Already Gone (2 page)

“The good news is that it’s a clean cut. You probably won’t need surgery.”

This is good news.

Anything is good news when you’re on morphine.

My hand is resting on a silver suture tray and covered in a cocoon of white gauze that makes my arm look like an oversized Q-tip. The doctor examines the bandage, then puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “You’re not a piano player, are you?”

I ignore him and turn toward the cop sitting on the red plastic chair next to the bed. He’s talking to Diane, asking her if she knows of anyone who might want to hurt me. He wants to know if I have any enemies.

Diane is staring at the walls, the floor, her hands, anywhere but at him. There are tears on her cheeks, and when she speaks her voice is soft.

“No one,” she says. “Of course not.”

The cop looks at me. “How about you? Anyone out there holding a grudge?”

“A grudge?” Diane looks from me to the cop, then back. “Over what?”

The cop stares at me, waiting.

“No,” I say. “I don’t think so.”

The cop scribbles something in his notebook.

“What is he talking about?” Diane asks. “Does someone want to hurt you?”

“No.” I shake my head. “No one.”

I can tell Diane wants to say something else, but instead she just frowns and looks away.

Nobody says anything for a while. Finally, Diane straightens in her chair and says, “So, what’s the next step?” She reaches for my good hand, squeezes, then turns back to the cop. “How long before you find these people?”

The cop looks up, and to his credit he doesn’t smile, but I can see it in his eyes.

He tells her once the report is filed, it’ll be assigned to a detective who will go over the details of the case, talk to witnesses, run any descriptions through the database. He tells her they’ll follow every lead to make sure the two men are caught.

If this were any other time, I’d laugh.

The cop will file a report. A detective might even look at the report, but that’s where it’ll stop. Random violence cases, especially the ones with no witnesses and no fatalities, are rarely solved.

I know this.

The cop knows this.

I think on some level Diane knows this, too, but we all go through the motions and play our roles. Who knows, maybe this will be the one time the system works.

Once the cop is gone, the doctor comes back with prescriptions for pain medication and antibiotics. He hands them to Diane and says, “Keep the hand clean and watch for infection. Make sure he takes the antibiotics. If you see anything strange, bring him in.”

Diane tells him she will, and after he leaves, she sits next to me on the side of the bed.

“What did that cop mean about someone holding a grudge?”

“No idea.”

“Is it because of your dad?” she asks. “You mentioned some of his friends in the book. You don’t think one of them saw it and—”

“You’re reaching,” I say. “The two guys tonight were strangers, I’ve never seen them before. They were probably drug addicts who wanted my ring so they could pawn it.”

“But they didn’t take your wallet.”

“No,” I say. “They didn’t.”

“It’s strange, Jake.”

“It is what it is.” I sit up, slow, and point to my coat. “Let’s get out of here.”

Diane helps me with my jacket. My ribs are wrapped tight, and my hand won’t fit through the sleeve so we run the jacket under my arm like a toga. It looks ridiculous, and I can’t help but smile.

Diane doesn’t.

“I just don’t understand why they came after you,” she says. “There were a lot of people in that bar, but they waited outside for you. There has to be a reason.”

“I was alone. That was enough.”

“You think that’s it?”

“What else could it be?”

Diane stares at me for a moment, then shakes her head and looks away. “I don’t know.”

I take her hand. “If you start looking for answers and asking, ‘Why me?’ you’ll go crazy. They came after me because they saw me as an easy target, that’s all.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” she says. “You had money, and they didn’t take it.”

“I wish they had,” I say. “I hate to lose that ring.”

“It was just a ring. We’ll get another.”

“We can’t do that. It’s bad luck.”

Diane laughs, soft and delicate. “The first one wasn’t exactly lucky, was it?”

“No,” I say. “I guess it wasn’t.”

When we get out to the waiting room, I see Doug sitting in a chair by the window. His head is back and his mouth is open and he’s snoring. The sound echoes.

“Has he been here all this time?” I ask.

“I guess so,” Diane says. “He must’ve stuck around after he called me.”

I don’t remember how long I was in the parking lot. My only memory is of someone pulling me up by one arm, then sitting in Doug’s backseat with him telling me to keep my hand over my head.

“You want to wake him up?” Diane asks.

I tell her to go ahead, and she does.

Doug opens his eyes and looks from Diane to me. When he sees my hand, he winces. “Shit, Jake, what’d they say?”

“Apparently, someone cut off my finger.”

Diane looks at me, frowns.

Doug shakes his head. “Who knows, maybe it’ll improve your typing.”

“Always the optimist,” I say.

Doug stands and grabs his coat and slides it over his shoulders. “What did the cops tell you?”

“That they’re working hard, following every lead.”

Doug nods. “Then I guess it’s just a matter of time.”

He winks at me.

I can’t help but smile.

The three of us cross the parking lot together. I feel fine, but Diane holds my arm every step of the way.

