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“Did he ever—I mean, did he ever tell you how it happened down there?” Stan twists his coffee cup back and forth between his hands. The porcelain is old, printed florals faded. The trailer’s been quiet for a while. You can tell it in the air; it lays still and heavy with no voice to move it. Stan’s not quite sure if he’s supposed to be asking, but he figures any words are worth something by now.
Linda smiles wryly. “Not a word.”
That ain’t right. It’s not surprising but it don’t feel right. A girl’s got a right to know something like that, Stan figures, or else what’s the point of being a girl? “Not even about Nick? Not a word about Nick? Because, you know, he wouldn’t even tell the guys how—”
“Especially not about Nick,” says Linda, quiet. Linda’s a very quiet person. Stan never knows quite what to do with that. “Especially not about how.”
Stan is surprised by how bad that pisses him off. “But that ain’t right!”
“It ain’t right?” Linda looks up from her own cracked cup of coffee. Her eyes are clear and pale.
“I mean, I just mean—” Stan searches every corner of his mind for an explanation. “If it were me, I mean, if it were my husband, I think I’d want to know what had happened. How he’d died, y’know. If my husband were dead.”
“We never did get married, Stanley,” says Linda. She is silent for a beat. She takes a sip of coffee. “And I think it’s private, somehow.” She says it as if it makes any sense at all.
“Private? Private? Weren’t you in love with that man? Don’t that mean something? How private could it possibly be? If anyone ought to know—I mean, if anyone ought—I mean, ‘private’! I mean—”
Stan stops in his tracks.
Linda’s started giggling, a weak, watery noise, almost like hiccups. It’s pulled Stanley from his train of thought. It makes him realize he sounds silly, getting so upset for someone else’s sake.
“Well, I suppose it’s alright if you really don’t mind it, Linda,” Stan says, trying to backtrack, “but c’mon. ‘Private’? I love Mike, I do, but that’s some bullshit.”
“Oh, Stanley, it is sweet of you,” says Linda, “but I really don’t mind. You know what he can be like.”
Unbidden, Stan feels the phantom cold of a muzzle pressing into his forehead, dead center. Five fingers, and the palm too, scorch into the flesh of his neck.
“Yeah,” says Stan and he’s laughing like Linda now; faint. “Yeah, I suppose I do.”
Mike doesn’t let anybody see the body. Stan thinks this is stupid. The casket’s too heavy to be empty, but that won’t stop the rumor mill.
Though then again, rumors never seem to stick to Mike the way they ought to. If Stan did half the shit Mike and Nick used to get away with, he’d have been called a fag and laughed out of town a long time ago. Stan used to resent them for that, but today, he hopes the trick turns one last time and leaves Mike alone.
Stan’s a pallbearer. On a sunny Sunday morning, he discovers that when a body is being carried on six uneven shoulders, in a wooden box, there’s only one thing for it; it rolls.
The first time Stan had shown up on Linda’s doorstep, he had been expected. It was the right thing to do, after all; come by and offer condolences. Stan had even remembered to bring food, like his mom used to tell him.
“When someone loses someone,” she’d said while she packed sandwiches and strawberries into a basket, wading through the yellow light of their old kitchen. Father Sorokin had died earlier that week. Stan was just barely old enough for the thought to scare him, even though he’d never liked the old man all that much.
“Y’know, when they’re left behind,” his mom continued, “here’s what you do. You bring ‘em something to eat. Something simple, something that’ll keep. Pasta, pot pie, soup. Anything. But in times like that, the last thing a person thinks of is eating, and more often than not it’s the first thing they ought to do.”
His mom had enlisted Stan to walk with her to Father Sorokin’s widow’s door. He rang the doorbell for her. Her hands were full.
Stan wonders if she had any idea he’d be using her advice so soon, and over a guy his own age.
That first time, Linda expects Stan. She takes the dish of lasagna gracefully, though Stan’s definitely singed it a little bit despite his best efforts. She invites him in for coffee.
Linda tells Stan she really don’t mind it and well—he supposes he believes her, but that don’t mean there’s nothing worth minding.
The second time Linda opens the weathered, wooden door to find Stan on her doorstep, she looks at him like she’s seeing a ghost.
