BRACE
I tore at the sealed flap. I looked into the envelope. Inside was a new, crisp fifty-dollar bill and a note. I thought about the implications. I thought about my life and my addictions. I thought about my love for Jane. I feared what would be written on the note.
I knew that reading the note would be a defining moment. I had waited patiently for Jane to return to my life. I also knew that whatever the words told me to do, that I would obey. There is no greater love than to trust your life to your partner. I had a feeling that my life was in Jane’s hands. I took the bill and tucked it into my pajama top pocket, then I unfolded and read the message from my lover, my Jane.
Dear Brace,
Come and play with me.
I want you to write about our relationship and how we celebrated our love. I want you to write about the night you broke my heart. I want you to write about our months apart. I want you to write about this morning. Tell the details, but be brief. Write it like a story. Write it in first person. Refer to me as Jane. Leave your written words on the kitchen counter when you meet me tonight.
Further instruction will be found at Flanner’s Mortuary on our table. Arrive at midnight. You’ll be glad you did.
Warmest Regards,
MOG
(Mistress of Games)
Jane, I will do anything for you.
She finished reading the words written by Brace. He had left them on the kitchen counter as she had requested. She smiled briefly before folding and depositing them in her coat pocket. Maybe she would send a copy to Jill, or the mortician at Flanner’s, or to Brace’s sister in Utah. She chuckled. The games had just begun.
Geoff Cooper
F I WERE TO WRITE everything I wanted to about Dick Laymon, my contribution to this book would run three-quarters-of-a-million words, thereby requiring another volume. Collectors would demonstrate in the streets outside the independent bookstores, screaming for my head. As the leg bone is connected to the hip bone, the calls for my death would follow the chain: booksellers demand my evisceration, and, in an effort to appease everyone, the editors of this book would place me in the stockade, taking turns of beating me about the head and shoulders with hardbound copies of The Midnight Tour, only to stop after publisher Rich Chizmar decides to throw me into the middle of Camden Yards with a big sign around my neck, identifying me as a Yankees fan, and have the citizenry of Baltimore (all those Orioles fans shudder) bludgeon me with baseball bats. In the interest of self-preservation, I will attempt to keep this a reasonable length.
I think most have heard The Saga Of The Jets Hat. If not, check your copies of Night in the Lonesome October (dust jacket photo) and Friday Night in Beast House, or acquire a videotape of The Late Show with David Letterman from 20th October, 2000. I won’t go there this time: Kelly already wrote about that. Anyone could do a master’s thesis on the importance of the body of Laymon’s work. So I’m going to have to go somewhere else, and keep it short enough to ensure I live long enough to see this make print. This ain’t gonna be easy.
Dick Laymon saved my life. Now I don’t mean this in the way that I mean that Lucy Taylor’s novel, Dancing with Demons, kept me from drinking at the time—which it did. If Dick Laymon did not do what he did when he did it, I’d have dined on a bullet. That’s about as blunt as I can say it. I was leaning toward the 230-grain hollowpoint in favor of the 165-grain variety. Fuck it: if you’re going to do something, do it right—that’s my motto. Half-measures avail nothing.
When my ex-wife left me for the guy across the street, I’ve no shame in saying I was suicidal. Everything that meant anything to me was gone. I had no job, no kid, no wife. She took the pasta from the cupboards (I confronted her about that. She said: “What the fuck do you need it for?”), the only running car, every reason I could think of to live.
I was sitting at my desk one day about a week after she moved out, thinking that I’d need a second magazine for the weapon. My intent was to walk over there, take care of her and her boyfriend, and then have the last bullet for lunch.
My phone rang. The caller ID box identified the caller as “Anonymous,” and I thought, Oh, fuck. It’s one of her lawyers calling to bend me over the couch, stick it in and break it off. I knew it wasn’t Rainy or Keene, with their daily call to see if I’d gone postal yet. It was too early in the day—about four in the afternoon—and their numbers always came up on the ID. The only “Anonymous” number that called during that time was Ray, and I’d just talked to him before, so there was little chance of him calling back right away. I picked up the phone with two fingers, paused a moment before I said hello.
They asked for Geoff. Lawyers always ask for you by both names: first and last, and are never as informal as a shortened down version of your first name. To a lawyer, I’d be “Geoffrey,” just like when I was a little kid and my mom was really pissed. This wasn’t a lawyer. Maybe some guy she hired, an ex-cop with buddies still on the force who would come over and beat the shit out of me with impunity. Maybe one of her boyfriend’s friends, calling to threaten me, suggest I leave town or end up as gator food.
“This is,” I said, looked around the room for a weapon.
“Hi, Geoff! It’s Dick Laymon. How’re you doing?”
I lied, told him I was hanging in there, and was quite relieved that he was calling and not a lawyer. We yapped for a while, then he said the reason he was calling was he really dug a story of mine that was online, and he asked me if I had anything that was unpublished that he might be able to read. Me, being my ever-eloquent self, said, “Are you fucking shitting me?”
He assured me no fecal matter—or fornication thereof—was involved. “Just send me a good, unpublished story, if you can.”
If I could. Yeah. You know: if I, some unknown writer who nine people on the face of the planet heard of, would be kind enough to send him, Richard Laymon, a story to read. If I could. Let me see if I could fit it into my oh-so-busy schedule.
“You kidding? Of course! I’ll e-mail it to you right now.”
Have you ever seen a cat about to fall into the bathtub? Because that’s what it felt like Dick did on the other end of the phone. I heard him freeze up, panicking at the thought. “Well...you see, Geoff, I...I always get messed up with attached files, and Kelly isn’t home to open it for me. Would it be okay if you sent it to the house?”
I printed out the story, dropped it in the mailbox that night so it would go out first thing in the morning. I thought it was a little odd that he specified an unpublished story, but who was I to question the intent of Richard Laymon? He was a Big-Time Author, and I was just some guy bumming around Fort Myers, Florida, trying to not look across the street and see my wife’s Thunderbird parked in front of some other guy’s house.
Okay, so what I could do is wait until one of ’em left for work. Surprise ’em, give ’em a bash on the head as they walked out the door, force my way in before it closed fully and start popping caps. Nah: too cliche. Better to make her live with the guilt. Maybe just do myself right here, right now—pull a Robert E. Howard. Bleh. No style. Oh! I know: I go and do it in the T-bird. Sit down inside, and blam! Splatter my brains all over the upholstery. I liked that idea. That was it. Or wait! Maybe I should consider the possibilities of high voltage...