by Paul Cwalina
I had been stewing in a broth of sadness and anger since Sarah left. As I sat there and drew a ladle of it, it seemed that the sadness had been cooked out of it. It had evaporated and all that was left was the anger.
I looked around, again, and saw no one. Sarah had often complained about the lack of security at the apartment complex, so I didn’t have to worry about cameras or guards. I grabbed the door handle and hesitated, before pulling it and pushing open the door. I got out of the car and looked around, again - still nothing. I bent down into the car and reached into the glove compartment, moved a few things around and pulled out my seven-inch hunter’s knife. It was smooth and perfectly sharpened on one side and deeply serrated on the other with a comfortable leather grip. I put it into my jacket pocket and looked around.
I didn’t want to make any noise, so I left my car door open and walked quickly to the driver’s side of Ryan’s car. Again, I looked around then stooped down next to the back tire. I pulled the knife from my pocket and plunged it into the side of the tire. There was a popping sound and the rancid smell of the air escaping the tire. I quickly withdrew the knife. The air was very slowly coming out, so I put the knife in again through the initial hole and with all my strength, started cutting the tire with the serrated side of the knife. The air then came out much quicker.
Without standing, I made my way over to the front tire and did the same, cutting it so the air came out rapidly. My heart was racing. I was operating on pure adrenaline, which must inhibit critical thinking skills.
I stood up and walked toward the building. On the lawn was a large birch tree growing through a bed of football-sized stones. I jogged over to the tree and picked up one of the stones and carried it to Ryan’s car. Again, I checked to make sure nobody was around. I positioned myself alongside the driver-side door. I lifted the stone over my head and then dropped it onto the rear-view mirror. It came off cleanly. The glass popped off, hit my leg and fell onto the ground. The rest of the mirror hung by wires against the door.
I picked up the stone and was going to throw it through the driver’s window, but decided against it. I ran back over to the tree and tossed the stone back with the others. I was getting paranoid, so I ran to my car, jumped in and fumbled with the keys before starting it. I began pulling out before I had my door closed. I put the gas all the way to the floor and spun my tires, propelling loose stones into the other parked cars.
I pulled out of the lot and reached for my cell phone to check the time. It wasn’t in the pocket in which I usually kept it. I frantically patted all of my other pockets in succession looking for the phone without success. I felt in between the seat and console and pulled out nothing but a pen and a gas receipt. I started panicking. I must have dropped it in the parking lot.
My palms were sweating and my mind was racing. I couldn’t think straight. I have to go back there and look for it. No. Someone will see you. If the phone is found near Ryan’s car, I’m dead.
I pulled into my driveway and opened the garage door. I rolled the car into the garage and turned the lights on. I began tearing apart the car looking for my phone. I lifted the floor mats and emptied the glove compartment. I pushed the seats forward and then all the way back checking every inch of that car. Nothing.
I slammed the car door shut and went into the house. I pulled a beer from the refrigerator, leaned against the island and tried to think what could have happened to my phone. After a few minutes, I went back out to the garage and contemplated going back to Sarah’s. Then I realized that if I show up there and Ryan or Sarah or someone else saw me near the vandalized car looking for my phone it would be even worse. Where is my phone?
I woke up an hour late the next morning because my phone also served as my alarm clock. I wanted to drive past the parking lot just to see if, by chance, I could see my phone my lying there from a distance. I had an early meeting, though, and had to get there as soon as possible.
I walked into city and hall and as I approached my office, I saw Chelsea standing there talking to Diane. As I drew closer, Chelsea saw me and pulled my phone from her jacket pocket. She held it up and said, “Forget something last night?” I couldn’t recall a single time in my life when I felt such an incomparable sense of relief. The knots in my stomach suddenly unraveled. A terrible burden had been lifted.
“Oh, thank goodness,” I said and reached for the phone.
“I tried to call you to tell you. It only took one ring to realize how completely stupid that was,” she said.
I laughed. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was going nuts trying to figure out what happened to it.”
“I bet,” she said emotionless. “Can we talk for a minute?”
“Sure. Come on in.”
We walked into my office. I shut the door behind her and said, “Have a seat.”
“No thanks. This will be quick,” she said, without a hint of her usual playfulness.
She stood in front of me and asked, “How was your ride home last night?”
“My ride home? Uneventful. Why?” I said, before continuing, “Well, except for the part when I ripped apart my car looking for my phone.”
