Getting psyched up.
Psyched out.
He face-dives into the mirror - not the mirror he’s checking himself out in, not that kind of mirror. The mirror decorated with lines of cocaine. That’s what he face-dives in. The cocaine, not the mirror. He doesn’t really put his face in the mirror. It just looks that way. Because of the reflection.
He strikes a kung fu pose.
He wants to face-dive into Siobhan.
Lotus flower style.
He’s surprised that she agreed to come to his place for dinner.
There’s not even food in his fridge.
He yanks the sword out, runs his hand along its blade.
Yeah, it’s phallic.
He’s going to split her in two.
*****
Chuck lounges at a café table by the canal. The legs he’s been following are only a couple of feet away from him, which he eyes whenever he has an excuse to lift his head. He has lots of excuses. Every second is an excuse.
But now, he has no excuses for not doing more than just staring. He’s Dodge. No Mr. Chuck here.
He lurches to his feet, shuffles to her table and slumps into the café chair across from her, throwing a leg over its wrought iron arm.
Dodge is not cocky, but Chuck feels arrogant playing Dodge, full of swagger and himself. He doesn’t really know how to be confident; he can only fake it – so he overcompensates.
Her English is broken
He has no French.
Fortunately, cocaine is an international language, and he scored some down by the bus station expressly for overcoming language barriers.
He dangles some in front of her.
She’s waiting on a friend.
He’s been waiting his whole life.
He can wait for a friend.
Chuck knows Dodge would play it cool, would walk away.
The last thing Chuck would do.
So he walks away, giddy with himself at the thought of it.
Sure enough, she tugs on his shoulder a minute later, only glancing back for a second for the friend who never showed.
*****
Dodge shuffles through the bramble of the wooded strip that conceals Dressler’s long driveway and secluded colonial from the road.
It’s not easy landing a helicopter and not attracting attention, so he’s hoofing it to get there from a field half a mile away.
He sees Siobhan’s car parked in the driveway.
He’s certain now he’s going to catch Siobhan.
Certainty and knowledge aren’t the same thing.
Certainty can be wrong.
He has no idea what he’s going to do now that he’s here. He stops at the edge of the trees, watches through the big bay windows. Afternoon is giving way to dusk, so he feels protected by the shadows, and it is lighter inside the house than outside the house.
That gives him a view.
He can see Dressler, sure enough.
Waving a samurai sword like some coked-up nut job.
He sees Siobhan getting out of her car.
His timing is perfect.
*****
Chuck delights in the pursuit of the French girl. Not his pursuit of her, but her pursuit of him - a striking change of fortune.
“Now you are hard to get?” she asks, her words tangled in the thick accent that makes French women seem so exotic, so sophisticated.
She is smiling at him, trying to wrap his arm in hers, trying to keep pace with him.
He grins back at her, imagining Dodge - charming, reserved.
“What, don’t you want my friend to come, too?” she asks, trying her wiles. “She’s very pretty, I promise.”
Her smile feels like a promise. If her friend comes along, Chuck is not going to know what to do. He’s only ever slept with an excessively drunk girl on the couch of a fraternity, while she imitated sex sounds she learned from watching movies.
Imagined her first would be more like Prince Charming.
Less downright alarming.
“Where is your friend?” he asks the French girl, trying to unleash some charm, pretending that’s what’s making this happen, not the drugs he’s offering.
His best chance at getting with her is to act like it’s not on his mind at all.
He thinks about Dodge because, well, he doesn’t want to have sex with Dodge.
It’s like mowing your lawn.
He always heard that sex lasts longer if you think about mowing your lawn.
He had a small lawn that night, the night with the freshman on the fraternity couch.
She probably didn’t even get the mower out of the garage.
Chuck knows how pathetic he is, even why.
But all the booze he’s been drinking, the Jagermeister and the wine, lets him shake all that off, lets him talk to French girl.
Maybe the language barrier camouflages how weird he is.
He smiles at her again.
They see her friend walking toward them.
His smile widens.
*****
Siobhan taps her foot at the door before ringing the bell. Something is wrong. Jaime said there was a soiree at Dressler’s. But there are no other cars.
An uneasy feeling, churning first in her stomach, creeps over her body.
The same body she knows Dressler lusts after, gawks at and drools over, looks for excuses to brush along, bump against, falls only short of groping whenever he gets the chance.
She can take the attention, doesn’t mind the flattery that much. He’s handsome, rich and confident - even has some charm. Really, though, he’s mostly just juvenile, lacks cool, and comes off as too desperate. The biggest turn-off of them all. She entertains his clumsy advances because he is big money. Nothing more, nothing less.
