“Tempest, you’ve been here for over a week. No one has reached out to you and thus far, I haven’t heard you reach out to anyone. Aren’t you overreacting a bit?” Ferdinand questioned.
“Part of the reason I stayed away from the two of you was to prevent tracking dirt into this house. Some of these people are a different kind of nasty you don’t want to meet,” she said solemnly. “I still don’t know what my status is with The Company or if I’ll walk into the living room any morning to find Mr. Exit sitting in a chair ready to take me out of this world.”
“Would they do that?”
“Yes, they would,” she said, trying to offer a smile, a little thing she rarely did, a big something that Ferdinand noticed. It was the smile that had drawn him to her as a young man of 27, fresh out medical school.
His plan was to marry a successful woman who would give birth to brilliant children that would go forth and make a difference in the world. It was what he wanted. Tempest never made it clear what exactly she expected from the marriage or even what she desired from him as a man. No matter what he tried, he always seemed to do things the wrong way.
“Caliban, go complete your homework. I’ll take over from here,” he said, placing her hand on his arm. “Tempest, we need to talk.”
“Talk,” she said flatly, waiting for him to say what he’d be aching to say for ten years. She prepared herself for the long-winded explanations of why he never divorced her, or why she was a bad wife and terrible mother. She didn’t exhale or exude frustration in her facial expression. Tempest waited for the next words.
“I’m sorry,” he spoke softly.
“What?” she asked, unable to believe he was willing to apologize for what she really considered had been solely her fault and not his.
“I said, I’m sorry. I wasn’t a very good husband, and I truly didn’t understand the impact of the postpartum even when it was staring me in the face,” he offered, patting her hand. “To make matters worse, you were a new mom and lost your own mother in less than six months of delivering Caliban, and I was too busy trying to start a new practice as a black vet in a very white world of show horse owners. I didn’t fight you leaving because in a lot of ways, I felt I never deserved a woman like you.”
“Funny thing is I left because I never felt I deserved a man like you,” she replied. “You were exactly what my mother told me to go out and get. The life you provided was the cookie cutter imprint of what she wanted me to have, but once I had it, I didn’t want it. Then I started making my own money and working with The Company, and I knew I couldn’t come back.”
“You’re back now.”
“I’m also handicapped,” she repeated as if he didn’t see the obvious.
“Even with 20/20 vision you were never able to see me or the beauty of the life we could have. I’m too stubborn and too stupid to push hard hoping, praying that you fight for us.”
“Yet you never remarried,” Tempest responded, looking at where she thought his face might be.
“It worked out for me and Caliban. Women came. Women tried. I kept them at bay by being married to you,” Ferdinand said. “In some ways, I hoped you’d come back. You’re back. You’re blind, so don’t say it again.”
“Ferdinand, I don’t want to stay because my vision didn’t come back. That’s not fair to you or to Caliban,” she said.
“What if your vision does come back and you choose to stay?”
“As what? Your wife? A PTA Mom baking cookies? That was never me,” she said.
“Then stay and be whoever the hell you think you are now,” he responded. “Life is too short to live out of a van, melting dead bodies left lying about by sociopathic hitmen. You can have a bed, a full-sized lab, and research funded by a government think tank on growing in the hair of bald men and making floppy erections stand up with the aid of a rubbing gel.”
“Sounds interesting,” she replied, shocked she was considering his words.
“Tempest, you never took the time to have a conversation with me to find a happy medium. You did what you do best when shit gets sticky—you run. You’ve run out of track, wife. The race is over,” he said, placing her hand on the back of the couch. “I’m going to start dinner.”
“Ferdinand?” she called out to him, “Thanks.”
“Thank me by being better and doing what’s right for our family,” he said over his shoulder.
“You and me as husband and wife again. I don’t know if I want that either,” Tempest said in a lowered tone.
