She stands up. She doesn't even seem annoyed that she's had to tell Will her name twice. "Molly Foster."
---end---