by Josie Brown
Next stop, the butcher’s shop.
I’d scream if I could.
Zoran is a chatterbox. He hasn’t quit talking since we pulled out of the garage. Having dropped his fake British accent, his sentences slip and slide over Slavic pronouns and badass claims.
I make it easy for him. I can’t talk, let alone move. In other words, I’m a captive audience, both literally and figuratively.
Lucky me.
“I would have liked to have given you a truth serum first, to find out who sent you. The Muslims? The Croats? Surely it wasn’t my old friends, the Serbs? And it can’t be the Mexican government. They have bigger worries than the disappearance of a few grape pickers. If only the injection I gave you allowed you to nod at my questions, but it won’t wear off for a couple of hours.”
Nod? I wish I could reach up and pull the tongue out of his head. We’ve been in the car for at least an hour now, and he’s been giving me a science lesson on what to expect while on his operating table.
He describes his favorite instrument: a Blue Max eighteen-inch 45 cc Heavy Duty gas chainsaw. He uses it to chop up the bodies after cutting open his victims and removing vital organs, while they’re still alive of course. He explains that, like me, they were first given a neuromuscular block to paralyze them. But he’s such a sicko that he skips the anesthesia that would block their pain.
“We should be at my ranch in another hour.” As if reading my mind, he adds, “The drug won’t wear off before we get there. And by the way, any friends who may come looking for you will be disappointed. You see, the cabin is not in my name. It belonged to a now-deceased fellow whom I met while fishing on Big Bear Lake. The lonely old hermit died of a sudden heart attack, while feeding his hogs! They ate him too. Can you imagine that? You see, to those animals, human flesh is a delicacy, compared to the garbage they ate before I came along. As you can imagine, I keep them well fed. Tonight they will be feasting, ecstatically I might add, on your leftovers.”
Not if I can help it.
Seems I’ll have some help with Los Angeles’ typical late Friday afternoon traffic. As the I-10 crawls east toward San Bernardino Valley, every now and again Zoran looks back at me in the rear-view mirror. I keep my face totally still. The whole drive I’ve been memorizing turns, and looking out the window for glimpses of expressway signs.
I vow to get back to my children. My twelve-year-old daughter, Mary, and my ten-year-old son, Jeff, need to be picked up from basketball practice. And before after-school pickup, I was going to stop at a toy store in East South Central, which, I’ve been told, still has a few Furbys on the shelf. I have every intention on watching five-year-old Trisha squeal with delight when she opens it on Christmas morning
And of course, Jack knows Ratko was on my to-do list today. If I don’t show up, he’ll be frantic. From the day of Trisha’s birth and until before Jack came into their lives, I’d lied to my children and told them their father had gone away, “on business.”
Did it stop them from feeling deserted? No.
If Ratko has his way and I disappear into the gullets of some hogs in the middle of nowhere, once again they’ll be devastated.
This resolve drives my desire to move any appendage. By the time we turn onto State Road 330 going north, I’m able to bend a random finger, to curl a single toe. Twenty minutes later, by the time he has veered left onto State Road 18, I can finally flex my ankle, and then my wrist. Now, if only I could move my arms…
I can, just barely.
“Almost there,” he chortles gaily. “By the way, the hogs love the sound of the saw. To them, it’s the dinner bell. When I turn it on, you’ll hear them squealing with delight. Then again, maybe not, since you’ll be screaming even louder.” He pauses, as if a new thought has just struck him. Too bad it isn’t a hammer instead. “Tell me, Mrs. Pitt or whatever your name is, are you a drinker? No problem if you can’t nod. I guess I’ll know soon enough. The telltale sign is any swelling of the liver. If so, I won’t be able to sell it. That’s okay. I’ll enjoy it myself, with grilled onions, and a hint of dill—”
The thought of being the main course in Ratko Zoran’s dinner propels me upward.
Between the crux of my elbow and the driver-side headrest, Ratko is in a headlock from which he cannot move. He chokes and flails, but I refuse to let go. Although the car swerves all over the road at sixty-miles an hour, I hold tight. Then, on the count of three I wrench his head fast, to the right, until I hear the snap that tells me I’ve broken his neck.
