by Amy Matayo
Slut.
The front door closes and a light comes on, illuminating the front window enough for me to see two shadowed figures moving inside the house. Unable to see them well enough to satisfy my curiosity, I climb out of the car and pad softly toward the two-story building, stopping to look both ways to make sure I don’t get hit by a run-down car or some guy on a ten-speed. What sort of neighborhood is this anyway? If you picked this apartment building up and deposited it in Chicago, it would belong in the slums. Drug dealers. Prostitutes. Crack whores. Waitresses. Presley would fit right in.
She’s trash. What does he see in her?
A thorn from a mangled rose bush digs into the flesh of my left thumb, and I let out a yelp before realizing how loud it must sound. Sucking on the skin, I glance at the window but don’t hear anyone walking this way. I rip the thumb out of my mouth and move closer to the glass, my mind sharpening in anger when I spot Micah’s tool box sitting untouched on the kitchen table. Where did he go? Why didn’t he take it with him? What are they doing?
What are they doing!
I press my face to the windowpane, my nose flattening out to the point of being painful. It can bleed for all I care; I’m not leaving without answers. There’s nothing but an empty, shadowless room in front of me for a solid five minutes. Maybe ten. Finally, when I’m on the verge of bursting through the front door and demanding to know Micah’s whereabouts, he walks into the front room. My eyes rake over his shirt, his pants…but I don’t notice any wrinkles, no buttons unfastened or off-center, no part of him is disheveled or out of place.
And then Presley walks out.
She’s changed. Jeans and a pale yellow shirt have been replaced with a sundress and cardigan. Hair once piled on top of her head now cascades in smooth waves down her well-toned shoulders. She’s wearing make-up; not a lot, but that hardly matters. Presley is dressed up to go somewhere with someone, but who? More importantly, was Micah with her, witnessing this transformation? I glare at both of them, unable to decide which one makes me angrier.
Before I can make up my mind, Micah grabs his tool box and walks out of the room again, and I settle in to watch.
I’m not going anywhere until I get my answers.
I’m not leaving unless they do.
TWELVE
Here’s an answer for you. I’ll even throw in a question as a fun bonus. What do you get when you cross a sundress-wearing, helpless-acting hussy with a jeans-wearing, plumber-masquerading playboy? You get two despicable people who sneak off to a bar on the other side of town, order food, sit in a corner, and feed each other fries and occasionally dance and loudly laugh over drinks for what is going on three straight hours now.
Spying on people isn’t as easy as it seems, not when you spend so much time bending around objects and then remaining immobile for long periods of time so as not to draw attention to yourself. Now along with my throbbing finger from the rosebush incident, my back hurts from sitting in this same position for so long. I’m next to a half-brick wall at the front of the bar, situated between counter and the bathroom—the worst spot in the bar because of the mixed scents coming from both areas. Food and toilet paper don’t mix, in case you were wondering. I’ve dry-heaved more than once, but vodka seems to help. I’m on my second, which puts me a little less on edge at least. The tenseness in my shoulders has relaxed a bit, making me feeling light and free. I’ll need to drink more to make the pain in my back go away. I pick up my glass and polish it off, then raise my hand for another. I drop my hand when the sight of Micah’s waiter gives me a sudden idea.
It’s time for Micah to leave the bar.
It’s time for him to get away from Presley and the power she clearly has over him.
It’s time for both of them to suffer just a little.
I keep a careful eye on the waiter as he takes their drink order and walks away from the table dangling an empty tray between his fingers. He’s practically whistling—his attitude way too upbeat for someone who works in this sort of establishment. I suppose when you’re poor and uneducated, you don’t know the world you’re missing. Not that it matters; I don’t need him for his intellect. In fact, dumb will more likely work in my favor for what I’m about to do.
He heads around the bar and retrieves two glasses, then fills both with ice and speaks to the female bartender working next to him. They both laugh, and I bristle. This bar seems to breed camaraderie tonight, something I need to put a stop to.
I reach for my bag and make my way to the counter, checking over my shoulder to make sure I’m still unnoticed. Not to worry; Micah and Presley are still engrossed in conversation, completely unaware of my presence. I swallow bitter bile and focus on the task in front of me.
“Could I have a rum and Coke, please?”
The bartender glances up at me, then unscrews a bottle of Jack Daniels. “Hang on just a second, let me finish up this order.” He pours Whiskey into one glass and fills the other with Dr. Pepper. Typical Micah with his boring no-alcohol rule.
“Could I get it now, please? My throat is killing me.” I pull out my wallet and slide a twenty toward him. “Keep the change.”
He looks up at me with a raised eyebrow. I ordered a six-dollar drink. Not a bad tip by anyone’s standards. He pockets the bill and reaches for a glass. When he turns toward the ice machine, I know my window of opportunity is wide open, but only for a second. Thank god the pills are already clinched inside my fist.
After a quick glance around to see if anyone is watching, I drop two pills in each drink, then give each glass a quick swirl to make sure they dissolve. I smile to myself and sit back, folding my hands in front of me.
