This very well might be the year.
“I have no memory of Salina being in jail however. Didn’t she and Percy just vanish?”
“They did.” Jimmy shrugged. “I’ve thought that they were better off gone from the start.”
“But I do like the story of her being in jail,” I said and Jimmy smiled.
If I really had memory issues.
As I did every year at this point in our little play, I asked the question once more. “Any idea where they are?”
Jimmy shook his head.
I looked around. “So why do I keep this place?”
Jimmy shrugged and said his lines perfectly. “Maybe it’s because you think Salina and Percy might return if you keep it.”
“That’s just flat silly,” I said, smiling at my friend and getting a smile in return.
I knew for a fact that they had never left.
“So you are making progress,” Jimmy said.
“Real progress,” I said.
I picked up the mug and put it back in the cabinet.
A place for everything and everything in its place.
Jimmy just nodded and smiled.
Salina and Percy were drinking wine naked the day I walked in on them, four days before I drank the slug poison to cover for me killing them, making people believe they had tried to kill me instead. She loved her wine cellar so much. She and her lover are now happy together down there.
A place for everything and everything in its place.
The wine cellar is a little smaller than it was originally designed, but I doubt anyone will notice.
“That’s a hell of a story you tell me every year,” I said to Jimmy, pretending I now remembered how much of a story it really was.
“I’ll do anything to help,” he said.
“Oh, you do help,” I said.
And thus started the third act of our little play as we walked out into the afternoon sunshine.
Act Three
Salina and Percy were sitting there, in my car, Percy behind the steering wheel.
Right on schedule, as they always were. Salina did not believe in being late for anything.
I was now in perfect courtroom mode. I was deep in the belief of the case, knew what I had to believe and had tossed out all other beliefs. The ability to do that, stay completely submerged into the play in the courtroom, was why I had won so many cases.
After a moment Salina and Percy got out and started up the walk toward the front door, neither saying a word to the other.
Clearly the sex was going bad between them and poor old Percy was starting to understand what kind of woman he had gotten hooked up with.
Jimmy and I stepped to one side and let them pass, then followed them back into the house.
We had done the same thing every year, but this year I hoped things would be different.
I made myself stop and not think that way. I needed to stay solidly on the script.
“So how come we just don’t sell this place?” Percy asked. “We could sure use the money.”
I was stunned. They had gone through most of my money and insurance in just three years. That was a lot of money.
I pushed that thought down as well and got back into my belief system.
Salina turned to him and gave him that nasty look she used to give me. “And have someone discover the bodies in the wine cellar?”
“That would be nice,” I said.
Jimmy laughed.
Of course Salina and Percy didn’t hear me. They just headed for the wine cellar.
Percy pulled the door open and said, “Wow, that’s a smell.”
Jimmy glanced at me and smiled. He knew at that moment that I had managed to get the slug bait on the heater and turn it on.
“It’s in your head,” Salina said, pushing past him and going down the stairs. “The bodies can’t smell, you fool. We wrapped them up too tightly in layers of plastic and they are behind a very solid wall, remember?”
“How could I ever forget,” Percy said, following her.
They went down the narrow stairs to check on where they had buried me and Jimmy behind the wine racks after killing us three years ago today.
I turned to my best friend. “I seemed to have left the door to the wine cellar open in my check of the house.”
“Better close it,” he said. “You know there are expensive bottles of wine down there you wouldn’t want stolen.”
So as if I was still playing the game of looking for Salina and her lover, I moved to the wine cellar door, pushed it closed, and locked it.
Everything in its place.
Then I turned off the lights and went to the breaker box and flipped the breaker switch, leaving the breaker for the heater down there on.
Jimmy just cheered beside me.
“Holy crap, we did it!” he shouted, jumping up and down in his excitement.
Actually, I was pretty stunned as well.
I could feel myself smiling and smiling.
The two people who had killed Jimmy and me were now locked with our bodies in the wine cellar in the dark.
And they were breathing very poison air.
A moment later I could hear Percy banging on the door shouting to be let out. His voice did not sound like he was much in control.
Behind him I heard Salina coughing. Then she said, “Idiot! Why did you pull the door closed behind you?”
“I didn’t,” Percy said, his voice a couple octaves higher than normal.
