BEAST OF THE WOODS

Chapter 10

"Are you retarded, Flocman? Didn't you hear me? We need to go find this place."

Did he? Flocman looked around at the faded clutter, dim lighting, the dust, and stamp on the coffee table. Thought about his book and the sessions with Rachel.

Bolger followed his gaze, said, "It's kind of a shithole if you ask me." He was acutely aware of the cold metal of his revolver shoved into his pants. The muzzle kept cutting into his waist.

Flocman said, "It was my parents' place. It's not a shithole."

Bolger laughed. "Okay, so it's not a shithole. It's a f*****g mansion. Still no reason why you can't pay what you owe me and let me book us a flight to Prague, to start." Bolger's mother had been born in Prague, managed to visit once or twice. It wasn't Sonoria, but it was a lot closer than Minnesota.

Flocman felt a flare of anger. Sonoria was his vision. Bolger was just a born-again.

"You've done your job. I'll pay you what I owe you. And then we're done."

Bolger sat up straight across from Flocman, stared at him. "No," he said, "no. It's not just about the money anymore." Bolger saw the place every time he shut his eyes, but that couldn't pay the rent or get him more work.

"So go," Flocman said. "You can do that yourself."

Bolger rose. "Is that your final word, asshole?"

Flocman stared up at Bolger, acutely aware of all the unspent, buried money he still had, waiting for him.

"I'm supposed to babysit the Sanderson kid in a little while. I think you should take your money and leave."

Flocman took out a wad of bills and put them on the table.

Bolger looked at the money, looked at Flocman, pulled out the revolver and pointed it at Flocman.

Flocman blinked, sighed, and kept staring just past Bolger's left ear. He really wanted one of those cigarettes he'd given up, and he was thinking about the most impulsive things he'd ever done besides hiring Bolger. The first was proposing to Grace after only a month of dating. The second was slowly stealing two hundred thousand over thirty-five years from house after house. Flocman hadn't stolen the money because he needed it. He'd stolen it because he was bored. Not much of a risk in the sense of looking down the barrel of a g*n, but still a substantial risk.

"f**k the money," Bolger said, both hands on the g*n. "f**k the money and f**k you. You're going with me to Prague."

Flocman considered the Beastlike Bolger and his g*n for a lot longer than Bolger would have liked, then said, "I'm not going to Prague, Bolger. There is no Sonoria. I made a big mistake. Just take your money and get out of here." The Sanderson kid would be there in minutes.

Bolger laughed, although it came out more like a coughing whimper. He didn't really know what he was doing anymore, he realized that. He'd come here with a stupid bluff, one that he'd thought Flocman might recognize as a way for them both to get the hell out of their situation. And now he was holding a g*n on him.

"You're damn right about the money. I've seen your checking account balance. I know you haven't been paying me from that. So it's got to be in the house somewhere. You just sit right there."

Still training the g*n on Flocman, Bolger searched the living room and the kitchen, ordered Flocman into the bedroom, searched there, again nothing, and they came back to the living room, where Bolger pushed Flocman back into his chair. Pain flared in Flocman's hip, but he said nothing.

"Who doesn't have some money salted away, asshole?" Bolger said. But even though he held the g*n, he didn't feel like he was in control. He picked up the Sonoria notebook Flocman had set on the table, pointed the g*n at it like he was going to shoot it.

"And now what?" Flocman asked. "And now what?" Inside, Flocman was shaking, but he'd never show Bolger that. "Go ahead and do it if you're going to do it, or get out." Flocman felt an emotion he hadn't felt in a long time - a rage mixed with the sadness. He wanted Bolger gone or he wanted to kill Bolger.

Bolger knew when someone was about to fold. Flocman wasn't going to fold. Flocman wasn't going to give up anything, because he just didn't care. And the Sanderson girl would be there soon.

Suddenly, he felt ridiculous. Suddenly, caught in the weight of Flocman's gaze, he saw himself as Flocman saw him. Bolger's shoulders slumped. He put down Flocman's book. He stuck the g*n back into his pants.

"Well, I'm going. I'm going to Prague. I'm going to find Sonoria. And I'm taking the damn stamp." It was dry, almost brittle, in his hand.

"Go ahead," Flocman said quietly. It hurt, a little bit, but he just wanted Bolger gone. He could already see the detective in Sonoria, written into Flocman's book as the loud foreigner walking along the river, not able to be understood by anyone but talking anyway. It solved some problems he'd been having with the narrative. Flocman wondered if Rachel would like the idea.

"Write when you get there," Flocman said, relenting a bit. "Send a postcard." Almost

said, "with a stamp on it."

Bolger was already at the door, not looking back. He'd taken his markedup pages from Flocman's book, stuffed them in his jacket pocket. Somewhere out there, somewhere in here, Sonoria was waiting for him. It had to be better than this.

Then Bolger was gone, driving slowly off in his car, and Sonoria with him, and Flocman rose to see Rachel walking up to the door.

