Stan blows up his old life with a few Facebook messages and a few cellphone photos, and after the divorce is over and he's bled dry as corn husks, he packs up his few remaining belongings in his shitty little fifth-hand Kia (the only car on Craigslist he could afford) and moves to North Garth to start rebuilding. He gets an apartment (studio), and a job (washing dishes), a new(ish) pair of sneakers and a rat in a glass case he names Salzer, after the famous German poet. He spends his first few months looking back, crying in the dark, calling his old house from grocery store parking lot payphones and hoping that Melinda doesn't pick up because they both know she's not going to let him talk to Cassie. Stan misses his daughter more than he misses the rest of his stupid old life and he tells himself that maybe that's ordinary.
Whenever his little girl answers, he never tells her it's him calling, just whispers all his secrets to her in alphabetical order and hopes she understands. When he runs out of those, he starts telling her his memories. When he was six, his dad shot himself in the garage with the Browning he brought back from Vietnam and ever since then Stan's had nightmares about red paper fans pressed against cracked window-glass. He stomped crayfish to paste by the creekside when he was a teenager. He married too young and tried to fix a broken thing with a baby. He tells her that despite all his sins she's beautiful and she's perfect and she's all he ever wanted and that's when Melinda yanks the phone away from their daughter and screeches PERVERT!! down the line at him and then it clicks dead in his ear. The next time he tries to call, a mechanical woman tells him that number's been disconnected. He screams and smashes the receiver against the base until it comes apart in his hand and the grocery security guards have to come and drag him away off the store property.
Back home, broken and battered and hammered out of shape, he drags himself into the bathroom and scoops a handful of scummy hair from the shower drain with bloody fingers, cradles it in his palms, coos nursery rhymes to it. It's a good start. But he'll need more.
Eventually he notices there's a new waitress at the diner: her name is Alexandra and she has a green and black tattoo of a snake stretching from her right wrist all the way to the line of her jaw and she laughs at his lame dad jokes and smokes too many menthol cigarettes and carries around a five year AA token like some people carry around crucifixes. She asks him about his bandages and he makes some stupid quip, hoping she gets the message. They start to have sex a few times a week, always at her place and only ever when her boyfriend isn't home. She watches him get high sometimes and never asks why he never invites her over to his apartment.
Stan starts to plan. Stan invests in a full set of antique dental tools off eBay. Stan takes showers that last for hours, pulling out the thin hairs circling his chest and his belly and his ever-expanding bald spot and letting them collect in the drain until they just about stop up the tub before he pulls them out and adds them. Stan buys weed and sometimes coke from the other dishwasher at the diner, another down-on-his-luck case who looks like a Chad but insists everyone call him Pablo. Stan has wet dreams about his ex-wife sometimes and always calls Alexandra to apologize after. Stan starts to buy anesthetic from one of Pablo's other customers, some asshole veterinarian who can't handle his shit. Stan doesn't go in the kitchen anymore because that's her room and she needs her privacy.
Salzer's been dead under a pathetic pile of shredded paper bedding for weeks before Stan notices, and when he finally does, he just throws the whole terrarium out into the alley where it shatters and startles a homeless man so badly he never comes back around. This city is dying anyway. Stan doesn't see the poor bastard beat his retreat down and away and it's just as well because Stan wouldn't care if he did.
His apartment starts to smell like rot so he spends his whole paycheck at the Yankee Candle one Friday and congratulates himself for his ingenuity. He walls off the kitchen with broken-down boxes and cheap duct tape that doesn't tear right but gets the job done. He sings while he puts it up, The Itsy-Bitsy Spider and London Bridge and Mary Had A Little Lamb and more. He tells himself she likes it but there'll be no way to tell until he's finished and that's not going to be for a while because he has to go slowly and carefully otherwise everything's going to get fucked up and he can't let that happen.
This is too important. She's too important.
One night, laying in bed, he tells Alexandra a little bit about himself, and in return, she tells him she thinks he's the loneliest person she's ever met. She tells him about her son who lives with her parents in Spokane and then he leaves because he can't handle that shit, and the next day at work she acts like nothing's wrong but he can see by the puffy glow around her eyes that she's been crying. He doesn't ask about it and she doesn't share. She doesn't answer his calls for the rest of the week either, but he's okay with that. He's got plenty of work at home to keep him occupied without having to worry about her feelings on top of all of it. He's got to focus.
Things are moving faster, now.
The next Saturday, he waits up and does lines of blow until well after midnight and then breaks into a local funeral home because those shitty Labrador painkillers he has at home aren't doing the job. He stumbles through the dark, upending chairs and caskets on his way through to the prep room and uses a screwdriver to snap the padlock off the supply locker: inside are racks of tools and rows of brown bottles with labels he only understands a little. These'll probably work. With one arm, he sweeps a whole shelf into his duffel bag for later and when a voice behind him asks
Who the hell are you? What are you doing in here?
he grabs one of the many-angled implements from the cabinet and opens the man's face with it. The sound is like a claw hammer against a steak and Stan leaves him there, crumpled on the floor in a creeping pool of his own blood.
In the bathroom of his apartment, Stan loads a pair of syringes with a mixture from the bottles and sets them on the edge of the sink while he works up the nerve. The first time he really does it, he starts small. A needle prick in the tips of his first two fingers, then he goes out to his car for the pliers while the itchy numb takes hold. He lays out paper towels all around the sink, gets a good hold, grits his teeth and yanks out one fingernail, then another. They come out with a wet sucking thwick and even through the warm embalming drug haze, the pain is exquisite, a fuzzy screaming wave that turns his whole hand into a burning, open nerve. There's not as much blood as he expected, though. He runs a cold tap over his bare fingers until it feels okay again, then he takes his ripped-free nails out to the kitchen to add.
Over the course of the next week he does the other eight, and then all ten toes, and then uses the antique bag of tools from the internet to start in on his mouth. He brings it all to the kitchen, taking his time to make sure each piece fits just so. It's only when the gaps in his smile grow wide enough to pass the neck of a bottle through that the weird, awful people at the diner start to notice. Are you okay? they ask. Do you need to talk to someone, Stan? He shrugs them all off. He's doing just fine. Every day he comes to work missing bigger clumps of hair and one time he lets slip to Pablo that he's been spending a lot of time digging for materials at the city dump. Barbed wire and medical waste. When Pablo asks him to explain a little bit more, Stan slaps him in the crotch and pretends he doesn't speak English. Pablo never talks to him again, not even when Stan comes in the next week missing the last three fingers off his left hand.
