Nessus

by Herb Scribner

  No one gives him a shot. Except Sam. She understands him and comforts him more than anyone else, and she doesn’t even realize it.

  Shawn tells jokes. Sarcastic jokes that don't really fit the mold of middle school comedy. More of late high school, early college jokes. He points out the ridiculousness in people's decisions. He talks out of turn with his teachers. Interrupts them in the middle of class and asks them rhetorical questions.

  No one laughs. Except for Sam. She gleams with each joke. The hottest girl in the class finds him adorable and hilarious. Pencils in their hands and worksheets empty, she giggles and smiles so wildly that her pearly whites glow among the classroom. Everyone stares when she does this. Jealous jocks and pissed of preps shakes their heads. No one is supposed to find Shawn funny.

  He sees them as fated. They have all five eighth grade classes together. Only lunch and recess separates them. Together for all hours. Jokes pass the time. How could such an experience not be fated? How could she not enjoy him as he enjoyed her? How were they not fated? A match made in math class.

  Fate.

  On the first day of math class back from winter break, Mr. Hendricks draws cards upon all the seats in the room. If your suit or your face match, you sit there. Sam draws the three of hearts. Shawn earns the eight of hearts. Together they sit and learn about algebra, how to solve for X. That kind of thing. All perfect. All well.

  But this is a memory of how he loses his faith in fate. And indeed that's what happens. He can't remember the specific day anymore. Just feelings. A cool spring air. Warm enough to sense summer is on the way, but chilly enough to recognize that winter has only just escaped you. He wears a solid black hoodie and dark navy jeans. A gray backwards hat. No sleep the night before for putting together some lyrics for a freestyle rap he planned to share with her that day. Confess his love in the middle of the hall amid lockers and onlookers of the young variety.

  He shuffles his way to the end of the hall. Nerves flip his stomach. Acidic waves crash inside the walls of his body and beg him to visit the toilet for a sweet release. He ignores the shouts and screams. This is more important. Too important to give up. He beatboxes out loud, reciting the lyrics in his head.

  Sammy, Sammy, oh, wow, kablammy

  You the one true soul who complete me

  Sweet eyes and sweet thighs, you a sweetheart

  Let's find our love and start

  To find the true love, find who you are

  And so on. Over and over the lyrics tick through his head. Line after line, rhyme after rhyme, verse after verse. Back and forth he spins the wheel, reciting the song until it reaches its conclusion for the umpteenth and the bell rings for class.

  He waits outside of math. How fitting. Confess your love after the class that helps confirm the love. Through a crowded sea of teens, he searches for her. She walks beside her firmed Lindsay, side by side, step by step. Books press against their budding breasts.

  A chance to live forever. A chance to make her aware of the truth. He pushes past Paul and Ryan, snakes around Tim and Sean, dives under David and Danielle. He arrives behind them. A breath away to start his song.

  “What am I going to do?” she asks her friend.

  “Just tell him.”

  A spark ignites within him. Is it true? Does she have the same feelings as he does? The gleeful light within bursts with a warmth so calming that Shawn wants to fall on his back and sail off into the clouds.

  “Yeah that'll go over great.”

  “He has to understand.”

  He nods with a smile. He will understand. Of course he will. He likes her too. He like likes her. So much.

  “Not sure a high school guy wants to hear his little middle school friend has his bun in the oven.”

  He pauses to watch her walk away, but to also watch her disappear among the sheep, away from his heart. Pregnant? Sam? Already? At this age? Her promiscuous ways stuck in his mind. An image of her and an older faceless guy floods his brain. He sharpens his eyes at her back. A dagger slashes at his heart. Tears build behind the dam of his eyes. Like all he had fought for had been tossed into a river, sent downstream to never be recovered. His offals spread across the floor, sliced and diced. His beating hart reduces to a chunky slab of human meat. Worthless and hollow.

