Save Me from Dangerous Men--A Novel

by S. A. Lelchuk

  He bit his lip. “I was angry, but I’d never hurt her. I have that gun for self-defense. I work in a bad part of town, been carjacked twice.”

  “How many Percocet did they give you at the hospital?”

  “What?”

  “How many pills? And what milligrams were they? Did you happen to notice?”

  “Only one. They wouldn’t give me more until the booze was out of my system.”

  “So you’re feeling clear-headed? Cognizant?”

  He looked at me in confusion. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Good.” I reached into my purse a second time. This time I took out a small black pistol.

  People reacted differently to guns being pointed at them. Some screamed, some froze, some ran. All kinds of reactions. Robert started jerking his head this way and that. Back and forth like some grotesque jack-in-the-box.

  “This is a Beretta subcompact chambered in forty-caliber hollow points,” I told him. “The subcompacts aren’t worth jack for target practice because the barrel’s too short. But from five feet away that doesn’t matter so much.”

  “You said you weren’t going to hurt me!”

  I pulled the slide back and the gun cocked loudly.

  The only safety I ever used was an empty chamber.

  He started jerking around even more frantically. “Please!”

  I left the gun on him for a long moment. Then in one smooth motion I pulled the slide back, popped the live cartridge out of the chamber, and put the gun down. “I need you to understand your situation. How it’s escalated.”

  “Please,” he said again.

  I walked over to him. Put a hand lightly on his shoulder. Put something in his hand. The cartridge. A small brass cylinder, pointed at one end, still warm from my hand. “I want you to keep that, Robert,” I said, sitting down again. “Think of it as your restraining order. If you ever get mad or lonely and start thinking about maybe finding Angela, I want you to hold this bullet and look at it and remember this conversation. Because if you ever try to talk to her or see her again, I’ll use a bullet identical to this one and shoot you in the head.”

  He stared at the oblong cylinder in his palm, saying nothing. I let him think.

  He looked up. “I understand,” he finally said.

  “Good.” I put the gun away.

  “So in the bar tonight, all those lies about wanting me, flirting … You were planning this the whole time, weren’t you?”

  “I didn’t lie. I don’t lie. I didn’t tell you a single word that was untrue.”

  “You hit on me.”

  “No. I let you hit on me. And I let you make assumptions about what I wanted.”

  “Why’d you have to hurt me, then?”

  “You put your girlfriend in the hospital. What happened to you is fair. Your injuries.”

  “So why come back here?”

  “The two parts are a system, Robert. If I just hurt you, that might make you angrier. If I just pulled a gun, you might not take me seriously. This way, you do.”

  “How did Angela find you?”

  “That’s not the point. The point is that I found you. It’s not about her anymore. It’s about us—me and you. That’s what matters now.”

  “So you’ve done stuff like this before.”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “You must think I’m a real scumbag.”

  “I’m sure I’ve met better and I’m positive I’ve met worse.”

  “I did love her. Maybe I still do.”

  “Okay.”

  “What if you hadn’t been able to take me? If I’d gotten to the kitchen, grabbed a knife?”

  A door opens. A step forward onto the sunlit floor. A sticky iron smell. Dusty sunlight along the wall. Another step.

  “I don’t like knives. A knife would not have helped resolve things.”

  He took that in.

  “Any other questions?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Then this concludes our business.” I stood. “There’s more coffee, if you want. I left the pot on just in case. Get some rest. And then go meet a new girl. Be nice to her. Or enjoy the single life. Not my business. Sound okay?”

  He spoke the single word somberly. “Okay.”

  “You won’t see me again. Not unless you try to find her. Then you’ll see me once more.”

  I left him there, looking blankly at the broken coffee table, and walked outside into the night.

  5

  On the freeway heading north, I slowed at my Berkeley exit, then changed my mind and accelerated past it. I wasn’t tired. The drive from Oakland to Bolinas was normally about an hour and a half. On the Aprilia, late at night, no traffic, I could do it in under an hour. I worked my way onto the 580 and headed north, taking the Richmond Bridge over the Bay. Loving the night, the speed, the wind. Across the water, I passed the bulk of San Quentin looming over the Marin coast.

  Trying not to think about what I always thought about when passing the pale stone walls.

  Who I always thought about.

  I twisted up and then down around Mount Tamalpais, leaning into hairpin curves, headlight lancing the night. At Stinson Beach I picked up my speed for the last few miles as the road straightened. Bolinas had changed a lot since my childhood. Mainly, the homes had all gotten about tenfold more expensive, the hippies and artists joined by millionaire tech boys wanting to play surf bum for the weekend. A crowd that didn’t think much of slapping down a couple of million bucks for a little place by the ocean that would have sold for thirty or forty grand only a few decades before. But the town was still tiny, and proudly held on to its original character despite the unrequested changes.