The blood seeps through the cheap vinyl off-brand bandages and gets everywhere, pattering spots on bowls and countertops and fresh napkins, but Stan insists this isn't a problem. It's no problem. He'll clean it all again, he'll scrub twice as hard. The manager sends him home and says not to come back until he's doing better. Stan asks what that means just in time to get the door shut in his face. On the way back through the parking lot, he puts a fist through the driver's side window of the manager's crappy old Buick. He stands there bleeding from both hands for a while before the idea comes to him and he starts scooping up handfuls of sea-green pebbles.
She needs eyes to see, after all.
And she always liked green. It was her favorite color.
Or was it purple?
He fills his pockets with safety glass, sure he'll find the right two somewhere in there. He's so close, now.
Back at home, Stan does all the coke he has left and it makes his brain feel like a trashcan that's on fire but if he pays attention he might be able to finish her tonight and that would make it worth all the shit and the hurt and the pain and the misery so he decides to do that: okay let's focus so we can do this come on let's fucking go. He lets himself into the kitchen through the cardboard door and goes to work, spilling his pockets all over the Formica countertop so he can find the right ones.
She waits for him at the table, hideous and cruel and nearly perfect, wrought from clumps of mottled, sticky hair and fresh stripes of leg-skin and mangled lumps of cartilage and broken bone, lashed together with tape and tight loops of wire and twine, her shape ruined humanoid, the proportions all warped and wrong. She smiles at him with his own torn-out teeth—they sit in her misshapen head glistening pearl red, arranged in as neat a row as Stan could fix them. She nods at him and he goes to work sifting through the jagged pile. The edges bite and slice into the pads of his remaining fingers, rendering the shards slick and hard to keep a hold of, but he keeps at it until he finds two that he thinks will work. He leans in and whispers to her, telling her about their angles, and when her smile spreads, he knows he made the right choice.
Stan steps in close and uses one butterflied thumb to make two little divots in her head so he can put the eyes where they need to go, but before he can place them, there's a knock at the front door.
Stannie? Alexandra calls from the other side. Stannie, are you in there? I just want to talk, please. She must have followed him home. Stannie, I'm worried about you. Nosy. She's always been nosy.
Ignore her, the creation hisses.
But Stan hesitates, stuck between the only two people left in his pathetic excuse for a life.
Open the door, Alexandra pleads. Please, Stan. I just want to help.
Give me my fucking eyes, his new child snarls.
Tears pour down Stan's face and he jams the glass into his replacement girl's makeshift skull and she shivers with pleasure, rising from her seat to meet him where he stands. Outside on the welcome mat, Alexandra's stamping her feet in frustration and calling his name, her voice swollen with sobs, but he can't hear her, now. His wretched abomination wraps him in her damp, ghastly embrace and when she squeezes it's like being devoured by knives—she shreds him apart and absorbs him, uses his parts to fortify her own, a doll of hair and meat and blood and metal. She blooms and overlaps herself, feels her father pulped inside the limits of her heinous body. She turns and tears down the fake wall, lurching toward the front of her prison, then crashes through the cheap pressboard door and onto the weeping woman she finds there, consuming her whole, the hair and steel coiling and thrashing her to red ribbons. The world beyond smells like fear, and hate, and blood, and she will devour it all, in her brutal, malignant perfection.
She opens her stolen mouth and crows to the heavens above, born to unmake the world in her image, and the gods she mocks there watch and weep and turn away to hide in their barrows. Deep inside her, as he’s pulled apart and digested to slurry, Stan’s last thought is of the family that left him, the world that forsook him, and in the moments before he truly becomes another part of his girl’s terrible entirety, he weeps with joy.
The end has finally come.
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Monday, May 14, 2018
Monday, April 30, 2018
Leave the World a Better Place, by Tom Barlow
The
first one went better than she could have expected. The right rifle,
a .260 Remington with a Zeiss Conquest scope, which she had demanded
when they divvied up her father's estate years before because she
knew it had the least recoil. A comfortable place to sprawl on the
floor of her van. The sun down, the parking lot of the Walmart nicely
lit by halogen spotlights, her van parked in the dark beyond. A
six-pack of hard lemonade in the cooler at her elbow.
Katie
waited an hour for a deserving target, watching through the hole
she'd bored for the scope in the back door of the van. He turned out
to be a young, heavy-set man with thick black hair, most of his face
obscured by the bushy beard extending well up onto his cheeks and a
Red Sox baseball cap pulled down to rest on the top of his glasses.
He caught her attention by scanning the parking area before reaching
down between his seats, coming up with a handicapped parking pass,
and clipping it onto his rear-view mirror as he pulled into a
handicap spot.
She
removed the plug from the lower of the two holes, the one for the
barrel. Through the top opening, she located the driver's door of the
car in her scope. The young man opened the door, jumped to his feet
effortlessly, and shoved it shut with his hip as he took his first
long strides towards the store.
She
squeezed the trigger. When the rifle fired, the clap left her ears
ringing. "Wear your ear protection, moron," she reminded
herself, irritated.
She
put the caps back in the holes in the hatch door and raised up to
look through the rear window. The man lay face-down on the asphalt,
blood splattered beneath him in a long arc reaching an abandoned
electric cart near the curb. An elderly couple who had just exited
the store had dropped to the ground with their arms over their heads.
An SUV swerved around the body to grab a parking spot near the door.
Katie
wrapped the rifle up in the quilt, crawled awkwardly between the
seats to the front of her van and pulled away from the scene, slowly,
cautiously. Her heart was beating a drum roll, and the air inside the
van tasted of gunpowder.
***
She
finished the six-pack before she could fall asleep that evening. Her
bladder woke her long before she'd rested enough though, and after
the trip to the bathroom she accepted that further sleep was not
possible.
She
made a pot of coffee, took her blood pressure, cholesterol and pain
meds, choked down a large tablespoon of peanut butter for protein,
and turned on the television for some company. Deborah had always
watched the news in the morning, and Katie found it a habit she
didn't want to break.
A
young black reporter in a sports coat too heavy for the humid summer
weather stood at the edge of the Walmart parking lot, breathlessly
laying out the timing and sequence of events. The actual crime scene
seemed overwhelmed by the comings and goings of police, fire,
Homeland Security, news cameramen, city officials, and finally, the
FBI. It looked to her like a couple of acres of parking had been
cordoned off with yellow tape which sagged between light poles and
billowed in the breeze. Nothing he said suggested she had been seen.
Katie
examined her emotions as the reporter conjectured about the origin of
the fatal bullet. Guilt? Very little. The man had been able-bodied,
taking up a handicap space, the kind of selfish prick that had forced
her mom to walk from remote parking even when her emphysema was at
its worst. Excitement? That seemed to have dissipated quickly the
previous evening. Satisfaction? More like an itch that had been
thoroughly scratched but would most likely return as she continued on
with the plan. Pain? Still there, mostly in her ribs. She took
another Percocet, wondering when her oncologist would permit her to
move up to harder drugs. He seemed to be holding that out as a reward
for applying for hospice.
