I yank the vodka from the cabinet over the refrigerator — no text from Jane. I guess I will party by myself today. I twist the cap off, no need for a glass; it only makes dirty dishes. Bottoms up.
Why is there ringing? What is that? I lift my head off the area rug of the living room. How did I get here? My tongue feels fuzzy, and I shake my head around. Yuck. Vodka, that’s how I got here. There’s still ringing. Ugh, my phone.
“Hello?” but there’s no answer, just more ringing. Oh, wrong phone.
“Hello?” I answer into the other receiver without looking at the name.
“What the fuck is going on there?” John screams down the line, and I sober up quick.
“Honey, hi.” I push myself up to a seated position on the floor, reeling from the room spinning around me.
“Hi? Hi? I’ve been calling you over and over, what are you doing?” he barks.
“I apologize. I have a migraine today, and I was taking a small nap hoping to help ease the pain. I guess I didn’t hear the phone ringing.” I instantly rise off the floor, grabbing the arm of the couch to help sturdy my feet. I begin to tidy up the area around me at the sound of my husband’s angry voice.
“I thought you were off cheating on me.” His voice sounds hurt. I roll my eyes and indeed cause myself a headache. No, I’m not the cheater, dear husband.
“Absolutely not. What a horrible thing to do to a person. I would never be so cold.” I dig in; I want him to prove me wrong and have emotions.
“Do you think you need to go to the doctor for this headache?” I don’t need any more pills, John. I shake the phone violently in my hand.
“No. No. I fell asleep in an awkward position last night. Migraine was just a dramatic word on my part. I should have said an intense headache instead,” I coo down the line. Ever so polite and meek, meanwhile flashing my smooth, newly painted middle finger toward the phone.
“The cook emailed me that you sent her away for the week.” He doesn’t sound pleased.
“Oh, honey. I’m fine cooking my own dinners for one week. I like to do it.” I put the throw pillows back onto the couch.
“Only you could stomach your cooking.” He chuckles like it’s a joke. Fuck off, John. I don’t say anything to the comment, just shuffle the paper plate that holds no remains of the delicious Portobello mushroom sandwich I made for lunch today toward the kitchen.
“I don’t mean it like that, Medeia. You’re so huffy when you have a headache. I was trying to be funny.”
“I know. Just a joke, right?” I dump the plate in the trash can.
“Are you taking a tone with me?” I can see him ducking into a corner somewhere now, out of sight of others to make the conversation private. “Is this about the job?”
“No, I’m sorry. I was trying to focus in on something, and my eyesight is still blurry from the headache.”
“You should take some pills.”
“I don’t need to.”
“Well since you’re too busy to talk to me, maybe I should let you go.” Pouty toddler.
“It may be a good idea. I should lie down. Hope you’re having a marvelous time, darling.” I hope you die in a plane crash, darling.
Nothing but the phone signaling he’s hung up. No love lost. It rings again in my hand. Fuck. This is going to be the lecture of a lifetime now.
“Yes, dear.” It’s singsong, but I can’t hide the irritation.
“Dinner, darling?” I hear a feminine giggle.
“Jane?” I hold the phone away and see her name instead of the other J.
“Who were you expecting?” she asks.
“The dickhead who told me my food was inedible,” I slip and slam the bottle that once held vodka into the trash. “I didn’t think I gave you this number. I thought you were a burner caller.”
“Shit. Sorry. Is the dickhead going to be even grumpier? Your husband is the dickhead, right?” She clarifies.
“Yeah.” I realize my slip, exposing any part of my non-perfect life to a stranger. “I mean, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to project like that.”
“No sweat. If you can’t talk about it with your girlfriends, who can you tell?”
“My therapist.” Another slip.
Jane laughs. “You’re spilling all the beans. I like it. So, dinner?”
“Sounds good. Where at?”
“A little mom-and-pop place called Dangeil’s. I’ll text you the address.” She cheers. “Meet you in twenty?”
