by Amarie Avant
“Aw, not fair,” Donald says.
“Trust me, you’ve made my day, Mr. Dudley,” I reply, arising from my seat. “Besides, you didn’t even get the chance to grade any papers.”
We chat while heading out to the lobby. I expect Donald to leave the hotel as many of the restaurant diners are locals here. He had mentioned working at a local high school in the neighborhood, which I recall beat my old high school during one of the homecoming games. Instead of parting ways, Donald follows me toward the elevator.
“Well, have a good day,” I say as the elevators swoosh open. There’s nobody inside so I hop into the claustrophobic space.
Donald follows suit. “I had one more question,” he says, again rubbing the back of his head. Donald looks me into the eye, murmuring, “You said I made your day…?”
Oh crap, does he think I was flirting?
The elevator doors rush closed with just the two of us inside.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Stalker
Not thirty minutes later a hot beam from the sun radiates down on my head. My orange hair was a ball of fire. And man, did my head still hurt courtesy of Lincoln Zager. I slam the trunk of my rental, turning around to smile at a rather nosey old bitty who is walking away from the hotel. The white-haired woman has done her best to look inside of my trunk while passing between her Cadillac and my mid-sized sedan.
She gives an icy blue glare, to which I match, while she gets into the driver seat of her car.
“Don’t fucking stare at me, stupid bitch,” I murmur under my breath.
“Are you sure the woman was staring at you, Jeffrey?” My therapist had elaborated. This had started our conversation about body language. My issues with staring. “It isn’t safe for women to walk around blindly. Perhaps she was merely previewing her surroundings.”
That old bitch was staring. I grab the handle of the driver’s side door and yank it open, recalling how angry I became at the mention of “it not being safe for a woman to walk around blindly.” What was the shrink implying? I’ve never hurt a woman in my life—not unless they weren’t begging for it.
I sink down into the seat and toss the briefcase in the passenger side so hard that it torpedoes against the door before bouncing onto the seat. The briefcase is empty, no chemistry paperwork from my imaginary high school students.
I chuckle to myself, heading out of the parking lot onto Bowie Street. My high school years were the worst, I smirk, wanting to reminisce on my breakfast with Siobhan fondly, but another time in my life ruins it. That fucking story about asshole chem students hit close to home.
My murky green eyes glare through the rearview mirror at the hood of the trunk as I switch over from Interstate 37 to the 10 freeway. The further I travel from San Antonio, the more my mind begins to clear. I have a long stretch of highway ahead of me to make it home.
Like Siobhan, I am Texas born and bred. Tragedy forced me from home, but unlike Siobhan, seasons have come and gone. “You’re forty-seven-years old, Jeffrey Peterson,” I tell myself, recalling how I left the small city I was born in, almost three decades ago and never looked back.
An hour and a half later, a thick layer of dust coats the rental. An impassive affect blankets my face as I stare through the window before me.
Glendora Wilson kneels in the front yard, next to a bed of roses she seems desperate to keep alive despite the thick heat. A wide-brimmed hat covers much of her blond hair, hair that I once loved to touch. I have only but one regret about her hair…she’d always been unconscious when I lovingly stroked her hair. Unlike the other girls, Glendora was just asleep. The suspense of it all. Me sneaking into her bedroom when we were children. She totally unaware. Such a hard sleeper.
As if feeling watched, Glendora peers in my direction, craning her long neck.
I get out of the car, and lean against the white-washed gate as she walks over.
She still has the longest legs. When we were in grade school together, Glendora was taller than me, now as she takes a curious stroll in my direction, she appears to be of the same height as me. No taller.
“Jeffrey Peterson, I’ll be!” Glendora slaps her hands against her legs, stride quickening. She opens the gate near the walkway and waves me over. “What a lovely surprise.”
“Hey, Glenny,” I say, attempting to mirror her happiness, but the smile on my face falls flat. Those emerald eyes of hers no longer persuade me much the way they once did. Yet she holds her arms open, ready for a hug. How ironic, all the things I’ve done for her, and never had she been so generous with her affections.
Glendora gives me an energetic embrace. “You’ve gotten strong.”
