by James Sperl
“Okay. Now can you go ask Terrance to fire up the grills and heat the fryer oil? I don’t suspect it’ll be too long before the first person pushes through our doors once we open.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Valentina peeled away and walked directly for Terrance by the bar. He listened to her then looked up at Clarissa and nudged his chin before he disappeared into the kitchen. Valentina smoothed her apron then helped Mary set the tables.
Here we go.
Turning back toward the entrance, Clarissa crossed the room until she held the plastic “OPEN” sign in her hands. Instead of flipping it over, she only held it. She stared through the glass into the street and watched as cars and passersby went about their day. She tried not to think about how some of the people she saw might not be around the same time tomorrow, that some of them may very well just cease to be, whisked away to who knew where for who knew why. Would she be one of them? Would she know it if it happened to her? Could she just be walking down the street, wandering through a store, or driving along in her car one minute only to suddenly not be there the next?
And now Maxwell…
A tear teetered on the lip of her eye, but she tamped it away before it had the chance to stain her cheek. No, she would not cry. She couldn’t afford to. People were going to start crumbling all around her, and they would be looking for someone they could lean on. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but she felt she needed to be that person. With unity came strength. She would crumple into a ball and cry later when it was all over.
Now, though, she had a job to do.
Wiping her palms on her pants and standing tall, Clarissa flipped over the sign. Aunt Mae’s was officially open for business.
CHAPTER 11
There were just enough seats in the upper section of the away-team bleachers off the twenty-yard line. It was a good thing Clarissa, Rachel, and Valentina decided to arrive a little early. The place was filling up fast.
Clarissa didn’t think she had ever seen the football stadium so crowded, not even when Pastora played their fiercest rival, the Greenhall Timber Wolves. It looked as if the entire town had turned out for the meeting, but she knew this was impossible, at least by a count of thirty-three.
Joe wasn’t kidding about the importance of the meeting. Dispersed over the length of the field was a small army of city employees: police officers, firefighters, EMTs (complete with what appeared to be every available ambulance the city had parked in the distance), city council members, and every other sort of local politician or person of influence. Everyone congregated in loose groups, their eyes continually evaluating the crowd, which continued to grow as people streamed in from every direction.
Which was a problem.
Even if only half the town showed up, it would still have been considerably more than Pastora High School’s measly stadium could handle. Clarissa didn’t know the exact capacity of the stadium, but she’d wager 4000 was a fair bet. And now the city expected it to accommodate more than three times that amount.
Both end zones swelled with people, the crowd deepening by the minute. Folks sat on the ground in front of the bleachers ass to knees, others having resorted to standing on the roofs of their cars in the distant parking lot. It was already a full house and one that looked to get even more full. Fortunately, the powers that be had thought to erect a high stage for the event, so regardless of where a person stood or sat, everyone could see the mayor.
“This is insane,” Rachel said, as she panned over the crowd. “I mean seriously. This is, like, the whole town.”
“I know,” Clarissa said, her voice raised above the din. “I didn’t even know this many people lived here.”
Valentina searched the field. “What do you think he’s going to say?”
“Who, the mayor?” Clarissa said. “I don’t know. I only hope that whatever he says it’s good news. Lord knows we could all use a bit of that right about now. But Joe did mention something earlier today that had me lifting my eyebrows a bit.”
Valentina scowled. “Something Joe said? What?”
“Something to the effect of the mayor knowing something that maybe the news didn’t. Like they had some information that wasn’t reported.”
“Oh, please,” Rachel scoffed. “How would little old Pastora know something that the rest of the world didn’t? Sounds like Joe was trying to give you all a pick-me-up.”
“Maybe, but he seemed sincere. It wouldn’t be like him to spread false hope.”
Rachel shrugged and gave a conceded head bob: Maybe you’re right.
Clarissa checked her watch: 6:50 p.m. The meeting was scheduled to start at seven, but with the way people were still filing in, she felt a good fifteen, twenty minutes remained before things commenced. It was just enough time to take care of some personal business.
“I’m going to run to the bathroom.”
“Now?” Valentina said. “It’s almost time.”
“I know, but…” Clarissa looked around and lowered her voice. “…I’ve got to go. I’ll be back before things kick off.”
“Okay, but hurry.”
“Seriously,” Rachel said.
“Okaaaaay,” Clarissa said, bugging her eyes at her friends.
As she stood, she stared over the sizable crowd. It might take me fifteen minutes just to wade through everyone, she thought. She hoped she was right about the meeting starting late. Like everyone else in attendance, she was more than intrigued to hear what the mayor had to say. She didn’t want to miss a single minute. But first things first.
Nature called.
* * *
Clarissa had been in the ladies room for the better part of ten minutes. Travis should know—he followed her there.
She’d been inside a long time. Well, it felt like a long time. But seconds tended to seem like minutes when one was impatient. Maybe that wasn’t the right word. Anxious? Excited? Either one was a fitting description for the way Travis felt, but neither fully encapsulated the wonderful turmoil that swirled around his heart. It started the other night when he saw her. It was the first time in eons. She looked great. She looked better than great—she looked magnificent. She had gained confidence, strength, and it radiated out of every pore, suffusing her presence with a loveliness that was difficult to qualify. Travis felt drawn to her. More than he ever had. He’d always carried a torch for her, ever since high school, but that flame had grown exponentially in recent days. He thought it was time Clarissa knew it.
