by Bryan Smith
She glanced up and down the street, looking for him.
For the man with the sinister smile and the long black cloak.
15.
Lee’s stated time frame elapsed with no sign of her would-be rescuer. On occasion a car would come rolling down the narrow residential street--which was lined with other cars parked at the curb on both sides--pause briefly at the intersection, and then vanish again into the night. Sometimes the approach was spookily silent. Each time that happened, Kayla retreated a little further into the darkness-shrouded yard, which heightened her awareness of her status as an intruder on someone else’s property. Any second now someone inside the house would peek outside and spy her creeping closer, a development not likely to produce a happy result.
Lee, goddammit, where are you!?
If the big nerd didn’t show up soon, her nerves were going to wind up fried beyond repair.
Other cars rolled through the intersection with audible musical accompaniment, most commonly the thump of over-amplified bass and a rapper’s muffled voice. Now and then it was some form or other of rock music. One guy in a dark-colored Saab rolled up blasting opera at ear-shattering volume. She’d caught a glimpse of him, a big, bearded man in an expensive-looking suit. His window was down and he was singing along in Italian or whatever the fuck it was at the top of his voice. Dude had some serious vocal talent, but he was loud as all get out and Kayla was glad when he was gone.
She didn’t mind these abrupt noise intrusions.
They broke up the monotony of waiting around in the dark, at least.
Exasperated, she dug out her phone again and looked at the time.
11:09 pm.
Nearly thirty minutes had passed since the end of her conversation with Lee. She’d give him another ten minutes. If he didn’t show by then, she’d try something else. Maybe call a cab. She’d never done that before, though, and had no idea how much a cab ride back to campus might cost. A check of her wallet showed that Red Nose had swiped her cash. Awesome. So, in addition to being a murdering fucktard with the fashion sense of a brain-damaged baboon, he was also a thief. At least he hadn’t touched her debit card or the Visa card she was only supposed to use for emergencies. Of course not. Those things could be traced too easily. She wondered, though, if a cab driver would be able to process a card. It was another area where her lack of knowledge frustrated her, because she just didn’t have a fucking clue.
She was rescued from having to find out a few moments later, when a shrill squeal indicative of very worn brake pads signaled the arrival of Lee’s circa 1990 Toyota Corolla. Kayla sprinted to the curb as the car pulled up, darting around to the passenger side without pausing to acknowledge Lee’s shouted greeting. She yanked the door open and dropped her ass into a landfill. The seat was covered with stray pieces of paper, open envelopes, fast food receipts, candy wrappers, and so on. The floor was littered with empty soda bottles and cans.
“What the fuck, Lee? You couldn’t have taken a minute to clear away the fucking garbage?”
He flinched at her stern tone. “Sorry, I was in a hurry. Wanted to get here as fast as I could.”
She snorted unamused laughter. “Good fucking job there, Lee. It only took you forty goddamn minutes. What the hell happened?”
His face crumpled as she unleashed this rant. He actually seemed to shrink into his seat. The illusion made him seem more pathetic than ever. “I’m so sorry,” he said in an abject, wounded tone. “I should’ve gotten here ages ago, but I got popped for speeding. I was just so anxious to help I wasn’t watching how fast I was going. I got a big ticket.”
“How big?”
Lee grabbed the citation from his dashboard and showed it to her.
Kayla’s eyebrows went up when she saw the figure. “Oh. My. That is big.” She couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her lips then. “Sixty-five in a thirty zone. You really were in a hurry to get here.”
The abrupt shift in her demeanor from fiery vindictiveness to smiling appreciation had a visible effect on Lee. He sat up straighter in his seat and appeared marginally less pitiful than he had moments ago. “The cop was giving me a lot of grief. He said if I’d been going any faster he would have arrested me for public endangerment.” He frowned. “Do you know if that’s a real thing? Public endangerment?”
“No clue, man.”
“I think maybe he was just trying to scare me. He thought I had a bad attitude, but I was just distracted. All I could think about was how pissed you were gonna be that I was so late.”
