But he couldn’t summon her.
Sometimes he couldn’t even remember what she looked like, even when he was looking at her picture. (Maybe he’d looked at it too much.)
He’d stopped trying to bring her back.
So why did he keep coming here? To this crappy little house …
Eleanor wasn’t here, she was never really here – and she’d been gone too long. Almost a year now.
Park turned to walk away from the house, but the little brown truck whipped too fast into the driveway, jumping the curb and nearly clipping him. Park stopped on the sidewalk and waited. The driver’s side door swung open.
Maybe, he thought. Maybe this is why I’m here.
Eleanor’s stepdad – Richie – leaned slowly out of the cab. Park recognized him from the one time he’d seen him before, when Park had brought Eleanor the second issue
of Watchmen, and her stepdad had answered the door …
The final issue of Watchmen came out a few months after Eleanor left. He wondered if she’d read it, and whether she thought Ozymandias was a villain, and what she thought Dr Manhattan meant when he said, ‘Nothing ever ends’ at the end. Park still wondered what Eleanor thought about everything.
Her stepdad didn’t see Park at first. Richie was moving slowly, uncertainly. When he did notice Park, he looked at him like he wasn’t sure he was really there.
‘Who are you?’ Richie shouted.
Park didn’t answer. Richie turned jaggedly, jerking toward him. ‘What do you want?’ Even from a few feet away, he smelled sour. Like beer, like basements.
Park stood his ground.
I want to kill you, he thought.
And I can, he realized. I should.
Richie wasn’t much bigger than Park, and he was drunk and disoriented. Plus, he could never want to hurt Park as much as Park wanted to hurt him.
Unless Richie was armed, unless he got lucky – Park could do this.
Richie shuffled closer. ‘What do you want?’ he shouted again.
The force of his own voice knocked him off balance and he tipped forward, falling thickly to the ground. Park had to step back not to catch him.
‘Fuck,’ Richie said, raising himself up on his knees and holding himself not quite steady.
I want to kill you, Park thought.
And I can.
Someone should.
Park looked down at his steel-toe Docs. He’d just bought them at work. (On sale, with his employee discount.) He looked at Richie’s head, hanging from his neck like a leather bag.
Park hated him more than he thought it was possible to hate someone. More than he’d ever thought it was possible to feel anything …
Almost.
He lifted his boot and kicked the ground in front of Richie’s face. Ice and mud and driveway slopped into the older man’s open mouth. Richie coughed violently and banked into the ground.
Park waited for him to get up, but Richie just lay there spitting curses, and rubbing salt and gravel into his eyes.
He wasn’t dead. But he wasn’t getting up.
Park waited.
And then he walked home.
Eleanor Letters, postcards, yellow padded packages that rattled in her hands.
None of them opened, none of them read.
It was bad when the letters came every day. It was worse when they stopped.
Sometimes she laid them out on the carpet like tarot cards, like Wonka
bars,
and
wondered
whether it was too late.
CHAPTER 58
Park
Eleanor didn’t go to prom with him.
Cat did.
Cat from work. She was thin and dark, and her eyes were as blue and flat as breath mints.
When Park held Cat’s hand, it was like
holding
hands
with
a
mannequin, and it was such a relief that he kissed her. He fell asleep on prom night in his tuxedo pants and a Fugazi T-shirt.
He woke up the next morning when something light fell on his shirt – he opened his eyes. His dad was standing over him.
‘Mail call,’ his dad said, almost gently. Park put his hand to his heart.
Eleanor hadn’t written him a letter.
It was a postcard. ‘Greetings from the Land of 10,000 Lakes,’ it said on the front. Park turned it over and recognized her scratchy handwriting. It filled his head with song lyrics.
He
sat
up.
He
smiled.
Something heavy and winged took off from his chest.
Eleanor hadn’t written him a letter, it was a postcard.
Just three words long.