Shoot the Moonlight Out, page 28
“Christ, Bobby,” Lily says. “Just give it to him.”
“I don’t have it,” Bobby says.
Jack thinks about making a quick reach for his own gun, but he holds back. The last thing he wants is for Charlie to turn on Lily and fire at her.
Without hesitation, Charlie shrugs and shoots Bobby’s father. The noise the gun makes is a pop. It doesn’t match the effect of the bullet. Right in the chest. A moment of shock and recognition on the guy’s face. He goes down hard on the linoleum in the kitchen.
Lily gasps.
“You thought I was fucking with you?” Charlie asks.
FRANCESCA
Francesca wakes up with a start. She’s lying on a couch in the dark. She forgets where she is for a minute. Light streams in from another room. Her head is pounding. She needs to pee and she needs a glass of water. She sits up. She remembers everything. Her mouth is so dry. She goes out to the kitchen. The Irish woman, Mairéad, is sitting at the table, reading Lily’s story and smoking a cigarette. “You’re up already?” Mairéad says.
“I can’t believe I passed out,” Francesca says. “I have to use the bathroom.”
“Of course.”
She rushes to the bathroom, knowing she’s been there already but not quite remembering where it is. She tries one door and it goes down to the basement. Another is a closet. Mairéad points down the hall and says she’s pretty sure it’s the last door.
Francesca goes into the bathroom and pulls her pants down, closing the door most of the way. She sits on the toilet and pees forcefully, feeling an intense burst of relief. As she pees, she puts her elbows on her knees and tilts her head back, looking up at the ceiling and a gross old light fixture full of dead moths and browned with dust. The light is buzzing, almost sizzling. She wonders what keeps old houses like this from burning down.
When she’s done, she wipes, flushes, and stands, balancing herself with one hand against the tiled wall as she pulls her pants up. She struggles to the sink, washes her hands, and then splashes cold water on her face over the basin. She opens the medicine cabinet above the sink and looks at the ancient bottles of amoxicillin and St. Joseph Aspirin and Vicks VapoRub and two rusted cans of Barbasol shaving cream. Hidden behind a package of unopened Q-tips, she finds a small bottle of Tylenol Extra Strength, popping the cap and emptying three into her palm. She tosses them in her mouth and then leans over the sink, running the water and drinking straight from the tap to wash them down. She puts the bottle back, closes the medicine chest, and dries her face on a stiff blue towel hanging from the hook on the door.
She goes into the kitchen and sits across from Mairéad, who looks up from the story. “Feel any better?” Mairéad asks.
“I feel like an idiot,” Francesca says. “Some real rookie bullshit, huh?”
“Happens to the best of us.”
“Where is everybody?”
“They went over to help your friend. Bobby, was it? I’m worried. Could be a bad situation.”
“What? Really? Christ.”
Mairéad motions to the half-full cup of coffee on the table in front of her. “Your coffee might still be lukewarm. You want me to heat it up for you?”
Francesca takes a sip. It’s cold. “I’ll do it,” she says. She takes the coffee over to the stove and empties it into a small, clean pot already on one of the burners. She turns the gas on high. While she’s waiting, she finds a glass in a cabinet over the sink and fills it with cold water straight from the tap. The glass is one of those collectibles from McDonald’s. It has the Hamburglar on it. She drinks the water and thinks about Jack and his wife taking his daughter to McDonald’s on Twenty-Fourth Avenue when she was a girl and bringing home this glass. She places it on the counter when she’s done. The coffee boils quickly, and she pours it back into the mug. She drinks some on her way back to the table. She sits down, finds her tobacco, and rolls a cigarette. “How’s the story?” she asks Mairéad.
“Quite good,” Mairéad says.
“I can’t believe they went over there. I can’t believe this night.”
“It’s my favorite thing about the world,” Mairéad says. “Nights like this where there’s nothing really, it’s just plain, and then there’s everything all at once.”
Francesca lights her cigarette. “Do you really communicate with the dead? Or is that just something you tell people at parties?”
Mairéad laughs. “Just something I tell people at parties. It’s not hard to imagine what people want to hear from their dead loved ones. ‘Oh, I miss you so bad, Larry. Heaven’s fucking great. Can you please send my sister a card?’ ”
“You’re messing with me.”
