The Girl in the Grimace Jacket

Only one person would wear heels to a cemetery after it snowed—the last person I wanted to see. Her footprints gave her away.

We were once orphans together. We communicated like an old married couple—finishing each other’s sentences and being comfortable together in long silences. Back then, I knew her better than I knew myself. She said we were connected. We had to be.

“Oh, June.” I sat in my eighteen-year-old Corrolla with the heat on. Eight degrees in Albany, New York is uncommon for the first week of March, but the three inches of snow isn’t. My sister was from here. She should know not to wear heels.

I wore jeans and boots and a heavy winter jacket she said made me look like Grimace from the old McDonalds commercials. She didn’t say it in jest.

She said it in the brief stopover just after the breast cancer took our Aunt Erin, the woman who raised us, the woman who held us together after Mom and Dad died that one summer.

It was four years from Aunt Erin’s diagnosis until I took her to the Hospice one Thursday afternoon. My memories of that day don’t go away.

“I wish my Juney were here.” Aunt Erin didn’t look at me while she spoke. She looked out the window at the passing trees, naked as winter loomed. It was November, gray and rainy. Cold. The perfect day for a horrible thing.

I wanted to cry about all of it. The drive to the hospice. That she pined for her Juney, the girl who tossed us aside for a bigger life. That June tossed me aside after I idolized her. But I had to be strong. My big sister wasn’t there anymore.

“I know,” I said. I kept my anger as my own secret. My tears would come later.

I could understand if she had left for love. But her Juney left to get away from where she came from, from what she was. She left to get away from us. First in the family to attend college. Then a Masters. Publication. A brownstone in Boston. A movie deal. A fairy-tale romance with a production assistant in LA.

I got pregnant. Had the kid. Married young, got divorced. Tried to drown it all in booze, then stepped back from the cliff.

June didn’t have time for the girl in the Grimace jacket.

After they’d optioned one of her books, she shuttled between Boston and LA. She lived in Boston because it was closer to Europe, where her books were set. She went to LA because that’s where the movies get made. We delayed the damn wake for her, and she could only spare the afternoon. Aunt Erin raised us and her Juney couldn’t spend a single night after she died.

While I grieved, June had an audience, telling old friends about parties, the actress in the adaption of her book, what it was like to set a book in Europe and work with movie people. What a pain traffic is in Boston and LA and how her electric car wasn’t adding to climate change. About her commitment to justice.

To me, justice means going to prison for committing a crime. When I told her that, she informed me it’s not that simple. I said it’s not that hard. As she lectured me about privilege, I told her she shouldn’t have come. We haven’t spoken since.
And yet, there were the tracks made by the only person who’d wear heels in the snow.

“Shit.” There was no one in the car to hear me swear.

Sometimes life works out that way. You can be the glamorous star people queue up to see when you make it back. Or you can be the one who did all the work and said all the prayers and watched everything turn to shit anyway.

I try not to curse any more. I’d heard my daughter curse the other day, when the people in the next apartment changed the password on their internet. She had to go to McDonalds to finish her homework.

If I did better, she wouldn’t have to curse. She could do her homework at home. She could’ve done better at school during the shutdowns. If I did better, she wouldn’t dream of spending the summer with her aunt.

I got out, pulled my hat down and put up my collar. I had to be to work in an hour. Then the other job after that. Bills don’t pay themselves. Almost three months after Christmas and I’m still behind on the money.

The wind bit into my face. You can live here forever and it’ll still make you gasp a little. I used to love winter.

Aunt Erin took us cross-country skiing at a place where they sold Christmas trees. It didn’t matter how cold it was, we’d work up a sweat, then sit by the fireplace in the lodge and drink hot chocolate. The owner liked Aunt Erin, so we skied free, got a Christmas tree, and lots of whipped cream on our chocolate. June let me steal some of hers.

I still scrimp so we can get a real Christmas tree every year. Then when my daughter’s asleep, I sit next to it and drink hot chocolate and soak up the scent.
Sometimes we all stayed at the guy’s house. When we stayed there, we’d have popcorn for dinner and fall asleep in the living room in our princess sleeping bags. If the movie was scary, June would let me sleep right up next to her. Sometimes I pretended to be scared when I wasn’t. I think she knew.

I blinked back a tear. Too damn cold for crying.

The cemetery was brilliant white, the way it gets when a storm comes through, then the sun comes out. Everything looked new and pretty. Makes your eyes hurt when your sunglasses are broken and you can’t afford new ones. When it gets like this, it’s hard to believe it’ll ever warm up.

I followed the footsteps, turned the hedge corner just in time to see June put flowers on the grave—long-stem yellow roses. Aunt Erin’s favorite. The kind I can’t afford. I could adjust work schedules to run Aunt Erin all over for doctor’s appointments. I could sit up with her at night when the pain was bad and watch her body rot away. But I can’t afford the damn roses.

June stood up, adjusted her mask. You can’t catch the Covid alone in a cemetery. Everyone knows that. But that’s June, always making a statement.

She wore a fleece-lined denim jacket and baggy jeans. And boots with heels. And sunglasses, probably the Ray-Bans she loved. She bought me a pair for Christmas while we were still talking. They broke last week, but they were still on the counter at home.

She hugged herself hard against the chill. The coat seemed too big on her. The pant legs fluttered in the wind.

I stood still, almost hoping to melt into the background. I was good at that, and this wasn’t the place for a fight.

She turned. She always knew when I was there.

“Hey.” My voice was flat.

Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh,” I think she said. It was hard to tell with the mask on.

June’s steps had always been firm and decisive. She happened to be in the girls’ room one day when I was in fourth grade. For whatever reason, a girl named Rosie Carp decided she hated me. She was in fifth grade and huge. She decided that day to stick my head in the toilet and flush it. June was in sixth grade at the time. Middle school.

For some reason, she was at the elementary school in that bathroom when it happened. All of the schools were connected, but still, she shouldn’t have been there.
I’d fought and lost and had accepted my fate. In fourth grade, getting your head stuffed in the toilet was like dying.

In three steps, June crossed the girls’ room, pushing everyone out of the way, and punched Rosie as hard as she could in the nose. Rosie collapsed like someone shot her. For a second I thought she was dead.

June spent a week in detention for that, and though my blouse was ripped and June’s shirt was stained with Rosie’s blood, Aunt Erin didn’t ask for an explanation or punish either of us. She said she was disappointed it had come to that and let us have ice cream for dinner that night.

The June standing in front of me was different. She was frail. She shuffled, tucked a cane under one arm, held out the other as if she were reaching for a railing.

I looked back at the footprints and realized she’d shuffled all the way here. It had to take five minutes in the cold, a long time when you’re only wearing a denim jacket.

When I turned back, she was right in front of me, mask off. Her face looked drawn, too small for her skin. There were lines etched on her face, which had been perfect before. When she spoke, her voice was thick.

“I hoped…I wanted…you’re here. You’re really here.”

“Hi, June.” My voice was flat. I wanted it that way.

She pulled off the glasses and slid them in her pocket. Her eyes should’ve pierced two holes in me for being a bitch, but they were shiny with tears that spilled onto her cheeks. She blinked against the sun.

“What’s with the cane?” Nice. Lead with the worst possible thing.

She held her eyes shut a second, the opened them. “I…I got sick last fall. In Boston. They thought I would die.”

I gasped and something caught in my throat. My chest felt tight.

She nodded toward the gravestone I’d picked. “She was there. Aunt Erin. I had dreams…she was…she said I had to stop on the way to LA. She said I had to see you.”

I had to work to get past the part where my older sister might die. She couldn’t die. She was June. She was the strong one.

“You’re going back to LA?” My question was an accusation, really. I decided I was okay with that.

She nodded. “Bradley died. His family’s there. I have to…we both got it. Covid. I’m going back to plan the memorial service. He, uhh…” She looked down again, brought the hand that wasn’t holding the cane to her mouth. “He passed in November. They cremated him, shipped him back. I…I was on a ventilator at the time and…I’ve been bad off ever since.”

