Chapter 22
Charlie and Abby were back at the theatre, and she was about to go in with her movie stub to retrieve her hidden phone.
“What are you going to do for the rest of the day?” he asked her.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Go home, I guess.”
“It’s only one o’clock. Your husband won’t be home for hours, right?”
“Yeah, but he’s always watching. I’d better go get my phone before they restock the paper towel machine.”
“You’re crazy,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll wait for you here.”
Abby went through the front door of the theatre, showed the guy selling tickets her ticket stub, and told him she’d left her phone in the bathroom. He waved her through, indifferently.
Her phone was right where she’d left it. She checked and saw one missed call, from Krissa, from a few minutes earlier. She dialed her back.
“Hi Krissa. Sorry I missed you. I’m leaving a movie.”
“A movie? Okay. That’s where Mr. Greer thought you might be, but he was worried. He wasn’t really expecting you to go to a movie today.”
“I’ve been mentioning it to him for days. It wasn’t a secret.”
“So you went to a movie. What movie was it?”
“You know that movie that won all those awards about the orphans and World War II? Helga’s Garden is the name of it. I’m leaving it now. It was sooo good. Really moving, but so sad. Do I sound like I’m crying? I’m totally crying.”
“Oh, I didn’t even notice. So it was pretty good?”
“I highly recommend it.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. You heading home now?”
“Yep. I’ll be right there,” said Abby.
“I’ll let Randall know.”
Abby went back outside to where Charlie was waiting in his truck, parked right beside her car.
“I’d better go now,” she told him.
“Not yet. Let’s talk for a minute before you go. Please?”
“Okay, but just for a minute.” She got in the passenger side. He put his hand on her leg. “I can’t stay here long,” she told him. “Someone could see me.”
He handed her a pair of sunglasses. “Put these on,” he said.
She did, but she didn’t feel any less conspicuous. “Maybe I ought to buy something. Randall gets suspicious if I’m gone longer than I’m supposed to be and I don’t have any purchases to prove what I was doing.”
“How do you live like this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can’t your parents help you?”
“They’re dead.”
“Don’t you have any brothers or sisters who could help you?”
“They’re dead too.”
“Grandparents?”
“Dead.” Abby started to giggle. She covered her face with her hands, but she couldn’t stop. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m horrible. It’s really not funny. At all! I don’t know why I’m laughing.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No! I’m sorry. It’s not funny. None of this is funny at all.”
“You’re that alone?” asked Charlie.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Never mind. You probably think I’m crazy. For laughing about something like that.”
“Are you kidding about it?” he asked.
“No. I guess I’ve spent so much time with it all inside my head that when I talk about it out loud, it kind of seems funny to me. But, no, I realize my life is sad. I’m aware of that.”
“So you have no family at all?”
She shook her head.
“Friends?”
“Just you.”
“Have you ever told him you want to leave him?”
“Yes. He’s made it clear that’s not an option.”
“Clear how?”
Abby shook her head. “I’m telling you, he’s not going to let me go.”
“What if you left him?”
“He’d find me. He’s rich, but I have no money of my own. And he has tons of connections and important people on his side. I don’t.”
“What if you withdrew a big chunk of money and took off?”
“God. I don’t know. Some days he checks our account twenty times. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has something set up to warn him if something like that ever happens. Also, I’ve got a passport, but it’s locked up at his office.”
“It sounds like he’s really got you where he wants you.”
“I guess.” Abby sighed. “But let’s think about us for now, instead, okay?”
“Okay,” Charlie agreed.
“With that being said, I’d like to apologize in advance for any future discomfort you suffer brought on by my massive trust issues.” She broke into another fit of giggles. “I’m sorry. I’m such a mess. I need to stop talking now.”
“It’s alright,” he said.
“Now I’m really leaving,” Abby said, handing him his sunglasses and opening the door.
“Until next time, Abby-girl,” Charlie said.
“I miss you already.”
“Abby?” Charlie said, as she was about to shut the door.
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to get you out of this. Just wait and see.”
Chapter 23
“Put your rubber boots on,” Randall growled.
“Sure. Give me a second.” Abby went into the bathroom to spray some Derma Numb on her vagina. Buying all that lingerie had been one of her dumbest moves ever, and that was really saying something.
Randall had gotten himself a prescription for Viagra (Abby was unsure why he’d never thought to do so sooner) and he was so ecstatic that he was once again a “fully functional male” (his own words) that he couldn’t stop himself from constantly starting something. Abby suspected that he was more turned on by the sight of his own dick than by any of her outfits.
They cycled through all $1,500 worth of attire, and, just when Abby thought Randall was losing steam, a $1,000 Frederick’s of Hollywood gift card appeared sticking halfway out of a surprise pile of scrambled eggs one Sunday morning.
“I didn’t know you could make eggs,” she said as she rinsed the card off in the kitchen sink.
