On Tenterhooks (12 page)

Chapter
1
5

Steve rolled over and looked at the clock on the nightstand: 2:37
a.m.
.
Kicking
the covers off
with a sigh
, he
grabbed his glasses
from
the nightstand and sat up
.
Only the alarm clock and the low pulsing red light of his phone on the pillow beside his lit the darkness
:
Julie’s
pillow
.
Her side of the bed had become his desk of sorts at night
.
Magazines, mail, the TV remote and his laptop covered the comforter
.
Shortly after
her death
,
he had
put her pillows up on a shelf in the closet. He tried to make the king-sized bed with just
his
pillows, placed in the middle of the bed, when he bothered to make it at all
.
It
looked ridiculous
,
out of
balance
.
Eventually
,
he
had
returned her pillows to the bed. Even if she would never rest her head on them again, putting them back on the bed made for a good appearance, at least until it was time to turn out the lights and crawl into bed alone.

When he
grabbed t
he remote
to
flip through the stations
,
Steve found
nothing
that could hold
his interest
, so h
e tossed the remote back on
to
her pillow and
grabbed the stack of work mail spilling out of his rucksack. He had decided the day
before
that he needed to get the pile off his desk at work, yet he had refused to throw the journals and magazines away before he’d had a chance to give them a good read.

Steve had always been a traditionalist when it came to magazines
.
He respected the blogs and online versions
,
and
agreed
they made for easy searching and insight, but he still appreciated the feel and satisfaction of the printed page
.

Julie
had often teased him about it.

“You’re a techie guru who won’t give up the paper
.
You’re like a walking oxymoron. Or maybe we
should
scratch that ‘oxy’ part.”

T
hen she’d laugh so hard that she’d
end up snorting
, which would lead Steve to laugh right along with her.

As he leafed through the magazines now, he saw right through the pages into the past, thinking back on the many times and many
ways
in which she had made fun of his
book-wormish
traits
.

He
shuffled the stack looking for a cover with some appealing headlines to draw him in
.
The small lavender envelope slid out of the stack and landed on his lap
.
He didn’t remember loading it into his pack, but there it was.

He put the stack of magazines aside, opened the envelope and read the brief message again.

I
wish something like this
did
exist.

Having a chance to say goodbye might have made this a little bit easier. Having her ripped away without warning had put him in an extended state of mental shock
,
or at least a partial mental shutdown
.
What
words would he have said if he had known
it was the last time they would speak?

Steve laid his head back on the pillow
.
He took several deep breaths, staring at the ceiling
, then
yawned and removed his glasses, rubbing his eyes
.
He looked down at the letter still in his lap
,
shook his head and reached for his laptop on the bed beside him. While it booted up, he turned off the TV and read the note one more time
.
H
e logged in
to his network and entered the web address on the card in
his web browser. A
simple black and white page loaded
.
“
Say Goodbye to Me
”
in tall, plain letters covered the top of the page, and underneath was an italicized tagline:
A chance to tell them how you feel, even though they’re gone.

Beneath it was a simple web form, formatted like an email. The date showed at the top of the message
.

“What the hell?” he
asked, shrugging.

He filled out the TO field with a simple “
You
” and the FROM field with the accompanying “
Me
.”
Leaving
the
SUBJECT
line blank
, he
moved the cursor down to the body of the message and began writing.

Doll,

I wish there
was
a way to talk to you one more time
.
I’ve got so much to tell you and show you, but I always figured I’d have our whole lifetime together
.
It wasn’t until you were gone that I understood how much I needed you
.
We always showed love and passion, but I would have done so much more for you if I had known we would only have a few years together on this planet
.
I miss you more than I can even try to say
.
It hurts me deep in my heart
.
At first
,
it was like somebody jabbed me with a giant spear
,
but now it’s like a dull ache that I can’t shake
.
Every place I look I see you, I see us
.
I turn on the TV
,
and I see the commercials that made you laugh
.
I search the drawers for the can opener
,
and I find that pig spoon you loved to eat your ice cream with
.
The house seems so sterile and cold
.
I sleep in our bed
,
and I feel so small in it by myself. How am I supposed to do this now?  I am so angry and so confused
.
I don’t know where to go
.
I wish you were here again
.
I need your warmth in our bed and in my heart
.
I don’t know anything anymore
,
and I want to feel good again.

Steve paused, staring at the screen.
Tears blurred his
vision. For a
moment,
he considered deleting
the message
.
Instead, he continued.

But, I know you’re not here
,
and you won’t be coming back
.
I know this is
not really going to help
.
But if this is my prayer, I’ll pray it
.
If this is a chance to speak to you, I’ll say it
.
I love you. I need your love
,
and you need mine
.
Wherever you are and whenever we meet again, you will have my love. It
is
the greatest gift
that can ever be offered, and we gave ours to each other
.

W
ip
ing his
eyes and his nose with the back of his hand
, he
pressed the Submit button without another glance at the words he had written. Instantly the screen changed with a new message:
Congratulations! Your message has been sent
.
We will see to it that your loved one gets it as soon as possible!

Steve shut the laptop and placed it back on the bed
.
He put his glasses on the nightstand, pulled up the covers and
stretched out
again in bed, staring at the ceiling.

By 3:24,
he
was asleep.

Chapter
1
6

“
Martin, d
ude!
” said Lloyd, rapping his knuckles on the pharmacy counter.
“Jesus, you look like what that proverbial cat drugged in!”

