by Gary Sapp
“He’s my best friend in this world. Of course, I care about what happens to him.”
Seth inhaled, exhaled, and stood as tall as his 6”1 frame allowed. “I understand that, Angel. He is your best friend. I am your husband.”
Angel’s eyes lost the mist. “And for that, I pity you.”
“That’s not funny.”
Angel tossed a bra into her bag and stepped in his direction. He thought she would embrace him, but she stopped just short of where he was standing, and brushed the back of his cheek with her soft hands. He felt aroused in spite of himself. He wanted to be angry right now. “You’re a good man, Seth Dupree. You’re a damn good husband. You deserve a damn good wife. I’m not a good wife. I’m not…she struggled to find the right word…I’m not sure that I know how to be one.”
She turned her back on him to resume her packing. He wraps his arms around her with such suddenness, that he engulfs her smaller frame with his own. The scent of her perfume, the relaxer in her hair is intoxicating. She throws her head back and exposes her neckline…collarbone…and the top of her breast to him. She reaches back and finds his manhood already stiffening against her buttock.
She was the one usually seducing him during times of crisis in their marriage. And honestly…she is at it again. She’s been seducing me from the moment we walked into the bedroom. I’m just late to the gathering. But he would let her claim another victory in this war between them, if only she didn’t go. “I’m begging you to stay,” Seth said as he ran his lips along her neck line. “We can fix this.”
Angel gently but firmly removes herself from his embrace, spun around, and smoothed out her clothes. “I have to go, Seth.” She announced to him. “I’ll call you as often as I can. I’m sorry.”
He snatched at her arm with quickness beyond reason, beyond relief. Anger had superseded reason and he found himself in unexplored territory and it was lost of him exactly what to do next.
Angel gave him his answer.
He needed to defend himself.
Angel pushed his hand off of her and attempted to knee him with her right leg in the crotch. Perhaps it was some type of male intuition that caused him to be prepared for such a maneuver as he blocked her first and second attempt successfully with the lower half of frame. Unfortunately, that left his topside vulnerable for a counter attack and Angel took full advantage. She jabbed him twice above his right eye socket with her left fist.
She’d proven herself ultra-flexible and even athletic during their exotic romps in bed, but here physical strength was proving far more just a nuisance as she connected again with another punch that hurt, this time on his jaw.
He found an opening as she swung wildly and missed, and used all of her 125 pounds against her and shoved her at the top of her arm, sideways on to the bed. Don’t escalate this, he thought, whether it was intended more for him or her he could not say. She cursed at him again. Angel’s big brown eyes were full of fire and brimstone…and focus.
This time she kicked at him and found success…and the inside of his thigh and crotch paid a steep price. For the first time since this episode began Seth feels the bite of almost unbearable of pain.
He backhands his wife.
The world stops…and so does Angel…and her suddenly frail body lands on the bed flat on her back.
“Oh, my God,” Seth dives on top of the bed and on top of her. “Angel, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” And he is filled with dread not only in the fact that he has struck a woman for the first time in his life, but he has struck a woman with federal agents parked on the curb outside his house. He has allowed his anger and more so his pride to put his career, to put his freedom in jeopardy.
“Get. Off.”
“I’m sorry.” Seth said pointlessly again. He wished he could take it all back.
They stayed in that position, that odd position with him on top her, almost pinning her down for what had seemed a long time. He took some assurance, selfishly so, that the FBI didn’t hear this exchange, because the doorbell hadn’t chimed, or they hadn’t knocked the door down and a score of agents hadn’t piled in the room and jumped on top of him.
Instead he and his wife looked into one another’s eyes. He looked into her magical big browns, and he could see his gray’s reflected in hers. She didn’t try to punch him anymore, or head butt him, or even bite him. In fact, her body went lax; she exposed the other side of her face, the one that wasn’t slightly swollen to him.
