I remember Terry as a boy. We grew up together, practically. I mean, we lived about ten miles from each other, but whenever we were together we were closer than brothers. Having no brothers of my own, I adopted him as my older brother; and although he had two younger brothers already, he chose me as the one to be protected. I looked up to my cousin for guidance, and yet we shared that dreamlike quality of friendship that only two boys could share. There were summer days like this one, when we would strip to our underwear and plunge into the cedar dyed waters of the lake where Terry grew up. It seemed as though we chased bullfrogs one summer, chased girls the next. Terry taught me how to drive a stick shift, and after that I never drove anything else.

What in the world had happened to him? I blamed myself. I blamed society. I blamed Allison. But I could never blame Terry. That would be like exposing Santa Claus as a fraud to a young child. No, I thought as I drove, Terry is as much a victim as those others.

The county jail never looked as imposing to me as it did that moment when I pulled up. How could they keep him here, I thought. How could they not see that this is all a terrible mistake, a horrible dream? Terry should be at home. They can't keep him here.

Of course, I'd been to the jail before. As Public Defender, it's my job to confer with those who cannot afford counsel. I feel a frustration at times at not being able to throw my whole self into each case, but unfortunately that would take more hours than there are in a day. The jail is also a courthouse, and we practice a sort of assembly-line law there. I can't remember most of my cases, although somewhere I have records of them all.

This case I will remember to my dying day. The only reason I could take it at all was that Terry had refused counsel, and the Judge had ordered him to get a lawyer. After pleading with His Honor for an hour I finally managed to convince him to assign me to his case. "Okay, Counselor," he had said. "But from now on you are to treat him as the county's client and not, repeat, not as your cousin."

As I walked to the conference room I felt the resentment creeping back. Resentment toward the system. Resentment toward His Honor. Resentment toward myself.

I entered the room. Terry was sitting at the oak table, clad in his denim uniform. He didn't look up when I entered, nor when I sat and opened my briefcase. He seemed preoccupied with a chip of varnish that was flaking off the tabletop, and he played with it with his index finger. He did, however, offer his usual greeting:

"Hey, Cous."

I stared at him. His voice had an empty quality to it. His eyebrows knitted as though he were attempting to solve a great mystery, yet in his voice was defeat, a tone I had never heard in his voice before. It was not a welcome change.

"Your mother is worried," I said. "She told me you don't want to see her."

Terry shrugged.

"Your sister said you don't want to see her either."

"I don't want to see you, but here you are."

I sat back. I turned to the door to see the guard's left shoulder through the little wire-laced window, and back to Terry.

"Smoke?"

My hand produced a Marlboro cigarette. He took it, and I lit it for him. He took a long drag and spit out the smoke in a plume, and finally looked at me.

"What do you want, Joey?"

"The Judge insists you have counsel. I volunteered."

"Volunteered, my ass. You begged for this and you know it. You wanted to see the lion at the zoo and you begged the zookeeper to let you in the cage."

"Terry, I just . . . "

"Fuck you! You just shit! I don't have to talk to you about it. I'll tell the judge myself."

"I can help. What do you want in terms of justice?"

"I did it, Joey. I planned it out, to the letter. And I want the fullest extent of the law."

The words stung me. "You can't be serious. In this state that's lethal injection."

"That's right."

A new anger arose in me. "You can't do this, Terry. Do you realize what your mother is going through? What all of us are going through? Goddammit, Terry, this is no kid's game! This is big time, Cous. And you just sit there like a scab on the world, ready to leave a scar, and tell me you want to spend the rest of your short, miserable existence married to Bubba the Soap Dropper?"

Terry looked away. I felt ashamed, but at the same time I felt I had said what needed to be said.

When he looked back at me there were tears at the corners of his eyes. "Mr. Hotshot Lawyer, whit your wife and your kids. What do you know about anything?" I just stared. "I'll tell you what happened, and why. But I tell you, you don't know shit, and you won't like what I have to say."

He took a long drag, and as he spoke the smoke came out in spurts. "You remember Allie? She was everything to me, my Alpha and my Omega. Every waking moment I thought of her, and how wonderful she was. And she doted on me, understood me like no one ever had before. Those years with her were bliss."

He took another drag. "But then, I don't know. She lost touch. I know what it was, it was that new boss of hers. You know, she got that promotion, and all she could talk about was that corporate moron she was working for now. 'Calvin this,' and 'Calvin that.' When I asked her intentions toward Calvin, she got defensive. 'Oh, you're just jealous because I've finally come into my own. Well, he may be charming and witty, and all that, but he doesn't compare to you,' she said.