They’re sitting at the kitchen table. It’s an old piece of shit, three uneven legs barely supporting a lopsided top. It always looks minutes away from collapsing, only Stan knows for a fact it’s looked that way for five years at least. There’s crude sketches of leaves and flowers scratched into the surface—it looks like they were etched in with a key.
It’s two weeks since Stan was here last—another Saturday afternoon. He’s gotten the same coffee cup—he knows, because it’s got the same hair-thin crack, running right through one of the washed-out sunflowers.
“So, what can I do for you?” asks Linda, smiling politely.
Stan startles from his thoughts. “Huh?”
“I mean, why did you come over?” Linda gasps a little, like she just realized something. “Oh! Mike’s not home right now. He’s—well, he’s out somewhere.”
Stan knows that. The Cadillac’s not in the driveway. He had checked. “Oh no, I know he ain’t. I just—I, uh.” Stan realizes he’s fidgeting with the damn coffee cup again. “I guess I wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh,” says Linda. She blinks. “Well, alright. What did you wanna talk about?”
“Just—well, y’know, just.” Stan had not thought this far ahead. He hadn’t thought much at all, frankly. He’d been coming down the road and he’d seen Mike’s car missing—he’s always looking for it, ever since Mike left the first time. He’d seen it missing and he’d remembered Linda’s figure lingering by the grave, just last week. She’d stood there all alone against an awful blue sky. “I wanna—we can talk about. Just—I don’t know—whatever.”
“Whatever?” Linda doesn’t sound judgmental, exactly, but she sure sounds confused.
“Just—whatever you want, we can talk about. Or—you know sometimes people rather don’t talk, so we can not talk together too, but—” Stan notices Linda looking at him very steadily and smiling very serenely. “Oh, hell, Linda, I don’t know what I’m saying. I saw Mike’s car was gone and I thought you must’ve been awful lonely lately and I figured I’d stop by and that’s it.”
“That’s nice,” says Linda and then again, with a reanimated smile and far more conviction, “That’s nice of you, Stanley. Why would I be lonely?”
Stan very nearly spills half his coffee down the front of his shirt. “Why would you—because of Nick. Because of Nick, Linda. Because he’s—well, you know what Nick is.”
Linda looks down at her cup and then up again and down and then up, faster this time. She’s squinting. “Nick was gone before. You weren’t here before.”
“We thought he was coming back,” says Stan. “We all thought he’d come back to you.”
For a second, there is something sharp in Linda’s expression—an eyebrow creeping up in doubt. It passes. “Well, you’re a real sweetheart, Stanley, but I’ve got Mike now, so you don’t need to worry. We’re getting each other through this.”
Now it’s Stan’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Oh, c’mon, Linda! No way is Mike any help to anyone right now. He’s barely good company when he’s happy. He’s barely nice when he’s drunk. What the hell is Mike gonna help you with? Now, you don’t need to talk to me, but you need to talk to someone who ain’t Mike or you’re going to lose your whole damn mind. Mike ain’t no help to no-one, c’mon now.”
Linda’s giggling a little, like the last time Stan started ranting. Stan’s less inclined to stop this time around. It’s good for Linda to laugh, he figures, and besides, he’s pretty sure he’s right.
“But I like Mike’s company, Stanley,” says Linda. She gestures towards Stan with her cup. “You like Mike’s company.”
“Now, no offense, Linda,” says Stan, “because you always seemed like a smart girl to me. But are we really that glowing of a recommendation?”
Linda laughs again, but Stan thinks she takes his point.
Work’s awful as it’s ever been—it’s hard and it’s exhausting and the way the smell and the soot stick to Stan’s skin still makes him feel sick.
Stan and Axel did it alone for a few years. The job hardly lends itself to talking, but they stand close together now and they move in sync. It’s nice, in its way.
These days, Axel has taken it upon himself to stand between Stan and Mike—in the most literal sense. His figure, taller than the both of them, always ends up blocking Stan’s view. Axel places himself in the spaces between his friends with such nonchalant ease Stan could almost believe it wasn’t on purpose.
Stan’s pretty sure Mike’s never even noticed it in the first place—and how could he? It’s not like his mind’s around.
