Perhaps I was supposed to thank people as they left, but I was too depleted to make nice. I slipped into the minister’s empty office instead, waiting for the chapel to clear out.
Then I sat silent in the chapel’s front row, watching as Linette’s coffin was lowered hydraulically from the dais to the crematorium below, and consigned to the flames.
She’d always been an ethereal spirit. Now she was free to soar at last. A glint of quicksilver across the sky.
And I was free as well. The bitterness over her betrayal was gone. Burned away. Only her memory remained. And the ache of her loss.
Dusk was falling as I finally trudged out to my rental car. Climbing in, I lowered the windows and sat quietly a moment, breathing in deep draughts of cool autumn air, trying to fill the hollow in my heart.
Time to go. Firing up the rental, I headed home to my apartment.
I didn’t make it. At an intersection, I was waiting for the light to change when a utility van suddenly roared out of a side street, screeching to a halt beside my sedan!
Its windows were down, and for a split second I stared into John Mackey’s wild eyes before he raised his shotgun to fire.
I only had a split second, but this time I knew exactly what to say.
“Gun!” I shouted, diving under the dash.
In the backseat, Kovacs threw her blanket aside, and came up with a pistol in her fist, blasting three quick rounds that blew out the van’s side window, ripping into Mackey’s shoulder.
His shotgun went off and something slammed into the side of my head...
For the second time that week, I woke in a hospital. Groggy and aching, but in less pain than before. I had no idea how long I’d been out, or what time it was.
Sergeant Shane Kovacs was slumped in the chair beside my bed, her chin resting on her palm. Sound asleep. I studied her face in the pale light. A good face. Not conventionally pretty, I suppose, but strong and honest. A bit careworn, I thought...
When I woke again, she was watching me.
“We can’t go on meeting like this,” she said, straightening in her chair. “How do you feel?”
“Awful. What happened?”
“Mackey’s shotgun blast shattered your windshield, some of the fragments gave you a pretty good whack in the head. You’ve been out cold for several hours.”
“What about Mackey?”
“His wounds aren’t serious, he’ll live to stand trial. One slug zipped through that Seabee tattoo he was so proud of. I’d call that poetic justice.”
“It all happened so fast. Weren’t you supposed to shout a warning? Stop or I’ll shoot? Something like that?”
“There was no time, his gun was up. Besides, you warned him at the funeral. He had plenty of time to change his mind. But he didn’t.” She leaned forward, intently. “And you knew he wouldn’t. That’s why you asked me to hide in your car. How did you know he’d come after you?”
“Linette described him perfectly, a man of action. When I threatened him, he turned violent, as he did before. Only this time, you were there to nail him.”
“And if I’d been too slow?”
“Even bookworms have to take occasional risks.”
“Well, thanks to you and Linette, Mackey will be arraigned for murder and attempted murder as soon as the hospital cuts him loose. And from the screaming match they had in the emergency room, I don’t think his wife will be bankrolling his defense.”
“He’s always claimed to be a self-made man. He certainly made this disaster on his own.”
“And what about you, Professor? What will you do?”
“I haven’t thought much about it. Take a few days off to pull myself together, I suppose. Then go back to teaching. I’m a scholar. A bit of a drudge, actually. Linette was right about that, too.”
“I’d better get back,” Kovacs said, rising to leave. “Can I offer you some friendly advice, Professor?”
“You saved my life, Sergeant Kovacs, offer away.”
“Fair enough. No disrespect intended, but for a perceptive woman, your girlfriend made some incredibly stupid moves. She idealized Mackey into some kind of conquering hero, and it cost her everything. Don’t make the same mistake. Don’t idealize her memory into some kind of... Apian. She deserves better than that. And so do you.”
I stared at her, surprised. Meeting those intelligent gray eyes. “You’re pretty perceptive yourself, Sergeant. I’ll remember the advice. And you.”
“Sorry if I overstepped.”
“You didn’t. And I’m sorry too.”
“About what?”
“That we met in such terrible circumstances. Given the ways of the world, I probably won’t be seeing you again.”
She hesitated in the doorway, giving me an odd, unreadable look.
“Famous last words,” she said.
Copyright © 2009 by Doug Allyn
A Fellow of Infinite Jest
by Nina Mansfield
One of Nina Mansfield’s short stories was published last year online, in The Chick Lit Review, but this is her print fiction debut, and her first paid fiction publication. As a playwright, she has already been both produced and published. Her plays No Epilogue and Crash Bound were brought out by One Act Play Depot, and she is one of several winners of the Longwood University Ten-Minute Play Competition, for the recently produced Missed Exit.
The smell of sawdust brought it all back. Paint-splattered jeans. Brushes soaking in turpentine. The ever-present power drill. “Walk purposefully holding one. People will just assume you’re busy.” That had been Harrison’s advice during strike. Five shows up. Five shows down. Summer stock in Vermont. I’d been twenty years old then. Summer apprentice. More like summer slave. Understudying Equity actors by night, hammering away at sets by day. I had wished that I could sew, and could join those spindly fingered girls in the costume shop to avoid inhaling paint fumes on a daily basis. My lungs had practically built their own set. Pneumonia the Musical. I drifted through those days in a sleep-deprived haze.
When that mousy, tired-looking girl — what was her name (Jenny? Ginny?) — went home with mono, they’d reassigned me to props. With Harrison. Harrison could make just about anything with a glue gun and a sheet of Styrofoam.
But that had been another decade. Fifteen years ago, to be exact. I half expected him to emerge from the prop closet, glue gun in hand. Overalls hiding his sweaty physique. Striped cap covering his receding hairline. Permanent five-o’clock shadow dotting his sturdy chin. But Harrison belonged to another lifetime. Harrison was dead.
“Can I help you?” I recognized the man-boy without knowing him. A gangly teen with safety goggles flipped up onto his forehead. Brown eyes with too-long lashes. Chin like a shoe horn. Tiniest bump in the bridge of his nose.
“Jaime sent me here for a master key. She can’t find...” I stopped. Was I being rude? “I’m sorry. I’m Sheila Brighton.”
“Oh yeah, the writer. You wrote... that book.” Clearly my fifteen minutes had come and gone.
“I’ll be staying at the Cottage this summer. Well, for a few weeks, anyway. In... I think Jaime called it the blue room. But she can’t find the key.”
“Jed Mann,” the teen responded. No wonder he looked like a ghost.
“Harrison’s...?” It had been ages since I’d spoken that name aloud. Harrison Mann. Was this his brother? No, too young.
“Son,” Jed filled in the gap. I hadn’t known. So Harrison had a son. I tried to keep the surprise from creeping into my face. “I lived with my mother back then. In Manchester.” How did Jed know when back then was?