I look at the clock. I hadn’t realized it was evening already. 6:30 to be exact. “Shit,” I mutter.
“Okay, thirty?” She mistakes my curse for lack of time.
“No. Ugh.” I run my hand down my face. “I’m drunk. I can’t drive.”
“Starting the party without me?” She laughs.
“Something like that. Do you think you could pick me up? I’ll text you the address.”
“I got a better idea. I’ll call the pizza shop, you text me the address, and we will stay in tonight. Need me to bring anything?”
“Wine,” I spit out.
“Aren’t you already drunk?” She bursts into a deep cackle.
“What if it wears off?” I raise my eyebrows, smiling.
“Good point. Wine it is. Text me the address.” With that, she clicks off the line, and before I forget, I send her our address from the burner phone and waddle to the bathroom to relieve myself. A little bit of the woozy feeling has worn off after a good emptying of my system. I walk a bit better back to the couch and slump down. I smile to no one and throw my feet up on the coffee table.
John hates feet on the furniture. He would scream if he saw it. I rub my heels back and forth all over the table, bursting into a rage of laughter. I hold my stomach and scream out into the emptiness. He hates any loud noise, as well. I jump from the couch searching for the remote control for the TV. I know there is a music channel on here somewhere. I blare the jazz channel. Something John told me was music for the dumb people. I hold both middle fingers up in the air and move my body to the sound coming through the surround system.
It’s not long before the doorbell screeches through the music and I’m dancing my way over to answer it.
“Jane!” I yell when I pull the door back to her smiling face.
“Crazy lady!” She laughs. “May I come in?”
“Come in. Come in. Come in. Join the fun. We’re doing everything my husband hates.” I pull her into the living room, leaving the front door open behind us.
Jane sets the pizza and wine on the coffee table and immediately joins in on the dance party.
“I’m going to go shut the door,” she says as she shakes her body back to the entrance. I open the pizza box on top. Pepperoni. Delicious. I dive in for a slice. John would scold the calories.
“What else does your husband hate?” She strips her coat off and leans back out of the room, looking for a coat rack. I point to the couch with a determined eyebrow shimmy. Without a care, she tosses the coat on the sofa.
“Everything,” I shout. “Me.” I laugh into her face. I smack her arm because I want her attention for my next words, even if she is already looking at me. “But he doesn’t hate his whore.” I wave my pizza in her face then bite a considerable chunk and search to switch the music to rap because John hates that, too.
“Shit, Medeia.”
“Hmm?” I look at her face, and she’s stunned by my omission. “Oh—” I wave her off— “I’ve known for a few weeks now; don’t beat yourself up.” I find the rap and start bouncing my body. It feels good to move without a rigid board up my back for once.
“And you’re still here?” She’s pointing around to the house.
“Well, I’m poor without him.” I catch her face screw up in disgust. “Don’t give me that.” I mute the TV. “I’m working on a plan.”
She holds her hands up in surrender. “I apologize. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. There’s no saving my marriage. There’s no going to my
childhood home.”
“You could live with me,” she offers.
“I hardly know you. I mean I like you, but we don’t know each other yet.”
She nods. “I can understand that. I do. If ever you need a place, though.”
I grab her hand and squeeze. "You're the first I'll call." I wink at her, and she smiles a sad smile.
“So, pizza?” she tries to rally.
“Pizza.” I shake the slice I still have in my hand at her and turn the sound back on the TV. We continue dancing until I can’t feel my legs, and I forget why I stopped moving my body this way so many years ago.
Medeia’s Journal
Dear Anna,
I’ll see you in the morning at the gym. I’ll be hungover, but I’d never miss a chance to see you.
Seventeen
“So, I thought about it after I went home last night, and I looked it up. It’s perfect.” Jane is buzzing as she approaches me next to the treadmills. My head is fuzzy and hanging on the front half of the machine.
“Thought of what?” I groan. Hangovers hurt.