Her survivalist classes were going strong. She could start a fire with flint, and figure out some leaves and berries to eat. Still, she was convinced that no matter how many plants she learned to identify, if she were thrown in the woods and left to die, she’d die.
She’d gone on the pill. Charlie got them for her somehow, delivering them in a crumpled brown lunch sack like they were drugs or hamburgers. Abby kept them loose in a mint container.
For a few weeks, neither Charlie nor Abby brought up the subject of Abby leaving her husband. They saw each other just a couple hours a week, in stolen moments after her class. It didn’t leave much time to talk.
On what Charlie was calling their one month anniversary, he surprised Abby with a cupcake, a single red rose that she suspected might be from a gas station, and the desire to have a conversation about their future.
“We need to talk,” he said, after she’d put the rose in a plastic cup of water on his countertop.
“Is something the matter?” she asked him.
“No. Talking’s a good thing, Abby-girl.”
“Okay. What’s up?”
“You need to get away from your husband.”
Abby sighed. “I don’t know. It’s not that simple.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe you’re imagining that it’s harder than it really is.”
“As long as I’m alive, he’ll look for me. He’s obsessed with me, but even more so, he’s really proud. He’d be furious if I left him because it would make him look bad to his friends.”
“So you need to disappear.”
“I’m a person. I’m not a pet, or a… sock. I can’t just disappear.” Abby said.
<
br /> “Awe. You’re so cute. You’re not a sock. But seriously, Abby, I don’t think it would be that hard. People disappear all the time. Things happen. It’s tragic, but it’s true.”
“So I’m going to… what? Get kidnapped? Drown? What do you have in mind?”
“The perfect thing about disappearing,” said Charlie, “is that aside from getting some money together, you don’t need to do much else.”
“How do you figure?” Abby asked. “There’s so much more to it.”
“Not at all. Most big decisions take a lot of planning. Like, if you’re going to get divorced, you’ve got to file some paperwork, go to court, get a lawyer, probably buy some courtroom suit to wear… In your case, you’d get your hair done, maybe get your nails done. Right? Wouldn’t you?”
“I guess?”
“Sure you would. Then you’d have a pile of legal contracts to read. Hell, you’d probably have a team of lawyers and so would your husband, right? And then there’d be filing fees. All of that. Right?”
“I guess.”
“Don’t say ‘I guess’. I’m right, right?”
“Yes,” Abby admitted. “It all sounds pretty complicated.”
“It would be! And let’s say you were going to move. Did you and your old man ever move from one house to another?”
“No.”
“You lived in his place the whole time?”
“Yeah.”
“You just moved right into his place?”
“Yes. So?”
“Well, picture it with me for a minute: You see some new mansion that’s even bigger. Even more mansiony. You and Daddy Warbucks gotta have it.”
“I thought he and I were splitting up?”
“Hear me out. This is a different scenario now.”
“Okay. Sorry,” she said.
“So first you’ve gotta put your house up for sale. So you get a real estate agent, and maybe some lawyers again, just because, and they’re going to tell you to put on a new roof first, so you get a roofer, and then you’re going to need all new windows, and that’s all just to get you out of the old place. We haven’t even started talking about everything you’ve got to do to the new place. And you’re going to have to hire a moving company.”
“What does this have to do with me leaving Randall?”
“Listen, Abby-girl. I’m getting to that. I’m telling you that most big decisions in life require a whole lot of planning. But disappearing is different.”
“Okay.”
“If you are going to disappear, as in – poof – be gone, well then, you need to do everything as normal as can be. In other words, you don’t need to do anything at all.”
Abby smelled the rose again and added a little more water to it. “Do you have any sugar? I think if I add some sugar to the water, that will keep it alive longer.”
Charlie shook his head. “Once you disappear, it’s important that everything about your life looks normal, right? No red flags. Nothing unusual that would make a person wonder if there’s more to the story. Come over here and sit by me.” He patted his sofa.
Abby stayed where she was in his kitchen. “Randall’s a lot older than me. I’m kind of just waiting for him to die. Of natural causes, I should add.”
“That could take a long time. You need an actual plan.”
“I’m listening.”
“Maybe some of my survival skills that I taught you really will come in handy, in case you’re on the run for a little while.”
Abby nodded. “Maybe,” she said. Did he think she was going to live in the woods, eating beans over a campfire like a hobo?
“All you need to work on doing is finding a way to get money without him noticing. You’re not going to be able to start over without money.”
“That’s true,” she said.
“A girl like you, with rich connections, it shouldn’t really be that hard, right? To come up with a lot of money?”
“Harder than you’d think.”
“Do you have stuff you can return to stores for cash?”
“Maybe.”
“Can you get some of your tuition money back?”
“I don’t know. That class is my alibi.”
“True. Forget that. Do you have jewelry you can sell? I’ll bet you have plenty of nice jewelry, right?”