“Then we shall begin again as something we have never been: friends. At the end of all this nonsense, we need to be more than husband and wife. I am asking for your friendship. Let’s begin again there,” Ferdinand suggested.
“In other words, I don’t deserve you.”
“No, Tempest, in an odd sense, we deserve each other. This blind fate of yours brought you home where you belong,” Ferdinand said. Hearing his stomach rumble, he told her, “Hey, come snap the beans while I sauté the chicken.”
Tempest felt her way down the hall, tapping her cane, using the cording along the baseboards to lead her toward the kitchen. At the corner, at eye level, she felt the wall, checking for the location of the K. Twelve steps in front was the eat-in kitchen table. Four high-back chairs cradled the table, each holding a thick padded cushion which had become a friend to Tempest’s bottom. After taking a seat, a colander was placed in front of her, along with a bag of green beans. Using her fingers, she felt through the bag, snapping off the ends, pulling downward, removing the stringy portion of the bean pods.
“It feels good to be here,” she said, smiling at no one in particular.
LESS THAN A MILE AWAY, Rami Slanecki wasn’t smiling at all. Anger ran up and down his body to the point of making him physically shiver. Tempest was supposed to suffer. Her family should have kicked her out, especially after the vehicle showed up, letting them all know he knew where she was.
He could get to her.
He could get to them.
He could take them all out at any moment he damned well felt like it, and right now, more than anything he’d ever wanted in the entirety of his life, he felt like taking her out. Rising, ready to make a bold move to the house and place a few well aimed bullets in their heads and leave a nasty note for Beauty, The Glitter Man stopped where he stood.
In the distance, a black SUV slowed and parked a mile away from the house. Rami sat on the east side, staring into the kitchen at the happy family. The lone figure sat on a hill on the western edge of the home. The window rolled down slowly. Rami aimed his scope at the dark figure, gasping in recognition of the face.
Beauty was a bitch.
She had dispatched Mr. Exit to pay Tempest a visit.
“Maybe I should wait until he kills the family, then get him. I owe that fucker anyway. I owe him big time,” the Glitter Man mumbled.
The Technicians, Beauty and the whole crew, had done him a disservice. Tempest stole his life. Mr. Exit took his wife. The rest of the crew just pissed him the fuck off, driving around with rifles and shit removing people from the planet for pay.
“I’m going to get you all,” Rami promised, climbing into his truck and waiting to see what the morning would bring for Wrong Way.
He would wait.
He had nothing else to do.
Chapter Thirteen – Upended
Tempest awakened to a piercing pain shooting through her right temple. The discomfort was so sharp she cried out, holding on to her forehead and praying for it to go away. Groaning loudly, she opened her eyes, still praying to at least experience light. Squinting, rays of sunlight permeated the retina as dark shapes formed in the room.
“Holy shit,” she said, swinging her legs out of the bed, only to crumple on the floor from the intense pain shooting through her head.
Crawling across the floor, she located her purse in the chair and rummaged through it to locate her sunglasses. Slipping them over her face, she tried opening her eyes ag
ain, and this time the sharp pains weren’t as prevalent, but still there.
“My vision might be coming back,” she said with glee. Feeling her way around the edge of the bed to locate the white cane, she gripped it tightly. This morning, she would start the coffee for Ferdinand and try making a simple breakfast for Caliban before he left for school. Tempest dressed quickly in leggings and a tee she hoped matched, brushing her hair to the back and clamping it at her neck with a rubber band. “I have no idea how I look, but it will have to do.”
Working her way down the hall, she made it as far as the kitchen before the air changed in the room. A thickness settled just below her nose, altering the smell, the balance, and weight of the air. Someone was in the house. Slowly, she pulled the glasses down from her face. Light slapped her hard across the eyes, forcing her to place the glasses on once more.
Tempest sniffed the room.
The pungent scent of juniper, laced with citrus and a hint of bergamot was familiar to her in a distant sort of way. Scouring her muscle memory bank, she moved left and right, using the cane, not swinging high or low. The smells were familiar. Bergamot, citrus, juniper.
