So when Andi called him up and suggested he send her just one more, the phone shook in his hand, all five fingers gripping it, not wanting to let her go.

“Of course I can get you an ear,” he told her.

And of course he could.

An ear because Van Gogh sent an ear, and when people debated the greats she didn’t want people to argue Van Gogh was more romantic than Charles. Maybe an ear was worth more to some than a finger and a toe. Maybe it had something to do with being so close to the face.

After they’d hung up, Charles went to the bathroom and studied his ears in the mirror.

“I wanted to do it, Richard. I truly did. But here…”

He reached out and tugged gently on Richard’s earlobe. The black sky thundered above.

“Can you imagine it?” he asked. “The pain? The loss?”

Then he removed his hand and looked ahead again, into the powerful Goblin rain.

“So I did the only intelligent thing I could. I went back.”

18

One more trip to the morgue. One more walk to the basement.

One more opening of the drawer.

Charles entered the basement for the third time just an hour before calling Richard tonight. At the second drawer from the left in the middle row, he breathed deeply, braced himself for the face, and gave it one solid pull.

The drawer moved too quickly.

Inside it, he saw only shadows that, days before, hid so well the rest of the body.

Had the body been moved? Buried? Did they notice what he’d done to it?

Charles panicked.

He opened the next drawer over. It, too, was empty. So was the next. And the next. In a frenzy, Charles checked all eighteen steel drawers, and each held nothing but cold drafts and shadows.

He looked once around the stone room, as if expecting to find an errant body slumped in the corner. Then he ran out of the basement, breathing hard, images of Andi disappointed racing through his mind.

You’ll have to tell her now, buddy.

Outside he hurried to his car, the same Oldsmobile he’d bought at age sixteen, and sped north on Christmas. Home again, he called Richard.

Richard would help.

Richard was his friend.

His only friend.

Now the rain beat on the roof of the car like it was the closed fists of the Goblin Police.

“Have I failed her, Richard?”

Richard squirmed in his seat like worms were crawling under his coat. One of the two of them had to get out of the car. He was going to go crazy if one of the two of them didn’t—

“Have I failed her, Richard? Tell me. Please. I’ll believe you.”

Oh, Charles…

“Have I done something wrong? I feel like I have.”