A Third of Me

by Alan Conway

  Devin

  I'm with Sarah out by the pool. She’s still my girlfriend. It's a frickin scorcher today, but I'm feeling pretty good. I take a sip of fruit punch while she's making eyes at me from behind her sunglasses. She doesn't know that I know this. Her hand finds mine and I squeeze it just the tiniest bit. I can smell her tanning oil, which smells good enough to eat – a coconut dessert just for me – then I lower my sunglasses and think about asking her something, but the words never make it past my lips. I've already forgotten what I was about to say. Must not have been that important.

  With my free hand, I pull out a spiral-bound notebook from underneath my chair. I turn to a blank page and sit there with my pen for a while.

  “What are you going to write about?” Sarah asks.

  I don't answer her right away. Maybe I'll surprise her. Maybe I'll surprise myself. I look down and see the ink expanding into a huge black dot where my pen has rested on the page for too long. Something tells me I already have a story. I told it last Christmas and it was a riot. It would make for a cool movie. Yeah. A movie…

  We all act as if we've got ourselves figured out, but let me be the first to say that I don't have a clue. I don't have all the answers. I don't pretend like I do. I'm just trying to find my way through life. One thing I have learned is to not believe what they say about the impossible. There's no such thing.

  I scrawl the first lines of my new screenplay and relax because I have all the time in the world. Maybe I can even deepen this world. Just a little bit anyways.

  Hang tight and check back with me later. I've got a lot of work to do. In the meantime, love and be loved. There is nothing else.

  THANKS FOR READING

  A THIRD OF ME

  ENJOY THIS SPECIAL PREVIEW OF ALAN CONWAY’S UPCOMING NOVEL

  ELEGANT PREDATORS

  CHAPTER 1

  The phone rings four times before I am completely awake. I know because the machine had four messages from four completely different telemarketers. The “do-not-call list” is about as useful as second cock. I erase the messages and pour a glass of orange juice but not before swallowing my daily multi-vitamin along with an additional five-hundred milligrams of both calcium and vitamin E as recommended by my nutritionist.

  I have twenty minutes to shower, shave, and masturbate before catching the red-eye to Portland. The four hour layover in Vegas will allow sufficient time to imbibe and stretch before boarding the last leg of the flight.

  Chastity will be waiting for me at PDX, waving her delicate fingers as I pass through the gate. She'll draw back her thick lips to reveal a flawless smile – a very expensive smile courtesy of Dr. Bruce Skenoza in New York – then take me to her car, which I'll drive to the hotel while she's blowing me.

  We won't have time to fuck once we get there. We'll go to sleep immediately because George and Katherine are meeting us for an early breakfast at Delany's. George and I knew each other from grade school, but we were never friends until our junior year of college. We shared a small house off Kansas Street with a guy named Mickey Burman. Mickey wasn't in school, but he told the landlord he was so he got a great deal on rent. Best liar I've ever known. Besides yours truly, of course. That goes without question.

  I assure you the events that follow are completely accurate according to what I remember of those few days in Portland. If I choose to embellish any details, they are for your enjoyment as well as my own. At the end of this confession, you may ask yourself why I did what I did, so I'll tell you upfront–

  On second thought, I'll let you be the judge of that.

  CHAPTER 2

  We can't sleep so we go downtown. A group of hipster kids walk out of this cafe. They're in their late teens and wearing classic band T-shirts (bands these kids probably never heard of) that evoke a sense of euphoric nostalgia within me, but at the same time, the sight of these lame mouth-breathers with their converse sneakers, tight jeans, and stocking caps (Christ, it's summer) sickens me and pisses me off beyond my capacity to remain cool. One of them, a pretty young redhead with a body I'd rock for weeks, reminds me of an ex who had spouted off snide remarks about my receding hairline and the extra pounds growing above my belt. She's dead now. Car accident. '96. Don't remember her name. Anyways, this redhead sees me pull out a pack of Camels and asks me for one. I want to light it for her then hold her down and push the cherry into her forehead while she screams, oh that sweet song of her crying generation, high on anti-depressants and German techno music. Chastity is with me, so I walk past the girl, but I smile at her. I try very hard to make it sincere and apologetic but also a warning to her and her classy socialites.