Stan knows why Axel feels he has to keep him and Mike apart—appreciates it, even. When he looks up and sees Axel solid beside him, it settles the rolling of his stomach and the running of his breath. Probably, Axel wouldn’t actually win the fight, but he sure looks like he could. And anyway, Mike wouldn’t actually start one. Probably.
So, Stan’s glad for Axel’s presence and he understands it, which is why he never asks Axel to move. But, sometimes, Stan catches a glimpse of Mike, furnace fire caught in his hair and under his eyes, skin covered in sweat and light and Stan’s fear’ll pitch downwards and left, slide right into something else. For those fractured seconds, before the fire sputters back down, or Axel moves into his eye line, or Stan’s brain catches up to the rest of him, Stan would wish Axel away in a heartbeat.
The next time Stan’s at her door, Linda doesn’t seem quite so shocked. Mike’s car is missing from its perch between the ramshackle porch and the truck Nick never drove again.
It forms a habit. Every Saturday afternoon, Stan and Linda sit in the kitchen at a small table under a smaller window and talk. Sometimes the topic is nothing at all, the weather or Linda’s job—like his mother and her friends before them, Stan and Linda discuss every sale and price hike that comes through that place as if it’s their own personal Wall Street.
Sometimes, they gossip about their neighbors. Slowly but surely, Stan learns Linda has a mean streak. He remembers, actually—she was always tripping people and kicking at their stomachs, before she got old enough for people to tell her ladies weren’t supposed to trip or kick anyone. Linda may not fight anymore, but when she catches wind of a scandal or an affair, she still goes for the guts.
Mike’s never around. He’s got some sort of standing appointment on Saturdays. Who knows.
Sometimes, Stan and Linda barely talk at all. The trailer can be a mausoleum. Sometimes, Stan will pick up a cup only to notice the cheery pinecones cheaply printed all over it or Linda will pick up an old magazine just to find a sharpie drawing of a shrike covering the back page. On those days, they sit in silence. It’s too much to say at all, or maybe Stan just doesn’t know how. But they sit together.
The week of first snow, Linda shows Stan how to make lasagna without burning it. The week after, Stan actually manages to goad Linda into a snowball fight. The week after that, they build a snowman behind the trailer and give him a fur hat that someone’s tied a bike reflector to. Stan’d never admit it, but a tear or two damn near freeze to his cheeks that day.
The four of them still end up at the cabin a few times a month, though none of them seem to like hunting much anymore. John brings beer—more than is probably wise, but far less than he used to, even accounting for the missing men. They all pretend not to notice this.
Mike drives. Through some unspoken agreement, the passenger seat is left empty, John and Axel and Stan piling in the back together. It is as much respect as it is fear—for Stan it is, at least.
Stan never forgets his boots or his jacket anymore, and always his knife. This is just habit. Without Mike’s over-preparedness to leach off of, Stan had started packing better within weeks. Ain’t that funny? Mike spends all that time nagging and grumbling and the thing that does the trick is him leaving. Stan was gonna tell Mike like a joke when he got back. He hasn’t yet.
Up in the mountains, silence swallows them. Axel takes half-hearted shots and sometimes John joins in. The bullets fly screaming through the quiet, but they never hit anything. They walk through their mornings and drink through their evenings. The deer don’t have nothing to fear from them.
Linda and Stan figure out, eventually, that Mike’s visiting the grave, Saturdays. Linda hears from someone at the store, apparently. Stan’s pretty sure she’s got some kind of network.
Mike stays out, Saturdays, for hours on end. Linda’s source says he don’t say a word to the headstone. Best not to dwell on it.
“The way you look at him—” starts Linda before Stan’s even gotten the chance to take his coat off.
“I don’t look at him,” says Stan, struggling to extract an arm from its sleeve.
“—like it breaks your heart.” Linda is standing in the middle of the trailer’s living room. She had been moving towards the kitchen corner with the rickety table before stopping in her tracks.
Sometimes, up in the mountains, deer would get caught in the Vronsky car’s headlights. They’d freeze just like the saying says; head up, eyes huge, staring straight ahead. It’s a fear response.
It used to freak Stan the fuck out, the way the deer would just stand there, waiting. He used to think that maybe, just maybe, the thing daring a car to hit it wasn’t stupid by nature; maybe it just knew something about cars that you didn’t.
Linda looks a little like that, right now.
