What Happened That Night

by Sandra Block

  “Sorry.”

  Then I crawl into bed, feeling the tug of sluggishness pull me in.

  It is a relief, an exquisite relief.

  I sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  James

  I let out another eye-watering yawn.

  “Dude,” Cooper says. “What’s with all the yawning? Didn’t you get any sleep last night?”

  I shrug, feeling another yawn coming, probably because it’s contagious and he said the word. “Some.”

  But he’s right. I didn’t sleep much. But for once, it wasn’t because I was too stressed out or sad. It wasn’t because I was thinking about Ramona or Rob. I was just too happy.

  Last night was odd.

  First off, her friend made a move on me, so she must not be much of a friend. It wasn’t even questionable, so I know it wasn’t just me misinterpreting things. We were walking to the station, and about ten feet away, she grabbed my hand and pulled me in to her and started kissing me. That’s two times in one night, which is definitely an anomaly. But I didn’t want to be kissing her, so I pulled away. Maybe not gently enough.

  She said “What?” and looked hurt.

  I was so shocked that I just said “Dahlia,” which must have been the right thing to say, because she said “Oh, right” and gave me this smile, which was kind of pathetic with her missing teeth. Then she said “I had to try,” which made no sense so I didn’t answer, but she didn’t seem to expect an answer anyway. “You’re the bee’s knees, James. You know that, right?” she asked.

  Again, I didn’t answer, and she gave me this weird, toothless grin and left.

  I looked up bee’s knees when I got home. It’s an old saying, which is probably why I didn’t get it. Still, I definitely have to brush up on my idioms. Never heard of bee’s knees or par for the course. It’s an Asperger’s thing—the idiom problem. But luckily, I pretty much took care of that one back in seventh grade. I kept taking everything too literally when finally my teacher took mercy on me and got me a book of idioms. I memorized them, which helped, because people say idioms all the time, and they usually make no sense.

  But enough about idioms. And Natasha. That wasn’t what made me happy, so happy that I didn’t sleep all night and didn’t even mind.

  What made me happy was the other kiss, with Dahlia.

  It was perfect, which sounds kind of cliché, but really isn’t in this case. It was actually literally perfect. It wasn’t like any of the three previous kisses (four if you count Natasha, which was unwanted so doesn’t really count). The kiss with Dahlia was different. It was right. When we kissed, I felt lit up inside.

  “Dude,” Cooper says. “What’s so funny?”

  I turn away from my screen. “What?”

  “You’re smiling like a mad man.”

  “Oh,” I say, surprised. Usually no one can tell what I’m thinking. “I am?”

  He shrugs. “Whatever. You got up to something last night. But I won’t ask what.”

  I don’t answer, because I really like Cooper, but it’s not his business.

  I reset Taylor Hale’s LexisNexis password, which she seems to forget every other day after swearing “I’ll write it down this time” and then not doing so. I glance at my watch once more when I get a text.

  Coffee??

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Dahlia

  “What’s going on?” he asks in a low voice as soon as the break room is empty. He pulls his chair closer to mine.

  “Nothing.” I play with the long strap of my purse. “I guess I’m a little nervous now that we’re actually doing this.”

  “Next week though,” he says, verifying. “Right?”

  “Yes. Just soon, I mean.”

  “Okay.” He nods, with a thoughtful frown. “Let’s think about it. We have a plan.”

  “Yes,” I agree, “we do.”

  “Next Tuesday, at lunch hour. Tina Delgado doesn’t get back until four. Which leaves us plenty of time.” His tone is purposefully calm. “Did you find out the layout?”

  James cleverly suggested we get the specs of the condo before we get there, to save time planting the cocaine. “Yes.” I zip open my purse, searching for the folded paper. “She faxed it to me.”

  “Who faxed it?”

  “The real estate agent.” I unfold the paper, smoothing it out on the table between us. “I called her about the condo, pretended I was interested in Cary’s unit. She said it was taken, but she could give me one with the same layout.”

