Page 2 of Kill Your Darlings

He saw her in Bryant Park, dusk of a summer night, the city parting its shoulders to facilitate her grand re-entrance into his life.

She must have seen him, as well, because before he had a chance to extinguish his cigarette, to re-order his mind and body, she was there in front of him, jacket collar quivering, a threat to the tranquility he had created in the ten years since last they’d met.

“Blech,” Wendy said out loud, mainly in response to the prose. For a moment Thom’s words had distracted her from the realization

of what he’d done, what he was doing. They’d grown apart over the years, but Wendy believed, had believed, that the one thing that cemented them together was a commitment to never speak of the past. Their sins were private

sins. It was Thom who saw the world through books and movies, who once upon a time had said that they were like Fred MacMurray

and Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity . They had boarded a train together and there was no getting off, all the way to the final stop. Wendy had also believed that

no one else would ever be allowed on that particular train, not friends or priests or other lovers. And their story wasn’t

for books either.

What was he thinking?

Back downstairs the album had ended, and the guests were searching for coats. Thom was at the bar, pouring himself another

drink, then turned around to scowl at the deserters.

“Is he going to be all right?” Roger said to Wendy at the door, which was rich, considering his own husband was currently

weaving his way toward a collision with a rosebush.

“He’ll be fine. He won’t remember a thing.”

Wendy picked up Emily’s scarf, which she’d dropped to the floor while struggling with her winter parka. “Here you go. How

did you get here? Are you driving?”

“Marcia’s driving me home,” she said.

“Oh, good. Our only sober guest. It was nice meeting you.”

“Maybe we could get together,” Emily said, the words coming fast, like a Band-Aid being ripped away. “We could talk about

poetry.”

“Yes, I’d like that,” Wendy said, wondering if her voice sounded as bemused to Emily as it did in her own head.

Everyone left, and Wendy let Thom pour her another glass of wine she wasn’t planning on drinking. But they sat together and

listened to side two of Live at the Pershing . “Party poopers,” Thom said.

“It’s two a.m.”

“Is it?”

“Yep.”

Wendy considered bringing up the book he was writing but knew it wouldn’t be worth it. She hadn’t been kidding when she told

Roger that he wouldn’t remember anything the next day. He wouldn’t. She could see it in his blank eyes and the way his mouth

was slightly ajar, lower lip hanging. She took a tiny sip of her wine. He had put his empty glass down and was mimicking playing

the piano along with Ahmad Jamal. God, she despised him. It was a new realization. For a long time she’d known she disliked

him, known that the thought of spending the remainder of her years in his company filled her with a kind of dread. She’d also

known that he was never going to change, but she hadn’t admitted to herself yet that she truly hated him. That she wanted

him gone.

I should just kill him, she thought.

“What are you smiling about?” Thom said.

“Just murder,” she said back. “Your murder.”

He laughed and moved his hands along the imaginary keys.

But twenty minutes later he was standing at the top of the stairs on the second-floor landing, a hand loosely on the banister,

a confused look on his face. Wendy was passing from the bedroom to the bathroom but stopped to ask him what was wrong.

“I thought I’d forgotten something downstairs and now I can’t remember what it was.”

He really was drunk, his head drooping, his free hand waggling a finger.

“Your glasses, maybe,” Wendy said.

Then, without really thinking about it, or rather, as though she’d planned this very maneuver before, she reached out toward

the front pocket of his shirt and gently pushed him in the chest. “Jesus,” he said, tottering backward then righting himself,

but he was wearing socks and one of his legs gave way and he fell down the stairs, hard, spinning all the way over then thudding

to a halt at the bottom landing. The violence of it was extraordinary.

“Thom!” Wendy yelled, then followed him carefully down the steps. He was silent except for a low purr that reminded her of

a cat. But when she’d reached him, he suddenly came to, springing back onto his feet as though he’d simply fallen onto a couch

and was now getting up again.

“Fuck,” he said. “What just happened?”

“You fell down the stairs, Thom,” she said. “You’re drunk.”

He asked again in the morning, when he’d found the bruises on his body. “I don’t know how you fell,” Wendy said. “I was brushing

my teeth. Anything broken?”

“My last shred of dignity,” he said, and went downstairs to start the coffee.

ii

Thom checked the weather app on his phone; it told him it was currently raining in New Essex.