My hand went to my mouth. He was the man who saw me as more than June’s little sister, the recovering alcoholic who shops at the Walmart.

“Aunt Erin…uhh…she told me. In my dreams.”

“Told you what?” Part of me wanted to throttle her. For coming here. For surprising me like this. For daring to throw Aunt Erin in my face like that.

She closed her eyes and more tears came. “That you would come. I’d stop here and you’d come.”

“Here I am.” I sounded like a…like a bad person.

“I know.” Her voice was a whisper now, taken by the wind. Somehow, I heard it. “I told her and she said I had to tell you. She told me if I said…” Her lips quivered and she looked down, away from my eyes. Away from me.

“If you said what?”

“That I’m sorry,” she said. “So sorry.”

It’s hard when a god, even a small one, says you settled and deserve what you got. It’s hard when you know you disappointed her. No one wants to be rejected by a god.

Now, the god whose voice my personal demon used to condemn me was standing in front of me. And she was apologizing.

“I was wrong. So wrong.”

No one wants to see a god crumble.

We stood like that for a while. Me in my Grimace jacket. Her in her fleece denim, holding her cane, hugging herself against the cold.

“I like your jacket.” Her eyes almost reached mine as she said it.

I laughed, though I didn’t want to. “I like yours. Takes a special kind of stupid to wear a denim jacket when it’s this cold.”

She laughed back and for a second, it sounded like before. Whatever bound my heart loosened a little. “It was October when we—when I got sick. That’s what I had.”

She lived in Boston and I knew she had lots of clothes. I’d seen them. She said she’d give some to me, but none of them fit.

“You went from the hospital to the airport?”

She nodded. “I booked the ticket, then had another setback…it took a couple extra days. There was no time to go home first. It’s all too big anyway.” She looked so small. So…damaged.

My mouth hung open.

“I missed you,” she said.

The wind stung against cheeks I didn’t realize were wet. I wanted to say tell her I missed her, too, but the words didn’t come.

“Can you forgive me?” she said.

Funny thing is, I cut her off. Told her if she couldn’t be proud of me, I didn’t want her, so she left. Erin withered away day by day in front of me. My husband was long gone. I came apart.

Even my daughter didn’t want me. But now my sister was here. And she wanted me.

I wanted to say yes, but the bottom part of my face quaked. No words came. The wind couldn’t take the wail that released my heart and drove me into my sister’s arms.

Christmas Lexus commercial I’d love to see

“Dude, it’s nineteen degrees outside and my feet are warm, I am not going outside.” She sat on the couch, her legs curled under her, the way women do. She cradled a cup of steaming coffee, letting her hands soak in the heat.

“Come on sweetie. It’ll be worth it.”

She shook her head. “We stayed up until two frigging thirty putting toys together. I had too much wine last night. I’m finally warm. In seven minutes, the kids will be up and this’ll be a hurricane of wrapping paper and noise. And the Advil hasn’t kicked in.”

I bounced on my feet, my excitement pushing back my headache.

“Come on. You have your robe on and your slippers. It’ll just be for a minute.”

She glared at me, but her resolve was faltering. I could tell.

“Please?” My tone was almost begging, which was risky.

But when her shoulders fell slightly, I knew I was okay and my bouncing in place increased. My smile almost exploded.

She shook her head and got up, leaning over and placing her coffee on the end table. She was almost regal in her movements.

“You’re an idiot.”

In case you’re curious, that means she loves me and though she doesn’t want to show it, she’s excited.

“This better be good.” Her words were stern, but she was smiling.

“I can’t believe it. I’m so excited.”

I waited until the last second, until she was right by the door (which was conveniently windowless–and though we always open the drapes in living room, on this day, we chose not to. It’s not contrived at all.).

She shook her head again and smiled and I opened the door.

Her mouth fell open and she practically stumbled forward.

And there it was. Speeding ticket red. Sleek. Shiny. With a leather interior, bluetooth integration, and stereo that made you feel like you’re in an opera house.

“Ohmygod…”

“Right?” I said.

“Ohmygod…”

“It’s got seat warmers.”

“Ohmygod…”

I jumped in place a little.

“You got me a car?”

“I got you a Lexus, baby.”

She turned to me and I imagined the sex we would have when the kids finally crashed. It would be amazing. I felt a little stirring below.

“You got me a car.”

“I got you a Lexus.” I gazed upon my masterpiece.

“You. Got me. A car.”

“A Lexus.”

The pain was sharp and almost made me stumble off the steps.

“You got me a goddamn car?”

My mouth opened and nothing game out.

“Do you understand that I spent the entire frigging year keeping track of our finances so I’d know if we were getting a damn refund? Do you know how much time I spent on the frigging budget?” Then, with each word she punched me again. “You. Frigging. Moron.”

“But it’s a Lexus.”

“I’m happy with the Toyota, you idiot.” Two more punches.

“It’s got seat warmers.”

“Oh, my ass is plenty chapped right now!” She punched me again.

It’s not fun to get locked out of the house on Christmas morning when it’s 19 degree and there’s snow.

Cordell & Cordell is an international domestic litigation firm focused on men’s divorce and all other family law practice areas. We have attorneys in your area willing to help you when things don’t work out the way you intended. Just go to cordellcordell.com.

The writer of this commercial and characters are not lawyers. They are non-legal satirists.

Art in motion: Curveballs and opening paragraphs

Back in the old days, one of my favorite things was to watch Dwight Gooden throw a curveball. He already had a masterful fastball. So he’d set the hitter up to expect the fastball and throw a rainbow twelve-to-six curveball and the batter would freeze. Or collapse. He was really, really good at his craft.

If you aren’t a baseball fan, you wouldn’t care. Even if you were a baseball fan, you might not take the time to stop and appreciate the mastery and beauty in a guy throwing a ball to another guy while a third guy (all overpaid, of course) tried to hit it with a stick.

It’s easy to walk past something that’s layered and nuanced and not even notice it.

Micki Browning is a writer friend. She’s also really, really good at her craft She recently guest blogged about opening lines on a site called Novels Alive. And she shared the opening paragraph of her novel Mercy Creek.

“Everyone had a story from that night. Some saw a man, others saw a girl, still others saw nothing at all but didn’t want to squander the opportunity to be a part of something larger than themselves. To varying degrees, they were all wrong. Only two people knew the full truth.”

That’s some damn fine writing right there. It buckled my knees and sent me back to the dugout.

Micki Browning

Although I haven’t read that novel yet, that paragraph promises amazing things. In four sentences, it covers the fact that eyewitnesses are sometimes unreliable. Who’s reliable? Who isn’t? And it baits the hook. Who are the two people? What do they know? Will I know who the two people are?

But it’s the middle where I found depth.

If my college roommate were exactly one year older, he’d have gone for a semester abroad on Pan Am flight 103, which crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. That gives me connection, helps me understand a tiny slice of what it must be like to lose someone that way.

Sometimes people go far beyond using emotion by proxy as a way to relate. After any sizeable tragedy, you’ll find people trying to insert themselves into that tragedy, from Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies taking and sharing pictures of the Kobe Bryant crash scene to people vamping on Instagram in front of Auschwitz. Everyone, it seems, wants to be part of the story.

There’s even an old Rockford Files episode (a two–parter) where a police groupie wants very badly to be part of the action and almost gets people killed.

You know what happens when Jim gets his gun out of the cookie jar? Bad things, man. I mean BAD things.

In our social media obsessed culture, there’s public release for that need. It speaks to a hole that can’t be filled. To how you can be lonely while standing in a sea of people.

It speaks to how I felt a little lonely when I had to serve a day in the Facebook penalty box because there are a lot of people I connect with there. People want connection and will sometimes do warped things to achieve it.