"That was enough for me, at the time. Looking back, I accepted it, but then I always felt this kind of dreading, a loathing for this guy I never met, this 'Calvin.' I think I always knew where she was headed with it, and I cringed at the mention of his name. It was like fingernails on the chalkboard, 'Calvin.'

"You remember, don't you? You remember how alive I was with her?"

"I remember how you talked about her constantly, when she wasn't there, and how much you loved her," I agreed. I didn't mention how I remembered how Allison berated him publicly and called him "worthless" and "a burden" behind his back. There was no love lost between that woman and me.

"I could never figure out what happened. He brainwashed her. That's what happened. She calls me up and says it's over. I asked her what she was going to do, and she said she was moving to the city with Calvin. I knew it would happen eventually, but I was in denial over the whole thing. And when it finally came, it was like a real kick in the ass, you know?"

I nodded. I thought back to that night: Terry calling me, crying, drunk, incoherent; calling again after taking the pills; me driving him to the hospital. It was a painful memory. I remember how at that moment I was more hateful of Allison than ever before.

"I wanted to woo her back, of course," Terry continued. "She said she wanted to remain friends, and I called her often. I tried hard to convince her that he had a choke- hold on her head and she was in danger of losing herself to him. She laughed it off and insisted she was happier now than she had ever been, and asked why couldn't I accept it.

"Then the bottom dropped out.

"I heard from a friend about this party going on in the city, a really wild time. There were going to be women there, lots and lots, and I could maybe find someone there. So I went. We got there and it was a real study in debauchery. I had been there about fifteen minutes, and then I saw something that stopped my heart.

"Allison came in the door with a man, whom I assumed was Calvin, led by the neck on a leash. Do you know those choker collars with the points on the inside, to teach a dog to heel?" I nodded. He looked away. "He paraded her around the room and allowed people to pet her like a dog. He finally brought her around to me, and I was so stunned I could hardly speak. I remember mumbling something about being glad to meet Calvin at last.

"'Oh, this isn't Calvin,' she said. 'Cal rented me out for the night.'

"I couldn't believe my ears. I'm like, 'How can he do that? How does he know you won't leave?' And she showed me a scar behind her left ear, a small 'C' raised in a purple burn.

"'It's his brand,' she said. 'I belong to him now.'"

I sat back and let out my breath. This was all news to me. I knew that Allison was a little unhinged, but I was shocked into silence.

"Yeah, that's pretty much how I reacted too, Cous," Terry grunted when he saw the expression on my face. "I couldn't take it. My head was swimming, and I had to get out. When I hit the street I puked, and I didn't even have anything to drink that night. I walked to the subway, and took it to the train station, and took the train to Mom's, and by the time I got there I had it all figured out, what I was going to do. I had to save her from him, and from herself."

He held out his hand and I automatically put a cigarette in it. He noticed my hand was shaking and he laughed. "So now you realize, huh, Cous? So now you understand. This ain't no show, man. This is the real thing. This is me."

I just stared. I could not recognize this man sitting before me, this man with whom I had grown. Here was something far removed from my memories of that boy who had grown to be this man. Yet now I understood the catalyst for his transformation, and I awaited the details of his metamorphosis.

He took a long drag and spoke. "Do you have a tape recorder on you?"

"Yes."

"Turn it on. I want to save this part for posterity."

I fumbled in my case and produced by Sony mini-tape recorder. Terry laughed. "Good old Joey," he said. "Never without his little gadgets." I flushed and pushed the record button.

"Okay, Terry, go ahead."

He took a deep breath. "I planned meticulously for any contingency and was finally satisfied that there would be no failure. I went over each scenario in my mind ten times until I was sure I could deal with any variable that came up. It was the most effort I ever put into any piece of planning. Imagine if I had applied that kind of energy elsewhere! I could have been rich!

"When I was sure it would work I initiated the action. Once that was done there could be no turning back."

He spoke like a man animated toward a crusade. His eyes glowed and his hands told the story, and I sat fascinated, watching him rehearse this part of his life.

"I reserved two plane tickets, both round-trip, to Denver in Calvin's name. I phoned the local Avis agency and reserved a car, a Ford Escort. You know, very non-descript. Again in his name. Then I got myself a gun, a Glock nine millimeter. Registered it and everything. I didn't waste any time at the range. For what I was going to do, I didn't need to practice marksmanship.