“You could’ve sent me a text, let me know what was going on.”
Lee shook his head. “I was too paranoid, I guess. That cop was so worked up, I thought maybe he’d think I was going for a gun if I reached for my phone. I like you, Kayla, really, but not enough to risk taking a bullet to the head. Sorry.”
Kayla laughed. “Yeah. Okay. I guess I’ll give you a pass on that.”
He pointed to some check boxes on the citation. “Look, they dinged me for reckless driving, too, not just speeding. I thought that was excessive. I was driving fast, but I wasn’t swerving all over the road or anything.” He sighed. “No idea how I’m gonna pay that.”
Kayla squinted at him. “You’re a Vanderbilt student.”
“Yeah. So?”
“It’s a rich kid’s school. I ought to know. I’m a rich kid. All my friends are the children of very wealthy people. If you can’t pay it, call your parents. Have your dad talk to that cop’s boss and get the ticket torn up. That’s what my father would do.”
Um…is that a smirk on my favorite little troglodyte’s face? What the fuck?
“We’re from different worlds, Kayla. Scholarships and loans are paying for my education. I’m broke. I’m always broke.” He swept his hand at the Corolla’s dash. “Come on, my sweet ride should’ve clued you in to that. And as for my father…how much influence over the local cops do you think a factory worker from Knoxville would actually have?”
Kayla frowned. “You’re really poor?”
“Yeah.”
“Goddammit.”
Lee’s smile was rueful. “I shouldn’t have told you that, huh? You’ll never want anything to do with me now. I can’t blame you, I guess.”
Kayla’s frown deepened. “Jesus. Stop talking like a loser. That’s half your problem right there.” She opened her purse and shoved the citation inside. “I’ll pay your fucking ticket.”
Lee’s astonished expression took several moments to fade. “Um…you don’t have to do that.”
“Fuck you, I’m doing it. Now please take me home. I’ve had a hard night. I’m tired and I just want to go to bed.”
Lee was silent for a while. She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t need to see his face to guess at his struggle. The ticket was far more than a guy like him could comfortably afford to pay. But he was a guy, albeit a supremely nerdy one. His pride would compel him to protest, to demand that she allow him to pay his own ticket. She was in an uncomfortable position. She didn’t like Lee at all. It was practically written in her DNA to detest guys like him, regardless of whatever positive qualities a less judgmental person might see in him. But he’d put his ass on the line to help her. She couldn’t ignore that. She was a bitch, but she wasn’t that much of a bitch.
She looked him in the eye. “It’s simple. This happened because of me. I have the money. You don’t. The end. It’s okay. Really. We won’t talk about it ever again. Now, please, take me the fuck home.”
Her words appeared to have the desired effect.
Lee let out a big breath and put the car in gear. The Corolla eased away from the curb and then rolled through the intersection.
“So…can I ask how you wound up lost out here? Or is it none of my business?”
Kayla imagined his reaction to a truthful account of her night. Probably an endless round of questions, accompanied by an unspoken doubt that she was in her right mind. Just thinking about it made her tired. “It’s none of y
our business.”
Lee nodded. “I can accept that. Look…I know I’ve already said it a couple times, but I want you to know how very sorry I am about what happened when you came to see me.”
Kayla kept her expression stony. “You embarrassed me.”
He winced, his gaze sliding away from her to the road ahead. “I know. I’d give anything to take that back. I know you probably won’t believe me, but I have no idea why I did what I did. It seems so crazy now. So…”
“Unreal? Unexplainable?”
“Yeah. I mean, you were never very nice to me, that’s one thing, but that doesn’t explain why I acted the way I did. Jesus, the girl of my dreams was trying to rip my clothes off. I have some pride, Kayla, but not that much. I can’t figure out why I didn’t let it happen.”
“And has this been bothering you ever since?”
