by Nancy Adams
The two friends got changed for dinner, Margot taking a shower due to being a little grubby after the motorbike ride through the dusty roads. An hour or so later, the sparkling nights sky hung over their heads as they walked along the cobbled roads past the men baking corncobs over coals on little trailers that they pulled along on bicycles, the smells filling the smoky air, neon lights hanging outside buildings lighting up the old town in a bright blue haze. They also passed the fruit sellers and the jewelry peddlers who set their stalls up especially along the routes that the tourists took.
Margot stopped at several, looked at the merchandise, decided that the prices were too steep, and moved on. The two strolled on until they were passing down a narrow little road that bent down toward the riverbank. Soon, they were making their way into the large stone building of the riverside restaurant and walking through the inside, past several occupied tables that sat in the tight little alcoves at the edges. They made their way toward the back, where there was a balcony overlooking the river, and both sat down at a table at the edge, ordering a bottle of local Malbec. Once the waiter had gone to fetch the wine, they sat watching the night fishermen as they fished from their long, slim boats with lamps and nets, doing amazingly well to keep their balance as they stood up on the little boats, eyeing the water for anything shining back in the lamplight.
“This is the time they catch crocodiles, you know,” Margot stated as they both leaned on their elbows watching the men spread their nets out into the water. “They use the lamps to spot the eyes shining in the light.”
“Yes,” Juliette replied. “One year, Jules and I sat and watched them drag in a huge specimen. He must have been nearly twenty feet long, and it took six of them to get him up there onto the bank. Jules, being his usual nosy self, jumped down from the balcony onto the bank and went to join them in the long grass. He stood just off the men as they circled the beast, the thing lashing its tail out every now and then, before rolling over in the net.”
“They can break a man’s leg with their tail,” Margot put in.
“Yes. I recall standing here watching the scene with a worried feeling aching in my heart. I was so scared that it would escape the net—and the men—and march straight up to Jules and gobble him up. He, of course, didn’t give a damn, and at one point he even helped keep ahold of part of the net while one of the men attempted to get a spear into the back of the croc’s neck. When I watched Jules get so close to it, my heart almost climbed up my throat and out of my mouth.”
Juliette went silent for a moment as her eyes glazed over. Margot reached across and once again took her friend’s hand.
“You miss him so much, don’t you?” Margot smiled at her.
“Yes,” Juliette replied softly as she gazed out at the fishermen.
Margot studied her friend’s sad expression for a moment as the latter gazed at the action on the river. There was such forlornness in Juliette that when Margot looked at her, she felt it permeate out of her friend and begin to affect her own heart.
Having sat watching the river for a moment, Juliette turned slowly to face Margot and added, “If I felt like that then, Margot—if I felt such fear for him as he approached that crocodile—then how could I be so cold as to abandon him? If I feared harm being done to him then, why could I just run away from the harm done…”
But she didn’t go further. The waiter had returned with the wine and Juliette hushed herself, merely smiling at the young man as he poured her a glass of the delicious red. He offered a small amount to taste and when she had, Juliette remarked that it was very good.
Having served the wine, the young Colombian asked if they were ready to order and the ladies asked for another ten minutes, to which he bowed slightly and left them to gaze out at the wide river.
“He forgot to light our candle,” Margot exclaimed when he’d left.
Juliette smiled, took a lighter from her bag, leaned across the table and lit the candle that poked from an old wine bottle.
“That’s better,” Margot said when the flickering light was fully illuminated.
“What are you going to have?” Juliette inquired.
“I was thinking of eating fish, but I changed my mind about a second ago and have decided to go for the ajiaco instead.”
“So you’ve gone from fish to chicken?”
“Yes,” Margot smiled.
A little later they ordered; Margot ordering the ajiaco—a type of South American stew with chicken, corn and beans—and Juliette deciding on bandeja paisa—which is basically a platter of beans, rice, fried eggs, chorizo sausage and different local vegetables. The food was wonderful, and the gentle waters of the wide river, the smell of burning wood floating through the air, the fishermen in their boats, the noisy bugs in the grass and the sparkling stars above their heads, all gave the night a lazy feel. The two finished their meals and sat drinking the last of the wine, the alcohol adding to the languid haze of the evening, gazing out at the moonlit river, watching fireflies bobbing above its surface, fish sporadically splashing the water as they leaped out to catch the various insects that hovered above the river.
“How happy are you, Juliette?” Margot suddenly asked.
Juliette turned to her friend and simply said, “Why?”
“Because I don’t think you are.”
Juliette gave her friend a sad smile and took her hand in her own.
“I don’t get to be happy,” she said across the flickering gloom of the candle.
“You do,” Margot stated firmly. “You should be happy.”
“Why should I be happy after what I did, Margot? There hasn’t been a day gone by when it hasn’t haunted me. And to make it all worse, my treatment of Jules goes to show how bad I’ve become.”
“You’re a good person, Juliette,” Margot assured her.
Juliette looked Margot straight in the eyes and said, “Good people don’t kill.”
“You had no choice,” Margot retorted. “And we’ve been over this a thousand times.”
