Page 8 of Kill Your Darlings

It was Thom, though, who most often broke these rules, especially lately, so Wendy seethed a little that he’d dared to call her out on referring to them as astrological twins.

She composed a speech in her mind, telling him all the times in the past couple of years when he’d drunk too much and made jokes about his and Wendy’s dark history, or given speeches about how the guilty were never truly punished.

Then she threw the speech away. In the morning this would all be forgotten, and they had a party to plan, and according to the latest weather reports, a storm moving in.

There would be things to do. Wendy closed her own book and turned off her reading lamp.

ii

“What do you think?” Jason said. Five minutes earlier he’d handed his father a printed list of possible songs for that night’s

birthday bash. Thom was at the kitchen island, slowly working his way through a dry ham sandwich, and even though he’d been

staring at the list his son had produced, his mind had been elsewhere.

“Etta James?” Thom said, picking the first track his eyes landed on. “How old do you think your mother and I are?”

“Mom said it was one of her favorites.”

“I can’t even remember how it goes.”

Jason sang “At Last” in his shaky baritone. He’d been late to puberty, and Thom sometimes found himself shocked by his son’s

altered voice, even though he was now seventeen, waiting to hear from colleges he’d applied to, and with a serious girlfriend

to boot, one he was almost certainly having sex with.

“Oh, right. Scratch that one out. Your mom will never notice. Besides, this is a dance party.”

“Scratch Etta James,” Jason said, swinging the list toward him and producing a pen.

When Wendy and Thom had agreed to let him DJ the event, neither had been really prepared for how seriously he would take the task.

He’d strategically divided the playlist between songs that would set the proper mood, songs that would get the fifty-year-olds onto the dance floor, and songs that “were so banging they could simply not be ignored.”

“No wedding songs,” Thom said.

“Define a wedding song.”

“I’ll know it when I hear it. No chicken dance, no Meat Loaf.”

“Dad, have you met me?”

Thom went over the list, made a few suggestions (more Prince), then finished his ham sandwich, resisting the urge to wash

it down with a beer. It was going to be a long day and an even longer night. They’d rented the VFW hall downtown and hired

a catering company plus a bartender who could stick around until one a.m. After that they’d be on their own. It was strange

to be throwing a party not happening at their own house. Normally, on the day of a party he’d be frantically preparing for

the onslaught. But they were full-on adults now, he supposed, and had their parties catered.

After lunch he put on his winter boots, plus a light jacket, and went outside to work on the driveway. There had been a major

storm a week earlier that dumped nearly two feet of snow across the region, but the last two days had been unseasonably warm,

turning that snow into a heavy, waterlogged slush from which streamed rivulets that froze into black ice overnight. The day

was insufferably bright and Thom squinted while pushing waves of icy muck into the road that fronted his house. One of his

neighbors, Larry, swung by to ask him if he needed to bring anything to the VFW hall that night, code for wanting to know

if he needed to bring a flask of whiskey, as he usually did to beer and wine parties. “It’s a full bar, Larry, courtesy of

us.”

“That’s what I heard. Mighty generous.”

“Janine coming as well?”

“Ah, probably not, I’m sorry to say. Another round yesterday and she’s not feeling her best.”

“Sorry to hear that, Larry.”

The other neighbor he spoke with was Ellen Larson, out pushing her newborn. She wished Thom a happy birthday and since he

couldn’t remember whether they’d invited her and her husband to the party, Thom didn’t ask if he’d see her later. Instead,

he gushed at the baby girl, her name temporarily forgotten, and avoided looking directly at Ellen, who was so pretty that

Thom sometimes believed she caused him actual physical pain.

After an hour of on-and-off shoveling, there was no visual evidence that the driveway had changed in appearance or reality,

so Thom quit, plunging his shovel into a pile of grimy snow that had been created by the plow, then walking around to the

back of the house to lean against one of the large boulders that marked the edge of their tiny backyard. He thought of going

inside, getting both his sunglasses and maybe a light beer, and returning to his sunny perch, but told himself that the night

ahead required some sort of drinking plan. Maybe one beer while getting dressed, then a strong drink upon arrival at the hall—a

Manhattan, maybe—then back to beer for the remainder of the evening, making sure to alternate beers with full glasses of water

or seltzer. The most important thing was not to switch over to whiskey later in the evening, or to not switch over to whiskey

until he was safely back at home, fireside with Wendy.

He wasn’t worried about bad behavior so much as he was worried about having a blackout, a period of time with no recall. He’d

had a number of these in the last few years and they’d filled him with such a sense of fear, almost as though they represented

brief glimpses of his death to come. He mentioned it only once to his wife, and she told him that she already knew he was

having blackouts (of course she did), and that her fear was that in one of them he’d tell one of the young women he was infatuated

with all about what they’d done years earlier.

“That will never happen,” he said. “I promise.”

But leaning against the boulder now Thom wondered, not for the first time, if he could somehow fictionalize what he and Wendy had achieved twenty-five years ago.

Wendy wouldn’t like it, but it was half his story to tell.

And now, on the day he turned fifty, he realized that maybe it was the only thing that made him special,

this story of transgression, and his firsthand knowledge of it.

It would make a great novel, a kind of American Crime and Punishment .

No, that wasn’t right. More like a modern take on Dreiser’s An American Tragedy .

He’d read that in high school, and it had stayed with him throughout the years.

But his story would be different. It would

be about punishment, what happens when someone waits their whole life for it and it never comes. A tingling feeling crept

over his skin that maybe this novel was a good idea. An opening line even occurred to him. Was this the book that he was meant

to finally write? Of course, Wendy would be furious. Maybe not furious, but she’d be worried that he would be putting them

in danger somehow. But that was ridiculous. Crime novels with outlandish murders were published all the time. No one went

around assuming that the authors of these novels were basing them on actual events.

A sudden, jarring flutter went through his chest, not for the first time, but this one was accompanied by a tightening of his throat that made him think he might suddenly be sick.

He placed a hand against the cool surface of the rock and thought to himself, Jesus, I’m dying on my birthday, dying before I get a chance to finally write the great American novel.

He breathed deeply through his nostrils, telling himself to calm down.

The fluttering stopped, but his throat was still tight.

He swallowed several times, remembering that his phone was inside.

Should he call 911? Should he tell Jason, no doubt back in his room perfecting the set list?

Wendy was out to a birthday lunch with two of her friends.

Regardless, he needed to make his way back to the house, unless he really was dying, in which case maybe this rock was an excellent spot.

He flexed his jaw several times, then walked on stiff legs up onto the deck and through the sliding-glass doors into the kitchen.

All of his symptoms had disappeared, and he felt fine, except for a slightly racing heart and a fuzzy mind.

He poured himself a glass of water from the tap and consumed it in one long swallow.

From upstairs he heard the sound of music, a bass line he recognized as belonging to a song by the Talking Heads.

It was a song whose title he could never remember, a song about being already at home.

Not great for dancing, Thom thought, refilling his water glass.

iii

The party was in full swing, and Wendy had begun to have fun. There had only been one toast, delivered by Larry Bathurst,

while everyone was sitting down to eat the prime rib and baked potatoes that Thom had insisted on serving (“we’re old folk

now and need to eat like it”). Larry, despite his circumstances, had delivered a toast that was funny rather than sentimental,

and for that, Wendy was grateful.