Page 105 of Lone Wolf

“I’m not an alcoholic,” Evan said. “I like booze too much.”

“Ain’t that some shit an alcoholic would say?” Tommy sucked in a lungful, spoke through the strain of the exhalation. “You still think you’re noble, like I once told myself, back when I blocked out how much of all that was just cover fire for my arrogance. No, not arrogance—it was to distract myself from how tight I was gripping the steering wheel.” He put his hands out, air-steering, cigarette stubbed out of his knobby knuckles, the other fist still gripping the bottle. He looked like an advertisement for reckless driving. “Then I figured out the steering wheel wasn’t hooked up to nuthin’, man. It was just a loose steering wheel.” He glanced over at Evan. “You still think it’s your responsibility to fix every damn thing in the world. That’s good. But it’s just training.”

“For what?”

“For what happens after you learn you can’t fix anything or save anyone. All you can do is light a match at a fork in the dark-ass road to show someone a better path that they’ll probably not take.”

“There’s gotta be something,” Evan said. “Something you still want to aim at. To leave behind. What do you want them to say when they put you in a casket?”

“‘Look,’” Tommy said, “‘he’s moving!’”

He smirked, flicked his butt at Evan’s boots. They sat awhile longer.

“Courage, man,” Tommy said. “It’s for the ignorant. Anyone who’s had a taste of what courage puts you at the mercy of? After that? They only want mercy. That’s all I want anymore. Mercy. Lately I been thinking about…”

“What?”

“That scared part you build the rest of yourself around so you don’t have to look at it. You know that part? Once you see it, trembling in the light of yer, dunno … awareness, you can never unsee it. But least you know … you know it’s part of you. Jesus.” He bridged his forehead with his hand, covering his eyes. A dead leaf flew up and stuck in his cuff, a spot of gold. “I’ll tell you what. You get old faster’n you can believe. And you want to get it right. The quicker you can get it right, man. Do it. Because you run out of time. I think about all these rounds I’ve sent out into the world, how many skulls and chest cavities they’ve punctured … Well, I think about that, I might as well not think at all.” He swung his bloodshot eyes to Evan, gave him a rare glimpse inside. “Ever again.”

Evan nodded once very slowly, the slightest downward tip of his head so as not to disrupt the course Tommy was charting to wherever he needed to get.

Tommy gestured around with the bottle of amber fire. “Here’s how I see it. When you cash in yer chips? The afterlife is just you frozen at that point in time. All them ghosts you left behind, all that business you didn’t settle, all those demons you swept under the rug. They all haunt you. You’re suspended with ’em forever.” He was slurring a touch now, a rare ceding of ground to the bourbon. “So: Clean it up. Clean everything up while you can. Afore it’s too late.”

The fire snapped and crackled, and at last Evan felt his body temperature coming down, the sweat cooling across his chest. Tommy was staring out at the night with the glazed eyes of a veteran who had too many memories rattling around in his head.

“You done?” Evan said.

“Yeah,” Tommy said, exhausted. “I’m done.”

“Good,” Evan said. “If you can manage to not get any more miserable, when you’re old and drooling and worthless, I still might visit you in the nursing home.”

Tommy’s mouth bunched, mustache curling up at the edges, and then he spit in the dirt. “If I let your sorry ass in.”

The first gleam of light warmed the horizon to the east, more a premonition than an entrance. Tommy tilted the bottle, gauging how much bourbon remained, then took a nip. He was still for a moment, and then his broad shoulders started shaking with amusement.

“What?” Evan said.

“When us dudes lose our cool, we think we’re Steve McQueen. But we’re not. I came at you like a whiny little bitch, didn’t I?” Tommy imitated himself in a squeaky voice: “‘Don’t look at me.’”

He smirked some more, polished off the bottle, and tossed it into the flames.

“You were all right, Tommy,” Evan said. “You were Steve McQueen.”

47

Battle Within

In the morning stillness of the Castle Heights lobby, Evan stood before the closed doors of the elevator. They were appareled in a cling-wrap advertisement featuring Lorilee posed with crossed arms, a Girl Boss CEO. A banner graphic unfurled across her stomach proclaimed, RE-ELECT LORILEE. SERVICE IS MY ‘WHY’!

On a yellow Post-it stuck above the word RE-ELECT, a note was jotted in Hugh Walters’s proficient hand, reading, You can’t re-elect someone who wasn’t legitimately elected in the first place. A drawn arrow, retraced with a vigor suggesting latent rage, pointed at the slogan.

A pink Post-it adhered above the yellow Post-it read, What kind of grown man desecrates official campaign materials?, with an equivalently aggressive arrow aimed at its respective target.

Evan shot a glance back at Joaquin, hoping for a moment of shared commiseration, but Joaquin had dozed off in his chair. After their last exchange, Evan had run deeper background on the kid; he had plenty to be tired about, so he let him rest and turned back to larger-than-life Lorilee.

When the car arrived, the doors parted, splitting her enhanced breasts, a clear design misfire.

Evan stepped through her cracked chest cavity into the elevator and rode up.