The Escape Artists

by Michael McSweeney

We weave through the highway's hypnotic dark, an hour or so south of the White Mountains.

I need to check the directions, I say. Do it, says the character, the end of a pistol raised to my face. My phone drinks power from the console. The screen's pearl light washes us as I open the map app.

There's still a while to go, I say.

***

I should explain the character.

I was half-awake on the couch with some streaming-service sitcom misting happiness in my direction when it happened. The sudden grind of fans inside my laptop. The ripples on the screen. How a person, no, a shade of someone crawled naked through the screen and thumped onto the floor. My instinct was to bring them clothes. Their skin reminded me of dust as it floats in a sun-blushed room. Or how the air seems full just before it rains.

No light? the character asked as they dressed.

I need to replace the ceiling bulbs, I said.

Where's your bedroom?

I pointed across the room toward the unlit entryway. The character walked into the bedroom and returned with a pistol in their hand, the one I’d bought to kill myself, and told me to sit. They started talking.

I don't remember everything they said. I was still shaking off disbelief like a dog wanting to be dry. They described a folder within a folder within a folder on a cluttered desktop and how I abandoned them there. Now they wanted me to finish the work, to complete them.

I don't know how, I said.

Then we need to find Tom.

How do you know about Tom?

I watched you both create me. You need to explain who I am. Show why I matter. Finish my story.

Tom lived in an apartment building just outside of Lincoln, New Hampshire. It took me a while to find my car keys. As I dug through the debris of my life, the sense-memories of our friendship returned. The thickness of his fingers when we shook hands for the first time after our hometown reorganized the high school bus routes. The hometown summer to autumnal membrane we passed through to college. His basso swagger in theater tryouts, around bonfires, during pointless drives through New England wilds. Four years. The wall of his body as we fought about the small, stupid things that weren't what I felt about his plan to leave so soon after graduation. The smell of him as our faces succumbed to gravity. The silk of his tongue. The silence he was capable of when, one week later, we piled the things he wouldn't surrender into the bed of his truck.

***

I need to use the bathroom, I say. It's the last rest stop for a while, so I'd like to stop.

Okay, says the character.

There's a small bathroom in the rest stop's main building. I piss in a stall with no door. A janitor sprays a mirror with washing fluid and wipes it dry. A trucker brushes their teeth at the rightmost sink in the row.

The character is waiting for me at the vending machines outside. I stare at the bags of chips and salted pretzels behind the glass before I decide I want something heavier, warmer. Adjacent is a small food court, and the only counter open is a Mexican place. Fast-food tacos aren't really my thing, but I order a pair of them and a bottle of water. An employee washes the floor beside the drink machine, and a trail of blown water stretches behind them. I think about the type of people who buy this kind of food at this hour, whether true hunger or something more discomfiting keeps them awake. I wonder if I'm this type of person as I throw hot sauce packets and extra napkins in the bag.

Back outside we pass a truck as it feeds from the pumps. The driver smokes a cigarette and holds it through the rear window between puffs.

We're quiet, back on the road. We hit a stretch of construction. The wheels grumble on the rough terrain and the pistol jostles against the character's leg as potholes pass beneath us.

I'm sorry, I say.

The character says nothing so I keep going.

I'm sorry for starting something and not finishing it. It's a thing I do a lot and you didn't ask for this.

Okay, the character says. 

I hear them swallow air, a discomfiting gulp caught in the throat. Dark mountainsides rise around us like the bows of great ships.

Want something to eat? I ask.

The character swallows again.

Yes, they say.

There's a new vulnerability in their voice now, like a small crack in a glass.

Take one of the wraps from the bag. I've got it in the console right here.

The character rests the pistol on the dashboard and takes one of the tacos. They peel the wrapping and bite into it. The stench of grease-hot cheese and beef blooms around us.

Good, right? I ask. 

The character nods and keeps eating. A glob of tomato and cheese drops onto the shirt I gave them.

Have the other one, I say. It's a long drive.

The character reaches into the bag. We've struck an understanding, I think, smiling at the wet chewing sound in a mouth that's only several hours old.

Thirsty?

Yes, says the character.

Grab the bottle in the cupholder. It's got some water in it.

The character unscrews the top. Water splashes on their front as they gulp it down.

Thank you, says the character.

I nod. Then I ask, Why do you want this? Like, to be completed. To have us do all this so we can complete you.

Something just doesn't feel right about me, the character says. Like I'm about to fall apart. Have you ever felt that way?

