by Julie Frayn
Two of the endings she and Bruce edited had come true. Or maybe only one. The clown edits were hers and hers alone. But Bruce read them. She balled up her fists and released them several times, as if she were gripping the stress ball at work. The one she’d drawn a mouse face on in red pen.
Bruce didn’t seem to have first-hand knowledge about the demise of the clowns. Maybe he was a great actor. But no, she knew him now. He wouldn’t harm anyone without a personal reason.
Would he?
She fished her cell phone from her purse and found his number, tapped her thumbs over the keyboard.
Did you hear?
The walk light lit and Billie rushed across the street and up the sidewalk toward her apartment. She checked her phone every few steps. Why didn’t he answer?
She rushed up the stairs of her apartment building. Her prosthetic foot caught under the lip of the riser and she tripped, grabbed the railing for balance. Her blood coursed through her veins, her whole body atremble. It wreaked havoc with her coordination. She slowed her breathing and her pace, rested on the landing of the second floor for ten hippopotamuses before continuing.
Inside her apartment, she threw the keys on the floor and raced for the television. Channel after channel of sports and religion. Too early for news on a Sunday. She clicked on her laptop, chewed at her thumbnail, and bounced her good leg up and down while the computer booted up. She found a local news website and scanned the headlines. There it was. Couple found dead in pool.
She read the article. Except for the man, the drowning part was just as she and Bruce had written it. She checked her phone. No reply from him. Could he be involved? Would he exact revenge on behalf of someone he’d never even met?
Glimpses of blood, of a swimming pool, the water shimmering in the bright afternoon sun, and a broken martini glass flashed through her mind. She closed her eyes. Stop imagining it, for Christ’s sake.
Her eyes flew open. Shattered glass? She re-read the article. It didn’t mention anything about broken glass. She couldn’t recall including that in their edits. Man, she needed a drink.
She looked around the apartment. Peg Leg perched in his sunshine square, his eyes glued to her, nothing moving but the tips of his whiskers. He mewed and blinked. He wouldn’t care if she drank. Hell, he didn’t even know it was Sunday.
She opened a new bottle of Sauvignon blanc that Bruce had brought, warm off the counter. She tossed ice cubes in a tumbler and filled it with wine. Half of it was gone before her phone buzzed.
Are you home? Can I come over?
Her thumbs sailed across the keyboard. Yes and yes. I’m freaking out.
Chill, Billie Sunshine. Just another coincidence. I’ll bring lunch.
As if she could eat anything.
Billie paced the small strip of carpet in front of the window and sipped at her wine. “Coincidence, my butt,” she mumbled. “Once, maybe. But twice?” She shook her head. “Right, Peg Leg? Twice is too much.” She rubbed the cat’s ears. “You agree with me, right?”
The door handle jiggled. Billie jumped, sloshing wine onto the carpet. She set the tumbler down on the table beside the sofa, didn’t bother with a coaster.
“Billie?” Bruce called through the door and rapped his knuckles on the wood.
She ran to the door, unclasped the chain, and unlocked the deadbolt. She threw the door open and leaped into his arms.
He dropped a bag onto the floor and engulfed her in his arms. She laid her head on his chest and took solace in the pounding of his heart, still thumping from his race up the stairs. “Hey, you’re trembling. Come on, let’s be bold and have a morning drink.”
“Already way ahead of you.” She pulled away, stooped to pick up the bag, and peered inside. Her worries about being unable to eat were drowned out by the grumbling in her stomach. “Tacos? I’m starved.” She took his hand and led him to the kitchen. “So, you saw the news?”
“Yes. Like I texted, coincidence.”
“Once. Twice is not coincidence. Peg Leg agrees with me.”
Bruce raised one eyebrow. “Sure he does.” He ripped the bag open and set tacos on the counter, fished out packets of hot sauce and little plastic cups of sour cream.
Billie handed him a plate, grabbed three tacos and covered them with sauce. “It was just like we wrote it. Drowned in her own pool. Or her dead husband’s pool.”