  More than a decade and a dozen ill-fated relationships later, Shawn doesn't care about fate. He doesn't believe in a plan that guides the universe. Forget destiny. Forgot plans. Forget all the hoopla and hubbub about a path built especially for you.

  You make your own life.

  “I don't believe in fate,” he says, his eyes locked on the California angel.

  Sam's sting still burns. He polishes off his cup and coffee and says goodbye with raised eyebrows.

  “Wow. Really?”

  “Yeah. Really. I'm out.”

  “Good.”

  “Great.”

  And so he turns to walk away. He takes a breath and then moves toward the door.

  As he hits the door, a spark ignites inside of him. Fate isn't real. Destiny isn't real. There isn't a plan guiding him to meet this girl. It's not like a drawer or designer orchestrates their meeting. So why walk away? Why not try and see if there was more to this? She clearly believes in the potential of fate. But if this wasn't fated, then there is no reason to not talk to her. Rejection or acceptance would come no matter what happened. Might as well take a shot as soon as possible.

  “I knew you'd be back,” she says when he returns.

  “Shut up,” he replies lightly, “what's your name?”

  He can see she's taken back by the question. She steps back slowly, leaning against the bar.

  “My name?”

  “Yeah, like, what do they call you?”

  She swallows. A gulp really. This is taking too much time. Something's off when a simple question doesn't receive a simple answer. Something amiss when an easy inquiry turns incredibly difficult. She takes a second and a breath longer than he anticipated so he asks her again with raised eyebrows.

  “Cassie,” she says, extending her hand for a shake.

  Why did it take so long?

  “Shawn,” he replies. Best not ask too many questions too soon. You're on a hot streak Shawn. Stick with it. You've got this.

  She begrudgingly shakes his hand, a pathetic slap of the palms that would in no way put a prospective employee closer to a second interview. Their eyes lock for the briefest of moments. A slight kindling flares beneath his skin, closer to his heart. A flicker that tickles his soul. Not enough to change him, but the slightest tinge to change the status quo. A new feeling, one he's not held since her. Since the one he ran away from.

  “Right,” he begins, snapping himself back into reality, “nice to meet you.”

  He goes to leave. It's time to get out of here and head back to the hotel room. Unwind with the buzzing boob tube. Catch the Warriors or Lakers. One of them is playing the Celtics. Could be a fun game after all.

  As he turns to leave, she says to him, “Really? Just like that? Not even going to ask for my number or for a first date?”

  “I already know the answer. Plus, I know where to find you.”

  “Okay because that's not creepy.” Another eye roll.

  He offers a parting smile before he's out the door and into the mid-morning sunshine. Forecasts predict some overcast skies later in the day. Hopefully it doesn't rain.

  Massachusetts

  The Discovery

  His phone rings. His eyes crack open. Crust drifts down onto his pillow, wading in a pool of drool. He’s on the edge of the bed now, his beer gut hanging off the side of the mattress, like a rock teetering on the edge of a cliff. He doesn’t know why he’s awake. He just is. He has to pee something fierce. Must have been those three bottles of water he polished off before bed. Health experts suggest water makes you healthy. Why not give it a shot?

  His phone rings again and now Hughes knows why he’s awake. He reaches over with a grunt. The mattress prot
ests as he rolls toward the nightstand. The glowing blue rectangle of a cell phone — or, smartphone, as the kids call them these days — sings a tacky tangy song. Beeps and bops of a default tune attract his attention.

  “Yeah?” he asks under his breath.

  “Evening Detective Hughes. It’s Officer Duncan out on Maple. We’ve got something of an issue going on down here.”

  Maple. Not again.

  “Domestic disturbance.”

  “Noise complaint, too,” Duncan confirms. “A few houses down the road.”

  “Yeah. How is it this time?”

  “We normally wouldn’t call you sir, not this late anyway. We usually can lock these down really quickly, but this time it’s different. You’ll want to get down here.”

