Airbag Scars

by Jim Heskett

  She pursed her lips. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve got a plan, baby. I’m getting everything back together so we can leave here. It will take me a little while longer, but I’m going to set everything right. You’ll see.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t keep telling you this. We’re divorced, and I don’t want to get back together with you. It’s over.”

  She wasn’t understanding him. He needed to approached this in a different way. “No, Caitlin, you’ve got it all wrong.” He took a step toward her and she backed up again, which made her bump into a car. She reacted, lifted the pepper spray, and unleashed a cloud of pain at him.

  His eyes burned, his lungs heaved in enough of the foul spray to send him to his knees. Tears streamed down his face and he could barely breathe. He leaned over and tried to spit out the smoldering pain, but it hovered around him like a pack of buzzards.

  When he could see again, she was gone.

  Donovan, slumped on his couch, dabbed the never-ending stream of tears from his eyes and sipped his glass of whiskey. Every few seconds, he wiped his still-burning eyes with the wet rag, but it didn’t help much.

  Patton the dog looked on at his master. He wanted to go for a walk, because that’s what Patton always wanted. A walk, or some treats, or his belly rubbed.

  “It’s not always about you, Patton,” Donovan said.

  The dog cocked his head at the mention of his name, and Donovan smiled as he swallowed half the glass in one gulp.

  Patton started sniffing around at his guest’s feet, and Donovan cleared his throat. “No, Patton, leave it. Leave her alone.”

  The dog looked up at him, then plopped on his belly and let out a huff.

  He’d moved Sherry’s body from the floor to the chair he’d found in the dumpster behind the building. She was starting to smell, and he knew he needed to wrap her in a tarp and get her out of here, but there never seemed to be a good time. Plus, he kinda liked having someone to talk to, especially someone who couldn’t talk back. Talking to the dog wasn’t the same thing.

  He approached her, taking his time to cross the short distance in his living room. His vision was still blurry.

  The bruises circling her neck had grown a deeper shade of purple in the last twenty four hours, and her skin had bloated to make her look chubby. She hadn’t been a bad-looking woman, but not quite so pretty in death. He wondered if Caitlin or Hayden would look like this after having the life squeezed out of them.

  He felt a yearning in his crotch, that old familiar desire to expel his demons. An image of his hands around Hayden’s throat appeared, although he knew he couldn’t do that. She was too important.

  There was something else he could do with her, though.

  He set the empty glass of whiskey on the floor and walked next door to her apartment. It was time for him to show her what he could do in the bedroom.

  Time for her to stop playing games.

  “Hayden?” he said as he banged on her door. “We need to talk. I’ve had enough of this cat and mouse bullshit.”

  No response. He waited a few seconds, listened for shuffling inside, then banged again.

  “Are you there?”

  But she wasn’t home. She was probably off with her new Prince Charming, that fuck-face Michael McBriar, or whatever the fuck name he was going by these days.

  Micah. What a stupid name. It sounded biblical, like someone in a story about a goat and a tax collector.

  As far as he knew, those two hadn’t done the deed. Unless they’d done it without Donovan seeing, but he knew she hadn’t brought him back to her apartment, and Micah hadn’t taken Hayden to his. That meant the competition to get into her pants first was still open, unless they’d gone to a motel room somewhere, but that seemed like a waste of money.

  His loins burned with desire. He would have Hayden, and he would have her first, before that snitch did.

  Maybe it was too late to get Caitlin back (at least for now) but Hayden was still within his reach. He’d check the shooting range first, then confront them both together. End this shit now.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  DONOVAN PARKED and surveyed the cars lining the street to the gun range. Japanese car, German car, Japanese car. Didn’t anyone buy American anymore?

  A couple blocks away from the homeless shelter, there were no wandering bums out in view. He didn’t see any other faces lingering or watching, so he punched the glove box button and removed the revolver. The thumb latch clicked as he opened the cylinder. Inside, six bullets. He took a dozen more from a box in the glove compartment and stuffed them in his pocket. He flicked it closed and spun the cylinder, loving the sound it made as it slowed and came to a stop. He’d always wanted to play Russian roulette.