“It wasn’t exactly the same. We didn’t write that her lover would die. Or even be there. And hers was an accident. We didn’t write murder.” He watched her shove a third of a taco in her mouth and snap off the crunchy shell. “God, I love the way you eat.”
She covered her mouth with one hand. “How do I eat?” Hot sauce dripped down her chin.
“Like a man.” He shoved a taco in his mouth and gave her a thumbs up.
She giggled through meat and cheese and crushed corn tortillas. How did he do that? His very presence put her at ease and let her paranoia melt away. She poured them both a glass of wine and clinked her glass to his.
Yes, she was being paranoid. That was all there was to it. Please, God? Just paranoia.
Thursday the 16th
BILLIE LAY ON DOC Kroft’s chaise and stared at the tin ceiling. Her eyes followed the swirls stamped into the metal, round and round and round they go. Like a labyrinth with no walls, a maze with nothing but exits. Annoying in its planned randomness. Flecks of peeling paint drooped from the smooth finish, poked holes in perfection.
“I just can’t find any focus, Doc. Church isn’t helping. I think I might be losing my mind.”
“What about your boyfriend?”
Billie sat up. “What about him?”
Doc cocked her head. “Any …” the fingers tented in front of her chin. “Progress? In the relationship I mean.”
“Do you mean am I still the oldest virgin on record? No, I’m not.”
Doc’s eyes came alight with repressed mischief. “I see. And how does that make you feel?” She looked as though she was going to spew spittle-fueled laughter through her psychobabble façade.
Billie poked her tongue into her cheek and grinned a sideways grin. “Oh, like running through a field of wildflowers? No, wait, that’s when my tampons are absorbent.” She shook her head. “What do you think? It makes me feel like a grownup. Like a full-fledged woman. I can’t believe I waited so long.” But she hadn’t waited. She’d just never been offered the chance.
“So maybe that’s what’s pulling your focus?”
“Maybe. Or because I’m waiting on a promotion and they start interviewing next week. Or because I’m having weird —” She scratched at an imaginary spot on the seat, “dreams, I guess. Sort of.”
Doc shifted and put on her serious face. “What kind of dreams?”
Billie leaned back and put the heels of her hands over her eyes. “Okay, not dreams.” She dropped her arms to her sides and looked at Doc. “There’s some privilege thing between us, right? Confidentiality?”
Doc squinted. “Yes. Why?”
“So if I tell you something that I might have done.” Billie held her palm toward the Doc. “Just might. Theoretically. Something not legal. You have to keep that between us, right? Like a priest?”
“Billie.” Doc Kroft set her notepad aside and sat forward. “Tell me.”
Billie stared at her lap, picked at a scab on her forearm. “That dissociative fog thing. It’s real, right?”
“Not fog. Fugue. F-you-g. And yes, it’s real. Rare, but real. Have you had another incident?”
“I’m not sure. Sometimes I wake up sore and achy. One morning I woke up on an unfamiliar street corner.” The scab fell off and a drop of blood oozed from her skin. “I don’t even remember last Saturday. I stood Bruce up. Missed a date.” Her eyes pinched and her throat ached with held-back sobs. “And some stuff has happened,” she wiped a rogue tear from her cheek, “that I can’t explain.”
“Try.” Doc picked up her notepad and poised her pen above it.
Billie opened the flap of her purse and slid a red-marked newspaper from it. She tossed it on the coffee table. “I edit the news. When the bad guys get away with it, I make them pay.”
Doc picked up the paper and scanned the edits. “Nothing weird about that. You used to do the same with storybooks. Changed the endings so that nobody died.”
“Huh. I’d forgotten about that.” A vision of Bambi, covered in crayon edits, came to mind.
Doc placed the newspaper on the coffee table. “So why is this different? What are you worried about?”
“Well,” Billie cleared her throat. “Two of the edits have come true. Sort of.”
Doc’s chin dropped to her chest and she looked at Billie over the rim of her glasses. “Come true how?”
Billie explained about the clowns and the widow’s drowning. She told Doc of the pile of her father’s clothes in the middle of the floor after each event. She hadn’t connected it to the clowns, and the first time she could explain it away as Peg Leg being a brat. The second, not so much.