“A little.”
“So, you do… talk to the dead?”
“Not on command or anything, but I’ve had my encounters. I didn’t ask for it and I don’t take advantage of people either, if that’s what you’re wondering. I’m not a con artist who charges people to get messages from their dead relatives. And I don’t solve murders with it.”
Francesca takes a drag on her cigarette and exhales away from Mairéad. She drinks more coffee. The pounding in her head is getting lighter. She looks around at Jack’s kitchen. Linoleum peeling up. Scuffed cabinets. An ancient, humming fridge the color of a faded lime. A clock on the wall, stopped at four thirty. She wonders when it stopped. She can feel time in the silence of the house. “Can I ask you one more thing?”
“Sure,” Mairéad says.
“I’m sure you get this all the time and I’m sorry to ask it, but I don’t want to regret not asking. Can you talk to my dad?” She pauses, blows smoke down at the table. “Forget it. I’m sorry. It’s not a party trick. I’m just like everybody else.”
“Asking is natural. I can’t just switch it on. The situation has to be right.”
“Like a séance?”
“I don’t do that stuff. It happens when it happens. I can’t really predict it. Sometimes I see things. Other times I just hear things.”
Francesca nods. “I’m sorry.”
“I was only half kidding before about being able to guess what people want to hear. Without even hearing from your dad’s spirit, I can tell you he’s proud of you. He’s proud of the person you are. He’s happy you think about him so much. He misses you. He wishes things had worked out differently.”
Francesca’s crying. She drops her cigarette into an empty Guinness bottle and wipes the tears away from her cheeks with the heels of her hands. “Yeah?”
“If I heard from him, that’s what he’d say. I guarantee it.”
“You’re right. That is exactly what I want to hear.”
Mairéad has let her cigarette burn down to a long line of trembling ash between her fingers. She tries to deposit it in a bottle without the ash scattering everywhere but doesn’t have any luck. The ash flits out across the table, on Lily’s story, little whispers of black debris among the dark bottles. “Shit, I’m cooked now,” she says. “Lily will know I read the story. Oh well.”
“So you believe in the afterlife? These people you communicate with sometimes, they’re either in heaven or hell or purgatory and they tell you about what it’s like there?”
“I don’t know. I guess. But it’s not like any afterlife I’ve ever heard of, not really. More a kind of bank of spirits. They’re here. They watch. They listen.”
More tears. Francesca thinks of her father’s spirit, floating around. “I hope Jack and Lily are okay,” she says. “I should’ve gone with them.”
JACK
Lily’s about to move forward to help Bobby’s dad but Jack puts his hand on her shoulder and tells her to stay back.
Bobby’s on the verge of tears, his old man shot right there in front of him, the bad decisions he’s made leading to this. It wasn’t real at all—it was a fantasy he was living inside of—until Charlie pulled that trigger and dropped his father like dirt.
“I’m gonna puke,” Bobby says. He collapses to his knees. Charlie has the gun on him now. Bobby doesn’t throw up. He just stays there, kneeling, looking like a sprinter who’s stuck at the starting line, a failure who never even gave himself a shot.
“Puke’s the last thing we need,” Charlie says. “Get up.”
Bobby stands, wavering. “It’s in my room,” he says.
“All that for nothing. It’s right here in your room? Jesus. You got it in your Mickey Mouse suitcase? Go.” He waves the gun at Jack and Lily.
Bobby leads the party into his room. Charlie has Jack and Lily lean up against the wall. He stands back, so everyone is in front of him. He keeps the gun on Bobby, who unfolds a pink plastic stool he keeps behind his dresser and places it on the floor in front of the closet. He stands on it and reaches onto the high shelf in the closet, a shelf up out of sight behind the frame, shooting a look at Jack as he rummages around.
Jack has the sense that Bobby’s going for a gun, but there’s no sign of that yet. Bobby tugs a big duffel bag out and drops it on the floor just to the side of him.
“Now you’re talking,” Charlie says. “Everything’s there?”
“Yes,” Bobby says. He turns to Lily. “How do you know him?” It’s clear he’s talking about Jack.