“Yup, I ain’t the scrawny little shit anymore.”
I hold her close, an uncomfortable feeling of guilt overwhelming me. Siobhan has done me dirty by her association with that fucking Lincoln Zager, but I, in no means, want to retaliate with Glendora Wilson. Shame cloaks me as Glendora’s sweet, putrid perfume surrounds me. The lovely Siobhan Lowe smiled at me, gracing me with her presence. She truly fell in love with me over pancakes, my favorite food as a child. It takes every ounce of willpower in me not to push Glendora away.
We finally part. I step two paces back, rubbing my palms against my jeans, feeling dirty as fuck.
“How’d you know I live here?” she asks. Small town or not, this isn’t her childhood home. No, this is her marital home that she shares with my enemy.
“There’s only one grocery shop on Main Street. Bob told me.” I offer a wink. It seems the thing to do since I’m incapable of grinning so easily. There also has been three Bobs in our tiny high school. With my luck, at least two of those idiots work at the damn general store. I strangled the third with my own bare hands.
“Oh, come inside, do come inside.” Glendora gestures toward the rickety front door, narrow ass sashaying as she goes. “Something told me to squeeze a few lemons this morning before it got too hot. There’s lemonade in the fridge.”
“All right.” I shrug, finally attempting to smile. This time my mind is solely focused on Siobhan Lowe. It works!
“Nice home,” I lie, glancing around at the shotgun house Glendora sold her soul for.
“Oh, really,” she waves a hand, “it ain’t the home I always dreamt of.”
“No shutters,” I murmur, recollecting on Glendora’s daydream she told me while in the library one day. We head past a living room with paint-chipped walls. A box-shaped television sits on the floor across from a lumpy-ass loveseat. There seemed to be a secondhand vase in each room with fresh daisies.
The kitchen room had to have once been a powdered blue, but now is more of a dingy gray with oil splatter on the walls.
“No kids?”
Her gaze lowers and not from the sadness of being barren. Is she barren? Is her husband, Alton? I stalked a lot of women because of Glendora Wilson—who no longer was a Wilson on account that she betrayed me by marrying Alton. It’s a shame that I know these women so intimately, but only had outsider information on Glenny, the girl who I grew up with.
“No.” Glendora shakes her head. To hide the melancholy from her face, she busied herself by cleaning off the counter which has remnants of squeezed lemons that she mustn’t have cleaned earlier. “Alton and I never got around to starting a family. One of us was always leaving the other. He had this bad habit of drinking and hitting me while I was down. I had this bad habit of lying about leaving him for good.”
“Drinking and putting his hands on ya?” There is shock all over my face, but of course I knew much of this. “Guess nothing changed much in high school, ’xcept he got the girl.”
“W…we didn’t get together until … until a few years after high school.” She fumbles on her words and gestures. “Way along down the line. After you left, Jeff.”
I glare into her lying gaze. Still so vibrant green, there are creases on her eyes now. Not laughter wrinkles, probably more from crying. All the women I’ve murdered in your name were the spitting image of
you from younger years. I’ve stalked the beautiful women who reminded me of Glendora. The moment I laid eyes on Siobhan, the obsession with Glendora ceased. The need to murder Glendora Wilson—or the women who looked and acted like her in some form of fashion— subsided. Because unlike Glendora, Siobhan needs me.
I hadn’t noticed our stories are aligned. Mine with Glendora, and Siobhan’s with Hosea. Unlike Glenny, Siobhan loved her childhood best friend. Which is the reason I haven’t murdered Hosea.
I sought to learn their story, and how strong their bond was. Unlike mine with Glenny, who has betrayed me.
Due to all the therapy sessions I’ve attended, I perceive an uncomfortable silence passing between the two of us, as Glenny stands before me, holding a ratty cup towel. I speak up, “How ’bout that lemonade?”
Glendora moves at the flash of lightning, much like I presumed she does when Alton backhands her. If I am reading her mind right, the nostalgia of seeing an old friend has caved away to old truths and old lies.
