The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter [113]
If you’re in your right mind, you drive straight to the police, but I wasn’t in my right mind, and besides, the roads were terrible. I was thinking: I did the wrong thing, and now they’ll arrest me, Chloé, for what I did. I saw myself, arrested, ruined, panhandling on the street. I thought of Rhonda, my sister, too far away; my friends, too unhelpful and stoned; and then I thought of Bradley, my boss and my friend, and his girlfriend, Margaret, because maybe I was still thinking of Oscar, I could still feel him, and I was thinking of our wedding day, and the party that Bradley had thrown for us, the feast of love he’d laid out on his table. I thought of that, too.
THE ROADS HADN’T been plowed yet, and this thick snow lay over everything, and the Matador had rear-wheel drive, plus it was old and rusty, and the first thing I knew I was going down my street sideways, and then I wasn’t going anywhere at all, just spinning and spinning at an intersection. I thought of the Bat and his four-wheel truck gaining on me, and that was when a face appeared on my driver’s side window, and I screamed.
But it was only a passing pedestrian walking his dog, and, like, offering to push me. It’s amazing he stayed when I screamed like that. But he did, and he pushed my car, and I was off again.
I made my way around the city trying to get to Bradley’s street, over by Allmendinger Park, and at one point the engine died and I had to start it again, and at another point I found myself on a dark street with the snow falling and I had to stop the car because I was crying and shaking and shivering. But then I faced up to things and got strong, and I made another New Year’s resolution two months early that I wouldn’t give in to cheesy panic or anything, even though it made sense to panic, and was the easy, logical thing to do, lame though it was.
The street lights passed over me, and I felt myself getting faint and helpless, and I had the sudden recognition that I didn’t know where I was, but then I passed the football stadium where Oscar had once given me a Slurpee, and I made a right turn, and another left, and another right, and I started skidding down Bradley’s street, and suddenly I felt my baby kick, although it was way too early, it couldn’t have been the baby kicking, so I guess it was my heart thumping, which is how I knew Oscar was leaving me, because I was having this little tiny heart attack, just like the one Oscar’d had, except very small, so it was time for Oscar to go. And then he was gone, out of me entirely, having helped me in my time of trouble. He re-died.
I parked in front of Bradley’s house, which was, like, totally dark. I opened the Matador door with its formerly satisfying squeak. I ran up to his door, and when I did, the snow got into my running shoes, and I rang the bell, rang it and rang it and rang it, and Bradley the dog started barking inside, but there was no Bradley the human there, or Margaret either, and I thought, oh please, someone save me now before the Bat gets here.
So I ran over next door, where Harry and Esther Ginsberg were, and there was more snow in my shoes, and I thought I would faint, but I pounded on their door knocker, and I said, “Help! Please, help! Somebody, please!”
And I heard Harry coming toward the door, and as he opened it, he said, like he didn’t know it was me, like my voice wasn’t my own but a man’s voice, like he thought it was someone else, “Aaron? Is that you? Aaron?”
TWENTY-SIX
I KNOW ONE UNASSAILABLE TRUTH: Help your friends and those whom you love; hurt your enemies. The very banality of this formulation ensures that most academics — who enjoy hurting their friends — will ignore it.
For days, in any case, I lay awake, thinking of Aaron and of how I might have done him indeliberate harm. I awoke, nocturnally fevered, my forehead sweating, perspiration soaked into my pajamas, in my unforgiving mind’s eye the spectacle of