He looked outside but saw no sign of rain, even though the dark, swollen sky was threatening.

He felt terrible, having drunk far too much the night before, and he’d woken up with about five mysterious bruises down one side of his body (Wendy had gleefully informed him he’d fallen down the stairs).

Still, he was determined to ignore the pain, to get outside and take a walk, try to stretch his muscles, clear his head a little.

He stared at the app again, then out through the window that looked onto Naumkeag Cove, now at low tide, gulls and crows hovering overhead.

Goose Neck was a small, rocky peninsula that jutted into the outer harbor of New Essex, and for whatever reason it had its own weather patterns, ignoring all forecasts.

He decided to risk it and went to get his coat.

He was halfway through the circling walk that would take him along most of the perimeter of Goose Neck when the rain started

up. He didn’t mind. It was a misty kind of rain, and he was planning on showering anyway when he got back, so what difference

did it make if he got wet? He buttoned the top button of his coat and kept walking, still trying to pick apart the chronology

of the dinner party the night before.

It had started fine, Roger and Don in good form, Marcia jumpy as always, Wendy’s roast lamb a huge hit. Sally Johnson hadn’t

wanted to be there, but he wasn’t sure Sally wanted to be anywhere, except for maybe alone with a book. She was a true academic,

that one, almost as though she’d gotten into the field out of a love for literature instead of the desire to only have classes

on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the chance to take sabbaticals every five years.

He was surprised that Marcia had invited Emily Majorino. Pleased too. When she’d first been brought on, back in January, he’d

been entranced by her quiet beauty. She’d mesmerized him, but not in any lustful way. Something about her stillness, her quiet

voice, her mysterious life. (She was much younger than he was, but as far as he could tell she had absolutely zero social-media

presence. He’d looked.) He imagined them talking to each other, confiding in each other. He imagined giving her advice. Sometimes,

oddly, these fantasies would warp into her pressing a cold washcloth against his head, the way his mother used to do. Or else

he imagined her cooking him a meal, telling him everything was going to be okay. He supposed he was getting old.

The mist was being replaced by actual rain, and Thom sped up, lowering his head, and still picking away at the memories from the previous night.

He knew that Roger had done his party trick—his J.

Alfred Walken—and that the drinks had flowed.

Sally had left early. No surprise there.

And he knew that he’d sat next to Emily for some time and that they’d been talking passionately, or maybe it had just been he who was doing the talking.

But the words were gone. He also had no memory of how the evening had ended, just that he’d been downstairs by the fire and the next thing he knew he’d woken up in the morning, his mouth dry, his forehead damp, and his body aching as though he’d been beaten with a croquet mallet.

He turned onto Jewett Lane and stopped for a moment to look across the harbor, pocked with rain. He rubbed at his ribs and

a memory from the night before, a fragment of a memory, pricked at his mind. The upstairs hallway. Wendy’s face. A look of

revulsion. Then it was gone.

“Okay there, Thom?”

It was one of his neighbors, Fred, out walking his dog. Thom blinked in Fred’s direction. “Oh hey, Fred,” he said. “Just thinking

about going for a swim.”

“Ha-ha.”

Back at home, Thom felt worse than he had before his walk. The cold had gotten into his bones, and the partial memory from

the night before, his wife’s face, was haunting him.

“How’d I fall down the goddamn stairs?” he said to Wendy, who was putting together some kind of casserole in the kitchen.

“I pushed you, naturally,” she said.

Wendy had a morbid sense of humor, she always had, and he sometimes wondered if it was because of what the two of them had

done in the past. Or was it in spite of it?

“No, really, you must have heard me fall.”

“I did. I was brushing my teeth. For a moment I thought you were dead.”

“And how did that make you feel?” Thom was pouring himself coffee and noticed a slight tremor in the hand that held the cup. It was worrying.

“In the time it took me to walk down the stairs and check on you I’d already spent the life insurance.”

“Oh yeah? What on?”

“A couple trips to France. A new downstairs bathroom. Maybe a Birkin bag.”

“You did think about it.”

She smiled, and Thom felt colder.

“You read the text from Jason?”

“No,” Thom said, pulling out his phone.

Their son had planned a visit for the weekend, and Thom assumed that the text was a cancellation, but instead he’d texted