Page 68 of Kill Your Darlings

“I need to know you’re okay with it. I need to know that it’s not going to haunt you forever.”

“Tell me the plan again. In detail.”

ii

At five in the morning Thom got out of Wendy’s bed and dressed as quietly as possible. Wendy slept, curled up in a ball like some small animal in its den. He’d told her just before she’d fallen asleep that hewould slip out at dawn, so that he didn’t need to wake her and tell her he was going. Still, it was all he could do to not shake her awake, give her one more kiss. It was unbearable, almost, to think about how long it would be until they saw each other again.

They’d talked all night, going over the plan in detail. Wendy had devised most of it. She’d memorized the dates and times, and if everything went perfectly, this time next year they’d be together, starting a new life.

In the downstairs lobby of the hotel, a woman in running gear said “Another early riser” to him as he passed.

“Yes, I am,” he stupidly said back to her, and moved quickly for the door. He’d parked on Main Street, and the short walk to his car felt surreal and ghostly. The day was going to be hot and already mist was lifting off the front yards, making everything seem a little out of focus. He was happy when he arrived back at his own cheap motel, where he immediately stripped and got under the sheets, telling himself he might as well attempt some sleep before driving back to Connecticut. Checkout wasn’t until noon.

He did manage an hour of deep, dreamless sleep, and then he was awake again, going over the plan in his mind. He’d brought a blank notebook with him, one in which he’d begun to outline a short-story idea about a high school boy who falls in love with an exchange student visiting for two weeks. He flipped ahead to a blank page and considered writing down the details of the plan. He could always rip those pages out later and burn them. But he talked himself out of it. It was important that there be no evidence whatsoever, that it was all only in his mind.

On August 21, Wendy was going to fly to New York City to attend a college friend’s art opening. On that same weekend, Thom would visit Austin and stay in some cheap motel. His college friend Samantha was now living there with her boyfriend, Ethan, an aspiring country singer who was performing on the Sunday night of thatweekend. His trip could be to see them. It would be easy enough for him to drive on Saturday to Wendy’s house outside of Lubbock. She’d told him that every night before he went to sleep Bryce would go outside and walk around the pool and smoke a cigar. All Thom would have to do was push him into the deep end and make sure Bryce didn’t pull himself back out. She said that he could barely swim and that pushing him in was maybe all he would need to do. Wendy also told him about the Happy Lake Baptist Church, where he should park, and how to get to the back side of the Barrington property. They both agreed that the most important thing was that it appear to be an accidental death. If it looked as though Bryce had been murdered, then the suspicion would fall onto Wendy, even though she would be away at the time. The Barrington family wouldn’t necessarily be able to stop her receiving Bryce’s money, but they could try.

The last thing Wendy had told Thom was this: “If something seems off, remember that you don’t have to go through with it. If anyone is there with him, then simply turn around and go back. Or even if you have a bad feeling, or decide that you can’t do it, then just don’t do it. That’s more important to me than getting his money. We’ll still have each other.”

“Okay,” Thom had said.

“I mean it. Come end of summer we will be together, one way or another. But here’s the thing. If you do succeed, then everything that we do afterward has to be perfect. No signs that you were ever at the house. No getting stopped by the cops on the way back to Austin. No drunken confessions. No remorse. If we’re going to do this, then we’re going to do this right. We’re going to have a good life together, and Bryce is going to wind up exactly where he should wind up. Okay?”

Thom was nodding his head, but the room was dark, and he said, “I won’t let you down.”

He checked out of the motel. They’d held on to a credit card for incidentals, but he paid in cash. Before leaving, he watched the girl atthe reception desk rip up the slip of paper that had his card’s imprint on it and put it in the trash. During the long drive back to Connecticut, he kept thinking about what Wendy had said about the end of summer, how they’d be together. If only he could snap his fingers and time would rush forward to that instant, like in a movie, or a book. He tried it in the car, snapping his fingers, but he was still behind the wheel, trapped in this particular moment.It will happen, he said to himself.If we’re careful, it will all happen exactly as we planned it.