“He’s in my writing class,” Lily says.
“You really don’t know me?” Bobby says to Jack. “You don’t know it was me? I was there with my friend Zeke, and we were both throwing rocks, but it was me.”
What Bobby’s saying hits Jack full in the chest. The room becomes a roar. Lily’s saying something now. Charlie too. Jack’s shaken beyond words. This kid—Lily’s former stepbrother, Francesca’s wild fling, the murderer of Max Berry—threw the rock that killed Amelia?
The roar settles into a hum. Lily says, “What are you saying? You threw the rock that killed his daughter? You didn’t tell anyone? Jack, I’m so sorry.”
“I couldn’t tell anyone,” Bobby says.
Jack has thought about this moment nonstop over the years. Meeting the kid responsible for Amelia dying. What he’d say. What he’d do. He’d imagined every scenario. Different ways to kill the kid. Different ways to forgive him. And now here he is, confessing, under Charlie French’s gun. “You were what, fourteen or fifteen?” Jack asks.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Charlie says. “Open the bag. Let me see my stuff.”
“I was fourteen,” Bobby says to Jack. “I’m nineteen now. I’m sorry. I don’t want to die.”
“You’re sorry?” Jack says.
“I wish I could take it back. I wish that more than anything. I can’t, though. I was a stupid kid.”
“Looks like you still are.”
“Open the bag now,” Charlie says, waving the gun at Bobby.
The blood’s drained from Bobby’s face. He begins to unzip the top of the bag, struggling with it, the teeth caught in the fabric. When he gets it partially open, he reaches in, coming out with a small gun. His hand is shaking so bad, it’s a miracle he doesn’t drop it.
Without hesitation, Charlie fires at Bobby, seeming to have had a good read on the situation as soon as that zipper started moving. This shot’s not as perfect as the one he pumped into Bobby’s old man. This one gets Bobby in the upper arm and he flops forward over the bag.
The shot at Bobby gives Jack just enough time to draw his gun and return fire at Charlie. He hasn’t used the gun in a long while, but it’s still in decent shape. It’s loud, his shot, filling the room, seeming to echo and reverberate and do whatever else it is that sounds do, settling over them, a boom that keeps booming. It’s not a good shot. It goes over Charlie’s shoulder.
Lily is terrified. She backs up further against the wall, trying to disappear into it. She keeps her eyes away from Charlie and Jack.
Charlie looks around like he can’t believe Jack missed. He puts the gun on Jack. And Jack still has his gun on Charlie. He can see an ending for this he doesn’t like, both of them unloading on each other. If he’s going down, he’s not missing again this time, Charlie’s going down too. And maybe Bobby. Maybe that’s what Jack wants. Revenge. An ugly end.
Bobby, sitting up now with his hurt arm dangling, fires at Charlie while he’s distracted by Jack. It’s better than Jack’s shot. Gets him in the chest.
Charlie turns to Bobby and pops off a quick return shot. This one tears up Bobby’s gut.
Lily cowers on the floor, hands crossed over her head.
Jack aims to plant his next shot right between Charlie’s eyes. He squeezes the trigger and the shot goes low, catching him in the throat. Charlie drops his gun and puts his hands up around his neck, blood swarming out between his fingers, his breath halted. He falls hard.
Jack lowers his gun and tries to comfort Lily. She’s scared. He’s about to put a hand on her shoulder but he stops himself from touching her. It’s not his place to touch her. To be touched is probably the last thing she wants right now. “Are you okay?” he asks.
Lily looks out from between her arms and focuses first on Charlie bleeding out on the floor and then she turns her attention to Bobby, realizing how badly he’s hurt. “Jesus Christ,” she says.
Bobby sits with his back against the opposite wall. He lets his gun clatter to the floor. He pulls the bag close to him by its strap. The first shot he took is in the fleshy part of his left arm. He’s hunched in that direction a bit, as if that side of his body has sort of caved in. The second shot to his stomach has done the real damage.
Lily scurries on her knees to Bobby’s side. “How bad is it?”
“It’s bad.” Bobby puts his hand on her hand in an effort to hold her in place but his strength is waning.
