Page 7 of The Staircase in the Woods

“Nothing. Sorry. I—” Lore looked at the box in her hands. “I’ll order dinner. Wake Shar up. Then I have to leave. Flight to catch. Red-eye.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” Cedar rubbed their eyes with the back of a hand. “What time is it?”

But Lore didn’t answer them. She was already walking back downstairs to the kitchen where she’d grind up the mushrooms and make her weekly microdose capsules. Capsules that, when it came time to catch her flight, she left there on the counter, because if she was already hallucinating, what was the fucking point?

5

Nailbiter

May 31

Pete the Greek was from Philly, used to run a bar until it got shot up by, in his words, “this drunken Irish fuck.” Pete took three bullets himself, two in the back, one through the left biceps—all scars he liked to show off to whoever came into his place. Thing was, his place wasn’t a bar in Philly, not anymore—it was a used bookstore in Pittsburgh. (“I’m a youse guy in yins territory,” he was wont to say.) The store, Squirrel Hill Books, was owned by Pete’s sister, who lived in Florida, and figured that Pete needed to relax in his later years, and that a used bookstore would be just the pace he needed.

Pete didn’t read anything but the newspaper. He was proud to have never read a book in his life. His mobile phone was an ancient flip phone—one step above a pager.

So, there he sat behind the counter. Surrounded by books he’d never read, never would.

He looked up over the lip of his paper at Owen, who waited at the counter.

“You’re not in till tomorrow,” Pete said.

“I can’t come in tomorrow,” Owen said. He nibbled at a fingernail. “Or the next day either. And not sure about the following—”

“Then you’re fired.”

“What?”

“I don’t have anybody else. Means I have to cover for you, and Idon’t want to, but Sissy”—that was Pete’s sister—“says the place has to be open, and you’re my guy. My only guy. So if you’re not gonna be my guy, you’re fired.”

“It’s only a few days. A friend—”Is dying,but it came out different. “Is dead. He died. Going to his funeral.”

From Pete, a grunt. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah. Well.”

“How long you worked here, Owen?”

“Six months.”

Pete looked him up and down. Evaluating him, and not in a good way. “Look at you. Always wearing black. Always looking like your dog got run over. And you got those—” Pete pulled at his own ears. “Those big holes in your ears. That loopty-loop in your eyebrow. Who knows what you got elsewhere. Nobody else is gonna hire you, that’s for damn sure. I dunno, Owen. You just go through job after job after job and for what?” He shrugged. Then sighed. “Fine. Back in three days, not four, and you keep the job. If you care.”

I don’t, not really,Owen thought, but he forced a smile and said thanks.

Pete grunted. Conversation over, it seemed. On the way out, Pete yelled at him, “And quit biting your nails. I keep finding the little nail bits all around, it’s fuckin’ disgusting, you hear me?”

—

He did not want to fly. He hated flying. He hated everything about it. The discomfort. The waiting. The disassociation. And of course, the persistent chance of death, given how the mere act of being in a plane felt like grave hubris.

He stood there in the Pittsburgh airport. He’d made it through security. Owen found the gate with an hour to spare, and it was in this spot he stood rooted, as slowly the crowds gathered, as they started to call boarding groups, as they calledhisboarding group, and still he remained where he stood.

They’re going to close the door.

That thought danced a sideways eight around his head again and again, looping back on itself so many times it started to sound like gibberish.

They’re going to close the door, Owen.

They’re going to close the door.

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