“Marlowe probably needs to go to the bathroom,” he said, feeling warm pangs of affection for the black Labrador retriever fill him.
“How’s he doing?” Francis asked. “You know, with the whole Madeline thing?”
“He still asks about her from time to time,” Remy said. “But I think it’s just in a dog’s nature to accept the inevitable and move on.”
“And you?”
Remy looked at his friend, not sure what to say, his silence conveying more meaning than mere words could express.
Remy read the yellow Post-it note pressed to the window of the entrance to his Pinckney Street home. Homicide detective Steven Mulvehill had stopped by. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his friend.
He pulled the note down, crinkling it up and shoving it into his pocket. He dug for his keys, letting himself into the foyer, and smiled faintly at the sound of an excited dog barking on the other side of the door.
“Just a sec, buddy,” he said as he put the key in the lock and opened the door.
The black Labrador surged out into the hall, his toenails clicking like castanets on the tile floor as he danced around Remy.
“Hello to you too,” Remy said, bending down to accept the fervent attentions from Marlowe’s eager tongue.
“Miss you,” the dog said.
“And I missed you,” Remy told him. “C’mon, let’s go inside.”
“Yes, inside. Yes,” the animal agreed.
“Did Ashley take you for a walk?” Remy asked as he took off his jacket and hung it in the hall closet.
“Yes. Walk, yes. Ashley. Like Ashley.”
“She is something, isn’t she?” Remy didn’t know what he’d do without Marlowe’s teenaged sitter, and dreaded to think of the fix he’d be in when she went off to college.
He stood in the hallway, feeling like a stranger in the home that he had lived in for more than thirty years.
It was when he was standing still that the problems arose.
“Do you want an apple?” he quickly asked the dog.
“Yes! Apple,” Marlowe barked. “Want apple.”
“I knew that was a stupid question.” Remy moved toward the kitchen with the excited Labrador by his side. “And I think I’ll have some coffee.”
He had to do something, anything, or his thoughts would begin to wander. He would hear things, see things: echoes of the past. And he couldn’t stop them.
He saw her standing there, his beautiful Madeline. Her back was to him as she stood before the stove in her white terry-cloth robe. She was making a cup of tea, and by the way she was holding herself he could tell that something was wrong.
The conversation had gone something like…
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, just a little sore today.”
“Are you telling me the truth?”
She had slowly turned around, holding on to the stove for support, and her eyes had filled with tears.
“No.”
Marlowe whined and the past momentarily fled.
Remy was standing in front of the kitchen counter, apple in hand. The dog was staring intently, a puddle of drool on the floor beneath his mouth.
“I’m sorry, pal,” Remy said, reaching for a knife. He was cutting the apple into strips when the memories returned unbidden.
Again they were standing in the kitchen. She had her heavier jacket on, looking small and fragile within its folds. There was a suitcase at her feet, and she was looking around.
“What are you doing?” he asked, coming to stand beside her. Remy took her in his arms and gently kissed the side of her head.
“I’m committing it to memory,” she said. “I don’t want to ever forget what it looked like.”
“Don’t be silly; you’ll be back before you know it,” he told her, squeezing her close.
The disease had progressed faster than they had expected, the amount of care she now required more than he could provide.
“They’ll get you on the straight and narrow, and you’ll be home before you know it.”
He’d known it was a lie, and so had she. But she hadn’t let on, allowing him his fantasy.
“The straight and narrow can’t come fast enough,” she said, leaning in to kiss the side of his neck.
He returned to the present, watching his dog gulp down the cut-up slices of apple he had placed inside the animal’s bowl. A chill danced up and down his neck, and he raised a hand to his throat. He could still feel her kiss, the last they’d shared in their home.
The dog was done with his snack in record time, and returned to wipe his slobber on Remy’s leg. “That’s a good boy,” Remy told him, thumping the animal’s side like a drum.
“Good apple,” Marlowe said, then belched loudly.
And suddenly Remy heard the ghostly sound of her laughter drifting throughout the lonely house; a million tiny little things would send them into fits of hysteria—Marlowe’s burps being one of Madeline’s personal favorites.
So many memories, triggered like the fall of dominoes inside his brain. It was if he were caught inside some elaborate trap, his every action springing a recollection that left him emotionally mutilated.
Does it ever get easier? He was certain that it must, but didn’t know how much more he could take. He’d always imagined himself made of sterner stuff.
He made a pot of coffee, even though his desire for the hot beverage seemed to have waned dramatically of late.
Mug in hand, he gestured to Marlowe, lying attentively in the center of the kitchen floor. “Want to come sit with me?” he asked, not waiting for a response as he headed into the dark living room.
He set the steaming cup down on a side table and sat in his chair. He did not put any lights on, preferring the darkness.
Marlowe padded into the room, jumped up onto the sofa, and plopped down with a heavy sigh, snout between his paws.
Remy thought about watching television, or trying to read a few chapters in the book he’d started a few nights ago, but television after all these years bored him to tears, and he couldn’t even remember the title of the book. Sleep was out of the question. Since Madeline’s death, a night’s sleep had become something of a rarity, and because he really didn’t need it, his bed—the bed that he and his wife had shared—remained empty.
So he did what he’d been doing just about every night since Madeline’s death. He sat in the dark, listening to the quiet snoring of his dog, and allowed the memories to wash over him.
Remy was at the office early the next morning. It had been at least two weeks since he’d last been there.
Since narrowly averting the Apocalypse, the world had become a much darker place. He had hoped that humanity, overjoyed by the fact that they had been given a second chance to embrace life, would have tried to make things better, but in fact they didn’t even seem to notice. He was sure that on some level they were aware that something was up, that something had come pretty close to screwing up a lot more than a golf date, or that sixth trip to Disney. But the end of the world didn’t happen, and life continued just as it had before.
But whether they noticed or not, the world had become a little bit darker. The approaching end of the world had churned things up—like the bottom of a deep, dark lake, the slimy silt, mud, and sediments stirred by a powerful storm above.
Things not of this world, which had chosen—in some instances it had been chosen for them—to make the Earth their home, had become aroused by the closeness of the cataclysm, and were greatly disappointed when it had not occurred.
Leave it to Remy to spoil a potentially good time.
He stood in the lobby of the Beacon Street building that housed his agency, trying to get the accumulated mail out of his box. Swearing beneath his breath, he tugged on the wedged catalogues, flyers, and bills, trying not to damage them too badly as he extracted them.