With five pills, you run the risk of your target landing in a hospital for days on end while police sniff around asking innocent people a whole bunch of incriminating questions. Five is too many, I know that now. All I want is for them to get sleepy—really sleepy. So sleepy that they’ll be out the door and ending their night of togetherness within the next five minutes or so. Unlike one, two pills will work fast.
Two will definitely do it.
“A rum and Coke for the lady,” the bartender says, placing the tall drink in front of me. I smile, entertaining the thought of flirting until he places two drinks on a tray and walks around the counter. With my plan in motion, my heart starts to pound. No time for chit chat. I grab my drink and quickly make my way back toward my corner table, not even caring when the bathroom door opens and a woman stumbles out. I roll my eyes and turn back to the important happenings across the room.
The waiter places both drinks in front of Micah and Presley, and to my delight they both pick up their glasses. After clinking them together—what are they toasting, anyway?—both take their own individual sips. My racing heart slows. There’s nothing to be nervous about. Micah takes another long gulp and stands up, then leads Presley to the dance floor. The music is slow, so the dance will be as well. My heartbeat might have slowed down, but my blood pressure skyrockets. I watch as Micah pulls her toward him, then wraps his arms around her waist. She lays her head on his shoulder and their bodies begin to sway. I take in the movements, observe the scene. There’s nothing sexual about it, nothing remotely suggestive occurs. But I don’t like it. They’re way too…comfortable with each other.
Almost like they belong together.
I pick up my drink and down it by half, anger and jealousy zig zagging across my brain and successfully blurring my vision.
They do not belong together. Micah belongs with me, at least until I have no use for him.
I stare in front of me, looking at nothing, until the moment in front of me begs for attention and I snap out of my funk and back to the situation at hand. Micah and Presley are no longer dancing. He is back at the table, arms propped on the back of his chair, head down like he’s trying to steady himself. Presley rubs his back—get your hands off him!—and for one split second I consider running toward him. His savior. But I stay put. Nothing good could come from
either one of them spotting me now. I’m an hour away from home, and there’s no way either would buy any sort of I was just in the neighborhood explanation from me.
Micah sits down. Presley takes a seat and lays her head on the table.
Two pills. I gave them two pills a piece. This cannot be happening again.
After a long moment in which neither of them moves—the longest moment of my life, are they trying to kill me?—Micah stands and helps Presley to her feet. They make their way to the bar. I tuck myself closer to the wall, but not so far away that I miss the sound of Micah’s voice.
“Hey, can you call us a cab? I think we’ve danced a little too hard tonight.”
“Sure, man. I can have one here in a minute.” Micah tells the guy thank you and sits on a stool. Presley leans against him, slumped against his side.
“You okay?” I hear him whisper to her. It’s all I can do not to huff a string of profanities. Of course she’s okay. She ingested sleeping pills, not meth for heaven’s sake. Two minutes. It’s been two minutes. Four tops. I knew it would work fast, but Presley’s reaction is ridiculous. She’s a lightweight. Weak. More proof that she is half the woman I am. I can handle anything life throws at me with more class than anyone I know.
Micah is practically cradling her. You might think they would be more discreet considering I’m sitting right here. I drain the rest of my rum and Coke and hiccup into my hand. Too much carbonation can mess with digestion, I’ve found.
The bartender announces rather loudly that the cab has arrived. I watch as Micah nudges Presley awake and the two of them rather awkwardly make their way to the door. At the last minute he picks her up. She giggles just before nestling her face into his neck, raising her head again to watch as he fumbles with the door. I hiccup again while he holds it open with his foot. He’s supposed to be tired; how is he managing to carry her? Stupid soda. Clearly the caffeine is having a counter-affect.
Finally Micah gets the door open and maneuvers them both through it. Just before the door closes behind them…
I swear Presley looks right at me.
THIRTEEN
I sit up with a start.
Wide awake, high alert. But everything’s hazy.
It hurts to fall asleep across your dashboard when you have nothing but an old hooded sweatshirt to use as a pillow. My back hurts. My neck. My hand. I will hate roses for the rest of my life.
Drool slips out of my mouth. I catch it with my index finger.
I look out the window, down the street, squinting against the bright morning sunlight. I need sunglasses or a ski mask, something to dull the ache behind my eyes. There’s sleep sand blocking my vision. I swipe it away with a knuckle.
That’s when I remember where I am.
They came here. I followed them back. One cab, two people, her apartment.
I think they’re still inside.
This won’t do.
This won’t do at all.
I snap a picture of Presley’s door and post it to Instagram. Just driving by… the caption reads.
Micah needs to know that I’m onto him. Presley needs to be scared. And then he needs to beg me to take him back and she needs to beg him to go.
It’s almost funny, the irony in our separate situations.
What goes around does indeed come around.
PART THREE
Presley
FOURTEEN
I was sober when I first saw her at the bar.
She doesn’t think I saw her, but I did. I was dancing with Micah, and I looked to the left. One second. One glance. At first I thought I was conjuring up images from that spot across the bar—I’ve never liked Mara. Maybe I was looking for bad things to happen. But it was her. She hid behind a wall sipping a drink, out of sight out of mind. That phrase is a lie. Mara was on my mind even before she drugged me.