Only after he chortles his last gasp do I look up. Before my death grip, Zoran had steered the car onto the Stanfield Cutoff, a sliver of a road that unites both sides of Bear Lake at its narrowest juncture. The car sidles off the unprotected shoulder and into the lake.
There is no time to jump out before nose-dives into the lake.
The BMW sinks below the lake’s cold, choppy waves. The water pressure against the doors keep it sealed, like a tomb. With the electrical system dead, I can’t open a window, either. Soon the oxygen will be exhausted. I can only hold my breath for three minutes, tops.
Still, I’ll be damned if I’m going to be found in the bottom of this lake with this war criminal. Not with Christmas just around the corner.
I’m pounding on the window when it hits me. My diamond.
Immediately, I etch around the back window with my ring. Then I brace myself on the back of the front seat before kicking it out with both feet.
The force of the kick pushes out the glass, and me with it. As the water flows into the vacuum of dead air I leave behind, I feel myself being sucked into the dark, frigid abyss. I force myself to open my eyes, to look for light, anywhere.
Finally, over my head, I see something. My lungs burn as I kick with all my strength, toward the brightness.
I burst up out of the water like a buoy submerged too deep for too long. I cough out water and fear while bobbing in the gentle waves of the lake.
My teeth chatter as I swim to shore. I don’t care that I look like a drowned rat. I’m still alive.
When I reach the road, I head west, the way we came. I’ll keep running until I come across a store, or someone with a cell phone, so that I can let Jack and the kids know I may be late, but that I’ll be home, soon.
They must be worried sick about me.
Chapter 2
How to Buy the Freshest Tree
One of the most beautiful traditions of Christmas is the cutting, decorating, and lighting of a conifer brought into your house.
Traditionally, the tree was adorned with fruits and nuts (not the California kind) and lit (not by an arsonist) on Christmas Eve, then removed the day after the twelfth night, which is January fifth. But heathens (yes, I mean you) have decided to stand tradition on its head (I guess this is better than putting its head in a guillotine) and put up the damn thing right after Thanksgiving, then take it down in the first week of January.
Traditionalists, this is considered bad luck.
You have been duly warned.
When hunting down a Christmas tree (very different from hunting down human prey, FYI), besides gauging it for height, berth, and the perfect conical shape, you should also be concerned about its freshness. This is especially true if you insist on leaving it up for five or six weeks.
The needles on fresh trees are green and bend easily, as opposed to brown and prickly. You will feel an oily sap on them, as well as on the tree’s bark. And of course, the tree smells fabulous!
And by the way, the same buzz saw you use to cut it down can be used on your next victim! (Helpful hint: Be sure to buy a saw with a variety of blades.)
“Mom! Where have you been? We’ve been waiting here since basketball practice ended two hours ago!”
Jeff’s way of saying Thanks, Mom for picking me up, and boy do I miss you and love you and can’t live without you leaves a lot to be desired.
Yes, admittedly, I’m late for my turn at carpooling Jeff and his two pals, Morton Smi
th and Cheever Bing, from basketball practice.
Hey, that’s what happens when a hit doesn’t go according to plan.
I would have been much later, too, if a trucker hauling artichokes and Roma tomatoes from the Central Valley hadn’t been kind enough to give me a lift off the side of a lonely two-lane blacktop.
But just my luck, I hitched a ride with the only trucker in the world who sees no need to have a cell phone when he's got his trusty old Cobra CB radio, so I had no way to call Jack and let him know the mission was accomplished, sort of.
When I hopped in the trucker’s cab, he warned me he could take me only as far as downtown Los Angeles. But he changed his mind and dropped me across the street from Ratko’s office in Beverly Hills when he realized I knew every song on his Best of Bonnie Raitt CD.
He sighed and wiped away a tear as I finished the last mournful stanza of “Not the Only One.”
