But the last couple nights, after Dolly had left, he’d felt a fresh and galling emptiness. What did a house mean, after all? It seemed, when he thought about it, that it meant nothing. If anything, the nighttime shadows of the house seemed to beckon him toward the banister. He could almost see himself hanging there, and drank more to banish the images, wondering if there was anything to this idea of the curse. “Unlucky in love,” he’d certainly been that. Perhaps the house thought it fitting that he end himself the way that unfortunate Indian princess had done. Perhaps it desired such a sacrifice; he didn’t know. But something had put the thoughts in his head, and had made them persistent, too.

He supposed he could and should have called Marty, who had enlisted in the Marines with him in ‘41 and had ended up back home in Pine Rapids in ‘43 minus an eye, with shrapnel in his neck and shoulder. As far as JJ knew, Marty was still working at the service station on the corner downtown. Marty had been a good buddy, and had seen action; they could have talked without talking. JJ might not have felt so alone.

Yet: embarrassing to be such a wreck, when your friend was holding down a job and making a life. And: unbearable to think that Bob and Duke, who had enlisted with JJ and Marty, were both buried over in the Pacific. It made the whole idea of a “reunion” seem just plain shitty.

And Dolly, of course, had a husband; she couldn’t very well stay all hours, playing house with him. He wouldn’t even have asked her to.

So his loneliness ratcheted up to excruciating, these nights. He didn’t know quite why it was worse now. He only knew it was a different feeling from that of just being alone, or feeling alone in a crowd. This was a feeling of skin scraped raw, of having just vomited out the entire contents of your guts, leaving you with the taste of gunmetal in your mouth. It was a feeling like when your leg that wasn’t there began to ache, or itch, or pinch. Phantom pain. The pain of an absence; the pain you could only endure, not touch, not relieve. It was enough to make you scream.

He wanted to break things again, like he had his first night in the house. The only thing that stopped him was the thought that he would disappoint Dolly.

For that, he had to laugh at himself.