She emerged from the bathroom flicking water from both hands. She proceeded to palm-swipe them on her jeans and walk for the bleachers when the sight of Travis froze her in place.
“Hi, Clarissa.”
Clarissa looked around as if to make sure other people were in sight of her. “What’re you doing here? What do you want?”
“I’m here for the same reason you are. To hear the mayor tell us not to worry and that everything will be just fine, though I think most of us know it won’t be.”
Travis smiled, but Clarissa didn’t see it—her eyes were pinched shut ahead of her response.
“No, not what’re you doing here,” she said, motioning to the stadium surroundings. “I mean what are you doing here. Outside the women’s bathroom. Are you following me?”
Travis feigned insult. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m a stalker?”
“You don’t want to know what I think of you. Now tell me what you want.”
“I don’t want anything. I saw you and just wanted to stop by and say how good it was to see you the other night. It’s been, what…years?”
“Mercifully.”
Travis cocked his head playfully. “Now, now, you don’t mean that. I could tell that bumping into one another was as much a surprise for you as it was for me.”
Clarissa laughed. “You got that right. Just not in the way you’re thinking. And we didn’t ‘bump’ into each other. You just sort of invited yourself to sit down.”
“Well, I figured you wouldn’t mind, being that it�
��s been so long and all.”
Clarissa laughed again, but it was steeped in incredulity and absent a speck of humor. “Jesus, but you’re a delusional fuck.”
“I still think about you, you know. All the time.”
Clarissa’s humorless smile dried up to a thin-lipped line.
“I think about us all those years ago. About what we could’ve been. Man, we would’ve been such the couple! Everybody would’ve been so envious.”
“I, uh…I need to get back to my friends.”
Starting forward, Clarissa attempted to slip past Travis, but he sensed she would try to make a getaway, so he stepped forward. The sudden movement caught her off guard. It forced her back a step into the shadow of the restrooms; the light hanging over its entrance created a suitably dark pocket.
“What’re you doing?” she said. “Get out of my way.”
“Are you going to try and tell me you don’t think about me? That you don’t think about us?”
Clarissa swallowed, her eyes searching for a friendly face beyond Travis, but he knew no one would intervene. They were just a couple having a friendly conversation, after all.
“I think about you,” she said, summoning courage and moving toward him. “But if you knew in what capacity, you wouldn't like me very much.”
“Oooooh, do tell.”
Clarissa smirked, but it didn’t hold. Her attempt at bravado faltered, and soon Travis was staring into the eyes of the same scared rabbit he knew in high school—which was just how he liked it. He liked that she was frightened of him. That she had always been frightened of him, even when there had been no reason to be. At least not early on. But he had given her reason, hadn’t he? Yes, he had most definitely given her something to be frightened about.
“I’d like to leave now,” Clarissa said.
“I’m sure you would.”
“I’ll scream.”
“In this crowd? You’ll start a stampede. Every panicked fat ass will try to run out of here, and when they do they’ll stomp over their fair share of less agile folks, like kids and mothers with babies, but, hey, if you want that on your conscience then be my guest.”
He cupped a hand around an ear and waited, but Clarissa only blinked. He nodded and dropped his arm to his side.
“See, things are going to change soon. Hell, they’re already changing. Everyone feels it, though they don’t know what it is. But I do. Soon, people are going to have to start relying on one another to survive. They’ll have to do things they never thought themselves capable of just to get to the next day. I know it may not seem like that now, but it’s only a matter of time. Days, really. The only question is, who do you want in your corner when things go tits up?”
Clarissa’s eyes watered, though Travis didn’t think she was crying. Sometimes intimidation had the same effect.
“I’m already making a name for myself,” he continued. “From here all the way out to the East Coast. I’m gaining respect and a fan base for what I do. People are responding to my product and asking for more. And I give it to them.” He tilted his head, looked at her sideways. “I know you don’t approve of what I do, but don’t define me by that. I provide a service that’s nothing more than a means to an end. And this life of mine you so disapprove of is paving the way toward a secure future that will be there regardless of what plays out over the coming days.”
Travis stepped even closer to Clarissa. She opened her mouth to yell but stopped herself.
“You could be a part of it,” he continued. “You wouldn’t have to do anything. You wouldn’t have to be involved with anything. Just be with me. I’ll handle it all, do everything. Just be by my side when things go south, because they will, and fast. I can give you protection, Clarissa, and whatever else you need. I just want you to be safe.”
Clarissa blinked away the tears rimming her lids and rose to her full height. “If it came down to either you or being the lone survivor of a fiery, earth-scorching apocalypse, you would be a very distant second choice.”
Travis smirked. “I know you don’t mean that.”
“Oh, I do. I just wish there were stronger words in the English language to convey just how much I mean it.”
Travis tried to broaden his smile, but Clarissa’s honesty diminished it.
