He’s not even religious, I thought, holding the pocket Bible in disbelief. Maybe my addiction made him find God. A sliver of paper slipped out and fluttered onto the bed. I picked it up and read: 11 30 67. A chill shivered through my synapses. I racked my thoughts, dusting off my most primitive memories.

The numbers meant nothing.

A relapse had driven me to ransack my parents’ house. They were letting me stay with them on the condition that I attended group therapy every morning in Arlington, which I agreed to, copping dope on the commute to shoot in the bathroom while everyone stirred non-dairy creamer into their coffee and rehearsed their monologues.

The sun cast its final golden gaze across the carpet. I replaced the sliver and returned the Bible to my father’s nightstand. He’ll be home soon, I thought. He’ll see how dopesick I am and throw me out of the house in a rage. He’ll make sure the whole family shuns me this time. He’ll scream his shame into me. I’ll live with it forever.

Why should I live at all?

Realizing I had yet to search the basement, I raced downstairs. Plastic crates of my father’s military relics were stacked and scattered, intermingled with my mother’s miscellaneous nursing equipment. Empty luggage still looped with airline tags sat unzipped and aerating, awaiting vacations. Faded polaroids from distant times, scrapbooked and boxed, yearned to be seen. But my eyes settled on The Gunroom, my father’s closet of firearms that was invariably locked. As a child, I spent many simmering summer days hoping he’d leave the door open so I could sift through the tackle box of trinkets he kept from his past life abroad. Spent shells, Zippo lighters, crumbling pieces of Bazooka bubble gum with cartoon wrappers, Iraqi coins and bills emblazoned with Saddam Hussein’s hideous face, handwritten letters, MREs—scraps of war. I’d envision my father as a good, brave man fighting bad, cowardly men for his country. Killing only to avoid death. Defending his brothers in arms. His family.

I tried the door.

Locked.

Suicide wandered through my thoughts, as it does, casually and without warning.

Can I pick the lock? I thought. No. What am I, a professional fucking thief? No, just a useless, pathetic junkbox. I deserve a bullet. I deserve to be tortured to death with AIDS-infected spikes. But a gunshot should do just fine.

It was settled: I would die.

I just needed a way inside.

I paced frantically, knowing my father would be home any minute. I tore through every box, envisioning a key, then floundered into the furnace room on a whim. Near the furnace was a narrow slit in the wall where the two rooms intersected. I’d seen it a thousand times before, but it only registered in that moment. Glinting in the faint light was the backside of The Gunroom’s doorknob. I squeezed my fingers through and, after several attempts, turned the lock.

Adrenaline hit me like a speedball.

I was in.

Pulling the frayed string overhead illuminated the barren shelves. My father had cleaned recently. The tackle box was gone. Everything was, except for a giant keypad safe bolted to the floor.

The numbers, I thought.

I darted up two sets of stairs to my parents’ bedroom, copied the combination, and teleported back to the safe. The safe door swung open. A Glock slept soundly on a pile of paperwork. Waking it with my right hand, I ejected the clip into my left—full.

Should I write a note? I thought. Explain everything away? What’s the point?

Tears dotted the dusty concrete floor. I looked up at God. I asked Him for help. Forgiveness. For a sign. Any sign.

I put the pistol to my head.

I pressed the safety with my pointer finger.

You’re red, you’re dead, I thought. Just like Dad taught me.

I put my finger on the trigger and shut my eyes. I tried to imagine the happiest moment of my life.

Maybe I should say something, I thought. My last words.

I spoke aloud, sobbing: "Well, I guess this is it… I guess it’s my time or… whatever… I know nobody is listening… that there isn’t a fucking God… that’s just a bullshit story concocted by anonymous men who were afraid to die… to give themselves purpose… purpose… a reason to live, to push on, fuck a girl, knock her up, settle down in the sad soft suburbs and plop out some shithead kids… what the fuck am I saying… I wish I could make my mother and father and asshole brother feel this… this hopelessness that eats away at my soul… just for a moment… maybe they wouldn’t treat me so awfully… maybe they’d love me again… but I hate them, I fucking hate them!"

I wiped snot on my shirt and opened my goopy eyes for what I thought to be the last time. There was an unsealed white envelope stowed in the very back of the safe that I hadn’t noticed before. Perhaps it had just appeared. I reached out and flipped the seal flap, revealing a ten-thousand-dollar band wrapped around a wad of blue hundreds. I pressed the safety on the Glock.

There was dope to be shot.

Read Chapter Thirty-Two

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