  Worry flashes over his face. “Did you give her your real name?”

  “Of course not,” I say, pseudo-offended, and he gives an apologetic grin. “Plus, I sent it to the fax for closings. No one would blink twice at it showing up there.”

  “Good thought,” he says.

  I point to the upstairs on the paper. “Master bedroom closet. I figured that would be a good place to stash the briefcase.” I sit up straight. “Did you get the briefcase?”

  James nods. “Paid in cash.” He stretches out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. “I set the lock to 8-8-8-8.”

  “Same as the keypad.”

  “Yup. Just in case it has some special significance. It’ll be hard to explain that away.”

  “Smart,” I say with appreciation, tapping on my temple. He allows a smile. “Burner phones?” I ask.

  “Yup. I even sent a text off one of them already.”

  “Good. We should space the rest out then.” I inch closer to him. “What did it say?”

  He reaches for his phone. “Here, I wrote it down.” He reads from his notes screen in a stiff voice. “Great stuff, Big G. Can I re-up for another couple ounces?” He looks up at me. “But I spelled that O–Z.”

  I nod, pursing my lips. “Well. That’s not…terrible.”

  “Yeah, it’s not the best,” he agrees. “I went on Urban Dictionary.”

  “Okay.” I clap my hands together. “Let’s do the rest of the list. Scrub hats, booties, and gloves?”

  “Check,” he answers.

  “And I have the baggies, with perfectly ridiculous Big G stickers.”

  James chuckles.

  “So, we have one little issue left,” I say. One of the lawyers walks in, and we stop talking while she fills her coffee cup and puts all the fixings in. There’s an awkward silence as we wait for her to leave and she finally does.

  “What’s that?” he asks.

  “The alarm. There may be an alarm.”

  He pauses. “Did the real estate person say—”

  “She said every apartment has one. But it costs extra to arm it.” I tap my fingers rapidly on the table. “And he does have the money to do it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Again, he pauses, then purses his lips. He leans forward closer to me. “I can offer only a few bad solutions to this one.”

  “All right. Hit me.”

  James pauses, then cocks his head.

  I stare at him a second, then can’t help but giggle. “It’s an expression, James. I don’t really want you to hit me.”

  After a long moment, James looks up at me. “I’m not that good at idioms.” His expression is so raw and vulnerable that it shames me. It cost him something to tell me this.

  “Then I’ll try not to use them,” I say.

  He bites his lip. “It’s just…one more thing to decode.”

  I touch his shoulder, which feels as solid as it looks. “It’s fine. Really.” I take my hand off, still aware of the warmth of his shoulder, the feel of his shirt against my palm. My hand wants to touch it again. “So, go on. Tell me your bad solutions.”

  “Okay,” he says, leaning toward me. “Number one, we could ask Snyder to verify the question of the alarm, but I don’t think we want him suspecting we’re trying to break in.”

 
“Agreed.”

  “Two, we could pay Natasha to go in and plant the drugs.” We meet eyes just a second and simultaneously shake our heads. “Three. We take our chances.”

  I bite my lip. “And if the police come, we’re standing there with a briefcase full of cocaine.”

  “Which leads us to number four, we try to get the hell out of there before the police come.”

  I sigh, putting my elbows on the table. “Those are four very bad solutions.”

  “I don’t disagree,” he says. Then he looks up at me. “So what do you say?”

  I shrug. “Number three. We take our chances. And if it goes bad, number four.”

  • • •

  After work, I’m still on edge, so I decide to head over to Crawley’s and surprise Eli.

  The evening is gray, cold, and depressing. Huddling into my coat, I walk past the Thanksgiving displays and the mini-marts, as well as handful of Thai restaurants, boutiques, and mobile phone stores. The smell of a wood fireplace floats over the air from somewhere.