I tighten my fingers on the steering wheel. Yes, I say.

I need to know if I mean something. Is that wrong?

No, I say.

Did you write me to be like this? To feel this way?

I didn't, I say. Then I say, I don't know if I did or meant to.

How do you not know?

Maybe I was just spitting out my thoughts because some days I feel like I'm coming apart.

A minute goes by, then I ask, What will you do after? After I finish you, I mean.

What do you do? the character asks.

Like, usually?

Yeah.

Eat. Go to work. Try to write sometimes. Sleep.

Maybe I'll do those things. Or something else.

We reach Tom's apartment building and stop in the corner of the parking lot. Everything in town is closed, and the only sonic constant is the breeze.

When we get to the door, I think about how much he may have changed since we last saw one another. I ring the bell. I wonder if he'll even recognize me.

Tom stomps down the stairs with the same stocky form, the same rough crop of strawberry hair on his head and face, the same Testament shirt he's worn a million times.

Mike, what are you – whoa, hold on, what the hell? he demands, his eyes trained on the pistol in the character's hand.

Take us inside, the character says.

Let's just take it easy.

Inside, the character continues, their voice a faulty plug.

We follow Tom up two flights of stairs to his apartment, a cramped rectangle that contains a bedroom-kitchen-den and a bathroom in the back. A half-drank beer rests on the lone table beside a powered-down laptop. A ceiling fan rattles at half-speed on its peg.

Tom sits in one of the squat wooden chairs at the table. What the hell is going on? he asks.

I look at the character. They lean against the counter and gesture at Tom with the pistol. Like I'm supposed to recite the whole story.

So I say, Tom, remember that story about the guy who's trying to write one more story before he retires, but he struggles to do it, and he winds up down at the Cape for a friend's funeral where he falls back in love with this artist he knew as a younger man and there are all these different characters around, like that guy who rents him the apartment but it's a shitty apartment and it's all he has plus the one below it, same building, but we didn't really finish the story and the whole thing with the apartment felt weird and unnecessary?

Tom blinks at me before nodding.

We need to finish it. If we don't finish it, I don't know what's gonna happen. So we gotta finish it.

I keep talking and repeating what I've said and as I do Tom reaches for his beer and swallows it in small sips. I ask if he has a copy of the story, the old version, the one I didn't butcher trying to make it something good or at least complete.

I can try looking for it, says Tom. He's looking at the pistol again.

Tom powers up his laptop and clicks around. Then he finds it: The Escape Artists, we called it. The character perks up when Tom reads the title aloud. Like they know it, too.

We get to work. Sometimes I'm typing, sometimes Tom. We settle into our old routine. As I'm writing, Tom goes into his bedroom and returns with a thesaurus. He thumbs through tattered, sometimes water-damaged pages, hunting for good words. Tom builds sentences like bonfires, a way I can't, so when it's time to hit them with the period they ignite. I watch him write and try not to cry as I remember the acute period of our friendship, the warm competition of it, how I miss his company. 

When it's my turn, I slow things down, to maintain all this for as long as possible.

The character paces behind us as we work. Talking about their mother. I’ve never thought about the character being born.

Can you focus, please? Tom asks.

We write about the character and the building they maintain. About the people who rent its shabby warrens. Gasping pipes in the summer. A starved boiler struck dumb in the winter.

The sky turns to royal blue in the window and we stop for a while, light cigarettes and catch ash with the tips of our shoes. Then we keep going. The character's sibling visits for a while, dragging a childhood like heavy clothes. A love interest flees and then returns. We seek surprises as the words dribble from our hands.

The last sentence stares back at us for ten minutes. Tom retrieves a dusty printer from a closet and connects it to the laptop. Pages unfurl from its jaws. When the last page emerges the character takes them and sits at the table.

Tom shoves me and I topple from my chair. The pistol clanks to the floor and slides away from me. I feel like some struck pet in a wild, depleted fit. What am I and why am I here, I wonder. But those words aren't in sequence. Just a cloud of feeling, a bodiless brain attempting to type its intent.

What is wrong with you? Tom asks. He grabs the pistol and rests it on top of the fridge. Then he sinks to the floor beside me and the sounds of our breathing collide like clocks out of sync.

The character is reading what we wrote. Page after page slap against the wooden table. This is really good, the character says. You understand me.

Is that why you're here? Tom asks me.

The character is crying at the table. I mean something, they say. Some of the pages fall from their fingers and splash against our legs. I mean something, they say again.

***

Michael McSweeney is a Massachusetts writer.