“You’re sure it exists, this journal of yours.”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay,” Hans says. “So let’s say it does. What’s your plan? We go and make Gary tell us where it is? We don’t even know he took it and, I hate to burst your bubble here, Jerry, but to me it sounds like he didn’t take it at all. Either somebody else found it, or you hid it elsewhere. Where else could you have hidden it?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is that I need your help. Please. Will you help me?”

Hans says nothing for a while. He just stares at Jerry, and Jerry can see Hans’s mind unlocking the problem, the way he always has.

“Okay,” Hans says. “Let’s head back to my house and work on a plan.”

“Why don’t we go straight to my old house?”

“Because we have to think about it, Jerry. It’s foolish to rush into something without a plan.”

“But—”

“Trust me. Going in without one is a surefire way of failure. I wish you’d chosen the stripper option,” he adds, and he checks for traffic and then does a U-turn. “It sure would have been a hell of a lot more fun.”

WMD

It’s now one a.m., which makes this Sunday, which actually means this is no longer the day of the WMD. Time to start over.

WMD PLUS ONE HOUR

The online video has now had more than twelve thousand hits. If only your books could sell as quickly. There are also over a hundred comments. The Internet gives everybody a voice, and it seems those who can’t spell are the first to take advantage of that.

Ha funny.

Guys a genious. Bet his wife really is a whore.

Guys a hack. His books r shit.

Guy’s a fag. FAG! No wonder his wive screws round.

God loves everybody—but even he thinks this shmuck is an asswhole.

These kinds of comments have always made you fearful of where the world is going. You worry one day people will have the courage to say in the real world what they can now only say anonymously through social media.

Since writing those comments down in the Madness Journal (no cutting and pasting here, Jerry), the hit count has gone up another thousand. At this rate every single living person in the world will have seen it by Christmas, unless some celebrity kills somebody or flashes their junk to the media. Hard to know whether it’s crashing what’s left of my career or helping it. What’s that old chestnut? All publicity is good publicity? This will put that to the test.

Sandra came into the study earlier. It really has been a day for good ol’ chestnuts, because she pulled out the words that follow, and here’s how it all began. . . .

We need to talk, she said.

I’m really sorry, Sandra. I feel so ashamed and—

How could you, Jerry? And I don’t just mean how could you say those things, but how could you think them?

She was crying. Tears are what Henry used to think of as emotional blackmail. Many of his female characters used them to get their way (you really are a chauvinistic pig, Henry), and all you could do was tell her how sorry you were, over and over, but being sorry wasn’t going to fix it. You were forming a plan—Henry can tell you.

Jerry was going to get his gun. Jerry was going to shoot the son of a bitch who put that video up online. Then Jerry was going to shoot himself too.

Thanks, Henry.

Do you really think those things? Sandra asked.

You wanted to say no. The word even formed in your mind, this little word so big and powerful, too big it got stuck, too big it was crushed under its own weight. Yes, you said. And I don’t blame you, I really don’t.

You did nothing to avoid the slap you knew was coming. It echoed around the room. If this had been a book or a movie Sandra would have realized what she had done and gasped and apologized, and in the end you’d have made up. It would have been the ultimate rom-com: you being put through the wringer, your relationship being pulled apart from every direction near the end of the second act, but all would have been saved late in the third. If only.

She slapped you again, this time much harder. Act three was going to be tough work to come back from this, and you realized this is why rom-com writers don’t throw a hilarious dose of Alzheimer’s into the rom-com mix.

You think I’m a whore.

No, it’s not that—

Then what? she asked.

I know you’ve been sleeping with the baker.

What?

And the guys who put in the alarms. You’re always disappearing for wedding stuff, and I know, you said, and tapped the side of your head because that’s where the proof was baby, pure and simple, you’ve been sneaking off to be with other men. Including Hans.

Anybody else I’m screwing? she asked.

The cops who came to the door after the car got set on fire. And probably even a few people from the wedding, you said, because honesty is the best policy, isn’t it?

You must really hate me to think that way, she said. Have you always thought these things?

Only since you started sleeping around, you said.

It’s this . . . this . . . disease, she said, spitting out the words. It gives you carte blanche, doesn’t it? You can say what you want and you don’t have to own it because it’s not Jerry, it’s his bloody Alzheimer’s, but you have to own this one because half the world has already seen it. You became a laughingstock tonight, Jerry, you embarrassed yourself and you humiliated me and you ruined Eva’s wedding. I know you’re sick, I know things aren’t the same, but how am I supposed to forgive you for this?

That’s when you went ahead and made things even worse. It’s your fault.

Now she was the one who looked like she had been slapped. My fault?

If you hadn’t been cheating on me none of this would have happened.

She burst into tears and ran out of the room.

Good news—there is none.

Bad news—you’re probably in your final few days at home now. Your wife can’t handle the truth (what movie is that from?), and the hit count of you ruining Eva’s wedding just topped thirty thousand.

Good news. You have two unopened bottles of gin with your name on them.

Hans’s house is twenty years old, a single-story brick home with a neat and tidy yard on a neat and tidy street, a pleasant-looking area in which Jerry can’t imagine Hans fitting in too well. His tattoos alone must make him stand out. But then again he’s never been one for company. Hans has had a few girlfriends come into his life, girls with sultry smiles and big tattoos. But just as easily they’d drift away and move on to bigger or lesser things, drugs or booze or a different bad boy on the path to aging fast. Hans has always been one to move on as well, literally moving to a different house every two or three years.

Hans pulls the car into the garage and uses the remote to close the door behind them, putting them into darkness. The garage windows have been covered with pieces of cardboard taped into place.

“Nosy neighbors,” Hans says.

“The rest of the place the same way?”

“Not all of it, no,” Hans says, opening the car door. The interior light comes on.

“Have I been here before?”