  He asks why and she tells him. She’s honest and blunt. Direct and right to the point. He accepts her words without remorse or sadness. He expected this to happen eventually. One hit turns into two hits and soon enough there’s nothing left to hit. That’s how it works. He thought maybe Lowell would be a little calmer than Chicago, but, yet again, he sees the fallout of romance gone wrong. He sees the end result of a Romeo and Juliet. He sees the fitting conclusion to love. If you can call it that.

  His feet touch the floor. The bed squeals for him to stay put and get those next two hours of sleep.

  “Mike?” That’s the wife. Chelsea. Chelsea Hughes.

  “I have to step out.”

  “What?”

  She’s up now, scooting her back against the thick set of pillows pushing against the headboard. She cleans her eyes of crust and sand. She quickly reaches to her left and flips on the lamp. An auburn light slants around the room. It reminds Hughes of sunset.

  “Domestic disturbance. Maple.”

  “Again?” she asks.

  “Again.”

  “Why do they need you to go out there? I feel like they’re always calling you to go out on those calls. Can’t they handle it themselves?”

  Hughes buttons his pale blue shirt, the same one he wore earlier in the day. Or, yesterday. Whatever. The middle buttons fit snug around his gut. The pale blue shirt always tells him how heavy he is. When it’s tight, he knows he’s gained an extra few pounds. At his most fit, it drapes over him. He can almost sleep in it like a blanket.

  Tonight it’s snug. He really needs to lose the weight.

  He slips on his pair of dark black sneakers and his navy bomber jacket. Temperatures dip closer to freezing than fiery. Not normally jacket weather, but it’s late, or early, and he rather be safe than sorry.

  “This time it’s different.”

  “They always say that,” she replies, shaking her head. A look of disdain waits for him. The protective glance that tells him not to leave.

  “This time it’s different,” he says again. “I have a feeling that we won’t be doing this much longer.”

  “Finally over? Good. I remember when they had detectives run real cases.”

  “This is my case,” he says, leaning down to kiss her. “It’s been my case since I was an officer. That’s why they’re calling me.”

  “I hope you get him this time.”

  “Me too.”

  The drive to Maple isn’t a long one. In a past life, it probably was, or at least it felt that way. Now it’s quick and to the point. It’s a familiar drive. Birch trees wave with the wind, greeting him. He speeds forward in his modest little Kia. He nods to the pizza shop and the shutdown BP gas station. He wends around the corner where one of the young officers, Samson, lives. Yes, he knows his city well.

  The scene unfolds through his window. An American flag foray of lights glisten and splash across the night sky. Caution tape lays scattered like a tangled spider’s web, shining with a yellow not unlike the Walmart smiley face down a few roads.

  He rolls his car to a stop on the curve beside the closest line of caution tape. It’s Officer Duncan who meets him there. She’s short with dark brown hair, so dark you can’t even see it in the night. She reminds him of that actress from the movie about the pregnant teenager. She’s been in some psychological thrillers, too. Her eyes are a little buggy, but she’s still beautiful. Had he been twenty years younger and single, he would have made a play for her heart. He’s sure of it. Now he just helps her through the day when he can. Though they tend to run in different circles.

  “Nice to see you, sir.”

  “You don’t have to call me sir,” he says. “It’s a little to early for that kind of talk.”

  “Right, detective.”

  He rolls his eyes. “We’ll get there. What are we looking at?”

  He ducks under the mosaic of tape. A heavy scent of copper smacks him in the face. He recognizes that smell from all the other crime scenes he’s visited over the years.

  “Domestic disturbance. Turned into a heavy fight,” Duncan says. “Really bad. We got the call, figured we’d wait a few minutes because, you know, we’ve been getting these calls for months now.”

  “Sure.”

  “And,” she pauses as she starts again. Trepidation lingers on her breath. “And we finally sent a team out here. Glass everywhere. TV from the window, cigarettes all over the ground. Found a few hundred pennies too scattered everywhere. Just a mess.”

  Hughes’ stomach flips on him. The scene of the fight plays in his mind.