I got all that from one sentence in an opening paragraph of a novel. A few words opened up that entire thought process.

When I watched Gooden strike a guy out with that curveball, I’d take a second and reflect on the skill and artistry of what I just saw. Sometimes, I just said, “Damn.”

Same thing here.

And it’s even better because Micki Browning will never play for the Yankees, the way Gooden did.

Short story time: The Watch

I’m writing a novel inspired by the Neil Diamond song Holly Holy, particularly the lyric Touch a man who can’t walk upright. And that lame man, he’s gonna fly. In it, a woman named Holly touches a guy who’s wheelchair bound and he can suddenly walk. And stuff ensues.

This is a scene I’m working on that happens before the healing, of the guy in the wheelchair with his (now) former wife. Her brother Brian is the cause of the paralysis, which has understandably added a bit of stress to the relationship.

This was written off a prompt, which means you’re getting a first draft, very lightly edited.

***

“You’re not even listening to me,” Cindy said.

Richard was busted. He’d lost her someplace in the story about her sister’s sprained ankle. In addition to doing anything from the waist down, at times, he was dead from the neck up.

“You’re staring at your frigging watch. Am I boring you?”

He kept his gaze on the watch a while longer, then looked up at her. When he spoke, his voice sounded like a saltine would if it could talk. “No.”

“Then what? I was telling you about a friggin’ lump in my breast.” She said the word friggin like she was punching something.

He nodded. Took a little metal dagger and stuck it into his soul. Not far. And not the salt-coated dagger. Even he deserved a little grace now and again.

“Sorry.”

She stood, her face tight and about to unleash a storm–another storm. There had been so many lately. “Sorry? If you were sorry–like really sorry–you’d…” Then she stopped. Her eyes narrowed. The storm held steady. Maybe even moved away a bit.

“You weren’t looking at the time.”

He shook his head. “No.”

Cindy wasn’t a stupid woman. She was book smart, but she was also maybe the best he’d ever met at reading people. Especially people she’d been married to for eleven years and separated from for a year and a half.

“Not the time, then it’s…” Then the light went on.

He nodded, saying nothing as he did.

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Bit her lower lip. Turned away from him and took a few steps.

Just after the accident, when they were still numb from it, she’d told him one good thing was he didn’t tower over her any more. Cindy was five-four. He was ten inches taller. Until the wheelchair.

The joke hadn’t worked. Then again, damn little had worked since her brother Brian had–since the accident.

When she turned back, he couldn’t read her face.

“You were looking at the step counter.”

It was a statement. Not an accusation, though it felt like one to him.

He nodded. No words. Shame is conveyed best without them. There’s nothing you can say when you’re focusing on something stupid and selfish.

“It says zero,” she said.

Actually, it said 41. Sometimes it picked up arm motions as steps. Sometimes you body reads latent crap as physically feeling something. When you lose the bottom half of your body, a lot of things aren’t what they seem. They’re lies. False fleeting hopes. He didn’t need the salt on the dagger. There was enough salt in his wounds already.

“Yeah,” he said. “Zero.”

When he looked up again, her face might as well have been melting. If he’d paid attention to something other than his stupid paralysis, he might’ve noticed that.

“My grandmother died of breast cancer.” Now she sounded like a saltine.

He thought of her grandmother. Of Theresa. She’d liked Theresa and she seemed to like him. When Theresa died, he’d only been dating Cindy a few months.

She’d called him after it happened. He’d gone to her place to find her hip deep in a bottle of brandy. Between the alcohol and the tears, the dehydration were gonna cause a bitch of a hangover.

After it became clear she wouldn’t puke on him, he embraced her and she poured out her pain. Later, on the couch, she fell asleep in his arms. When she woke to pee, she asked him into her bed, nodding that it was okay. She cried herself to sleep again.

He’d woken before her and after checking the fridge, had gone to Stewarts to get a six-pack of Diet Coke. He already knew that was her go-to on hangover mornings. It wouldn’t be as cold as she liked, but it would be there.

When he brought her one as she woke, she hugged him hard. He made her scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast and sat with her on the couch while she watched a chick flick on TBS.

That afternoon, she led him again to the bedroom, taking him by the hand.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to–“

She placed a finger on his lips and walked him into the bedroom.

Sex is what it is. There are only so many variations.

What they did that afternoon, as the light bled from the winter sky, wasn’t sex. It was different than that. No animal lust. No doing it just for the experience of flash against flesh.

It was a pairing. It was Cindy wanting to be with someone in the closest way possible. It was slow, almost mournful, and when they finished, she lay with her head on his chest, her body pressed to his. And it didn’t surprise him to hear look over and see her cheeks sparkle in the light of the fading day.

He pulled her close and she held him tighter and fell asleep that way. He followed soon after. They both woke at about 9 and their night’s sleep was destroyed.

It was then he knew he’d marry her. Later, she’d said the same about him.

“I’m sorry.” He returned from the time he’d been a hero to now. When there were no heroes.

She flopped on the couch he’d taken from their house. She’d been waiting to get rid of it anyway. Before the accident, sometimes he’d fall asleep on it watching a ballgame. There was no sleeping on it now.

“You said that. Sorry.” Her tone told him she wasn’t buying it.

His nod was almost motionless. “I know–I remember how much it hurt when Theresa–when your grandmother died. I’m sorry I wasn’t paying attention. I…get lost sometimes.”

She blinked a couple of times, her eyes now glossy. “Yeah.”

That was all she said. Yeah. It wasn’t like he was thinking about the Knicks. He was thinking about what he lost. It was a schmucky thing to do, but better people than him would’ve struggled with it.

“It is big?”

She shook her head in confusion. “What?”

“The lump. Is it big?”

She looked annoyed at his answer. “I don’t know. It’s a lump. Any lump is big when it wasn’t there before. When…”

When your grandmother rotted away before your eyes from it. He finished the thought for her in his mind.

“I’m sorry.”

She smiled, but it wasn’t happy. If anything it was angry. Overwhelmed. Disbelieving.

Richard imagined that he’d smiled the same way just after it had happened.

“Imagine how I feel about it.” She looked away and bit her lower lip. That’s what she did when things were too much. She bit her lower lip to try to stop from crying. She’d started when he was hurt–when Brian was victimized by his decision to become paralyzed. She blinked some more and surprised him by holding in the tears as she rubbed her hands up and down the thighs of her jeans.

“Do you…do you know what it feels like to know that the thing that’ll kill you might be growing inside of you and you might not be able to stop it?” Her voice was unsteady now, a weak sing-song, heavy with the crying she tried so hard to hold back.

If he didn’t know her, he’d say she had to give it time. That it could be nothing. That there are tests to be done before she freaks out. But this was Cindy. Cindy the great. Cindy the brave. Cindy, the one who’d face the facts as they are, not matter the cost.

She knew all that. She didn’t need him to tell her.

“No. I don’t know that.”

She looked at the wheelchair and snorted what might’ve been a laugh. “I guess not.”

He recoiled as if she hit him. At least his head did.

Then her hands went to her mouth. “Richard. I’m so sorry. That was horrible.”

He closed his eyes. She’d leaned forward and was now maybe a foot before him. He could smell her. Almost feel her presence. It was a female presence, different than his. It was more than her gender. He felt like he knew when her soul came close to his. It was female, too. Completely, unapologetically female. And it fit with his. Even when they’d been warring, just its presence was like a salve.

When he opened his eyes, her face covered his field of vision. Her eyes, as green as Ireland, or so she’d said. The faint freckles on her cheeks. She slight scar where Lisa Ostermann hit her with an iceball in second grade after gym. Now, it was being absorbed in crow’s feet next to her right eye.

The wide lips that would make everything okay when they formed a smile, even if everything wasn’t okay.

But there was no smile now.

There was him in his wheelchair. There was her in her fear.