***
She
didn't try to pull herself together until after lunch, in preparation
for her appointment with her shrink, Eric. The mirror disappointed
again. She had hair once more, but it had grown back coarse, like
corn shocks after a month in the Thanksgiving display she used to
hang on the front door of the urban two-story she and Deborah had
shared. Her skin, once creamy, was growing increasingly transparent,
so that late in the day she could track the network of veins and
arteries underneath. Even the blue in her eyes seemed muddied. The
only part she found pleasing was her cheekbones, much sharper after
the weight loss, high enough that she looked faintly Native American.
She
picked the cheeriest blouse in her closet, a polyester thant felt
like silk in her hands, a fuchsia and sky-blue pattern. It
momentarily improved her mood, but the adult diaper she donned
brought her back down.
***
"Tell
me about your week," Eric said, seated beside her on his long
leather couch.
Katie
fixed her gaze on the fat white candle he always lit at the start of
their sessions, leaned back in the couch and threw one arm on top to
take pressure off her ribs. "I'm trying to do what you said–work
on acceptance. Still not sleeping worth a damn. I haven't seen
Deborah or Glory Beth for a month."
"How
do you feel about your daughter now? Last time, you were furious
about the things she said to the judge."
"I
keep reminding myself she's only 15. That helps."
"You
were also angry at your partner. Have you come to terms with her
behavior too?"
Katie
thought the word 'terms' gave her a great deal of latitude. "I'm
working on that."
"Hmm,"
he said. "Are you still working?" He wrote something, but
kept the folder tilted away from her so she couldn't see it. She
figured it was something like "Agitated, fatigued."
"I
had three days of temp work at a call center downtown. They didn't
want me back. Evidently, I don't have a warm voice."
"How
do you feel about working menial jobs? With your background in
management?"
She
rubbed both eyes with a pinch of her right hand. "Acceptance,
right? Nobody hires cancer patients. I understand that. So I work on
appreciating whatever comes along. It beats sitting at home waiting
to die."
Eric
wrote some more. "You've had a great deal to accept recently,"
he said. "Anger is normal. It might show up in ways you don't
expect. Try to identify those impulses that derive from that anger
and stop yourself from acting on them. In times of personal crisis,
misplaced anger can drive a wedge between you and your loved ones."
Katie
held back from saying the first thing that came to mind; it was
already too late.
***
Deborah
had made her a cup of chai the afternoon of the emancipation hearing
a month earlier, after their daughter Glory Beth had been finally
pried away from them by Deborah's born-again bitch sister Elaine and
her brother-in-law Stuart.
"You're
going to stroke out if you don't watch it," Deb said, stroking
Katie's neck lightly. The fingers felt like steel wool.
Katie
had expected to come away from the hearing in tears, not with the
seed of anger that now burned within her. But their daughter had
adopted a pernicious attitude over the past two years thanks to the
harping of Elaine about the ungodly relationship between Katie and
Deborah. It had surfaced again that morning when Glory Beth's
testimony dwelt on Deborah's licentious lifestyle. And the judge had
forbidden them from even approaching their daughter for the time
being, so she couldn't challenge Glory Beth's behavior.
"I
told you Elaine was going to bring up that article," Katie said
bitterly. She was unsure what angered her more; Deborah's repeated
infidelity or the fact she had blogged it, claiming that her sexual
freedom was an important example to set for their daughter,
encouraging her to transcend the repressive mores of her parents'
generation.
"The
judge was a troglodyte," Deb replied. "Sometimes you just
have to make a stand, even if it causes you pain in the short run."
When she tried to put her arm around Katie she slapped it away.
"I
can't stand to have this argument ever again. I'm moving out."
"We've
been together almost twenty years. You can't just throw that away."
"As
far as I can tell, you throw it away every time you walk out of here
to meet your lovers."
***
Katie
still read the newspaper, curious about the future despite her
prognosis. Daily delivery was one of the first things she'd arranged
when she moved into the tiny efficiency apartment in a neighborhood
quickly on its way to becoming a barrio for immigrants from Central
America. She circled an article in the Metro section about a Tom
Abalo, a forty-year-old brick mason who had just been arrested for
driving drunk for the tenth time. This time he'd clipped a boy on a
bicycle who ended up losing a leg. Appallingly, Abalo was free on
bail, even though he'd been forbidden from driving since his fourth
conviction.
He
still had a land line, so she was able to bring up his address from
the White Pages. Googling his name provided a photo of him with a
couple of proud homeowners posed in front of their new brick patio.
Luckily,
her beat up van, which she and Deb had kept only because it was handy
for hauling Deb's pottery to weekend shows, did not look out of place
in Abalo's neighborhood, where virtually every driveway sported a
panel van advertising a construction or repair service. She parked
down the street where she had a clear view of his house from the
floor of the van. The sun had set, and despite the heat, she was cold
at her core, so she snuggled into the sleeping bag they had bought
for the women's retreat where Deb's infidelity had found its first
legs.
She
put a stick of gum in her mouth and waited; although she had zero
appetite, the chewing gave her the illusion of eating, and she was
content with illusion at the moment. With all the opiates, food lost
velocity in her colon and could be coaxed into passing through with
only the greatest difficulty.
While
there were no streetlights in this development, many of the houses
had gas lights shining on their sidewalks, and the soft glow gave
just enough illumination to frame anyone coming out of a house. She
waited, and waited, until at just after 10:00 p.m. when Abalo walked
out of his house, jumped in the truck in the driveway, and backed
out. Katie started the van. When the truck passed her, she followed
from a distance. As she expected, he drove less than a mile to a bar
in a strip mall on Westerville Road, Jack's Lounge.
She
figured he was there for quite a spell, so she took the opportunity
to hit the McDonald's down the road to change diapers and was back on
post, parked in the lot of a closed window repair shop across the
road, when he came out of the bar at 1:00 a.m. He was in the company
of two other drunks, but fortunately they peeled off, got in another
pickup and left before Abalo, walking unsteadily, reached his. The
shot was a piece of cake, although the sound echoed for a couple of
seconds from the glass storefronts of the strip mall.
She
wove her way home via back roads to avoid any traffic cams and
arrived by 1:30 a.m. Her ribs were aching brutally thanks to the
hours spent on the hard floor of the van, but the sense of
retribution made the pain endurable.
***
She
had fallen into a restless sleep on her futon late that morning when
the doorbell rang. She'd told no one except her ex-boss Bev Crosley
where she was living, so she was expecting her when she opened the
door. Only at the last moment did she think to wonder if it could be
a cop, a bit of obliviousness that surprised her.
