Sweet Little Lies (2 page)

Tally sat with her back barely touching the
chair, ramrod straight. Uncharacteristic for her, she usually
slouched and sprawled like the rest of us. The chairs were suede
lined and double width for our comfort, and they served their
purpose well.

I approached the table, expecting Bunny to
see me and drop her feet off my newly assigned chair. Instead, she
was talking about me. I stopped, indignant. They hadn’t even
noticed I came in. She was so caught up with whatever maliciousness
she’d intended for the day that she didn’t realize I was standing
barely five feet away. I could hear her clearly. Talking about me.
Gossiping about me. That little bitch. I started for her, then
stopped. Maybe I’d eavesdrop a little more, see what I could use
against them later.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not naïve enough to
think that a group of women friends aren’t going to talk to one
another about the missing person. But there’s a big difference
between talking about a friend who’s absent and publicly dissecting
that friend’s life. We’re all somebody, the four of us. Which means
that there are multitudes of fodder, plenty of grist for the
communal mill. There are some things that are sacred, though, and
an open discussion of my disastrous marriage is one of them. You
just don’t do that.

I started toward the table again, ready to
give Miss Bunny a walloping with the side of my tongue. A short
frizzled blond with mismatched socks beat me. Damn. Shirley.

Shirley was one of those people. You know
the ones I mean. Not to be mean, but they drift around the
periphery of any tight knit group, waiting like a dog for the table
scraps. Shirley wanted to be a part of our group, but that would
never happen. She was just too annoying. Yet Bunny’s face lit up
when she saw the diminutive disaster headed to the table. She swung
her feet off the chair, rose like Amphitrite from the depths, and
hugged Shirley. Physical contact with a barnacle? That was well
known to be strictly forbidden. What in the hell was going on
today?

I had become persona non grata without a
clue as to why. No one would look at me, each woman kept her eyes
from mine. Busboys and waiters wandered right past me, no one
asking to help me, no one offering me a refreshment. After my long
walk to the clubhouse, I could have used a nice Chardonnay. That
was it. It was time I let my presence be known to my so-called
friends.

I glided to the table, mouth slightly open,
deciding which opening I’d use. Hello girls, waiting for me? You
lousy bitches, how dare you speak about me behind my back? Bunny,
you look divine today—whose sperm are you carrying? Kim, I think
you need a quick trip to Alberto’s. And Tally, darling, do try to
sit back, you look like you’ve got a pole stuck up your ass.

But all my words died in my throat when I
saw what Shirley had brought as an offering to my group of friends.
The newspaper unfurled, bearing a special edition logo, the
headline seventy point. GUILTY, it screamed.

***

I stormed through the house, looking. How
dare he. How could he do it? What was he thinking?

I wasn’t finding what I was looking for. I
needed to stop and think. I was in a black rage, I couldn’t even
see straight when I was this worked up. So I sat on the bottom step
and took a few breaths. That helped.

My husband was not a foolish man. He
wouldn’t have left a trail, or a bunch of clues. I had all night to
search. The rest of my life, if it was necessary. I’d start in the
obvious place. The basement.

I’d had a very difficult time reading the
article Shirley had brought to my friends in gleeful attribution.
She was a lawyer, one of the few women in our circle that actually
worked for a living. A prosecutor, at that. Assistant District
Attorney Shirley Kleebel. She paid her dues, if you know what I
mean. She wasn’t married to or aligned with a man of the club. She
was the member, one of the few singles to join. That’s part of the
reason she’d never make it into the right circles. We had nothing
to gain by being around her. Really, even meek and mild Tally had
her signature on the checking account of the largest footwear mogul
in the country. Shirley had nothing, except her name.

So I’d been a bit skeptical when I’d read
the article. If I’m being totally honest, I didn’t believe it. Not
that it was outside the realm of possibility. My husband could be
vicious when he chose.

It lauded Shirley as a genius, having
resurrected a trial that was not only lost before it began, but
achieving a guilty plea from the jury. I ran the article over and
over in my head as I searched. According to the reporter, this had
been done already. Several fruitless times, in fact.

