by Luis Samways
Melisa lets a few tears run down her face. “What’s wrong with $300,000? Surely we can live with that?” she says.
“Everything is wrong with $300,000! It’s pennies compared to what this house is worth. Not just in sentimental value, but in real estate. You heard what the real-estate agent said. We aren’t settling for anything less!”
Andy walks out of the living room and slams a few doors in the house for good measure. Melisa remains on the sofa, this time letting out a flood of tears.
Fourteen
Andy has been sulking in the garage for an hour or so. He can’t bear to think about the house anymore. He just misses the time in which he and Melisa were on the same page. He doesn’t want to fall out with his wife over such a benign thing as selling a house, even if the house is the key to their future. He sits there, shoulders slumped inward for a few minutes. He can hear the hustle and bustle of the countryside from where he is sitting. He can also hear the sound of workers working on his property. Some men are chatting idly near the garage, commenting on the state of the house. He hears a conversation between two voices he doesn’t recognize as he notices the light shifting in the room as a shadow squeezes through the crack of the garage door.
“Smoke?” the voice says. Some footsteps accompany the sound as they stop just outside the door.
“Sure,” says the other voice. The sound of a lighter sparking up follows.
Andy moves in closer to the garage door, being careful not to knock anything down on the short journey.
“Big house,” says the voice.
“Sure is,” agrees the other. A long moment of silence follows. All Andy can hear is the faint sound of a cigarette being inhaled.
“You reckon the guy, what’s his name?...Andy, that’s it. You reckon he’s going to go for the pool house conversion?”
“Maybe. The guy’s a sap, but Dayton said he’s good people.”
“Dayton is soft in the head. Just because he’s good people doesn’t mean we can’t make some money while we are at it,” says the voice from behind the garage, sounding a little formidable in his tone.
“True,” agrees the other voice.
Andy just sits there for a while. What follows is idle chit-chat regarding sports. Then the sound of an approaching pickup truck disrupts the conversation as both men scamper back to their duties. Andy assumes the boss, Dayton, is back. Andy remains there for a while, mulling over what he just overheard. Could the two men be right? Is Andy just a sap? He didn’t think so. In fact, he’s fixing to make a point out of it. Just as soon as the time is right.
“Sap, my ass,” he says, shaking his head in anger. “I’ll show all of them. Trying to rip me off.”
Fifteen
“What’s wrong with you?” asks Melisa as she notices her husband’s moist eyes. “Have you been crying?” she asks.
Andy just shakes his head. He can hardly stand to look at her. In his head, he knows she is always right. That’s what’s good about her. And he knows that he let her down, trying to act like a man and stand up for his beliefs. But he knows she was right, and now he feels like a fool. He just looks down at the hardwood kitchen floor and blushes a little.
“Andy?” his wife asks, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“You were right. We don’t need any of this. We don’t need to do the house up, and we certainly don’t need to be wasting money on improvements that could leave us out of pocket.”
Melisa smiles. “Look, honey, we may not need it, but if it makes the house more appealing, than I don’t see why we don’t go for it.”
That’s typical Melisa. She always supports her husband in the end. Even if it means admitting she’s wrong, even when she isn’t. That’s what Andy loves about her. She’s always there for him, through thick and thin, stupid and foolish. Whichever one of those he is, she stands by him, always.
“I love you. You know that, right?” he asks, returning a gentle hand to her firm waist.
“Of course I do. It’s written all over your face, day in, day out. Baby, we will get through this. Mark my words!”
At that moment, they both kiss. Following the kiss, a commotion breaks out in the garden. Andy snaps his lips away from Melisa and tilts his head to the window, trying to see what is going on. He can’t see anything through the net curtains on the window.
“What the hell is all the shouting about?” he says aloud to himself. Melisa is thinking the same thing. They both decide to go outside and investigate. They walk through the house rapidly and jar open the front door. The sun cascades into their eyes as they try to pinpoint the direction the noise is coming from.
Melisa cups her hands over her eyes, as if she’s sightseeing in the bright light. She sees the workmen gathered around in a circle near the pickup truck a few yards away. She points. “Over there,” she says.
Both Melisa and Andy race over to see what all the fuss is about. A few of the workmen are pacing nervously. A few others are looking on with an expression of shock on their faces. All of them are staring down at something on the floor. All of them are surrounding it like a circle of school children mystified and puzzled by something on the playground. Melisa pushes through the huddle of humanity. She gasps.
“Andy! Dayton is unconscious!” she screams.
Andy makes his way through the onlooking workers. He sees Dayton lying face down in the dusty dirt. He immediately turns Dayton over and onto his back. Andy catches the glimpse of a metallic sheen around one of Dayton’s wrists. A pair of handcuffs hangs off his left wrist, one end clasped tightly to his arm, the other bent and distorted, as if they had been ripped off something. The unconscious man coughs up a little mucus but remains still.
Andy doesn’t know what to do. All he can think of is saving his friend. “Call an ambulance! Quickly!” says Andy as he barks at the workmen surrounding his downed friend.