“And a thousand more will it torture my conscience until my eventual death.”
Margot let out a sigh. The two best friends had been traveling together now for thirteen years, and had known each other a further ten before that. Over those years, they had discussed each other’s lives to the point where they were both experts on the other. Both women had so much balanced upon their tired shoulders and often sat for hours attempting to decipher the intricacies of their lives, striving to reach catharsis through the act of talking about it, attempting to exorcise the demons of their pasts. But old wounds stay open and sensitive, and catharsis had only been partially achieved for both of them. Margot knew that Juliette would never reach a sense of peace on her own, and it was with this in mind that she had kept in contact with Jules, realizing that the only true way that her friend could finally achieve emotional release would be through facing Jules, her love.
Margot knew for sure that the old man held no ill in his heart for Juliette, only love. He understood Juliette better than any creature on Earth, including Margot. It had taken so much strength not to say anything every time Juliette had mentioned how much she suspected Jules despised her. She felt like screaming at Juliette that he loved her as much today as he always had, that in fact he’d written that in at least five of the letters that he’d sent to Margot. But Juliette had always sworn Margot never to contact Jules and never to inform him of their whereabouts. Margot wasn’t entirely sure why this was, but sensed that Juliette wished to make her own mind up on the subject and not have her hand swayed for her. But as each year had passed, Juliette had not bothered to reach out to her love, and each year she appeared to wilt even more. Margot felt that left to her own devises, Juliette would never contact Jules and, therefore, never attain peace within her soul.
When Margot found Juliette thirteen years earlier, having been out of contact with her for four years at that point, Juliette was drinking heavily and was back doing what she had done to get b
y ever since she was a girl: prostitution. Jules had pleaded with Margot in his letters to her from prison, asking for her to go in search of Juliette and help her—claiming that he’d had nightmares in his cell about his love. Horrifying visions of her falling into an abyss of self-loathing and animal men eating her up as she offered herself to them.
And it was lucky that Margot acted on Jules’s nightly visions.
Because what Margot found in that L.A motel thirteen years ago was a fragment of Juliette.
What Margot found was a woman close to the edge, drinking herself into oblivion and committing awful acts with strangers in order to fund her own sad death. When Margot had arrived at that motel room, she found Juliette half unconscious with cuts on her arms and booze bottles lying around on the floor. Margot immediately took her friend by the arm and led her away from that terrible place, sensing that the whole motel was somewhere for people to go to when there’s nothing left to them but death. The place stank of decay and hopelessness.
After that, Margot had tended to her delicate friend ever since and funded their whole trip around the world. You see, Margot was once a New York society girl turned bad. She came from extreme wealth, but had battled her own extreme demons throughout her life. When her father had died sixteen years ago, Margot inherited over three-hundred-million dollars in straight cash and countless stocks, bonds, shares and interests that her two older brothers would look after for her. She was completely free in many respects to do as she pleased. As to her father, he had been a very successful Manhattan realty developer with apartment blocks, golf courses and casinos all over America and the world, including Dubai. So to do the right thing by her best friend was pretty simple; after all, Juliette had been there so many times for her, and Margot would be the first to admit that she owed her life to Juliette as much as the latter owed hers to Margot now.
“You know your problem?” Margot suddenly said, turning sharply to Juliette, both having spent the last few minutes in silence.
“What?”
“You’re proud,” Margot let out curtly, before finishing the last of her wine in one gulp and getting up from her chair, wobbling a little as she did.
“Are we going home?” Juliette asked Margot.
“I am. You can stay here and feel sorry for yourself.”
With that, Margot took out her purse, pulled some bills out and then tossed them on the table, before marching off out of the restaurant.
When she had gone, Juliette let out a trembling sigh, her eyes moistening. Margot’s right, she said to herself. She was proud. She always had been. Too proud to look in Jules’s eyes and know that she was in the wrong, that she had wronged him, unable to face the recriminations in her own heart that would come reflecting from his own eyes. First, she had been too proud to stay around after the police had finished questioning her all those years ago in ’84. Then, when Jules’s lawyer had gotten in contact with her stating that his client wished her to visit him in prison, she had put the phone down on the man. Her pride drove her toward booze and in her despair she fell harder than she’d ever fallen before. Margot had appeared to her then in that motel room back in L.A as an angel come to pull her from the tomb of desolation that she lay in.
With a slight tremble, Juliette felt suddenly very alone, and in her loneliness she got up and left the restaurant.
On the short walk home, Juliette thought about her life and realized that too many times in it had she allowed her pride to cloud her judgment.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When she reached the hotel, Juliette found Johnny waiting outside her room. When she’d unlocked the door, she went inside and fetched him some biscuits. She then led the dog outside onto the balcony and fed him there.
After that, Juliette went to bed and, succumbing to the heavy wine, she fell into a deep sleep.