“I deserved that, Seth.” When he tried to speak, she shook her head slowly, and shushed him as softly as one of her kisses on his cheek might have been. For the entire dishonor I’ve brought to our marriage, I deserved it.” A single ran down her smooth cheek and it frightened him more than any moment during the fight. She didn’t cry at their wedding. She didn’t cry when she suffered bouts of pain in her leg as the result of her bout with polio as a young child. She didn’t even cry when they buried her father. But she was crying now. Go ahead, Seth, you get one more shot at me, for the future dishonor I would bring to you if I stay.”
He felt suddenly ill. “I don’t want that, Angel. I don’t want to fight with you at all.”
He backed off of her and she sat up and perched her weight on her elbows. “I’m allowing you a free shot. I’m advising you to take it.” She said, in a low dangerous voice. “Because if you ever lay a hand on me after my offer expires, I’ll kill you Seth; you know what I’m capable of. There are already three people buried because of me.”
Angel pushed herself off of the bed. Seth reaches to help her, but she slaps his hand aside. He guesses that she has decided to shower after she reaches Atlanta because she limps over to the bedroom mirror, touches up her face, brushes her hair, and changes from one button up blouse to another. Seth sees his reflection close in behind her, but he keeps a cautious distance between them.
“You’ve always told me that you have been responsible for two deaths, Angel.”
“There’s Brody.” She said, her blouse still fully open, exposing her bra and cleavage to him in the mirror.
Seth nodded. “He was the fugitive who came looking for your father during one of the times he left you in that old house alone. After three days of being his hostage, he made a sexual advance on you and you stabbed him to death.”
It was her turn to nod. “Eight years later, a young man named Kenny Traylor learned his valuable fatal lesson.”
“He did.” Seth said as she buttoned the blouse at last, doused perfume on each wrist and put her trinkets in place. “He learned that when a woman says no she means it. You defended yourself and your actions were cleared in a court of law.” When Angel spun around she grabbed her bag and began to exit their bedroom. He stepped in her path but retained the separation between them.
“Angel, what is this third incident?” He asked his wife. She had shared the other two instances with him…again, tearlessly…on their wedding night.
“My mother died birthing me,” Angel said as a matter of fact and without emotion. “So I’m responsible for killing her too.”
Seth loses all of the strength in his leg and tumbles to the edge of the bed and seems paralyzed in his attempt to move thereafter.
Angel limps to the mouth of the doorway and speaks to him without turning to face him; perhaps the tears have found a home on her face again. “I’m screwed up, Seth. I am a drunk…a functional one considering the detail I pay my work, but a drunk nonetheless.”
“Are you a whore as well?”
Now she did face him, and did she have the audacity to for anger to be plastered on her brow or was the look lodged there meant to mean something else? “I don’t like to be alone.” Angel could nothing more as her look softened.
“And us?” Seth asked. “You specialize in Clinical Psychology, Dr. Angel Hicks- Dupree. You specialize in the integration of the science, theory and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective an
d behavioral well-being and personal development.” He’d memorized the definition over the years. “What is the diagnosis for us moving forward?”
An hour later Seth learned that even the king sized mattress couldn’t hold his weight on its edge and he’d slipped aimlessly to the floor. He had a bed, bedroom, and a home that was already too large for a couple, grew exponentially larger and lonelier still now that he was alone after Angel had given the best answer she could muster to his last question and had left for Atlanta with the FBI. He was still staring at the bedroom’s doorway where she’d stood, even now.
There was a pop, and then a bang rising from the surround sound in their bedroom that startled him. And for the first time Seth realized that during his scuffle with his wife, they had somehow managed to switch the television back on. He was now viewing how a scene had played out from the first night of the siege that had been caught on amateur video. Shots had been fired from inside the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, and some of the protestors and other curious citizens were scattering for cover. Half dozen Peacekeepers had drawn their weapons in response and had taken what Seth surmised as strategic positing around the building. Where are you going, Angel? He asked himself. What are you getting yourself into?
For all of his life, Dr. Seth Dupree felt he was holding his breath…waiting; he hoped to still mend his broken