He opened his arms and leaned back in his chair, nodding down toward his lap. In his condition, having someone sit in your lap’s a little perilous. Things start to break down, but you don’t feel them. And, if nothing else, the bag leaks and you don’t know it until you either see the dark stain spreading or the person on your lap feels it. Or, if that’s not embarrassing enough, you smell it first.

“Okay?” she mouthed.

He nodded.

As she draped her right arm around his shoulders and let her head touch his, he pushed those thoughts away.

Brian was an asshole. She was a bitch for not seeing that. And Richard would never walk a step again. All of that mattered, but it would still be there in the morning.

Now, he looped his arms around her and let all that fade away. And though he hadn’t done so from the time he’d been told walking wasn’t part of his future, he prayed.

When it was just him, he could be angry at God and tell him so. This wasn’t Him. This was Cindy.

He prayed hard for her.

Prompt for a frustrated character

This is a first draft, so as Hemingway said, it’s shit. But it’s my shit, so that’s how it goes.

“If you have to be here, do something useful and put on some gloves.” Stacey Oakes pounded a heavy bag as she spoke. The shock waves in her arms were visible as she worked the back, and she made it hop with each strike.

After I was exiled to Florida, Stacey had become the closest thing to my partner. She’s a six-foot, three-inch blonde who can probably crush a Volkswagen between her thighs. Her mood and invitation meant I could be in for an ass-kicking, and not the fun kind.

I chose instead to brace the bag for her the way she’d shown me when she decided being able to run eight miles in the Florida summer didn’t constitute being in shape for me.

She didn’t grunt, instead puffing a quick breath out with each contact made with the bag. It wasn’t hard to keep it from moving me, but it wasn’t as easy as you’d think, either.

Her arms were already slick with sweat and the tell-tale ring had started to form around the top of the ironically named wife beater she wore. Her cheeks were shiny.

I let her go, to work out the anger and frustration on the bag.

The plan was to be there for as long as it took for her to exhaust her rage, then be there if she wanted to talk. According to Robin, my ex, I didn’t spend enough time letting her get to the point where she talked. Stacey would never be Robin, but I like to think I learn as I go through life.

Except exhaustion came slowly. The beating continued as the sweat ring grew. As her lithe arms started to glisten. As the part of her hair that wasn’t in the braid started to become matted with sweat. Through it, I braced the bag, on the assumption that she’d eventually run out of steam or anger.

Instead, she kept up, sprinkling me with bits of sweat. The smell of exertion spread as she pounded away. Eventually, she spoke.

“You came here to say something, you say it.”

When I nodded my head, I knew she’d catch it, even if she wasn’t looking at me. Stacey didn’t miss much. Three tours in Afghanistan—usually away from whatever base she was assigned to—make you notice things without visible effort.

“Then why are you here?” She could speak at a normal volume and make her voice fill the room—or in this case, the covered area behind her house where she worked out all year in the elements—currently in the middle of a Tampa summer.

“Sparkling conversation,” I said.

She stopped and tried to burn a hole through me with her eyes. Her chest rose and fell, but only slightly, considering the effort she’d burnt over the last fifteen minutes. Her nostrils flared and a bead of sweat hung on the tip of her nose before eventually falling away.

She glared a few seconds longer and when I didn’t react, she went back to pounding the bag. The crisp, staccato breaths she punctuated the punches mixed with grunts. She started to turn her hips more. The bag wasn’t hopping quite as much, but I still didn’t want to take its place.

She pounded it with a quick three-jab combination. Usually, that would lead to some footwork, but this wasn’t about style. She followed up with a left hook, a right upper-cut, and a left hook, then she backed off and took a few breaths, bouncing around the way someone had taught her several years and countless beatings ago.

I stepped away from the bag. “Want a water?”

She nodded, not quite looking at me.

“Towel?”

Another nod.

I grabbed a water out of the fridge she kept against the structure’s only wall, and a rolled white towel out of the cupboard. By the time I turned back, she’d pulled off her right glove and was working on her left.

When I got to her, they were both off and set on a chair about five feet to her left. Before she finished, they’d be back in their place. Once the sweat droplets dried, she’d sweep the area. You could almost eat off the floor.

She drank nearly half the water, then walked to a bench next to the wall and sat down, dabbing at her face.

“Whatever you came to say, say it.”

I shook my head. “Came to listen.”

“Not in a talkative mood.”

I shrugged. “That’s okay.” Then I sat next to her.

“She’s in fourth grade, Shane.”

I nodded.

“And that asshole who left his sperm in Cheryl those years back doesn’t give a rat’s about her.”

I kept nodding.

“And he’s got the money and the lawyers.”

“Yup.”

“And she told me to walk away.”

I nodded. With most other women, I’d have touched them, or offered a hug. But this was Stacey and I’m not as sturdy as a Volkswagen.

“You once told me the reason you walked away from the military, from any captive employment, was so you could do what you thought was right.”

She spoke almost before the words cleared my lips. “You think I’d sit still if I thought I could move?”

I shook my head. “That’s what confuses me. I’ve seen you piss off cops. Politicians. The most prolific personal injury attorney in the Southeast. So I don’t understand why you’re cornered by a 112-pound girl who told you something she didn’t like that you can’t stand.”

Once again, I considered myself relative to a Volkswagen. Fortunately, she didn’t decide to crush me like one.

“When I left the military it wasn’t because I don’t like rules.” She leaned her head back on the wall. Splayed her legs straight out. They’re magnificent legs. Were I a lesbian, they’d intrigue me greatly. “I got to the point where I needed to follow my rules and not theirs—and that makes me a horrible soldier.”

Saying nothing seemed to be working, so I kept at it.

“I made a promise. A stupid promise as it turns out, but a promise.”

She drained the rest of her water and set the bottle down on the bench, then dabbed at her face with the towel. And then we fell into a silence.

“And because you won’t leave until I tell you, I served with her father.”

“Cheryl’s.” Cheryl had been the client.

She nodded. “Intelligence. Most of us—the women—couldn’t do much because of cultural considerations.”

“And you can be very persuasive when you need to be.” She’d told me this part of the story before, how she’d worked herself into intelligence by being too good to ignore. Even though she was a woman in the middle east.

“Cheryl’s dad helped me along. Colonel Horatio Briggs.” She smiled briefly. “Led with that first name, almost like daring you to make something of it. Said I was good enough for the work and if we weren’t there to help women break stupid barriers there wasn’t a point. So he cracked some doors for me, said it was up to me to kick them in.”

She rolled her head and smiled. “It was all I needed. I ripped the doors out of the wall.”

I smiled back, even as hers faded.

“It’s a cliché for a reason. He needed my help, said it was about is granddaughter. Said her father was a shitheel—his word—and it was my job to convince him not to be a shitheel. And failing that, to get him to walk away.”

It only took a second to put it together. “And then he—Briggs—told you to stop.”

She stared ahead as she nodded. “Called me an hour after I got done with Cheryl. When I pushed back, he said I owed him and this was collection time.”

There was more. There had to be. I’ve seen Stacey stare down people who aren’t usually intimidated. Something else kept her from disobeying him. If she got to it, I’d know. If not, eventually, I’d get the hint and walk away.

“The girl—she’s…I’ve been a surrogate Big Sister for her. She…” She snorted an angry laugh. “A kid was giving her shit at school. Third grade, you know? Probably likes her, but doesn’t know how to handle it. So I told her how to handle it. How to make it clear what the line was without getting in trouble herself or actually hurting him.”

“Do tell.”

She looked at me like I’d asked for her deepest secret. “I’ve seen how you look at me sometimes. I might have to use it on you.”

I didn’t argue the point.

She chuckled. “You know what she told me? He’s buying her snacks now. Stood up to some kid who gave her shit for no reason.”

She took in and let out a long breath. “Her name’s Bonnie. She’s a handful, but I love her. I’ve known that kid since she was four. And though I get to stick around her, I can’t do anything about the father.”

“If you do?”

