A short story.

“The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.” —William Shakespeare

Chapter 1

he mansion was quiet. Ty It sat perched at the top of the town’s highest prominence; it stood out

and above the cheap, prefabricated homes on Oak Street. The sun was drawn to this house and its slumbering inhabitants. It awarded its rays to the highest, the top of the town, first. That morning, the sun sliced through the once-blackened curtains, projecting its light through the house’s enormous windows, exposing 6,000 square feet of absolute perfection. The light crept across the room and finally landed in Kerch Clyde’s eye. He stirred. Scout, the family’s golden retriever, heard its master and let out a bark downstairs.

Kerch told the dog to be quiet while he scratched his stubble. He looked over at his wife next to him in the bed. Later that day, she would be leaving him for a week. He hated her trips. He wished she had never taken that sales job at the Govett Insurance Company. It was a big job, though—a promotion for her—that required flesh pressing, canned smiles, and meeting demanding quotas. Evelyn really wanted the job and so Kerch agreed to support her. He wanted her to be happy, because he loved her.

Kerch knew that it was time to take Scout outside, but he had to check his email first. He had sent Saito-san important sales figures late last night and wanted to see if his Japanese boss had received them. He was paranoid about e-mail and expected that people never got what he sent, that his important messages ended up in spam folders.

Kerch walked downstairs; Scout met him there with his tail and tongue wagging, with his head shaking. The dog was hungry and needed to go outside. Kerch slipped past him and entered his palatial den. He logged onto his computer with

clacks of his keyboard and clicks of the mouse. Scout saddled up to him and shook his collar, which made a jingle-jangle noise. It reminded Kerch of holiday-season Salvation Army bells.

“Enough, Scout, knock it off,” Kerch uttered, pushing the dog away with one hand while he read his screen. Scout retreated to his bed in the corner of the den.

Kerch let out a loud sigh. Saito-san had received his e-mail. He wanted to know if Kerch could recrunch the numbers on the T6 merger and send the revisions to him before the morning teleconference. This would be hard to do; this meant Kerch needed to get to the office immediately. This called for a panic. Kerch wrote a two-word reply to his boss: “Will do.” He used that phrase a lot. He was a will-do, can-do kind of man. He was on his way up at Semiconductor International.

Kerch shut off his computer and bolted upstairs. Scout followed him to the base of the stairs and shook his tail. He thought Kerch was finally taking him outside.

Evelyn heard the hiss of the shower and sat up in bed. She grabbed a sealed letter that had been hidden under a book on the nightstand just as Kerch blasted out of the bathroom. His towel clung at his waist; his wet feet slapped the hardwood floors. Water trickled down his back, falling in drops, trailing him wherever he walked.

Evelyn called out in a whisper, “Kerch?”

Her husband was feverishly putting his pants on. Water soaked through them, making amoebalike splotches. He never seemed to have enough time to dry himself. Evelyn called out to him again. Kerch fumbled with his shirt, trying to button it as fast as he could. “Hey, love. I’m running late. Call me when you land. OK?”

“Kerch, come here,” Evelyn said. She held up her hand, which contained the small, sealed letter, and used it to wave him over to her like a geisha waving her fan. “Sit down, honey.”

“T’m running late.”

“Sit down,” she repeated, gently. “I have something for us.” Evelyn handed Kerch the letter. It smelled like her.

“What’s this?” he asked, getting water all over it.

“Read it when you first think of me today, OK? Read it the very moment I pop into your head.” She smiled and touched his hand. “It’s special.”

Kerch looked into Evelyn’s eyes and ran his fingers through her hair. “You know I love surprises,” he said. “I love you. Have a safe flight. I’ll read this when I first think of you. I promise.” He then stuffed the envelope into the pocket of his suit coat, grabbed his cell phone from the dresser, and walked out of the room.

“T love you, too!” Evelyn called out after him. Kerch didn’t hear her. He had already bounded down the stairs and walked out the door. Scout let out a bark and slumped down in his bed.

Semiconductor International’s parking lot was empty. Kerch pulled his BMW in front of the sign that read “Restricted Parking—Senior VP” in bold letters. That was Kerch—a senior vice president. He made a beeline for the entrance. The Singapore teleconference was starting in 30 minutes. Kerch rushed into his office and pulled up several spreadsheets on his computer. He recrunched the numbers and fired them off to Saito-san.

It took his boss only five minutes to send a reply: “Excellent.”

