Jessie Ch. 16

I took a breath, took a drink. Quieted my voice, slowed it down. "Every day, lately, part of me wishes I'd died up on that Minnesota road."

"Gary, I - " Jessie put her hand on my leg and I took it off. She looked at me, shocked.

"I don't want to feel like this. Feel anger, feel hate, feel fucking DIRTY all the time, and I can't help it, because what's going on around us, I'd be a fool NOT to feel that. I just want to stop." I chuckled widely, mirthlessly. "I put my gun in my safe because I'm honestly afraid if I'd come out here alone, drinking - and I was going to, no matter what - I might've decided to eat a bullet."

"What...I...I had no idea you were so... Miserable. Is it me? Is there something wrong with me? Is there anything I can be doing for you? Do you want to see a shrink? Talk to someone? You can always talk to me." She was babbling, trying to process what I was pushing on her, making her feel.

"Doesn't help. All this stuff still exists. All those fucking evil people still exist." I held out my hands and they shook. I made them fists to still them. "You remember that radio announcer two years ago? Bad voice for radio, critical of the governor? Even his own audience didn't like listening to him?"

"Yeah..."

"Guess who fucked up his car before his accident?"

"Who?"

"Morgan. That senator from down south we all think is gay? He's not. He likes girls. GIRLS. Specifically from Venezuela. Not Honduras. Not Peru. Not Mexico. Venezuela. Morgan buys them. First from coyotes, crossing the border, now kids that get lost in the immigration or homeless systems."

"Why? The governor I get, but that senator and him seem like they're exact opposites."

"Money. He's got a whole bunch of Hollywood types paying him for the same shit. A bunch of east coast politicians paying him, giving him cover to go do violence, create unrest. Fucking distracts us all. Remember the Denver riots?"

Jessie swallowed hard. That had been a bad day for us. "Yeah."

"The mayor was rerouting police for them to fight. Paid off the police to look the other way on the bomb investigations. Between the human trafficking and the stirring up civil unrest, this guy is the most influential man in the country, and no one knows his name. And its all right there, on his flash drive. He wore a fucking wire everywhere, Jess. Everyone he met with, they're all right there, on tape, talking about killing their opponents, rape, riots... The actress who drowned in the bathtub this spring? She was gonna go public on an actor that we both like, raping her during the filming of a movie that I have on fucking Bluray. He wanted Morgan to drown her so she'd die feeling powerless. And the school shooting in Alabama? That was the idea of a Washington state senator. He stalked that kid for months, groomed him. Encouraged him to do that."

"Shit." Jessie took the bottle back from me, drank for a long while. "So we go public. Make copies of that flash drive and send it to every paper we can think of."

I snorted. "Right now, I want to die. But not like I'd die if that went public. There's literally twenty, thirty percent of our fucking government working with Morgan, a shit ton of Hollywood and business types, and you think they're not gonna look for revenge for outing them as violent or diddlers or petty murderers? They'll kill us with power sanders." I looked over at her. "Yeah, that happened too."

We sat there in silence. Neither of us knew what to do. Knew what to say. Knew how to process this.

"And besides us, think about what happens to the country if this gets out. The American people realize their nation is at least partially run - and entertained by - some really fucking awful people? How do you hold a country together then? Nobody accepts how things work NOW. It all falls apart. Real riots. Assassinations, violence, like Hong Kong or Chile or Venezuela. People dying in this country on a scale not seen since the damn Civil War. It's not worth it. And yet it is."

"Poor Sienna," Jessie said. "Carried that around for a year. Maybe more. No wonder he got her addicted, if she ever came forward, no one would believe her." She paused. "Maybe... Maybe that helped her deal with it too."

"Yeah."

"So... What do we do now? You wanna go public? Go on the run?"

"No."

"No?"

"I'm gonna find Morgan. And I'm gonna kill him. Like, KILL kill him. Not with a bullet. He needs to know. He needs to understand that all pain he's caused in the world is getting repaid, just a little. I see him again... I'm gonna murder him."

"And go to jail."

"Good trade." I drank more Chopin."He's evil. He offends me as a human being. He offends me as a man. So he has to die."

"Not that I don't doubt that you can, but... You've barely survived the last two times you met him."

I shrugged. "Details."

Jessie laughed. "Let's get you home, old man."

We stood, both unsteady. She kissed me and I wanted to cry. Nothing that felt that good, that living should exist in this world. I wrapped my arms around her and held her close. "I LOVE you, Jessie."

"I know."

"I... I'll regret saying this stuff to you tomorrow. Telling you everything. I shouldn't have. I'll pretend like I didn't say it, you'll probably pretend like you didn't hear it. But it's still there. In vino veritas and all that shit."

"You gonna stay with me?" Jessie helped me off the end of the bleachers, and I stumbled, woozy.

"Yeah."

"Then nothing else matters. Because I can't, I won't live without you." Her voice was fierce.

I pulled up my shirt to show her the bandage on my chest. "Ain't found a way to kill me yet."

We walked home together, leaning on each other in the warm fall night. Most of the lights had gone off in the houses, and the neighborhood slept, still and safe and blissfully unaware. I breathed in the fresh scent of approaching dawn, of night condensation, of the big city we sat on the edge of. Next to me, Jessie was tight to my side, an arm gently wrapped around me.

She loved me. No matter what, she loved me.

I heaved out a sigh.

Beautiful night to be alive.