“I don’t look at him,” says Stan again.
“How do you do that?” asks Linda.
Stan’s gotten the coat off by now, but he hasn’t put it down anywhere. He’s keeping the way out clear. His knees itch like they want him to run. “Do what now?”
“The look,” says Linda, “like your heart’s breaking. I think my heart’s broken, but I don’t look like that.”
For a beat, Stan doesn’t think anything at all. “Linda,” he says, a strange affection swelling up in his chest, “I really think there’s something sort of wrong with you.” And like the idiot he is, he hangs his coat over the never-used chair that was once Nick’s, makes the short journey over to the kitchen table and sits down.
After a second, Stan says, “Hey, Linda, you know he tried to shoot me?” like he hasn’t done all he can to keep that secret. “No! He really did shoot me; it just turned out a blank. Did you know that?”
“No, that’s not how,” says Linda. She’s turned to face Stan, but moved no more than that. “Ever since you were children.”
“Linda, for Christ’s sake, I’m not looking at him any kind of way. C’mon, I’m trying to tell you this story. Don’t you wanna know—”
“That’s just what he’s like.” Linda interrupts him. She looks at Stan like he’s a little kid and she’s the one that got stuck telling him Santa isn’t real. “Stan, you know that’s what he’s like.”
“What he’s—well—” Stan can’t really argue with that, but it’s not the point of his story. Or maybe it is, maybe Mike’s just another guy with a gun like Linda is another wife with no way out and maybe all Stan’s ever going to end up being is another faggot found dead in a ditch because he can’t keep his eyes to himself.
But Stan don’t like those points and it’s his story anyway—he figures he can tell it any way he damn well wants. He waves Linda over, gestures towards the other chair. It’s the most solid piece of furniture in the kitchen, which isn’t saying much. Yellow paint peels off it grotesquely. It don’t look right at all when it’s empty.
“Linda,” says Stan. “Would you just sit down? I’ll tell you this story and we won’t have to talk about Mike for all of five minutes.”
Linda looks at him, considering. Her cheeks are a little pink, like she’s embarrassed somehow. Her lips are still twisted into that pained look. She lifts her hands, fixes her hair, dusts of her dress. She sits down in the awful, yellow chair, and her spine’s straight as an arrow. “I thought the story was about Mike?”
Somethings swoops up in Stans stomach the moment Linda sits down. It’s like a weight lifts from his shoulders—his knees settle and stop thinking of running. “No, it’s not, c’mon” says Stan, grinning reflexively—somehow, all of a sudden, he’s so relieved he could puke. “The story’s not about Mike. Weren’t you listening? The story’s about me.”
Mike nearly kisses Stan at the bowling alley. Not even at the bowling alley proper. In the bathroom—the distinctive smell of goddamn bowling alley bathroom is so pervasive it nearly disguises the cheap beer on Mike’s breath. Stan’s no romantic, but he’s a little bit pissed about it.
Mike’s drunk, of course. He’d stumbled his ass over to the bathroom and then he’d stayed there for twenty whole minutes and then, Stan had stood up to check on him. The ghost of that gun be damned, Stan had thought, he’s not the kind of guy to let someone fall asleep at a urinal or choke on his own vomit.
Mike, it turns out, is not asleep or choking or even using the bathroom for its intended purpose. He’s standing in a corner. The dirty mirror reflects his face, but the far side of it is no more open than the close. There is red high on his cheeks but no smile or tears to stain them. He looks otherworldly.
He looks stupid. And drunk.
“Hey, Mike,” says Stan. “You doing okay there, buddy?”
Mike’s eyes move to Stan’s face with startled speed, though the rest of him stays still. He has piercing eyes, but he’s had them all his life. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m checking up on you,” says Stan, sticking close to the wall, “since you been in here half an hour at least. Thought you might’ve fallen in and drowned or something. I wouldn’t let a friend drown, you know.”
Mike nods sagely. “You’re a good man, Stan.” He must be drunker than Stan thought.
Stan’s got no idea what to say to that. He’s got no idea what’s going on with Mike. Mike’s still lurking by the mirror, his stillness doubled under a suspicious sort of stain. “Look, if you’re finished, do you wanna come on out? Axel’s been playing for you. He’s going to ruin your reputation.”