However,
it was neither. Instead, there stood Deborah holding a fruit bouquet
of chocolate-dipped prunes. There was no contrition on the woman's
face, but Katie couldn't remember ever seeing her ex-wife contrite.
Or embarrassed, for that matter. She wore the faint smile she always
did, like she saw something everyone else didn't.
She
stepped aside so Deb could enter. She'd forgotten already how much
taller her ex was than her, willowy, all the way to hair which moved
like sea grass in the lightest of breezes. She had always loved
running her fingers through Deb's hair.
Deb
placed the bouquet on the counter that divided the living room from
the kitchen. "These still work on your constipation?"
"There's
such a thing as knowing one another too well," Katie said,
taking a seat on one of her bar stools. "What are you doing
here? And how did you find me?"
Deb
took a seat on the other bar stool, so that their knees almost
touched. Katie scooted back.
"I
called Bev. She's worried about you, and so am I. I'm hoping to
convince you to move back home. It's like a house full of ghosts back
there, and I miss you like crazy."
"Too
late," Katie said. "I've moved on. You should too."
"Moved
on to what? An apartment the size of a closet? More painkillers? Kid,
we've been through too much together to watch you die alone. To hell
with Glory Beth; give her another month with the God Squad and she'll
come begging us to let her return."
"It's
not that, and you know it," Katie said, shoving the bouquet
further away; the smell was nauseating her. "I only stayed with
you for the last two years for Glory Beth's sake. Since you starting
cheating."
"I
told you right up front what I was doing, as you'll remember. I
thought maybe now, when you're close to, you know, you'd see how
silly it is to let other people stand in the way of living life on
your terms. But I'll tell you what; you come back, I'll remain
faithful. If that's what it takes."
"Which
will make me just what you despise, right? The person who takes away
your freedom? No thanks."
"So
what are you going to do?" Deb's cheeks were flushed, a sign
Katie had long recognized as a precursor to an angry outburst. "Hole
up here until you die? For Christ's sake, there's not even anyone to
find the body. You could lay here until you rot before someone knows
you've passed."
"I'm
working on a project," Katie said. "Believe me, there will
be plenty of people know when I die."
"I
don't like the sound of that."
"Meditate
on this. I don't want you. I don't need you. Go and sleep with
anybody you want. Be free." She waved her hand toward the door.
Deb
stood, frowned, shook her head. "You poor girl. Don't be afraid
to call me when you need me. And you will." She left without a
backward glance.
***
On
the news that evening the murder was the lead story; given the
history of the victim, there was a hint of schadenfreude in the
reporter's voice. Fortunately, there was still no mention of a
witness, although the reporter conjectured that the shots might have
come from a van or SUV. They did suggest a possible link with the
Walmart shooting.
She
had expected a race between her mortality and discovery, so she
wasn't all that worried that they might have pieced together a bit of
the plan. The day of her death was still in her control.
The
next morning, though, she woke exhausted, only then realizing she had
forgotten to eat the day before. With disgust, she ate a few of the
prunes from the bouquet and rinsed them down with a bottle of Ensure.
It was mid-afternoon before she had the energy to browse for her next
victim.
It
didn't take long. Scott Van Driesen, once a wide receiver for the
local university, had been caught eleven years earlier raping a coed
at knife point. Since his release from prison two months before, two
women had been raped by a man matching his description and method.
However, the Columbus Dispatch
reported that the woman Van Driesen was living with, Polly Bender,
who had been one of his guards in prison, insisted he'd been home
with her both nights. Caught by the photographer, Van Driesen had
given the most appallingly smug smile when asked if he did it.
***
Bender
had a house in the country twenty miles west of Columbus, which
magnified the difficulty. Katie assumed the sheriff's department was
going to keep an eye on him, although she doubted they had the
manpower to watch him around the clock. The night was once again
going to be her friend.
She studied the layout on Google Earth.
The house was surrounded by cornfields, the nearest neighbor a
quarter-mile away. There was a lane a hundred yards to the west of
the house to allow tractor access to the corn fields. Since the
August heat had baked the ground dry, she presumed she could park
there.
She
had never made a Molotov cocktail before, but she remembered the
olive oil vases that had been Deb's obsession for a while, until she
discovered they were too brittle. Waiting until Deb was at work, she
returned to the two-story long enough to snatch one that would hold a
quart of gasoline. It was shaped like an acorn squash, easy for her
to throw.
The
lane through the corn was indeed bone dry; she was able to back well
away from the road at 3:00 a.m. the next morning. She made her way on
foot down a row of corn toward the house, the rifle over her
shoulder, the gas bomb in her left hand. She nicked her earlobe on a
corn leaf and it began to drip blood, but the pain disappeared into
that of her ribs.
She
stopped at the border between corn and lawn, laid the rifle down, and
pulled out the lighter she'd brought from home, the one she used to
fire up the medical marijuana that had proven so useless. She played
out the steps in her mind, took a deep breath and walked quickly to
the house. There she lit the fuse and, with all her remaining
strength, threw it through the picture window of the living room.
As
flames lit the interior of the house, she dashed back to the corn,
dropped to the ground, picked up the rifle and sighted on the front
door.
She
was almost too slow when the two of them exited instead through the
kitchen door on her side of the building. She quickly sighted on Van
Driesen as he turned on the outside faucet and fumbled with the hose
curled at his foot. She aimed for his back, but hit him in the head
instead.
To
her surprise, Bender, an older, obese woman, didn't run; instead,
unthinkably, she ran in Katie's direction, shrieking. She waited as
long as she could for the woman to come to her senses before dropping
her with a shot to the chest only ten yards from her sniper's nest.
The
fire department responded so rapidly she had to wait for them to pass
by before pulling her car out of the corn and speeding away.
***
Every
time she started to drift into sleep, Van Driesen's face, at the
moment of impact, came back to her. She had thought her heart
adamantine, but apparently she had a bit of work yet to do to purge
herself of sentiment. And she felt repentant about Bender. The woman
had been a liar and a fool but didn't deserve to die for such scum.
To
her surprise, the sheriff of Sheridan County was quite open on TV
that morning about what the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation had
found on the scene. They had recovered a shoe print from where she
had approached the house, a tire print from where she parked, and a
blood sample from the corn leaf on which she had cut her ear.
Luckily, she was sure her DNA was not in any police database. They
had matched the bullets in all three killings, though, and the
television people were barely able to disguise their delight at
having a serial killer to draw viewership. Even more so as the BCI
had concluded from the footprint that the perp was a woman.
Katie
walked into the bedroom and grabbed her father's Glock, tucked it
into her waistband.
***
"Tell
me about Glory Beth," Eric had asked during her first visit six
months earlier.