"Next I packed three days worth of clothes and the gun in a Samsonite suitcase. Just to be on the safe side, I put the gun in a gutted steel Thermos. I put all this in my car.

"Then I called Allison. That was the hardest part. I felt that if I could stay cool in the first five minutes of conversation, then I would be alright for the next twenty-four hours.

"She sounded surprised to hear from me, and pleased. She was glad I wasn't upset over what happened at the party. I'm like, 'Hey,' all non-chalante, 'You've got your own life now. I'm just glad that you're happy with it.' And all that. I asked her if we could meet somewhere to talk, I had to finalize some stuff with her. She told me about this Irish bar around the corner from her place. That was fine, I said. In reality, it was perfect.

"Before I left the house I took two of Mom's Valliums and crushed them up. I put the powder in a small piece of folded up paper.

"When I got to the place she was at the bar. I asked if we could go sit in the corner where it would be more private. She agreed. When we got there she started gushing about how she was finally happy, and all this bullshit, but more importantly, she was sipping this beer she had ordered. When it was half gone she excused herself to go to the bathroom, like she always did. As soon as she was gone I dumped the Vallium powder into her beer and stirred it with the little straw I got with my Gin and Tonic. It dissolved completely.

"When she got back she took another sip and started gushing again. She sipped and gushed for about five minutes, and when the beer was gone, she asked be to get her another. I went to the bar and gave the bartender the mug, but I didn't get another beer for her. By the time I returned she looked drowsy.

"She's like, 'I don't feel so well, Terry, can you take me home?'

"And I'm like, 'Sure, I'll get a taxi.'

"I helped her into the taxi and quietly told the guy to take us to the airport. By the time we got there she was passed out cold. It was all I could do to get her and my suitcase to the desk. I told the girl that my 'wife' doesn't like to fly and she took Vallium before we left, and that it kicked in too soon. She smiled and asked if I needed help, but I refused. She gave me the tickets and I helped Allison to the concourse where our plane was departing. I gave the stewardess the same story about Allison when we got on the plane, and she helped me cover her and put a pillow behind her head.

"She slept the whole flight, She slept in Denver at the Avis counter, and I had the attendant bring the car to me and help me load her and my suitcase in. The one thing I hadn't planned on was her sleeping all the way out to the mountains. I pulled off to the side of a deserted road, pulled her out and dragged her into the brush about fifty meters. I sat there panting for five minutes and then I went back to the car and got the gun out of the suitcase.

"I got back and she was still asleep! I cursed myself. I didn't want to wait for her to wake up or I might talk myself out of it. So I rolled her over, put the barrel of the gun behind her ear and pulled the trigger."

"You killed her," I interrupted, still unable to believe it.

He looked at me fiercely. "Of course I killed her, you asshole! What the hell do you think this is all about? I pulled the trigger, her brains exploded out of her face, her body bucked once violently and then shook for about five minutes. Yes, I killed her. As sure as she killed me. Only, the way she killed me she left me to walk this earth in agony for all eternity. She damned me to hell but left me in Purgatory, and I damned her to hell and sent her there."

"But that isn't all, is it, Terry?"

He relaxed a little, then shook his head. "No, that isn't all. So far only the first half of my plan had been carried out. Now I had to exact revenge on the source of my misery."

"Allison wasn't the source?"

"No, she was just the tool. The source was that son-of-a-bitch Calvin.

"I drove to a hotel near the airport and got a room under a bogus name. I went in, lay down, and slept like a baby. For the first time since Allison left me, I slept soundly, and without waking up five times in the middle of the night. When my wake up call came at four-thirty, local time, I knew I had to hurry or Cal would worry and call around for her. So I picked up the phone and called him.

"This part was critical. Not ever having met the guy, I had no idea what his reaction would be.

"So I'm like, 'Hello, is this Calvin Flannery?'

"And he's like, 'Yes, who is this?'

"I was silent for a second to simulate hesitancy. I did it often enough in the conversation to convince him that I was truly remorseful about what I had done. I said, "Calvin, this is Terry McGee, Allie's old boyfriend.'

"Now he was quiet. Finally he said, 'Where are you?'

"'I'm in Denver, Calvin, and Allison is with me.'

"He's like, 'Let me talk to her.'

"And I said 'She's sleeping, Cal. We've had a long night.' And then I said, 'I've done something terrible, Calvin. I didn't mean for it to go this far.'

"He's like, 'What did you do,' still all quiet.

"I'm like, 'Look, I'm sorry about all of this. I know this is a big inconvenience, but I wonder if you could come and get her. I don't want to send her home alone.'

