Goody One Shoe

by Julie Frayn

  Todd tapped Nick’s shoulder and handed the joint back. Nick always got the last hit. He sucked smoke through the tiny nub until he was getting nothing but air, opened the alligator clip, and tossed the bit of rolling paper that remained to the alley floor. He pocketed the clip and surveyed the pedestrians who paraded past on the darkened sidewalk.

  Nick discovered this location a couple nights earlier. He and Todd got all lit up, grabbed some high-end hag’s purse, and took off running. Good take, that one. Coach bag. Even with the cut strap it earned them a hundred bucks at pawn. Not only was there a wallet stuffed with three hundred cash, but a gold chain and a diamond ring were tucked inside the change purse. They traded all that loot for good weed, cut it with oregano and parsley, and sold it all at the middle school. Stupid eighth graders have no clue.

  They ducked into this alley, made darker than usual by three busted-out streetlights on the same block. What fucking luck. A dark street just a block from the bright lights and busy shops filled with all manner of rich twats just dying to give it away. Or at least too stupid to keep it to themselves.

  He spied a lone woman wandering up the street toward them. She dug in her bag and pulled out her cell phone. She weaved side-to-side, a bit unsteady on her ridiculous stiletto heels. She grinned at the phone and tapped away at it with her thumbs, fake nails clacking against the screen.

  Nick fingered the switchblade in his pocket, rolled it in his hand until he got just the right grip. He reached out and squeezed Todd’s forearm. “Target, twelve o’clock.”

  When she got within a few yards, she tossed her phone back in her bag.

  Nick shook his shoulders and bounced on his toes. He pressed the button on the knife, propelling the razor-sharp blade into the open air. When she was almost past the mouth of the alley, he pounced. He grabbed the strap of her purse and sliced through it, then turned to run.

  He came to the end of the long strap in two strides. It went taut, and his momentum snapped him back like a Saturday morning cartoon dog on a short leash. He landed on his ass on the pavement.

  The chick screamed and held tight to a short handle attached near the opening of the purse.

  He bounded to his feet. “Grab it,” he yelled at Todd.

  Todd emerged from the alley and gripped the purse with both hands. He had a tug of war with the woman, and he was losing. They’d pegged her as easy pickings, but this bitch was tough. She released one hand from the purse, but kept an iron grip on the handle. She fumbled with a pendant on a long chain around her neck.

  A whistle.

  Nick stepped forward, grabbed her by her long, blond hair and put his other arm around her waist. He dragged her into the alley. She smelled of flowers and wine and something just a little sweet.

  “Okay, okay.” She let go of the handle. “Take the purse. Just take it. I’ll walk away. I won’t tell anyone.”

  He threw her onto a pile of hefty bags overflowing with kitchen garbage from the trattoria.

  She kicked at his legs and tried scramble to her feet.

  No one was going to get the best of him. That gimpy bitch on the subway was the last one. And she’d pay one day.

  He jerked his head at his accomplice. “Hold her down.”

  Todd did as he was told, wrestled with her until her arms were pinned against the bags.

  Nick unzipped his jeans. “Should’ve just let me take it the first time.”

  Todd stared up at him. “Dude. The fuck?”

  “What do you mean, the fuck? Bitch pushed her luck. She’s gonna get what she deserves.”

  “No way, man. You’re out of control. I’m out.” He let the woman go and took off into the night.

  Fucking traitor.

  Her arms free, the woman rolled off the bags and got her feet underneath her.

  Nick put one foot on her back and stomped.

  She landed face-first on the asphalt. The air groaned from her lungs.

  Nick rolled her over, shoved her legs apart and yanked up her skirt.

  She slapped at Nick’s head. “Help me,” she yelled into the empty alley. Her voice bounced off the walls of the buildings towering above the alley floor.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he hissed. He grabbed her hands, held both wrists with one hand, and pinned them above her head. “You yell one more time and I’ll cut your tongue out. You feel me?”

  She nodded, her eyes wide, tears streaming down her temples.

  He ripped her underpants off, and raped her while she cried.