Kerch dialed into the Singapore call. The speakerphone crackled to life. “Who just joined?” a voice asked. It was Saito-san’s.

“Kerch Clyde here. Good morning, Saito-san. Or should I say good evening?”

The speakerphone exploded with the laughter of sycophants and then the call began in earnest. It moved along slowly—account statuses were briefed in painful detail; deals were announced; negotiations requiring group consensus were discussed. Just as Saito-san’s proposal on the T6 merger was winding down, Kerch’s cell phone rang.

It was Max.

Max Clyde was Kerch’s younger brother. Max called only when he needed money and if he really needed money, he called first thing in the morning. Kerch let it ring itself to death. Go to hell, Max, he thought. For everything that Kerch was, Max wasn’t. Kerch and Max were brothers in name only. But they had been best friends at one point. Growing up, they shared a room for 10 years. It had been a hardscrabble childhood for the two of them. Their father had abandoned the family, which left their mother working several shifts at a meat-processing plant just to make ends meet. But they persevered and formed a close bond. It was Max who gave Kerch his first piggy bank. And it was Max who had saved Kerch when he pulled him from the bottom of Peter’s Pond on a fishing trip 20 years ago.

But none of that mattered now. The relationship between the brothers was ruined. It began to unravel when Kerch left for Princeton. He rarely came home after graduating. Max dropped out of high school. As Kerch rose to new academic heights, Max descended down a proverbial sewer lined with drunken excess and debauchery. Kerch’s academic accolades, his Ivy League sheepskin, contrasted with Max’s drunken failings, his long liquor bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. The two were polar opposites. When Kerch finally came home to visit his mother, Max was long gone. He was last seen bound for Amsterdam with a backpack and a fancy bong.

The two had not spoken to each other until recently. One day out of the blue, Max called Kerch from a pay phone. He sounded very far away. He needed money. He was hungry. He missed their old relationship. After a minute of listening to Max’s desperate pleas, Kerch told him to go to hell. Max called Kerch every day

after that. This time, however, Kerch just let the call go to voice mail. He expected a new message to flash on his phone, he expected to hear Max’s rehearsed, desperate plea for help, and he expected to summarily delete it.

Kerch slapped his phone shut and returned to hear the conclusion of the Singapore call. Sure enough, a new voice mail message appeared on his phone. Kerch snickered because he had just found an easier way on his phone to delete the message without listening to it. Two button pushes is all it took. Go fo hell, Max. Pick yourself up on your own like I did and wipe the dust off your ass, he thought. The teleconference ended with Saito-san restating the group’s action items. Kerch mumbled a quick good-bye to his boss and returned to his work computer, which was now filled with several pages of unanswered e-mail.

His cell phone rang again.

Kerch didn’t bother looking at it. He knew Max was trying again. A new voice mail message icon appeared on the phone and Kerch summarily dispatched the message, deleting it using his newfound two-button method. That’s how VPs work, Kerch thought: delete, delete, delete. Delete as much as possible! For the next few hours of the morning, Kerch sat in on several more conference calls and then decided to take a coffee break. He stood up and walked over to his office door, but before he could reach for the handle, the door opened. Margaret, his secretary, fell into his office. Her face was ashen; her eyes were full of tears; her mouth was open. Her lips quivered. She looked at him as she sat on the floor and shook her head. “This can’t be,” she muttered.

Kerch reached down to touch her. “Margaret? Are you OK?” he asked. Margaret stuttered.

What is wrong with this lady? Kerch thought. He didn’t want a scene. Some coworkers heard her and came into the office. They picked her up and moved her to her chair. Kerch leaned over to offer her his hand; he touched her shoulder with his index finger, making a superficial lifting gesture. Kerch tried hard to make the gesture look right; he wanted to show what appeared to be sincere concern for her. Her father must have died, or maybe she was sick. Kerch always wanted to be seen doing the right thing at the right time. Moments like these were absolutely vital for corporate vice presidents. Vice presidents had to show what appeared to be sincere empathy; vice presidents had to look concerned about their employees’ well being. As Kerch stood back up, a small white envelope fell out of his suit coat and landed next to Margaret.

It was Evelyn’s water-splotched letter. It smelled like her.

Margaret tried to compose herself. She wiped tears with her blouse’s sleeve. She looked at him again and shook her head. Between sobs, she told him that a plane had just gone down over the Pacific.

“A plane?”

Margaret looked away. “I think Evelyn was on it. It matches the flight number of the itinerary you gave me.” (Kerch had made it a habit of giving Margaret all of Evelyn’s itineraries and insisting that they get added to his busy calendar.)