“This is a mess,” Lily says. “I need to call an ambulance for you.”
“I can’t believe you saw Francesca,” he says.
“I wish we hadn’t,” Lily says. “We never would’ve come here.”
Bobby’s coughing blood now. He looks at Jack. “I’m sorry. Take the money.”
Jack’s seeing Amelia tangled up in all that metal. Part of him wants to lift his gun and finish Bobby off. Instead, he tucks the gun under his shirt. “We should get help,” he says to Lily.
Lily nods. She’s about to run out to the kitchen but Bobby stops her.
“Please stay,” he says.
“Okay, I’m not going,” Lily says. One of her hands is holding Bobby’s right hand and the other is touching his face. She’s crying. She has the hands of someone who would rescue a baby bird. She has the hands of someone who would tend to the sick. “You’re gonna be okay,” she says.
But Bobby’s not going to be okay. He’s pale. He’s fading fast. The bullet must’ve hit a major organ. He coughs more blood. He’s having trouble breathing. He can’t make words.
“Jesus Christ,” Lily says again.
And then Bobby’s gone. Just like that. One last pained breath. Blood pooling on the floor around him. The kid who threw the rock that killed Amelia. A stupid kid then and still a stupid kid now. Stupid to steal this money. Stupid to risk Francesca’s life. Stupid to get his father killed. And himself. Dead now, this stupid fucking kid.
Jack puts his hand on Lily’s shoulder. “We should go,” he says. “We need to go.”
LILY
Lily follows Jack. She’s not sure what else to do. They leave Bobby and Danny and Charlie French and leave all that money and all those drugs, climbing over the old steam radiator and out Bobby’s window and rushing down the fire escape, which trembles under their feet. Jack has no hesitation about leaving. Lily does.
There are already sirens but she insists on going to the payphone on the corner. Her heart is beating so fast, she’s sure she’s going to die. She pictures it. A nuclear explosion in her chest. Disappearing in a thrum of light. She tries not to think about all the blood up in that apartment, about the dead bodies. She was there. She saw it all. She didn’t see it all. She can’t have. It’s a dream she’ll wake up from.
She says what she needs to say into the receiver to the 911 operator. She heard shooting. The address. It doesn’t matter how fast the ambulances get here. Bobby is gone. She hangs up without answering any of the operator’s questions.
She guesses that Jack took care of Micah. It hadn’t seriously occurred to her, but it should have. Those long hours he was gone. She thinks of him hoisting Micah into the trunk of the car his rich Westchester County parents bought him, driving up to Poughkeepsie and leaving him there near the station. She wonders how Jack did the deed itself. She wonders what happened between them. Was there a fight? Jack probably believed that the only definite way to avoid danger with someone like Micah was to get rid of him.
She looks at Jack now. He’s been so kind to her. She couldn’t have known about Bobby throwing the rock that killed Amelia, but she feels somehow responsible. She couldn’t have anticipated that trouble layered over the other, newer trouble. She feels so safe with Jack. He’s the kind of person who makes things feel like they’ll be okay, even if they hadn’t been okay for him, which is why she didn’t hesitate to go warn Bobby. They don’t say anything to each other. Not yet.
They go to Jack’s car. He opens the door for her. She settles into the passenger seat and he gets behind the wheel and they leave the block. She takes a deep breath, trying to regain some of her composure. She looks down at her right hand. A couple of spots of blood. Bobby’s blood. She spits on the fingers of her left hand and wipes the spots away, circling over the blood with her thumb and forefinger until the red dissipates into a faint pink on her pale skin.
The moon has settled over the neighborhood like the fluorescent entrance to a tunnel-of-love carnival ride, spilling its light on the blacktop, on the hoods of cars and the Virgin Mary statues in weed-strewn front yards, on all the damaged windows and doors, on the cracks in the sidewalks and all the cracked hearts, on the rooftops, on the order and disorder, on all that’s hidden and all that’s out in the open.
As they drive past St. Mary’s church in the dark, she blesses herself. It’s an old habit from when she was a kid, but this time she’s blessing herself for Bobby and Danny. Saying a prayer for them, she guesses, even if she doesn’t believe in prayer anymore.