Sixteen
Andy and Melisa have been at the hospital for three hours. They’ve been waiting for news, news that can’t come quickly enough. News that means a great deal to Andy. Both of them keep darting their heads from the floor to the door every time it swings open. And every time it does, it’s someone of little importance.
“He’ll be okay,” says Melisa as she cuddles Andy’s arm in the waiting room. The aircon buzzes above her head. A few flies zap into the electric zapper as she looks around the hot and muggy seating area. It’s literally empty. They are the only people there. The workforce that was working on their house decided to go out for a drink. Melisa remembers thinking that maybe some people find it hard to stay in hospitals. Still, leaving your boss alone in critical condition is pretty gutless, even if she may say so herself. “He’ll be okay,” she says once again, just in case her husband didn’t hear.
“Maybe,” he says.
Melisa feels helpless as she watches her husband deal with the trauma of seeing his friend get airlifted to the hospital. Medics on the phone said that his symptoms could be cardiovascular and insisted on calling in the helicopter for the job. It was all a little too much for Andy. He had put it in his head that his best friend was just exhausted or had sun stroke. He didn’t dare to think it was anything as serious as a heart attack.
The paramedics paddled his chest when the helicopter arrived. It was then Andy realized his friend had died in his dirty yard. It was then Andy realized that if he hadn’t hired his long-term friend to fix up his house, then maybe he wouldn’t have keeled over trying to make the place stand out.
“It’s not your fault, Andy,” says Melisa, trying to reassure him. She knows his face of guilt. She’d been accustomed to seeing it many times when he had missed arranged days out because of work. “It isn’t your fault, Andy. How were you supposed to know that he had a heart problem?”
“I didn’t. I mean, we don’t. We just assume. A healthy thirty-three-year-old man doesn’t just collapse,” says Andy as he rubs his hands together.
“So what else could it be? You saw him being revived b
y that defibrillator, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but he could have died from something else.”
“Either way, he did die. And then he was revived. So everything is going to be all right.”
Andy shakes his head. “So why haven’t they come and told us anything?”
Melisa doesn’t know how to answer. She just continues to cuddle Andy’s arm.
Seventeen
“Come on out… That’s it… Faster…’ the man in the bushes says as he tips a container upside down. The container is medium-sized, the sort of container you may put leftover Chinese food in.
“Fuck!” he screams. He immediately realizes that his vocal outburst was too loud. He sucks his finger in pain. He pops his finger out of his mouth and winces at the sight of a big red sore. “Fuck,” he says again, this time quieter. He rustles around in the bushes some more and pulls out another container. This one is a little larger. He repeats the process of pouring out its contents. He does that again two more times. Each time the container gets larger. “That’s it… Follow the yellow brick road,’ he says as he looks on. “Into the crack in the wall,” he says. He gets up and shakes himself down. “Gives me the creeps,” he says while he pats himself down vigorously as if he has ants in his pants.
He quietly makes his way to his car and gets in. He looks at his reflection in the side mirror and smiles. He keys the ignition and reverses out of the driveway.
Eighteen
The police officer makes his way down the hospital hallway. Melisa spots the man first. Andy hears the chains on his belt whip against his leg. The sound makes him turn in the direction of the oncoming officer. Melisa looks on nervously. It’s as if she realizes what is happening. It’s not like she knows what’s happening, but she knows something bad is happening. She gets a funny feeling at the mere sight of the approaching officer. “Andy?” she says, sounding scared.
“What?” he asks, still looking at the oncoming officer.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
Andy turns to face Melisa. “How the hell am I supposed to know?”
The officer reaches the couple. He looks down at Andy. His expression is blank. It’s unnerving for both Melisa and Andy.
“You Andy?” the officer asks in a thick country accent.
Andy nods. “Yeah.”
“The guy with the house renovation?”
Andy nods again.
“You brought in Dayton?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Andy says, starting to sound impatient.
“I’m afraid I need to take you to the sheriff’s office. We need some questions answered.”
Andy looks shocked. “Questions? What sort of questions?”
The police officer extends his hand as a gesture to follow him. “Just protocol in a situation like this.”
Melisa looks at Andy and then at the officer. “‘A situation like this’?” she repeats.
“Yes, ma’am. Your husband will be fine. It’s just procedure.”
“Procedure for what?”
The officer looks uncomfortable. “I’d rather not say,” he says.
“Please. Tell us what is going on. What procedure are you talking about?”
The officer grabs Andy by the arm and yanks him up to his feet. Andy hasn’t got time to react. Before he knows it, handcuffs don his wrists. “Procedure for attempted murder,” the officer says with a hiss while dragging Andy up the hallway and out of the building. Melisa just stands there in shock.
Nineteen
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Andy says as he braces himself on the steel folding chair. The officer goes behind him and pushes Andy in closer to the table. The sound of the chair legs scraping against the floor resembles chalk on a blackboard. “Is anyone listening to me? I need some answers. This isn’t fair!” he says, feeling trapped against the table, which is in close proximity to his sternum. “I’m innocent!” he bellows.
