by Julie Frayn
She slid up his legs and lay on his chest, slipped her arms under his wide body, and pressed her ear against his beating heart. “Sometimes you need a little push. I’ll push you. If you want me to.”
He wrapped his arms around her and rolled her onto her back. He propped up on one elbow and traced the contours of her face with one finger. “I want you to,” he whispered. His eyes met hers. “You’re my motivation, Billie. I never gave a shit if the smokes killed me. I screwed up my marriage. Never had any kids. Same old routine day in and day out. And for what? Just to put in time until I croak.” He swallowed, brushed hair from her forehead, and gave her a gentle kiss. “I’ll give it my best effort.”
“Is doing it for me enough motivation?” She stared at his lips.
He smiled. “I’m doing it for me. I’m not just punching the earth clock anymore. I don’t want to miss one single moment with you.”
Her eyes softened. For the first time since her father died, she felt safe. Not only physically — he protected her from bullies, from rude people, from gawkers and assholes and finger pointers and snickerers — no, she was safe in every way. It was a new feeling, one she had grappled to define this past month. She wanted to grab onto it and hold on tight. Hold on forever.
She ran her hands through his too-curly hair and down his too-crooked nose. “Love.”
He squinted at her and cocked his head. “Love?”
Her hands circled the back of his neck and she pulled herself up until their lips met. She lingered in his kiss, lived there for that moment before lying back down. “Definitely love.”
Agatha Friesen
AGATHA FRIESEN DIPPED HER toe into the shallow end of the pool. She licked one finger and ran it around the edge of her crystal martini glass until the vibrations sent music into the late afternoon heat.
“You should slow down. Shit, you’ve barely been acquitted and you’ve spent most of the insurance money already.”
She did a slow turn and laid a laser glare on Jeremy. Poor, sweet, Jeremy. So young. So stupid. But hot damn, could he fill out those swim trunks. She eyed his tanned form, the bulge of muscles at his shoulder, his biceps. The bulge of her favourite muscle in his pants. He lounged by the pool, drank the booze, and ate the caviar while bitching at her about buying it all.
“You have no idea how much money there is to spend, you gorgeous simpleton. And I’m innocent, remember? I can spend as I please. They can’t touch me.” But a jury of his peers hadn’t tried him. He’d better watch his hypocritical forked tongue.
“All’s I’m saying is, people are talking.” He popped a giant shrimp in his mouth.
“Let them talk.” She raised her arms and looked around her property. “I’m innocent,” she yelled at the cotoneaster that bordered her yard.
“Keep your damn voice down,” Jeremy hissed. “The neighbours might hear you.”
“Fuck the neighbours.” She set down her appletini and leered at him, reached back and tugged the strap of her bikini bra free. “Or better yet. Fuck me.” She stripped off her top and dived into the pool.
Jeremy jumped in after her. They surfaced simultaneously. He ran his hands over his wet hair, long, wavy, and sun-kissed, and pushed it from his face. He grabbed her by the waist and yanked her against his hard body. “Come here, you old broad.”
She smacked his arm. “I am not old.”
He buried his mouth in her neck. “Older than me,” he said into her skin.
His hot breath sent shockwaves through her body. She swallowed and closed her eyes. “But not as old as my poor, dead husband.”
Jeremy laughed. “Nobody is as old as that coot. You’re way better off with me. I can fill your every insatiable desire.”
“As long as I have money.”
He shrugged. “Good thing you have a shitload of it.” He grinned and grabbed her ass in both hands. His hard prick pressed against her crotch.
She slid her hands into his swim trunks. “Just shut up and do me. As long as you can keep it up, you can stick around.”
The tinkle of shattering crystal startled her. “What the hell?” She crossed her arms in front of her naked breasts. “Who’s there?” She spun around.
Jeremy climbed from the pool and kneeled beside the broken martini glass. “Chill out, Ag. The wind knocked your drink over.” He stood and turned to face her. “I don’t know how you can drink this green crap. It’s like apple-flavoured anti-freeze.”
