CARTER continued... 3
Yeah. My own private place of worship. People around here don't know a damn thing about God, Angela. You'd be surprised.
Angela doesn't know what to say to this. She shifts her weight, says nothing.
I'm sure you remember that, though, he says. I always was opinionated, wasn't I? He laughs a little. You called me that once. Opinionated.
Angela can't tell if he's reminiscing or reprimanding. Either way it doesn't matter. This was a bad idea. Time to wind this up and get back on the road.
I better go, Carter.
But you just got he--
A sudden noise from elsewhere in the house. A laugh or a shriek. An animal, possibly. Or maybe a person. A woman? Hard to tell. Carter stops talking, breaks eye contact with Angela. He appears to be distracted, maybe listening.
What was that? Angela says.
It's nothing, Carter says. Nothing.
Is someone else here, Carter? You have a girlfriend?
Carter laughs a little at this. Girlfriend? he says. Well, I wouldn't call her that.
She's downstairs?
Look, it's no big deal.
I better go, Carter.
Hold on a sec, okay? Just let me go down and check on her. Okay?
Check on her?
Yeah, just a sec.
Carter --
He trots off to the door beside the bookshelf, opens it, and disappears within. Angela sips her beer, waiting. This man is nothing like the Carter she remembers. Actually -- scratch that, he's only a little like him: enough to make her wish the real Carter would come back. Whatever had happened to Carter in the intervening years, it's obvious that living out here in the country hadn't done him much good.
Definitely leaving now. As soon as he gets back, I'm gone, she thinks.
She can hear muffled voices from elsewhere in the house. She listens closely, but can't make out what is being said. Angela takes a step and kicks accidentally at an overturnd pizza box, revealing an array of photographs. Polaroids. Pictures of flowers, from the look of them.
She bends down and picks one up. What looks at first like a flower quickly resolves itself into something else, a hole, a red crater. A wound. It's hard to tell the perspective on a shot this close-up, but she's confident now: it's definitely a picture of a fleshwound. A torn hole; punctured skin. But whose? And why?
The next photograph is dim. Two people sitting on a couch. Two women, leaning away from each other. It's not until Angela gets the photograph right up to her face that she realizes both women are dead. The women are nude and have been dissected. What Angela first took to be clothing turns out to be far more gruesome: the contents of their torn-open bodies spill colorfully over their laps. They stare blankly at the camera. Above the couch is a ripped poster: NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR 1964-1965.
This room. This very room.
Carter, what have you done?
There are more photographs, but Angela doesn't want to see them. She drops the picture of the two women onto the trash below. Her raspy breath seems loud in the quiet house. She can feel the pulse in her temple, a percussive flare, keeping time.
I didn't just see that, she thinks. That was not there.
She hears a small shuffling noise and looks up, looks at the door Carter had gone through. It's ajar, as he had left it, revealing only darkness behind.
Angela turns and shoves open the screen door. Slowly she walks across the porch, taking in lungfuls of fresh, clean air. It's a lot brighter outside than she remembers it, from just moments ago, almost blinding. The light makes her wince, causing a fresh spark of pain from her damaged eye. She fumbles awkwardly for her sunglasses, slips them back on. Takes two steps down. The ground under her feet feels refreshing, solid. She understands what sailors feel like, taking their first steps back on land. She can see Missy's profile now from inside the Honda. Missy waves at her. She waves back.
Angela takes comfort in the normalcy of what she's doing. She has visited a friend, and now she's leaving. Here I am. There's the car. Missy inside, waiting. An act she's done a thousand times before. Just get there, she thinks. Just get to the car.
She suppresses the overwhelming urge to run. Running would ruin the normalcy. It would mean somehow Carter had won. So she walks, methodically, one foot in front of the other, step by step. The sun blazing. A normal afternoon.
There is no fear. Only subversion. Betrayal. Ten minutes ago Carter had been the only salvagable part of her past. Now he was nothing, less than nothing; just another in a long line of assholes that had taken her trust and crushed it, destroyed it. Just another man that had made her look like a fool.
It takes two eternities to get to her car, but she manages it, meticulously, systematically. She opens the door and begins absently searching for the keys in her purse; it takes her a few seconds to remember the car is already running. Angela slides into the driver's seat, puts her purse down, and closes the car door with a satisfying chunk. There now. Safety.
Are we leaving? Missy says.
Yeah, Angela says. We have to go.
She sticks the car in reverse and puts her arm behind Missy's seat, looking behind her. Hits the accelerator and pulls smoothly down the gravel drive, back toward Evanston Road. For a brief second she seems to catch a glimpse of him: his silhouette on the porch with a hand in the air. He could be shielding his eyes or waving goodbye. It's impossible to tell.
Did he have a dog? Missy says.
No, honey. No dog, Angela says, digging around again in her purse. As she pulls the car backward onto Evanston Road, she withdraws her cell phone from its sleeve.
Did he have a cat? Missy says.
No, sweetie. Thumbing the buttons. 9, 1, 1. Fuck Richard, she thinks. Let him find me if he can.
Did he have anything? Missy says.
Angela thinks of the garbage. Stacks of it, reeking, everywhere. To cover up the smell of something worse?
The cellar, the woman below. Girlfriend? I wouldn't call her that, he said.
He had... a lot of problems, Angela says, and there's the refrain again, that endless mantra, revolving in her brain: I sure can pick 'em.
Let it be a warning to myself, she thinks. Please, God. Let it describe how I used to be.
She puts the Honda in drive. The tires squeal a little as she jets away.