Page 5 of Kill Your Darlings

“Okay,” Wendy said, turning her head to look toward the kitchen. Her shoulders had relaxed.

Thom decided to try a joke, and said, “Want her all to herself, do you?”

“Something like that,” Wendy said. “It’s not every day I meet a fan.”

Later, in bed, Thom thought about the conversation with Wendy, how strongly she’d reacted. She had genuine cause to be concerned.

He’d given her reasons throughout the years to not trust him. Maybe there really was some jealousy involved, that Emily/Annabel

had shown interest in Wendy and she didn’t want him to screw it up. Fair enough, he thought, and began to doze off, but kept

thinking about Emily’s real name, and about that poem by Poe. How’d that go again? Wendy had it memorized, he knew that much.

He’d tried, as well, but it somehow hadn’t stuck. All he could remember now was the first two lines, and he whispered them

to himself now: “It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea.”

v

The Airbnb was smaller than it had looked in the pictures, but it was very clean, and the owners had left a gift basket with a bottle of red wine and a small box of chocolate truffles from some local candy shop.

Wendy opened the front-facing window of their apartment to let the air in. They’d gotten onto their Amtrak train that morning

at South Station in Boston, each wrapped in scarves and fleece coats, and they’d disembarked at Union Station into an altogether

different climate. Balmy air, even a hint of humidity. She was determined to enjoy herself a little, and to see that Thom

enjoyed himself as well. She knew that other people would see that as horrific, but she didn’t, exactly. If Thom were dying

of cancer and had only months to live, then bringing him down here for one last hurrah would be seen as something kind, as

life-affirming. And Thom did have a cancer rotting him. A lifetime of guilt and shame had metastasized into something uncontrollable.

Before leaving on this trip, Wendy had steeled herself and read the first forty pages of his “mystery” novel. It was worse

than she’d thought it would be. It was a confession badly disguised as fiction.

“Open this wine now, or go out and find a place to have a drink?” It was Thom, standing behind her. He’d spent the train ride

studying what pubs and restaurants they should eat at during their trip. He hadn’t mentioned once, not since she’d first told

him about the trip, how Georgetown was a return to the place where it all began. And he hadn’t mentioned the Exorcist Steps.

“I need to take a shower after that train ride. Why don’t you go find a place for a drink and text me where you are and I’ll

meet you?”

“Mission accepted,” he said, and saluted her.

She made a face, and he added, “Sorry, Jesus. Something about this trip has me on edge.”

In her shower she thought about what he’d said, hoping that what was making him nervous was the fact that he hadn’t yet had a drink by midafternoon, and not that he’d cottoned on to her reason for taking him on this trip.

For some reason she thought about Samsa, their old cat, and how when they’d made the decision to have the vet put him down they’d both been relieved to find out that vets made house visits these days to perform that particular service.

As it was, Samsa’s last moments had been stretching in a bar of sunlight on the second-floor deck and not shaking uncontrollably at the animal hospital.

If Thom turned out to be miserable on this trip, she didn’t know if she could go through with it.

By the time she got to the Tombs, the bar he’d picked for an afternoon drink, she’d walked in out of the sunshine, her eyes

taking a long time to adjust, and watched Thom come into focus. He was in his element, one elbow on the bar, a pint glass

in his hand, talking to a much younger woman, who was looking at him with some interest. Not a lot of interest, but not revulsion

either. Thom, naturally, had no idea that Wendy had entered the bar; he was far too focused on the pretty girl and whatever

story he was spinning. Wendy stood for a moment and watched. Over the past few years, she’d felt herself becoming invisible

to the world around her—it was a cliché, she knew, but one she happened to be living. Thom, on the other hand, had attained

some second age of attractiveness, or maybe it was just a fairly interesting style, in his fifties. He’d let his thinning

hair grow out just a bit over the ears, brushing it back, and he’d started wearing black-rimmed eyeglasses. Wendy didn’t imagine

he was in any way sexually appealing to the young woman he was talking to, but he had something going on. Maybe he’d mentioned his recently published piece on John Cheever called “Lear in Suburbia,” and how it had been

nominated for an obscure academic prize, and he was definitely footing the young woman’s bill. Wendy made her way slowly to

the bar.

“Ah, my wife,” Thom said theatrically, and Wendy wondered how many drinks he’d managed to consume already. She hadn’t taken

that long in the shower.