Salina coughed a few more times, then said, “Break it down, you fool.”
The door pounded hard, but I remembered that when we had that wine cellar built, Salina wanted the best material and the best locks since we were going to have a lot of expensive wine down there.
She had said that many, many times to me during construction and in the arguments leading up to construction.
So the door held and then after a moment there was a loud crashing sound as two bodies tumbled back down the stairs.
And then it was silent.
“I’ll be,” Jimmy said, laughing. “We did it! We actually did it!”
I could feel this immense sense of satisfaction. Three years of practicing the scripts to make sure I felt connected to the real world. Three years of returning here to this house I hated on the day she had killed me and my best friend. We had caught her making love to Percy, but we didn’t expect the gun she had bought and had in the drawer beside her.
And I didn’t know about her trips to the gun range to learn how to use the thing.
Three years waiting for revenge.
And now it was here.
Outside I could hear the faint sounds of a siren headed this way.
“She got off a 911 call,” Jimmy said, suddenly looking worried again.
“They won’t be alive by the time the police find them,” I said, smiling at my best friend.
“I hope you are right,” he said.
“I am,” I said. “Head back to your waiting spot for a minute, would you? We need to start the play over just one more time. I want to make sure they find our bodies as well.”
He looked puzzled, but just nodded and then vanished.
A moment later his voice came over my phone inside my suit coat. “I’m here if you need me.”
I said in the general direction of my pocket, “Listen and enjoy.”
I put myself back in the courtroom, back in the belief that I was alive and could actually move physical objects without thinking about it.
I believed it more than I had ever believed in a case.
I was here to look for Salina and Percy in bed together.
I looked around the home I hated, then moved over to the front door and opened it and left it standing open for Jimmy to come in. Just in case I had trouble when I found Salina and Percy in bed together.
Staying solidly in my belief of where and when I was at, I went back through the house, looking for Salina and her boyfriend. Making sure that with every thought,
every belief, I would find them alive and making love.
Of course, I didn’t find them.
As I finished my search of the back bedrooms, I heard a call from the front door. “Police! Anyone here?”
I had heard no sounds at all from the wine cellar in almost five minutes. So on the way toward the front I clicked back on the breaker lights for the wine cellar.
Then focusing as hard as I could to stay in the act of our little play and not get caught for murdering my wife and her lover and putting their bodies behind the wine racks, I went forward to greet the police.
I had to play this one perfectly. Just like a summary statement in front of a jury.
I had done it a thousand times. Once more, with flourish this time.
“Hello,” I said and two young cops both turned to me.
Wow, they were making patrol officers young these days. Both looked like they were right out of college, if that. One even had a face of pimples.
I pointed at the door just off the kitchen. “My wife and her boyfriend are dead down there in the wine cellar.”
They both just looked at me, clearly stunned and trying to process what I had just said. Then the one with the bad skin said, “Did you do it?”
What a stupid question for a policeman to ask, but I was glad he did. He played right into my plan perfectly.
“Of course I did,” I said. “I killed them. But there are two bodies behind one of the wine racks that she killed. Make sure you take care of those as well.”
Then, while they stood there stunned, I walked for the last time out the front door of the house Salina built and I had come to hate.
“Hey, wait a minute!” one cop said behind me and turned to follow.
But I was gone.
“Where did he go?” the one cop asked.
Quickly they went in different directions around the house, looking for me while calling in for backup.
But they would never find me, at least this part of me. I hoped they found my body down there behind the wine rack.
But this part of me was back in my reality. I was off stage, out of the belief that I had needed to touch the few things I had needed to touch. I knew and believed now that I was only a ghost.
And beside me, Jimmy was laughing.
“Well played,” he said. “Who knew you could act like that.”
“I’m a trial lawyer, remember,” I said. “I can believe anything if I really need to.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Who would have thought as a ghost I would need a lawyer.”
Laughing, we turned and walked down Bryant Street.
I had no idea where we were going, but anywhere was better than staying in that home with that woman.
About the Author
Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than one hundred popular novels and well over 100 published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.
Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.
Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books.
Currently, he is writing thrillers and mystery novels under another name.
Call Me Unfixable: A Bryant Street Story Page 2