It was then that she dreamt of that terrible night sixteen years ago when she and Jules had been traveling by motorbike across America from California to New Orleans for the mardi gras. They’d reached Louisiana from Texas late at night and a rainstorm had begun lashing them, making it almost impossible for Jules to read the road. In the blinding rain, they’d pulled up at some farm and found a barn. The two of them in desperation decided to smash the door’s padlock off with a rock they found. Juliette remembered the relief they felt when the doors swung open and they dove inside the dry barn. Soon, they were clambering up into an old hayloft and removing their wet clothes. Covering themselves in some tarpaulins that Jules found, they curled their wet bodies up for the night.
The next part was what would change their lives forever, and what Juliette dreamt about now in her unsteady sleep.
Juliette was awoken by something blunt and hard being pricked into her side. When she opened her eyes, it took a few seconds for her to realize what she was looking up at. There standing over her and Jules was a very angry-looking man holding a shotgun on the two of them, the barrel staring straight into their eyes. Juliette quickly nudged Jules awake and when he was, his eyes widened at the sight of the barrel glaring down on them.
“Hey, man,” Jules stuttered, “we were caught out in that rainstorm and needed somewhere to crash. I left my bike just up the track and—”
SMASH!
The guy didn’t let Jules finish, smashing him in the mouth with the barrel of the gun. This made Juliette instantly scream out.
“Please, sir,” she said, taking ahold of Jules in her arms and shielding him like a mother protector, “we were only looking for somewhere to sleep for the night.”
“Is that why,” the man began in a snarl, “you broke apart my God-damned lock? You came out here to destroy my private property is what you done.”
“We were desperate,” she pleaded with him.
The man abruptly turned to her and in a flash of metal, Juliette saw stars and felt herself fall back slightly, a terrible, cold pain shooting through her mouth, the taste of blood in her teeth. In the moment that she’d reeled back, Jules leapt at the man and forced him back. As Juliette attempted to get her bearings back after the dizzying blow, just in front of her, Jules fought with the man. At some point, the shotgun had been dropped on the ground and the two rolled around in the periphery of Juliette’s blurred vision. In the confusion, she found the shotgun lying at her feet, not even recalling having stood up. Then she was standing over Jules and the man holding the shotgun in her hands, pointing it at the man as he sat atop of Jules. The man had at some point gotten the better of her husband and had positioned himself on top with his hands around Jules’s throat, throttling him. Juliette looked on in despair, watching Jules’s face go blue as his hands struggled to fend the man off. In an instant Juliette aimed the shotgun and pulled the trigger.
The man exploded in a spray of blood, the shot coming no more than three feet from him, hitting him in the shoulder, neck and face, half his head disintegrating, covering both Jules and Juliette in blood, the blast sending the guy off of the edge of the loft and crashing down into the floor below.
Jules lay there stunned for a moment, before suddenly getting up and grabbing the shotgun from Juliette’s trembling grasp, the woman staring blankly at the spot where the man had been only seconds before, her face dripping with his warm blood.
“It’s okay, baby,” Jules let out softly as he took ahold of her shaking body with his free hand. “We gotta get dressed and get the heck outta here, okay?”
But Juliette only heard him as a distant echo and didn’t respond. She felt fixed in that position and her mind was flying off elsewhere. Before she knew it, Jules had sat her down and was dressing her as best he could.
“The blood, Jules,” she muttered, and he looked up at her as he put her jeans onto her legs.
“We haven’t got time to clean it all off,” he stated. “We’ll get dressed and then let the rain do the rest when we’re back on the road.”
“We’re going to leave him?”
Jules took Juliette’s face in his hands and looked her
square in the eyes, “Juliette we have to get out of here. Don’t you understand? We were breaking the law when we entered this barn—we were trespassing on his property. He was within his lawful right to pull a gun on us. The law states that as we were committing a felony by breaking and entering, any death that occurred directly or indirectly as a result places us as murderers. No chance of claiming self-defense. Do you understand? They will send us both directly to prison for a very long time.”
“But he was strangling you, Jules.”
“They won’t care. It’s like I said: no chance of pleading self-defense when we were committing a crime and he was protecting his property.”
Jules finished dressing her, before taking ahold of the gun, wiping the prints off with the sleeve of his sweatshirt and then throwing it into the hay. The two then climbed down from the loft. As they passed the dead man, Jules leading Juliette by the hand, she looked back at him. The man had landed on his side and was now in the fetal position lying in a huge pool of his own blood, a huge red-and-pink open wound where half his head used to be.
“Don’t look,” Jules let out as he yanked her hand.
Outside, the storm had stopped and they washed their faces in a metal water trough, Juliette merely standing there with glazed eyes as Jules wiped the blood off of her stunned face. After that, they were soon back on the bike motoring away from there. Four hours later, they found a motel on the highway and booked a room. They then took a shower together, Juliette still stunned and simply standing there as Jules washed her down. After that, they slept the rest of the day and then the night too, waking early the next morning.
As they got up from their long slumber, neither of them spoke and when Jules suggested they go for some breakfast, Juliette felt a massive knot reel up in her stomach at the thought of leaving the room. So, instead, Jules went to the diner to get them both something to take away.
When he got back to the room, he found Juliette sitting up in the bed, gazing into space and shaking all over. The moment he saw her in such a forlorn state, Jules ran to her on the bed and took her in his arms.