Mike blinks. “Axel’s a better bowler than me.”
“That’s what I meant, dumbass.” Even Stan’s not tactless enough to point out Mike has the dubious honor of being the worst bowler present. The man who used to hold the title with smiling grace can’t be far from Mike’s mind, but it’d take an even worse fool than Stan to invite him further in.
Mike’s fallen silent again. The bathroom’s small, tiled wall patterns repeating endlessly over the same square inch of space. The fluorescent lights flicker from time to time, out of sync with the music that bleeds in past the cherry red door. Every time the room goes dark, Stan swears he sees tears welling up in Mike’s eyes.
Stan figures he could dry them off. He figures there’s not much he could do, except that he could step closer and make it all alright—isn’t that what friends are for? If being a terrible hunter has taught Stan one thing, it’s what a long shot looks like, but aren’t they friends at least?
When the lights come back on, Mike’s eyes are dry as ever. Disappointment scratches at the bottom of Stan’s stomach like a raccoon up a chimney. It’s probably for the better.
Stan finds his voice. “So,” he says, “you coming, or what?”
“You came to get me?” says Mike.
If Stan were a bit taller, he thinks, and if Mike had never shot him, he could just grab Mike’s wrist and drag him out of here. “Didn’t I just say that? Yeah, I came to get you to make sure you didn’t drown in piss and die since you—”
“Stanley,” says Mike and he takes a halting step towards Stan. “Would you come just a little bit closer?”
Stan hasn’t moved from his spot by the wall and it hasn’t been by accident. “Sure,” he says and he moves closer anyway.
Mike scrutinizes him, eyebrows drawing together over his nose. From this close up, Mike’s got a scar on his forehead. Mike’s got a beauty mark, from this close.
“You’re short,” says Mike. He sounds frustrated.
“I know that, asshole,” says Stan. He tries to push back his shoulders and straighten his spine without being obvious. “You’re drunk.”
That is when Mike starts to lean in. The room looks like hell’s waiting room and smells like piss and Stan swears he hears wedding bells. When a hand settles on his shoulder, he doesn’t even remember to flinch.
Stan will step back, turn around, leave through the artery red door because he knows better. Because he’s pissed. It’s insulting. A kiss in a bowling alley bathroom introduced by a slight. Stan knows what he is and, more importantly, he knows who he isn’t, but he thinks he deserves a dingy bar, at the least.
Stan walks right on out. Of course, most of him still spends the rest of the night wanting to turn back. There’s no changing that.
It’s storming. Raindrops on the window cast splattered shadows over the familiar wood grain and tea stains of the table’s top. The coffee’s getting cold.
“Linda,” says Stan. He stops. Gathers his courage in his throat. “I had something of an idea, maybe. I was thinking—I had something of a thought I thought could help us.”
Linda barely responds to that. Some days, Stan is pretty sure she don’t care all that much to be helped. “Oh?” says Linda, carefully.
Nothing for it, thinks Stan. Nothing to it. “I was thinking, well—do you think we ought to get married?” The question comes out all in a rush.
Linda sighs deeply and, delicately, places her head in her hands. “Why do people keep asking me that?”
Stan doesn’t really have an answer for that. Him, personally, he’d asked because someone ought to and it seemed the right thing to do and because he’s starting to fear that Linda could actually do worse. He’s not in love with Linda, obviously. He wants her to be happy, though, and he wants her to be safe and he’s pretty sure none of those things are happening down here.
Stan, if he’s being honest, knows damn well he’s not going to be marrying for love, anyway. He thinks this might keep the both of them a little safer.
“I mean,” tries Stan, “I mean, I didn’t mean it romantically, y’know. I mean, you know I wouldn’t want that.”
“Gee, thanks,” says Linda. “You’re real good at this. You’re knocking it out of the park.”
It’s a good sign, Stan thinks, that Linda’s not being too nice about this. It probably means she’s actually listening. “You’re avoiding the question!” he complains. “You’re terrible to propose to. What do you mean why do people keep asking you that? Who the hell is even asking you?
“All I’m trying to say is you don’t wanna marry anybody here and I don’t wanna marry anybody here and everybody here is gonna keep wanting us to marry someone, so I figure we help each other out. I figure maybe we even—maybe we elope. Maybe we get out of here together and we play house in a house that isn’t a coffin and things’ll get a little bit better.”