But it’s a big house. There are places no
one would think to look simply because they wouldn’t know they were
there. Passages between floors with unseen staircases, a tunnel in
the basement that accessed the freestanding garage. Escape routes.
I thought them charming when we’d bought the house, then put them
out of my mind. Now, I needed to comb through them, because I knew
I’d find the truth in one of those dark, dank places.

Either way, he won’t be coming home tonight.
There won’t be any more arguments, no broken coffee cups, no unmade
beds. The bed. He’d slept in the bed last night. And he’d cried. I
remember that now. He sobbed winningly, and told me how sorry he
was. That he’d never meant for it to go so far. That he loved me,
he truly did. He’d cried himself to sleep, then gotten up in the
middle of the night and wandered away. I hadn’t understood last
night. Now, I think I did. But I’d have to see for myself.

The basement reeked pleasantly of cool and
damp. I sensed nothing unusual, no odors, no sights that gave me
cause for alarm. I crept around the corner, slipping silently
through the gloom. If what the article said were true, if my
friends’ gossip was accurate, I’d have ages to find all of the
little passageways in this house. I think there’s one that goes all
the way up to the clubhouse, but I’ve never found it.

The one I did know about was just ahead. A
false wall, easily misleading without the exact knowledge of where
it should be. If you looked closely, you could see a crack in the
foundation, like the floor was settling. The fracture ran up the
wall, and if you pushed just the right brick…

There, the wall swung open to reveal a small
passageway. When the house was built, over two hundred years ago,
the original owner wanted to be buried in the house. That’s right,
in the house. The crypt was the logical place to look.

I couldn’t describe the emotions I felt when
I saw it. It had been a sloppy job. He knew no one would ever find
their way in here by accident. He thought he was safe.

So pale. I’d always loved my hands, long
fingered, smooth skinned. Sticking up out of the dirt, though, they
didn’t look quite as nice.

The article said it was Marie-Cecile that
testified against him. She’d seen it all. Seen his hands around my
throat. I wonder why I didn’t remember that part.

Son of a bitch. I hope he rots in jail.

Maybe I’ll go visit him.

WHERE’D YOU GET THAT RED DRESS?

Flashing in the Gutters 2006

I walk down South Congress, my heels tapping
on the pavement. Saturday night in Austin, there’s always something
for a girl to do. I stop at the door to the Continental Club, look
at the marquee. Matinee, Richard Stooksbury. A Tennessee boy. I’ve
missed that by a mile. Headliner, 10:00 P.M., James McMurtry. Oh
hell, yes.

I walk through the doors and into the
darkened bar. The first thing I notice is the red velvet curtain
hanging over the stage, the oval “CONTINENTAL” sign branding the
space. McMurtry is up there, making jokes about being a beer
salesman and asking people to buy the new CD because he forgot to
remind them last night. The mood is jovial, and I swing into it
effortlessly.

I take the last stool at the bar and order a
dirty martini. The bass guitar whaps in time with my heart, deep
and pure. My head nods involuntarily. The song ends; McMurtry
launches into another. I listen with my eyes closed, sipping the
cool, salty gin.

“Where’d you get that red dress?” He croons
the words and I open my eyes, look at my breasts. Well. It’s like
he’s speaking directly to me. I am wearing a red dress. The refrain
courses again—“Where’d you get that red, dress?” I giggle. Where
indeed.

Any woman will tell you there are few
purchases that stay with you forever. There is a certain dress, one
meant to be worn only once, made of silk or taffeta or satin.
White. Pure. Perfect. You wear it for a few hours, then package it
up, stuff it in the top of a closet and hope that sometime, someone
might want to wear it again.

I had a dress like that. It reached the
ground and dragged behind me, pulling on my legs until I thought
I’d scream. I wore it, and said the words, teared up at the
appropriate moments, smiled when I was kissed. Ate food and drank
champagne and danced and loved every moment of it. Then it was time
to say goodbye.