I chant the words of each child from rote memory, “Jeffrey Peterson, the ginger, was a creepy motherfucker, and ain’t nobody in the entire town liked him. Yeah, that’s what they used to say about Jeffrey, on account that his father shitted through a screen, giving the boy freckles.”
She stops walking mid-step, hand shaking as it grazes against the refrigerator handle. “Jeff, I never said any such a thing about you. That was the worse chant ever. And we were—are—friends.”
“We were friends. Both of us lived on the outskirts of town, Glenny. Both of us were punching bags, targets for rocks and piss until we got to high school. Your acne left. You got tits and a hot, little ass that the biggest douche of all, Alton, liked.”
“Jeff… Jeffrey,” Glendora sighs heavily. “Don’t freeze up on me like you used to…”
“I’mma guess that the yellow rain when you were fucking ten was a bit of foreplay for ya! I got my ass beat every fucking day making sure we made it home from school. All until we got to high school, Glenny! Then it was just me, the lone wolf!”
“Jeff, stop doing this.” Her slender fingers grab my arm. “Stop going into the past. You know I apologized about ignoring you in high school.”
“Yeah, you ignored me during the day, said you’d made a couple of girlfriends. But Alton would sneak into the girl’s restroom at school. Were you getting on your knees then, sucking his cock and then coming to me at night?”
“I never came to you at night!”
I chuckle. Here I am having a hard time smiling at Glendora earlier, and now a silly grin is slapped on my face. “You scraped those knobby knees at lunchtime at school with Alton, then you cuddled with me at night, Glenny. You cuddled with me at night with the scent of his pissy-ass dick on your funky little lips.”
“I didn’t screw Alton in high school, Jeffrey. It was Mr. Wagner, fuck. It was Mr. Wagner, the history teacher, all right!”
She glares at me as if it made it right. Nah, her screwing anyone on God’s green earth but me, made it all wrong. I place my hands on the table, staring at the thick hairs on my whitish-copper knuckles, concentrating on the coolness of the wood. My heart thrashes against my chest. The heart rates of young women who shared Glenny’s likeness, began to pulse at my fingertips. Slowly, all too slowly did those heart rates slow. My thick fingers craving their vital source because all I could do was see Glendora.
“Jeff… Jeffrey.” Glendora sinks down onto the chair next to me. She searches for eye contact. It wasn’t until I’d been kicked out of the army that I learned, human’s sought eye contact while communicating. I had no means to provide such eye contact. That was reserved for taking souls or getting my point across. But I feel her apprehensive regard as she speaks.
“Um, I just got off the phone with Alton a few minutes ago. He said he’d be home shortly. The idiot drank on the damn job so the mill kicked him out this afternoon. Alton will be home soon.”
“You sure?” My gander slides over to hers, just to see if she is willing to lie to my fucking face.
Her thin eyebrows cluster in the center. She nods. “Yes.”
“Okay, Glenny.” I reach over and pat her hand. It is cool, too cold. The warmth glowing from her skin earlier has died. I give a half smile. “I’ve got something for you in the trunk of my car. Do you mind me opening the gate so I can park closer to the door? The gift is a bit on the heavy side.”
“A gift.” Glendora licks her thin, pouted mouth. “Um well, what sort of gift? Alton might not like it, his wife getting a gift from another man. Like I said, he will be home soon.”
“It’s a gift for Alton too. Scout’s honor.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Siobhan
An imaginary vise grip clamps my throat as I hold my hands up, palms out, hopefully a sign that my intentions are good. Heart drumming in my ears, I step around the rental and toward the barrel of a shotgun.
His bushy eyebrows scrunch, gaze keen. “That you, Siobhan?”
“Yes, sir.” Damn it, Mr. Murrell, I shouted that it was me a hundred times while getting out of this damn car.
“Well hot damn, you used to drive one of those ugly-ass bugs around,” Mr. Murrell says in disdain of my Volkswagen Beetle. Dad bought me a brand spanking new Beetle convertible once I learned to change oil.
I stare at Mr. Murrell. What once was a handsome man with the same butterscotch skin tone as Hosea, and hazel eyes, is haggard looking now. He’s crazed enough to be fully dressed in the heat. His jeans are baggy against his thin skin. The hood of the gray pullover he has on covers much of his pallid skin.