Linda’s hands are fisted into her skirt, knuckles white. Her lips are smiling.
Stan wants to backtrack, immediately. It was a stupid thing to ask. The storm had just been so loud, the room so cold, he’d thought anything might be better than this. “You don’t—I’m sorry, Linda, what am I saying? And with Nick barely—”
“But you do.” Linda’s fingers lighten up purposefully, smooth down wrinkles. Her head tilts. “You do wanna marry someone from here.”
Stan feels all the air leave his body; wishes he could follow. Linda’s not quite wrong. “I don’t want to marry him, Linda, and neither do you. And neither should anyone, frankly. It was—It was just some dumb idea I had, no need to take it so seriously. Who’d wanna marry me, huh?”
“I would,” Linda says, cheerfully, and then the words actually catch up to her. Stan can see it play out across her face—her eyes widen and her eyebrows twitch and the corner of her mouth pulls. “Well—if I weren’t me and if you weren’t you—which, I guess isn’t really—oh, but someone ought to.”
Stan’s laughing now. “Linda,” he says, “you’re real sweet sometimes, you know that?”
Two weeks later, the storm water’s frozen right back over, and Stan nearly falls on his face twice before he can manage to get inside the trailer.
Linda’s standing by Nick’s old chair. “Would you really elope with me?” she asks, easy as anything.
Stan just about falls over again. “Jesus, Linda. You got to let me sit down before you ask me something like that.” He wrestles off his coat and his muddy boots, makes the now familiar trek. Sits down.
Linda sits too this time, no problem. “So would you?”
“Yeah, sure,” says Stan. “Yeah, I think so. Seems smart, ain’t much else to do. Get us out of here.”
“Okay,” says Linda. She’s not agreeing, Stan can tell from her voice. She’s gearing up to say more.
There’s no coffee today. Usually, Linda makes the coffee ahead of time—they’ve become regular as clockwork. Stan doesn’t mind not having coffee, except he’d like the cup to close his hands around; keep them still.
Linda visibly steels herself, straightens her back. “Okay. Stan. I’ve thought about your proposal and I don’t really want to marry you—”
Stan laughs. “Yeah, I got that, Linda.”
“But,” says Linda, “I have a proposal of my own.”
Their eyes meet. Stan’s smile drops.
“I think—I think you were right about one thing. I think we need to get out of here.” Stan doesn’t think he’s ever seen Linda look this resolved—shoulders squared and chin up. She looks, just for the moment, like some other man.
Stan agrees readily enough—he’d already known that much.
There’s only one way out of Clairton. Stan’s car is a piece of crap, more liable to break down halfway to nowhere than not, and too small to fit two people’s luggage besides. Lucky for them, just outside the window, unused for years, sits Linda’s proposal—a dead man’s truck.
Nick’s keys are missing. Of course they are. Nick could lose water in the ocean and he never drove the damn truck anyway.
Stan and Linda find one of Nick’s gloves underneath the lamp with the fish sticker on it and another stuffed into the crock-pot that Mike and Nick apparently own. They find a pile of pennies in a KFC take-out box. They find three snow white rocks in the pocket of Nick’s second jacket, still hung up by the door.
In the bedroom closet, under a pile of poorly folded shirts, Linda finds a little bound book. When she opens it, a small, pressed flower floats gently to the ground. Stan and Linda get maybe three words in, before they silently agree it’s not for reading.
They put the diary right back where they found it.
Stan thinks it might have been better to burn it. Some cloyingly sentimental part of him thinks they could have brought it up to the mountains and left it there—let nature take its share. He doesn’t bring that up for the same reason Linda keeps quiet about it. It wouldn’t be right, what with the two of them already leaving.
The plan, such as it is, is to start Nick’s truck and drive it up to Philadelphia and see how far they get. There’s some money between them and just a flicker of hope. All they need is a house free of hauntings and maybe some music—Stan’d like if they had music.
It’s not a very good plan and as such it’s not very Linda-like, but all it has to be is enough.
Stan finds the gun in a shoe box that’s been stuck underneath the record player in Mike’s living room. It’s a small, black thing, a revolver with six chambers. All empty—it’s the first thing Stan checks.
