The Younger Ben turned to the Executive Producer.
“I’ll be taking both doors,” he said.
“My God,” said Bobby. “I do love your work.”
The Younger Ben turned to his old doppelgänger.
“I’ll take the left door. You take the right.”
“You sure?” the Older Ben asked.
“Yeah. Look out for me over there, all right?”
“I will.”
“Go. Go before he changes it up on us.”
The two Bens shook hands and the Younger Ben watched his older, crabbier self walk through the right-hand door into the bright white light at the entrance of Shangri-la.
And then the door closed. It was just the Younger Ben now. Singular. He turned to the old leather-skinned executive and pointed to the left-hand door.
“I’m going through there now.”
“You certainly are.” The Executive Producer shook Ben’s hand. “You did great work here. You’ve got a future in this business, kid.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“’Atta boy. Never lose that fighting spirit.”
Ben went for the left-hand door.
“Remember,” said the Executive Producer. “Not a word.”
“Yeah, yeah.” And Ben turned the knob and walked out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CROCUS DRIVE
The door closed behind Ben and he found himself inside an aluminum shed. He heard a whirring sound coming from outside. The double doors on the other side of the shed were unlocked and hanging loose. He pushed them open and walked out onto a path at the base of a small mountain in the Poconos. There was a white pickup truck parked out front. Two burly men were laboring off to the side, ripping a chain saw through a fallen poplar. When Ben came out of the loose doors, they turned and stared at him. They had human faces. Nonthreatening. A friendly Rottweiler came running out from behind the shed and licked Ben’s hand. He froze in place.
One of the guys took off his construction earmuffs.
“Hey man,” he said. “You lost?”
Ben said nothing.
“You staying at the hotel? We can give you a ride.”
“No. No, thank you, sir. I’m fine.”
He walked carefully away from the shed and the truck, past a wide swinging iron-bar gate, and then he broke into a run. Delirious. Buoyant. Soon, he came to a junction marked by two trees with split trunks.
I know those trees!
He followed the path back up the mountain, to a clearing with a circular fire pit and sawed-off log benches.
I know those benches!
He sprinted along the top of an esker and saw markers every tenth of a mile. And birdhouses: elaborate little birdhouses with stepped gabled roofs.
I know those birdhouses!
He looked down the mountain and saw a bunch of fancy Pennsylvania McMansions, each house large enough to accommodate a giant or two.
“Hello, you big fucking mansions!”
He saw the hotel. The same dumpy, unpopulated country inn he had come from. He sped to the front door and saw his car parked exactly where he had left it. In the lobby, there was a young girl in a cupcake nightgown dancing around in her bare feet in front of a table of souvenirs and maple-leaf cookies and overpriced tchotchkes. She bumped right into Ben. The girl’s mother came up and chastised her.
“Will you please go back to the room and get dressed? We’ll never be able to see Stroud Mansion if you don’t hurry up!” The mother turned to Ben. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said, smiling warmly. “I have three of my own.”
“Oh, God. Three?”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
Ben sprinted up the stairs, through the narrow hallway, to his creepy old room. He took out the key and opened the door. Everything in the room was exactly as he’d left it . . . except now his phone was sitting on the nightstand. Screen intact. Fully charged. He grabbed the phone and called Teresa.
“Hello?” she asked. Her voice knocked him dead silent. “Hello?”
“It’s you.”
“Ben?”
“It’s really you.”
“Are you okay, Ben?”
Not one word. “I’m fine. In fact, my dinner was canceled. I’m gonna come home. Right now.”
“Ugh, they sent you all the way up there for nothing?”
“Well, I did get to check out some of the scenery.”
“The kids’ll love to see you. You think you’ll be home in time for dinner? I’m making crab cakes.”
“. . .”
“Ben?”
“You know, I think I’ll get dinner on the road. Don’t worry about making extra for me.”
“You sure you don’t wanna stay there? Have the night to yourself?”
“No. No, I’m coming.”
“Okay. Then we’ll see you soon. Love you!”
“Love you, too.”
He hung up. He hadn’t said a word about the path. It’ll only get easier from here, amigo. Everyone needs to have something inside them that no one else can have. He texted his vendor to tell him he had come down with something and that he wouldn’t be able to make it. Then he packed his rollerboard without bothering to shower or change clothes.
The front desk was unmanned. Ben came trudging down the steps with his suitcase and rapped on the counter. The clueless old lady walked out from the back.