"She's
precocious," Katie said. "She should be, given the amount
we spent on sperm."
"And
your partner? Is she smart too?"
"Very
much so. It's gotten so sometimes I have trouble following their
conversations."
"That
must be annoying, since you were the birth mother."
"I
guess so. Sometimes I get the sense that Glory Beth sees Deborah as
her mother, or maybe her father, or both, while I'm something else. I
can't put my finger on what. A wicked aunt, maybe?"
"From
what you've told me about your partner, she sounds like a person who
makes people earn her respect."
"Oh,
that's true. She can be downright rude to people. But not to Glory
Beth. She can do no wrong in Deb's eyes."
"But
not in yours."
"I
can tell the girl is going to break my heart. I just don't know how."
"Did
you ever consider that your ambivalent feelings about your daughter
might be in part transference of your feelings about Deb?"
Katie
had sat quietly mulling this over for several minutes, until the
silence grew too oppressive. "How much am I paying you for this
bullshit?"
***
She
had intended to complete the plot in the morning, before the lawyers
trickled off to court, but her ribs kept her up late, until she took
an extra couple of Percocet. They left her drowsy until 11 a.m., and
by the time she showered, dressed, and wrote out her confession, it
was early afternoon.
The
traffic was one thing she was not going to miss, she thought as she
fought her way downtown. Luckily, the parking garage across from the
firm where Deb worked had several open handicapped slots on the
ground floor. Ironically, it had been Deb who convinced her to get a
script for a handicapped mirror hanger.
She
laid the rifle on the passenger seat, where the police were sure to
find it, and used her phone to email her confession to them. She
adjusted the Glock in the small of her back.
As
she rode the elevator to the fourth floor of the building across the
street, she realized that the outfit she was wearing, the mint-green
taffeta blouse, the tailored slacks, the melon blazer, the Blahnik
flats, had been bought for her by Deb. That was a mistake, but she
was too far into it to return home and change.
She
had never cared for the firm's receptionist, Astana Poole, a woman
who had a way of looking at her that she found demeaning, unsure it
if was personal or simply a strategy to put clients in their proper
place, subordinate to their attorneys. Therefore, she wasn't afraid
to pull the pistol as she walked up to her. The waiting area was
otherwise unoccupied.
"What
in the world?" Poole said, finger poised above her phone.
"Before
you call 9-1-1, call Deb. Tell her I'm waiting for her. Don't tell
her any more than that."
Poole,
hands shaking, pressed Deborah's extension. Katie couldn't hear her
answer, since Poole was wearing a headset, but was content that the
woman did just as she instructed.
"Now
call the cops."
Poole,
puzzlement on her face, punched the number. When the police answered,
she identified herself, gave the address, and said, "We have a
woman in the lobby named Katie Frank holding me at gunpoint. I think
she means to kill Deborah Kline, one of our attorneys."
When
Poole began nodding, and Katie said, "That's enough. Hang up."
She
did so. "Please don't kill me."
"You
do what I tell you, you'll walk away from this. Understand?"
Poole
nodded. Katie could smell the odor of urine wafting across the room,
and was pretty sure her diaper was dry.
Just
then, Deb came around the corner, saw the setup, and stopped. "What
the hell are you doing?"
"You
and I have some unfinished business." She swung the gun around
to point at her ex.
"What?
You're going to kill me now? Are you really that angry?"
"You
cost me my daughter. Shouldn't I be?"
Deb
wrapped her arms across her chest. "Elaine took Glory Beth from
us. You know that."
Katie's
arm was trembling. "But you provided the ammunition. It's you
that deserves the punishment."
"So
that's why you're going to kill me. To punish me for losing Glory
Beth."
"Who
said I was going to kill you? I've done far worse. I hope you enjoy
going through the rest of your life known as the wife of a serial
killer."
Deb
was silent for a long moment. "It was you? That shot those
people? That was your project?"
Katie
heard Poole gasp. In the distance, she could also hear a siren. "The
guidance counselor in my high school asked me once what I was going
to do to leave the world a better place. I figure I've done my bit."
"I
never knew you had such cruelty in you," Deb said. Katie could
see the tears coursing down her cheeks.
"Cruel?
You haven't seen anything yet. When you think of me, I don't want you
dredging up sweet memories, so here's my last gift. I want you to
remember me just like this."
And
with that, she raised the gun to her temple and fired.
Monday, April 23, 2018
Itsy Bitsy Spider, by Michael Bracken
I
recognized Millie’s work when I saw the tattooed spider web that
radiated out from Mona’s quarter-sized areola and covered her
entire left breast.
“Where’s
the spider?” I asked.
A coy
smile tugged at the corners of Mona Peterson’s lips.
I
found the spider later, tattooed at the edge of her bikini line, its
eight little legs caught in her curly black pubic hair. By then, I
was trapped.
Before
then, though, I could have walked away. I probably should have.
***
She
first came to my office on a wet Tuesday afternoon, her college
T-shirt glued to her like a second skin, and it was obvious she was
both cold and braless. I tried not to stare at the dimpling of her
thin gold T-shirt as she stood on the other side of my desk and
dripped on my carpet.
Her
hair hung in a sodden black mop and she tucked it behind her ears
before she looked around my office. When she spied a stack of
business cards on the corner of my desk, she pried one off the top.
Neatly thermographed on the front of the card were my name—Morris
Ronald Boyette—and my contact information. She held the card close
to her face while she read. When she looked up, she asked, “This
you?”
I’d
just deposited a few thousand in my bank account—the final payment
from a philandering spouse case I’d wrapped up less than a week
earlier when I’d caught the husband on video sticking it to my
client’s sister on top of a picnic table in Cameron Park—and I
didn’t feel charitable. I said, “Yeah, it’s me.”
She
dug into the front pocket of her tight-fitting jeans and dropped a
wad of green on my blotter. I carefully peeled the wad apart,
discovering five waterlogged Benjamin Franklins.
“I
want to hire you.”
***
Millard Wayne Trout—Millie of Millie’s Tattoos and
Piercings—listened to the story over tacos and beer after he closed
his tattoo parlor that night.
“She
walked all the way from the university in the rain?”
“That’s
what she said,” I told him between bites.
“Did
you carry her back?”
“I
offered.”
Millie
wore a gray sweatshirt, leaving only the tattoos covering his hands,
fingers, and shaved head visible until he pushed the sleeves up to
his elbows and exposed his thick arms.
“And?”
“She
said no.”
“You
see where she went?”
I
shook my head. My office is a single room in the back of the
building, behind Millie’s
Tattoos and Piercings. The empty suite
across the hall from my office had once been occupied by a finance
company too legitimate for the neighborhood and, in front of it,
facing the street, was Big Mac’s Bail Bonds. Without leaving the
building, I could only see the alley behind the building and the
empty lot to the side.