“Probably. Good idea. I never thought of that. Then again, Randall might notice.”
“Can you ask for cash back when you buy stuff, and then pocket it?”
“A little, but he usually likes to look at all my receipts.”
“Okay. Well, keep thinking about this. We’re going to make this happen. Me and you.” Charlie got up from the couch, went into the kitchen, and gave Abby a kiss. But he wasn’t interested in having sex. Not even when Abby pointed out that it would be anniversary sex. He was too distracted by the plans in his head.
Chapter 24
All the sex Abby and Randall were having was taking a toll on her relationship with Charlie. They were coming up on their two month anniversary, and they’d suddenly hit a dry spell of no sex and little communication for ten days. She only had so much to give, especially since sex with Randall required props and backstories and costumes.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been more connected lately,” she told Charlie when he picked her up after class one day. “Let’s get back on track.” As soon as they had pulled away and were on their way to Charlie’s apartment, she pulled her skirt up, revealing one of her pairs of crotchless panties.
“Those are sexy. Listen: I figured out how you’re going to do it,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Get away from your husband.”
“That would be really great,” she said, smoothing her skirt back down.
“Do you like antiques?”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Oh. I thought you were talking about Randall. No. I don’t have any interest in Randall or other antiques. Why?”
“You need to get interested. As soon as possible.”
“Okay. Why’s that?”
“Because they sell plenty of antiques at that flea market on the highway, many of them are expensive, and they only take cash.”
“Interesting,” she said.
“Think about it: If you got really into antiques, you could withdraw piles of money without making Randall suspicious.”
“That’s a good plan, except our house is really modern. We hate antiques. Randall and me. I mean, he hates them and it’s our house, so… you know. By default, we hate them.”
“Tell him you changed your mind.”
“You don’t think he’d find it pretty suspicious if I suddenly liked them? In fact, I’ve never cared about decorating at all. That’s his thing.”
“That’s not the kind of thing guys find suspicious. I’m a guy. I know what I’m talking about. He’ll believe you.”
“Okay then. So maybe he’d believe that, but like I said, he’s not going to want to live in a house filled with antiques. He’s very particular about how things look.”
“What if you wanted to get a little cabin to furnish or something? Is he that rich that you could buy another house?”
Abby felt bad answering this, since Charlie was just a mailman driving an old truck, living in a little apartment. “I’m not sure. I think so,” she said.
“Okay, well, maybe that’s the plan. You want a cabin and the cabin needs to be furnished. Does that sound like something he’d fall for?”
“It sounds pretty farfetched, but I could try it.”
“Good. Give it a try.”
“I will.”
“Awesome. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner, Abby-girl.”
After ten days of only seeing him at work, hearing him call her by her secret name again gave her a little flutter inside. It made her imagine them living together in their own little cabin full of flea market antiques. They’d be happy, and totally in love. Hav
ing a sweet, simple life. A fire crackling in a stone fireplace. Quilts on the beds. Maybe they’d even have a baby. And a Victrola!
“Earth to Abby! What do you think?”
“So, how’d you come up with this ingenious plan?” she asked him.
“I was down there at the flea market this weekend, stopping in to see my cousin -- he sells old motors and car parts -- and I wanted to go buy myself a hamburger from the food tent. He said they only take cash. The whole flea market is cash only.”
“What about receipts? Randall is receipt-crazy.”
“Most people write up receipts on those pads with carbons you can buy at office supply stores. And the best part is that the prices are completely unpredictable. You could buy an old dresser for fifty bucks and tell Randall it was $500, and show him a receipt to prove it.”
“It’s a good plan, but how will I get all these antiques home once I buy them?”
“Huh. Good question. I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe you need a new vehicle? Or maybe you could go antiquing for small things?”
“If I’m going to really come up with a bunch of money, I think I need to buy furniture. I guess all I can do is ask Randall for a new SUV. My car is years old, so it’s not like he’ll wonder why I need something different.” Once again she flinched at her own thoughtlessness. Charlie’s truck looked like he’d had it since he was in high school.
“So, yeah. That’s the plan.”
Abby nodded. “It’s really clever.”
“I know. I wish I’d thought of it months ago.”
“Me too,” she said.
“It’s really going to happen,” he said. He looked a little torn. Excited, but nervous. Maybe even a little sad.
“You don’t need to look nervous,” she said. “I’m the one whose whole life could change.”
“Yeah. That’s true.” He looked down.
“And then there’s the question of how I’d start over,” she said. “Like, where would I live? What would I do? Would I have a whole new identity? I mean, I’d have to. Right? It’s very complicated.”
“We’ll figure that out later.”
“You’re acting like it’s a minor detail.”
“No I’m not. Not at all. I’m just asking you to go one step at a time.” They’d reached Charlie’s apartment, but before they got out of his truck he took a moment to squeeze her hand “So for now, all you have to do is get really interested in antiques.”
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