ornamental shrubbery on this lawn, he’d be invisible even if they were using infrared. He watched the Granada out of sight, then settled back to wait.
Mark burned with a pure fire. He knew what he wanted, and how to get it. The people who made pain in the world would be stopped. The uncaring, the smug, the self-confident, the lofty, too high and mighty to think about the people down below; they would all be toppled from their pedestals, and afterward the world wouldbe clean. No more hatred, no more pain, no more suffering, no more pity. No need for pity in a world without pain.
“You don’t feel sorry for me , you only feel sorry for yourself!” They’d both written that, in an exchange of letters, each accusing the other, and Mark had thought, If we make a joke of it, perhaps we can get past all this despair and love one another, mother and son at last. But he hadn’t made the attempt, nor had she; neither ever spoke of the coincidence, the same sentence in both letters, crossing from bedroom to bedroom. Had she failed to notice the identity of the words? He knew she read his notes, she quoted selected pieces back at him out of context in her own subsequent writings. This was at a later stage, after the screaming and crying, when he was in high school, in the larger apartment with her own bedroom, so she was no longer sleeping on the convertible sofa in the living room. (How he hated her out there, heavy, humid, unconscious, imprisoning him in his room with her presence.) She had started leaving him notes on his pillow about cleaning his room, washing up after himself in the kitchen, putting out the garbage, and he’d responded at first with scrawled remarks at the bottom of her notes, placed on her pillow at night while she was out working at the bar. But soon what he had to say was too extensive for the remaining corners and margins of her notes, so he bought his own paper with money stolen from her purse, and the correspondence began.
Tonight, Mark had been the one to find Koo Davis, and now his mind kept filling with that extraordinary scene. After he’d heard Larry at last go to bed— without checking Davis—he’d got up again to see to Davis himself. The man’s jokey treatment of the cassette still rankled; it was time he learned that everybody was serious.
Mark had expected to wake Davis, maybe put a little respect into him— not slap him around, Larry always overstated things—but he hadn’t at all anticipated what he’d actually found. There was good reason to believe he’d in fact saved Davis’ life. What irony!
He’d gone down to the utility room, moved all the empty wine cartons concealing the door, unlocked and opened it, and there was Davis bubbling and strangling in a lake of his own vile vomit, his bloated red face streaked with it, his arms and legs twitching like an impaled bug. The stink of the place! And the helplessness, the terrible gross flabby weakness, of the man gargling and retching on the couch. Mark had rolled him over, pounded his back, got Davis at last breathing again, and had then gone off to wake Peter, who would have to decide what to do next.
The action had been instinctive, saving Davis’ life. Now, after the event, would he repent at leisure? A dead Koo Davis would make no more tapes, of course, but he’d still be usable as a counter in the negotiations. The other side needn’t know of his death until it was all over. And mightn’t it be better, simpler all around, for Koo Davis to be dead? In imagination now, Mark saw himself not enter the room, not save Davis’ life, but instead close the door, walk away, and never tell anyone he’d been down there that night.
There was nothing personal about it. There was nothing personal in it. The fact that Davis had been Mark’s choice of subject—so subtly inserted into Peter’s mind during the early discussions that Peter now believed Davis to have been his own idea—mattered little. In truth, Davis was the
Mark burned with a pure fire. He knew what he wanted, and how to get it. The people who made pain in the world would be stopped. The uncaring, the smug, the self-confident, the lofty, too high and mighty to think about the people down below; they would all be toppled from their pedestals, and afterward the world wouldbe clean. No more hatred, no more pain, no more suffering, no more pity. No need for pity in a world without pain.
“You don’t feel sorry for me , you only feel sorry for yourself!” They’d both written that, in an exchange of letters, each accusing the other, and Mark had thought, If we make a joke of it, perhaps we can get past all this despair and love one another, mother and son at last. But he hadn’t made the attempt, nor had she; neither ever spoke of the coincidence, the same sentence in both letters, crossing from bedroom to bedroom. Had she failed to notice the identity of the words? He knew she read his notes, she quoted selected pieces back at him out of context in her own subsequent writings. This was at a later stage, after the screaming and crying, when he was in high school, in the larger apartment with her own bedroom, so she was no longer sleeping on the convertible sofa in the living room. (How he hated her out there, heavy, humid, unconscious, imprisoning him in his room with her presence.) She had started leaving him notes on his pillow about cleaning his room, washing up after himself in the kitchen, putting out the garbage, and he’d responded at first with scrawled remarks at the bottom of her notes, placed on her pillow at night while she was out working at the bar. But soon what he had to say was too extensive for the remaining corners and margins of her notes, so he bought his own paper with money stolen from her purse, and the correspondence began.
Tonight, Mark had been the one to find Koo Davis, and now his mind kept filling with that extraordinary scene. After he’d heard Larry at last go to bed— without checking Davis—he’d got up again to see to Davis himself. The man’s jokey treatment of the cassette still rankled; it was time he learned that everybody was serious.
Mark had expected to wake Davis, maybe put a little respect into him— not slap him around, Larry always overstated things—but he hadn’t at all anticipated what he’d actually found. There was good reason to believe he’d in fact saved Davis’ life. What irony!
He’d gone down to the utility room, moved all the empty wine cartons concealing the door, unlocked and opened it, and there was Davis bubbling and strangling in a lake of his own vile vomit, his bloated red face streaked with it, his arms and legs twitching like an impaled bug. The stink of the place! And the helplessness, the terrible gross flabby weakness, of the man gargling and retching on the couch. Mark had rolled him over, pounded his back, got Davis at last breathing again, and had then gone off to wake Peter, who would have to decide what to do next.
The action had been instinctive, saving Davis’ life. Now, after the event, would he repent at leisure? A dead Koo Davis would make no more tapes, of course, but he’d still be usable as a counter in the negotiations. The other side needn’t know of his death until it was all over. And mightn’t it be better, simpler all around, for Koo Davis to be dead? In imagination now, Mark saw himself not enter the room, not save Davis’ life, but instead close the door, walk away, and never tell anyone he’d been down there that night.
There was nothing personal about it. There was nothing personal in it. The fact that Davis had been Mark’s choice of subject—so subtly inserted into Peter’s mind during the early discussions that Peter now believed Davis to have been his own idea—mattered little. In truth, Davis was the
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