“Well, that’s the weird part.” Lee leaned over the steering wheel as they reached a place where the residential street met a much busier road with two lanes of traffic flowing in each direction. Kayla recognized West End. From here it would be a straight shot back to Vanderbilt. Lee waited for a hole in the traffic to appear and then steered the Corolla into the center lane. Once they were safely headed in the right direction, he glanced at Kayla again. “And this is something I can’t explain either, but--”
“It didn’t bother you until today.”
He frowned. “Well. Yeah. How did you guess that?”
No guessing about it, bub.
Kayla didn’t say anything. She’d made a mistake by steering the conversation in this direction. She blamed it on her exhaustion. She wasn’t in her right mind. Lee wasn’t someone she could confide in. He was just a convenient means to an end. She resolved to have nothing further to do with him once he dropped her off at her dorm.
But Lee wasn’t ready to let it go. “Kayla, I don’t mind telling you, this is all a little spooky. For one thing, I don’t understand why you were trying so hard to get with me, when all you’d ever done before was treat me like dirt. Sorry, but it’s the truth. As for me…it’s like there was some weird kind of malfunction in my brain that kept me from acting normally around you. And…well…you kind of seem like you know something about it. If you do, I wish you’d tell me. This is all making me feel like I’ve lost my mind a little.”
Join the fucking club, Poindexter.
Kayla looked at him.
Lee Stanley was taller than the usual nerd, maybe a shade over six feet, but he was rail thin and not in the cool way. This wasn’t a guy who could ever pull off the skinny jean-wearing hipster look. He looked scrawny. Malnourished. His head looked too big for his body. Something about his face looked out of proportion. Not in a freakish, oh-my-god-its-the-fucking-elephant-man way. It was more subtle than that. Something in the size of his nose or the set of his eyes. His glasses were too big for his face. And the pimples dotting his chin and cheeks were unfortunate, to say the least.
If ever there were a prototypical capital-N Nerd, Lee was it.
And he was some kind of fucking math major.
Lee isn’t my kind of people, she told herself. I’m not telling him shit. In fact, I’m going right back to snubbing his loser ass as soon as I’m out of this horrible nerdmobile.
“Kayla?” he prompted her. “Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard you.”
He drummed his thumbs nervously on the steering wheel. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you should shut the fuck up. I’m tired of listening to you.”
A pause. “Oh.” His hurt tone stabbed at her. “Sorry.”
Jesus.
What’s wrong with me?
She’d been meaner than necessary and she considered uttering words to that effect, but she kept her mouth shut. Any apology would be counterproductive at this juncture. It would just open up further avenues of conversation and that was the last thing she wanted.
They rode on in total silence until Lee pulled up at the curb outside her dorm. Kayla opened the door on her side, but didn’t step out right away.
She placed a hand on Lee’s arm. “Thank you.”
Lee grunted.
Time to go.
Kayla hesitated, wondering if maybe she should say something else. Maybe go against her gut and fucking apologize. Maybe even open up and tell him the truth about everything. Hell, he might even believe her.
No. The moment had passed.
Kayla got out and threw the door shut.
Lee’s Toyota puttered off, leaving her alone at the curb.
16.
The next day dawned to the sound of Sheila puking loudly in the bathroom, no doubt paying the price for last night’s overindulgence.
The sound didn’t bother Kayla. She’d gone straight to bed after parting ways with Lee and slept through the night, not even waking when Sheila returned from her evening out. She groaned and stretched out in her bed, raising her slender arms high above her head. She hadn’t felt this well rested in a long while, maybe since last summer. But now her eyes widened as a disturbing notion fluttered lazily through her mind.
She turned on her side and stared at the radio alarm clock on her bedside table.
Fuck.
The alarm had not been set the previous evening. She’d slept through her first class of the day and was in danger of being late for the second.
She threw back the bed sheet covering her mostly nude body and hopped out of bed, racing for the bathroom. Sheila glanced up as she came in, her face red and traces of vomit smeared around her mouth. She was still in her little black party dress from the night before. “Kayla…I don’t feel so good.”