Millie
drained his beer and opened another.
Someone
tapped on the window and we both turned. Standing on the sidewalk
outside were two young women—blond, bouncy, and probably wasted.
Millie walked to the front, unlocked the door, and pulled it opened.
He stood in the open doorway to prevent the women from entering.
“We’re
closed.”
“No,
please. Open up for us,” said the taller of the two. “My friend
wants a tattoo.”
The
shorter one reached in her pocket and pulled out a wad of money. “We
can pay cash.”
“Come
back when you’re sober, ladies,” Millie said.
“She
won’t do it when she’s sober,” protested the taller one. She
looked at her friend. “Show him where you want it.”
The
shorter blonde pulled down her tube-top.
“She
wants it to say ‘Got Milk?’”
“When
you’re sober, ladies,” Millie repeated.
“We’ll
just go somewhere else!”
Millie
eased the door closed. The two young women looked at each other while
the shorter one pulled up her top. They staggered away.
Millie
returned to the counter where we’d been eating. “Sober clients
don’t have regrets,” he said. He poked through the wrappers and
found the last taco. “I hate it when they come back crying.”
***
The
next morning, after a quick Internet search and a few phone calls, I
drove to the university and parked in one of the visitor lots. I
hadn’t been on campus in months and it took a while to wend my way
through all the new construction. I finally found Mona’s English
professor in his office, half-hidden behind a pile of books.
He
looked up when I closed the door behind me. “May I help you?”
I
settled into the only unoccupied seat, rested my elbows on the arms,
and steepled my fingers in front of my chest. “That depends.”
“On?”
“How
well you know Mona Peterson.”
Color
slowly drained from his face. “You related?”
I
nodded. “We can trace our relationship back to Benjamin Franklin.”
Quintuplet Benjamin Franklins.
His
eyes narrowed. “What did she tell you?”
“What
matters is what I tell you,” I said. “You don’t contact Mona
again. She gets an A in your course. I hear different, I come back to
visit you.”
He
sat up a little straighter. “You can’t do anything to me,” he
said. “I have tenure.”
“You
might keep your tenure,” I explained, “but you won’t keep your
balls.”
I let
myself out of his office and returned to my Chevy.
***
Lester
Beeson had taken over Big Mac’s Bail Bonds twenty-seven years
earlier when a disgruntled client emptied a shotgun in Macdonald
Pearson’s face. Lester was sitting behind his desk thumbing through
a stack of file folders when I stepped into his office. He looked up,
saw me, and pulled a folder from the middle of the stack. He tossed
it across the desk.
“This
guy’s become a pain in my ass.”
I
flipped the folder open and looked at an average Joe, the kind of guy
who worked every minute of overtime the company offered so he could
pay for the bass boat he used as an excuse to get away from some
shrew of a wife.
“His
name’s Carl Weaver. He lives with his wife in Hubbard.” Lester
gave me the address.
“He don’t answer when I call, and the
employer I have listed in his file says he ain’t shown up for work
in a month.”
“And?”
“I
need to see him in my office. I want some reassurance that he hasn’t
skipped.”
***
Millie left his shop in the
capable hands of Alice Frizell, a wisp of a tattoo artist he’d
hired a year earlier, and he rode with me to Hubbard, a small town
about thirty miles northeast of Waco.
Weaver lived in a
one-bedroom frame house near the cemetery, and only one car occupied
the driveway. I dropped Millie in the alley where he could watch the
back of the house, and I found a convenient place to watch the front.
Weaver arrived home nearly
an hour later, parked his pickup truck next to the car, and went
inside. Thirty minutes later, his wife exited the house, climbed into
her car, and drove away.
I called Millie’s
cellphone. When he answered, I said, “He’s alone in there. Let’s
go get him.”
“About time,” Millie
responded. “I’m freezing my ass off out here.”
I went through the front
door and Millie came in through the back. We met in the living room
and quickly realized we were alone in the house. We discovered why
when we found the clothes Weaver had been wearing strewn across the
bed, three wig stands—only two of which held wigs—on the dresser,
and a selection of women’s clothes suitable for a large woman or a
man of Weaver’s size.
“Think he’s really
married?” Millie asked.
Although we found a lot of
make-up, we found no feminine products. “If he ever was,” I said,
“he isn’t now.”
Millie and I left things
pretty much as we found them and walked out to my Chevy. We drove to
a small cafe, ordered cheeseburgers, fries, and coffee. While we ate,
a young couple sat at a table near us. The woman wore low-slung jeans
that exposed the T-bar of her thong and the tramp stamp above the
crack of her ass.
Millie jerked his thumb at
the woman’s tattoo. “Whoever did that should break all his
needles and quit the business. I do better work when I’m blind
drunk.”
“Why do they do it?”
“People get tattoos for
all sorts of reasons,” Millie said. “I do a lot of ugly people
who would be better off spending the money on dental work and plastic
surgery. And I do eighteen-year-olds rebelling against their parents
who will probably regret it when they grow up to be soccer moms and
Boy Scout dads.”
I looked at Millie. Every
part of his body that I had ever seen, except his face and his palms,
was covered with tattoos. I wondered where he fit in.
After we finished dinner,
Millie and I returned to Weaver’s house. We waited in my Chevy
until Weaver’s return at half past midnight, and we were tired and
not in the mood for subtlety.
For a second time, Millie
went through the back door and I went through the front. We caught
Weaver standing in his bedroom wearing only a bra and panties. He
tried to resist until Millie planted a fist in his gut. We threw a
blanket over him and grabbed some clothes. We walked him to my car,
where he sat in back next to Millie and pulled on the clothes we’d
grabbed for him.
On the return trip to Waco,
I phoned Lester and told him we had Weaver. I said, “You could have
told me he’s a cross-dresser.”
Lester laughed. “He must
be one ugly woman.”
“You don’t know the
half of it.”
The bail bondsman met us at
his office fifteen minutes later.
“How’m I going to get
home?” Weaver asked.
“Not our problem,” I
told him as I left with Lester. I knew the guy probably wasn’t
going home, and where he was going his choice of underthings would
not work in his favor.
After
we left Lester’s office, Millie slipped into his car—a 1965
Mustang he’d rescued from a
junkyard—and I went home.
***
Mona
Peterson returned to my office at the beginning of the Christmas
break. She carried a backpack and said she had no family with whom to
spend the holidays. She said she wanted to thank me for taking care
of her problem earlier in the semester.
I
told her that the quintuplets had already shown their appreciation.
“The
university won’t let students stay in the dorms during Christmas
break.” I waited while Mona’s gaze traveled around my office
before settling on my face. “I can’t go home and I can’t afford
a motel. I gave you all the money I had.”