Kerch stared at the letter. He didn’t remember picking it up; he didn’t remember feeling the hands moving him to his little chair in his big, spinning office.

It’s tragically ironic how, in life-changing moments, we sometimes can recall only the small details. We hear the bird’s song before the bomb’s explosion; we chuckle at the ice on the stairs before we slip. And so Kerch stared at a large coffee stain on his comptroller’s shirt while he listened to Margaret talk about inoperable engines and little hope for survivors.

Chapter 2

The sun began to set on that big house that loomed over Oak Street. With the exception of the sinister glow of a single television set, the house was dark. Scout lay at Kerch’s feet. A network news channel broadcast macabre images of burning corn fields. The camera on the news helicopter zoomed in on metal shards and broken luggage. Talking heads—air-safety experts—pontificated on the probability of survival: zero. After takeoff, the plane had hit the ground after a slow and terrifying death ride. Apparently the pilots had tried to restart the plane’s engines for 15 minutes. Passengers had time to call loved ones and the anchorman with the theatric sympathy frown warned parents to usher their kids out of the room as the network played snippets of recorded prayers and I-love-you messages that always worked wonders with the Nielsen ratings and made all the people tear up at the right time.

Kerch sobbed. In one hand, he held Evelyn’s opened letter. In the other, he palmed a Glock semiautomatic pistol. The gun was cold. A bottle of vodka sat on the coffee table beside him. Scout jingle-jangled his collar. Kerch clicked and clacked the pistol’s slide, loading a hollow-point bullet into its chamber. Scout tubbed his head against Kerch’s knee. Kerch looked down at the dog and kicked him hard. The dog yelped and cowered in the corner. Kerch grabbed the bottle of vodka and shoved the letter and pistol into the pockets of his gabardine pants. The house’s front door opened and slammed shut; a car peeled out of the driveway. Scout barked and then the house grew silent again.

Kerch slammed the gears of his BMW too early and the car reacted by thrusting forward reluctantly. Maple Street Park was only seconds away. He was in fifth gear by the time he reached the park. Nobody was there. A swing in the shape of a toy dragon rocked eerily on its own next to an abandoned bike in the playground. The wind whipped up sand in spurts. Particles blew into the car’s windshield. Kerch reached into his pocket. The vodka bottle was full. He felt the gun. With a giant swig, he downed the bottle; he reread the letter as tears blurred his eyes. The buzz kicked in.

He hesitated. He was scared. Kerch counted to three, reread the letter, and finally shoved the pistol into his mouth. Looking one last time at the letter, he thought about Evelyn’s cute handwriting. He remembered all the love notes he had gotten from her in the good old days—the days when she was alive. It was this cursive 20 years ago that told him—with the heart above the lowercase i— that she had the house to herself and the special lingerie. It told him secrets and shared explicit fantasies. Earlier that day, it told him, with the heart below the five exclamation points and in all capitals, that their life was going to change.

Forever.

He traced the hearts in the exclamation points with his index finger: “WE

He pulled the Safe Action trigger system on his Glock. Just a little more pressure was all he needed to blow chunks of his brains into the back seat. But before he made the final move, a flash of white zipped past his car and exploded in front of the window. Kerch jumped. The gun dropped. The round remained chambered. A man stood outside Kerch’s car. He wore a black cap and a blinking vest. A headlamp was attached to his head and emitted an LED light that shone into Kerch’s bloodshot eyes. The man’s feet kept moving in a rhythmic cadence. His breath emitted clouds that puffed in front of the BMW’s halogen lights.

The man gestured for Kerch to open the window.

“What?” Kerch spat.

The man coughed. It was a sickly, wet cough—an unhealthy cough—a cough that belongs in cancer wards, not in parks with dragon swings. “I’m sorry to bother you, but do you have a cell phone?” the stranger asked.

Kerch rolled down his window. “No,” he said. He was about to roll his window back up, but the man stopped him by hanging his fingertips over the edge of the window.

“T need to call my wife. I’m not going to make it home,” the man said.

“Tough.”

“Wait!” The man spoke fast: “I changed plans . .. 1 changed course… I need to tell her to come and pick me up. I was supposed to run 10, but I’m doing 20, and I just can’t make it. My legs are killing me. I just took a different route.” The man turned his head to the side and coughed another one of his sickly cancer-ward coughs. “So Isaw your car and your lights and thought you’d have a phone on you.”