  Thursday, August 6th

  “STOP HARASSING ME and be patient. It’ll happen when it happens.” Katherine tapped her lime-green fake nails against her glass-top desk. “Or, in your case, if it happens. Which is unlikely.”

  Billie drew her hands into fists. She flailed at the made-up face across the desk, beat Katherine’s surgically upturned nose into red-ink pulp and ripped her extensions out one by one. “Interviews were supposed to have been finished by now. Can’t you tell me when they’ll start?” She ground her teeth together.

  “Nope. Can’t. Not my area.” She leaned forward, her elbows on the desk. “Don’t worry, your resume is in the mix. Since you bypassed me and sent a copy directly upstairs.”

  Billie was certain that “you presumptuous bitch” died on Katherine’s lips before she spoke the words aloud. Billie stood, commanded her nerves to quell and her hands not to shake, that awful tell that gave away her true nature — chicken to the core — when she tried so hard to be tough on the outside. “Fine. I’ll wait.” She turned and left the office, sat at her desk, and stared at the blank monitor.

  No way was Katherine not the reason for the delay. She was pulling someone’s strings. If only Billie could figure out whose. Someone with influence. Someone who, like Katherine, was intent on keeping Billie in the proofer’s wading pool. But who would conspire with that flame-haired shrew? Who could hate Billie as much as Katherine did? Did anyone upstairs even know who Billie was?

  “Still no go?” Jeffrey’s hand patted Billie’s shoulder.

  “Correct.”

  “It’ll happen. It’s out of her control now.” He winked at Billie.

  She doubted anything was out of Katherine’s control. One thing was certain. Billie had control of nothing.

  “How can she hold me back like this? What did I ever do to her?”

  Doc wrote on her notepad, the scratch of a near-dry Rollerball pen like a hot stick in Billie’s ear.

  “You tell me.” Doc didn’t look up from her scribbling.

  Billie gaped at her. “Tell you what? I’ve not done anything to deserve this. I get my work done, put up with her bull crap, her outrageous demands and ridiculous deadlines. She just piles more on, never gives me credit, and never, ever, acknowledges my hard work.”

  “Maybe that’s the issue.”

  Billie shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re too nice, Billie. You let her walk on you. Heck, you almost encourage it. You have to be more proactive. Make her acknowledge you.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do.” Tears threatened the corners of Billie’s eyes.

  “Yes. But it’s too late. The pattern is set, has been in play for, what, six years? And your efforts to get out from under it now are a threat to her. She’s fighting to keep the status quo. Making sure you remain at her disposal to use and abuse.”

  Billie furrowed her brow, opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated. She swallowed. “That’s crappy advice. You know that, right?”

  “My job is not to give advice. It’s to help you see how you can help yourself. But if advice is what you’re after, here it is. Be patient. Wait for the interview process. Forget Katherine. If you get the job, then leapfrog over the bitch and never look back.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Doc slapped her notepad onto her lap and eyed Billie over her glasses. “Get out. Fast. Because it’ll only get worse.”

  Janis Jones

  JANIS JONES BACKE
D OUT of her driveway and pulled onto the road, wipers at full tilt against the driving rain. Nothing douses the media fire better than time and bad weather.

  Once the Crown Prosecutor announced that no charges would be brought, that there was insufficient evidence in the deaths of her first two children to prove any wrongdoing, the media began to lose interest. Each day, bodies and cameras would trickle off her lawn. As of yesterday morning, they were gone. Only squashed roses and footprints in the grass remained as proof they were ever there at all.

  Janis missed them. Missed the attention. What was that old saying? No such thing as bad press? Well, that’s a load of bull. Everywhere she went people pointed and whispered. Women gripped their children as if Janis would snatch them and drown them in the bathtub just for shits and giggles.

  She wasn’t a monster, for God’s sake.

  A frail figure limped along the gravel shoulder, one hand gripping a cane, back hunched, hood protecting him from the downpour. Why was this old man walking all the way out here? In this weather? Perhaps he was lost. Or worse, had dementia and had wandered away from home.

