Page 85 of The Triangle

This day, if it’s the last day I ever have, will have been worth it.

The lone sound I hear—that of brittle leaves crunching under my feet—reminds me how secluded we are. I’ve only ever been here once before, when it was summer. I came to see the finished product. I was struck by how lush and green the area around the house was. Now it’s gold. Brown. Rust.

Not unlike me, Danny, and Christine.

We started out fresh, green, new. Once upon a time. We must have. I’m sure we did.

But over the years we’ve become stained. Stained by the passage of time. Stained by the blood of those whose blue hearts we’ve taken from them. Stained by the lives we’ve lived. And now we are rust. We are brittle. But we are still beautiful.

Or at least we are to each other. And that’s all I really care about.

More memories tumble through my head as I continue walking, feeling the sharp sting of the late afternoon air filling my lungs.

Speaking of memory…

“Hey,” Christine’s voice comes from behind.

I turn around to see her half-skipping toward me through the kaleidoscope of leaves on the ground. I grin. She’s done that ever since I’ve known her. Even when in the midst of a moment freighted with danger, she’s always maintained a bouncing lope in her gait. It’s in her bones. Embedded deep into her DNA, I suppose. That buoyancy. That life.

Fokken hell, I love her so.

“Hey,” I say back.

“Where are you going?”

“I need to make a call. There’s no reception in the house.”

“By design?”

“Yes and no. It’s ballistic, wire-mesh glass. Which no one bothered to mention would play havoc with mobile reception. Shame. But you rarely get one thing you want in this world without sacrificing another.”

A puff of frosty breath leaves her lungs. She’s wearing the same clothes she had on when we arrived. She hugs Danny’s pea coat to her body and her shoulders tense up in the direction of her ears. Her hair is still a bit damp. I stroke a strand of it from her cheek.

“You should go back in. You’ll catch cold.”

“I want to walk with you. Can I?”

“Where’s Danny?”

“Shower.” She nods over her shoulder back toward the house.

I look at my glass castle. One of approximately seventy homes around the world that I currently own. Right now, it is by far my favorite. All the others could disappear with the wave of a magic wand and I wouldn’t care. In fact, everything I own in this world could disappear right now and I don’t think I would care.

Which is the first time in my life I have ever thought something even remotely resembling that. And suddenly, a notion occurs to me. An idea. A fantasy. One that makes me laugh.

“What’s funny?” she asks, also smiling.

“Nothing. Yes, let’s walk. I want to show you something. You should see this.”

She takes me by the crook of the arm as I stick my hands in the pockets of my topcoat and we amble off in the direction I was heading. To see us now, one might think we were simply two lovers out for a stroll. I am reminded of a time I sat on a bench in the Central Park Mall in autumn and watched people walk along, amidst the falling leaves, carefree and content with their understanding of the world.

I recollect thinking how nice it must be to live a small life. Not ‘small’ in a pejorative sense. ‘Small’ in the way of easy. Worry-free. Simple. A life that wasn’t about chasing the rush of adrenaline that comes of escaping barely alive.

I imagine that this… now…. walking along with Christine’s hand on my arm, and Danny inside, taking his morning ablutions… feels like that.

If you take away the added element of the gun in my pocket.

And the bullet hole in my top coat.