The last item I took was the gun Park had used to kill. Everything else I had taken was alien to me. The gun was comforting in its familiarity.
There was nothing else of Park that I understood half as well as I did the lethal mechanics of such a weapon. I could follow the rationale in his choices and actions, but it was very much like a novice speaker of a foreign language translating everything he heard into his native tongue. The sense was there, but it was arrived at only after great labor, and with little nuance.
Fluency would take time. But I’d made a start, and learned this much.
29
PARK DID NOT WATCH JASPER LEAVE WITH OMAHA. he couldn’t. If he had stood at the door and watched them drive away up the street he would have broken in two. Instead he kissed her forehead and tapped the tip of her nose with his pinkie while standing at Rose’s bedside, to remind himself that he could take care of only one of them.
It did not hollow him out to watch her sleeping in Jasper’s arms, carried from the bedroom. He felt full, pressure at every seam, in danger of exploding.
He attended to business first.
He came back to Rose. Still reciting, she shivered from time to time or clenched her teeth as if a sudden pain gripped her.
From the bedside table he picked up the plastic-wrapped bottle. Rose’s eyes were scanning back and forth across the far wall, as if monitoring the dangers of the game. He ripped open the plastic bag, and the bottle of pills dropped to the floor with a rattle. He picked it up, studied the instructions for opening the patented childproof cap, pressed down while pinching, twisted one way and then the other, and the cap popped off. He broke the foil seal, picked out the wadded cotton, and shook a light blue tablet into his palm.
“Rose.”
She didn’t answer.
“Rose.”
She didn’t answer.
“Rose. I love you more than life.”
He put the tablet at her lips, pushed it past her teeth, placed a water glass against her mouth, and tilted it up. She coughed and then swallowed.
She wiped water from her chin and looked around.
“Park?”
He shook another pill into his palm.
“Yes.”
Her eyes cleared.
“What the fuck, Park? Now I’m gonna have to start all over.”
He shook his head.
“No, you don’t, hon. You don’t have to start over. You finished it. I wish I’d been here to see.”
She smiled.
“It was so cool. So quiet. It was.”
He put another tablet at her lips.
“Here, take this.”
She took it between her fingers and looked at it.
“What is it?”
“It’ll make you feel better.”
She blew out her lips.
“Anything that can make me feel better. I mean, I feel like shit. What is this, cancer-flu or something? I’ve never been this sick. I mean, I never get sick at all.”
She put the tablet in her mouth, and he gave her the water glass, and she swallowed.
“Hey. Have I been asleep for a long time?”
Park nodded.
“Yeah.”
She rubbed her eyes.
“Because everything seems really weird. Like when you’re a kid and you dream you missed Christmas and you wake up and it’s August fifteenth, but you still feel like you missed it. I feel like that. And sick. Rub my neck, baby.”
She rolled onto her side, and Park rubbed her neck.
The muscles in her back had stopped twitching.
She opened her mouth wide and yawned.
“Okay, whatever those are, they’re great. Please tell me they’re not illegal.”
“Not illegal.”
“Can I have another?”
“Sure.”
He gave her another.
She smiled at him.
“I know it’s not your thing, babe, but you should take one of those.”
He shook his head.
She nodded.
“I know. Never lose control, Parker Haas, you never know who might be watching.”
She touched his face.
“I love you. I love you more than life.”
She closed her eyes.
He didn’t say anything.
She sighed and opened her eyes and saw him.
“How am I going to be able to look after you?”
He shook his head and told her he didn’t know, and she kind of sighed like she always did when she thought he wasn’t getting something.
“No, I mean, really, how am I gonna look the fuck after you?”
He told her that she didn’t have to look after him, that he was okay.
She was staring at the ceiling.
“You’re such a, God, I hate the word, but you’re such an innocent. I mean, how am I supposed to walk away from that?”
He didn’t say anything.
She shook her head, wondering at something.
“I’ve known you how long? Already I can see it. You’re destined to walk into traffic while reading a book. Or to get stabbed by a drunk asshole in a bar when you try to defend some tramp’s honor. Or do something even stupider like join the Marines and go get killed for oil because you think it’s the right thing to do.”
He knew the rest, every word, by heart, but he let her say it all.
“And how am I supposed to keep you from doing something like that if you’re up there and I’m down here? I mean, where did you come from? How did you drop into my life? You’re, God, you’re everything I don’t want. Hold me.”
He held her.
She yawned.
“I can only look after you all the time if we’re together.”
He held her.
She twisted partway around to see his face.
“Really together.”
He nodded.
“So let’s get married.”
She blinked slowly, smiled, nodded.
“Yeah, let’s get fucking married.”
Her eyes closed. She slept. Just as she had years before when they’d first had the conversation the morning after the first night they spent together.
Park stood, scooped her in his arms, walked down the hall, didn’t look at the blood-soaked towels on the floor, and carried her into the nursery.
Settling her into Omaha’s crib, curled and slight; she opened her eyes once more.
“Park?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Omaha?”
“She’s with Jasper.”
Rose nodded, closed her eyes again, nuzzled her chin against his palm.
“Oh. That’s good. She’ll be safe with him.”
He spent five minutes slipping pills one by one into her mouth, offering her water, and making sure she did not choke in her sleep. Then he sat on the floor next to the crib and put his hand through the bars to hold hers.
Her eyes moved back and forth under her lids; she sighed once, breathing deeply all the while, until her breathing shallowed. Slowed. And stopped.
Leaving the room, he looked at the gun on the floor, next to puddled blood seeping. He was feeling what his father had demonstrated with his shotgun. But he was not tempted to pick up the pistol. He had something he had to do.
At the back of the closet he found his uniform wrapped in a dry cleaner’s plastic. It had been over a year since he had worn it. In that time he’d become less disciplined in his workouts. The extra fifteen pounds he’d built up for the street through daily weight training and nonstop calorie cramming had fallen off. He had to snug his belt an extra notch, and his shirt hung loose at the shoulders and neck. He couldn’t find his pepper spray. His baton was buried under a pile of shoes. His hat, on a top closet shelf, carried a thick layer of dust. He had only one pair of navy socks to wear, holes worn in both heels. The Walther did not fit the holster as well as his old nine-millimeter had, but it would serve the same task if needed.