“Okay. Did you try to come back for the phone or did you go straight home?”
“Straight home,” I said. “I didn’t pass ‘Go’ and I didn’t collect two-hundred dollars,” I joked.
She didn’t laugh or smile. Not only was she not amused, but she she seemed disappointed in my answer. She took a deep breath, grabbed the lapels of my suit jacket and pulled herself into me, resting her forehead on my chest. She whispered something, but I couldn’t hear exactly what she said. I guess it was only intended for her own ears. It sounded like ‘I forgive you’, but I couldn’t be sure. What could she possibly be forgiving me for? It didn’t make sense.
I asked her what she had said. She waited a moment, then lifted her face to look at me and said, “Nothing.” She reached up and kissed me on the cheek. “I gotta go,” she said and let go of my jacket.
I asked her if she was alright and she said that she was fine as she made her way out the door.
Then I realized that she had my phone all night. Did she go through all of my texts? My phone logs?
I immediately went through all of my texts between Sarah and me. Nothing incriminating, unless she went all the way back to before she and I even met. My phone logs, though, were a different story. She probably saw a hundred calls from my phone to Sarah’s just in the past week or so. Damn. That must be it.
From that day on, I made it a habit to erase all of my texts and clear my phone log daily.
Diane buzzed me and told me my early meeting got pushed back an hour. Now that the phone issue had been resolved, I sat in my chair and let the events of the previous night play out in my mind. It all seemed so strange to me, as if it was somebody else doing what I did. It was as if I was watching a movie, a work of fiction being run on a screen from which I was completely detached.
Then I remember seeing Sarah’s silhouette in her bedroom window and I felt the pain and rage build again and I became fully aware of what I did that night.
Chapter Thirteen
A week had passed and my ridiculous antics at Sarah’s went without any recriminations on my part. Even though it was perfectly rational to assume I had something to do with the vandalized car, nobody for a second thought the mayor of a city would do such a thing. The lack of accountability with that incident emboldened me to further vent my anger towards Sarah.
I was resting against the front of the desk reading through the budget when Sarah stormed through the office door. It was the first time she contacted me since that day she broke off the engagement. I knew why she was there. Still, seeing her made my stomach tremble. I wanted to take her into my arms. Then I wanted to just confront her...to ask her why...to vent my anger at her. I played it as cool as I could and looked down at Greg’s budget notes.
“Why did you do this?” she demanded, waving a letter in her hand.
> I looked up. “Excuse me? Do you have an appointment?”
“Why did you deny my permit?”
I cast my eyes back down at the budget. “Code Enforcement is two doors down on your left,” I said, motioning to the door.
“Cut the crap. I know you did this.” My refusal to look at her was surely making her furious.
Without looking up, I calmly said, “If you have a complaint, I suggest you attend the monthly citizens input meeting next Tuesday night.”
“Knock it off, right now. There was no reason to deny my permit. None.”
“According to Code Enforcement, there was an issue with medical waste disposal.”
“Ha! That’s a lie! I called Code Enforcement. Your stooge over there didn’t even know anything about it.”
I couldn’t intellectually defend what I did. She was right. I issued the denial personally. “Your permit was denied. End of story. Leave or I’ll have you removed.”
“Why are you doing this?” she pleaded.
I put the budget down on my desk and looked her right in the eye. “I don’t answer to you. Now, get the hell out of here.”
She was always offended by any profane kind of language and I knew it. “Can you have a modicum of class and not use that kind of language in front of a lady?”
“Lady?!? Lady? Are you kidding me? There are no ladies in this room,” I raised myself up off the edge of the desk. “Oh, or have we changed the definition of ‘lady’? Is the new definition of lady a woman who spreads her legs for a man while she’s engaged to another man? Is that the new definition of ‘lady’?”
That one stung. Sarah turned her eyes away from me and stared out the window behind me. She bit her lip as her eyes began to moisten.
“I said I was sorry.”
I felt my power growing in this confrontation. “Yeah...big deal. You can shove that apology. You’re nothing but a whore.”
“Nice.”
“Are you done?”
“Look, it just wasn’t meant to be for us. I don’t know how else to say it.”
I had her on the defense. “Oh, what a load of crap. You’re just never satisfied. I loved you more than anything.”
“Oh, please, you never loved me. You only love yourself. Someday you’re going to realize that.”
