"Matthew, what do you want."
There was no question at the end of Pam's sentence. That bitch. She knew she had me by the balls because she had Hannah.
I spit a mouthful of Riesling over the rail. I needed a bottle of beer. Better yet, I needed a bottle of Woodford Reserve.
"You know what I want. What does she think? I'm writing like you always ask but you're never fucking h—"
"She loves it." Pam stifled a yawn.
Okay, Pam had probably been asleep—like I fucking cared. She deserved this. She ratted me out to the reporters. Her and Bethany, maybe even Nate. I'd had time to think and I finally figured they were all in on it. They knew about me and Hannah. They tore us down on purpose.
Why, I didn't know, and it didn't matter. You can't trust anyone.
"I swear," I growled. "Tell me more."
"She... she really empathizes with the narrator, the surrogate."
"Why?"
"I don't know, Matthew. We work together, we don't do psychoanalysis."
"Oh, fuck you Pam."
I ended the call. Fuck her. I drained my bottle and dropped it, watching it roll across the porch. What a gorgeous fucking night. Cool and dark, windy and quiet. All I needed was a cigarette. Or that bottle of beer. My Ambien was kicking in, though. God, I loved that feeling... like a balloon rising and expanding in my head.
I woke up drunk.
Jesus, why did I sleep on the porch? I was fucking freezing, wearing only a pair of boxers, and sore as fuck, slumped over in a wicker chair.
I flicked through my phone. Huh, I'd talked to Pam. God, she probably called me in the middle of the fucking night. She was always calling, always harassing me.
I shuffled into the cabin and took two shots of bourbon. I gulped down three glasses of water. Damn, that did me exactly right. Headache gone, stomach settled, hands steady.
I refreshed Laurence's water and topped off his food dish.
"Perfect morning," I told him. I hummed as I dressed. Mm, it felt good to drink. I'm an all-day all-night drinker when I drink. I do nothing by halves.
My mind whirred along as I brushed my teeth, popped a Xanax and a Lexapro, and collected my latest pages from the kitchen table. I was writing everything by hand. Only fucking way to write. Why did I ever use a computer? Pen in hand, hand to the page, it's godly.
The morning was chilly. I lit a smoke and headed out, leaving a few windows open and the front door unlocked. Uncle's cabin was in the middle of goddamn nowhere.
I strolled up the gravel road to my nearest neighbor, a little farm called The Patch where people came to pick fresh vegetables and buy eggs. My typist was the farmer's wife. Fuck, I couldn't be bothered typing out my own stuff, and this lady looked like she could use the change. I paid her ten dollars per typed page.
We had a rough start—she kept fucking up the formatting and couldn't make out my handwriting—but after about a month we got going smoothly. I wrote, I took the pages to Wendy, I bought some vegetables, I picked up the pages, I paid Wendy, I mailed the pages to Pam, rinse and repeat.
I never went online. I didn't even bring my laptop to the cabin. The internet was a mess of gossip about me, and it was part of how Bethany took me down. And it was how I met Hannah. Now, its unreal, anonymous spaces, the programs and sites where we connected, the laptop screen glowing like a window to another world... could only bring me pain.
"You got pages for me?" Wendy smiled, the corners of her eyes wrinkling sweetly.
She was crouched in a ring of wire mesh with a horde of fuzzy chicks teeming around her. When she saw me, she wiped her hands on her jeans and climbed out.
"Yeah, fifteen or so," I said.
I hovered near the pen. I didn't like to look Wendy in the eye. Hell, I didn't like to look anybody in the eye. Eye contact is too intimate.
Wendy understood that. She got me. She also didn't care about the perpetual booze on my breath—not that I could tell, at least.
She took the pages and rubbed my shoulder. She had dry knobby hands.
"Alright hun," she said. "Would you look at these little guys? Just look at 'em."
"Yeah, they're sweet. God, they're cute." I ran a hand through my hair. I needed a shower. I should have taken another two shots. "I'll look at the animals for a while. That okay?"
Wendy laughed.
"Matt, I told you to stop asking. You come see 'em any time. I'll be in the house."
"Mm, thanks. Thanks Wendy."
I watched as she moved toward the old farmhouse. Morning sunlight fell across the white clapboard. Here and there the paint was peeling. The grounds were unkempt, patches of garden braced by scruffy grass and dirt.
Perfect. This place was perfect. I stepped into the chick pen.
"Hey guys." I crouched and reached for the chicks. They swarmed away from me, making me laugh. "You little jerks. You're all fat. You're all going to be ugly in about a month, all scrawny and gray. Come here."
The tiny endless peeping of the chicks was breaking my fucking heart. I would probably cry when I got into the barn. That's what I usually did.
Finally, I captured one of the chicks. I cupped its body to my chest.
Little bird, I thought. Soft warm little bird.
I wandered around visiting the animals and talking to them. I fed the goats and looked into their weird rectangular pupils. I stroked my hand down a pig's leathery back.
In the barn, a tabby darted away from me.
I glanced around. There was no one in sight, just me and the old black Percheron in his stall. I drifted over and he came to the edge of the stall. He knew this routine. He lowered his lumbering head toward me and I hugged him around the neck.
"Hey pal," I said, my voice thick. I wasn't sad or anything. Mike said that crying is a cathartic release and sometimes it has nothing to do with sorrow.