Doug is reminiscing.

“I never once locked my doors until I went to college, and you want to know why I started?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Because people kept coming in and taking my dope. Never because of this shit.”

“It’s a different world.”

“And one I don’t understand,” he says. “It’s like I woke up one day and everything was off-kilter. Not a lot, but enough to where all the rules have changed.”

“I think that’s called old age.”

“I never locked my doors growing up,” Diane says. “Now, I never leave them unlocked.”

“See, your wife agrees with me.” He looks at her, asks, “Where did you grow up, hon?”

“Name a place. My father was in the military so we moved a lot, base to base mostly.”

“Military bases are safer than cities,” I say.

“Obviously, you’ve never lived on one.”

“Not everyone grew up like you did, Jake. Some of us remember a time when you didn’t need to look over your shoulder when you stepped outside.” Doug points at my bandaged hand. “And this kind of thing was unheard of. If they wanted your ring so bad, why didn’t they just make you take the goddamn thing off?”

“You see?” Diane pulls at my arm. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Tell you the truth,” Doug says. “I’ve had enough. A couple more years teaching, and I’m done. I’ve got a little place on the beach in Mexico. All mine. It’ll be me, a few drinks, and the waves.”

“Sounds nice,” Diane says.

“It’s beautiful. I’ll make sure to have the two of you down for a visit. You can see for yourself.”

No one says anything else until we get to Doug’s car.

“I’ll talk to Anne Carlson about rescheduling the meeting,” Doug says. “She won’t mind, considering the situation.”

“I don’t want to reschedule.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want everyone making a big deal out of this.”

“It is a big deal,” Diane says. “Take some time before you jump back into things.”

“I don’t need time off. I want to move on. As far as I’m concerned, this never happened.”

“But it did happen. You can’t just pretend it didn’t.”

“I’m not pretending, but I’m not going to let it stop my life either.” I look at Doug. “I appreciate it, but I’ll be fine.”

“Your call.” Doug unlocks the car door and gets inside. “If you change your mind, let me know. Anne Carlson and I go way back. She’ll understand.”

I tell him I will.

Diane and I step back and watch him pull out of the hospital parking lot and drive away. We walk to our car, and when we get there, I notice she’s crying.

“You okay?”

She nods and fakes a smile. “I just feel so bad for you. You didn’t deserve this.”

“It could’ve been a lot worse.”

This doesn’t make her feel better, but I can’t think of anything else to say that might, so I put my good arm around her shoulder and pull her close. She leans into me until the tears stop, and then we get in the car and drive home in silence.

Halfway there, I feel my hand start to pulse under the bandage, and I realize the morphine is wearing off. The pain is still far away, but I know it won’t be for long.

I take it as a warning.

Things are about to get worse.

The package arrives with the morning mail.

It’s small, about the size of a coffee can, and covered in packing tape. I pick it up off the porch and set it on the kitchen counter.

“Another gift?” Diane asks. “Who’s it from?”

“No idea.” I hold it up and turn it from side to side. We’ve been getting a few late gifts since the wedding, but this one’s different. There’s no card and no return address, just our last name written on the plain white wrapping. “How the hell am I supposed to open it?”

Diane takes out a pair of scissors from one of the drawers and says, “Let me try.”

“I can do it.”

She looks at my bandaged hand and pulls the scissors away. “You should let me. It’ll be easier if I—”

“I’m not a goddamn child, Diane. I can do it.” My voice comes out harsher than I’d intended, and I stop myself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

This isn’t the first time I’ve snapped at her in the past few days. Since the attack, all I’ve done is lie around the house and work my way through the bottle of Vicodin they gave me at the hospital. The pills help with the pain, but they don’t do a thing for the constant itch grinding up from the spot where my finger used to be.

It makes it tough to stay in a good mood.

Diane says she understands, but that doesn’t make me feel good about it.

“I am sorry,” I say.

Diane sets the scissors on the counter and walks out of the kitchen and into the living room, away from me.

I don’t blame her.

I look down at the scissors, then at the bandage on my hand. I feel the anger building in my chest, and I push it away the best I can.

It’s getting harder to do each time.

When I think I have it under control, I pick up the scissors and set them on top of the package, then go to the closet by the front door and grab my coat.

Diane comes around the corner. “Are you leaving?”

“Going for a walk,” I say. “I need to get out of the house for a while, get some fresh air, clear my head.”

She steps closer and puts her hand on my arm, then leans in and kisses me, soft. When she pulls away, her eyes never leave mine, and as always, I lose myself a little inside them.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” she says. “With all that’s happened, everything you’re feeling is completely natural.”

I nod, but I don’t buy into the “victim’s trauma” theory, at least not in my case. All I want to do is move on, go back to the way things were before. Sometimes I think I can do it, but there’s another voice, a dark voice, and it won’t let me forget, no matter how hard I try.