  An urge in his genitals burned hot and then spread through the rest of his body. He would usually fight that back down, but it was time to work out some angst. Whipping it out while parked alongside a city street seemed risky, but that was part of the fun. He glanced around one more time and caught shuffling across the street. This would not do.

  He got out of the car and approached a mass of blankets huddled in a slim alley between two buildings. As he came close, a head peeked above the blankets. Homeless man, dirty, with a silver skullcap bearing the logo of the New England Patriots. His face was a spider web of wrinkles, his teeth sparse and yellow.

  “Patriots suck,” Donovan said, and he heard the sound of his own words slurring. He was much drunker than he’d realized. Funny how it can creep up on you like that.

  “What? What do you want?” the man said, his voice rough and faint.

  “I said, the Patriots suck. You shouldn’t wear that around here. This is Broncos country, right? Isn’t every Denver person some kind of Broncos fanatic?”

  The homeless man grumbled and raised the coverings above his head. Through his shield, he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Cup’s on the ground. Put a dollar in it or leave me alone. I got no time to speak to you about football. I’m busy out here.”

  Donovan sprang forward and ripped the blanket off the man. “You’re not listening to me, dumbshit. You and your Patriots cap aren’t welcome on this street. Get the hell out of here, or I’m going to pick you up and make you leave.”

  The homeless man squinted at the hulking beast before him, then spat a green glob on the ground. “I ain’t afraid. You might knock me out, son, but you’d be the first. I’ve taken bigger guys than you.”

  Donovan cackled. Out of respect for the man’s giant brass balls, he almost wanted to walk away. But no, the intruder had to go.

  “Last chance,” Donovan said.

  “Last chance for what? This is my spot, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to pack up my shit and move somewhere else just because you don’t like my cap. You can go to hell, you big jerk.”

  With one hand, Donovan removed the skullcap and tossed it aside. With the other, he grabbed a chunk of the old man’s mangy locks and lifted him off the ground. The homeless man’s brave face melted into dread.

  Donovan punched him with the full weight of his shoulder, feeling the tension reverberate through his arm. Bones in the man’s face crunched. Donovan hit him again, then let go of the hair.

  The old man slumped into his pile of blankets, unconscious. Either that, or playing dead, and that was fine too. If he wouldn’t go, at least he’d keep his damn eyes shut.

  Donovan returned to his car, looking around the street one more time. He seemed to have zero audience now.

  He lifted the handle to lower his seat all the way and unbuttoned his pants. The street was entirely silent. He slipped a hand into his boxers and tried to think about Hayden while working himself hard.

  A few minutes later, he gave up when he couldn’t find relief. His stupid prick wouldn’t accommodate him.

  He closed his eyes and worked up a guttural roar to clean out the last of the nerves. Then he went back into the glove box, took out the remaind
er of a fifth of whiskey, and downed it in a single gulp. Throat burning, he slipped the pistol into his waistband, and got out to meet Micah and Hayden.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  EVEN THOUGH she’d said they should meet at the gun range today, Hayden hadn’t showed. Micah thought it a bit odd, since she seemed eager to talk through their argument from before. Her absence was okay with him though, because he was still confused after their last exchange. He’d been so sure that she was into him, but she’d given him some mixed messages.

  The air changed as Micah walked to his car, keys in hand. A sudden breeze ruffled his hair and sent a tiny shudder through him. Footfalls echoed across the lot, and he spun to find a hulking frame enveloping his vision.

  The large man had the bleary eyes and lumbering walk of a man dead-drunk, and he came close enough to Micah that his stale, whiskey-soaked breath spread out like fog.

  Micah started when his eyes adjusted and took in the face of this giant opposite him. “Don’t I know you?”

  “You sure as fuck do, but not in the way you think. Donovan. And you… you and Hayden,” Donovan’s words slurred together like one long ramble, and his head bobbed and weaved while he spoke.