  As I get closer to Eli’s bar, the streets turn seedier. Rent-to-own shops and Western Unions, where gentrification is running into some turbulence. I’m not afraid though, however run-down the streets might be. My Beretta is safely in my purse, waiting for trouble. And when a man walks by me, grinning at me like I owe him something, I glare right back at him. Because I don’t.

  Finally, I turn the corner, spying Crawley’s blinking neon light ahead, with the W grayed out. The place is dead as usual, and I saunter up to the bar.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” he answers, with genuine pleasure. “You must be here for our award-winning chili.”

  I roll my eyes. They do have a vegetarian chili, but it wouldn’t win any awards unless ravenous dogs were voting. I put my purse down with a thunk, and he hands me my usual Dr Pepper. “So, how’s mission impossible going? Killed anyone yet?”

  “Not yet,” I say.

  Eli shakes his head again, but doesn’t answer, just glances up and down the bar for anyone wanting a drink, but there are no takers. “What’s with this place?” I ask.

  “I don’t mind the break to be honest.” He pulls out some glasses and starts cleaning them with a white rag. “Double Dutch is fucking crazy.” Double Dutch being his other bartending gig.

  “What’s up with you?” I ask. “Any new job leads?”

  “Nah.” He waves off the question with his rag.

  “The development thing?” He was looking into something at Boston University.

  “Decided against it. Hours weren’t great.” He spritzes cleaner on the counter. Hours weren’t great likely means nine to five, which makes it harder to party all night and sleep all morning. “I’m meeting up with Brandon later,” he offers, as a positive slant to his life.

  “Brandon? With the AC/DC tattoo?”

  “Youthful mistake,” he counters.

  “Yeah.” I jiggle my ice cubes. “We’re allowed a few.”

  A guy in his fifties in a business suit strolls near me with a questioning gaze, and I give him an icy smile in return. He settles on a chair three chairs away. “Stoli,” he says, and Eli turns to take care of him.

  “So,” I say, in a low voice. “We’re taking care of the Cary G situation on Tuesday.”

  His expression turns wary. “How’s that?”

  “Planting coke on him.”

  “On him?” he questions. “How are you going to do that?”

  “Not on his person,” I say. “In his condo. In the street. In his name.”

  He spritzes more cleaner on the already-clean counter, the bitter scent filling the air. “So you’re trying to frame him? Like…”

  “Yes. Like framing him. Like framing him as a cocaine dealer.”

  He keeps wiping in circles, robotically. A soccer game blares on the television in the corner.

  “What?” I ask him.

  “What do you mean, ‘what?’” he asks back.

  “You’ve gone silent here.”

  He stops wiping then. “Yeah, Dahlia. I’ve gone silent. I never said I approved of this fucking revenge thing. In fact, I told you not to do it, if I remember correctly.”

  “Jeez,” I say, taken aback at his words. “And if I remember correctly, I never said I needed your approval.”

  “Well, don’t get me involved, then,” he mutters.

  “Fine,” I say, sipping my Dr Pepper, swallowing back my hurt at his reaction. “I won’t.”

  Eli straightens himself up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” He glances around the bar quickly, and no one is listening. “All I’m trying to say is…okay…it’s terrible what happened to you. Of course it is. But, you know, these are real lives here. Real people. This isn’t a game. This guy’s about to get married. He’s gonna have a kid and you’re trying to send him to jail.” His hand clenches the rag. “For real time.”

  “Wow,” I say. “You sure have a lot of empathy for the rapist.”

  He swallows, then looks ashamed. “It’s not that. It’s just… I don’t know. Maybe you’re right.” Eli shakes his head. “I don’t even know what to think anymore.”

  A bit shaken by his response, I consider what we are going to do for a minute, our revenge on Cary Graham. I let in a sliver of conscience, an ounce of guilt. If we get away with this, it could mean years in prison for Cary Graham. Years and years. His fiancée would probably meet someone else. He would never watch his son grow up.