“Leave me alone.”

The man stuck his sweaty head into the car. “You’re driving a Beamer and you don’t have a cell phone? Come on!”

“T told you I don’t have a cell phone.”

The man stopped jogging in place. “Well, then, sorry to bother you, my friend,” he said. “I got a lot on my mind, and if you can’t tell, I do things like run in the middle of the night. I figured you sitting there in that park meant you had things on

your mind, too. My name’s Ray, Raymond Franklin.” He heaved and spit. “People call me Skull these days,” he said while thrusting out his hand to shake Kerch’s.

“Skull?” Kerch left Ray’s hand unshaken.

Ray pulled his hand back and wiped sweat from his brow. “Yep. See?” Ray removed his cap. The sickly sheen of his balding head gave it away. Ray blew his nose into his glove. A bead of yellow snot hung down from his hand like a stalactite. “Brain tumor equals radiation and chemotherapy. Nothing’s working, so I figure I’ll run myself into the grave before this monster gets me. I’ll run and make right what this damned world makes wrong.”

Kerch looked down at the crumpled letter and the empty bottle.

Ray backed out of the window. “Well, sorry to bother you, my friend, take care.”

Kerch mumbled something to himself.

“Take care,” Ray repeated.

Take care? Kerch thought. How the hell am I supposed to take care? He was about to say that to Ray, but it was too late. The runner had slipped away into the night.

Kerch rolled up his window. He threw his head in his hands and sobbed. He shut his eyes and imagined dark things: death, shoes, luggage, and Glock Safe Action triggers. Airplanes crashed while dogs scurried away. Kerch was drunk and so the park spun a bit and then turned itself upside down, raining sand, extinguishing the fiery corn field in front of the helicopters and the network news anchor. Kerch started the BMW and took off, bound for the town’s only 24-hour liquor store: Shabi’s Beverage Outlet. He needed more booze to get up the nerve to stick that cold gun in his mouth again.

Shabi’s was in the bad part of town. Getting there from Maple Street Park required crossing train tracks and locking your doors. He had forgotten about Ray. Vodka was all he cared about.

But Ray came back to him.

A figure was hobbling down the street. It crouched down low, looking like Quasimodo. Its feet fell in heavy thuds and its hands arched sideways, with palms up between strides. Kerch slowed down and pulled up alongside the suffering figure. Kerch recognized Ray. Too bad for him, he thought. He sped off down the road, leaving Ray to his misery.

The car made it to the next stoplight. While he waited for it to turn green, Kerch adjusted his rearview mirror and scanned the dark road for Ray.

No sign.

Kerch gripped his steering wheel and looked at his wife’s letter in his clenched hands. The words “WE’RE” and PREGNANT” couldn’t be seen. They were folded up, stuck between his hands, buried. The dim glow of the streetlight illuminated only the wet, heart-shaped exclamation points on the letter. Kerch closed his

eyes; he thought about Evelyn; he remembered running his hands through her hair for the last time. He let go of the letter and let out a long sigh. He sobbed for a minute, letting the light turn green while his car idled. Finally, he grabbed the gearshift with his sweaty hand and shifted it into reverse.

The car’s backup lights shone on a slumped figure on the street.

It was Ray.

Kerch leapt out of his car and stumbled over to the man. He lifted him under his trembling hands and placed him into the back seat next to the Glock semiautomatic pistol with the hair trigger. Ray lay in the back of the car in the fetal position. He was shivering. A rivulet of blood dripped from his nose. Twisted vines for pulsating veins formed across his temple. He muttered directions to his house between wet coughs. Kerch drove him there and helped him up to the door. Ray pushed the doorbell three times.

Ray’s wife opened the door. She stared at Kerch for a second and then motioned for the two of them to enter. The room glowed under the light of a small television that was broadcasting some breaking news about an airplane that crashed in a corn field after takeoff. Ray’s wife stared at the screen and shook her head. “Oh, those poor people,” she said. “No survivors.”

Kerch put Ray down on the sofa.

Ray’s wife turned her gaze from the television to Kerch. She fired off questions. “What happened? Where did you find him? Who are you? Why do you smell like booze?”

Kerch wiped his crimson hands across his gabardine slacks and calmly explained things. Ray put his hands on his face, feeling his nose, looking occasionally at the drying blood in his palms. Ray’s wife shook her head. Kerch slowly wiped his hands again. “I just don’t understand this man,” she said. “The doctor tells him to rest. They say he needs all the energy to fight it; they say he should be resting and sleeping. And what does he do? He runs. He throws his life away and he speeds up his death!” She turned around and put her head in her hands. Ray curled up on the sofa and coughed. She mumbled through her hands, “But he’ ll be out there tomorrow. Sure enough, he’ll be out there at 5 a.m.”

