Free Man Down by Roger Smith

what you have. Believe me, it’s way more than a piece of shit like you deserves.”

3  
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    It was very late and Turner prowled the house barefoot listening to the calls of the nightjars and, pausing at their closed bedroom doors, the soft snores of his sleeping wife and daughter.
    Then he padded through to the kitchen and, without switching on the light, took an Evian from the refrigerator, drinking it dry in one long draft.
    He had a thirst that water could not slake.
    Turner stood a while, listening to the whirr and clack of the wall clock and then he observed himself at a distance as he opened a cabinet above the refrigerator and stared at the bottles of liquor that gleamed malevolently in the dim light.
    Turner reached for a liter of Jack Daniel’s, the square bottle as familiar to his touch as an old lover’s body.
    “What are you doing?” he asked out loud.
    He had no answer.
    He opened the whiskey, hearing the creak and whisper of the cap as it unscrewed and lifted the bottle to his nose, inhaling the astringent perfume of the alcohol.
    He could already taste it on his tongue and feel the slow, sweet burn as it hit his gut.
    Ten years.
    He was tilting the whiskey to his mouth when the scent of the alcohol was overwhelmed by the stink of blood and firearm propellant and he screwed the cap tight, stowed the bottle and slammed the cabinet door shut, gripping the kitchen counter, his eyes squeezed closed, waiting for the shakes and nausea to pass.
    Over the years, whenever Turner had felt himself waver, become tempted to reach for a drink or a spliff or, God knew, something way stronger and more memory-scouring, he’d never sought out drug or alcohol support groups to help him shore up his resolve.
    How could he?
    How could he have shared—in the parlance of those higher-power-loving klatches—with a room full of strangers that he’d woken that December day ten years ago in Johannesburg a stoner, a drunk, a user, and emerged, after the hellish, blood-filled night that followed, not clean, no definitely not clean, but sober, straight, dry—that was the fucking word—dry, dry as the parched desert he now found himself marooned in?
    No, his battles were to be fought alone, wandering the movie set of a house, listening to the nocturnal gargles of his wife and daughter, trying not to think about the events that had driven him to the self-imposed life sentence of sobriety.
    For a decade, until that moment in the motel room earlier, he’d accepted his fate: he was bloodless and cold, a man who lived in exile from his country and from himself.
    But the appearance of Grace Worthington had slowly changed that. She’d thawed him and he’d let it happen, always telling himself that it was under control.
    That it was safe.
    Just meaningless sex, R&R from the attritional, dug in battles with Tanya.
    And then those three words had escaped his lips.
    Words he had never in his life before uttered to a woman.
    But what he felt for Grace was a passion—a need—unlike any he’d ever known and it left him shaken and sick.
    Turner walked away from the kitchen and the booze, away from the sleeping females, to his bedroom on the far side of the house.
    The day they moved in, the PoolShark making Turner wealthy enough to buy this bizarre confection—the seller needing cash to avoid prison for his role in a Ponzi scheme—Tanya had flung open the door to the remote guest room with its cramped en suite and said, “This will be yours.”
    Without waiting for his reply she’d stalked off to supervise the movers who were carrying the double bed into what was to become her room.
    After Lucy was born Turner and his wife had continued to share a bed but they hadn’t had sex in years, so this banishment had come as no surprise.
    It had been a relief to Turner.
    His wife’s meager body and the unpleasantly acrid odor that shrouded her no matter how many times a day she showered, or how fragrant the