“I need to check out,” he told her. He laid his key on the counter.
“But you just checked in.”
“Strange, isn’t it? But I have to check out now.”
She appeared remarkably inconvenienced for someone with so little to do. God bless her moronic soul. “Well, I still have to charge you for the room.”
“That’s fine. I don’t care. You can e-mail me the bill.”
“E-mail?”
“Never mind.”
He walked past the little girl, still dancing in her nightgown, and out to the parking lot. He jumped into his car and gunned it like it was a pickup truck.
There was traffic on the way home. Of course there was. The Executive Producer probably wanted to hammer home the fact that the Younger Ben had chosen to go back to the real world in all of its annoying glory. But Ben wasn’t rattled. He didn’t speed. He didn’t honk. He didn’t cut anyone off, like a dick. He didn’t futz around with his phone. It was all fine. He was the only serene driver in America.
I’m coming, Teresa.
Halfway down Route 15 he saw an exit for CISCO. He slowed down for just a moment to make sure he hadn’t read it wrong. Another twenty miles later, he saw an exit for FERMONA.
“HA!”
The roads were clean. No deer this time. He hit a patch of thickly grooved pavement and it thumped in lockstep with his bursting heart.
It was close to 8 P.M. when Ben finally made the turn onto Crocus Drive and into his old neighborhood: the creek running along the street, the little playground up on a hill that was routinely infested with bees, the signs stapled to the telephone poles noting the final day of leaf pickup for the season. He made his way up the hill and pulled in front of the distressed white brick house, with its crumbling driveway and retaining wall. In the dark, he saw the plastic castle slide laying sideways in the yard. The kids loved knocking it over more than they liked sliding down it. Teresa’s white minivan was parked by the steps. Everyone was home.
Ben parked on the street and the red front door opened wide, his three kids running to him and screaming at the top of their lungs. Flora was cuddling a stuffed fox. Rudy was holding a train. Peter was wearing his pajamas, as always.
“Hi, Daddy!”
“Did you get us anything?”
“Did you bring us candy?”
They swarmed his legs a
nd he bent over to cry and smell their hair and kiss them. He could see that Peter’s jammies were wet.
“Were you messing around in the sink?” he asked the little boy.
“I was, Dad.”
“That’s all right. We can get you new jammie pants.”
And then he looked up and saw his wife come out of the storm door in her jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt. She gave him a little wave.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
His heart grew giant. She smiled and came closer, and he finally burst into tears. He couldn’t help it. He held his hand over his mouth. The whites of his eyes were beet red.
As Teresa got closer, she saw his tired eyes in the glow of the outdoor lamppost. Something was different about Ben. Off. She stopped a few feet away from him as the kids mobbed him.
“Ben, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Everything is great.”
But she could tell he was lying. He was always such a terrible liar. He looked adrenalized, but exhausted. Older. Wiser. Why, he looked as if he’d been away for . . .
And then she gasped. Ben saw her reaction and couldn’t understand what she had seen in his eyes, until . . .
Hey, how old is Teresa? She’s thirty-nine, right? Remember that one night a few years ago? When she came home from the hospital and wouldn’t stop crying? And then stayed silent for a couple of days afterward? You thought she had just lost some patients that night she went catatonic, right? She never really did explain. She never told you why she liked painting horses, or why she took up fighting, or why she would rub her wedding ring with her thumb in the occasional still photograph. Remember what she said to you, Ben? She said she killed people. She said . . . she said . . .
“I can’t tell you or it’ll kill me.”
He gazed deep into her pupils and saw the soul of a woman who wasn’t thirty-nine at all, but far older.
Maybe ten years older. Or twenty.
“Oh my God,” he said.
For a long time, they stood there and stared at one another, dumbstruck. They didn’t say a word. They couldn’t.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to my family, Byrd Leavell, Tim Marchman, Jesse Johnston, Howard Spector, Allison Lorentzen, Devin Gordon, and Spencer Hall. And to East Stroudsburg University, thanks for the little stroll.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Drew Magary is a correspondent for GQ magazine, a columnist for Deadspin, and a Chopped champion. He’s also the author of three other books: The Postmortal, Someone Could Get Hurt, and Men with Balls. This is his second novel. He lives in Maryland with his wife and three children, and enjoys taking long walks.
Find Drew on Twitter @drewmagary
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