“I don’t get to see her again.”

“What’s special about the father?”

She shook her head. “Other than being a dipshit, I got nothing. Not for trying, either. But he’s got enough sway to tell a retired Army colonel to back me off.”

Stacey and I had worked together here and there over almost three years. Most of it had been mundane, but not all. I’d saved her life and she’d saved mine. She’d also helped me build a client base when I first arrived as a disgraced former cop from upstate New York.

“You’re aware of the concept of plausible deniability,” I said.

“Everyone’s aware—” Then my meaning hit her.

She bit her lower lip. Closed her eyes. A bead of sweat dropped from her forehead to her right cheek and rolled down.

“I’d tell you I’m discrete and work without leaving tracks, but then you’d know something, so I’ll keep that part to myself.”

Her head fell forward. When she spoke again, I almost didn’t hear her. “You can’t fuck this up, Shane.”

I nodded.

“No, I mean it. If you aren’t almost positive you can do this without fucking it up, walk away.”

I waited a while, not speaking, before I said, “And here I am.”

She turned to me and it seemed like maybe all the moisture on her face wasn’t sweat. “If this looks like it’s going south, bring me in, plausible deniability be damned.”

“Sure.”

She smiled as she stood up and held out her arm. I took it as if we were going to shake.

“That shirt’s not dry clean is it?”

This was the woman who said she had socks worth more than my entire wardrobe.

“You know it’s not—”

When she pulled me to her, it smelled like I was buried in old gym towels. But in all the time we’d worked together, I’d never seen her hug anyone.

“Thank you.” Her whispered words were close enough to almost be in my ear.

When I first started working down here, I did some jobs on deep discount. Robin said I was a sucker and if I wasn’t careful, I’d wind up working for free. I guess she was right.

Copyright 2021, Chris Hamilton. All rights reserved.

(Short) Story time: The Black Ticket

Four hours earlier in something that used to be a Motel 6, Linda towered over me, smiling sideways. She wanted to celebrate my winning Powerball ticket and this was the nearest place handy.

She drank up my groans as she gyrated gently atop me. Her green eyes ensnared me, not that I wanted to break free of them.

“Trust me?” she said.

I nodded.

Then she slid forward and back like the world’s slowest metronome. Tick…tick…tick…tick.

You’d think after a month, the novelty would wear off, but there I was, sacrificing myself on the altar of her will. Again.

“How do you do that?” said a voice that sounded vaguely like my own.

“I’m a magician, baby.” And then she slowed down and I stopped thinking.

Good? Evil? I didn’t care. A sound I’d never heard before escaped my mouth as she denied my desire to release myself to her.

*  *  *

I’d known her from the day I got to Laughlin, the little Las Vegas that sprouted up on the Colorado River, just north or where Nevada, Arizona, and California meet. I’d come from Vegas, short on luck and hoping a change of scenery would help my finances. It did. I hadn’t cleaned up the all damage I’d done playing in Vegas, but I was close.

She sat at a bar nursing a Scotch-rocks. Her jeans were tight enough to stop blood flow and she wore a black shimmery top with lose short sleeves and a bottom cut like a triangle that formed just low enough to make you want to see more of her ass.

We wound up commiserating about how the cards fell over drinks. I ran into her again two days later and from there it became ritual. If things went well, we’d meet at a casino bar. If not, one of the lesser bars. One day, things went so poorly, we had to meet in an abandoned parking lot behind the In-N-Out, where we shared a couple burgers, a bottle of cheap-ish hooch, and complaints about our shared lifestyle. That happens when you gamble to pay the bills.

She talked of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where she grew up and never wanted to return.

“It’s cold and small and miserable. There aren’t a lot of ways to make money and the heat’s not free in the winter.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke and seemed like she didn’t want me to look at her.

I did, though. Couldn’t help myself.

“I didn’t like making money the easiest way, so I learned to play cards.”

I handed her the bottle—a knock-off vodka that tasted like whipped cream. Her choice.

“The skill set’s the same, you know?” She didn’t wipe the bottle before she took a long drag from it. Clearly, I’d be driving her home.

“What?”

She shrugged. “When you’re with a guy, like with a guy, you gotta build the experience for him—except it’s really for you. If you let on, the whole façade crumbles and neither of you believes it. And you both lose. Like cards. You can never let the façade crumble. Never let them know what you’re thinking.”

That was before we became us. She never spoke of it again.

I drove her home and after we both lingered awkwardly at her door. Her eyes were glassy and I knew if I asked to come in, she wouldn’t object. But I liked her. Laughlin isn’t that big and the desert’s enormous. It’s easy to feel little. If I ever got to being big in her eyes, I wanted it to be for more than twenty drunken minutes.

I decided to go home.

That went on for three months—playing at the casinos or whatever pick-up games seemed okay. Then meeting to compare notes. We were both good enough to pay the bills with a little left over most weeks, but neither of us would ever get rich on it. You’re always a bad streak away from oblivion.

Three weeks ago, after we’d played against each other and both of us crapped out, she stared at me until I had to work not to look away. We were outside, in a little city park that overlooks the Colorado River. It was quarter to one in the morning and the empty swings swayed in the gentle breeze. The breeze held a chill so she slid into me and moved my arm so it was draped over her shoulders. She smelled like cherries. I didn’t move, for fear I’d spoil the moment.

At that time of night, you’re either playing, working to support those who play, or home sleeping. A lot of the people live across the river in Bullhead City. You could almost see a life that takes place outside a casino from our bench. We shared a bottle of peanut butter whiskey, my choice.

She took a drag and held it out to me. “If this whiskey sucked, we wouldn’t be friends anymore.”

“What?”

She shrugged. “Guess it’s good for both of us it didn’t suck.” And there was that smile. “What do you think it’s like over there?” She nodded across the river. “You know, having dinner, then watching TV before bed? Taking your two-week vacation and getting health insurance that doesn’t cost a fortune?”

I closed my eyes to push the memory of it back. I’d had that. Once. “I think it’s like you imagine it. Mundane. Familiar. Safe.” I remembered Dianne when she said she wanted a divorce. Those were the words she’d used. I’d just bought her the Jeep she’d always wanted. It had been a very, very good month. Apparently, not good enough.

It’s never about the Jeep.

“I can’t play against you.”

Linda’s words pulled me from my regret. We weren’t a thing, so why did this feel like it had with Dianne?

“What?”

She didn’t quite meet my gaze. “I can’t concentrate on the game.”

“You had a bad day. We both did.” Damage control. It hadn’t worked before but…

She leaned in and kissed me, almost nibbling on my lower lip first, then plunging her tongue into my mouth. It had been a long, long time since anything like that had happened. My arms encircled her and she leaned into me.

She tasted like peanut butter whiskey, which isn’t a bad thing.

Though her eyes sometimes had a wall I couldn’t get thought, it had always come down if I waited. Now, as she pulled back from the kiss, they had a force of gravity I yearned to give into.

She stood up, taking my hand in hers. “Come on.”

“You sure?” It was a stupid question.

She nodded and pulled me along with her. “If we stay here, one or both of us’ll need bail money for lewd and lascivious. ‘Sides, I heard jail sex is vastly overrated.”

She bought a room at the Colorado Belle with points. She made me get into bed and turn the lights out while she underdressed in the bathroom. I almost said I wanted to see her, but decided to let her lead. She ran across the room into bed, which was the last coy thing she did that night.

Just to prove I wasn’t a total free-loader, I bought breakfast the next morning.

*  *  *

Since that first tryst, nothing was mundane. Even on this rough bedspread, it was amazing. I moaned again.

“Not yet, baby,” she said, slowing her movement more and pumping her eyebrows. “I’m not done with you.” And then she flashed the smile.

The heat within me built and it took effort not to speed things up.

I reached up, compelled to touch her. She swatted my hands away, then tucked them under her knees, pinning them to the bedspread.

I let her.