1991

October

It was a forty-minute walk from Rachel’s apartment in North Cambridge to the Harvard Museum of Natural History, but the weather was perfection, and Wendy felt as though she could do this walk every day of her life. Her friend’s neighborhood in North Cambridge was a little run-down but still had more character and charm than the nicest neighborhood in Lubbock. After navigating through Porter Square, Wendy began to walk down Oxford Street, lined with trees and Victorian houses and charming brick apartment buildings. The narrow sidewalk was buckled here and there by tree roots and long winters. Wendy wore her oldest, most comfortable jeans and a new sweater she’d bought the day before at Filene’s Basement in downtown Boston. There was chimney smoke in the air and the ground was covered with fallen leaves, and Wendy, as she’d felt years earlier when she’d briefly lived in New Hampshire, knew that this was the part of the world in which she belonged.

As she got closer to the university, Oxford Street widened, concrete academic buildings replacing houses, and wide swaths of campus replacing tiny front yards. It took her a while to find the museum, only because there were three museums all in a row, housedin imposing brick structures. She paid her entrance fee and shuffled in between two large families. She was early—their meeting time wasn’t until noon—but Wendy genuinely wanted to walk around a little. Before entering the main exhibit she got caught up looking at a display of glass flowers—tiny, delicate specimens. She had never been particularly interested in either glasswork or even real flowers—that was her mother’s passion—but something about these pieces, created over a hundred years ago, was fascinating. A voice was speaking to her, and she came out of her reverie. “I’ve been coming here every day for ten years,” he said, and she turned to look into the face of a very old man, dried spittle in the corners of his mouth. She nodded and smiled and left the exhibit.

By twelve o’clock she’d wandered through most of the rooms and wound up in the Great Mammal Hall, feeling as though she’d stepped out of her own life and into Victorian England. There were taxidermied giraffes and great apes, and several whale skeletons hung from the high ceiling. There was a balcony level that ran all the way around the room, displaying hundreds of stuffed birds and allowing a closer look at the whales. She was on the balcony when she spotted Thom, entering the hall below her, his hands tucked into his front pockets, walking slowly, looking like a typical New England college boy in jeans and an unbuttoned peacoat. His hair was longer than the last time she’d seen him.

He pulled his hand out of his pocket and checked the time, then scanned the crowd of other visitors on the lower level, clearly looking for her. Wendy stood still, watching, enjoying the feeling of spying on him. She could tell he was dazed by the majesty of the room, just as she had been. He was slowly moving—he hadn’t even looked up yet—then settled in front of a large glass case that contained a stuffed lemur. He bent at the waist to get a better look. Then he mussed his hair a little and she realized that he was looking at himself in the reflection. She was just about to leave the balcony to meet him whenhe suddenly looked up, his eyes seeing the enormity of the room for the first time. She stayed put and he found her, a smile creasing his face. For a moment she saw herself through his eyes, poised on a balcony, a Juliet surrounded by dead animals. She was about to come to him, but he was already moving toward the steps that would bring him to her.

Later, in the hotel room, he came out of the bathroom and stood naked for a moment just looking at her lying on the bed. She was propped up on all of the pillows, naked as well, a sheet pulled up over her legs and lap. “What are you doing?” she said.

“Memorizing this.”

She pulled the sheet off her legs so that he could see all of her, striking a sexy pose, trying not to laugh but failing a little. But he didn’t laugh back, just clambered onto the bed and worked his way toward her.

“I keep thinking in clichés,” he said, twenty minutes later.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I want to say things like I’ve never felt so alive as I do right now, and looking at you stops my breath, and how you are the most perfect creation I’ve ever seen. Do you know what I mean?”

“I know that I will only ever be happy with you,” Wendy said.

“See. Clichés.”

“I don’t care. They’re clichés for a reason. And it’s not like we’ll ever share them with anyone else. Just ourselves.”

“How long can you stay here?”

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