Maybe everything that's going on might make us hate each other less, you and me. Maybe it's one less thing to worry about, because it's already happened. Maybe we can love each other better now. The fight, the separation, I don't know what to call it because it wasn't really either of those things, there was no obvious cause, nobody really knows what happened. Maybe in time, we'll hate each other a little less. Sometimes, you just need to get somebody out of your life. You need to know it's possible. There's no other way.

I didn't need to go off into the woods, cover my tracks, go on the run. I didn't gun everyone down one night, set the house on fire, take the car then a train then a boat with the cops on my ass, the neighbors on TV saying none of it makes any sense, I looked normal, a little lonely maybe, but normal. The house, the dog, the kids, grandma, little wifey, the job, the holidays, the loans, the barbecue. Bang bang bang.

It suits me better this way. Of course it does. I like things to be clear. I don't want any misunderstandings. It suits me because I'm not done taking care of myself, the only thing I really care about, because it takes up a ton of time, and that's something you never have enough of, time. It suits me because love is terrifying. All types of love, even love for a child, maybe that's even the most terrifying of all. That's what I told the young one the other day. Just like I told the skinny one. Just like I told the others that came before and after them. Because they won't stop questioning me, because they don't understand, because they think I have a strange way of suffering, just like they think I have a strange way of loving. They tell me it scares them when I say it suits me having things just the way they are. The thing that scares me shitless is their fear. It makes me wonder what they want from me, what their vision of love is, whether they, too, can see into the abyss, the icy abyss of all the things there are to be afraid of.

16