  I turned off the main street onto a narrow, curving road that led up to the high bluffs above the ocean. Halfway up the road I got off the bike. Cut the engine. Walked quietly up to a blue house that was just visible in the dim predawn light. A small, single-story house. A neat brick walkway bisecting the clipped grass of the lawn. I noticed a child’s tricycle had been left in the yard. I bit my lip as I imagined a kid pedaling frenetically around the path. I could hear the crunching sound the plastic wheels would make, rolling over the pavement. Could hear the happy laughter.

  A cheerful blue house.

  I stood there looking at the house. No lights on. No one awake. The night quiet. I could hear the waves below. Felt that same choking feeling I always got.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the house. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  6

  “Nikki, yes? Nikki Griffin? Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?”

  “Myself. Like anything in particular?”

  “Wherever you’d like to start.”

  “That sounds like a trick question. Like a job interview.”

  “There’s no trick. Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  “Okay. My brother and I grew up in Bolinas. My parents were the Bohemian California type, drove down to the Fillmore for shows on the weekends, weed and wine and bonfires on the beach.”

  “Are you close with your brother?”

  “I try to look out for him.”

  “And you are close to your parents?”

  “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Of course. May I ask you something, Nikki?”

  “Sure.”

  “How’s the violence?”

  “The violence.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I wanted to slug my waiter the other night.”

  “Your waiter? Why?”

  “Ordered a martini and he brought it over with vodka.”

  “Vodka? That was a problem?”

  “Gin. Someone orders a martini, you bring them gin. That’s the default. Not vodka. Gin.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Didn’t hit him? No. Just asked for gin. I was mostly kidding, anyway. About hitting him.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that.”

  “But I wanted to. Kind of. A little. Vod
ka. God.”

  “Are you drinking a lot, Nikki?”

  “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Just a question—you know, drinking can be a trigger for other things.”

  “Other things?”

  “For impulsive behavior of any kind.”

  “Look. Ninety-nine percent of the time I don’t consider myself impulsive.”

  “Maybe we should talk about the one percent.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but can I go now?”

  “We can end early, I don’t see why not. I’ll see you next week, same time?”

  “Sure. Next week. Same time.”

  “And Nikki?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Try to be good.”

  * * *

  I walked out into bright afternoon sunlight. Squinting, putting on black Ray-Ban aviators. Reached into my purse for lip gloss, tasted vague citrus. The therapist worked out of her home in North Berkeley. She had been dressed casually in blue jeans and a faded sweater. We’d sat in her living room, me on a couch, her in an armchair. A desk adorned with crayon pictures, probably the work of grandchildren. A worn Persian carpet over the hardwood floor, a high bookcase filled with many of psychology’s prominent names, as well as others I didn’t recognize. I liked the setup. A home was better than tile floors and clipboard questionnaires. For this kind of thing. The therapy thing. Outside, speed bumps in the road rose in gentle asphalt waves. Colorful homes lined the quiet streets. A gardener’s clippers buzzed. A comfortable neighborhood. A safe neighborhood. The late September air pleasant.

  I pulled a hair tie off my wrist and worked my hair into a bun, put my helmet on. The big engine thrummed, the sound filling my ears even through the padded helmet. I left my leather jacket unzipped to feel the wind. Clicked my foot down into First, eased my hand off the clutch, rolled onto the street, headed south toward Oakland.

  I had a job to do.

  7

  The man’s bare behind was the same shade as an uncooked parsnip.

  I aimed the black crosshairs, centering them directly over his back.

  Click.

  I took several shots, the powerful zoom lens of the camera making it seem as though he was only a few feet away, instead of across the street in a second-floor apartment. The woman walked into view, wearing only a bra and underwear. The apartment was rented under her name. She looked about forty, maybe two decades younger than the man. She had the body of a woman who spent her fair share of time in the gym. I idly wondered if he paid for the apartment, some kind of sugar daddy relationship. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter to me one way or the other. What mattered was that the two of them were here, in front of me, together. The woman looked awfully pretty for him, though.

  They embraced. His hand caressed the back of her neck, under her blond hair.

  Click. Click-click-click.

  I watched through the zoom as his fingers worked her bra open.

  Click. Click.

  As they moved from window to bed they disappeared from my line of sight. That was fine. I put the big camera into my backpack and walked down the block to wait. I found a deli and bought a coffee and a copy of the Chronicle. There were the usual headlines, seemingly all of them bad. Skyrocketing housing prices, North Korea shooting off missiles, human rights abuses in the Middle East. In the U.S. & World section there was a blurry picture of a curly-haired man with a missing front tooth, inset next to another picture: an overhead shot of yellow police tape surrounding a body bag. The caption identified him as the late Sherif Essam, a prominent blogger who had decided to leap from a thirtieth-floor rooftop in Cairo while breaking a story about government human rights violations. The police were treating it as an open-and-shut suicide. I pushed the paper away. The world was a depressing place. Not really the most groundbreaking thought, but one that I had frequently. Maybe due to my work.

  Given what I did, I didn’t generally see the best side of people.

  Best side, indeed. I stood. Even the most passionate couples only shacked up for so long.