Martin had been taking inventory of
the
allergy medicines
near the back of the pharmacy.

“
Thanks
,
Lloyd,” replied Martin,
approaching the counter.

“You okay, dude?” Lloyd asked. “Still not sleeping much it looks like.”

“I’m fine, thanks.
Did you find anything?”

“Here’s all I got
.”

He handed Martin a small, grainy photo print-out
.
The picture, from the store’s security camera
,
was of a tall man, dressed in black
.
A
wide
-brimmed
black hat hid his face from the camera.

Martin tended to loathe extended conversations with Lloyd, the store’s elderly security guard
.
He
had been with the pharmacy for nearly thirty years
. He had no close family so he stayed at his post
long after he’d reached the end of his useful shelf life as an enforcer of law and order inside the confines of the drugstore. L
loyd was more like a tradition
than an actual crime deterrent
.
Years ago, the city had built a new downtown police precinct
headquarters
less than a block from the pharmacy, so there was
rarely
a shoplifter to
snag
.
Martin found the idea of Lloyd chasing, let alone apprehending, a criminal
ludicrous
.
But as with any small town, this one had its traditions, so the security guard stayed on, despite his ineptness or
obsolescence
.

Lloyd
had become bored over the years and to combat the tedium of his regular day shifts, he took to chatting up the teenage clerks who covered the front of the store.
He
was
well
-
versed in their culture
and his tales of “the way it used to be before
MP3s
players
and
reality shows
” amused the clerks.
He regularly adapted himself to their culture, often to a fault, in Martin’s opinion.
What Kathie found amusing
about
the man
annoyed Martin to no end.

“Martin,” she would say, “
it’
s easy to get through a conversation with him
.
Just nod
occasionally
and have fun counting how many times he says
‘
like
’
or
‘
dude
’
in a single conversation
.
I am up to a record of 14 in a single
five-
minute conversation myself.”

Martin
squinted
at the photo
.
“I can’t even see his face.”

“Yeah, sorry.
This new playback system we got for the cameras is like, the bomb
,
dude. I watched the whole night in about
eight
minutes. There’s no clear shot of him on it. The whole time, his face is covered by that ginormous hat.”

Martin’s brow wrinkled in frustration as he stared at the small print-out
.
The photo was too grainy for him to be certain
.
This could be the preacher from his dreams, or it could simply be an uncanny coincidence. The figure in the photo appeared to be dressed as a preacher, and he did look rope thin
.
But without seeing his face
—
the bulging eyes, the tall yellowing teeth, Martin couldn’t be sure.

“So you watched the whole night and saw
nothing else
unusual?” asked Martin.

“Roger that
.
I mean
,
like dude, don’t get me wrong now. T
here were like the usual crowd of barflies coming in and some punk
-
ass kids who were getting their jollies off breaking curfew
to go
to the store and all that
. And then sometime near
three
,
your
gangly lookin’
friend there
came in, wandered a bit and then
took off. Didn’t buy
nothing.
Jimmy said
that
he was all singing to himself and stuff
.
Dude was
prolly
drunk
.
But naw, none of them went near the counter.
”

“What about the biker guy who came in early this morning?” Martin asked.

“Yeah
...
S
aw him on there
,
too
.
Looks like a dirtbag to me.
But I don’t think he was out of camera-shot long enough to get that close to your shop.
In fact, I rewound that sucker all the way
‘
til yesterday when you closed up
.
Once you left,
I don’t
think
nobody even got near the
way back of the store
all the way ‘til
when
you opened it back
up,
dude.”

“What about the counter here?” Martin
asked
.
“Can’t you see that on the tape?”

“No, dude, y
ou know that
.
I've been saying’ it to them forever
.
We got to have a way to
keep
an eye
on the goods back there,” said Lloyd, gesturing to the shelves of drugs in the pharmacy.

“One day somebody’s gonna get a bright idea to bust in that back window, make off with that junk and turn all the kids in
this
town into crack hos
,
and we won’t have the foggiest who done it, will we dude?
Course, ask me and I’d put my money on that biker dude
.
Jimmy told me the dude laid
damn
near a Benjamin on him as a tip?  Hoo
—
hot
damn!
  I’m bettin’ he’s like one of them advanced scouts for Hell’s Angels
.
You know them biker clubs is all a front for drugs and all sorts of bad business, right?  I seen it the other night on one
of
the
m
cable
expos
é
s
, dude
.
Them guys is bad news
. . .
bad news
,
I’m telling you that!
”

Lloyd whistled to emphasize his point.
Martin
took the note out of his back pocket and scanned it again.

“So, uh, dude,” said Lloyd, straining to get a better look at the letter
.
“Why’d you want to know so bad
anyway
?  What’s
the biggie if
someone left you a letter or something?
”

Martin quickly folded
the letter
and slid it into the back pocket of his khakis.
He smiled.

“Sorry Lloyd, I think we’re up to
nearly 20
now, which
exceeds
my daily
dude
quota
.
Gotta go,” said Martin
, turning back to the pharmacy shelves
.

“Huh?” asked Lloyd.

“Back to work,” said Martin, stepping back from the counter.

“Ah,
gotcha
” said Lloyd, smiling
.
He
whistled through his teeth
and wen
t back to patrolling the store.
“Peace out
for now
, dude!” he called back to Martin.

“Yes sir,” said Martin under his breath
.
“Peace when you are out.” He returned to his inventory.