“Clarissa, come on. We’re destined.” He reached for her then, tried to place his hand against her cheek. Maybe if she felt his touch she would soften a little and trot back some of the hurtful things she said. But it didn’t go that way.
“Don’t you dare touch me!” she hissed.
Travis’s initial assessment was right—Clarissa had gotten stronger.
Her outburst was loud enough to turn the heads of some nearby passersby, but most just continued on their merry little way. All except for a grubby-looking, mustachioed man, who carried a spare tire around his midsection and easily pushed past the six-foot mark. He looked at Clarissa then stopped when he saw the fear in her eyes.
“Everything all right over there?” the man said.
“We’re fine,” Travis started. “Just having a dis—”
“No, I’m not fine!” Clarissa blurted. “This guy won’t let me leave!”
Travis looked from Clarissa to the man to address him. The break in concentration turned out to be all Clarissa needed to slink by on his blindside and shuffle away. He whirled and caught sight of her too late—she already scurried back to the bleachers.
“Remember what I said,” he called after her. “Everything I told you. It’s coming.”
Clarissa peeked back at him, but quickly turned around, put her head down, and hurried off.
Even though she had gone, the man hadn’t finished intervening.
“Maybe you should just leave her alone.”
Travis found the man again. He was enormous, easily six-three, perhaps even six-four. Travis would never take him in a fair fight—if he were to fight fair.
He dropped his head in mock shame. “You’re probably right. It’s just been a shit day. First, she dumps me and won’t talk to me about it, then I get a flat tire and can’t get the lug nuts off to change the stupid thing.” He exhaled the breath of a defeated man. “Sorry you had to get involved.”
The man stepped closer. “Women have a way, don’t they?”
Travis forced a chuckle. “You could say that.”
“You say you’ve got a flat?”
“Yeah. Just happened in that rocky, piece of shit parking lot over there.” Travis flung his hand past the restrooms toward an area designated for overflow parking. A significant stretch of dark land lay between the two locations. “Now I’m stuck.”
The man glanced in the lot’s direction. “Well, if you’d like, I could give you a hand with it. At least loosen the bolts for you.”
Travis pretended to brighten. “Yeah? You’d do that?”
“Sure. But we need to hurry, so I can get back for the meeting.”
“No, yeah, right. Wouldn’t want to miss what the mayor says.”
The man nodded. “Exactly.”
“Great. We can cut through there.” Travis pointed to the swath of black field past the restrooms. The parking lot sat several hundred yards away. Insignificant pole lights dotted the cars crammed there in dim pockets of white fluorescence. “It’s the fastest way.”
The man gave one chin-to-chest nod. “Lead the way.”
Travis started past the restrooms into the field. It got dark immediately. Even with the stadium lights illuminated, the area outside the immediate vicinity was oddly bathed in shadow. The restrooms were a bit of a walk from the bleachers and situated in the opposite direction of the concession stand (the design decision something he never understood), which left them a freestanding structure that didn’t particularly promote congregating.
Which was just how Travis wanted it.
“What’s her name?” the man said, as he followed Travis.
“Clarissa Evans. Known her pretty much my whole life.”
“That so? Well, it sounds to me like you all are experiencing the telltale signs of relationship fatigue.”
“What’s that?” Travis couldn’t have cared less.
“When a couple is together long enough, they start to find things in each other that didn’t annoy them before but do now. It happens to everyone. Hell, truth be told, I’ve been married eighteen years, and there’re some things my wife does that drive me up a wall that never used to.”
Travis rolled his eyes. “Yeah, like what?”
“Like picking up laundry with her feet. I don’t know why it bothers me. She’s always done that. Scoops up some laundry that didn’t make it into the hamper with her bare feet rather than just bend over and pick it up with her hands. Who does that?”
“No one I know.”
“Exactly! And now I cringe every time I see her do it. It’s like she’s a monkey or something using her monkey feet. And I didn’t marry no monkey.”
“I should hope not.”
Travis forced a chuckle. He veered around several piles of construction supplies covered with opaque plastic sheeting. A cement mixer lay dormant on a concrete slab nearby, prompting a memory of a rumor he had heard that the school was renovating their track and field facilities.
“Point is,” the man went on, “that we all reach that fatigue point where we feel like the interest is gone. I’m not going to lie to you, sometimes it is, but most of the time you just need to look for something different in the other person and then reinvent yourself a little to give them a new angle to view you.”
Travis slowed as he reached a heap of tarped-over rolls of polyurethane sheeting.
“What did you do to change yourself in your wife’s eyes?”
“That took a little bit of thinking. I was never really sure what Marcy liked—”
Travis’s knife was buried to the hilt in the man’s throat before he knew what hit him. The man may have been tall, but nothing beat the element of surprise and a sharp blade.
The man gurgled, blood spilling out of his mouth. His eyes bulged in disbelief. He grappled for the knife, somehow still having the presence of mind to try and pull it free. But Travis expected this. He gave it a ninety-degree twist, the five-inch blade plenty long enough to scramble a portion of the man’s brain and incapacitate him. As Travis hoped, the man was too surprised to call out or yell for help. He sank to the ground silently, Travis easing him to the earth until he lay back and twitched.