The Secret Society of Demolition Writers by Marc Parent Page A

support groups and talk to people who understand. Your wife was murdered, people told him, and his brain didn’t disagree but his heart did: the worst thing of all is that he understood the driver of the car. It was an accident. You kill someone and you panic. A family man, too, probably, with a wife and maybe two kids who never knew, a guy who realized he had killed someone, he read the papers, but that was his punishment, to live with it forever in secret.
    Connie of the bad makeup. Connie of the brown eyes. Connie who killed her parents, and didn’t that make more sense, for him to seek out Connie, didn’t those pieces fit together better than two people filled with grief and anger,
no my loss is
worse, no mine is.
There was Connie, who had a space in her life shaped just right for his grief and anger.
    To never be angry again! To use it all up in one terrific surge. What a relief that might be, and what a disappointment. To think,
That was another person, not me
.
    If he could have seen the future: the Dutchman’s real sorrow, the coverage in the newspaper, all of Connie’s eccentricities, of course, her blankness, her sickening love of animals, her failure to love particular people, she only loved mankind, wasn’t it interesting, said the papers, what a saint she was?, and he was happier than he’d ever been, and more miserable, too, and he was sure it wasn’t worth it—if he’d known he would have stopped himself. No question whatsoever.
I was a di ferent person then too,
he thought,
and what was wrong with the person I
was?
He was a coward. He only thought he could see the future. He had a brilliant, impractical imagination.
    They were leaving the revolving restaurant. He’d already stepped off next to the stationary maître-d’ stand. She stood straight up on the revolving platform in her puffy pink jacket with the white-fur-trimmed hood. “Maybe I’ll just stay!” she said. You couldn’t see her move, you could just tell, second to second, that she
had
moved. “Maybe I’ll just ride the restaurant all night! Here I go! Good-bye!”
    “Good-bye!”
    “Good-bye! See you around!”
    “Good-bye! Come back soon!”
    “I will! Good-bye!”
    She had her hood up: this trip would take her to the Arctic. She had her coat open, for the breeze off the coast. She was a brave, curious traveler.
You never let me do anything
, she told her mother, and shortly thereafter she learned what it really meant, never to do anything. The hood had fallen over her eyes. The maitre d’ was frowning, but they were like the teenagers in the store: they didn’t hate him, they just didn’t care. She was two feet away from him now.
    “Here I go!”
    “Send me a postcard!”
    “I will! Good-bye!”
    He reached out and grabbed her waving hand.
    “Marry me,” he said.

The Safe Man
    THE HOUSE ON SHELL ISLAND was as its owner had described it over the telephone, large and white with black shutters and wide porches running the length of both the first and second floor. The house had two dormer windows that creased the roofline like eyebrows raised in surprise or maybe anger. The columns that sustained the double layer of porches looked like teeth below those eyes. Brian Holloway parked his van on the left side of the turnaround circle and got out without any of the tools he would need. It was his routine to meet the client first, survey the job and provide an estimate, then come back to the van for the appropriate equipment if he secured the job.
    It took two rings of the bell and a hard rap from the brass lion’s-head knocker before anyone answered the door. It was a man in blue jeans and a sweatshirt. He was barefoot. He was clean shaven and Brian guessed he was of similar age to himself. Late thirties, maybe a little older. The man had a scowl on his face.
    “Didn’t you see the sign?” he asked.
    “The sign?”
    The man pointed to a small brass plaque posted beneath the mailbox to the left of the door. It said, ALL