Bishop's voice cut into my consciousness. "What the hell are you doing?"
It was dark. It had been dark for a while now. How long? I had no idea. I'd gone straight from the front doorway to the nearest chair. Hours later, I was still sitting there.
Bishop switched on a nearby lamp and stared down at me. "What's wrong?"
I shrugged. "Nothing I want to talk about."
He was quiet a long moment. "Where's Chloe? I thought you two were hanging out today."
Great. Sonowhe remembers her name? Screw it. What did it matter? What did anything matter?
My voice was a monotone. "She's gone."
"To work?"
"No. Just gone."
His eyebrows furrowed. "For good?"
"Yeah." I almost choked on the words. "For good."
"What happened?"
"What do you care?" I said. "You never liked her, anyway." It was true. He'd been giving me grief from day-one. Probably, this wasgoodnews to him.
His voice was quiet. "I never said that."
"Yeah, whatever." It wasn't Bishop's fault that she was gone. And it wasn't Chloe's fault either. It wasmyfault. And me getting mad at Bishop wasn't going to solve a damn thing. Or maybe, I just didn't have the energy to fight with him.
The last couple of weeks had been a roller-coaster of ups and downs. But this last down – it had knocked me on my ass.
I stood. "I'm going to bed."
"But it's only seven o'clock."
Was it? Did it matter? It was November. This time of year, the nights were long, and darkness came early. Just yesterday, I had been looking forward to long, winter nights curled up with Chloe. Now, they'd just be long and cold.
No Chloe. No little dog. No one to blame but myself.
Without another word, I turned away, feeling Bishop's eyes on my back as I left the sitting area and trudged up the stairway. He knew the way out. Or shit, maybe he was planning to stay a while.
Either way, I didn't care. I didn't care about a lot of things.
That night, I couldn't sleep. And I didn't sleep all that great the following night either, or the night after that.
Over the next couple of weeks, I spent an obscene amount of time at the office and too many hours hitting the weights. And, no matter where I was or what I was doing, I spent every waking moment, thinking of Chloe.
Like a dumb-ass, I was still carrying around those doggie-treats in the pocket of whatever I was wearing, even to places where I knew Chloe wouldn’t be – at the office downtown, on the basketball courts at the gym, to some anti-poverty thing, where I was supposed to be the keynote speaker. I'd done a piss-poor job of it. They wouldn’t be asking me back.
About the treats, maybe they were just part of the punishment. Sometimes, as I moved, I'd hear the package crinkling in my pocket, and it would remind me all over again how stupid I'd been.
For whatever reason, Bishop was sticking around. We didn't have any side-ventures planned, so I couldn’t see the point, unless it was to keep me from slitting my wrists – hard to do with no knives in the house.
I hadn't bothered to replace them, and Bishop didn't seem inclined either.
But I wasn't going to kill myself. For one thing, it was too easy. I didn't deserve easy. So I kept on going, cursing myself for the promise that I'd made to stay away, and cursing myself even louder for the things I'd done to make that promise necessary.
What a cluster.