“It’s as if Bonnie is sitting right here beside me.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” I said, nodding shyly. I may not be a redhead (at least, not today) but the raspy voice was natural enough after that frigid dip in Big Bear Lake.
Little did the trucker know how much that particular song means to me. Only recently I found out about Jack’s unresolved feelings for Valentina.
To put it bluntly, I’m not his “only one.”
No doubt he’d claim the same about me. Not only did my ex, Carl, let me in on Jack’s little secret in the hope of breaking us up, he’s also made it clear that he plans on staying in my life, despite my telling him to get lost.
Even his position as number three on every terrorist watch list hasn’t kept him from wooing me, threatening me, and shooting me.
I know he’s a crack shot, so it must be true that love is blind.
Considering how many of my bullets have just grazed him, I guess I have a few unresolved issues as well.
Now that I’m on dry land and within arms reach, does my son even notice that I’m sopping wet from head to toe?
Nah. That would mean he’d have to look up from the video game he’s playing on his cell phone.
Okay, I can play a game as well. “So sorry! I was out Christmas shopping.”
His anger dissipates when he hears this. I can tell by the silent shrug that accompanies his quick glance into the back of my Honda SUV.
To dodge the fact that there are no store bags anywhere in sight, I ask, “Why didn’t you call you father?”
“I did! But when I told him you weren’t picking up your phone, he sounded sort of worried and hung up fast."
"Call him back and tell him I'm here." The last thing I need is for Jack to worry about me, now that I'm safe and sound.
As he hits Jack's digits, Cheever pipes up. "And my mom should be here any minute." Then he adds with a smirk, “But she sounded pissed. You know, she schedules her mani-pedi when it’s your turn to drive, so she can gossip with Mrs. Swift and Mrs. Cockhead… um, I mean Mrs. Coxhead.”
Cheever’s deliberate faux pas gets the desired effect. Morton snorts the last of his Red Bull through his nose and almost chokes on it.
I wince when I hear this. Not because Morton might suffocate on my watch (frankly, a loss of oxygen to his brain may calm down the kid’s libidinous fantasies), but because it means I’ll get yet another tongue lashing from Penelope Bing for showing up late to carpool.
There’s still time to beat her fair and square. If he’s already at our house, and I fill his belly with a nourishing bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup and Kraft grilled cheese sandwiches, she’ll have nothing to bitch about.
I drill the boys with my best do as I say look. “Jump in! Now! I’ve got a pot of hot soup and sandwiches waiting—”
“What about Mary?”
“Oh!” How could I forget my eldest daughter? Thank goodness Trisha, my youngest, had an after-school play date with her pal Janie Breck, whose mother owns the largest McMansion in Hilldale. “Well, where is Mary? I asked her to wait here, with you.”
Cheever chortles like a hyena. “Making out under the bleachers with Trevor Smith—”
Both Jeff and Morton slap their hands over his mouth. “Shut your piehole, Cheever! They paid us a buck each to keep quiet, remember?”
His bites to their palms have them yelping. “Yeah, well, I warned them with anything under a fiver, I have a selective memory.”
Mary’s crush on Trevor Smith, Morton’s brother and the lead forward on Hilldale Middle School’s Varsity Wildcats basketball team, grows exponentially with every three-pointer he makes. The last thing I need to hear is that Mary and Trevor’s ongoing attraction for each other has gone from shyly flirtatious wordplay to outright foreplay.
I jump out of the car and run into the gym. It’s empty, but I hear moaning, and pain has nothing to do with it. I move quickly but silently under the bleachers until I spot them huddled together on the floor, eyes closed and lips pressed together.
By her fierce concentration, my guess is that it’s not the first time she’s been kissed.
This realization is both sweet and bitter for me. While your first kiss is a rite of passage that every girl dreams of, every parent contemplates it with both angst and pride. Yes, we are proud that someone sees the beauty in our child. But we dread the thought of her experiencing heartbreak or that the runaway desire of some boy who may have her growing up much too soon.
When Mary fell for this guy, where was I? Doing laundry? Watching Trisha attempt pirouettes in ballet class? Saving the world from terrorists?
