Page 51 of What is Lost

“I’d say you’re a little late about that. And you know what?” He was suddenly, painfully aware of how naked he was, how much he’d stripped himself bare for this woman—and that made him even angrier because...Damn it.Sweeping up his underpants, he quickly pulled them on. “I don’t care. Keep your secrets, Roni.”

He was at the threshold to the bathroom when she said, “The way you keep yours?”

He stopped, dead.No, she can’t possibly... He forced himself to face her and, just as forcibly, willed himself to ice. “Don’t try to turn this around. This isn’t about me, Roni.”

“Yes, it is,” she said, her voice still so maddeningly calm. “You’re as armored as an armadillo, John. Oh, but wait...they don’t have those in Wisconsin, do they? Only in Texas. Well, Alabama, too. I remember Emery mentioning how they’ve migrated into the South.”

His heart bumped against his ribs. “That so? I never saw one.”

“Oh? I’m surprised. All you have to do is look in the mirror, John.” Another pause. “You know what I’ve always wondered about? Why we only went to Emery’s range that one time.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

She went on as if he’d not spoken. “At first, I thought I’d done something wrong. Maybe said something. We never went back and, when I asked, you always found a reason not to go.”

He had. She was right about that.

“I finally realized it wasn’t me.Ihadn’t done anything wrong.” She let a moment slip. “What I finally realized...was thatyouhad.”

“Get out.” The words came out rough, as if he’d dragged them from some deep pit. He wasn’t even aware of having thought the words, much less said them. The voice which came from his mouth was...different because that voice was so close to breaking, as if the person who’d just spoken those words was only a boy forced to make a choice no child ever should. “Get out, Roni. I don’t care if you have to wander the halls butt-naked looking for a place to clean up, but don’t be here when I come out.”

She might have said something else, but he turned and stormed into the bathroom and flung the door shut. The sound was a thunderclap and so violent his toothbrush jumped.

He took a hot shower,as hot as he could stand. He didn’t want to think but couldn’t help himself because his heart was breaking, and she had used him and the thought of her in Driver’s arms—of her arching and crying out in her ecstasy as Driver pounded into her—was so painful he had to stopper his mouth with a fist to keep the anguish from roaring out of his chest.

When he finally came out in an exhalation of steam—his skin as wrinkled as an old prune and knuckles scored from his teeth—she was gone. Nothing of Roni remained except her scent on the sheets and the salty pungency of their sweat and sex.

He stripped the bed.Wonder if I can burn the sheets?And no more Mr. Nice Guy. He was done playing the patsy.Whichever enlisted guy came in after him this morning could just suck it up and go find new bedlinens. Or sleep on the mattress; he didn’t care. Wrenching off a pillowcase, he thought it was too bad he couldn’t take bleach to his brain?—

Something dropped to the floor with a small, soft papery rustle.

Only then did he realize he hadn’t switched on a light. He bent, patted a hand until his fingers brushed a small, folded square.

A note.

I don’t care. He wasn’t going to read this. He shouldn’t, couldn’t afford to. Stan had warned him about precisely this:Son, don’t let anyone in who can’t handle the boogey-man under the bed.Or the demons hidden away in a box with that imp on a certain, high, dark shelf in the closet at the back of his mind.

But was that right? He still could conjure the confusion and fear and guilt of a certain fifteen-year-old boy boarding a plane for a new life. A new name. A fiction of a past.

He had been so careful all these years. He’d let in virtually no one...until now. Whoever had thought up that old saw about love and pain being tied in the same Gordian note wasn’t wrong. Keeping himself under control was one of the reasons why he loved movies: all of life and passion in ninety minutes, maybe a hundred and twenty on the outside, and it was all sointenseandsatisfyingand, yes, safe. A little one-sided when it came to actual feeling, but then so was masturbation.

She had used him. He should hate her.

When he was certain he wouldn’t simply crumple the paper and flush it down the john, he went to the table where his laptop rested and turned on the desk lamp. Then, he carefully spread the note.

She hadn’t penned his name. Of course, she wouldn’t. Not as if he had an evil twin, thoughthere was the not-so-little fact that he was, himself, a fraud, a fiction: a made-up boy with a manufactured past.

The note read:Today. 1730.

He stared at those words so hard and for so long the paper ought to have burst into flames. It didn’t.

He tore that note into tiny pieces and fed them to the toilet.

“Hey, Doc.”

Still standing on the top step of the van, he looked to his left and the med tech raised a hand. “Hey,” the tech said, again and then stood to give John the window seat. “Sit here, Captain.”

“Thanks, Corporal.” He dropped into the seat beside the tech. He didn’t feel much like talking, but the van was packed, and this was the last available seat. “Appreciate it.”

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