He places the shotgun against his leg, it’s not loaded, or at least I hope it isn’t. Hosea’s father was losing his mind long before his mother lost a battle with cancer. His arms wrap around me, bringing with it the smog of stale cigarettes.
After Donald held me captive in the elevator for a few more minutes to joke about his chemistry students, I had the sudden urge to visit with Hosea’s father. No matter how nice Donald was, he left me with a weird, bad taste in my mouth. So I decided, might as well allow this day to be unmatched, continue to step out of my comfort zone, and then sweep it underneath a rug.
Though Donald had this underlying weirdness, Mr. Murrell is all around crazy. He moved from the home he and his wife owned that was in the same housing track my parents lived in. He’d set fire to the house the day their home went through escrow. Much of the living room and dining room burned down. Most people think it was because he couldn't bear to let anyone live there after she died.
I never saw him as the distraught type. Hell, he wasn’t all that nice to his wife when she was around. With Hosea, he took it to a whole other level after finding out Hosea had a fondness for the literary arts over playing high school football. Hosea’s mother died in the summer when Sammy was helping me transition to his college in California. The day after Hosea laid his mother to rest, he followed.
Mr. Murrell leads me into the trailer home he owns. The kitchen is in the center. Piles of pots and pans are sticking out of the sink. Luckily the trashcan is overgrown with paper plates and Styrofoam cups or the dishes would reach the top of the ceiling. His bed is toward the back of the trailer, with old tattered sheets.
Tears well in my eyes. Hosea used to send money home to Mr. Murrell. The one time I mailed him a few hundred dollars after Hosea’s disappearance, his father went ballistic. Mr. Murrell called adamant about speaking to Hosea. It hurt so bad to explain that I had desired to continue the kind gesture.
His usual authoritarian voice had filled with despair when responding, “All right, I thought my boy was home… that maybe you all lied about the little motherfucker being gone so he didn’t have to be bothered with me.” To this day, I’m unsure if that was Mr. Murrell’s way of apologizing since when angry, every other word is loud and punctuated with cussing.
“Excuse the mess,” he mumbles, kicking stray empty cans from the linoleum floor under the table.
“That’s all right, sir, I appeared out of the blue.” You don’t have a phone or any means to contact you. Sinking down into the vinyl cushion, my body feels like it was just submerged into an array of bacteria, the bench sticks to my clothes with every move I make.
“So you found my boy?” There’s a flicker of fire in his eyes. I had heard how handsome Mr. Murrell had been when younger. Hosea's mother had mentioned it many times when he was being an asshole. I didn't understand what the need was for a drop dead gorgeous man if he didn't love anyone but himself. Yet, the honey brown flicker in his eyes now tells me otherwise.
In an instant, a rush of memories of how much Hosea loved me floods to my mind.
“Siobhan, nobody can tell me that I’m not blessed. God gave me you to love forever,” Hosea quoted the Songs of Solomon that day, with the same fire in his hazel gaze.
“Girl, speak! Where my son be?” Mr. Murrell’s fist slams down onto the foldable tabletop so hard that the stick holding up the edge fell. I jumped up before the tabletop could go slamming down onto my legs as gravity pulled it toward the wall.
“I don’t know, sir.” My voice increases with volume.
“That’s what’s wrong with you kids these days, don’t know shit!” He waves his hand in a hard gesture of anger.
“Mr. Murrell, I came by to check on you.” I reach out to touch his forearm and he slides away.
“I don’t need no-got-damn-body checking up on me. I ain’t no fucking baby.” He moves closer to me, eyes ablaze. “You think my boy dead? I always told ’em that Lowe girl ain’t love him nowhere near as much as he loved her. That boy followed you all the way to California,” Mr. Murrell cackles.
How words sting, stabbing to my core. “Mr. Murrell, please… I just came by to—”
“He loved you so, so much. Bet the situation would be different if it were reversed! You stopped searching for ’em. You ain’t ever loved my son.”
My eyes burn with tears, but I hold my tongue.