She smiled again, leaned forward and did something with her mouth, and I couldn’t stop myself. We bucked and shuddered against each other while time stopped just to give us this moment.

Then it was over and she collapsed on me, her body damp and cool against mine. Outside, it was 102 degrees and a world away.

“I could stay like this forever.” I pulled the other side of the bedspread over us. Then enclosed her in a hug as she snuggled against me.

I felt her lips move as she smiled, her face pressed against my cheek. “You hit Powerball last night and said we should leave before you gambled it all away. If I’m running away with you, I have to tie up some loose ends.”

“But—”

She propped herself on an elbow and silenced me with a firm index finger against my lips. “Just a couple hours, then you’re stuck with me.”

As if I had a choice in the matter.

She nibbled my ear as she got up. “Remember that and you’ll be fine while I’m gone.”

She washed up, put her hair up, then let me watch her as she dressed.

It was the first time she’d done that. For all she could do in bed, she seemed self-consciousness when she was naked and you looked at her. She blushed a little as she slid on her underwear, but she didn’t turn away. She even smiled—not the crooked smile–as she her bra put and reached behind to fasten it. Then two hops as she put on her jeans, followed by the top and the sandals.

“I’ll text you. Shouldn’t be long.”

She leaned over and kissed my cheek, letting her lips linger there a few seconds extra before laughing silently and standing up. This laugh was different. Normally, her laugh had an edge to it. Not this time. This was like…it was like joy.

“If I don’t leave now, we’ll be here forever.”

I’d have been okay with that, but she turned and left, sneaking in a sly smile as she pulled the door shut behind her.

Only the smell of her remained, and that was enough for the moment.

*  *  *

Four hours later, in an old metal garage in the middle of the desert, she towered over me again, her scent a mixture of sweat and desperation. The green eyes weren’t placid. There was no metronome. No crooked smile.

Nothing was familiar. Or safe.

We were on a concrete floor surrounded by cobwebs and the crap you find in an abandoned building. My own sweat fused my shirt to my torso and the hot desert air made it seem hard to breathe. She knelt between my knees as a guy named George stood impatiently across the dust-scented room, not exactly aiming his gun at us.

George was the guy I won the ticket from, before it was worth $54 million.

Her face filled my field of vision. “Come on, babe. I need the ticket.”

I heard George shift behind her.

“You have to give it to me.” Her gaze hardened as she begged, as if she commanded me. “I need you to trust me.”

“It’s ours,” I said. Though for the moment I wondered if there was an us to share ownership of something. Or if she’d built an experience for me.

She shifted forward and I felt her breath on my face, heat on top of heat. I let my eyes close and tried to get back to that moment in the motel, but that was a fiction.

When I opened them again, her eyes, which had controlled me just a few hours ago, seemed to plead. It wasn’t like her to lose control.

She reached for my forehead, then pulled back. “He’s gonna take it, babe.”

I wanted to stand, protect myself. Protect us. But there was nothing I could do. George had the gun and it was all up to her. Whatever she did would determine our fate. My fate.

I heard him move behind her. Aiming the gun, maybe.

She’d told me to meet her here, so we could leave together.

She’d opened the door and I saw something in her eyes, almost like she didn’t want me there. I noticed the tear in her shirt, the tousled hair, now down, and the beginning of a bruise on her right cheek.

Then I noticed George.

“Get the hell in here.” His voice seemed guttural, like an animal warning growl.

She took my arm as he aimed the gun at me, his arm rigid, the dark hole of the barrel seemingly endless. He told me to walk to the other side of the room. Linda walked with me three steps, then let go. There was nothing in her eyes.

“On the ground,” he said.

I turned and faced him, then kneeled.

“On your back. Harder to get up.”

He was close enough to hit me with as many shots as it took. A mile outside the edge of town, no one would hear.

George nodded at Linda. “Get my ticket.”

She glared at him and came over to me.

I knew I’d die. My fate had been sealed as soon as they drew the last number.

“What did he do to you?”

She let out a slow breath. Her eyes were lifeless. “Nothing. He just…he wants the ticket.”

*  *  *

He gave up the ticket three days earlier in the back room of a bar across the river in Bullhead, when he lost to my two pair. He couldn’t cover his bet.

“There’s always his car,” one of the other players, a guy named Sid, said. He seemed to relish saying it. George had been around a while. None of us really had friends, but George didn’t have many acquaintances.

Sid, in particular, didn’t like him.

“I need my car.” George’s voice seemed harsh, too harsh for what we were doing. You don’t yell at people you’re playing; it’s not done.

Sid looked at me, his eyes gleaming as he spoke. “Watchya gonna do, Slick?” He liked to call people Slick, and to stir the pot.

George had a reputation for making life difficult if you pissed him off. I was just about flush and didn’t need the hassle. He’d pulled out a Powerball ticket when he got out his cigarettes.

I nodded toward it. “You’re two hundred short. Give me the money in the pot and the lottery ticket. Then we’re square and you keep your car.”

He glared at me as he flipped the ticket out into the pot. “Asshole.” Then he got up and left.

“Sign of weakness, boy. Shoulda taken the car.” Then Sid cackled as he got up and shuffled across the room.

*  *  *

Back in the abandoned building, my words were harsh as I responded to Linda. “I could’ve left him with nothing. I did him a favor.” I let him hear what I said. “That ticket’s mine.” The gun was his. I’d lose this hand. The question was how much it would cost me.

“Trust me.” Under her ripped shirt, she wore no bra. She leaned closer and the cherry scent washed over me again.

I pushed it away.

“Time’s up,” George said.

“You kill me, you’ll never get it.”

I lied. The ticket was in my right hip pocket.

“Check his wallet,” George said.

As she reached into my back pocket, she leaned down into me. The physics were the same as in the hotel room, except with several layers of fabric, a gun, and impending death. She got my wallet. Her lips moved, but I didn’t catch what she said, couldn’t read her as she sat up again.

She leaned back and looked through the wallet, then turned to George and shook her head.

“Pockets. For your sake, it better be there.”

She checked my left pocket.

“You gonna kill me if it’s not?” I tried to sound brave, but my words were small. Scared.

He laughed. “I’m gonna kill you either way. Question is what I do with her.”

“Trust me,” she mouthed. No bra. And a bruise. What had he already done to her? What had she done to him?

“Maybe I’ll bury you both in the same hole, not all the way. Let you both bake to death.”

I nodded toward the right hip pocket. No reason not to at this point. Maybe if he had the money, he wouldn’t kill us. Then again, players come and go, and people don’t tend to notice. The desert’s a big place, with plenty of options for hiding bodies.

Her hand formed a fist as she reached in and pulled it out. Her eyes lingered on me and for an instant, I thought they were the same as in the motel, or on that bench that night.

She stood. As she’d taken the ticket from me, her shirt had untucked in the back. She tucked it back in, fiddling with it as if it wouldn’t tuck right. Odd time to make sure your shirt’s tucked in.

Then she stopped. She looked down as she opened her hand, then turned to me. The slow, sweet torture that seemed so real in the motel was a mirage. In its place, her eyes bulged with anger and fear.

“You fucking moron.”

Her tone hurt. She’d never spoken that way to me. Then again, I guess she’d been building an experience.

She held up the ticket. It was black.

“I told you not to leave it in the glove compartment. I took it out and gave it to you. It’s a heat-printed ticket. You stupid fucking dumbass!” She kicked me hard in the leg. Hard enough to hurt. A lot.

I kept the damn thing with me, tossed it on the nightstand at my place and stuck it in my jeans after checking the numbers at breakfast with her. While we celebrated our new fortune in the shitty hotel room, it stayed in my pocket.

George’s arm drooped. He looked like I’d just killed his dog. Or taken his car in a poker game. His voice was an inhuman growl. “You ruined the ticket. You…”

His mouth opened, then closed. He grabbed it from her hand. Flipped it back and forth. His face convulsed as he crumpled it and threw it to the floor. Then he slapped Linda hard enough to drive her to the ground next to me.

