Yeah. Brenda invaded the apartment, plugged Sampson, then dropped her voice two octaves.
“No.” Idiot. “It’s me.”
The door opens. Adam sees the bathtub before he sees me. “Oh God.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not.” Sampson’s legs are sticking out from the tub and he’s looking real stupid. The flickers in his pupils are slowing to irregular pulses as his life drips down the drain. I estimate he’s got half a minute left. It’ll be an uneventful thirty seconds.
“Brenda? Brenda?”
I tell him she’s safe.
“Oh thank God,” he says.
Thank Ravella, you jackass.
As he rushes past me, he kicks Sampson’s gun. It spins on the tiles. Moron could’ve blown my foot off.
“Oh God,” he says. Again, it’s not God.
I come out and he’s hunched over the kid. The kid’s not there. He left to have a heart to heart with Saint Peter. That lifeless shell didn’t need Adam’s attention. I did. Not that God’s gratitude isn’t enough, but Sutler’s would’ve made a nice cherry on top.
I mean, he gets on his hands and knees and presses on the kid’s wrist. Hell, a blind man on the moon could tell you he ain’t gonna find a pulse.
When the obvious hits Sutler, he drops the wrist and turns to me. Says this is my fault. Says he was kidnapped because they couldn’t get to me. Like it’s my fault my building has a good security system?
Then he drops the big deuce. Says he knows all about my deal with Marcus. I’m like, “What do you know?” and he’s like, “Enough to put you away.”
Ouch.
My heart broke. Well, cracked. Because I tried. I really tried. And maybe that’s enough. If I had been given the chance to rescue Sutler and didn’t take it, that’d be bad. But I tried. So isn’t that good? Isn’t whatever happens next something else, a different column in the ledger? I don’t know. It’s all so confusing and not one person can have any more answers than me.
So there’s that. But you know, I’ve learned that when God closes one door, he opens another.
I rest my hand over my heart and say, “I’m sorry you were kidnapped.” Sutler’s baby browns register confusion, like he’s never heard an apology before, doesn’t know what one sounds like. Living with Brenda, odds are he didn’t.
Once the word “sorry” came out, it was hard to stop the ball. I swear, I had a juicy sin for nearly every day of my life. I uncovered stuff that I’d buried and thought I’d never see again. The world is such a corrupting place. All this sludge oozed out. After awhile it wasn’t me talking. As my conscious unloaded itself, it was like I was watching from the side, astonished.
I finish. More likely, I just stop. I’m sure I had more. I can’t really gauge his reaction. He’s blurry. I don’t mind telling you that I’m a little teary by now, so I’ll never know what he made of all this.
I ask him to forgive me.
And he does. He says it quiet. He says it like he doesn’t mean it. But he says it.
If I’ve ever lived an Oprah moment, this was it. The viper let go of my soul and slithered back to hell. God massaged my heart with His gigantic, divine fingers. Pretend you really have to take a piss. Your bladder’s gonna split apart any second. You’re certain the piss is gonna come out your ears, your tear ducts. You finally get to a toilet. Now imagine the sensation of letting it all out multiplied by a hundred. That’s what it felt like confessing to Sutler and receiving his forgiveness.
Then I fire. Twice. I would’ve shot more, but the fucking thing jams. A common problem with that model, though you never see it happen to James Bond.
I regret I couldn’t have received Adam’s forgiveness for killing him before the fact. Although I’ve pulled a lot of stunts in my day, twisting time has never been one of them.