  Micah’s first thought was that this man was a drunk reaching out to him for help. He’d done it before, chatting up people who had shown up drunk at meetings. “I think maybe I’ve seen you at meetings before. But you know Hayden?”

  “Sure I do. Real fickle bitch. And you do too, don’t you, Micah? You know her real good, I bet.”

  Micah noticed that Donovan was gripping something in his closed fist. This drunk didn’t seem like he was asking for help staying sober. “I’m so confused. What in the world are you doing here?”

  Donovan laughed, but his face was a twisted grimace. “She left me. I gave her my heart. I traveled halfway across this country to get her back, and then she gave me a face full of pepper spray. How do you like that?”

  “Hayden left you? Were you two dating?”

  “No, you dumbshit. My wife Caitlin left me. You had to show up here and mess up my concentration, and I fucked up getting her back. Everything would have been fine if you hadn’t come along, you know. I put that on you. Maybe it’s too late, maybe it’s not, but I have to deal with you first, and that’s complicated everything.”

  Donovan opened his hand for a split second, and Micah saw a flash of something green, but he kept his eyes on Donovan’s face. He still hoped he could help this man, even though his rambling made no sense.

  Then a more insistent thought came into focus. “Wait. Deal with me? I don’t even know you, and you’re showing up here at the same place as me to talk about how I messed up things with your wife? What’s going on?”

  Donovan ignored the question. “All that hippie Buddhist shit you spout at meetings, well, you should know that what goes around comes around, right? You can’t get away with something like that.”

  The hairs on the back of Micah’s neck turned to needles. “Donovan, how did you find me here at the shooting range? Were you following me?”

  “Magic.” Donovan grinned, and then swayed like a top nearing the end of its spin. “I’m Harry fucking Potter.” He burped, leaned over, and then vomited on the pavement.

  Micah reached to steady him but Donovan’s hand shot out and swatted the arm away. The green item he’d been clutching fell to the ground.

  “Do you have any idea how much pepper spray burns?” Donovan said. “It’s like icepicks in your eyes.”

  Micah didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Where is she?” Donovan said.

  “Where is who? Your wife?”

  “Damn it. I’m tired of listening to you babble. You can tell it to El Lobo, Michael. Or whatever’s left of his people.”

  Micah went white. He didn’t know the man standing across from him, but this man knew him. Someone who’d been in the cartel. And he knew Micah’s real name.

  His greatest fear of the anonymous last year of living in Denver—of being found by someone from his old life—materialized before his eyes. They knew where he was, and they’d sent this man to collect him. But why had he come up to chat with him? Why hadn’t they thrown a bag over his head and stuffed him in the back of a van instead?

  Donovan stumbled backward, wiped his mouth, and looked at Micah with an expression of blank confusion, as if he’d suddenly become conscious of his surroundings. Like he’d woken up from a dream. His mouth opened and closed a few times, trying to find words.

  In a flash, he turned, sprinted through the parking lot, and disappeared around the corner.

  Micah took a step and felt something foreign under his shoe. On the ground in front of him, Donovan had dropped a crumpled pair of green panties.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  HAYDEN LEANED over the receptionist’s counter and compared her company-issued day planner against the receptionist’s scheduler on her computer. Hayden had made a mistake and double-booked her ten o’clock slot. After spending a couple minutes in the bathroom rubbing her temples, she’d shrugged it off, since one of the slot holders, Glen The Paranoid Texan, hadn’t shown for his last two sessions anyway.

  But as soon as she thought that, she turned around, and there he was. Glen was sitting in one of the dozen chairs lining the walls, which surrounded a coffee table with the standard doctor’s office array of ancient magazines no one wants and toys for toddlers. He had a backpack with him, resting in his lap. Besides his normally disheveled appearance, his knee was bouncing erratically and he was chewing his fingernails, eyes darting around the room.