Blood ran down from Linda’s lip in a single scarlet line.

He raised the gun toward us and she slid back next to me.

“Killing us over millions? I get that. Over nothing? Four other people were there. They’ll know. You’re not that stupid.”

I think she wanted to sound confident, to push him. In reality, her voice gave her up. She was afraid, like me. She was on the ground in a hot shithole facing death, and she was playing her weak hand as hard as she could.

He fired. About a foot to the right of my head. In the enclosed building the sound couldn’t escape and all of us jumped, even George. A shard of concrete bit into my cheek and I felt blood.

He glared at us, then his arm collapsed to his side. He screamed and threw the gun at the wall. I started to get up, to go after the gun, but she grabbed my wrist. Her grip was firm, but not harsh.

“No,” she mouthed.

He walked over, picked the gun up and left, slamming the door behind him. His car started and we heard stones shoot across the ground as he gunned the engine in the car I’d let him keep.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the ticket. Perfect. Worth millions.

“You palmed a different ticket.” I wiped the blood from her lip. “The ticket in my pocket couldn’t have been ruined. It was in my pocket the whole time.”

“You gotta build the experience.” She rolled over onto her stomach in the dust and kissed me. “He had one in the cupholder, told me he plays every drawing, but his luck is for shit. He was waiting for me—said he’d been to your place and you weren’t there, so he came after me. He was waiting when I got there. Told you I’m a magician.”

I looked at the tear in her shirt.

“Did he…”

She looked away. “He hit me.”

She stood and held out a hand. I took it and stood, though I could’ve done that on my own.

I kept her hand in mine and she let me, using her other hand to dab at the blood on my cheek. I dropped her hand to open the door and she slid it into my back jeans pocket. I put my arm around her, putting her head on my shoulder.

I was hers, for as long as she wanted.

© 2021, Chris Hamilton. All rights reserved. Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or other use of the pictures, descriptions, or accounts of this short story without express written consent of the commissioner’s office is prohibited. So there.

The Bathroom Door

The Bathroom Door

Gillian

I stop in front of the mirror and run my hand over my stomach. Still flat at forty-seven years old. The hair’s jet black and shiny, though I have help with that. I turn and check my butt. Not too saggy. The lines in my face are the give-away, but they aren’t bad. Any other time I’d smile at what I see.

Instead, a shiver passes up my spine because I’m in my apartment’s bathroom and Michael’s in the bedroom.

The first time I walked out of a bathroom naked to a man, Ted was a junior at college. I was a year behind. We were at his aunt’s cabin near Whiteface Mountain that summer. The windows were open that night and the breeze cascaded though the bedroom. A line of storms passed by and the smell of the damp woods was almost as intoxicating as the beer I’d drunk to give me courage.

Even with one of the lights on, we could see some of the fireflies speckling the night.

Two years later, on our wedding night, Ted didn’t complain at the task of unhooking the forty-four buttons on the back of my dress. We weren’t new to each other by then and the wedding-night sex wasn’t the best. But we were married and I fell asleep with my head on his shoulder, looking forward to building our lives together.

Part of me still loves Ted.

He took his lunch to work the first two years we were married so we could save the money to see Seattle because I’d always wanted to go there. Then he agreed to move there because I loved it.

He sat wordless with me when we found out I couldn’t have kids. He let me be an angry shrew for longer than he should have. Six months later, he held me again when I broke down crying for no reason while we made love.

He never left me during the forty-one hours between my mother’s stroke and her death. He handled all the arrangements because he knew I couldn’t. No questions asked.

Even now, I feel his hands, thick and powerful. I can feel his breath on my neck as he stands behind me, his arms wrapping me like a shield. I can still smell his earthy, musky scent, the one I’d take a second to breathe in if I was putting his shirts in the wash. He was big and solid and immovable and he made me feel like nothing could hurt me.

And then he took me to hell when I found out what kind of man he really was.

 

Back in the present, there’s noise on the other side of the door. A murmuring.

“What?” I ask.

A couple seconds go by.

“What?” Michael says.

“Did you say something?”

A short delay, then “No.” Not an emphatic no, kind of unsure. Ted never seemed unsure.

 

The sky was turbulent that March Thursday afternoon when everything came apart. Ragged clouds raced inland toward the mountains. The wind that pushed them found every gap in my clothes and made me strain against shivering.

That day, I wore a coffee-colored insulated leather jacket, black slacks, a red turtleneck, and my favorite boots. I don’t have those clothes any more. I don’t have a lot of the things I had that day.

Three police cars sat in front of our house. Two marked cars and one that wasn’t.
When I pulled up, the police were taking him away in handcuffs. They took all of our computers, too. They took my work computer from my hands as I stood there. Explaining that was no fun.

“Mrs. Hyatt?” The detective’s eyes were hard on me. She a little younger than I was, thick in the middle, like maybe she’d been able to have kids and couldn’t quite get rid of the baby fat. Her iron eyes made me feel small and guilty.

“Wh-what’s happening?”

When she told me, my eyes went to Ted’s and found nothing. His silence told me everything. The mirage of our lives together staggered me.

Eight-hundred ninety-six counts, they said. One for each picture. I don’t know how I found out, but there were eleven hundred sixteen kids in those pictures.

All those years, Ted took me in his arms and made me feel secure. And all those years, he was a monster. He is my worst nightmare. I still try to convince myself I had no clue.

“I love you so much it hurts,” I told Ted the night we moved into my dream house in Seattle. Four bedrooms and a back yard because we didn’t know I was barren. In retrospect, it was better that way.

Twelve years and five months later, the day he was arrested, I found out what that loving till it hurts really means.

I lost the house—lawyers aren’t free. I lost most of my friends. I lost my church and my workout partners and the good will of my colleagues at work. They’d ask how I didn’t know, why I didn’t stop it. It wouldn’t have hurt so much if I weren’t asking myself the same questions.

Everything we built was a lie and I was stupid enough to believe it. Maybe I looked the other way because of how he made me feel.

Kids are abused because guys like Ted want the pictures. And guys like Ted want them because women like me don’t say anything. Maybe I wasn’t a victim. Maybe I was an accessory. That uneasy truth is the worst part.

I don’t like living in Florida. There aren’t mountains and navy blue lakes. The scent of the trees doesn’t remind me of the woods in the Adirondacks all those years ago. The grass doesn’t kiss your bare feet when you walk across it. But down here, people don’t know who and what I am. Down here, I don’t feel their eyes on my back and their judgements on my heart.

As much as I dislike it, down here is best.

 

I met Michael when he saw me reading a Robert B. Parker at Barnes and Noble.

“I miss him,” he said. “Since he died.”

As soon as I looked up, his eyes dropped, and then came back to me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Ted wouldn’t have apologized.

Michael’s eyes are brown, not blue. He’s small and his hands are thin and soft. I didn’t intend to talk to him. I didn’t intend to ask him to buy me coffee. I didn’t intend to have dinner with him that weekend.

Our first date was four years and sixteen days after I packed everything in my car and left Seattle.

Last week, I told him about Ted. We were walking along the beach at Honeymoon Island. It was cool and there weren’t a lot of people there. I don’t know why I decided to do it then, but I did. There was no one there to hear—no one to watch as he inevitably walked away from me.

He said nothing as I spoke and when I finished, my heart froze during his long silence. I almost turned to leave, but he took my hand.

“I don’t know what happened. But I know you. And you couldn’t do that to someone.” When he smiled at me, I felt warm inside for the first time since the afternoon they took Ted. That’s when I decided to do this.

So I’m standing naked in my bathroom, my clothes heaped on the floor like the armor I never really had. And he’s waiting for me. Out there. He knows what I am and he’s still waiting.