Fear settles easily in Stan’s stomach, cold and familiar.
It’s not that weird for Mike to have a gun. He’s a hunter. He’s a soldier—or a veteran, now, but even Stan knows that don’t make much of a difference. He’s a man.
It is weird for Mike to hide a gun under the record player he only ever touches to play Frankie Valli. Who is he even hiding it from?
There is another option, of course.
“Linda, hey, Linda?” calls Stan.
Linda sticks her head out from underneath the sink. “Yeah?”
“Did you buy this gun?” He holds up the revolver.
“No,” says Linda, the pitch of her voice sliding up like it’s a question. “Why would I buy a gun? Where did you even get that?”
“I got it from your house; why else would I be asking you? I got it from this box in your house,” says Stan. He starts waving the gun around demonstratively, before realizing what he’s doing and quickly setting it back down. “And I thought you might have it in case.”
“In case of what?” asks Linda. She’s rooting around by the sink again, pulling out dish soap and insect repellent, calm as anything. Like she didn’t show up to Stevie’s wedding with her face banged up halfway to hell—and to a million other places too. None of the other guys ever noticed, but Stan had shared his room with two older sisters for years. He knew a full face of foundation when he saw it.
Linda keeps her voice perfectly neutral, walking the tightrope of politely curious, like she’s never told Stan You know that’s what he’s like.
“Y’know,” says Stan, “in case.”
Linda tosses a wave of blond hair over her shoulder and looks at Stan again. “What? In case I need to shoot someone?”
“Alright, Linda, alright. I know it ain’t yours.” Stan goes to put the gun back where he found it. “I just figured I’d ask, it being in your house and all.”
When Stan picks up the box again, something inside it shifts and starts rolling till it hits one side with a hollow ‘clunk!’. Stan looks through the shoe box again and finds a single bullet. It glints meanly in the morning light.
Stan puts the bullet back where he found it, and the gun too. He returns them to their place under the record player and hits play on Frankie for good measure.
Over the sound of the music, he calls, “Hey, Linda?”
“Yeah?”
He hesitates for a moment. Fear’s an old dog; you can learn to live with it. But there’s no point ignoring it when it’s right. “Do you think—should we be buying you a gun?”
“Why? We’re going, aren’t we?” Linda’s hands are still steady, sifting through a pile of magazines, but her voice is becoming tense.
Someday, thinks Stan, if they can find these keys, if they can start the truck, if he can tear his eyes away. It might just be too late. Stan is learning, lately, how quickly things can start to end. “Well, yeah, but just, y’know, just in case.”
Linda finally stops her searching. She stills and sighs and says from behind the slumped line of her shoulders, “What good would that do?”
Stan never does tell Linda about the almost-kiss.
“Some secrets, you keep,” his mom used to say. “A secret or two, it’s good for the soul.” Stan wonders, sometimes, whether she knew more than she let on or just kept her own secrets that well.
There’s no point in telling, anyway, because there’s no world in which Stan actually kisses Mike. There’s no world where it’s worth it. Love couldn’t even make Mike kind, so what the hell is pity supposed to do?
Stan doesn’t want kindness, really—look where his eyes keep ending up—but he’s pretty sure he wants more than this.
Stan and Linda find the keys to Nick’s truck in the back of a kitchen cupboard they’d checked twice already, hidden behind a mountain of empty KFC boxes. When Stan picks them up, he sees a small, plastic elephant dangling from the chain. It’s cheaply made and old as hell. It’s missing an ear. It sort of makes Stan want to cry.
A lifetime ago, during summer break, Axel’s dad had promised to drive Axel and all his friends up to Philadelphia to see the zoo there. They had all been excited about it for weeks—even Mike, though he pretended he wasn’t. Stan and Axel talked about it so loudly and so often that news of the trip eventually reached Linda, who had made a face so sadly hopeful Axel felt honor-bound to invite her along, even though she was a girl.
When the fated day dawned, bright and warm, disaster struck. Nick woke up with a fever and despite his best efforts, could barely get out of bed, let alone go to the zoo. There was talk of calling the whole thing off, but Nick convinced them to go without him—well, he convinced most of them. Mike insisted on staying by Nick’s side—Stan remembers thinking Mike was gonna try and scare the sickness away by glaring or maybe bully Nick’s mom into letting him make Nick’s food for her.