  It’s always the same. The only thing that changes is the aftermath. But the speeches are tropes now. Don’t do it again, or we’ll be back. Do this one more time and we’re going to find ourselves in a bad situation. We’ll arrest you site on scene. Don’t get into this fight again. But how the conversation flows out — who yells first, who screams their story the loudest, who the cops believe — that all changes. Most times it’s the man who controls everything, tries to fix the broken pieces, while the women sits quietly with tears dripping from her eyes. Back and forth they switch roles like magicians caught in an act of surprise.

  This time seems like it’s a little different. The dark air hangs heavy.

  “Where is he?” he asks.

  “Sir?”

  “Where is he?”

  Officer Duncan gulps. “On the run sir.”

  “And Mary?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Everything is so messed up.”

  Hughes takes a deep breath.

  “Show me.”

  The cold air bites him. Snaps at him like a ravening scavenger on its last meal. A little nip and scratch. Calm settles in as the breeze shifts to stillness. What a cold summer night. These come few and far between. He follows Duncan across the cracked road up to the home, a stale white duplex with chipped paint and rusted edges. It’s an old New England home. Probably built before automobiles were even a twinkle in Henry Ford’s eye.

  The floor protests each of his footfalls, but Hughes carries on down the main floor of the house. The copper scent hangs so thick that it sticks to his clothes. His feet crunch against the shattered glass on the ground. The fridge stands slightly askew, the door ajar. A golden light floods out of it. The scent of spoiled milk lingers as he draws closer. A younger version of him would have held his nose at the smell. Not now. He’s smelt too much death and destruction to care about dilapidated diary.

  They reach a dark brown staircase that curls its way to the second floor. When they reached the second floor, Hughes pauses at the picture hanging on the wall. It’s him, standing with Mary, arm and arm, hand in hand. They’re on a beach. Looks a lot like Hyannis. He’s clean shaven and doesn’t have drooping dark circles under his eyes. She’s smiling from ear to ear. She looks genuinely happy, something that rarely happened anytime Hughes showed up on their doorstep. He had only seen her dripping wet with tears and exhaustion. Satisfaction and pleasurably rarely joined in.

  As he rounds the corner, the sight strikes him and sends him back a few feet. Blood paints the walls a crimson red. It’s like someone picked up a can of tomato paste and tossed it around the room. It smells like a million pennies. T
he air is thick with dark feelings and thoughts. Something otherworldly happened here.

  “Told you it was a mess.”

  Hughes doesn’t realize it, but his hand hovers beneath his nose. Turns out some smells can still get to him. He wipes his mouth clean of any drool that’s spooled out from his dropped jaw and squats down low. A trail of blood stretches from a foot ahead of him all the way to the wall. Shattered glass sprinkles the floor and scattered papers do their best to cover up the crime scene.

  “Do we know what happened? Anything at all?”

  “She said something about him acting crazy. She said she heard him whispering to himself or talking to himself. We heard her scream.”

  “Any idea?”

  “No, we couldn’t make it out. But he yelled. Really loudly. Like, we’ve heard the stuff before, but he’s never yelled that bad. That’s why we hung onto the line because we thought this would be the night.”

  Hughes wanted to smile at the irony, but it was the wrong place to try that.

  “And she’s stable?” Hughes asked.

  “For now.”

  Hughes has been here before, countless times. He saw this apartment flooded with shattered pictures, broken frames, a few destroyed snow globes. He’s seen entire dinners splashed against the wall because the two couldn’t decide about how much pepper to put in their meals. He’s seen a TV cracked in half because they were at odds over who deserved to be in the Super Bowl. The couple was sick — two people who shouldn’t be together trying to make it all work, despite the toxic fumes that hung around them.

  “Wrap this up,” he said at last, twirling his finger.

  “And you, sir?”

  He pauses in his step. He turns back to face Duncan, his eyebrow raised higher than his forehead it would seem.

  “What about me?”

  “I just, you know, sir,” she begins, moving side to side. “What do you want us to do about your son? About Shawn?”