Kerch retreated to the door. He was thanked and invited to stay longer. Would he like some tea? He would not. He said he had to go home.

Chapter 3

Hours later, a fan rotated above Kerch’s bedroom and blew the odor of vodka across it. Kerch was alone in bed. The satin sheets still smelled like Evelyn. He thought she was there with him. According to the clock on the wall, it was 4 A.M.

Something entered the room.

Scout jingled his collar. Kerch sat up and peered down at the dog’s golden fur. Dried blood was caked on its snout. Kerch remembered that he had kicked his dog the night before. Scout jumped up on Kerch’s bed, landing with a thump at the far end. The dog gave his master enough space to grieve, but he was close enough to be there for him. Scout was doing what dogs do best: forgiving and loving unconditionally.

Kerch felt the soft fur on his leg and put his hand on his dog. He patted the head and rubbed his hands across the golden body slowly and deliberately. The dog wagged his tail. Soft fur brushed against Kerch’s cheek; it made him smile. He then stood up and walked over to his closet. He tossed everything out into the center of a room, forming a large pile of starched-collar shirts and creased pants. He finally found what he was looking for: his running shoes. He held them to his nose. They still smelled new. After all, he had worn them only once, when Evelyn talked him into going for a walk with her a long time ago. After more rifling, he found his workout shorts and shirt. They smelled new, too. Kerch donned his exercise gear and looked at himself in the mirror for several minutes.

“T don’t know if I can do this,” he mumbled.

Scout jingled his collar.

Kerch let out a sigh. “OK,” he said. “Come on, Scout. Let’s get you something to eat first.”

The two walked downstairs over to Scout’s empty bowl. Kerch filled it to the rim and sat down next to the dog on the kitchen floor. Kerch had never watched Scout eat before. He had always been in too much of a hurry. Even though Scout was ravenous, he stopped eating periodically to look at his master and wag his tail. The dog was making sure Kerch was still there for him.

It took Kerch several minutes to find Scout’s leash. He rarely walked the dog; that was always Evelyn’s job. The leash was on the kitchen counter. It was underneath a grocery list made out in his deceased wife’s bubbly handwriting.

“Milk …eggs… bread… champagne.”

Champagne?

We were going to celebrate the baby, Kerch thought. He placed his hands on the kitchen counter and sobbed. Scout paced back and forth, sensing that something wasn’t right. Kerch looked up at the clock on the oven. It read 4:45.

He had to get going and so he wiped the tears from his eyes and took a deep breath.

Scout in tow, Kerch opened the front door. An enormous basket of flowers fell into the foyer. It was from Saito-san. ““We at Semiconductor International are deeply saddened at your loss,” read the note. Kerch stepped over the flowers and walked to his car. Scout hopped into the passenger seat.

They were on their way.

The BMW sped along River Street, passing Maple Street Park. Kerch caught sight of the playground. A child held its mother’s hand as it walked to the dragon swing. Kerch slowed down just in time to wave at the pair. Scout had his nose up against the window. His breath formed clouds on the glass. The mother didn’t see Kerch’s wave. The child did. It waved at the car.

Kerch’s BMW pulled into Ray’s street. It was five o’clock. He nearly hit Ray. The frail figure was in the middle of the road. He held his hands in front of his face. Kerch slammed on the brakes. Ray darted to the side and jogged past the car. He wore the same black cap and gray sweats from last night. But today he wore a rucksack that formed a monstrous bulge on his back. Ray plodded along with the familiar pose of the determined, yet fatigued runner: arms akimbo, feet slapping, shoulders hunched too far forward.

Kerch backed up. He rolled down the window and caught Ray in midstride.

“Ray? It’s me, Kerch. Can I join you today?” he said.

Ray slowed down to a trot. He was straining for breath and coughed out his response. “Hi. Sure. I got .. . 10 miles today . . . pull over. I’m going out at 9:30s … You can hang. You can stick.”

Kerch didn’t know what 9:30s meant. He pulled over to the side of the road and shut off the ignition. Scout stood up and leapt out the door. The two didn’t catch up to Ray until he stopped in midstride, bent over, and picked up an empty bag of potato chips. He then removed his rucksack and placed the bag inside.