The Night Gwen Stacy Died (10 page)

Peter continued driving down Highway 6 until the ominous expanse of the Coralville
Mall spread before him in the distance. There was a carousel in the parking lot and
on it children were rotating. There was a theater where the blockbuster movies played
every summer. Also an ice-skating rink. There had been a pond that sometimes froze
in the back of his house where he and his brother would slip around in their sneakers
in the winter, but this was long before the Coralville Mall had been built, with its
assemblage of various atrocities and attractions. He parked the taxi and gazed onto
the rink, thinking of Jake, of those winters when there was nothing to do but slide
across the expanse of the water and hope not to fall through the thin parts. Before
he had considered exactly what he was doing there, Peter approached the ticket counter.
He purchased an hour on the ice, rented a pair of skates, and laced them up. He emerged
on the rink and clutched the side railing as he slowly made his way around it.

In his dreams, the girl sat beside him in the taxi. What a small detail this was,
her presence beside him, but what a difference it made to have someone else there,
to give witness to the things he saw. It was a shock to the system to consider that
the things he saw were real enough that someone could bear witness to them. The children
were going around the rink quickly in pairs, and they were singing along to whatever
song was playing over the loudspeakers, a song that sounded vaguely familiar, like
something outdated, something kids shouldn’t know.

“Mister, gotta get off the ice,” one kid was saying, and it took Peter a moment to
realize that the kid was speaking to him.

Peter regarded the kid who had addressed him, a boy of twelve or thirteen who was
holding the hand of a girl who looked a little older. “Couple skate,” the boy said.
Peter nodded, not exactly sure what the boy was getting at, until he looked to the
boy’s companion who seemed to take amusement at Peter’s unfamiliarity with the rules
of the rink.

These kids had grown up with things he hadn’t—ice skates, technology, different kinds
of wars. They understood things that he did not. Peter mumbled in appreciation for
the tip, and he started to skate toward the swinging door. When he tried to exit,
he noticed a girl of about nine standing in his way. She was wearing one of those
costumes, with the leggings that are the color of skin and a skirt that swirls around
as she spins. Her lips were heavy with gloss, like the mouth of a doll. She held out
her hand.

Peter looked behind him but there was no one there.

“Do you need a partner?” the girl asked.

“No, thanks,” Peter said.

The girl rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know how to skate,” Peter said.

“Come on,” the girl said. “The song is half over.”

Precariously, Peter placed his hand in the hand of the nine-year-old girl, resisting,
holding back at first, to let it be made clear to any father or legal guardian who
might be watching that the girl was the one who was directing things here: Peter was
simply following her lead. He was not a pedophile. He did not habitually come to the
ice rink to find the hands of prepubescent girls to clutch during couple skate.

In his first solo laps, Peter had stayed very close to the outer wall, to have something
to fall into should he lose his balance. But this girl was leading him out to the
center of the ice where there was nothing to hold onto, nothing to guide him but her
hand.

“You’ve never been on the ice before?” the girl asked him.

“Not like this, with skates, no,” said Peter.

“You don’t have to hold on so tight,” she said. “It’s easy.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Peter asked.

“My entire life,” the girl said, and she said it with such quiet dignity, it was easy
to forget he was speaking to a child whose entire life was a fraction of a reasonable
amount of time. It seemed incredible that she could take herself so seriously, could
trust in her experience so effortlessly. Behind the child’s hand, Peter could still
make out the slow tingle of the place in his palm where he had caught the girl’s slap
in the gas station. It seemed to be couched there under the skin, auguring something.
He began to skate, and as he did, he felt a slow certainty growing in his body. There
were patterns carved into the ice from the laps of skaters who had passed before them,
who were continuously passing, and he clutched the hand of the child, for balance,
for assurance, but after a little while he felt steady; he felt that for the first
time in his life, he was following signs that were meant for him to interpret. That
he would find himself capable of things heretofore impossible. The song neared its
climax,
Love shack, baby love shack! Love shack bay-ay-bee-ee!
A love shack seemed in those moments a sensible place, not only a place where people
could get together, but a place where people could get things done, before it mutated
again into an absurd place, an idiotic made-up, vaguely seedy place conjured by people
on drugs—a place that didn’t exist.

When he hit the ice, the girl went down with him. He tried to release his grasp from
her hand, but the weight of his body was so much greater than hers, the momentum of
the fall pulled her on top of him. So first there was the impact of his tailbone hitting
the ground, and afterward the impact of her body hitting his. There was no blood,
no breaks, no sprains, no reason for the pairs of skaters to do little more than shift
their path slightly to accommodate the obstruction on the ice. But in the moment in
which he began to fall, thinking back on it from his bedroom later that night, there
was no fear. The drop weight of panic into the stomach, yes, but it was closer to
pleasure. The throb in his tailbone was an old familiar pain, he was remembering now,
there on the surface of the pond, Peter and his brother: they had tried to fall. The
object of the game had been to wipe out in the most outrageous and unimaginable ways,
how they had flung the weight of their sneakers into the thinnest parts of the ice,
how they had hoped to fall through the ice and drag up a fish, its body squirming
outside the breathable water. To be the most reckless, the most unhinged, the first
to break into another dangerous world and bring back evidence of his daring achievement.