He took me to the nicest hotel Austin had to
offer, checked us into the Presidential suite. Had chocolate
covered strawberries delivered, popped the cork on a bottle of ’87
Dom Perignon. Made love to me on satin sheets, relieving me of my
virginity with care.

Now I’m lying. That’s not really what
happened. I wish it were.

To be honest, he took me to the Holiday Inn
downtown, forced me on the bed, ripped my precious dress and
pummeled me until he came. Then he fell asleep and snored. It
wasn’t how I envisioned my first time. But I was prepared for it to
be like that.

I went to my little suitcase and retrieved
the knife. I just wish I’d remembered to take off the dress before
I cut his throat. The gods were smiling upon me though, because the
corner 7-Eleven had plenty of those precious little dye packets,
the kind you use for multicolored rubber banded t-shirts.

Back in the dingy hotel room, I dumped three
packets of Deepest Rosso in a bathtub full of hot water. Placed my
perfect dress in the vermilion water and left it for an hour. Had a
nice glass of whiskey I poured from his silver flask.

It was time. A few snips with some scissors,
both the dress and my hair, five minutes with the hairdryer and I
was an elegant woman in a red dress, ready for a night on the
town.

He was surprisingly heavy for a slight man.
Getting him in the tub was a bitch. I sawed at his wrists a few
times, made it look like he tried there first. I only spilled a few
drops.

I kissed his forehead before I left. Till
Death Do Us Part just got a whole lot shorter.

THE STORM

Mouth Full of Bullets 2006

The sky was transparent gray, the rain
moving up the valley. Lightning danced, long silver white forks
hitting the ground, thunderbolts thrown from Zeus’ hand. The lights
flickered as I looked out the window, watching the wet blanket of
virga slip closer and closer. The mountains hovered, old men with
knowledge to share. The outcropping of rock known to the locals as
Indian Head glowered at me. Hummingbirds raced the wind, trying to
gather one last sip of sugar water before the storm drove them to
their invisible nests.

He was coming for me.

You may wonder how I knew. It was the
palpable sense of heaviness that hung over my house. The storm
would blow in, bringing his acrid breath to the nape of my neck. He
would stand over me. I would be powerless. If it got that far, if
he got the upper hand, I was done for.

There was a little matter of paperwork.

The contract was sought three months ago. My
previous employers weren’t happy with my performance on a
singularly gigantic job. I had killed the target, in the exact
manner they requested. It was my affair with the man that upset
them. I wasn’t sure why they cared. He was dead, the contract
fulfilled. One little roll in the hay and they got their panties in
a wad. Hired someone to take me out. I was a bit upset by their
overreaction.

There were ramifications to every action I
took these days. I wish I could go back to the early days, where
mistakes were overlooked because I was who I was. No longer. More
was expected of me.

I knew who they had hired, of course I did.
It was my business to know these things. He was the best, which is
difficult for me to say. It’s hard to admit that you may not be the
very best at what you do. But I’m a realist, and if that’s the
truth, I have no reason to hide it from you. It’s not so much that
he’s better than I, more a matter of his experience. He is the
legend. He is the west wind. He is the assassin no one knows, no
one has ever seen.

And he is coming for me.

I’d reinforced the doors and windows, put a
stock of weapons at hand in each room, places I would know where to
look, but he wouldn’t. I wasn’t planning on going down without a
fight.

Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky. He doesn’t
have the element of surprise. My agent quite humanely called ahead,
let me know when the paper was produced. He likes me, would rather
me be alive and making him commissions than cold and dead in the
grave.

The lights dimmed, then extinguished. Light
flashed in secondary increments, allowing me to see the huddled
figure at the base of my ponderosa stand.

He has come for me.

I palmed two weapons and spun away from the
window. He would come in through the guest room, two floors below.
I’d left the window cracked to make his break-in easier. Four paces
to my left was a small alcove, to the right the cavernous space of
my office. The top room of the house; cool in the summer, warm in
the winter. I’d hate to give the room up. I bought this house
specifically because I knew I’d enjoy spending time in the bucolic
space, the windows overlooking both the valley and the mountains. I
stepped into the shadows of the alcove, knowing the darkness hid me
from sight.