“I know that smell,” she said softly. “A man. It belongs to a man...we danced. He held me close. He felt wrong.”
Tempest inhaled again, hoping the olfactory memories would kick in. Slowly, it started to come back. Five years ago, just outside of Charleston, a pedophile named Phil had come to a sorrowful end. Two days before the job was contracted, Tempest arrived, ready to plant the clues of how the man came to a tragic end. Then he arrived to take out the target. A personal hit ordered by the woman who employed Phil at an all girl’s school that unfortunately found out the man’s sickness too late. She requested his employment be terminated. That was his ‘thing.’ He ended employment contracts. Mr. Exit was here to hand out her pink slip.
“Mr. Exit?” she said in a low voice, “Raphael, is that you?”
The sound of fabric moving made her jump. “Yes, it’s me,” the deep voice replied.
Tempest felt her way to the table, careful to not ruffle the air which surrounded him in the space which grew tighter with his presence in the farmhouse kitchen. Beauty had sent him to kill her. Her employment with The Company was being terminated.
“Will you at least wait until my husband and son have left for the day?” she asked with a boldness that surprised not only him, but Tempest as well. “Or can you take me away from this house? My son will spend the rest of his life here, I don’t want the memory of discovering my corpse to be attached to this home. My family doesn’t deserve that, please.”
“I was sent to do a threat assessment,” Mr. Exit replied, “only to find out that you have a son and a husband. You as a mother, I would have never guessed that. Maybe that why you always read as unavailable to me.”
“I was also a wife and a mother to nine technicians,” she said softly. “My job was to keep each technician calm when you needed a hand and to clean up after the messes made. At times I was your only back up. At times, I have been your only friend. Every damned hit, bullet hole, and throat slit, I was there to ensure not a speck of trace evidence remained that could be tied back to any one you, so that your lives would stay protected. I did my job without question, always on time, never late, usually ahead of you and estimating what you needed. I may not have been a great wife, or a super mom, but I was super great at my job. Ten years Raphael, not one negative performance review.”
“You have no arguments from me,” he said in a droll calmness which made her skin crawl.
“Raphael, you terrify me, and I don’t scare easily, plus now, I’m blind,” she said, removing the glasses. “Instead of Beauty sending you to assess me, she should have sent you to find the Glitter Man; he did this to me.”
The air moved, and she knew he was waving his hand in front of her face. A brisk fanning of air around her face shifted, and she knew he must have faked a face punch towards her nose for a reaction. She wasn’t lying. She couldn’t see him to react.
“Still shifting blame on others, I see. Is that why you’re called Wrong Way? Consistently doing everything in life bassackward and like a country mouse trying to navigate the sewers of the big city, nearly eaten by a hungry cat?” he asked, moving closer to her.
“No Raphael, I’m not,” she said. “I was sent to do a personal job at the request of my employer. Unfortunately, I forgot to remove an item from the crime scene and went back. The news crew showed up as I was leaving, and I got caught on camera. The Glitter Man saw me, which brings us to here.”
He sighed, bored already with her feeble attempt to sway him. They were all the same. Greedy. Living by the vices which gave them a reason to get out of bed each day and fuck up other people’s lives then blame the end result on someone else. She irritated him for having to drive all the way to Louisville to have such a droll conversation.
“And what about the poor man you left in the bed in Marion, Illinois two weeks prior?” Mr. Exit asked.
“The Glitter Man was hot on my trail. I couldn’t stay because the cops were coming. If they got hold of my van, then all of it would lead back to The Company,” she confessed calmly.
“Yet you rolled on into Nashville, not warning the Assistant District Attorney that you had a monster hot on your heels,” Mr. Exit spoke. “The embarrassment caused to this man just may end his career.”
