This Is Where I Leave You

pressed it between her spread thighs.
    “Now you do me,” she said.

    8:50 p.m.
    When I step out of the store, Horry is sitting in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, trembling. His hand is suspended out the window, the cigarette in it long burned down to the butt.
    “Hey, man,” I say.
    He doesn’t answer. His head bobs up and down on his neck, and his lips tremble with exertion, like weights are holding his mouth closed.
    “Unggh,” he says.
    His arm is dead weight as I maneuver it back through the window and onto his lap. I drive slowly, but on the first right turn he falls sideways, his head landing on my shoulder, so I pull over and we just sit there for a while, Horry’s head resting on my shoulder as his body trembles like there’s a small electrical current running through him. Gradually, the trembling subsides, and then, after a little bit, Horry grunts and sits up, wiping the drool off of his chin with the back of his hand. He looks over at me and nods. “You see Penny?”
    “Yeah.”
    He nods and clears his throat and I can hear the loose smoker’s phlegm rattling around in his chest.
    “Can you hear me when you’re, you know, out of it like that?”
    “Yeah. Usually. I just can’t talk. It’s like part of me blows a fuse, but the rest of me is there, waiting for the lights to go back on.”
    I start the car. “You ready?”
    He looks out the window. “This is the block, isn’t it? Where you and Paul got attacked.”
    I hadn’t really been paying attention to the scenery, but now I can see we’re on Ludlow, just a few driveways down from Tony Rusco’s house. Paul and I ran for our lives down this sidewalk, the Christmas jingle of the rottweiler’s tags coming up fast behind us. I close my eyes against the sidewalk, but I can still hear his screams, still feel the cold terror crushing my bowels.
    Horry leans back in his seat and lights up a cigarette. “I hit Wendy once.”
    It takes me a minute to register what he’s said. “I remember.”
    “I don’t know if I ever even said I’m sorry for that.”
    “She forgave you.”
    “I really clocked her good.”
    Wendy had taken off a semester to help Linda and Mom care for Horry when he came home from the hospital. Back then they hadn’t yet found the right dose to take the edge off his anger, and he would descend into fits of rage where he tried to destroy anything he could get his hands on. Wendy, who had seen too many movies, decided the best thing to do would be to throw her arms around him and hold on until her love calmed him, but he hurled her across the room, and then when she came back he landed a solid punch, hard enough to break two of her teeth. Wendy didn’t hold it against him, but I think she became a little scared of him after that, and when Linda insisted she go back to school and get on with her life, she didn’t object. The next time Wendy came back to Elmsbrook, it was with Barry in tow.
    “That was a long time ago, Horry. You weren’t yourself.”
    He nods and blows his smoke out into the night, watching it dissipate in the amber glow of the streetlight. “I’m still not,” he says.

Chapter 17
    Friday
    2:00 a.m.
    I am having sex with Jen. She bucks and writhes under me, her hips rising up hard against mine. Her nails slice my back; her fingers grab my ass and then slide down my thigh to where my leg ends at mid-calf in a hard, creased stump. But it’s not me, it’s Wade lying on top of Jen, and I’m sitting on the reading chair by the window, watching them go at it while I pull at the worn straps of my prosthesis, trying to strap it on so that I can get the hell out of there. And now it’s me again, lying in the smooth delta of Jen’s opened thighs, but it’s no longer Jen, it’s Penny Moore, and I’ve got both of my legs again, and Penny’s got her legs wrapped around me, and she’s biting down on my earlobe as she moans, and it’s actually feeling pretty good. Then, from behind me, a low guttural growl, and when I turn, I see the rottweiler, with the tattered threads of Paul’s red T-shirt still hanging from his teeth, alongside a thick chain of white drool. And when I turn back to Penny, she’s Chelsea, Phillip’s old girlfriend, and I’ve got one leg again, and the dog is crouching, getting ready to attack, and no matter how much I try to pull out of Chelsea, she just keeps rocking her hips and licking her lips. And then the rottweiler is upon us, and I can smell his feral