“I’ll be fine.”

Diane smiles, touches my cheek, then turns away.

I open the front door and walk out into the afternoon.

When I get to the end of the driveway, I turn left and start toward the university. I don’t know how far I’ll get, but I plan on walking until I can start acting human again, however long that takes.

Luckily, it’s a nice walk.

The sidewalks in our neighborhood are wide and lined with towering oak trees whose leaves drape green over the streets in the summer and cover the ground gold in the fall. The closer you get to the campus, the older the houses and the quieter the streets.

Quiet.

That’s taken some time to get used to.

When Diane and I first met, I had a studio apartment a few blocks from the capitol. There was a rooming house next door and a bar across the street, and it was anything but quiet. It wasn’t the worst place I’d lived, but you didn’t want to be out walking after dark, either.

Diane wanted nothing to do with it.

She was working as a buyer for a local art gallery, and living in a condo downtown. We decided that if we were going to get married, we needed a bigger place in a better neighborhood, something we could grow into. So, after I took the job at the university, we started looking.

We fell in love with the first one we saw.

It was a small brick Tudor tucked into one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. Not too far from the gallery, and within walking distance of the university.

It was perfect, and we put an offer on it that night.

We didn’t move in right away. Diane was superstitious and didn’t want to live together before we were married.

“We can wait a month,” she said.

I pointed out that we’d spent almost every night together since we met, but she wouldn’t back down. She wanted us to be married first.

If I said it made sense to me, I’d be lying, but you do what you do for love. In the end, taking a step back to catch our breath turned out to be a good thing. Up until then, things had been anything but slow.

The first time I saw Diane was at a reading Doug had arranged at the university. I’d published a short novel with the university press earlier that year, and I was being considered for a teaching position. Doug thought a reading would cement the deal.

Normally, I would’ve jumped at the chance, but not this time. My father had just died of a heart attack in prison a few weeks earlier, and the last thing I wanted to do was get up and read in front of a crowd. I tried to back out, but Doug was insistent, so I went along.

The reading went fine, and after I’d finished, I stuck around to sign copies of the book. Diane was one of the first to come up. She told me how much my story had touched her and how it’d given her the courage to let go of her past and start over again. She said the book made her feel like anything was possible.

We talked for a few minutes, but I don’t remember a word of what we said. What I do remember is the easy way she brushed a loose strand of dark hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear in one smooth and fluid motion, then smiling up at me in a way that I knew would change everything.

It was impossible for me to pretend I didn’t notice.

I signed a few more books that night, and talked to everyone who came up, but I kept looking for her. And when the crowd thinned and people drifted away, she was still there, waiting for me.

That was the first night.

A month later we were engaged.

For the most part, people were supportive. We were both adults, and since neither of us had living family, we didn’t have to explain anything to anyone. In the end, it was just the two of us.

We were married by a judge on a Wednesday afternoon.

It was beautiful.

It still is.

I walk to the campus then turn around and head back. No one else is on the streets, and by the time I get home things don’t seem so bad. When I open the door and go inside, I feel better than I have in days. Diane is sitting on the couch with a book open on her lap.

She looks up at me and smiles. “Feel better?”

I walk over and kiss her.

“What’s that for?” she asks.

“For being here.”

Diane rolls her eyes, then turns back to her book and says, “Think about what you want to do for dinner.”

I go into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water. I finish it, then take a beer from the refrigerator and drink half of it.

For a while, I stand at the sink and stare out the window at a pair of squirrels chasing each other through the backyard. I stay there until the beer is gone, then I drop the bottle in the trash and open two more, one for me and one for Diane.

On my way back to the living room, I pass the package on the counter. The scissors are still on top, right where I left them. I set the bottles down and go to work.

Whoever taped the box did a thorough job, and cutting into it one-handed turns out to be a challenge. After struggling for a few minutes, I manage to cut through one corner. I peel away tape in long strips until I’m able to open the top and look inside.

The box is filled with bubble wrap, and as I pull it away, I begin to see the outline of a clear glass jar inside. It’s heavy, and there’s a piece of stationery taped to the lid, blank except for the words “
From the desk of Thomas Wentworth
” printed along the top.

The name doesn’t mean anything to me, so I drop the note on the counter, strip away the last of the bubble wrap, and hold the jar up to the light coming in through the kitchen window.

When I do, I almost drop it.

The jar is half-filled with a thick amber liquid that glows gold in the sunlight. My severed finger is floating inside, weighed down by the wedding ring just beneath the knuckle.

At first, my mind doesn’t register what I’m seeing.

My finger looks shrunken, fake. The severed end is a shred of torn flesh that drifts back and forth in the dark liquid like pale seaweed surrounding a jagged nub of bone.

I stare at it for a long time, feeling my hand pulse under the bandage. When I finally set the jar on the counter and step away, all I can think is that I got lucky.

I got my ring back.