“Security cameras. They have ones you can watch what’s happening from your phone. Technology is sick. Anyway, you could set some up in the warehouse and nail his ass.” She punches the air like she’s sinking a fist into John’s face.
“Warehouse?” What did I tell her last night? Does she know who Anna is?
“That’s the only thing you said last night. I see it on your face. Relax, you’re very private. You said that you saw a mattress at the warehouse. I figured this is the way that you can catch the asshole.”
“I did that.” I groan again. “The divorce lawyer only said that maybe it could help.”
Jane’s shoulders sag. She wanted to be a helper, but the fact that Jane was on the same wavelength felt like a kinship.
“If it doesn’t work, maybe I can find a way to use it as blackmail.” I put my hand to my chin.
“Speaking of blackmail.” Jane points down over the balcony. I look in the direction of her finger. Anna is late today. I thought she wasn’t coming at all. Wait. What?
“Blackmail? What kind of gossip do you hold?” I try not to look personally involved in the matter. “I need someone else’s drama for a minute.”
“Well, that girl down there, the one with the blonde curls that never mess up.”
I nod. I know who.
“Well, it’s just that the guys around here talk a lot, and none of them will touch her because she used to date an old boss and blackmailed him into giving her his wife’s Mercedes SUV. Everyone around here is scared what they’ll lose if they touch her.”
“Huh.” Well, that explains why Anna drives such an expensive car around. She got it the same way she got groceries yesterday. I’m a little relieved to hear it wasn’t John who purchased the vehicle for her.
“That’s not the only time, either. She’s made a trainer here give her a lifetime membership because he was banging her and didn’t want his fiancé to find out. I think she’s even gotten a nose job out of her manipulation skills.” She points down at Anna posing for a lifting selfie. “She’s a snake.”
I sink to my butt and look down the glass balcony at Anna. I look at all the people around her rolling their eyes or abandoning their posts to get far away. She is a pariah. Why can’t John stay away? Is he aware of her reputation?
“Why are you smiling?” Jane cuts into my thoughts.
“Just thinking about the karma in the world and how it’s hitting this girl. How I hope one day it will hit my husband just as well.”
She smiles down at me. “It will. It will.” She seems confident in her conviction.
“Yeah, I think it just might.” I smile down at Anna. I feel like a run before work today after all.
Medeia’s Journal
Dear Anna,
Do you run this often to keep physically fit or to outrun the problems of your life? I’ve noticed that your face looks less troubled when you finish. You won’t outrun me. I wonder if I can be as good at blackmail as you are.
Eighteen
John left me a voicemail to pick up some files for him at the office today so that he can work on them when he comes home tonight, earlier than planned. I can’t say the enthusiasm wasn’t hard to fake. I almost broke character and told him to stay exactly where he was forever.
Luckily, Anna has the day off and won’t be there to recognize the person who has been following her lately. She won’t see the silhouette of my body and remember someone at the grocery store looking the same way.
When I step into the office, everyone says hello, but they don’t bother to make eye contact with me. I wonder what stories pass around here about me. John may be painting me as a horrible mean wife, wouldn’t be the first time he’s managed to get people to shun me by inflating characteristic traits of mine into something unimaginably evil. That’s what he’s managed to do with his family. That’s why every gathering is uncomfortable with them.
John’s office sits on the top floor of the building. He overlooks not only everything inside the building but everything outside of it. His corner office is obscenely huge and not at all humble. Go big or go home. John has designed for his own office to have a separate waiting area with Anna’s desk—you need to walk through two doors before finally entering his space. He keeps Anna just as isolated in her own four walls as he does me in the house.
I glance at her desk as I walk in, it’s vacant. Easily accessible and concealed if I wanted to peek inside. I linger with my hand on the door that leads to my husband’s office. Just one look won’t hurt. I abandon the knob and check the glass doors leading out. There’s no one around. I lurk over and duck behind her desk, adrenaline rushing through my body.
