Page 3 of Kill Your Darlings

“It’s two a.m.”

“Is it?”

“Yep.”

Wendy considered bringing up the book he was writing but knew it wouldn’t be worth it. She hadn’t been kidding when she told Roger that he wouldn’t remember anything the next day. He wouldn’t. She could see it in his blank eyes and the way his mouth was slightly ajar, lower lip hanging. She took a tiny sip of her wine. He had put his empty glass down and was mimicking playing the piano along with Ahmad Jamal. God, she despised him. It was a new realization. For a long time she’d known she disliked him, known that the thought of spending the remainder of her years in his company filled her with a kind of dread. She’d also known that he was never going to change, but she hadn’t admitted to herself yet that she truly hated him. That she wanted him gone.

I should just kill him, she thought.

“What are you smiling about?” Thom said.

“Just murder,” she said back. “Your murder.”

He laughed and moved his hands along the imaginary keys.

But twenty minutes later he was standing at the top of the stairs on the second-floor landing, a hand loosely on the banister, a confused look on his face. Wendy was passing from the bedroom to the bathroom but stopped to ask him what was wrong.

“I thought I’d forgotten something downstairs and now I can’t remember what it was.”

He really was drunk, his head drooping, his free hand waggling a finger.

“Your glasses, maybe,” Wendy said.

Then, without really thinking about it, or rather, as though she’d planned this very maneuver before, she reached out toward the front pocket of his shirt and gently pushed him in the chest. “Jesus,” he said, tottering backward then righting himself, but he was wearing socks and one of his legs gave way and he fell down the stairs, hard, spinning all the way over then thudding to a halt at the bottom landing. The violence of it was extraordinary.

“Thom!” Wendy yelled, then followed him carefully down the steps. He was silent except for a low purr that reminded her of a cat. But when she’d reached him, he suddenly came to, springing back onto his feet as though he’d simply fallen onto a couch and was now getting up again.

“Fuck,” he said. “What just happened?”

“You fell down the stairs, Thom,” she said. “You’re drunk.”

He asked again in the morning, when he’d found the bruises on his body. “I don’t know how you fell,” Wendy said. “I was brushing my teeth. Anything broken?”

“My last shred of dignity,” he said, and went downstairs to start the coffee.

ii

Thom checked the weather app on his phone; it told him it was currently raining in New Essex. He looked outside but saw no sign of rain, even though the dark, swollen sky was threatening. He felt terrible, having drunk far too much the night before, and he’d woken up with about five mysterious bruises down one side of his body (Wendy had gleefully informed him he’d fallen down the stairs). Still, he was determined to ignore the pain, to get outside and take a walk, try to stretch his muscles, clear his head a little. He stared at the app again,then out through the window that looked onto Naumkeag Cove, now at low tide, gulls and crows hovering overhead. Goose Neck was a small, rocky peninsula that jutted into the outer harbor of New Essex, and for whatever reason it had its own weather patterns, ignoring all forecasts. He decided to risk it and went to get his coat.

He was halfway through the circling walk that would take him along most of the perimeter of Goose Neck when the rain started up. He didn’t mind. It was a misty kind of rain, and he was planning on showering anyway when he got back, so what difference did it make if he got wet? He buttoned the top button of his coat and kept walking, still trying to pick apart the chronology of the dinner party the night before.

It had started fine, Roger and Don in good form, Marcia jumpy as always, Wendy’s roast lamb a huge hit. Sally Johnson hadn’t wanted to be there, but he wasn’t sure Sally wanted to be anywhere, except for maybe alone with a book. She was a true academic, that one, almost as though she’d gotten into the field out of a love for literature instead of the desire to only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the chance to take sabbaticals every five years.

He was surprised that Marcia had invited Emily Majorino. Pleased too. When she’d first been brought on, back in January, he’d been entranced by her quiet beauty. She’d mesmerized him, but not in any lustful way. Something about her stillness, her quiet voice, her mysterious life. (She was much younger than he was, but as far as he could tell she had absolutely zero social-media presence. He’d looked.) He imagined them talking to each other, confiding in each other. He imagined giving her advice. Sometimes, oddly, these fantasies would warp into her pressing a cold washcloth against his head, the way his mother used to do. Or else he imagined her cooking him a meal, telling him everything was going to be okay. He supposed he was getting old.

The mist was being replaced by actual rain, and Thom sped up,lowering his head, and still picking away at the memories from the previous night. He knew that Roger had done his party trick—his J. Alfred Walken—and that the drinks had flowed. Sally had left early. No surprise there. And he knew that he’d sat next to Emily for some time and that they’d been talking passionately, or maybe it had just been he who was doing the talking. But the words were gone. He also had no memory of how the evening had ended, just that he’d been downstairs by the fire and the next thing he knew he’d woken up in the morning, his mouth dry, his forehead damp, and his body aching as though he’d been beaten with a croquet mallet.

He turned onto Jewett Lane and stopped for a moment to look across the harbor, pocked with rain. He rubbed at his ribs and a memory from the night before, a fragment of a memory, pricked at his mind. The upstairs hallway. Wendy’s face. A look of revulsion. Then it was gone.

“Okay there, Thom?”

It was one of his neighbors, Fred, out walking his dog. Thom blinked in Fred’s direction. “Oh hey, Fred,” he said. “Just thinking about going for a swim.”

“Ha-ha.”

Back at home, Thom felt worse than he had before his walk. The cold had gotten into his bones, and the partial memory from the night before, his wife’s face, was haunting him.

“How’d I fall down the goddamn stairs?” he said to Wendy, who was putting together some kind of casserole in the kitchen.

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