Monday - July 11, 2005 – 10 P.M.
She jerked awake. Her face was lying on a wet pillow. She had drooled in her sleep. The empty shot glass of Goldschlager sat on the nightstand. She glanced blearily at the big screen television in front of the bed, There was a blank blue screen. She woozily tried to remember if she’d seen the end of “House.” She had. But for the life of her she couldn’t remember what had come on next.
She shook herself and then unsteadily sat up and rolled her feet off the side of the bed.
Something had woke her up, but in the mists of first wakening, she couldn’t pinpoint it. Had it been a noise? Had one of the kids come in?
She strained to hear, but there was nothing. Normally she’d hear the air conditioning humming in the 90 degree night, but she couldn’t even hear that. It was as if she had cotton stuck in her ears. She got to her feet and made sure she was steady, then walked to the bedroom door and looked out. The lights were on. But no sounds. She made her way to Kelly’s room and then Bill Jr. Both were empty.
She turned around and went downstairs.
“Bill, Kelly, are you here? Is anyone here?”
Nothing. Now a sense of unease swept over here. They had kept a Glock in the upstairs safe hidden behind a painting over the desktop. She looked around jumpily. She could make it upstairs if there was an intruder.
“There’s no one here. You’re all alone.”
The voice came out of nowhere. And worse it was familiar. But she couldn’t place it.
“Who...what?”
“The children are gone and they’re not coming back. They have their own lives now. They don’t need you.”
She stared around her. She had to be dreaming. That was it. Right now she was upstairs asleep on her bed. This was only a dream and it couldn’t hurt her.
“Bill is gone. You think you dumped him, but he dumped you. He was always cheating on you, just like I warned you. But you wouldn’t listen. You really think he spent all those nights at the office pouring over court documents. You idiot. He was probably screwing that cow the whole time. Or any of the other women that spread their legs for him.
“You really are so stupid that you think he stopped screwing you and throwing you down because he lost the desire? He was getting everything he needed at the office. And you really believed he just stopped wanting sex with you because he couldn’t get it up. He couldn’t get it up because younger women than you were getting all his best moves.
“I told you. Life isn’t fair. Guys that look like Bill and have money or power still get all the pussy they want. It’s only women that get old. And guys think with their dicks so they don’t care how intelligent or accomplished or loving you are. As long as some young slut will spread their legs, they don’t want you anymore.”
“No!”
She screamed it out. She hadn’t accepted it then, and she wouldn’t now.
“He was so damned soft. No woman was going to try to grab him. He was mine, dammit. He loved me.”
Soft laughter echoed off the walls.
“Oh, Debbie, you never learned anything I tried to teach you. You don’t own a man, you never do. At best you rent them for a few years until they find something younger and softer and with better tits. They aren’t loyal. They don’t love the way women do. They’re dogs. Cunt sniffing dogs every one of them.
“And, Doug, your young stud. You know he was banging one of those pool bunnies five minutes after he got back to his place. Don’t you? And why wouldn’t he? Look at yourself.
Without transition, she was standing in front of the upstairs full length bathroom mirror. She was naked. She stared at the image in front of her. When had her breasts turned into flabby sacks of tissue? The tops were lined with wrinkles. When had her waist gotten so loose, so blobby? And her ass and hips. Larded with cellulite. She started to cry. Even knowing it was only a dream, she felt like something was breaking inside her.
“I am more than this. I am a mother and a professional woman. I am a professor at a major university.”
“No, Debbie, you’re not. You never have been. You’re just a beautiful face and a great body. You were always prettier than I ever was, prettier than any woman around you. You always had guys running to do anything for you. Teachers gave you good grades, professors let you slide on hard assignments. Guys gave you jewelry and took you on trips. Because you were intelligent? Shit. They wanted to fuck you and a lot of them did.
“Even Bill. Your beloved white knight, Bill. You think he came to your rescue that day because he was a wonderful human being? He wanted to screw you too. And he got you. That’s all you have ever been to anyone, a beautiful face and a big pair of tits. But at least you had that. But don’t cry now because it’s all going away. I told you it would.”
She sank to her knees and then sprawled out on the green grass that had in the logic of dreams become her bedroom floor.
A pair of familiar arms enfolded her and she laid her head on a familiar shoulder.
“Poor baby. I wanted you to have better luck than me. You saw what happened with Frank and me. The way he treated me, the way men treated me. I love you, and I just wanted to spare you what they did to me. But you wouldn’t listen.”
Familiar hands brushed her hair back and wiped her tears away.
“They’re all going to leave you, baby. Everyone but me. I will never leave you.”
She pressed her face against familiar blonde hair, until she felt herself sliding downwards as the grass opened up to reveal the mound of burial dirt that she sank into like muddy water. She started to struggle to rise, to climb out of the liquid dirt, only to feel strong hands grab hers and hold her with unyielding strength
As the dirt rose to her breasts and her shoulders and her chin, she started to scream, while the hands held her down firmly and that familiar voice told her, “We will be together forever now.”
She was sitting up on the bed, coughing and gasping for air. For a moment it almost felt like her throat was obstructed with wet dirt, but as the remnants of nightmare dissipated, she was able to catch her breath and relaxed as she realized there was nothing in her throat. She lay back on the pillow and breathed deeply.