I was drunk the second time I saw her at the bar.
She doesn’t think I know what she did, but I do.
FIFTEEN
I met Micah when I was eleven years old. He was twelve and somehow more messed up than me, which is saying a lot when you’re a girl whose mother dabbles in trying to permanently scar you. And considering she succeeded more than once in places no one can see, that makes Micah’s childhood situation a world-class tragedy. The spot under my arm throbs and I press a finger to it. The pain happens every time I give it any sort of attention, even in my mind.
Some might call them phantom pains. For me, they’re all too real.
When Micah walked over to me that first day on the sidewalk, I knew even without the physical signs that he was wounded. I might have been a kid, but I was already wise enough to know that you can see it in the shoulders. Unlike a shy person or a self-conscious person who walks with the slumped posture of uncertainty—think Eeyore with his whining and poor me attitude—a battered person carries their fear between the collarbones and shoulder blades. They’re both stiffly alert and quick to jump at the slightest provocation, a grenade just as the pin gets pulled. Hold it steady and don’t move a muscle, or throw it to the wind and run for your life. Either option leaves you facing a frightening future.
Micah was frightened. That much was plain.
At first I thought it was his father’s fist that caused it; weeks had passed before I discovered there was a lot more involved. Controlling the body is one thing. Attempting to control the mind is another thing entirely. Both are abuse of power, but one doesn’t involve the ability to run. No matter how hard you try, you can’t run from a fractured mind.
Tell me where you hid it, Micah, his father had screamed. And once he found what he was looking for, those words were followed by a You’re never gonna amount to anything anyway and an empty box tossed Micah’s direction. I flinched at the words, an easy thing to do when you have a mother who routinely screams similar things in the same embittered tone of voice. I wish you’d never been born. Those were her words of choice, said to my face, over my head, and behind my back more often than anything else. There might have been twenty-six letters in the alphabet, but my mother needed only fourteen to communicate her strongest feelings.
Sticks and stones is the worst nursery rhyme ever written. Words do hurt. They hurt so bad that a twelve-year-old boy who believes he’s never gonna amount to anything grows up to be a twenty-nine year old man dating wealthy blonds with fake personalities in an unrelenting quest to prove that same father wrong.
Mara.
I can’t put my finger on it entirely, but I see the eye rolls. I see the way she cringes when Micah gets too close. I see the glares she levels my way, completely unprovoked. But even if you took all those things away, there’s a feeling in my gut, an unshakable dread that something isn’t right…that nothing about this will end well.
But for some reason, I’m the only one who notices.
“Hello?” I pick up my phone on the fourth ring, not wanting to answer but caving at the last possible second. Monday mornings are for easing into the weekday workload, not for being bombarded by irate printers who have already managed to make a careless mistake.
“Did you get the file? We need your approval before we can do another print run.”
I make a right turn and sigh. “I’m almost to the office. I’ll check it when I get there and send you a text. Is the article on the front page this time like it’s supposed to be?”
“Yes, we got it corrected.”
“Good. Give me thirty minutes and you’ll have an answer.”
I don’t even wait for a response, just end the call and toss my phone on the seat beside me, trying to not let a bad mood take over my day. Micah’s article was left off the first run completely. I spent until midnight Friday night laying out the newspaper exactly the way I wanted it only for someone to delete the entire thing before printing the paper the wrong way. What a waste of time and paper. Not to mention the time it took to conduct the interview and make nice with Mara.
Mara. All roads seems to point back to her, don�
�t they?
If only Micah would stop being an idiot when it comes to women. Someday it will happen, at least that’s what I keep telling myself.
My phone rings, an old picture of Micah filling the screen. Speaking of the devil in a teal shirt…
“What,” I say, not even disguising the bad mood taking over this car ride.
“What’s your problem?” he says. It’s one of the things I love about him. He doesn’t sugar-coat anything. It’s also one of the things I hate.
“Oh nothing. It’s just that the printer somehow managed to leave the entire front page off the newspaper before they went to print, and now I have to go approve the latest version before they run it again. And my coffee maker broke this morning and wouldn’t brew a darn thing. It’s a great day here. Be glad you’re not with me.”
“I am. You’d probably try to run over me. Also you should quit that newspaper and get a job that might actually go somewhere one day.”
“Leave me alone, Micah. I’m not in the mood for one of your lectures right now.”
He laughs. I try to, but the comment stings. He has a point; no one buys newspapers anymore, which is precisely why I’m so determined to keep it going. We lose something every time we shut the door to the past. In our unrelenting quest for advancement, we take two steps backward. Conversations have been reduced to three-word texts that get misinterpreted faster than a political speech during re-election week. People no longer care about intent or perspective unless it’s their own. When did we lose our way? When did we become a society so hell-bent on being right about everything? In my opinion, it happened the day Facebook rolled out and digressed with each new medium of social media. I’m rarely on it and have considered getting rid of it all together, even though I know posting more often would probably help me sell more newspapers.
Speaking of newspapers, I’ll give up on this one the day someone pries it out of my cold, dead hands.