  When the man and woman emerged from the apartment, the zoom lens brought them again into perfect focus. He wore a pinstriped navy suit and red tie, looking like the successful lawyer that he was. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, hair still damp from a shower. Their faces flushed. Happy with their secret. He leaned in to kiss her.

  Click-click-click.

  It always amazed me how easy it was to catch people having affairs. Trysts in apartments, cars, hotels. Thinking they were being clever. I’d never had an affair, but maybe that was part of the thrill. The illicitness. Spy games. Getting to sneak around, check into an anonymous motel. Some people were more cautious than these two, the pictures harder to get. But they were always gettable. I didn’t mind the endless waiting, learning routines and preferences, but I didn’t like the intrusion. The weird voyeurism of seeing and photographing men and women, women and women, men and men, often in explicit sexual contact. People chose to have affairs. Had nothing to do with me. Some probably deserved to be forgiven. Some probably didn’t.

  But a job was a job and I’d do the work if I had the time. It was amazing how set most people’s habits were. A week or two would show most everything. Where people ate, worked, shopped. Sometimes the person who hired me already had e-mails or texts or proof. Others, just vague suspicion, coalescing into an itch that could no longer be ignored. Sometimes it would be nothing. Sometimes it would be. I always billed for the affair jobs. Not like the women from the shelters. Infidelity was one problem. Being trapped, threatened, hurt—that was different.

  Those people deserved protection.

  I watched as the man got into a silver Mercedes S550. The paint gleamed, freshly washed. A vanity plate read LAW1981. I didn’t care much about cars, but it was easy to tell that this was a nice one, the roof curved and taut, as though the whole car was eager to spring forward. The Mercedes pulled away as the woman went back inside.

  I had seen a pay phone down the block by the deli. I put coins in and dialed. A woman’s voice answered. “Hello?”

  “Brenda, it’s Nikki.”

  There was a pause. The woman on the other end bracing herself. Like getting lab results from the doctor. “Hi, Nikki. Any updates?”

  “Why don’t we meet for coffee?”

  8

  She was coming into East Bay from San Francisco, so I suggested a tiny coffee shop just off the Bay Bridge in West Oakland, not far from where I had paid the visit to Robert Harris. A sign said BAY COFFEE. The sign made sense. They had coffee, and there was the Bay. It was an industrial neighborhood, the road’s battered pavement waving a white flag high after years of the big trucks that jolted along on their way to the Oakland Port. Some parts of Oakland had gotten nice fast. Some were taking their time.

  Brenda Johnson was a stylish, pretty woman of about fifty. Her hair was honey-colored and professionally styled, her hands manicured. She wore suede boots and a three-quarter-length black Burberry jacket with the belt knotted fashionably. She eyed the small café anxiously, as though they’d hand her bad news printed right across the menu. I thought again of the lab results.

  “Coffee’s on me,” I said. “What are you having?”

  She blinked and looked at me. “Just a cappuccino if they have it. Otherwise coffee with cream and sugar. Thanks, Nikki.”

  “I’ll be out in a minute,” I said. “We can sit outside.”

  At the counter I ordered from a pretty black-haired girl in her midtwenties. “Can you do cappuccino?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Sure.” She had a slim body, brown eyes, and small white teeth. A brown-yellow discoloration, like a large birthmark, spread across her right cheekbone. I smelled cigarettes and Tommy Girl perfume. I’d worn the same stuff myself all through high school.

  “One of those, and a large black, no sugar.”

  She handed the full cups over unlidded, and a few drops of coffee splashed over the rim onto my jacket as I reached to take it. “I�
��m so sorry,” she said. She looked more than sorry. She looked like instead of a little coffee she’d spilled two million barrels of crude into a harbor full of otters. I saw the tattoo of a rose on her thin forearm, the long stem twisting along skin. Thorns protruded at intervals as though pinning the stem into her arm.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Here, let me.” She grabbed a handful of paper towels and dabbed awkwardly at my arm. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “I’m such an idiot.”

  “Hey,” I said, nonplussed. “It’s no big deal. Seriously.”

  “It’s just—I’m having the worst day. I know that’s not your problem.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  She shook her head as though at the silliness of the question. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for not yelling at me. You wouldn’t believe what some people are like.”

  “I believe it.” The yellowish mark on her face. It didn’t look quite like a birthmark after all. It had that unhealthy, overripe look of injured skin. She caught my gaze and seemed to shrink into herself. She tore little corners off the napkin she was holding and white flecks drifted to the counter with the determined instability of snow.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said again.

  “I’m Nikki,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “Zoe,” she answered hesitantly. She had a faint accent. South American. I couldn’t place the country. The smattering of Spanish left over from high school didn’t take me that far.

  “We can talk,” I said. “If you’d like. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

  She blushed and shook her head without a word.

  I picked up the two cups. “I work at a bookstore over on Telegraph.” I handed her a business card. “A few of us do a kind of book club thing. We’re meeting next Friday afternoon. Maybe you’d like to come.”

  She blushed again and looked away. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve even read a real book. I didn’t even finish high school. I wouldn’t fit in.”

  “You might be surprised. You might fit in just fine.”