What a nightmare! It had been a couple of months since she’d had one like that. She realized she was drenched in sweat, She went into the bathroom, took a quick shower, and dried off and put on clean pajamas. For just a moment she let herself remember the dream and then she started to cry. She made herself stop. What had happened had happened. She had tried to save her, but that was beyond anybody’s power.
She found herself crying again. You don’t stop loving someone just because they’re put under the ground.
But while the woman buried in a plot at a small private cemetery only five miles away was gone, Debbie told herself SHE was still here. And her two kids were here. Even if Bill would never let her into his life again, if Doug walked away, there were other men. There would always be other men. She got up and stripped off in front of the real life full length bathroom mirror.
She inspected herself critically. Her breasts sagged, but so what. They weren’t bags of suet yet. They might sag, but they still kept their shape. The nipples were still hard and firm. She let her breath out. She might be a hair over a 28 in the waist, but not much.
She tried to turn so she could see her ass. It was still tight enough that men stared in anything fairly close fitting. She didn’t even have to twitch it. As one member of the faculty had said during an unsuccessful seduction campaign, her ass just naturally twitched. She didn’t have to work at it.
She wasn’t a 19-year-old, but men weren’t about to kick her out of bed, either.
She started to go back to the bed, but stopped, There was a time when Bill would have been there to hold her after a nightmare like that. But he was gone now. Doug was gone, and in any case, he wasn’t Bill. She just didn’t want to sleep there alone tonight.
She walked by Bill Jr.’s room and saw him inside on his
computer, naturally. She just glanced at him and he got the message. By 11 p.m. he had to be in bed. Kelly’s bedroom was the furthest away. Unexpectedly, she was an outline under the bedspread.
“Kelly. You awake.”
“Um. Yeah. Just barely.”
“Why so early in bed?”
“I’ve been staying up till 2 or 3 a.m. the last few nights. Emailing and texting. I’m bushed.”
Debbie approached the bed. With the lights off, her daughter’s face was a black outline.
“You mind if I curl up here, baby?”
“uh – no. What-?”
“I just had a bad dream and I don’t want to be –“
“It’s lonely in there without dad, isn’t it? Where’s Doug?”
“In his own bed.”
“You ever think-?”
“No. Sometimes things happen, or you do things, and there’s no way back.”
She slid into bed and her daughter spooned with her, the way they hadn’t since she was a pre-teen.
She sniffed her daughter’s hair and put her arms around her and hugged her tightly.
“You know I love you and your brother more than anything else on earth, don’t you?”
Kelly didn’t answer and it felt like she was drifting off again.
Debbie lay there and thought about the woman in the grave nearby. Why didn’t anyone ever get to live happily ever after?
Monday - July 11, 2005 – 11:30 P.M.
It had been awhile since I’d been to the “The Last Call” bar on State Road 13 in Mandarin. I could have gone to O’Brien’s, but I didn’t really want to be around anyone I knew too well tonight.
It was still all dark wood and mirrors, chairs set at small tables, a long bar, greenery in the corner. Nobody was at the slightly raised piano bar so the music was canned. I felt like sitting at the long bar and pulled up a stool.
The Latin-looking guy with the big head of jet black hair I’d met before introduced himself as the owner, Armando Guzman, and asked me what I was drinking. I told him to hit me with double Bloody Mary’s, heavy on the Tabasco, pepper and vodka, along with about three fat green olives and a couple of limes.
I’d already put in two hours sweating at Hurly’s and I had a hard time raising my arms high enough to lift the drinks to my lips, but I’d manage somehow.
He brought them to me and said, “You going to need a police escort tonight, Mr. Maitland?”
“No. I’m going to sip these and then drive very carefully home. I’m not really interested in drinking myself into oblivion tonight. Got some things to think about.”
“Heavy? It’s quiet and I’m a good listener, if you’re in the mood to talk.”
“You ever kill a man, Armando?”
He looked at me funny and said, “Even if I had and wanted to talk about it, I think you’re the wrong man to discuss it with.”
I sipped the red concoction that according to the song takes away our cares and swallowed an olive, saying, “That’s a very politic answer. You’re not interested in a political career, are you? Anyway, I did it today. Not the first time. Either. A friend asked me how I could sleep tonight. Maybe I can sleep too easily after destroying people. Maybe I’ve been doing it too long. It should hurt more than it does.”
“Did he deserve it?”
“A good question. That’s the rub. I think so, but I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before. The trouble is, if I don’t decide, who does? The buck stops with me.”
“I don’t think I’d like your job.”
“Not many people would. And anybody that would actually want the job, I don’t think I’d like them having it.”
“In that case, Mr. Maitland, why did you take it? You like playing God?”
“No, although some people have said that. Actually, I took it for my father. So he’d be proud of me, I guess. Long story.”
A customer came up to the other end of the bar and he went to wait on them. While he did I pondered the question of why the Bingham case had hit me as hard as it had. What was different about this one?
He wandered back to my stool.
“Figure anything out?”
