Jackie's Week

by
M. M. Wilshire

Copyright © 2010 M.M. Wilshire

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either products of the
author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the
author.

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Prologue

The checkout guy scanned the Castle Rock
cabernet, the hothouse portabellas with baby squash medley, and the
package of Frenched veal chops priced at nearly twenty bucks a
pound. Jackie handed him a fistful of twenties and got back a
little change. The bagger fit the whole thing into one bag.
Everybody wished everybody a Happy New Year.

She was parked at the far end of the lot, a
good 200 feet from the entrance. For some reason, the lights were
out down there, and as she entered the shadows, she found herself
feeling uneasy. She stopped and steadied the bag with her left arm
and fished out her keys, pressing the remote start on the Malibu,
feeling less alone as it came to life 100 feet away. She arrived
safely at her personal island of noise and light and was about to
pop the trunk when he materialized. He was short, not much taller
than she was, but easily twice as wide.

In the dim red glow cast by her tail lights,
her first impression was that of a gentleman in formal attire. This
benign assessment was quickly erased by something more sinister.
The man was wearing a T-shirt tuxedo, oddly enough with real
buttons. His bare forearms were thick, hairy and powerful. In the
blink of an eye, he was in her personal space.

She knew the key fob in her hand had a panic
button, but she'd never tried it, and now it was too late. At the
sight of the big revolver she found herself wishing she could
disappear down a hole.

"
Vzj
a
t’ na abord
a
ž
," he said.

She tried to scream.

Chapter 1

It was a safe place. After the brutal
assault, the cops had come up empty-handed, so Jackie abandoned her
home in Van Nuys and went into hiding in the sprawling apartment
complex in Tarzana. She liked the unfriendly facade which rose up
forty feet into the air like a medieval castle. She especially
liked the round-the-clock security guards who patrolled the
thousand-plus units connected by a confusing maze of twisty
walkways. You practically needed a personal GPS system to find your
own front door. The front door itself was made of steel, and for a
few extra bucks she replaced the peephole with a security camera.
Of course, the apartment was not in her name and could never be
traced to her.

Naturally, the cops, when confronted about
their failure, told her not to worry. She had nothing further to
fear, they said, since it was doubtful lightning would strike twice
in the same spot. But Jackie knew better. She knew he was out
there. She could feel it.

She was starting to run out of money. They
held her job at the bank for awhile, but then the bank went under
and somebody else bought it and now there was no job waiting and no
prospects of finding any. She couldn't sell her house because it
was underwater and 3 months behind to boot. None of that really
mattered right now. The main thing was to be safe, to hide until
somehow he was gotten rid of. If they ever found him. Dealing with
the cops wasn’t like watching Cops on TV, where they wrapped
everything up in half an hour. Of course, the cops were in no
hurry. They had time on their side, and could afford to make
mistakes, a luxury she could not afford. Sometimes she wondered if
the criminals of Los Angeles had to actually walk in and surrender
to get themselves arrested.

Jackie established a careful routine, an
orderly framework upon which to hang her frail psyche. A typical
morning began with the vacuum cleaner. The carpet had perfectly
aligned brush marks which she was careful not to disturb. When this
was done, and most importantly, once a day, around 11 a.m., Jackie
took a walk through the complex to the front lobby and picked up
her copy of the LA Times. This was her personal sanity test. It was
a huge problem for her. It took everything she had to do it, and
over time, the amount of vodka to fortify her for the journey
seemed to have increased. But she made the journey without fail,
knowing the day she couldn’t do it, he would win. He would win
without ever having to do another thing to her.

For now she was somewhat satisfied. She had
her vacuuming in the morning and her trip to pick up the paper, the
court shows in the afternoon, poring over the L.A. Times at dinner,
and plenty of vodka and old movies during prime time. She had no
computer, believing he might somehow track her down over the
internet. It was safer to stay off the grid. She was safe—for the
moment.

The only other problem Jackie had aside from
the anxiety-ridden daily trip to the lobby pick up the paper was
the dream she had every night. It always started the same way, with
him popping up out of the shadows in that stupid T-shirt, showing
her his gun and saying, "
Vzj
a
t’ na abord
a
ž
" in his deep whiskey
voice. She then re-lived in nightmarish distortion the terrible
events of the assault.

In the rehab hospital, she learned if she
slept semi-upright, she didn’t sleep as soundly and was able to
wake up when she found herself in the dream. Sleeping on a big
stack of pillows was the best way to manage the nightmare. But for
some reason, last night, she’d fallen asleep on the bed while
watching an old Rex Harrison movie and her pillows had collapsed
and as a result she had slept supine and deeply and was unable to
awaken from the dream, which then unleashed its full fury upon
her.

Upon awakening, she wished he had killed
her. Being dead would have been better than having this dream
slowly drain the life out of her. The dream, she felt, was
sometimes worse than the actual attack, owing to the fact she knew
what was coming and had learned to fear it in advance. The actual
attack had only taken a minute or so, but the dream seemed to last
for hours as her emotions screamed without relief.