When Billie was done, she lay back on the chaise.
Doc didn’t say a word, just tapped her pen against lilac paper and pursed her lips. “Well, that’s interesting.”
Billie huffed. “No kidding.”
“How many people do you think read the newspaper each day?”
Billie shrugged. “I don’t know. Thousands?”
“In a city of two million? I’d bet around two hundred-thousand or more. And how many of them do you think are unsatisfied with the justice system? Pissed off at what criminals and murderers and pedophiles get away with?”
“A few.”
“Yeah.” Doc tossed her notepad aside and picked up the paper. “I bet, red pen notwithstanding, thousands of people want proper justice. Any one of them could have done this.” She smacked the newsprint with the back of her fingers. “Or it could be a complete coincidence.”
“Kind of a strange one though, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps.” Doc ripped the paper into shreds, crunched the bits inside her fists, made a tight ball from them, and lobbed it into the garbage can.
Nothing but net.
“But most coincidences are.”
Friday
BILLIE SCURRIED ALONG the sidewalk, her head down. Every passerby eyeballed her like the murderous sinner that she was beginning to think she was. Coincidence, maybe. Strange, definitely. Possible? The jury was still out.
She stared at her shoes and counted each time they hit the pavement. At the limits of her vision, glimpses of the world passed her by. A garbage can. A border collie balancing on three legs, peeing on a fire hydrant and all over his leash. Wingtips, sneakers, flip-flops, patent leather pumps. The shoes of humanity, whose accusing stares she was desperate to avoid. A homeless man with a gold tooth.
Billie froze in the middle of the walkway. Someone slammed into her from behind and her body lurched forward.
She spun around to face a balding man straightening his glasses.
He set his mouth in a thin line and glared at her. “Shit, lady, keep moving or step aside.” He brushed past, jostled her arm and stormed off, in a hurry to get nowhere fast.
Billie shuffled to the side and stood against the building. She inched toward the homeless man, a lump of rags and stink and dirt on the sidewalk. He held out a paper cup and grinned at anyone who would look down upon him, one gold tooth shining in the early morning sun. He blinked his wide eyes at strangers, some of whom would drop quarters, dimes, or even the occasional loonie in his cup. He’d nod and mumble at them. It sounded like “thank you” but could just as likely have been “fuck you” too.
Blood rushed to Billie’s head, filling her ears with her own pulse. She closed her eyes and gripped the brick of the building with the tips of her fingers. A vision of a much younger man with a gold tooth came to mind. A man with wild eyes and a red bandana over his long, dark hair. Could it be? Wouldn’t the police have let her know if they’d let the man that murdered her parents go free?
She opened her eyes and looked down at him. He scanned the sidewalk for donors, his head sweeping side to side. He noticed her, smiled, and blinked. He nodded in one quick jerk and shook his cup at her.
Her heart rammed up into her throat and she backed away, turned, and ran the rest of the way to work. She raced up the stairs, flew into the office, and dropped into her chair. Her forehead in her hands, she counted to ten then back to one, slowed her breathing and her heart.
“What’s with you, sweaty Betty?”
She didn’t even look up. “Leave me alone, Jeffrey.”
“Well, excuuuuuse me.” He dropped some papers at her elbow and put his hand on her back. “Seriously, though. If you need anything, let me know.”
She leaned back, plucked two Kleenex from the box with the bright flower pattern and wiped her brow, her cheeks, and the back of her neck. “Thanks. I appreciate that.” She poked the power button on her computer, chewed on one thumbnail, and bounced her prosthetic leg up and down while the computer took its sweet time booting up.
The second her desktop appeared, she double-clicked on the Firefox icon and Googled “Anthony Gerard Dickinson&1993&Murder&Fullalove.” A list of sites and a few images popped up. And there he was on her screen. Younger. Heavier. Longer hair. But it was him. He was out. And living on the street, just a block from her office.
She shook her head, clenched her fists, and kicked her trashcan. It flew across the aisle separating her cubicle from Jeffrey’s and clanged against the filing cabinet. It rolled to a stop at Katherine’s feet.