“Only that ‘In Vino Veritas’ is a crock. Actually, I’m just a little confused tonight. Too many things running through my head.”
“Like?”
“You ever been with a woman who was too good for you?”
He laughed.
“They all thought so.”
“No, I mean a woman who was just – out of your league. Out of your class. Who had no reason to be with you.”
A glint of something I could almost read shone in his eyes.
“Yeah, Mr. Maitland. I was with a woman like that once.”
“Still with you?”
He shook his head and busied himself polishing and cleaning a shot glass that was already gleaming.
“Women like that never stay with you. I think she’s married to some...industrialist or techie owns his own company in Mexico City. Has two kids now.”
“You ever think about her anymore?”
“Only every day.”
“It could be worse.”
“How?”
“You could have won her. Married her. Lived with her for 18 years and every day know that you’d never be able to hold onto her. The day would come when she’d walk. And that day would finally come. Because you weren’t meant to be together. Because you’d only won her through a fluke, an accident.”
“You’re being hard on yourself. You’re a powerful man, an influential man.”
“Women don’t marry positions or power. They marry flesh and blood men. Beautiful women don’t marry plain men and stay with them. First rule of nature. They may use unattractive men for financial security or as stepping stones, but they don’t marry them because they love them. You don’t see mules yoked with thoroughbreds. Like mates with like.”
I made it home with no trouble, even though I don’t remember much about the trip. But I finally figured out why the Bingham case bothered me so much. We had both been set up by God, a prick of the first order. We’d both been foolish enough to believe there could be happy endings in this life.
Bingham had found a beautiful woman, had a great sex life, had two kids he doted on, and was foolish enough to believe in that “happily ever after crap.” He had done everything right, and then God had tortured and tortured him until he broke, and he lost everything.
I had met the most beautiful woman I’d ever known in this life in a way that should never have happened. We had never moved in the same orbits, knew the same people, lived the same life. We were complete strangers who were thrown together by one incident. I knew I wasn’t the kind of man she had been with, the kind of man she had obviously wanted. I was the frog to her princess, and I had been fool enough to believe that a kiss from the princess would transform me. But that only works in children’s fairy tales.
I was happy. But why not? Except that I realized now that I had spent my life waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to wake up from the spell that had snared her and realize that she didn’t love me and never really had. It was just gratitude and hero worship and affection.
Which was why, I guess, months after the shock of the breakup, I had realized a sort of relief. It was like going to the dentist, having a tooth extracted with great pain and suffering, and realizing only later that the dull throbbing pain you’d lived with was gone. I wasn’t happy, but the suspense was over.
The cynics are right. There are no happy endings and the unhappiest of all is when you truly love another.
Tuesday - July 12, 2005 – 9:30 A.M.
I walked out of the elevator on the fifth floor dressed all in black. I’d mixed and matched to come under with an outfit similar to the one I’d worn Monday. I kind of liked the look now. I was getting some strange looks, but I was expecting them.
I passed by Cheryl’s desk, noticing Carl Cameron looking at me from a nearby hallway, on my way to my office and she m
otioned to me. I was turning to see what was going on when someone slapped me in the face. It didn’t lay me out like it might have before Carlos, but it grabbed my attention. I caught the next one in mid-air with newly improved reflexes and pulled the woman behind the slap toward me.
“Whoa.”
She swung at me with her other fist. I deflected the slap. Now I could see her. It was Bingham’s older daughter. She was taller, but I was stronger and she couldn’t break my grip or get at me with her hands or fingernails. So naturally she spit in my face.
It was only spit and let the spittle drip down the side of my cheek, but I kept my hold on her. She jerked and then she tried for my balls with her foot, but I was expecting that and I blocked her with a knee.
“Ms. – whatever your name is – I don’t want to have you arrested and dragged out of here. Please stop. It won’t do your father any good to know that his daughter –“
“My father is dead, you bastard.”
I looked over at Cheryl. She glanced downward as she said, “I’m sorry, Bill. I just found out. I was going to tell you but she got to you first.”
“Dead?”
“I found him in bed this morning when I woke up. I couldn’t wake him. And then I found the empty bottle of his pain pills on his bed. He was already cold.”
I just stared at her. I couldn’t tell you what I was thinking.
She blinked away tears and I saw that the hard exterior was getting ready to crack.
“I don’t even know why I was surprised. He had mom and my sister and me. And he lost mom, and you drove my sister away, and you were going to put him in prison so he’d lose me. He didn’t have anything left to lose.”
She was still fighting the tears, but she looked at me with what seemed like real curiosity.
“Who appointed you the Angel of Death, Mr. Maitland? When did God come down and tap you on the shoulder and tell you that you got to decide who lives and who dies, who is worthy of life or deserves death?”
She took a deep breath and relaxed.
“You can let me go now. I won’t do anything.”
I let her go and she started to walk by security. Then she stopped.
“I know I told you I hoped you got cancer like my mother and died. But I’ve changed my mind. I hope you live a long, long time, Mr. Maitland. And I hope my father haunts your dreams every night for the rest of your life. If you have a heart, which I doubt, I hope someone breaks it just like you broke my father’s. And mine.”
The Long Fall Page 24