Page 46 of Go Alone

Sure you were right up until that deed was firmly in your name.

He frowned. “I paid her for it.”

He flinched when he realized he’d said that out loud. He looked around, heat climbing his cheeks and driving away the chill more effectively than a dozen sleeved blankets.

The neighbors didn’t hear. Their backyards were empty and their windows shuttered. He released a sigh of relief and sipped more of his scotch, frowning. Five years after his divorce and he was still arguing with himself over this. It was done. It was over. It wasn’t his fault that Beverly couldn’t handle it. Hadn’t he given her three good years? Six if you counted the years before they married. That was more than enough to make up the difference between what he’d paid her and the market value of the home.

He got to his feet and headed inside. The night provided him no more relaxation.

She didn’t understand. No one did. He’d spent his whole life clinging to safety by a thread. He’d been homeless before, for a year when he was a kid, then for two more years when he realized at eighteen that his father was never going to grow a pair and fight for a better life for his family.

He’d done…

His lower lip trembled, and he strode to the kitchen, popped the cork off the scotch and drank straight from the bottle, gulping down three shots worth in one fiery blast. Lagavulin had the gentlest bite of any single-malt he’d had, but he made sure this one hurt.

He clung to the pain and growled—a little louder now that insulated walls and acoustic glass windows muted his speech—“I did what I had to do to survive, and that was almost thirty years ago.”

And he’d made it. That was the important part. Who cares what he’d done as a teenager to escape winter’s chill? He had found a way out. By twenty, he had three jobs and a studio apartment that he could actually pay for. He had warm clothing and enough money left over for public transit and a bus pass. He didn’t have to smile at gross old men and tell himself it wasn’t so bad.

“God damn it,” he growled again as he popped the cork off the Scotch once more.

His hands were shaking, and he couldn’t tell if it was the memories or the liquor finally getting to him. He drank again, then corked the bottle and put it away. His head was swimming now, and in fifteen minutes, it would be spinning.

He took advantage of the lingering shreds of his sobriety to throw a TV dinner in the microwave. He needed to eat something, or he'd wake up with a hangover to make him wish he hadn't made it to the morning.

He deserved this. Damn it, he deserved this. He’d done unspeakable things to earn a fucking room, then worked his ass off doing the “right” things, saving, investing, scrimping, and buying nothing he couldn’t justify. And after twenty years, he had a one-bedroom and a car, a 1993 Toyota Corolla with one hundred ninety-five thousand miles that ran but did so noisily and uncomfortably and smelled like the old men with whom he used to keep company.

Thirty years. Thirty years, and he was starting to feel the first signs that he wouldn’t live forever, that his chance to live a better life was rapidly departing, that the hill he had to climb to go from barely scraping by to actually having a fucking chance at comfort was steepening and lengthening and curving to form a cave that would close to form a box, and then the floor would drop out, and that box would become the hole that would bury him, and all of that time and effort and struggle would be worth nothing, and—

The microwave beeped. He stiffened, and his head did a lazy barrel roll. Surprisingly, the motion cleared his head and snapped him out of the spiral that had caused his knuckles to turn white from the grip his fingers formed on the edge of his kitchen counter.

The box called for him to leave the tray in the microwave for two minutes to finish cooking. He set a timer and reassured himself that those days were over.

He met Beverly. Her husband was speaking at some protest at Maloney Park in South Linden, the crime-ridden neighborhood where Martin lived and where his Corolla’s catalytic converter was stolen three times before he gave up and drove without one. According to the husband, they were squatting at a home in Gahanna, and the owner had showed up and kicked everyone out. Made sense to Martin.

To Beverly too. She didn’t challenge her loudmouth deadbeat husband when he raved about “natural rights” and “justified usurpation”, but Martin saw the despondency in her eyes. He recognized it. The belief that nothing better waited on the other side, that she was stuck living her worst life, that a chance for change had passed her by.

At first, he just wanted company. It had been nine years since he’d been with a woman, and she was pretty with her upturned nose and full lips.

Then he saw where she lived. Her husband was a loser. She was a successful day trader and she now had a beautiful home in Upper Arlington, a fact apparently lost on her loser husband.

Everything he ever wanted. Everything he’d earned by meekly putting up with two decades and more of shit.

He wanted more than company after that. In fact, company became secondary to getting what he really wanted. A life free of suffering. A life of comfort, maybe even of modest means.

And he’d worked for that life too. He’d charmed the pants—literally—off of Beverly. He’d shown her the kindness and respect she craved. He’d shown her better companionship than she got from her husband. He was good to her. Even when he left her, he thanked her for teaching him how to make money and keep his life instead of going back to the slums. And what had she said?

“You just used her for her house. You never cared about her. You just wanted her home.”

Martin whirled around at the sound of the voice. That wasn’t him. That couldn’t be him. It wasn’t possible. He was—

But it was him. He was a little older and a little heavier now than the last time Martin saw him, but there was no question in those blue eyes.

Martin opened his mouth to whisper the name, but it stuck in his throat.

The man smiled, and Martin was struck by the lack of anger in that smile. If anything, he looked sad.

And tired. Very, very tired.