"Now he was concerned, not so much for her as for me, which was good, because that's what I wanted. He says, 'Well, what are you going to do?'

"I'm like, 'I don't know, I'm going to stay here in Denver. My life sucks and I want to start over again. I'll see what I can do out here. Will you come get her?'

"'Yes, I will. Where can you meet me?' he said.

"This was perfect. 'At the airport,' I said. 'I got two round trip tickets, so all you have to do is get a one-way. I'll give you my ticket, and she's got hers.' Then I added, 'You can confirm that with the airline if you like.'

"That clinched him. 'No, that's alright, Terry. I'll get the next flight I can.'

"'You'd better call work,' I said, 'and tell them she's not coming in either.'

"He's like, 'Good Idea. Thanks for calling.'

"And I'm like, 'Thanks for being so good about this. We'll meet you at the airport.' And I hung up.

"Well, then I called the airport to find out when the next flight was coming in from New York, and they said there was one leaving in fifteen minutes, so I asked for the next one, and it gave me five hours so I went back to sleep."

"How could you sleep like that?" I asked incredulously. "Jesus, I would have been on pins and needles."

"It was the sleep of the damned, Cous. Sleep of the damned. But I knew I had to be alert when he got there, or I might fuck it all up."

"Smart move, getting him to call work for him and her."

"Yeah, stroke of genius. The plan was that the girl at the counter would remember her face, but not mine so much, since Allie was the main attraction. So if the police tracked movements to her, she'd say the two missing people went to Denver together. And where they work, well, I'm sure everyone knew they were involved, so when he called out for both of them, people would assume they ran off together. He had money, you know."

"I know." I nodded. Here was my old cousin, meticulous down to the last detail. He was always thought of as the intelligent one in the family, the most likely to succeed and bring fame to the family name. He'd brought fame, alright, but it was the old Warhol standard "fifteen minutes." And it was not a very pleasant fifteen minutes at that. "What about the tickets, though?"

"Oh, I forgot. I reserved them under his name, yes, but also under hers. 'Calvin and Allison Flannery.' Then people would truly think they eloped."

"I mean, what if he called. To confirm like you suggested?"

"By the time I talked to him for thirty seconds, I knew he wouldn't, but I needed a show of good faith to seal the deal.

"Anyway, this is the good part. I went to meet him at the airport. I made a cardboard sign that said 'C. Flannery'. Remember, I never met this guy and I didn't know what he looked like. But I saw him as soon as he got off the plane. He was craning his neck, looking all around, and when he saw me he came straight for me.

I swear, Cous, I almost dropped the sign. It was too good to be true. He was my height and build, same color hair, same color eyes, clean shaven like me. It was great. The girl at the counter in New York was sure to think it was him if she had to identify a photo.

"He comes up to me and says 'Terry?'

"I'm like, 'Yeah.'

"He wanted to know where Allie was, and I said 'We were talking all night, Cal, and she dropped off just before I called you. She was still sleeping and I didn't want to bother her. I left a note in case she got up.'

"He's like, 'Let's go get her, then.'

"We get into the Escort, and then he wants to know where she is, so I told him our family had a cabin on the outskirts of town. When we got to the place where she was I stopped the car.

"He's like, 'What's this?'

"I said, 'Wait here, I have to find something.'

"He's like, 'What?'

"So I said, 'On the way to the cabin I proposed to her. I stopped the car here and asked her to marry me. Gave her a ring and everything. But she got out of the car and heaved it into the woods, box and all, and started walking away. It was all I could do to convince her to go to the cabin with me. I was mad, but we got to the cabin, and we talked, and I calmed down, and now here you are. But I want to find that ring because I could use the money to get a start out here.'

"So now he's like, 'Well, I'll help you find it,' and he gets out. Which is what I wanted him to do in the first place.

"I told him she threw it straight back into the brush, and we walked into the brush together, eyes on the ground. Then he says, 'Oh, there's something,' and he runs to it and stops when he sees it's a woman on the ground. I don't know if he knew it was her, but he knelt down and started to roll her over and I came up behind him and popped him. He fell without a sound across her body. I thought, how perfect, I sent them to hell together. And I chucked the gun and went back to the car and drove back to the hotel."

He was smiling. I was not. I was taking it all in and I pictured Terry standing over the two lovers with a smoking gun in his hand. It all seemed so surreal. I kept wanting him to go "Just kidding!" but I knew he wouldn't. I knew now that he had done these things. Yet I could not bring myself to reprimand this man for what he had done. We are blood, he and I, and I can't help but wonder if I might have done the same thing, in his place.