But if this is a trick to get her up here alone, she’s going to give him hell for wasting her time.
She starts to seriously fear this is a set-up - orchestrated by Dressler, maybe even with Jaime’s help. A childish pretense, like Dressler thinks that since she’s all the way out, she’ll decide she might as well jump in the sack with him.
Juvenile.
She turns to leave, without ringing the bell, when the door opens.
Dressler stands in the door grinning like some goon, gnashing his teeth, a tiny kimono barely stretched around him - probably a woman’s - a samurai sword in one hand, the doorknob in the other.
*****
Not all French girls are easy. But one on a mission to have a stranger get her high, in a pair of Jessica Simpson cut-offs and over-exaggerated cowboy boots, willing to throw her friend in on the deal on sweat-soaked sheets in the red light district of Amsterdam, is. So maybe he’s surprised, maybe he’s not, when he quickly finds himself being taken advantage of on a bunk bed in his hotel room - no bigger than a closet.
And not totally being taken advantage of the way he wants, though at least they give him the dignity of some of that.
While Cowboy Boots knocks him on the bed and occupies him with kisses, her blonde friend unbuckles his belt and pulls his pants off without much ceremony.
Which seems exciting at first until it’s clear that she’s only done this so she can rifle through his pockets, collecting his cash and drugs, with little attempt to hide what she’s doing. At least her friend is still keeping him distracted, straddling his chest and pinning his arms back. And while it might be simply to keep him from protesting, or struggling, he takes an unexpected pleasure in being restrained and robbed.
He’ll pay that price for this reward.
The French girls must find this endearing because they don’t just bolt with his score. They linger to enjoy it, spilling it across his chest to snort it, pausing to kiss each other in their native fashion, occasionally one or the other rewarding him with a kiss, or a caress - enough to guarantee he doesn’t protest too much as they burn their way through his complete stash.
Chuck knows less about cocaine than he does about women, and the powder these chicks are dishing
is as unpure as his soul and, even in his drunkenness, he’s somewhere between unsurprised and thankful he didn’t snort any when they start twitching next to him.
And he can’t say the whole episode hasn’t excited more than he imagined the most obvious grift in the world could. So when the convulsions really start, and their bodies collapse and bounce with spasms on top of him, he just lets what’s happening go ahead and happen.
One person’s unhappy ending is another’s happy one.
*****
Dodge watches Siobhan standing at the door, dragging her feet, not ringing the doorbell.
He wonders when to intervene, if to intervene at all.
As hard as it will be to watch, it won’t change the reality of what’s happening.
He should just suck it up and get proof.
Evidence.
Photos.
The thought of actually taking photos - of what? Of Dressler making love to his wife? Or is making love too elegant of a phrase even?
The thought makes his stomach sick.
He can’t take it – sickness turning to anger, he bursts from the shrubbery even as Siobhan turns away from the door, freezing him in his tracks. But Dressler opens the door, looking like some gay samurai, spinning her back around before she notices Dodge in the shadows.
So she likes role-playing.
Bursting out in a laugh at the sight of Dressler, Siobhan simply turns to leave. Dodge slips back into the shrubbery, watches Dressler grab her by the wrist, pull her into his arms.
The kimono is not much between him and her. Dodge stares in sick fascination at her writhing in his embrace, his blood boiling toward rage.
He’s not sure what he’s seeing, to be honest, if this is some lurid game, some weird coincidence or misunderstanding. Or something surprising. Unsettling. Sinister.
Dressler pulls Siobhan inside, kicking the door closed behind him, and Dodge remains frozen for a second, until Siobhan screams. A crash resonates in the still air outside the window, something shatters. Siobhan screams again. Dressler curses.
Dodge charges.
Something is wrong. Seriously wrong.
The door isn’t locked when he slams it open, crashing through it and right into a bloody Dressler, his little red silk robe hanging open.
Dodge sees Siobhan sprawled on the floor, but doesn’t have time to see if she’s okay.
Dressler is bigger than him, and stronger, but he’s in shock, slow moving, even as he lunges toward Dodge with the sword.
Dodge is no fighter, no athlete, but some lucky grace allows him to just deflect Dressler’s blow without any effort, and take control of Dressler’s arms and hands - and with them the sword - and drive it back toward him, sending him stumbling backwards.
And once he’s falling, Dodge just follows his descent with a quick sword stroke right into his neck. He’s not thinking, just acting. And nearly cuts Dressler’s head right off.
