Free A Safe Place for Dying by Jack Fredrickson Page B

that gray drizzling October day, Amanda told me in a soft voice to take whatever time I needed to move out. She wouldn’t be back from Europe for six weeks. I told her I was going to get my life back together so we could try again. She kissed me good-bye at the international terminal like she believed me.
    I drove back to Gateville, packed what clothes I hadn’t given away in two black plastic garbage bags, and piled them inside the front door. But the next step, the one that had me turning the doorknob, throwing the bags in the Jeep, and driving away, was too big. I mixed a weak whiskey and walked slowly through the empty rooms of her enormous house. I didn’t want to stay; I didn’t want to go. An hour went by, then the afternoon, then the next day. And then the rest of that October passed, as I shuffled from empty room
to empty room, pausing only to mix watery whiskeys just strong enough to keep a veil over my thoughts. I microwaved things on occasion, and slept, sometimes on the bed, sometimes on the carpet. But mostly I paced from room to room, a ghost of something I’d been, looking at nothing at all.
    I came to life, sort of, on Halloween. In the middle of the afternoon, I put ice in the sterling silver bucket that was a wedding gift from the mayor of Chicago, filled Amanda’s grandfather’s Baccarat punch bowl with fun-sized Snickers, and set out a fun-sized quart of Jack Daniel’s for myself. I settled in one of Amanda’s antique white Louis XIV reproduction chairs to wait for princesses, goblins, and Harry Potter.
    But nobody came. Not a gremlin, not a goblin, not a Spider-Man or a Superman. At dusk, I levered myself out of the chair, pulled back the brocade drapes, and looked outside. In the glow of the landscaping lights, the smooth emerald lawns were empty, save for a few errant leaves that had had the nerve to fall since the twice-a-week lawn crews had last been by.
    There were no trick-or-treaters, not in Gateville. They must have been hurried inside when I wasn’t looking, home from some organized function where they’d been supervised by nannies, au pairs, and specialists at conducting controlled Halloween parties.
    It was wrong.
    What the hell was Halloween without trick-or-treaters?
    I aimed myself back to the chair, had more whiskey and fun-sized Snickers, and reflected on that. And, at about nine o’clock, I had an inspiration. None of the kids in Gateville knew how to trick-or-treat because they’d been raised too stuck-up-the-ass rich to go out to grub for candy.
    I’d show them. I’d be the Pied Piper of tricks and treats.
    Fueled by the whiskey and, by then, half a cut-glass punch bowl of fun-sized Snickers, I got up and started hunting around the house for a mask. Of course there was no mask, but it did take
some time, many overturned drawers, and four torn-apart closets to conclude that. And every time I stepped through the center hall—carefully, one foot in front of the other so as not to spill a drop—Wendell Phelps, who I didn’t suppose would like me one damn, mocked me, unseen but not unfelt, from his place on the other side of the wall.
    After the fourth or fifth such pass, I went into the dining room to confront Wendell Phelps, key Democrat, C.E.O. of Chicago’s largest electric utility, and advisor to senators, congressmen, and other people like himself. I stared at the portrait. It was life-sized, but just of his head. Amanda had said it was a good likeness. Wendell Phelps was all head.
    The liquor and the sugar had not drained me of all my resources. After staring at the portrait for several moments, I had a second inspiration. I would go trick-or-treating as the great man himself, Wendell Phelps, C.E.O., counselor, knower of everything worth knowing.
    The canvas of his portrait, despite being stiffened by layers of crusted oil paint, was surprisingly flexible. Wielding a sharp razor knife with great care so all