Clients
always have sad stories or they wouldn’t need to hire guys like me.
“I don’t give refunds.”
“No,”
she said. “I suppose not. I wouldn’t ask for one.”
I
waited.
“It’s
just that—” She sucked her lower lip between her teeth and chewed
on it.
I
knew where Mona was headed, and I let her lead me there.
“Do
you know any place I might stay?”
I
did. I had a two-bedroom brick ranch just off of New Road and I took
her there. The second bedroom had become a large walk-in closet
filled with storage boxes and dust bunnies, so I prepared a place for
her on the couch while she showered. I used floral print sheets and a
pink blanket I hadn’t removed from the linen closet since my
divorce.
After
I finished preparing the couch, I retrieved a beer from the fridge,
sat in my favorite chair in the living room, and nursed it.
When Mona stepped from the
bathroom, she was wearing a white bath towel wrapped twice around her
and was drying her hair with a second towel.
She looked at the makeshift
bed and at me. “That’s not what I had in mind.”
Mona
dropped one towel. Then she dropped the other. That’s when I saw
the spider-web tattoo that covered her entire left breast. I gagged
on my beer. When I recovered, I asked, “Where’s the spider?”
A coy
smile tugged at the corners of my client’s lips as she crossed the
room.
I
shifted position but couldn’t hide my reaction to her nakedness.
She straddled my lap and gyrated her hips ever so slowly.
One
hand still held the beer. The other held tight to the arm of the
chair. I said, “We
shouldn’t do this.”
Mona
continued gyrating her hips as she leaned forward and pressed her
lips against mine.
They were soft and parted easily to allow our
tongues to meet.
I
dropped my beer, wrapped my arms around her, and carried her into the
bedroom.
When
I buried my face between her thighs, I saw the spider, its eight
little legs caught in her curly black pubic hair, so small I could
only see it close up. Before I had a chance to react, Mona grabbed
the back of my head and thrust her pubic bone against my nose.
I had not been with a woman
her age since I had been a man her age. I had forgotten how energetic
they could be, and we found several ways to pleasure one another.
When we finished, Mona turned away, curled into a fetal ball, and
fell asleep.
After
I slid out of bed, I padded barefoot and naked into the living room,
where I picked up the half-empty beer bottle I’d dropped before
carrying Mona to bed. I used an old towel to soak up the spilled
beer. Then I opened a fresh bottle and drank it while contemplating
the meaning of Mona’s tattoo and the web she had spun for her
English professor.
***
I returned to the office
three days later, did nothing most of the morning, and accepted
Millie’s invitation to lunch at the wing place down the street.
Millie stared hard at the
blonde seated two tables away. “That’s the perfect canvas,” he
said. “Smooth alabaster skin, nearly hairless.”
I told him about Mona’s
spider web and that it seemed like his work.
“The
spider web?” Millie said. “I’ve only done one like it, must
have been a year ago, maybe two. The girl looked so young I made her
show I.D. She came alone, paid cash before I started, and never once
complained about the process. Some of those college girls can be real
whiners.”
“Ever
see her again?”
“She
came back once, a few months after I did the work, said she needed a
place to stay during Spring Break. I was shacked up with Bridget at
the time or I might have offered her the couch at my place.”
“She’s
not satisfied with the couch.”
“I
wouldn’t think so, not a girl like her,” Millie said with a
smile. Then the smile faded. “You
didn’t—?”
I
nodded. “I’ve seen the spider.”
“Moe
Ron, Moe Ron, Moe Ron.” Only Millie called me that, and this time
the nickname fit. “She’s not much older than your son. You should
know better.”
“I
should.”
“Where
is she now?”
“I
left her at the mall,” I said. “There’s no way I’m leaving
her alone in my house.”
“At
least you got that part right.”
***
I
needn’t have bothered. Mona was waiting for me when I returned home
that evening, sitting in my favorite chair with an open beer in her
hand, wearing one of my shirts and nothing else. Only a single button
kept the shirt closed.
“How
many people did you rough up today?” she asked.
“None,”
I said. I didn’t bother asking how she’d gotten in because the
back door key lay on the coffee table next to the day’s mail, and I
knew if I checked my key ring I would be short one key.
“Well,
you did all right by me,” she said. “I checked my grades this
afternoon. Straight A’s.”
Mona’s
English professor had come through. How she’d earned her other high
marks I hadn’t a clue until she undid the button and let the shirt
fall open.
“I
think we should celebrate.”
***
Lester
Beeson caught me on my way to my office the next morning. “Weaver
skipped again,” he said. “He’s in the wind.”
I
walked up front to find Millie collecting payment from a biker with a
face like a Shar-Pei and a fresh tattoo depicting a winged unicorn
flying over a rainbow. After his customer walked out the door, Millie
explained, “Said it was for his daughter.”
“Can
you get free? Weaver’s on the loose again and Lester’s not
happy.”
Millie
called to Alice and told her to take care of things. We were walking
around back of the building to our cars when Mona showed up. She
said, “I’m lonely.”
“I
have to go,” I told her. “We have a job.”
“I
don’t like being left alone,” Mona said. “Let me go with you.”
“You’ll
get in the way.”
As
she sucked on her lower lip, I glanced at Millie. He shrugged.
I
said, “Get in the back.”
She
did, and soon we were headed north out of Waco. As we passed through
Bellmead, I glanced at Mona in the rearview mirror. “Millie says he
did your ink.”
“How
do you think I found you?” Mona said. “I saw your sign that
night.”
***
We followed Weaver’s
trail until we found him sitting in a well-lit diner in Corsicana,
dressed as the ugly broad he’d been when we first encountered him.
When he saw us push through the diner’s front door, he dashed into
the women’s restroom, a place Millie and I dared not go with so
many people watching us.
“I’ll go out back,”
Millie said, “make sure he doesn’t climb out a window.”
Mona didn’t say anything.
She just pushed past us and marched directly into the women’s
restroom. We heard a rather guttural scream of pain, and she came out
a moment later with Weaver’s blond wig in one hand and his scrotum
in the other. On his tiptoes, Weaver minced along behind her.
The other patrons of the
diner stared at the four of us, but none of them interfered as Millie
grabbed the back of Weaver’s neck and marched him out to my car.
Mona followed. I grabbed Weaver’s purse from the booth where he’d
been sitting, dug through it, and tossed some money on the table next
to his half-eaten meal. Then I joined the other three outside.
Mona sat in the passenger
seat and Millie sat in back with Weaver. After I slipped into the
driver’s seat, I turned and looked at our collar. “You’re
costing Lester a lot of money,” I said. “I won’t be surprised
if he tries to revoke your bond this time.”