  She glanced at the clock. Therapy didn’t start for forty minutes. She did have some time to spare. Could forgo the usual three-pump, double-shot vanilla-bean latte and help the old dude out instead. Or just be late for the stupid appointment. She didn’t need it. Didn’t want it. But it helped to keep up the grieving mother façade. One side of her mouth turned up. She’d show her bastard husband that she was a decent person. Show the whole damn world.

  She pulled up beside the drenched old fart and slowed. His face was shielded against the storm by the hood of his insufficient windbreaker. She depressed a button on the armrest of her door and the passenger window rolled down.

  “Hey, mister,” she yelled against the rain pounding on the roof of her Escalade. “Want a ride?” She plucked her purse from the leather passenger seat and tossed it into the empty baby seat strapped in back.

  He fumbled the door open, and slid his wet, brittle figure onto the leather seat.

  Janis winced. She should have thought this through. Now she’d have to get her car detailed. Get the old-man stench out. But first, the good deed. She turned the radio off, extinguishing the lyrics of Fiona Apple’s Hot Knife, and clicked on the seat heater. “Nasty day. Where are you headed?”

  He mumbled something.

  “I’m sorry, where? Can you speak up? The rain, it’s so loud.” She glanced at his exposed hand, stared at the unexpected sight. It was too feminine, too smooth. The skin wasn’t rice-paper-thin, the knuckles not gnarled from age, the veins not blue or protruding like her father’s or her second husband’s. She lifted her eyes to meet his gaze and was met with the brown-eyed stare of a young woman.

  The woman slid her too-smooth hand into her jacket. “I’m going home.” The dashboard light glinted off the edge of a knife blade. ”You’re going to hell.” The knife sliced into Janis’s belly. Her screams filled the car. Blood spattered the steering wheel. She grabbed at her stomach with both hands.

  Her best suit. Ruined.

  “No more children to murder.” The woman sneered at her and jumped from the car. In the rear view mirror, Janis watched her run down the road, her cane in one hand, the bloody knife in the other.

  Janis reached for the mirror and fumbled for the blue button. Blood smeared the glass.

  “This is OnStar. How can we be of assistance, Mrs. Jones?”

  “Help.” It was all she could manage.

  “I’m sorry, could you repeat that? Is it raining in Grantham?”

  Janis mustered every ounce of waning strength she had. “Help.”

  “Mrs. Jones, do you need us to call nine-one-one?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK, got it. Police are on their way.”

  “Stabbed.”

  “Did you say stabbed?” The operator’s voice became muffled as if she were holding her hand over the microphone. Janis couldn’t make out her words. “Mrs. Jones?” The operator’s voice came back full volume. “Paramedics are on the way to your location. Just sit tight and stay on with me.”

  Janis stared at sheets of water on her windshield and tried to time her gasping breath to the beat of the wipers. The pain in her abdomen shot to every corner of her body. Blood drained from the wound, stained her manicured fingers, pooled onto the leather and trickled onto the floor mat.

  “Why?” Her voice was only a croak.

  “Just hold tight, Mrs. Jones. They’re about three minutes out.”

  The woman’s cruel words came back. No more children to murder. But she was innocent. The court said so.

  Every blink of Janis’s eyes took longer to complete. Her foot shifted off the brake pedal and the car inched forward. She put her bloody knuckles against the gearshift and pushed it up, but only got it as far as neutral. In the distance, the plaintive mewl of sirens squealed through the pounding rain.

  Her eyelids fluttered and she struggled to keep them open. A wave of ice swept over her body. The car shook with the thump of rain and the quaking of her limbs. Red and blue lights bounced off the water on the windshield, distorted and twisted like a Salvador Dali painting. She raised one hand and pawed at the air, tried to touch the pretty lights.

  “Ma’am?”

  Janis moved her lips but no answer would come. She was drowning in ice. Through the Vaseline-haze that covered her eyes, a face popped up. The face yelled and someone stabbed her arm. Her body was jostled and jerked. The headlights of her Escalade bounced away. Rain pelted her face. A door slammed and bright lights blinded her. She closed her eyes. The beeping surrounding her became one long tone.

