It was the perfect setting for some solid staking out. All we lacked were binoculars, whiskey-spiked coffee in Styrofoam cups, bitter ex-wives, and a pinboard with pictures of our suspects. But Stuart’s mind quickly drifted.
“I’m stuck,” he said.
I looked over. He was sitting on the couch. “Hmm? You miss the tissue?”
“I’m trapped and forgettable.”
“Yes, I remember. We went over this in the cafeteria. What losers we are.” I gestured across the street. “Do we have to rehash that now? Don’t you want to talk to Megan Rose and find out what’s going on with Melvin?”
“That’s exactly it.”
“What is?”
“She’s never wanted to talk to me.”
“Did she say that?”
“It’s implied.”
“Okay.” I took a good look at Megan Rose’s house—all quiet—turned around, found a chair, pulled it over to where Stuart sat. “Are you all right?”
He wasn’t. Stuart wasn’t all right, and it was a subject he was quite up-front about, I was learning.
“I’ve read all these damn wisdom books”—he gestured toward the shelf above the couch—“and they’re full of lies. They all say you only have to extinguish desire and you’ll be happy. But how do you extinguish desire? You need desire to stay alive! If we didn’t have a desire to eat, we’d starve. They lie, the books. They’re a deliberate, intentional lie.”
“By who?” I asked.
“By who what?”
“Who’s lying?”
“Man, are you even listening? Society. Those who’ve rigged it, in between flying private jets to Africa to shoot famous lions for fun. Megan Rose is joining them any day now. Brad Stone is in the club, too—that’s why he can beat you up and no one cares. Meanwhile, because I’ve oh-so-conveniently given up desire, I get to work the fastener aisle at Lowe’s until the day I die. And you’ll be in the next aisle over explaining to moms what kind of Spackle they should use when little Austin kicks a hole in the drywall. Don’t you get it? It’s rigged!” He threw up his hands. “And now Melvin is MIA. This week has been the worst. I should just goddamn quit. You ever feel like quitting? Like, for good?”
“All the time.”
“Yeah? Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
He cocked an eyebrow, gauging if I was serious. “So why haven’t you?”
I stood up and looked out the window to give myself a minute. Again, no sign of Megan Rose out there. A minute stretched to two. I didn’t want to answer Stuart’s question, because I didn’t like to think about the answer. I didn’t like to think about that feeling, the quitting one. A couple of years after Ma died, when Dad and I were living in a cabin in Wisconsin with only fat mosquitoes and the hum of a nearby Jackduke power plant for company, darkness hit me like a black Humvee. Then it backed up and hit me again. And then again. And again. Under the wheels and everything. And it never really went away. Every few months, just when I was feeling halfway decent— Bam! Again!
Mega D, I’d started calling it, this SUV of relentless misery. Mega D, as opposed to what I’d been dealing with up to that point, Kinda D. Kinda D: the type of sadness I could manage by cleaning my room or doing a juice fast or jogging for an hour. Kinda D was weak sauce. Mega D was an ocean, with me dropped in the middle of it, like that jewel by the old lady in Titanic. (Side point: I’m still mad she did that. Donate it to a rain forest!) Was it depression, as defined by doctors and therapists and other such people who think the key to health is telling you exactly what’s wrong with you? I don’t know. I avoided them out of habit. All I knew was that a couple of times a year I felt broken and that everything in my life was proof that my life was not what it should be; that, to give an example, if I was having a conversation, it was nothing but a judgment on all the other times I could have been having real conversations but didn’t. I could’ve been a person who talks to people, but it’s too late for that now.
I understood from talking to Stuart that this Mega D demolition derby—he was in it, right this minute.
That didn’t mean I knew what to say to him. Dad would’ve said something like, “In rural China, they leave deaf babies on the sidewalk” or “Here’s a twenty, go to a movie,” neither of which I ever found helpful.
Meanwhile, it was getting dark. I was no closer to talking to Megan Rose.
Then the curtain in the giant front window of her house snapped open.
I ducked down instinctively. After a minute, I raised my head to look. A man in a black suit and tie stood in the window, backlit by a chandelier. Slicked-back hair, lined face, trim-fit build. He looked like a stock option brought to life. He was motionless, with a drink in one hand, face lifted to the sky.
Megan Rose’s father.
Stuart came over and whisper-explained that Megan Rose’s parents were lawyers, successful ones who had moved to North Homer from New York City ten years earlier, under murky circumstances. He often overheard Mr. Rose yelling things like “Buybacks!” and “Residuals!” at his hand-free phones.
Lawyering, my father had once told me, was the art of grabbing money when it passed through the air from one account to the next. “I thought it was about figuring out the truth,” I’d said. (“Don’t be an idiot,” my father had responded.)
Mr. Rose lowered his head in our direction. Had he seen us? A door opened at the side of the house-brick, and two girls stepped out of it and headed toward a blue CRV parked in the driveway. The taller one had that straight posture and regal jaw. Megan Rose.
“There she is,” I said. “I’m going to shoot my shot, Stuart. Thanks for having me over.”
“You never answered my question,” he said. “How do you keep going?”
“Yeah, next time, I really should—”
“Did you extinguish desire? Is there peace inside you? Are you happy?”
I turned to him. Goddamn but he had the expression of a three-legged mutt at the end of adoption day.
“Look, Stuart, my life is no great shakes,” I said. “Fyodor. Giannis. Stevie Wonder. I’ve named the ants in my apartment—I’ve spent that much time with them. And look.” I pointed to my eye, the one welcomed to town by Brad. “This happens quite a bit. And the world, on top of everything, the world is a shitshow. What keeps me going? Peace? Happiness? Hell, no. Honestly, at this point it’s mostly pain and aggravation. Like life is an itch that I have to scratch.”