“That’s bull. That’s bull and you know it.” I paused before continuing, “And I suppose this punk you’re with now has more to offer.”
“At least Ryan’s priorities aren’t screwed up and he knows how to make a woman feel important...” And then she moved closer, looked me in the eye and twisted the knife, “...in every...way... possible.”
Something snapped in me when I heard her say his name and her added knife-twisting. I lunged at her. I grabbed her wrist with my left hand and thrust my right hand up and wrapped it around her throat. Her eyes grew wide. I’d never before seen her this afraid of anything. I don’t know if she was terrified or just as stunned as I was that I had her by the throat.
She struggled to pull her right hand out of my grasp. She put her left hand on my right and tried to pry it off her throat. “Let go right now,” she said. I felt her swallow hard beneath my palm. Then again through clenched teeth she said, “Let go.”
I was completely enraged. I felt my body shaking. I tightened my grip on her throat and wrist and curled my lip, ready to explode. What am I doing?? Suddenly, every time Sarah had an excuse for where she was started playing out in my head. Everything Diane said was playing like a voiceover. I wanted to let everything inside me burst out of my mouth. I wanted to verbally vomit all over her. I wanted to scream her into a sense of utter terror. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and kiss her passionately until she melted and came back to me. Instead, I took a deep breath and released with a slight push.
Normally, the small force behind the push would have been nothing, but she wobbled on her heels. Then the heel of her left shoe snapped off, sending her falling backwards. She landed temporarily on the arm of the guest chair before the imbalance sent both of them falling to the hardwood floor on their sides. On the way down, her head caught the edge of the small coffee table.
She landed hard on the floor and remained lying there for a moment. I started to bend down to help her up, but quickly changed my mind and stood back up.
“Get up. You’re not hurt,” I demanded. “It’s just another act.”
She slowly sat up on the floor and didn’t say a word. She ran her hand through her hair to gather herself, never looking my way. When she pushed her hair out of her face, I saw a laceration and a tiny amount of blood over her right eye. I took another deep breath and rested against the desk, again, and exhaled.
While still sitting on the floor, she took off her shoes and said, “You’re going to pay for this.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the cash I had. I peeled off two twenty-dollar bills and threw them at her. The bills floated down with one landing on her leg and the other on the floor next to her. “There, you can get another pair at Target. Now, get out of here.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” She brushed the twenty off her leg and got up and walked out in her stockings, carrying her shoes. Without looking back, she said, “This isn’t over.” She flung open my office door and walked out right past Diane.
Diane came right in. “What is going on in here? Why was Sarah crying? And not wearing her shoes?”
“Her heel broke and she fell. She’s embarrassed. That’s all,” I said without looking at Diane.
“Really? That’s the story you’re going with?” she said, looking at the chair and money on the floor.
“Did you notify all the department heads of the budget work session?” I said, still riding the adrenaline.
“Working on it.”
“Then get the hell out of here and get it done,” I barked. Diane threw knives at me with her eyes. She turned slowly and walked out.
I picked up the money from the floor and lifted the chair and set it back on its four legs. I walked around my desk and collapsed into my chair, then leaned forward to rest my elbows on my knees and buried my face in my hands. I couldn’t believe what I had just done. I’d never so much as raised my voice at a woman. I just wanted to take it back. How could I let myself snap like that?
I leaned back in my chair and just sat there staring out the window. I need to call her. I can’t even begin to make this right with her. I know her. There’s no reason for what I did.
About twenty minutes went by when Diane put through a call from Ryan.
“Hello?”
“This is Ryan --- Sarah’s boyfriend.”
Ouch.
He continued, “If you ever touch or even talk to her again....”
“Easy there, tough guy. Are you aware of what you’re doing?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you ever touch Sarah or talk to her again, I’ll kill you.”
“Are you aware, you moron, that you are threatening a public official?”
“I don’t care who you are. I’ll kill you. I swear to...” he stopped mid-sentence. I heard Sarah talking to him in the background, “Baby, don’t. It’s not worth it...”
Hearing her call another man ‘baby’ just sliced me up inside again.
“Are you done?” I asked him. He didn’t respond and I hung up the phone.
The phone call from Ryan set me off again. I picked up the phone again and dialed the police department.
“City Police, this is officer Kendall.”
“Get me Jim,” I demanded, without even acknowledging the officer who answered the phone.