“Oh, Terrence, please take your key back. Let’s be strong together. Aren’t you the one who’s always saying if you stumble, if the person you love helps you, you’re both stronger for it?”

“Yes, and if you’re not, then it’s time to just pull up your pants and go home. And that’s what I’m doing.” He swooped up his shirts that were strewn among the debris, and he left. The door closed behind him. I heard his footsteps down the stairs and the Porsche as he fired it up and drove away.

The taste of ash in my mouth felt gritty, and my skin seemed to be breaking up, and cracking open, exposing my heart, my liver, my guts to the pyre. Something inside me was burnt up, and gone forever, and I was living in the crucible of my own life. With shaking hands, I poured myself a stiff drink and swilled it, just like they do in the Westerns before they dig the bullet out. I stumbled into the bedroom and fell into bed, crying until finally an uneasy sleep put me out of my misery, though sleep was punctuated with bizarre dreams from which I would wake, remember, and ache. I hurt, physically hurt, like the night of the fight at the Comet Club. When I woke in darkness, and further sleep eluded me, I slid my feet into some sandals, wrapped myself up in a blanket, and waded through the carnage out to the porch, down to the dunes and the beach. I sat, my knees pulled up against my chest, my head resting there, so deep in anguish I thought I might dissolve altogether. The waves swept in and out in their careless fashion, and the moon finally paled against a brightening sky.

Chapter Thirty-three

“What the hell happened here?”

My eyes blinked slowly open to see Thelma wavering above the bed, her face contorted.

“Roxanne, talk to me!”

Groggy with sorrow so thick it lay leaden on my tongue, I could hardly speak. I roused slowly and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Oh, god, Roxanne. Look at you. Tell me what happened. I called and called and got a busy signal. I knew something must be wrong. The phone was off the hook.” Thelma went to the bathroom and dampened down a towel. She mopped my face while I sobbed out the story of yesterday. Was it only yesterday? I felt as though I had aged a decade. Thelma muttered over and over, Oh god, oh god . . . When I finished, she ordered me into the shower.

“I can’t. I can’t move. I’m dead inside.”

“You can. You must.” She went in the bathroom, started the shower, roused me from the bed, and walked me in there.

By the time I emerged, my hair dripping, clad in Terrence’s robe, debris from the fight had been swept, much of it, into piles.