I ought to be happy, but I’m scared. I’m shivering and staring at the door like I’m facing a death sentence, running water in the sink to buy time. But I can’t stay in here forever.

Michael’s not redemption. He’s a salve, a step toward a world where redemption might be possible. He’s the first blade of grass when the snow starts to melt.

My hand goes to the doorknob and I take a breath.

Then I turn the knob and step into the rest of my life.

Michael

I’ve run obstacle courses with live electric wires and vast dumpsters of ice water to swim through. I’ve gone into meetings fairly certain I’d lose my job. I held my son Roger, this new, helpless little boy in my arms and realized he was dependent on me—the guy who used to get drunk and belch the alphabet—for everything he needed in life. After my wife’s funeral, I came back alone to the empty house we’d called a home.

I’ve done scary things before.

My heart stopped when Gillian decided I could come to her apartment after our dinner together.

So I’m sitting here in the bedroom fully clothed while there’s a witty, attractive, fun, sexy, and probably naked woman on the other side of her bathroom door.

And I’m thinking of Vince Lombardi.

He was once recorded saying, “After all these years you’d think I’d be nice and relaxed and look at me. I’m a nervous wreck.”

Nothing says romance like thinking about a dead football coach.

For a second, I consider leaving. I’m fifty-two and age can limit a man, if you know what I mean.

“Good, jack ass,” I whisper. “Set the mood by thinking of Lombardi and impotence.”

“What?” Her voice is soft and inviting from behind the door. And I die a little.

“What?” I say.

There’s no way she heard what I said. If I act like I didn’t say anything, maybe she won’t think I’m a lunatic. Maybe she won’t walk out in a formless flannel nightgown and demand I leave.

“Did you say something?”

Dammit.

“No.” It sounds more like a question than a statement.

Actually, it’s not the performance that scares me. What scares me is being naked, stripped of pretense. What scares me is taking down the wall I worked so hard to build after Mary died. I tended that wall like she tended the flowers in front of our house. Like she tended our marriage and our son.

Like she tended me.

She built a life for us that was as colorful and fragrant as the flower beds. She told me I was responsible for all that, too, but in truth, I might’ve built the structure.

She made it special.

The wall I’ve built has served its purpose. It’s stopped me from hurting the way I did after she died.

Three years ago, I stayed home from church one Sunday. I’d run a half marathon the day before and then we’d gone out with friends.

“I’m toast,” I told her. “Go without me.”

“Really?” The doubt in her voice was almost all in jest.

“Did you hear me eating Rice Krispies during the night?”

She pulled back at the stupidity of my question. “No.”

“That’s because I didn’t. That was the sound of my legs as I hobbled to the bathroom.”

She sat down on the bed next to me and smiled, her green eyes radiating contentment. That’s what I remember most about that morning—how content she seemed. She always had an easy smile, but something felt different that morning.

I just didn’t pick it up.

“It’s not your legs betraying you. It’s the beer you drank last night.” She swatted my ass through the covers and let her hand stay there a few seconds. It made me smile, having her touch me, even through the sheets.

I buried my face in the pillow. “Leave me alone.”

She kissed me on the back of the head and left for the living room. I knew she was doing her devotional, highlighting the old Bible her grandmother gave her, probably biting her lower lip as she stared down through the half-glasses. I never told her, but I found the lip-biting thing irresistible.

I asked her once if they bothered her—the granny glasses. I was playing with her, expecting mock anger, but I didn’t get it.

“I’m fifty. And in four months I’m gonna be a grandma. The glasses don’t bother me.”

I chuckled. “I’m gonna score with someone’s grandma.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Not if you keep talking like that.”

Our grandson Brock was born four months later, almost to the day. Mary cried as she held him. She told Roger she’d buy everything in Toys R Us and make me pay for it. And she’d spoil the baby and make sure he never doubted her love.

She only got to be a grandma for six months, though she’d probably take the only out of that sentence. I’d never seen her happier.

When Roger’s wife Jo Anne said they needed help babysitting Saturday afternoons, Mary beamed in a way I hadn’t seen since she first wore her engagement ring. The best part of babysitting wasn’t the baby, it was watching her tend the baby.

From some reason it was vitally important that we miss the first Saturday of baseball season to take the kid for a walk and see the ducks at a pond not far from our house. It didn’t matter that there weren’t any ducks, or that Brock slept the entire time, or that I missed the Mets win 11-2. I got to see her being a grandma. Roger had given her a gift I never could.

When we got back to the car, she buckled Brock into the front seat carrier and I tried to imprint the moment into my mind forever. The effort was successful.

Mary didn’t like driving in the rain, a fact I conveniently let myself forget that Sunday morning. After the accident, one of the cops told me she wouldn’t have felt any pain when the truck skidded across the road and hit her head on. I’d love to believe that.

If I close my eyes, I can imagine the fear frozen on her face, the last expression she’d ever have, as the truck obliterated the front of her car. The funeral was closed casket and though the pastor told us all she was in a place where there were no more tears, I struggled to believe it.

“If you’d gone,” Gillian said over pizza last weekend, “she’d still be dead. It’s just that you would’ve died, too.” Her hand fell on top of mine as she said it and I didn’t mind.

She’s the first person who could say that without making me angry.

My going to church that morning wouldn’t have solved anything. It ought to be that simple. Like taking care of the checkbook or sleeping through the night or seeing a women who looked vaguely like Mary without feeling like someone ran a hot poker through my chest.

It’s been three years and the wounds still feel fresh.

 

In the bathroom, the water’s running now. At some point, Gillian turned it on.

She’s attractive—hot, even. She smells like cherries and has jet black hair and often looks like she’s pondering life’s greatest mysteries.

And in spite of everything that’s happened to her, she seems to know that she’s enough. And she’s getting herself ready, only to come out for…for this?

I’m in pretty good shape for my age, but holy crap, I’m a mess.

When I thought about this moment, I thought I’d be the man. I’d be lying on the bed, my legs crossed, left arm casually behind my head. My right arm splayed next to my side, ready to pull her to me as she slips into bed.

Instead I’m still fully clothed and it feels like nothing’s going to work. Here I am, after all these years, a nervous wreck.

She’s gonna walk out with no clothes on. She’s gonna have the courage to bare it all for you. You have to at least take your shirt off.

So I do.

We met one rainy Sunday afternoon at Barnes and Noble. She was reading a Spenser—one of the ones written after Robert B. Parker died.

“I miss him,” I’d said.

She looked up the way you do when someone interrupts a good read. As I started to look away, embarrassed, I caught something in her eyes. They were green, too, and they made me feel warm under my shirt, even though the store air conditioner was on. But I didn’t feel the hot poker. I felt something different.
I forced myself not to look away.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

She studied me for a second, at first suspicious, then less so. And then she smiled back at me. “Buy me a coffee and all is forgiven.”

All is forgiven. As if it’s that easy.

Last week, she told me about her husband, the jerk. Actually, he’s worse than a jerk, but I keep that to myself. That’s not about us. I can’t imagine her ever hurting children like that, not after trying so hard to have one. I don’t know tons about her but I know she’s not her ex-husband.

We’ve been dating almost five months. Made it to second base a few times, then the inning ended. Sometimes I ended it and sometimes she did. Compelled to go further but too afraid.

It’s been a long time since I’ve looked a woman in the eyes and just let my gaze settle there. Since I’ve let my hand linger on her cheek. Since I’ve combed my fingers through her jet-black hair.

If tonight was just sex, it wouldn’t be a problem. I’ve had sex before. But this was revelation. This was baring my soul, allowing this stranger into the place I’d walled off. It was putting her in a position to understand who I am.

To judge me. And maybe find me lacking.

I’m sitting on the corner of her bed, my shirt in my lap. And I can feel my heart beating.

The water turns off and, because there’s no other noise in the house, I hear her feet padding across the floor.

The doorknob turns and I take a breath and decide it’s too late to do anything but go with it.

And hope I’ll pass her judgment.