Nick and Mike were missed, but not enough to dampen the excitement of the day. Axel’s dad was the nicest dad in town—and subject of great jealousy as a result—and he once again proved deserving of the title by buying all of them ice cream. Stevie had spent a solid fifteen minutes staring at a cheetah and nobody had been able to tear him away. There is a picture of Stan and Linda by the flamingo exhibit doing their very best imitations, barely keeping their balance, that Stan’s mom used to love showing people.
Near the end of the day, Linda had marched all five of them to the gift shop, pointed at an elephant keychain and announced, “We should bring this back for Nick.” After a quick survey of the loose change in everyone’s pockets, it was agreed that Mike did not need any souvenirs, because he wasn’t sick and he probably wouldn’t like them anyway. But all five of them did chip in to buy Nick the elephant.
And Nick, being a sentimental bastard, had kept the damn thing.
There is one last test to run, which is finding out whether Nick’s truck’ll start at all. Stan’s suddenly realizing standing still for years might just be pretty fucking bad for a car.
Stan and Linda sit in the front seat. “You think this’ll work?” asks Stan.
Linda grimaces, squints a little and says, “I sure hope so.”
Nothing for it. Stan turns the key. There is a second, after, where nothing happens. Before Stan’s spirits can start plummeting, the engine roars to life.
“Huh,” says Stan.
“Good ol’ Nick,” says Linda. And then they both say nothing for a very long time.
It’s another Saturday afternoon, Stan knocking on Linda’s door. This time, instead of letting him in, Linda walks on out. She’s wearing a blue coat and carrying two suitcases. Stan knows exactly what’s in them. They had planned it all out a fortnight ago, sitting on Linda’s bedroom floor, sorting through possessions. There’s a set of cooking knives that, technically, belonged to Mike, but he wasn’t really using anyhow. There’s an old, stained sundress Linda couldn’t bear to leave behind. There’s a small, pressed flower Stan had pretended not to notice.
The sun’s an awful shade of yellow. It feels a little like an eye. Stan’s surprised by how much it freaks him out—he can’t tell what, exactly, is even all that different about it.
“I don’t know that we can do this.” says Stan. “You really think we can do this?”
“No,” says Linda. Her face is a little pink, the skin around her eyes crinkling like star bursts. It reminds Stan of being kids. “No, not really. You wanna try, anyway?”
They’re about twenty miles down the road when the slant of the sunlight becomes undeniable. It was a long shot, anyhow.
“Linda,” says Stan, tilting his face towards her. He wishes he felt more afraid and less certain. He wishes all of him wanted to keep moving forward. “We’re gonna have to turn this thing back around, aren’t we?”
Linda sighs. “Fuck,” she says. She leans forward, runs her hands through her hair, then settles them by the back of her head and pulls. “Goddammit.”
Stan thinks that must be the second time he’s ever heard Linda curse.
“Hey, Linda,” says Stan. They’re standing by Nick’s grave, earth freshly turned. Stan had seen Linda waiting by the grave on the hill, after the rest of the procession had moved on, after even Mike had managed to pull his body away.
Stan’s not quite sure why he felt he should talk to Linda, not quite sure what he said, but he knows in his bones it’s not right to leave someone standing all by themselves at a time like this.
After a while, silence falls. The day is insultingly nice for a funeral, all blue skies and soft winds. Stan’s having trouble looking right at Linda, but he can see the both of them reflected in the polished gravestone. NIKANOR CHEVOTAREVICH, it says, 1945-1973. BELOVED SON.
The question rises like bile from his gut and it’s out before Stan can even think to stop it. It’s kind on the back of his throat, kind behind the rows of his teeth—‘Don’t I know you?’ he means. ‘Don’t I remember what you’re like?’—but he’s pretty sure that’s not how it’s gonna sound once the words hit the mild morning air.
“Hey, Linda,” starts Stan. “Did you ever really l-”
“God, Stanley,” says Linda, starting to life like it’s her first breath. Stan does meet her gaze now. Tears shine behind the black of her veil, but her eyes are wild. She looks bereft, but more an animal trapped than a widow grieving. “How should I know?”