LOST

"Are you lost?" it says to me in its gravelly moan of a voice and for a long moment I can't answer. I'm thinking of how I got here and what that might mean and how to frame an answer and wondering why the answer that came to mind immediately seems caught in my throat like a physical form of fear, and that thought leads to this: remembering the line of color that brought me here: the spray of emerald-velvet-burgundy-chocolate mushrooms suddenly appearing on the old stone wall where yesterday there had been nothing, and me on my way to the university to teach yet another dead-end night class, dusk coming on, but somehow the spray, splay of mushrooms spared that lack of light; something about the way the runnels and patches of exposed white understone contrasted with the gray that brought me out of my thoughts of debt and a problem student named Jenna, who had become my problem, really, and I just

stopped.

right there.

and stared at the tracery of mushrooms, the way they formed such a uniform swoop across that pitted stone, and something about them, something about that glimmer, reminded me of my dead wife and of Jenna - the green was the same as my wife's eyes and that of Jenna's earrings, and I remembered the first time I noticed Jenna's earrings, and how it brought a deep, soundless sob rising out of my chest, my lungs, and I stood there, in front of the whole class, bent over, as if struck by something large and invisible, and how ever since I cannot tell if my fascination with her has to do with that color and my need for companionship or some essential trait in her, and how ironic, how sad, that she misunderstood my reaction and began wearing the earrings every day, until that physical pain inhabiting my body became a dullness, like the ache in an overused muscle, which I hated even as I found myself falling for Jenna...

and all of the time.

the whole time.

The light was fading except across the wall, and people in overcoats were walking past in the clear chill, under the streetlamps, and I could smell something other than the dankness of the wall as I traced its roughness with my fingers. It must have been a woman's passing perfume, but for a moment I smelled my wife and the emerald color of the mushrooms, the memory of her beneath me, the solid, comforting feel of her - all of this was the same thing, and when I started walking again, I didn't go straight. I didn't head for the ivy-strewn facades of the campus buildings. Instead, I turned

I turned and turned and turned.

turned as if turning meant wrenching my life from a stable orbit.

To the right I turned to follow the scatterings of mushrooms, and I don't know why, if I was just curious or if I'd already been captured in some way, because it wasn't like me. My dad had always said, before he passed from cancer in a very orderly way, that "you have to make a plan and keep to it." He said it to me, my mother, and my estranged sister, and he meant it. Routine was a religion for him, and we made it ours. Set meals. Set appointments. Set activities. I remember, when I turned eighteen, planning my rebellion, figuring out what I was going to do first and second and last, so I could savor my rebellion even as I.. .planned it. Less satisfying in the execution, the s*x quick and lonely and not with someone I loved, the beer and pot putting me to sleep too quickly, waking to a cat l*****g my face, out cold on someone's sour-smelling lawn.

But I turned the corner, followed the mushroom trail, which moved up and down the wall like a wave, now mirrored on the wall that had sprung up opposite it - and ahead the ache of a dull red sunset, which bathed the mushrooms in a crimson glow, and,

suddenly, it wasn't that night

that place,

but a two-lane road the year before, the lights of our car projecting through the murk as we drove down a corridor of night. She was driving, and had the pursed lip look of concentration that I loved about her, and which I never told her I loved because I was afraid that if I told her, the expression would become different in some essential way, and I never wanted that to happen - never wanted her to be a different person, either, when we made love, staring at her face and seeing that same look of concentration, of being fully engaged.

wanted no self-consciousness from her.

wanted her lilting laugh to remain spontaneous.

wanted her.

to always preface her questions to me with "Let me ask you a question."

But a look of concentration doesn't mean concentration, and when I said later, in response to the ever-present question, until I had exhausted the gauntlet of friends, family, strangers who didn't know, the ordinary words "car crash," I couldn't help but associate that look with her death, and thus her death with our s*x and our conversations and our holidays, and all I really wanted was a way to break that linkage, in almost the same way I wanted the trail of mushrooms to come to an end, because, honestly, where could they possibly lead that would be good for me? Ordinary thoughts, the thoughts we all have: that I was already late for work; that Jenna would miss me or she wouldn't; that this would be my fifth absence this semester and how many did there have to be before they let me go?

My legs didn't seem to have questions, though - they carried me forward. I followed the mushrooms because of the sparkle in Jenna's earrings, the gorgeous color of my wife's eyes. I followed the mushrooms because I can't say my wife's name. If I say her name, if I write her name, I will lose it - the name and my self-control. When I hear her name said, that is enough to conjure up the trail of evidence, the linkage. UnBeastable.

The red of the sunset had become as green as...

A few people dressed in the outlandish garb I'd become accustomed to on campus pushed past me, and ahead, partially obscured by the lack of light, the spires of an old church or series of churches. Crenelations. A darkness that came from age, inhabiting the corners of the spires. A few circling birds or bats. It reminded me of the vacation my wife and I took to Eastern Europe one year, which made all that was ancient about my place of employment look petty and cheap and just-yesterday. She fell asleep in the train from Berlin to Prague. I saw her face, framed by the reflection of the landscape rushing past the window, without lines or care, saw how her arms lay at her sides. She felt secure. She felt safe, I could tell.