I open the top drawer and find a key and a bunch of lip balms. Anna’s top side drawer holds a mirror and a spare makeup bag. The vanity of this girl is insane. Her bottom drawer is empty but lockable. This must be where she keeps her purse for the workday.
The left-hand side of the desk holds online business-related documents. Dammit. There’s nothing here. I slam the drawer, pissed. I wanted to find something, to hold on to something of hers and steal it for myself like she did my life.
I head into my husband’s office and push open the door. Inside on a riser sits my husband’s desk with space for two others to sit in front of him. I need to climb the two stairs to reach the precipice. Show off. This looks ridiculous. Another power play of John’s to let everyone know that he feels they are beneath him. I walk behind his desk. His drawers hold nothing, as well.
The top of his desk is even more disappointing, not a personal photo to be found. Just six months ago, a picture of him and I sat front and center, smiling at him all day. I’m gone now. He’s already removing me from his life. I wonder how much money I’ll have saved up before he pulls the plug.
I grab the files he asked for and dart out of his office. I stop by Anna’s desk one more time to grab a key. There is one thing of hers that I would love to check out.
Nineteen
I try to tell myself it’s too risky. I might get caught, but I want it so badly it’s eating at my soul. I place gloves on my hands to keep from leaving fingerprints and slip shower caps on my shoes to keep from tracking dirt or anything incriminating inside. The dark of the night covers me and borrowing Jane’s car helps me blend into the neighborhood around here.
The office desk didn’t give enough insight except for the fact that Anna must have parched lips for how much lip balm she keeps on hand. Following her has only proven to me that most of what I see is a façade and she is suffering from severe mommy issues.
I don’t need to break the door open because she leaves a spare key to her apartment in the top drawer of her desk at work. She’s even the kind of brainiac that needs to label that it’s for her apartment. How did she get a job working at John’s company when she can’t remember what her apartment key looks like or the fact that the only key in the top drawer of he
r desk belongs to her residence?
No one is around outside, the chill of the weather shoving them indoors. I made sure Anna’s apartment building didn’t have security cameras before coming here. Isn’t that sad? She doesn’t value herself or her life enough to have security cameras in place.
I value mine, that’s why our entire home has them. Probably why John never brings her to our house for one of their little lovemaking sessions. I check the cameras religiously every single day. Honestly, it’s always been an obsession. Security of my family and belongings, of what’s mine, is something I take seriously. This act tonight feels merely like an extension of it. I’m checking on what belongs to me—had belonged to me.
Anna isn’t home this evening. I know because she’s off at a club. At least that’s what her recent status on Facebook reported. I wonder if she’ll play the forgotten card trick on an unsuspecting man tonight and get free drinks. I laugh in the hollow space of the entry to her apartment and close the door gently behind me. I don’t dare turn on the lights; instead, I give myself a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
A sweet and citrusy smell surrounds this area. It must be the remnants of a candle or a room spray. Anna is conscious of the way her home smells. Well done. I give her kudos for that. That’s a sign of someone who takes pride in the things she’s worked hard for. It’s evident that Anna and I share similar backgrounds of being brought up poor. We champion and value things a little differently because she also enjoys working hard to take things that aren’t hers.
I walk through the living room that’s connected off the small entryway. The décor is basic enough. Not a lot of thought in style or design placed inside here. It’s functional as if that’s all it needs to be. Anna is a no-fuss kind of decorator with only one picture hanging on her wall. It isn’t a family portrait or a photo that would mean something to her. It is just a meaningless piece of art bought by the dozens at a warehouse store. She seems to lack a creative spirit when it comes to designing her space—what a shame. I don’t see any personal photos lying around. I haven’t seen her hang out with many people, either, as I watched her. Anna’s even flying solo tonight at the club. I bet she won’t come home that way. She must not be close to the members of her family. I know she isn’t particularly cozy with her mother, but I wonder if she even has friends.
Dear Anna Page 8