She looked at the can, then cut her steely glare to Billie. “Bad day? Maybe take it out on your own belongings.” She set her toe against the can and rolled it toward Billie. “I need the Evanston manuscript before end of day. Can you handle that?”
Billie’s eyelids flickered and her red pen decapitated her boss. “Yes. I’ll email it when I’m done.”
Katherine nodded and carried on to the coffee pot.
“It’s definitely the guy.” Billie slid the open scrapbook across the table to Bruce. An article from 1993, when Gold Tooth was convicted of accessory to murder, was glued to the page, its edges curled and the paper yellowed. “He’s older, sure. Looks pretty used-up. Lost the bandana. But it’s the eyes. And the tooth.” She tapped the picture. “That stupid gold tooth.”
“He only got accessory?” Bruce ran his fingers down the newsprint and skimmed the article.
“That’s my fault.”
He glanced up at her. “Your fault? How so?”
“I identified him in court. And I told them that he didn’t shoot my parents. The other guy did. In fact, it would appear that this guy,” she tapped the picture again, “might have saved my life.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. He apparently pushed the other guy’s arm down just as he was going to shoot me. The bullet that took my leg would have probably hit me in the face. Though that is just speculation by the defence. And they convinced the jury that’s what happened.”
“But you don’t remember that part.”
“No. Just the gun. I remember the gun. And the music. And the blood.”
Bruce reached over and squeezed her hand. “Can you have the cops remove him?”
“Do I have that right?” She pulled her hand away and crossed her arms. “He did his time. Or I assume he did, since he’s out.” A bottle of chardonnay sat at her elbow. She filled her glass for the second time. “I wonder if the prosecutor still works for the Crown?”
“Maybe you need to talk to him.” He poured his own glass of wine. “The guy with the tooth, I mean.”
Her hands began to tremble. “I don’t want to talk to him.” She wanted to slit his throat. Rip his gold tooth right out of his filthy mouth and jab it into one of his wild eyes. She closed her eyes and played that scene out in her head. Her tremble eased with each flash of fake film reel and spray of his blood on the sidewalk that passed behind her eyelids.
Bruce’s hands on her shoulders shook her from her macabre thoughts. He kneaded her knotted muscles, bent down and kissed her neck. “Maybe it would be good therapy,” he whispered in her ear.
Tuesday the 21st
“IT’S OBVIOUS SHE’S GUILTY.” Billie sliced a perogie in half, dragged it through a lump of sour cream, and shoved it in her mouth.
“But there’s no real proof.” Bruce ran his finger over the newsprint. “Even the old cases, just sudden infant death. Which, I think, is another way of saying they have no clue what killed them.”
“Exactly, how can there be proof for something unprovable?”
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Is that a word?”
She matched his arched brow. “You questioning the editor’s grasp of the English language?”
He laughed. “Not anymore.” He snapped the paper to straighten a crease. “Okay, so she’s a total bitch. Selfish, complete lack of emotion. Didn’t even cry at her trial, and look at that picture.” He turned the paper around.
A photo that looked like a screen grab from a grainy video showed Janis Jones standing at a window, peering out at the media, a cigarette perched between two fingers, her elbow resting in her other hand. She looked like Norma Desmond, with that crazy-bitch, brow-arched glare. Billie nodded. “That’s my point. No feeling. No empathy. Total sociopath.”
“We can agree on that.” He spun the newspaper back to face him. “But being a sociopath doesn’t mean you’re a murderer. It’s not that simple. Square peg, crazy round hole.”
Billie loved the way he talked. His odd metaphors, a little twisted and sideways. He was no scholar, not book smart or a word nerd. But he could paint just the right picture.
“I suppose. But I still say she’s guilty as heck. If she didn’t kill the first two, which they’ll never prove after all this time, since the judge wouldn’t grant the warrant to exhume their innocent little bodies, she definitely drowned Ryan.” A shudder shook Billie’s spine. How could anyone, especially a parent, lay a hand on their child? Kill them? Unfathomable.