"So," I croaked, and then cleared my throat. "So what went wrong? You had this thing planned perfectly. I can't see how it got messed up."

"Yeah, well I planned on everything alright, except for me."

"I don't understand."

"No, well, neither did I. When I got back to Jersey I resumed my old life. I watched the mystery open and close like a light wound. At first they were reported as missing, and then the girl at the ticket counter recognized their pictures and called in, like I hoped. And the people at work were quoted in the papers as saying they were very involved and probably ran off together and that was it. Case closed. The news was stale and I never saw it again, a mere week after it had been front-page stuff. Got another smoke?"

I blinked, and gave him another Marlboro and lit it for him. He took a long drag and blew it out forcefully. I remembered the time he taught me how to inhale. "You're not sucking it in!" he had said. "You gotta suck it in, like you're gasping. Go like this..." and he sucked in a mouth full of smoke. Then he inhaled sharply, like a gasp of surprise, and said "Mommy's coming!" Then he blew it out forcefully. Ever since that day I can't help but think "Mommy's coming" when I drag on a cigarette.

"Well, anyway," he said, "You know how I overanalyze things. I started to think about the deed, and I started to think it was just too perfect. It kept me up at night. What did I miss? What did I leave out? They're gonna find something, some little tiny thing, to link me to her. Then I thought about that bar. It was right around the corner from her place. No doubt she'd been there before. And someone would have seen me with her and knew I wasn't Cal. I mean, he resembled me somewhat, enough to fool the girl at the airport, but not enough to fool anyone who actually knew him. And where was he the night before? Was he alone? Was he at work? Was he with someone else? Someone who might say, 'Hey, I was with Cal that night! No way he went to Denver that night.'

"All these things were swimming around in my head, right? And I couldn't sleep. I kept waiting for that knock on my door. I imagined the cops busting in like the Gestapo and hauling my sorry ass away. Every time I saw a cop I'd hunch down so he wouldn't recognize my face, just in case they had a warrant out for me. And when I did get to sleep, the nightmares! Allie all bloody on my bedroom floor with that piece of shit lying on top of her, the cops surrounding the building. That kind of thing. I mean, I was going off the deep end in a big way, Cous.

"One restless night it came to me. Even if I was going to get away with it, what right do I have? What good is a life plagued with nightmares, a life spent looking over my shoulder? Besides, I had no life without her. Like I said before, she was my whole existence. Without Allie, my life was shattered, and all I did was make a hole in the air.

"So I turned myself in. I told them where to find the bodies. This was about three weeks later, so I figure they were pretty ripe by then. Bloated from the heat and all. Flies laying eggs, maggots, worms all in 'em. I don't envy the guys that had to pick them up. Couldn't put them on ice fast enough, probably."

He took another long drag and looked up to the ceiling. He seemed to be out of words for the time being. So I talked for him.

"Listen, Terry, I might get them to knock down your sentence. I mean, right now you're looking at two consecutive life sentences. At best. I mean, what about..." I couldn't bring myself to mention the other possibility again. I'd been a witness at an execution by lethal injection. There's not much to see. But it stays with you. To see a man walk into a room, only to be wheeled out on a gurney, to think that just minutes before, there had been life in that body, it's a thought that creeps up from time to time, and it's hard to shake off.

But Terry was shaking his head no. "I already told you, Cous. I did the crime. I did it and I planned it, and that is first degree murder in my book. Life without her is a prison. I wanna be paroled into the next plane. Let them whack that shit into my veins." He held out both arms. "I'm dead already."

"Terry," I started, but he cut me off.

"Get out. I'm done talking to you, Counselor."

I got up, turned the tape recorder off and put it back into my briefcase. I turned to go.

"Joey. . ."

I turned. He sat there, looking at me, and I could see the tears in the corners of his eyes. "Tell Mom I love her, will you? Tell her I'm sorry I fucked up."

I nodded. "Take care of yourself, Terry. Be good." I knocked on the door and the guard let me out.

I was numb as I drove home. What had I found out? Only that Terry could still feel, that he knew what he was after and sought to get it. I shook my head. At home I had my loving wife, my daughter and my son, but what of it? If all that were taken from me, what would I do? Where would I be? Would I be the shell I saw in that room, the body which was so recently full of life; the walking corpse my cousin had become?

I downshifted as I headed around the turn, and snapped the radio on. I turned it up as loud as I could stand it.

The End