The sun glistened off his wet skin, his dick still hard and poking at his trunks like a boy scout’s tent pole. She licked her lips. “It cuts through the aftertaste of your spunk. Now hurry up and get back in here before that thing goes to waste.”
He shed his trunks and dove headfirst into the pool. He swam between her legs, stripped her bottoms off, and surfaced in front of her. He kissed her, lifted her up, and brought her down on top of him.
She loved fucking in the pool. The threat of being seen. Well, maybe not a threat, she’d love it if that prissy bitch next door got an eyeful of Jeremy’s prime, grade-A meat slamming Agatha until she screamed.
The sun beat down on them, sparkled off the water and flashed light in her eyes. Damn she was glad she’d had her tubes tied all those years ago. Anything to prevent getting pregnant by her codger of a husband. She only wanted his millions, not his pitiful offspring. Not that he could keep it up long enough to fill that void in his life. And nothing beat Jeremy riding her bareback. Not that twenty years with that old fart hadn’t put her past prime childbearing years. Nature was taking too damn long to kill him. Agatha had needed to give her an assist.
Jeremy groaned and shuddered.
“Damn it, Jeremy, I wasn’t done yet.” Agatha’s bikini top hovered on the water. She slipped it back on and fished the bottoms out of the pool. She swam to the edge and grabbed his trunks, turned, and tossed them at his face. “Float me a raft and get me another drink.”
He put his trunks on under the water, sent an inflatable chaise lounge her way, and crawled out of the pool.
She climbed onto the raft and lay on her back, one knee in the air. She closed her eyes. Something cool tapped against her shoulder. She squinted into the sun and looked up into Jeremy’s handsome young face. Hard to stay mad at him for rushing his own orgasm. He’d be ready for more in ten minutes if she wanted another go. She took the offered appletini. “Thanks, love. I’m a little sleepy.”
He smirked. “So take a nap. Build up your energy. We can go again before dinner.” He grabbed his limp dick over his trunks and bobbed it up and down. It was hard in seconds.
She shook her head. “You are such a little boy.”
“Yeah, and that’s why you want me.”
She couldn’t argue with that. She downed her drink in two gulps and handed him the glass, settled into the chaise, the sun warming her skin, the water cooling her back and ass, and drifted off to sleep.
A splash shook her from her slumber. Her raft bounced against the side of the pool. She rubbed her eyes. “Jeremy?”
He was a few feet away, bobbing in the water.
“Shit, I was sleeping. Couldn’t you wait for a swim?” She propped up on her elbows.
He was floating, face down, the water around him stained pink, like someone had dumped Kool-Aid in the pool. “Jeremy, you jerk. Quit with the infantile pranks.” She dipped a cupped hand into the pool and splashed him. He didn’t move. Just lay in the water, arms out, face down, legs dangling below him. A burp of air bubbled from beneath him. His body shifted and slid below the surface, leaving a pink swirl in his wake.
Agatha tried to scream, but her open mouth produced nothing but silence. A shadow crossed her body. She looked up to find a man in a black hoodie and baggy black pants standing over her, his face shaded by the hood and blocked by the sun behind him.
He covered her face with his black-leather-gloved paw and pushed her under. She clawed at his arm, but her fingernails found nothing but fleece. She slipped off the chaise and bicycled her legs f
or purchase on the bottom of the deep end. Her hair tangled in his leather glove and pulled at her scalp.
Agatha batted at the man’s arm, but her arms barely broke the surface. Lights exploded in front of her open eyes. She opened her mouth and gasped for breath. She swallowed water, metallic from Jeremy’s blood, bleachy from chlorine. Her vision faded. She closed her eyes and took one final gulp.
Sunday
BILLIE JERKED AWAKE, trembling and bathed in sweat. The remnants of a crazy dream, justice revisited, edited and corrected, had come alive in her head and gone horribly awry. She rubbed her eyes and blinked. Sun streamed in through the vertical blinds.
She tossed the covers aside and eyed the alarm clock. Nine forty-three. She put both hands over her eyes and moaned. The gym would be packed by now, her usual treadmill probably four deep in line. And she’d slept through her editing time. At this rate, she’d never get Annabelle’s novel finished. Good start to freelancing, Billie. Lose your first client.