  We each get a latte and walk down Clay Street to the Ira Keller Fountain lit up like a majestic sculpture ran over with liquid luxury and modern class. If Niagara Falls was made over by Frank Lloyd Wright, it'd look something like this. There are too many people. The crowd makes me uneasy. Chastity makes eyes at me. She puts my hand on her ass, but not very discreetly. I think a couple of Japanese tourists take a picture or two. I could be mistaken, but it doesn’t matter. I'm ready to fuck.

  After several hours of blasphemous sex, she showers and comes back to bed hiding something behind her back. I toss aside the Tribune and sit up with a smile, curious and already turned on, wondering how much longer I can go before I just pass out. She climbs aboard, straddling me, her skin flush and smelling like sweet apples. She reveals the long serrated blade in her right hand. For a moment I panic, but she's smiling and looking sexy, so I think surely she'll pulling a sick one. Okay, I'll play along.

  “What are you gonna do with that, babe?” I ask.

  She leans in close and I can tell she hasn't brushed her teeth yet. Her breath still smells like latte and cock. I feel sick and not into this anymore. She says, “First I'm gonna open your throat then I’m gonna cut out that black heart of yours.”

  CHAPTER 3

  After dumping her body into a sewage drain, I hurry back to the hotel to clean up and gather my things. I pop my vitamins and a few extra Xanax then drive as far out of the city as possible. My eyes cut to the rearview, searching for any strobing blues. I find a jazz tune on public radio and try to calm my nerves. My breathing softens, becoming deep and rewarding. The cool night air is easy on my lungs and as my thoughts gain clarity, I realize the knife – now christened a murder weapon – is still lying in the passenger seat. I had washed it off in the sink basin and dried it off with a scrap of her bra – the padding was soaked through, but it absorbed the smears on the blade rather well. I had stuck it in her purse, which also went over into the runoff.

  The news is on. They might say something about me. Nothing. Not yet anyway. Emotion pours out of me, I'm overflowing with grief and confusion. I have no idea where I'm going and I have to call someone soon. Someone I can trust. But I trust no one. Then I remember Mickey. I don't know his address or phone number, but I have his mother's phone number jotted down in an old notebook in storage. I floor the gas and drive all through the night. I get to LA and retrieve the notebook from my old self-storage unit off Loxley. Mickey's mother tells me he's living in a duplex on Riverside, but he's working third shift at a toy warehouse. I find his place and wait in the driveway. My eyes grow heavy and I doze off for an hour or so. He raps on my window, causing me to bop the Lincoln's horn. I panic, then find relief in Mickey's ragged face. He invited me in for coffee. I tell my story.

  We drop off the rental car downtown and take a morning flight into Portland. When we arrive at PDX, my cell beeps several times. It's George. He wants to know where I am. Jesus, Chastity and I should be at Delany's by now. I could go over there and rip an excuse like Chastity is sick or she was called into work, but I can't do that because the police – oh yes, the police would get involved sooner or later, and what am I going to tell them?

  Mickey comforts me and says he has an idea. It's not a very good one, but I trust this guy. I can't even say he's very intelligent, but he's street smart, and right now that
's good enough for me.

  Why did Chastity want to kill me? We'd been together for fourteen months and the lies she told her husband must have been good enough to go so long without as much as a hiccup. She never struck me as nut job. She was very composed, agile, and witty. I'm ashamed to say I may have been in love with her, but we really didn't have anything in common except a voracious sexual appetite. Well, that's over now.

  Mickey calls in a few favors to dig up what he can about Chastity. Maybe she really was a crazy bitch with an amphetamine problem I didn't know about. But she was a publicist at a respectable firm. She had very real friends, more authentic in terms of their success and ridiculously honest and forthright. Her apartment was well-furnished. Her wardrobe, expensive, and not entirely to blame on my own wallet although I did indulge in getting her a few items she lusted after. We never fought – except for that knife – and we never argued. Something just doesn't settle right. And where did she get that fucking pig sticker? It was not the sort of thing you'd expect a gorgeous young brunette to carry in her handbag.

  I'm afraid to toss the knife. Maybe I've seen too many cop shows and forensic programs. My paranoia is through the roof, but I just cannot get rid of it. No doubt about it, the ugly thing would eventually surface and put me away for a really long time.

  CONTACT THE AUTHOR AT

  ALANCONWAYFICTION@GMAIL.COM