  But all I see is his face in minute 5:11 of the video, as he called out with glee: “Dude, I think I popped her cherry!” He lifted up three blood-tinged fingers in victory, when another voice in the video chided him. “Dude, you’re a fucking idiot. She’s not a cherry. You’re getting sloppy thirds here.” Cary shrugged, grabbing my hips and thrusting away. “I must be so big that I stretched her out, man.” This got a few laughs, and then his face got serious and scrunched up as he gave his final few thrusts and came inside me.

  “You know what,” I say to Eli.

  Eli leans on an elbow, staring up at me. “What?”

  Stoli-Man looks over at us, then back at his drink.

  I don’t bother to lower my voice. “He deserves some real fucking time.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Dahlia

  It takes an agonizingly long time for Tuesday to come.

  Smoothly, James drives us down the leafy, handsome street and we park at the curb across from Cary Graham’s place. Parking isn’t a problem here in the suburbs. As we approach his condo, a car pulls out of a garage a few doors down, and the driver gives us a smile and a little wave through the window. James and I do the same motion, as if it’s choreographed. When I drop my wave, I feel my heart jackknifing in my chest.

  Glancing around quickly, we see no one else, and James slips on latex gloves and punches 8-8-8-8 into the keypad. We hold our breath for one second, but then slowly, the garage door groans open. Stepping inside, James hits the Enter button to close it, and we wait as the door folds the sunlight out, and we are left in a quiet, musty garage.

  “You ready?”

  “Yup.”

  We throw on the rest of the surgical wear, booties, hats, and gloves. Swinging the door open, I realize I am bracing myself for the buzz of an alarm system. We stand in the doorway, staring at the little alarm box, which is, quite mystifyingly, not turned on.

  The small mudroom leads right into the kitchen, which is blindingly white. White-painted wooden floors and cabinets with stainless steel everything else. I feel like I’ve walked into the set of a futuristic sci-fi movie. I don’t have much time to ponder this, however, because just then, a flash of brown fur tears out of the family room.

  I fall against the wall. “Jesus.”

  The Rottweiler stands right in front of us, silver-link collar rattling. His
pink jowls are wobbling, as he lowers himself slowly. His growl vibrates his entire body.

  “Shit,” James whispers in panic. “What should we do?”

  I am frozen to the spot, speechless.

  “Give him a baggy?” he asks.

  “No, we can’t. That might kill him.”

  His growl grows more insistent. “Yeah, but—”

  “Code,” I remind him.

  But the dog lowers even further, his eyes trained on James. He is drooling now. “I get the code and all,” James says, his calm voice belied by the briefcase trembling in his hand. “But I’m pretty sure this dog wants to kill me.” The Rottweiler rears back farther, quivering with excitement and jingling the collar. He does appear to want to kill James. “Maybe just a teaspoon of cocaine?” he asks.

  “Teaspoon,” I repeat, the word giving me a sudden idea. I dash off to the pantry, which is also blazingly white and looks like it’s been organized by someone with OCD. I spot the red-and-yellow jar right away, with Peter Pan taking flight. Unscrewing the lid takes the dog’s attention off James for a second, and I lay the jar on the kitchen floor. The dog takes a quick investigative sniff. “You hide the stuff,” I say. “I’ll watch Cujo.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, but hurry.”

  So he does, tearing up the stairs with the suitcase swinging in his gloved hand. The Rottweiler takes one lick, tongue snaking into the jar, then glances up at me. The look is not a question, but a statement. This is mine. After a few minutes, the dog is clearly not going anywhere, so I shoot up the stairs and meet James on the landing of the plush, almond carpet, coming out of the master bedroom. He has the one large Cary G bag in hand but no briefcase.

  “Where’d you put it?” I ask.

  “Between some sweaters, with a corner sticking out a little. How’s the dog?” he asks, sounding short of breath from nerves.

  “Occupied.” I point at the bag he’s holding like a newly won goldfish from a fair. “What are you going to do with that one?”