Kayla swept back the shower curtain and turned the water on. “You drank too much.”
“Yeah. And maybe mixed too many of the wrong kind of drinks, I dunno.”
Kayla nodded. “You should stick to one thing. And if you get really fucked up, be sure to drink a bunch of water before you crash and take a bunch of aspirin or Tylenol.”
She made a mental note to heed her own advice. Her head was still pounding from being knocked out last night.
Sheila frowned up at her, looking more haggard than ever now and maybe on the verge of puking again. “That really work?”
Kayla stuck her fingers in the tepid stream emerging from the shower nozzle. It was maybe starting to get a little warm. But the clock was ticking. She didn’t have time to wait for it to get really hot, which was her preference. “Yep. Something my brother taught me. He’s an expert at that shit.”
She stripped off her panties and stepped into the shower. She let out a little shriek as the water hit her chest. It was colder than she’d imagined. There was nothing for it but to get done as fast as possible. Her hair didn’t really need washing, so she kept it away from the water as she squirted body wash on a shower puff and bathed herself. She was just beginning to rinse off when it all hit her again.
Oh shit…
The devil!
She had somehow spent her first several waking minutes blissfully oblivious to her plight, her mind for some reason failing to remind her that many momentous and dire things had happened to her the day before. She cursed that moment of delayed recognition. If only it had all turned out to be some really fucked-up dream. The devil. The shunning. The entire miserable, lonely semester. But it was all real. It had all happened. Was still happening. Her life had become a nightmare, and there was little to no hope of a happy resolution. Her hurry to get to her second class seemed laughable now. What was the point? Missing another dry history lecture wouldn’t make her life any less fucked.
There was a scrape of metal as the shower curtain was pulled back a little. Sheila peered in at her. “Are you okay?”
Kayla rinsed out the shower puff and used the attached suction cup to stick it the tiled wall. “Yeah. Why?”
“You screamed.”
“I did?”
“Yeah.”<
br />
“Huh. Well…the water’s cold.”
And the devil owns my ass, but let’s not go into that.
Sheila had stripped out of the party dress and wiped the traces of vomit from her mouth. She smiled. “Mind if I get in there with you?”
“I was just getting out.”
Sheila’s lower lip pooched out in a mock pout. “Oh. Pooh.”
Not this shit again.
“Sorry. Gotta run.”
She swept the shower curtain the rest of the way back and stepped out, leaving the water running for Sheila. Instead of hopping in right away, Sheila turned to watch Kayla as she grabbed a fresh towel from the rack and wrapped it around herself.
“You don’t know what you’re missing.”
I’m missing an intimate encounter with an admittedly fantastic-looking chick who was just heaving her guts out a few seconds ago. Thanks, but no thanks.
“I know. But I really do gotta run. Maybe some other time.”
“That’s what you said last time!” Sheila called out to her as Kayla escaped back to the dorm room and closed the bathroom door behind her.
She patted herself dry and dressed in a hurry, donning a clean pair of jeans and a pink v-neck t-shirt before dropping her ass on the side of her bed to pull on her shoes. She was anxious to get gone and not have to deal with any more of Sheila’s come-ons. Her roommate’s unsubtle attempts at seduction were flattering after so long a period of isolation and rejection, but letting anything happen was out of the question given the circumstances. She couldn’t have a fling with the person sharing her living space while trying to solve the biggest dilemma she was ever likely to face.
But maybe she wouldn’t go to class, after all. She doubted she’d be able to focus on anything the professor had to say. A better idea might be to go for a walk through nearby Hillsboro Village. It would give her a chance to clear her head and maybe come up with a scheme to somehow appease the devil without having to murder an innocent human being. She could spend some time browsing the funky little shops there, then maybe brood over a cup of coffee at an outdoor table at one of the cafés. Even if she failed to devise a plan to thwart the devil, she would at least have some moments of relative peace, which would be a monumental improvement over the previous day.