Because of the dream last night, the day was
starting out badly. She felt jagged around the edges and out of
control. For one thing, she hadn’t had time to vacuum, and there
were a few footprints messing up the brush marks on the carpet. For
another, it was almost time to go down to the lobby and get the
paper. She could forego the paper and start the vacuuming and then
watch the court shows all the way through dinner. But no. Then she
would have skipped her trip to the lobby and have no paper to pore
over in the dead spot before prime time. If she skipped once, then
she might skip again and it would be all over.

This was how it happened. You changed one
thing and it all fell apart for good. She would be a virtual
prisoner and who knew what kind of hell that would unleash? So just
this once, she would have to forget the vacuuming and just start
her day with her trip to the lobby for the paper. The problem was,
somehow the vacuuming gave her some kind of mental edge as she
worked up to going for the paper, and now she’d lost her edge. If
she vacuumed now to get the edge, it would throw the timing off.
She would meet more people on the twisty walkways, and there would
possibly be no paper. She would have to go for the paper now.

She went to the fridge and opened the
freezer and stared at the ice-covered bottle of Stolichnaya lying
on its side. Normally, a sense of propriety inspired her to dress
up the first drink of the day with some tomato juice and serve it
with a stalk of lettuce. Having neither, she took it out and
unscrewed the cap, pouring a couple of fingers into a clean jelly
glass before going into the bathroom and regarding herself in the
mirror. The hollow eyes stared back, the hair gone to gray, hanging
like a mop. The first sip hit hard but went down smooth. At least
it wasn’t the cheap stuff.

It was time. She checked the security
monitor on the kitchen counter to make sure the front door was
clear. She retrieved the box cutter from her pocket where she
always kept it and held it firmly while she opened the door a
crack, first making sure it was still on its safety chain. All
clear outside.

But something was wrong. At her feet was a
white envelope. She plucked it inside and closed and locked the
door. There was something substantial in the envelope. She tore it
open and out it came. Her charm bracelet. The one she had been
wearing the night of the attack. The one he took from her on New
Year’s Eve. He had found her at last.

It was not a safe place. She called the
police and then called her sister.

Chapter 2

When Donna arrived, she found Jackie sitting
on her sofa in the company of Johnson, the cop assigned to Jackie's
case. Ignoring Johnson, she assessed Jackie's condition.

"I'm taking you to see my psychiatrist,"
Donna said. "Right now."

It was a quick trip from Tarzana to Sherman
Oaks, and after a no-frills introduction, Jackie found herself
seated, facing the doctor. The third-floor Ventura Boulevard office
was cool and quiet. It was a place where secrets were told, and
kept, a place where good things maybe happened, and maybe not.
There was something comforting about Dr. Black's calm demeanor,
suggesting perhaps that things weren't so bad after all, although
Jackie knew they were.

"I'm not sure where to start," Jackie
said.

"Why not start at the beginning," Dr. Black
said. Black was a tall woman of obvious Native American lineage who
looked like anything but a psychiatrist. She was wearing a simple
turquoise shift and sensible tan flats. Her long black hair was
pulled back tight to reveal ears strikingly pointed at the tips. To
add to her striking appearance, she had the whitest teeth Jackie
had ever seen, with remarkably pointed incisors.

"You're an Indian," Jackie said, then
immediately regretted it. "I don't know why I said that. I'm
sorry."

"Navajo," Dr. Black said. "I was born and
raised in New Mexico. And it's okay to say anything you want
to."

"I like the fact that you're tall," Jackie
said. "What I mean is, you are nearly as tall as I am, which is six
feet, three inches. You've probably suffered from big girl syndrome
the way I have."

Black offered a half-smile, incisors slightly
protruding.

"Hard to get a date, right?" Jackie said.
"And all the teasing because you're fully developed in the 4th
grade? Then when you get older, you are joining the big girls
dating club and the nightmare really begins."

Black laced her long fingers. In the
heightened atmosphere of doctor-patient intimacy, her every gesture
seemed meaningful and pointed straight at Jackie.

"It's funny," Jackie said.

"What is?"

"I was wondering how many women have sat here
for the first time, just like me. I can imagine them. I can almost
hear their voices. I can imagine them wondering what good an hour
with you could possibly do? Their problems are huge, and an hour is
so little time. I imagine many of them felt like screaming."

"Is that how you're feeling?" Black
asked.

Jackie became aware of the distance between
them, a distance greater than mere measurement. A distance
magnified by the awareness that Black was a serene, healthy woman
and Jackie was anything but.

"What I feel like," Jackie said, "is curling
up in this chair and falling asleep. Maybe because it is so
peaceful in here."

"I gather it isn't so peaceful for you out
there," Black replied.

Jackie thought about this for a moment.

"You really know how to ask questions,"
Jackie said. "I can see that little thing going on in your brain,
there."

"That thing?"

"Yes. You know. The way you keep digging
around my edges. The way you take anything I say and turn it into a
question. Each time you do that, it's like you're giving me a
little jab, trying to break through."