“He can’t do that.”
Weaver didn’t deserve a
response, so I started the car and pulled out of the parking lot,
headed home to Waco. None of us spoke until we handed Weaver off to
Lester Beeson, and we walked out of Beeson’s office as he began
reading Weaver the riot act.
Millie returned to his
tattoo parlor and Mona followed me into my office. As I settled
behind my desk, she perched on the corner and did that thing with her
bottom lip.
After a bit, she said,
“Christmas is coming.”
“And?”
“What are you getting
me?”
“A place to stay isn’t
enough?”
“You haven’t even put
up a tree!”
“How about we pick one
out tonight?”
She liked that idea. “Maybe
I should go home and rearrange the living room so we have a place to
put it,” she said. “Call me a cab, Moe Ron.”
***
Later, over beer, I told
Millie I couldn’t stay long because I was going Christmas tree
shopping. Then we talked about what had happened that afternoon,
about how Mona had walked Carl Weaver out of the women’s restroom.
“She’s got hold of
yours, too,” Millie said.
I had been about to take a
drink, but I stopped. “How’s that?”
“What do you know about
Mona?”
“She hired me to—”
“To scare off the
previous man in her life.”
“You think I’m taking
advantage of her?” I asked. “I’m not in any position of
authority. I don’t have any impact on her grades.”
“You don’t? How’d she
ace the English class?”
I lowered my beer.
“Maybe you aren’t
taking advantage of her,” Millie said, “but she’s sure as hell
taking advantage of you.”
I stared at him.
“Christmas tree shopping?
Really?”
I glared at him for a
moment before I pushed my chair back and stood. “I have to go.”
He waved me away. “Make
like an angel and bend over,” he said, “’cause you know you’re
gong to take it up the ass when this is all over.”
***
Mona had moved some of the
living room furniture, opening up space by the front window.
She
said, “I think a tree will look nice right there.”
She was right, it did. That
evening, after I had the tree secure in the stand, I dug through the
closet in the second bedroom for ornaments I hadn’t used since my
wife walked out. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but my ex had
taken all the good ones, and what remained was inadequate to the task
of decoration. I said something to that effect.
“That’s all right,”
Mona said. “I think the tree looks fine.”
I strung the only two
strands of twinkling lights that still functioned, and we sat on the
couch staring at them.
As she snuggled into the
crook of my arm, I asked, “Why are you here? Why couldn’t you go
home for the holidays?”
“My father doesn’t want
me around. He says I get in the way.”
“What does your father do
that you get in the way?”
Mona didn’t answer my
question, but asked one of her own, “What about your son? Why isn’t
he here for Christmas?”
I had told her about my
divorce, but not about my son. His absence was not by my choice, and
I had long since come to terms with our non-existent relationship. I
didn’t let her question distract me from my questions. “And why
couldn’t you afford to go somewhere else when the dorm closed for
the holiday?”
“I don’t get my
allowance until the first of the month.”
“Allowance?”
“I have a trust fund,”
she said. “My expenses are paid directly by the trust, and once a
month I get some walking-around money. This month, all of it walked
around without me.”
“What about friends?
Couldn’t you have spent the time with friends?”
Her hand slid up my thigh.
“I thought you were my friend.”
***
Lester Beeson caught my
attention as I entered the building two days before Christmas.
“Weaver hung himself.”
“I thought you had his
bond revoked.”
“I did,” Beeson said.
“Jailers found him in his cell this morning. He was scheduled for
sentencing today. He was looking at three to five inside.”
“A man like him wouldn’t
last long.”
“He must have known it.”
I had never bothered to ask
what Weaver had done because I wasn’t paid to care. Even so,
hearing of his suicide put a damper on my day, and my trip to the
jewelry store later that day wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped.
***
The next afternoon, as I
prepared to head home to spend Christmas Eve with Mona, a man built
like a defensive lineman pushed into my office, interrupting my
examination of the Christmas gift I planned to give her. When I saw
the butt of a semi-automatic hanging in a shoulder holster beneath
his unbuttoned jacket, I shoved the gift in my desk drawer.
He asked, “Do you know
Mona Peterson?”
“That depends.”
“Humor me,” he said. He
closed the door behind him. “Let’s say you do.”
“Okay.”
“So now you forget her.”
“Why’s that?”
“Her father insists.”
“And who’s her father?”
He rested his knuckles on
my desk and leaned in close enough that I could smell the onions on
his breath.
“Mona likes to toy with
stupid fucks like you,” he said. “You get a piece of that young
stuff and you think you’re in love. She’ll chew you up, spit you
out, and replace you with another stupid fuck. I’m saving you the
grief by taking her off your hands now.”
I didn’t appreciate being
told what to do, so I made a move. I thrust my hand under his jacket
and grabbed the butt of his semi-automatic.
Before the pistol even
cleared leather, my visitor drove a fist into the center of my face,
smashing my nose and driving me backward. If my office hadn’t been
so small, I might have crashed to the floor. As it was, the chair
tipped backward and caught between the wall and the desk, leaving me
waving my arms and legs in the air like an upended spider.
“I guess it’s already
too late for you.” He peeled five Benjamins from his wallet and
tossed them on my desk. “This oughtta cover your pain and
suffering.”
He was gone before I could
right myself, and by the time I reached the front of the building he
was nowhere in sight.
Millie stepped out of his
shop and joined me at the curb. He looked at the blood still
streaming from my nose and put the pieces together. “Your visitor
left in a stretch limo.”
“You catch the plate
number?”
He shook his head. “No,
but when the door opened I saw Mona sitting inside.”
“Anyone else?”
He named a state senator
whose last name didn’t match Mona’s. Before I could grasp the
implication, he added, “Come into the shop. I’ll get a wet towel
and we can clean you up.”
When I returned home that
afternoon, Mona’s backpack was gone. So were half the Christmas
tree ornaments. I hung her gift from the tree—a ruby-eyed gold
spider on a chain—and stared at it as the twinkling Christmas
lights reflected eerily from its eyes. Then I drank myself to sleep.
***
The Friday after Christmas,
Millie and I were discussing tattoos and sharing nachos at George’s,
half-empty Big O’s in front of us, when Mona’s English professor
stopped at our table. I said, “Yeah?”
“Was she worth it?”
I couldn’t answer his
question, not then, so he turned and walked away. I watched him take
the arm of a woman closer to his own age as they pushed through the
door.
Millie and I resumed our
conversation about tattoos, specifically about Mona’s.
I said, “That spider was
pretty small.”
“I’ve done smaller.”
“Yeah?”
“The smallest tattoo I
ever did was for a writer,” Millie said. “He had me tattoo a
period on his ass.”
I didn’t want to know
why.
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