How on earth had she slept so long? She picked her phone up from the nightstand and poked in her password.
Three text messages from Bruce.
She flopped back against her pillow, unable to keep her smiles on the inside anymore.
Hey, movie’s starting. Did you miss the subway? I knew I should have picked you up.
Movie? That was tonight. Man, he needed a break. He must be stressed. She scrolled to the second message.
Knock, knock. Billie, where are you? Is everything ok? I’m calling you.
The furrow of her brow deepened. She switched screens. Four missed calls? How did she not hear her phone? She listened to the messages, each from Bruce, the panic in his voice a bit edgier with each subsequent recording. In the final message, he said he understood. They’d been seeing too much of each other. He was moving too fast. He’d leave her alone for a while.
Leave her alone? Too fast? She bolted upright.
No, God damn it, no. She was screwing everything up. Total, epic failure. As usual.
Her phone buzzed in her hand.
I know I said I’d leave you alone. Just can’t. Missed you last night. Be a good girl at church. Call me later?
Church? She switched screens and checked the date. Sunday, July Twelfth?
The cat lay at the end of her bed, his tail swatting side to side like a furry whip. “Peg Leg, tell me what day it is. What the hell, did I sleep through Saturday?” She tossed her phone on the bed and buried her eyes behind the heels of both hands. She breathed long and steady, urged her heart to calm down and beat slower.
She was supposed to go to the movies with Bruce tonight. Or, last night. She searched her memory for yesterday and came up empty. A flash of water, breaking glass. Damn it all to hell. Doc Kroft’s red glasses floated by. Dissociative fog. Or whatever. Billie dismissed that notion, and the doc’s spectacles, with a wave of her hand.
Sunday. Church. She should go to church. Meet God in His own house and ask for His guidance. Or at the very least, shed a little holy light on just what the hell was happening.
She sent Bruce an apology text. Vowed to call him and explain later. If she could just figure out what the explanation was.
She hopped toward the bathroom. Her father’s clothes lay in a heap in the middle of the floor. She stooped. The hoodie sleeve was damp. She sniffed and recoiled. Bleach. Or chlorine. How the hell?
But she’d put them out of Peg Leg’s reach. No way could he get up that high. And they weren’t there when she went to bed last night. What time was that? She closed her eyes and searched for any other remnants of Saturday.
Everything came up blank.
She tossed her father’s clothes into the laundry bag. She’d have to wash them now, just to get the stink out. Eradicate the remnants of his beautiful scent from her life. Forever.
She pulled the hoodie out and buried her face in it, inhaled as deep as she could. There was nothing but chlorine. She broke down and cried, let her tears soak into the fleece.
After a long shower, she put on her church clothes. She glanced at the clock on the stove. She’d be late for services, would miss some of the Scripture uttered by the luscious lips of the beautiful Reverend Keene. Not that she was particularly smitten with him any longer. He was too smooth. Too pretty. Too perfect. Nary one bit of gravel in his voice, no scars or marks or imperfections to his skin. Had he lived life at all? Or just hidden out in the sanctuary of his church, ministering to those who’d seen it, done it, survived it. Officiating at the funerals of those who’d died from it.
Billie stood outside the door and put her ear to the crack. The service was well underway. She pushed the massive slab of antique mahogany open. Billie winced at the creak of its elderly and rarely oiled hinges. She slipped inside and moved with stealth behind the last pew. Before she sat, the door slammed shut with the thundering sound that only heavy wood on heavy wood can accomplish. It echoed in the huge, hollow space. Sunday-best clothes rustled as the congregation turned to glare at the intrusion.
“Good morning, Billie.” Reverend Keene singled her out for public humiliation. “Glad you could join us.”
She nodded and threw him a brief smile.
“Shall we all wait for Billie to find a seat?” He raised his eyebrows and drew his lips into a thin line.
Her pen drew a red halo above his head, then ripped it out and threw it to the ground. A match lit and the halo burst into flames.
Billie glanced at the ceiling and apologized to God. Burning religious symbols wasn’t part of their deal.