  “Glen? You’re not supposed to be here until ten.” Not only had he kept his appointment, but he was also early.

  Glen released his tooth-grip on his thumbnail to answer, and his words came out in short, choppy bits. “I know. Need now though. Need to see you. Now.”

  Hayden again leaned over the counter, to tell the receptionist that she would have to bump her 8:30 to accommodate him.

  Hayden’s boss, a bitchy woman with a thing for pants suits, appeared in the hallway. “Hayden? Do you have a minute?”

  Hayden looked at Glen, and the panic on his face when he realized she might put him off. Hayden had no desire to talk to her boss, because she figured she was about to be written up for being late and skipping staff meetings. “Not right now,” she said, and her boss fumed but Hayden ignored it. She waved at Glen and he followed her into the other hallway toward her office.

  He kept a close grip on the backpack as she led him to her office. They both took their seats, and Hayden opened her mouth but Glen spoke first. “I wanted to let y’all know that this is the last time you’ll be seeing me.”

  “Okay,” she said, “are you moving, or something? We still have some work to complete on your treatment plan. Honestly, after two missed sessions, I was about to close out your chart, so it’s a good thing you showed up today. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

  “No, you don’t get it, Therapist Lady. This is the last time any of you is going to see me. I know he’s here, and I know what’s really going on. I’m not going to stand for this bullshit anymore.”

  Hayden clicked her pen. Glen loved to make vague and dramatic statements such as this, and now she needed to draw his true intentions out of him.

  “Who’s here?”

  He tilted his head. “His name ain’t important. Remember my friend, the one who helped me move here? She got this husband, this fucked up husband. He’s one of them. She called me, said he’s out of prison and he came up here to get her back. She wanted to warn me about him. It can’t be no big secret why he followed me here to Denver.”

  “How do you know he followed you?”

  He slammed his hand against his thigh. “You’re not listening to me! It’s all a goddamn cycle that keeps repeating itself. She told me it was safe here, that there were other people like us and no one had been in any trouble yet. But I could move to goddamn Timbuktu and they’d still fin
d me, so what the hell am I supposed to do?”

  She set the pen back down on her desk. “I’m getting confused here. Why don’t you explain to me what happened?”

  “Confused is how the cartel wants you to be. All rolled up in mystery like a pig in a blanket, too worried about your own ass to open your eyes and see what they’re doing to you and everybody you care about. Matter of fact, I’m not even sure I should be here. Could be, you’ll know what I know by talking to me. Then that’s one more way they can get to me.”

  “Okay, Glen, let’s slow down and take this one step at a time. We need to relax. Why don't you start by putting your backpack on the floor and we–”

  “No!” He hugged the backpack tight to his chest. A shaking hand unzipped the top a few inches and slipped inside it, his bug-eyes locked onto her.

  Whatever was in the backpack, it probably wasn’t good news. She edged her hand across the desk toward her phone, with a finger poised above the red emergency button that linked to Security. She maintained eye contact with him, conscious of her breathing and the expression on her face.

  She didn’t want to press the button. There was still hope she could talk him down. Stay calm, stay calm, she repeated inside her head.

  “Glen, listen to me. Whatever this is, we can work it out.”

  His eyes narrowed and his mouth curled into a snarl. “There’s nothing to work out, don’t you get it? I didn’t come here so you can work your goddamn therapy voodoo magic on me. I came here to tell you that this is it… right here, right now, we’re going to settle everything. I know, and they know, and they’ll be coming for all the rest of them soon enough. I seen one of them gouge a guy’s eyes out just because he looked at the man’s wife. How do you fight that?”

  As Glen spoke the last few words, he drew his hand from the backpack, except now his finger was gripping the trigger of a revolver.

  Hayden gasped. She’d seen and held a gun a couple days ago at the range, but this was different. There was something pretend about those weapons. This one was real, and there was no range safety officer over Glen’s shoulder to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid with that firearm. She lifted her hands a few inches from the table in a show of surrender. “Let’s talk about this.”