Wherever I was, it certainly doesn’t matter now. Neither do my feelings about it. She has a right to grow up, fall in love, and make her own mistakes.
Within reason! My goodness, she’s still twelve years old.
And in time, she’ll understand she has nothing to hide from me, that she can always share her celebrations with the one who loves her as no one else can. She will realize I welcome every rite of passage on her life journey.
Had my mother felt the same way about me? I’ll never know. She died of cancer when I was only eleven.
I guess that’s why I see no reason for chastising Mary for keeping this very special memory a secret. But I’ll break every finger on Trevor’s hand if it reaches its final destination, her breast.
“Ouch!” Trevor cries, as I yank his pinky finger as far back as it will go. “Mrs. Stone? What are you doing here?”
At the sound of my name, Mary’s eyes pop open. When she sees me, she practically leaps straight up in the air.
“Mom! I didn’t expect you—”
“Obviously not.” I give Trevor’s hand one more hard twist, behind his back, and point him toward the exit. “Get in the car, now. Both of you. Trevor, I’m dropping you and Morton at your house.”
“No, Mom! Trevor was going to help me with my math homework!”
“I think Trevor has taught you enough for one day. Let’s get moving.”
Mary glowers, but she follows Trevor out the door.
But we’re too late. By the time we’re back outside, Penelope Bing is already there. With her is her usual momtourage, Tiffy Swift and the unfortunately named Hayley Coxhead.
“So you finally remembered you’d left the children out here in the cold to fend for themselves.” Penelope’s glare could melt ice.
Tiffy’s laser-sharp gaze sweeps over me. “My God, Donna, you’re a mess! You look as if you took a swim in some lake!”
I’m envisioning what it would have been like, had she been down in the icy depths of Big Bear, as opposed to me.
Or worse yet for her, with me.
The thought puts a smile on my face. “Sorry I’m so late. I got caught in a flash flood, east of the city. Christmas shopping. But now that I’m here, you ladies are welcomed to go back to your spa treatments.”
“As if,” Hayley mutters. “Our pedicures are ruined! See?” She arches a foot in my direction.
Her paint job looks fine to me. It’s even got some jewel inlays. A
whiff of Hayley’s breath confirms my suspicions. Not only were they done with their mani-pedi’s, they had time to hit a happy hour as well.
They’re lucky I’m in a holiday mood. “Yeah, your foot is quite a mess. Let me make it up to you. Why don’t you ladies finish up with your appointment? Penelope, I don’t mind Cheever hanging with us for another hour or so. He can stay for dinner, too.”
Penelope purses her lips as she considers my generous offer. The tilt of her head brings the others into a huddle with her. If it were a full moon, I’d be convinced that I was watching the first scene in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Granted, I don’t hear any chanting of Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble. Instead, they’re debating the cons of leaving Penelope’s precious cargo in my obviously not-so-capable hands with the pros of downing yet another pitcher of mojitos, possibly delivered by a bow-tied but bare-chested waiter at their favorite watering hole, the Hilldale Chippendales Club.
The waiter has nothing on Jack. This is blatantly obvious when his Lamborghini comes roaring into the parking lot.
His deep green eyes scan every face, but his boyish grin breaks out only when, finally, he catches sight of me behind the children.
In a flash, he’s out of the car. His long, muscular legs moves like pistons as he runs to me. Tall and broad-shouldered, he arches down over me as he takes me into his large, strong arms. His deep, hot kiss leaves me limp with the longing that comes with the realization that life is too fleeting, and passion is its most precious reward.
Our love spell is broken by Morton’s hiccup.
When I open my eyes, I find Jeff and his friends staring at me, as if I’m some sort of exotic creature. My son is still fascinated that there is actually someone in this world who sees his mother as an object of desire.
Mary’s look doesn’t waver either. It’s not the wide-eyed grin of her brother’s, but a scowl. “Maybe you two should get a room,” she mutters under her breath.
I know what she’s thinking. At least her display of affection wasn’t quite so public.