The woman’s name was Alice Something and she was a grad student in Georgetown’s Department of English, out celebrating the completion of a final draft of her thesis.

She was interesting, actually, and just when Wendy was beginning to wonder if they’d be stuck with her for the evening, two of her friends showed up and whisked her to a table.

“Having fun?” Wendy said.

“I am,” he said, “but we don’t have to stay. I do realize I found the darkest bar to come to on this beautiful afternoon.”

“Yes, how did you find this place?”

“It’s famous, and it’s named after one of Eliot’s cat poems.”

“And they have alcoholic milkshakes,” Wendy said, reading the menu.

“Let’s go walk around the campus,” Thom said, “then find a place for dinner.”

It wasn’t until it was dark and they were slowly meandering their way back to their Airbnb from the Vietnamese restaurant

they’d eaten at that Thom mentioned the significance of where they were.

“Is this really the first time we’ve been back here since...?”

“I think so,” Wendy said.

“How old were we?”

“It was eighth grade, so I think we were probably both fourteen.”

“God, time is strange.” Thom was speaking too loud, a sure sign that he’d had too much drink. At one point during the meal

she’d gone to the restroom, noticing that his gin and tonic was half-empty. When she’d returned, it was three-quarters full.

Either she was losing her mind or he had quickly sucked down his drink, flagged a waiter to bring him a new one, then had

two big swallows of the new drink. All in the time it had taken her to pee, and then reapply her lipstick.

“Meaning what?”

“I don’t know. Meaning we were here in this same place, younger versions of ourselves, without any idea of all the things that were going to happen. And it was a different time back then, wasn’t it? I mean, we were fourteen and on our own at night, running around. Goddamn freedom.”

“We weren’t on our own,” Wendy said.

“Not on the trip, we weren’t, but the night you took me to the steps.”

“I don’t think so,” Wendy said. “That’s not how I remember it. We told MissAckles that we wanted to look at the Exorcist

Steps, and she brought us down there.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Thom said.

“She hung back, a little. I mean, I don’t think she was standing right next to us when we kissed. But she was nearby. I’m

sure of it.”

“It’s coming back to me. A little. She tried to scare us, tell us how we were being watched.”

“That part I don’t remember.”

“Maybe it was just me.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway. We both know we were there. At the top of the steps.”

“You mean the bottom.”

“Now you’re just being contrary on purpose,” Wendy said.

“I am. But we did go to the bottom of the steps. We started up top, and you and I ran all the way down and then back up. I

remember being out of breath.”

“I don’t remember that part at all. Maybe you ran down the steps and I stayed at the top.”

“Sensible even at fourteen.”

“I was.”

“Oh, here they are.”

They both stopped at the top of the narrow stairs that ran down between a painted brick building and a stone wall.

Streetlights illuminated the steep steps so that it almost looked like a tunnel carved out of the dark night.

Wendy had read or heard somewhere that these days the steps were mostly used as a makeshift gym, runners sprinting up and down them for some inexplicable reason.

But it was late, and the night had turned cold, and no one was around except for the two of them.

Thom stepped forward, standing on the top step, his hand on the metal handrail.

“Where exactly were we standing when we kissed? This isn’t quite how I pictured it,” Thom said.

“Right here, right at the top, where you’re standing now.”

“Who kissed whom?”

“I think it was kind of a mutual kiss, because if I recall it started off more like a headbutt.”

“Yes, that I do remember.”

Thom turned around, his back to the steps. The wind was kicking up but Wendy thought that Thom was swaying more from the effects

of the gin. It’s a perfect murder, she thought, not for the first time. Even if she were suspected, there was no way to prove

that he hadn’t fallen down the stairs on his own. He’d been publicly drinking all night. In fact, he’d probably told some

friends and colleagues that he’d fallen down the stairs in his own house. And it was a perfect murder because his last moments,

besides the moment that would involve careening down a hundred concrete steps, would have been a great meal in a beautiful

city on a cool, spring night. She took a step toward her husband.

vi

Thom felt unwell. Maybe it was the somewhat fiery food they’d eaten for dinner, or maybe it was the brandy he’d ordered for

dessert that he definitely didn’t need. But standing at the top of the steps from that movie that Wendy loved so much, he

was a little queasy. Sad as well.