The blow severs the jugular, and neck muscles, and tendons - but not the spinal cord - enough to kill him right away, to leave his head dangling like an afterthought off his body on the floor, his hair mopping up the blood as he twitches around in it. Not enough to stop all of the blood, though – not enough to keep it from pooling around him, and flowing down the slightly sloped floor of the crooked old colonial house.
Or from mixing with Siobhan’s blood, also flowing in the same direction, joining to form a crescent-shaped river of blood, taunting Dodge like a cruel red smile before continuing to just flow away from him.
Part 2 - No Cure
Jaime sees Mr. Chuck when she slips into the building, but she doesn’t want to be seen. What he’s doing here on a Saturday afternoon is a mystery to her, but she can tell he’s more strung out than she is, wearing a stupid I Love Amsterdam T-shirt that’s at least a size too small, hustling toward the shelter of his mail room. Jaime makes sure he doesn’t know she’s there.
Dropping into Siobhan’s chair, she flushes with guilt even as she relishes the feel of being in this seat. She fantasizes about what it would be like to be Siobhan, to have her money, her power, her husband. But this isn’t the way she wants to take what’s Siobhan’s.
So it’s not only guilt, but confusion - and shock - that make Jaime sick.
Siobhan is dead.
Dodge’s call was incoherent; she doesn’t know what happened exactly, but she knows enough.
She knows she kind of set this in motion.
But she knows too this is beyond her. She didn’t send Dodge there to kill Siobhan, or Dressler, for that matter. It was a prank. Maybe more malicious than a prank. Okay, so maybe not just a prank. A scheme. Worse. She was conniving. From heaven, or hell, she suspects Siobhan is already plotting to haunt her, planning her demise, determining how to torture the conniving bitch who threw herself at Siobhan’s husband, teased him at every opportunity, until she had his head spinning with confusion and desire. Filled his head with adulterous lies, and set his horny, jealous ass up to catch his wife doing something she wasn’t really doing.
Jaime knows she messed up, that she didn’t think things through. She knows how men get around her, she knows what she does to them, and a lot of the time, she uses this to get things she wants.
That’s true.
But she doesn’t want people dead. That’s not her.
She’s not going to take the bullet this. This is bigger than her.
Something went wrong.
Dodge should have seen Siobhan at Dressler’s; it should have broken his heart. He should have come crawling to Jaime. She would have consoled him. She would have made this work to her advantage. A reasonable enough plan. Nobody thinks that far ahead, or through crazy possibilities like this.
Now she has to save Dodge.
Now she’s an accomplice to murder.
So, yeah, she feels guilty. And ashamed. And shocked. And sad. And dirty.
She’s done the wrong thing.
She can’t make it right, but she can do something.
Help Dodge.
She types on the computer, slowly at first, because she doesn’t know what she’s looking for, she doesn’t know what to do. She’s resourceful, knows that if she looks, answers will present themselves. That, despite the cliché, if there’s a will, there’s a way. She believes this, it is a mantra to her, especially in times like this. The problem is, she can’t seduce a computer. It might be the only thing on this planet that she can’t get to do whatever she wants. The good news is, being desirable isn’t the only thing she’s got going for her.
She starts with Siobhan’s email, but it’s all work. Jaime thanks God that she didn’t send any emails to stage the rendezvous. Finding nothing is a relief as much as a disappointment, knowing there’s no way to take them back, and she could easily implicate herself. Especially if she deletes anything. Police will know she’s trying to cover something up.
Next stop - Siobhan’s credit card statement. Siobhan’s credit card bill is Dodge’s credit card bill, too, of course. This can do a lot of things. Show patterns of activity. Though she’s not hopeful, it could provide an alibi that at least introduces a reasonable doubt. Anything. She’s not a private detective, but like every other TV-overdosed American, she’s a competent sleuth by proxy.
Hiding crimes can’t be much different than solving crimes.
And there it is.
Bingo.
According to MasterCard, one of them has been in Amsterdam for two days.
And booked a last minute flight out of there last night.
Which isn’t true, of course.
But she does know who was in Amsterdam.
*****
This is not the new Chuck - skulking and hiding from Jaime. What the hell is she doing here on a Saturday morning anyway? Hell, even the old Chuck would follow Jaime around, lurk around corners, peek through windows - so this sneaking and ducking around frustrates him even more.
But he has bigger problems than figuring out why he doesn’t
have the balls to chase Jaime around.
Two dead chicks, a stolen passport and credit card, a late night flight from Amsterdam - these are not the makings of a new man.
Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets Page 7