We didn't take off until just before three. It was a fifty-five-minute flight to Spokane. There wasn't enough time. Eli had said to put the money in the car by four or she would die. I was having trouble breathing again. Like he never imagined someone could hurt. Eli didn't have a phone, so I tried to call Michael from the phone on the plane, but it wouldn't work. I slid my credit card over and over, but it fucking wouldn't work. I tried the phone in the row in front of me. None of them worked. Maybe Michael had called the police. Maybe it would be okay. At 3:55 we made a pass over Spokane, but there was low fog and the pilot said we had to circle. Always circling. We banked and straightened and I saw in a flash my own death, like a carousel ride, faster and faster, around and around, the same faces spinning at the bus stop and high school and the prom and Empire – Dana and Eli and me, and even Ben, until he couldn't hold on anymore and he let go of the railing and fell away. I knew then that I couldn't hold on much longer either (the plane banking, my head sliding against the seat, the tears falling from my eyes) and it occurred to me that I was dead already, that I had been dead since that day by the river, that Eli had put his hand on the chest of a corpse, had comforted a dying boy, and I thought, We are all just loose piles of carbon and regret.
When the fog cleared and the plane stopped circling and I stopped spinning, there was nothing holding me together; when we finally landed, at 4:10 P.M., I felt as if I would dissolve in the air.
As I got off the plane, I half expected to see police meeting me. There were none. I ran through the airport, waded through the other passengers, and sprinted across the terminal, over the sky bridge and into the parking garage, up the elevator to the top floor – low-roofed concrete and round pillars. No cars. The Mercedes was gone. My voice echoed in the garage. "No! Eli!" I ran down three floors to my own car, which I'd left in the garage the night before. My tires squealed coming down the ramp, and I sped away from the airport and across town.
It took me fifteen minutes to get to Eli's house. The Mercedes was parked out front, the For Sale sign still on it. I ran up the stairs to the carriage house apartment. "Eli!" The door was unlocked. He would never leave the door unlocked.
My old friend Eli Boyle was lying on his side. Blood was barely moving, in a slackened flow outward from the wound, across the carpet, onto the kitchen floor. Lying there on the ground he seemed so small, just like when we were kids and I saw him walking to the bus stop, the braces rattling around his knees, drawn into himself, as if he could keep the world away. And I remembered feeling his hand on my chest that day, comforting me, the pellet from Pete's gun burning in my eye.
I suppose there are worse things than rest. "I'm so sorry, Eli," I said. I crouched down next to him. Blood wept from his head.
The gun was next to his body. I picked it up. The shades were pulled in the apartment and it was dark, so I carried the gun out onto the porch. I pulled the pin the way I'd see Eli do it and rolled the chamber out. There were two bullets missing. I slammed it closed, threw the gun across the lawn, and screamed out: "Dana!" And then I looked up at the main house and-
Caroline? Another police officer is here. A Sergeant Spivey? He says you have gone home. Is that right? He says I have to stop writing. We almost made it, didn't we? Just close enough to know what we've missed… if that's not the shape of life-
I've been trying for two days to imagine the words I would use to close this, to finish – I have dreamed for you the profoundest words, Caroline – poetry to temper the sorrow and the longing, to somehow make this life beautiful.
But there are no words. No poetry. And only one thing left for me to do.
Rest now.
Clark
What kind of people have committed suicide because they were tired of life?
– Erasmus, In Praise of Folly
IX
1
She finishes reading and sets the last legal pad down in her lap. Spivey is a pad behind – reading with a confused and cross look on his face, mustache twitching as his lips move with the big words. It's three-thirty in the morning. As she slides the last pad over to Spivey, she remembers what Clark said: There aren't even names for the crimes… Caroline stands, walks across the office to her desk, sits down, and calls information.
"Sunnyvale. California. A listing for Michael and Dana Langford." As she waits to be connected Caroline's attention drifts to the top of her desk and a photo of her parents on their wedding day. It is the only picture she has on her desk, and the only picture she has of them together – a small three-by-five in which her mother rests one gloved hand against the black tuxedo on her father's chest. It is such a sweet, simple moment – her mother's got something funny to tell her father, and he can't wait to hear it. She's tried to imagine it a million times, what her mother might've said at that moment, and she still has no idea. All she knows is that after fifteen years that's the only thing she would take from her desk.
A woman answers on the fourth ring, "Hello?" Airy and easy at three-thirty in the morning. Either Dana is alive or her husband moves on quickly.
"I'm trying to reach Dana Langford," Caroline says.
"This is."
"My name is Caroline Mabry. I'm a police detective in Spokane."
There is a pause and Caroline hears footsteps and a door easing closed, as if the woman has gone into another room. Then Dana says, in a hushed voice, "Look, I have no interest in pressing charges. You can't do anything if I don't press charges, right?"
"Actually, we don't need the victim to press charges, no."
"Please," Dana continues. "It was just a misunderstanding between friends. No one was hurt. Did my husband call you?"
"No, your husband didn't call."
"I just don't want anything bad to happen to Eli," Dana says.
"Anything bad," Caroline repeats, and thinks, She doesn't know he's dead. "Look, Ms. Langford, if you could just answer a couple of questions-"
"I won't get Eli in trouble?"
"You have my word," Caroline says. "We won't be charging Eli with anything."
Dana starts slowly and Caroline has to draw her out with questions. But soon enough, she's just talking, telling the story of herself and Eli and a friend named Clark Mason, who all went to school together. As Caroline jots down notes, Dana explains Stanford and Michael, how they recruited Clark to find high-tech companies, how Eli's interactive game, Empire, came to be one of their companies. It is a strange feeling, hearing Clark's story from this angle, and as Dana begins to describe what happened the day Eli tried to kidnap her, Caroline imagines that her scribbled notes are a kind of staccato ending to Clark's long confession:
Last Friday at 0600, Dana flew up from San Jose to meet Eli re: selling Empire. 0945 Eli picked her up at the airport. He was "edgy, nervous." He drove her to his house "for meeting." She was surprised: no furniture in house. Empty except prom photo above fireplace. Empty house, Eli's pacing gave her creeps. At 1010 Eli borrowed her phone. Called Michael. Handed her the phone. Gave her note to read. Wanted money or would "hurt" her. Said she was in cabin in woods.
At first, Dana was confused. "I was not frightened" Eli never threatened her with gun. She never saw gun. After she read note, they had a "friendly chat!" Felt she could walk away anytime. Didn't try. They sat in empty living room, talking. Eli agitated. "I was worried about him. I'd never seen him like that." She convinced Eli there was no money. No investors. They talked about high school. He started crying. Under great deal of stress. Eli: "I have nothing, no friends." Dana cheered him up: "That's not true. What about Clark?" 1115 Eli gave her phone back and she called Michael. Told him she was fine. Begged him not to call police. Eli drove her to airport. 1235 Dana caught flight back to Oakland/Alameda. 1645 Landed. Husband picked her up.