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“I found a kid.”
“What?”
“A kid. In the street. I found him.”
“I told you not to go outside.”
“He was out there alone.”
“Where is he now?”
“I took him home.”
“Good, listen…I’m almost done here.” I hear him moving about. The speaker rustles. “Are you packed?”
“Have been for hours.”
There’s more rustling. “Perfect. Eat something. I’ll be home shortly.”
“Don’t we have a plane to catch?”
I listen as he clears his throat. He hates it when I fish for information he doesn’t want to give. “Not right away.”
We hang up. I decide to make Tom dinner. I want to clear the air between us. I want to make amends. I want to show him what he’s done to me. I want to know if there’s a future between us. I want to know if he could ever love me the way he loved her. I want to burn this house to the ground. We could start over.
I begin by opening one of the bottles of wine we received after we married. Cooking is hard work, it turns out. One glass turns into two, and two turns into three, until before I know it, I’m watching the wedding video again, and I have to open a new bottle just so he won’t know I’ve finished off the first.
When dinner is ready, which happens to be Tom’s favorite, lasagna, and the only thing I really know how to make, I finish off another glass of red. Then I put on a nice dress, and heels. I want to show Tom I can be like his old wife. But better. I straighten up, the way he likes it. I don’t stop there. For good measure, I don’t just hide the bottle like I usually would. I go around back so I can bury the wine bottle deep in the trash. The hard stuff, I put in the neighbors. I’ve heaved the lid halfway up when I feel something hard shoved in my back. I stumble forward. The wind is knocked out of me. “You really shouldn’t be out here.”
What I’m thinking is…this isn’t going to end well. At least not for me. How I’m feeling is, not ready to die. What I know is, everybody’s somebody’s fool. And, whoever said small things
don’t matter, never lit a wildfire with a single match.
I finish the recording. But I’m not holding out false hope. No one is coming to save me. I’m naked in a trunk. How much worse can it get? It’s like Mark Twain said, it’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Even if the recording uploads, they’ll say I’m a liar. It’s been this way my whole life. I tried to tell my sister not to make that leap. No one believed me. I tried to tell my parents about my first boyfriend, the only one they ever actually liked, and the wicked games he liked to play. I tried to save the animals. I couldn’t even save my sister.
They didn’t believe me about him either. He comes from a great family, they said. They were almost right about that. Except that great family meant he had so much money that to entertain himself he told me he had to go deeper and deeper. For a while he was into dog fighting. He said it beat hookers and blow. Anyway, he took me once. To a fight. There were a lot of people there. Big money maker, he said. Two dogs went into the pen. I watched intently. How much money, I asked. He told me to watch. It was not a time for talking, he said. One must respect the fight. It wasn’t much of a fight, I said. One dog was reluctant. He’s just standing there, I said. He should be doing something, I said.
Sometimes they don’t, my boyfriend said.
So, yeah, if you’re watching this, I understand what you’re going through. I know you’ll probably think it wasn’t a match. I thought that, too.
My girlfriend expected a fight, he told the guy heading it up after the reluctant dog bled out onto the pavement. His blood was practically black, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. My boyfriend punched him in the face. The guy, not the dog. Blood squirted from his nose like how those firemen go around letting the water out of hydrants. That’s how it looked. Like a waterfall you couldn’t stop because it was too fast. And it kept coming. I thought he might bleed out right there. Like the dog, only his blood was bright red. His nose hung all funny too. It was like his bones had just collapsed into his face. This, he said to the gusher, with a nod, was not a fight. This was a suicide mission.
He nearly beat the guy to death. All I could do was watch. I will say he was good in bed, that one. Always up for something new. Always one to keep you on your toes. One never knew quite what to expect. Let me tell you. But they say exes are that way for a reason and you don't want to know what he does for fun these days. Trust me.
I hit the front of the trunk with a thud as the car comes to an abrupt stop. My grip on the phone slips and it goes flying. I fish around desperately in the dark. The driver kills the engine. Finally, my fingers land on it. The screen lights up. I have bars. I press upload on the video and hope it works. I start to dial 9-1-1. The trunk is popped. There isn’t time. I stuff the phone under the carpeting. For this, I need to be hands-free. I shouldn’t have stripped out of my clothes, I realize now. Not only were they designer, I’ve practically offered up an invitation for what’s to come. My future is bleak. My final moments on this earth will not be pleasant. The trunk lifts. It’s show time.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tom
I’m seated at my desk, poring over the numbers from last quarter. I really need to get home. But I can’t. Not until I complete this transaction. Something is missing. Something is off.
I’m concentrating so hard on finding the missing link that it startles me when the phone rings, the sound thrusting me hard and violently back into the real world. It’s not that I’m jumpy. I just thought I’d had the ringer switched off.
I pick up the receiver and shove it back down in its cradle. I’m in a hurry as it is. As a matter of principle, I keep the ringer switched off to avoid such disturbances, so whoever was calling shouldn’t have expected to reach me anyhow. That’s what my secretary is for. I silence the ringer and turn my attention back to the balance sheet. I sigh in relief, not because what I’m seeing makes me happy. It should. But it doesn’t. And it won’t make New Hope leaders very happy either. The accounts are nearly emptied. A parting gift, I guess you could say.