She tried to pay attention to the Reverend’s sermon, but her pen insisted on defacing him. His true colours shone through, as if the heavens had opened up and focused a laser beam of self-righteous light on him. Just another bully hiding behind the folds of his Christian cloth. How had she not seen it before? She’d always been so goody-goody when he called out other members of the church. Always on his side. Maybe God was allowing her these edits because He knew she was right. Maybe He had a plan of his own for the reverend. A way of outing him, as it were.
Billie squirmed in her seat, the pew like a sack of rocks against her rump. She held her hands in her lap, checked her watch, eyeballed the panes of stained glass. Her pen skittered across her thoughts, editing the events of the past few days. But the chlorine-stinking mystery pile of her father’s clothes cluttered her mind. The possibility of that fog thing the doc kept yammering on about was becoming too real to ignore.
After service, the nave emptied in its usual fashion — front rows first. In the past, Billie would have been heading toward home by now. She used to love the front row, close to the Reverend, close to God. First out the door and never stuck in the crowd of Sunday Christians and their gossip and the stench of their Saturday hangovers. But this Sunday she didn’t feel as close to God as usual. Not within the confines of the church. And not because she was in the back row. She was closer to God on the subway. In the movie theatre. At her laptop in the sunny slice of her breakfast nook. She was closest to God in Bruce’s arms. In his lap. In his bed.
She waited for the last of the full congregation to file past her. Before Reverend Keene, the pews were sparsely filled. Now it was hard to find an empty spot. She’d never noticed the man/woman ratio before. It was heavy on the woman. Were they here just for the reverend’s pretty face? He brought in more souls looking for salvation. And they risked damnation for their lusty thoughts.
Many of those women tossed her looks alternating between pity for her sad past and deformed body and disdain for interrupting the service with her rude lateness. Screw them. Screw them all. Each received an edit on the way by — a devil’s tail, a forked tongue, a crown of thorns.
In the foyer, a crowd milled about, an evangelical mosh pit. Billie jostled her way through it. Bits of their voices, slices of their opinions, their observations, drifted into her ears. “… floating in the pool …” “… half-naked …” “… served her right, the whore …”
Billie fro
ze amidst the chatter and listened. Mrs. Hanabaker, gossip of grotesque proportions, sweet on Sundays, evil bitch every other day of the week, stood nearby. Billie touched the old biddy’s arm. “What’s happened?”
Mrs. Hanabaker’s face lit up at the prospect of a new audience. “It’s that awful black widow, Agatha Friesen.” She nodded, her eyes wide and bright.
Billie remembered the name. The woman who was tried and found not guilty of killing her husband. The one she and Bruce drowned in her pool with their red pens of justice. A just end for a woman who drowned her feeble husband in the bathtub, hastened his pending death so she could get at the money sooner than later.
Billie’s pulse quickened. “What about her? What happened?”
“Her and that young man she was … well, you know. I don’t want to repeat it.”
Billie drew a thought bubble above the old biddy’s head and wrote, “She was fucking him, the lucky bitch.” Billie kept her satisfaction internal and nodded. “No need, I get the gist.”
“Well they found them both dead in her pool. He had his throat cut. She was drowned. Dead as her husband.” She nodded and pursed her lips. “That’s justice if you ask me. The jury certainly didn’t do right by him. Seems like maybe God set it straight.”
Billie clenched her fists. “God isn’t in the business of revenge, Mrs. Hanabaker.” Billie turned and stormed out of the church. No, that wasn’t God’s agenda. But Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, whose was it? How many articles had she and Bruce edited? Five? Six? And two of them had come true. Not word-for-word perfect, but so close that it made her stomach knot. Was someone spying on them? Waiting to find out the appropriate end and exacting that justice laid out in the scripts they wrote?
She raced to the corner. As she approached, the walk light extinguished and the amber signal flashed at her. “Run, run, run,” her father would always chant, as if that were the right thing to do when commanded to “don’t walk.” If he were here with her, she’d take his hand and sprint to the other side. Instead, she paced on the street corner and waited to be told when to cross.