“Raphael, Markham is an excellent attorney with an amazing legal brain. His vice is that he likes to play rough on his own terms in the privacy of his own home during his off hours,” she said. “I was, like his other playmates, a consenting adult. There were never any animals or small children. He can recover. He can talk his way in or out of any situation.”
“Again, you are doing a piss-poor job of pleading your case, sleeping with these men, and you want me to spare your husband and son the horror of seeing your dead body,” he replied. “The irony is that all of the equipment needed to clean the scene after your demise was delivered here yesterday. This, of course, leads me to believe the van returned because The Glitter Man plans to pick up your professional duties, using you as his entrance ticket into The Company.”
His voice was like butter sliding down the side of a five stack of pancakes hot off the griddle. All he needed was a dollop of maple syrup, and the man could serve as a whole, filling meal. The kind that choked a man who ate a bite without any milk to wash it down.
“That van has more than likely been stripped of all the chemicals and left with booby traps inside of it for the next person who comes and looks. However, I understand what you must do,” she said calmly. “Will you allow me to leave a note for my family?”
Mr. Exit chuckled loudly, amused by the faux act of bravery. The moment he raised the weapon affixed with the silencer; she would start to blubber like a baby. Out of curiosity, he raised it at her face, but footsteps sounded, coming down the stairs. Tempest didn’t move her body physically.
“Caliban, stop where you are!” she yelled. “Do not come around the corner. I don’t have on any clothes. Go back up the stairs now!”
“Why are you naked in the kitchen...you know that’s kind of nasty,” Caliban countered suddenly feeling a wave of fear. “Mom, are you okay?”
“No, and you won’t be either if you look around that corner. Go back up the stairs. Don’t look back, son. Do not look back or you’ll be scarred for life seeing your Mama’s tatas before breakfast. Stop your father as well,” she said in a very calm voice. A tear streamed down her cheek. She swatted it away.
Mr. Exit softened, just a tad.
“If he doesn’t listen to you and comes around that corner, you will all die,” he warned.
“Let’s go, Raphael. I’ll go with you without a fight. I never wanted to bring any of this into the home where my son would grow into a man,” she said. “Nothing scars a child more than hunger or the death of a parent. You will not scar my son. I’ll go without a fuss.”
Tempest laughed s
oftly. “The good thing is, I won’t be able to see it coming. The rumor about you is if anyone can see you coming, it’s already too late. Does that apply to smell as well?”
She received no answer. The scent of juniper grew become louder, then faded on the current of wind. No footsteps were heard but the sound of the backdoor which squeaked just a bit as it opened let her know that he’d left. Fear held her immobile in the chair, waiting for the slice of a bullet through her brain. She took slow, even breaths for seven minutes before finally giving up.
“Fuck this! If I’m going to croak today at least let me enjoy a morning cup of fucking coffee,” she said, moving to the counter and opening the cabinet with the small C, labeled to let her know where the morning brew was stored.
Tempest added water to the carafe, pouring it into the hopper. The measuring spoon inside the coffee can made scooping out grounds easy and exact. Using her fingers, she felt for the opening and added the filter, followed by the coffee, and pressed the start button.
Heavy footsteps came down the stairs, and the scent of the signature soap Ferdinand used filled her nostrils. Tempest refused to cry even when her husband took her into his arms. He held her close, rubbing her back and promising everything would be just fine. In her heart, she knew nothing would ever be the same. His words of consoling touched the portion of her heart she’d shielded for many years. In a light whisper she said what she’d never been able to mouth.
“I’m sorry, Ferdinand. I didn’t know any better, so I could do no better. I’m sorry I hurt you and our family. Please forgive me,” she said, clinging to his shirt.
“I forgave you years ago, right after I forgave myself for not knowing or understanding the woman I married, but I put my energy into our son and the making him a great home life,” Ferdinand replied. A feathery light kiss was planted on her forehead as Caliban enter the kitchen commenting on his parent’s being gross, although it warmed his heart to see them in an embrace, however brief.
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