“Are you all right?” The child stood over him, or she had been standing over him for
a while, a slight concern passing over her tiny brow, her toothpick legs beneath her
again, the sequins on her costume glittering like some promise, close enough to touch.

Peter looked up at her. He smiled.

For the first night in seven, the dream did not come. Peter didn’t wish for it, or
wonder where it had gone. Even without it, he had made up his mind on what he was
going to do. He stayed up late in his bedroom, composing a note that would serve to
communicate his absence to his mother, until he returned.

Mom:

I’m sorry for leaving unannounced, the same as everyone. I borrowed Dad’s gun, but
don’t worry, it’s not what you think. I’m coming back—believe me.

Your son,

Peter

There was nothing about the note that felt right, but it was the best he could come
up with after several hours of trying. He went to sleep with the note under his pillow,
and when he read it again in the morning, he decided it would do. Then he brushed
his teeth and made a pot of coffee. With every action, his joints tingled beneath
his skin. He sat with his mother on the patio for half the day, and only in the late
afternoon, just before his shift, did he begin to pack a small duffle bag. When it
was time for work, he let himself quietly into his mother’s room. He found the gun
wrapped in one of her stockings as if it had been quietly waiting for him there for
years. He left the note face-up on her dresser. He kissed his mother goodbye. Then
he walked to the Yellow Cab lot, duffle bag in hand, and picked up taxi number ninety-seven,
whose
FOR HIRE
sign he extinguished halfway down the Coralville strip, and continued driving to
the gas station where he would collect the girl whom he had already begun to think
of as Gwen Stacy, and explain to her the nature of the responsibility they shared.

TEN MINUTES LATER
she was beside Peter in the car, heading due east on Interstate 80 in a stolen taxi.
The radio in the taxi was promising a cloudless, breezy night, lows in the low sixties.
The air on the interstate felt thin and bright and hydrating as a glass of water.
All the windows were open, and the longest strands of Peter’s hair were blowing all
over the place, skirting in and out of his eyes. He didn’t drive fast like he’d said
they would: he was a cautious driver, using the left lane only for passing, the needle
of the speedometer hovering just above sixty-five. Most of the guys that Sheila knew—Donny
and his friends, mainly—were pretty reckless drivers.

The CB radio was saying, “Fifty check. Fifty check. Fifty, head out and check me at
Mormon Trek. Fifty, where the hell you at?”

“Are you fifty?” asked Sheila.

He nodded.

“Can’t you turn that thing off?”

“No. You’ll be able to tune it out after a while.”

All together, there had been $716.64 in the cash register. Usually it would have been
less on a weekday, but Sheila was nearing the end of a long shift. There was a single
surveillance camera in the corner of the station, which would eventually be viewed,
but there was no audio feed, so the crime would perhaps look authentic—which could
be a good thing or bad thing, depending on the plan. But there didn’t seem to be much
of a plan. Of course, if anyone viewed the tape, there would be the matter of the
five minutes of calm conversation she and Peter had before he pointed the gun at her.
There was the possibility it wouldn’t look authentic in the least. Sheila had turned
the pumps off and left a little sign on the door of the station that said
BACK IN A MINUTE
, which probably wasn’t the right sign to leave.
OUT OF ORDER
may have drawn less suspicion. It didn’t take her long to realize that she had left
her phone on the back counter beside the radio. She could picture it ringing in the
empty station. Who had called her? Her father, maybe, would have called by now. It
was past nine o’clock.

“What’s in Chicago?” Sheila asked when it was clear that she’d be doing most of the
talking on this trip.

Peter exhaled slowly. He smiled. He said, “We make it up. Is that worth anything to
you?”

Sheila thought about it for a minute.

“Yes,” she said.

They drove. They drove through the night and through the state. It was pitch black
and they were about fifteen miles shy of the Illinois border when Peter slowed the
car along the road’s shoulder. Half settled in a ditch there was a car, or part of
a car, smoke pouring from where the engine would be. Peter turned off his lights and
pulled up just behind it.

“An accident?” Sheila said.

It was obviously an accident, and a serious one, but Peter said nothing. Pieces of
the car were scattered between the taxi and the white line of the road. Peter got
out of the taxi and closed the door behind him. Sheila watched as he walked up to
the driver’s side door of the car. It took some effort to force it open, but he used
his body as a counterweight. He dropped to his knees at the spot where the door fell
open. Peter knelt on the shoulder of the road and started to rock his body back and
forth.

Sheila ran from the passenger side of the taxi. She didn’t want to see what Peter
was seeing, but she felt her body move toward the spot independent of any will of
her own.

An SUV whizzed feet away from Peter’s knees on the white line of the road. The vehicle
pulled off to the shoulder a little further up, and a man emerged from the driver’s
side.