  Saturday the 8th of August

  BILLIE SHIVERED, HER CLOTHING soaked through. She sat in a culvert in two feet of runoff, like some filthy baptism gone wrong. She looked skyward, shielding her eyes from the icy raindrops that pummeled her quaking body.

  Where was she?

  She scrambled to her feet, the water squelching up between the toes of her left foot. Grandfather’s cane fell from her lap and plopped into the water. She snatched it before the current pulled it away. She tapped the tip of the cane against her prosthesis. Why did she have the cane if she was fully footed?

  Her clothes weighed a thousand pounds. She rubbed her gloved left hand, fisted around the cane, over the mound of soaking fleece at her belly, and closed her eyes. Her father’s hoodie. She searched her memory for the moment she’d donned his clothes, still stinking of chlorine since she hadn’t had the heart to wash the imagined entrails of his scent from them.

  Her eyelids flickered and she glanced down at her other hand. Her hammering heart picked up its pace at the site of a wooden handle and thin, curved, steel blade. Pain seeped into her consciousness. She dropped the knife into the rushing water, tucked the cane under her armpit, peeled off the wet glove, and raised her hand to her face. Blood oozed from a slice on her thumb.

  Her breath came fast. Her head whipped side to side trying to find some landmark, anything recognizable to ground her. To bring her into reality. Because there was no way this wasn’t a dream.

  She scrabbled up the embankment to the roadside. A truck roared by, honked its air horn. Its massive tires hit a pool of rain. A wave of dirty water slammed into her and knocked her to the ground.

  In the distance, sirens wailed.

  Oh, God, what had she done? The knife. The cut. The clothes. Sirens. She covered her ears and shut her eyes and rocked on the shoulder of the road, gravel digging into her skin through the black cargo pants.

  Another wave of puddle hit her, another honking horn. She wiped muck from her cheeks and ran one hand through her sopping hair.

  Sirens neared. Through the haze of rain and the fog of memories, Billie watched flashing red lights close in. Her belly hollowed.

  They were coming for her.

  She scurried off the shoulder and rolled down the embankment into the culvert. She lay in the water, only her head, from the nose up, visible
. An ambulance screeched past, followed in quick succession by two police cars.

  Her discarded glove bobbed on the surface of the water, snagged on a branch. Billie grabbed it and inched up into a crouch. She scanned the silent road. She stuffed the glove into the pouch of the hoodie, then parted the waters with both hands, her eyes trained for the glint of steel. But the runoff was too deep, the water too muddy. And too cold. She dragged her good foot across the sludge at the bottom. When her shoe caught on anything, she fished it out and held it up. Discarded bottles, a dead rat. A few feet down current, she slammed her foot into something big enough to be a body and nearly toppled over. She plunged both hands into the murk, grabbed the object, and grunted against the weight. The remains of a blown tire surfaced. She abandoned the search for the blade after three more cars sped by.

  Maybe she’d imagined it. Maybe there had never been a knife. But the cut on her thumb was all too real. As was the fact that she was wearing her father’s clothes and was up to her thighs in runoff in the pouring rain somewhere far from home.

  The sound of tires speeding toward her on the wet pavement was like the surf crashing against a sandy shore at night. Billie dove into the bog. A wave reared up and splashed her face. She spit and coughed dirt and silt and dead rat essence from her mouth. When only the sound of rainfall remained, Billie climbed up the other side of the gutter, shoved branches aside with the cane, and pushed her way through the brush.

  Thirty yards of scratching twigs and poking limbs later, she emerged into an open field. On the other side, across the blacktop of a two-lane highway, a dying neon sign pulsated in the gloom of a late afternoon downpour and announced “GAS for LESS.” She didn’t give a dead rat’s behind about gas. But maybe they had a phone.

  A bell over the door clanged and announced her presence to the world inside the tiny station. A tiny diner shared the space, two booths and four stools at the lunch counter. All empty, thank God for small mercies.