The officer who reprimanded him smiles a coy snaked grin. He finds Andy’s protests this early on in the “procedure” to be rather amusing. He immediately thinks that the interrogation will be a cakewalk.
“Innocent, are you?” the officer asks in his thick country accent.
Andy nods emphatically. “Yes, I am! Just tell me what’s going on.”
The officer nods. “In due time, Andy.”
Andy remains stunned into silence. He can hear his heartbeat in his head.
After a few minutes the door to the bleak interrogation room opens. A heavy-set man walks in, wheezing with every step. Sweat drips down his forehead. He has a large star emblem on his chest. It reads “Sheriff.” The man sits down opposite Andy and goes through some paperwork. The original officer with the country accent waves Andy off sarcastically and walks out of the room, leaving Andy with the strange-looking lawman. After a few more minutes of silence, the Sheriff finally looks at him. His big round face oozes sweat and authority as he takes a deep breath and opens his wide mustached mouth.
“I’m the sheriff of the county. And you are Andy, I suppose?” The man’s accent seems to match the other officer’s thick country twang.
“Yes, that is correct,” Andy says, rubbing his palms on his sides, trying to wipe the fear off them.
“Born in ’72, on May the twenty-eighth?”
Andy nods. “Yes,” he says, clarifying his rapid head movements.
“Your wife is Melisa. She, too, was born in ’72? A September girl, the twenty-second?”
“Yes.”
The sheriff continues to rustle through some documents. He stops dead at a piece of paper. “You are selling your mother’s house? You had an offer of $300,000?”
Andy looks on in awe. “How do you know that?”
The sheriff smiles. “It’s our job to ‘know that.’”
“What has any of this got to do with anything? How does me selling my mom’s house implicate me in an attempted murder?”
The sheriff remains quiet. He just continues to read through some more files.
Andy feels as if the sheriff is just letting him stew. “Fucking answer me!” screams Andy.
The sheriff finally looks up at him and twitches his strawberry blond mustache. “I will not tolerate such language in my interrogation room! You got that, you no-good son of a bitch?” the sheriff roars as he thumps his fist down on the metal table.
Twenty
“They took Andy in?” asks Patsy as she consoles her daughter.
Melisa cries into her mother’s shoulder. “He didn’t do anything!” she screams hysterically. Both she and her mother are standing in the lavish doorway of the estate-like home.
Her father, Peter, comes rushing to the door. “Melisa, darling, what happened?” He embraces both Melisa and his wife Patsy.
“Daddy, they took Andy in.”
“Who took Andy in?” Peter asks, still squeezing both his wife and daughter in an embrace.
“The police took Andy in! They arrested him,” she says, crying some more.
“Has he been hitting you?” screams Peter furiously as he lets his wife and daughter out of his grip. Patsy turns to Peter and gives him a look. It’s too late, though. Melisa has already grown red faced.
“No, he didn’t! Why on earth would you think Andy would even touch me?”
Her father looks miffed and a little embarrassed. “I just…”
Melisa shuts him down. “No, you ‘just’ nothing! Andy is a good man, and he has only ever been nice to you and Mom. I don’t understand why you have it in for him!”
“I’m sorry dear. I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Peter says, stepping back a few steps, looking flushed with embarrassment. His daughter has never called him out like this before. He never knew how she truly felt about Andy. He just thought their relationship was a one-off. “I just want you to be happy,” he says.
Melisa nods. “I know,” she says, understanding where her father is coming from. It wasn’t too long ago that her father saved her from her previ
ous boyfriend before Andy. Back then he was right. “Andy isn’t the same as Michael. Andy doesn’t hit me. You don’t need to worry about that.”
Peter nods. “Good. Truth is, I do like Andy. He seems like a good guy,” says Peter.
His wife Patsy gives him a warm smile. “He is a good man,” she says, holding her stubborn husband’s hand.
“I’ve been silly. I’m sorry, Melisa. I know how much he means to you.”
Twenty-One
Dayton is lying on the hospital bed with his eyes wide open. He is feeling a tad nauseous and could do with a sick bucket. The ceiling above him is doing backflips as it spins from left to right. He feels like he drank a bottle of whiskey and partied till the early hours. He knows where he is. It isn’t the first time he’s ended up in a hospital, and he knows that it won’t likely be the last time, either. To date, since he started his renovation business he has been in and out of hospital with all sorts of injuries. Nails in limbs, falls off ladders, fights in the yard, bar fights after the fights in the yard. Arrests for abusive language toward aggravated customers, resulting in more fights. It’s safe to assume that Dayton knows the deal when it comes to opening his eyes and staring at a hospital ceiling. The only thing that is alarming Dayton at this moment is that he’s never awoken in the hospital to find himself tied up in all sorts of tubes, as if he was on life support. It freaks him out as he comes to.
He tries to rip some of the tubing off his chest. The EKG monitor flatlines. Within seconds, a rush of doctors and interns spills into his room. The sound of the door swinging open frightens him even more. The look of relief on their faces is palpable.
“Mr. Rogers, please refrain from moving too much. You’ve been through quite an ordeal. You need to rest up and get better,” says one of the doctors as he approaches the reeling man.