Wilson's Hard Lesson (6 page)

The note on her pillow smelled like him. She held it to her
face before reading it, savoring the knowledge that it wasn’t a dream. He had
crept into her window last night and changed her world.

She wasn’t evil for tempting a man because it had been the
most beautiful thing that had ever happened to her. It was sweet release from
her prison, which she realized had been completely mental. She could’ve left,
but it was her guilt that was keeping her there. She could’ve made it. She was
smart, but she’d been taught to hate the world.

Now that she’d had a taste of it, she couldn’t stay. She
needed to live, and this simply wasn’t living. This was a nightmare based up on
one demented woman’s beliefs and fears.

As she soaked her body under the hot water, she realized
that she had been alienated from the world, and that that was why she hated it.
She had no idea what it was like because she’d never been allowed to experience
it. All she had was what her mother told her and what she had learned in
school, but she hadn’t been able to see society and the connections that people
make with one another. That had left her a shell of a human being, and as she
walked back to her room and got dressed she knew for certain that all that was over.
She wasn’t going to live that any longer.

She grabbed her clothes, her books and finally her
drawings—the false worlds she had built to replace the real one. She shoved
them all in her suitcase and hid it under her bed where she knew her mother
wouldn’t see.

She couldn’t tell her. She wouldn’t be heartbroken—she was
too cold. She would be furious and she would try to stop her for certain. She
would have to leave in secret, and she had to do it after school because that
was when he said he would come for her in the note.

This boy had saved her from this sterile hell. He was her
savior now; she didn’t need another. He would protect and carry her. She could
ride on his bike anywhere they wanted to go, and she knew it was real because
she’d actually felt his rapture running through her. She knew what love was
now, and she was certain that she’d found it was him.

“MARIE!” Her mother was coming down the hall to her bedroom.
She quickly hid the evidence and did her best to put on a poker face. When the
door slammed open and her mother saw that she looked like a shining child of
morality and righteousness, she became immediately suspicious.

“I trust you’ll be going to see the pastor today.”

“I want to go to class first. I’ll make an appointment with
him on my way out. I have to hurry though. I only have an hour.”

“Alright. Get ready. I have some bus money for you.” She
handed her a dollar and allowed her to make her way out the door.

Marie’s first class was calculus, which she had always
excelled at. The teacher was a young blond man with a golden smile. She usually
sat in the back row and decided to sit where she normally did.

She had to keep her mind on the numbers. She promised
herself that he wouldn’t affect her school life. She looked at the board and
saw him standing over her with his hair shining in the moonlight. She saw Drake
pounding against her when the teacher stood at the front of the room. She
wondered what it would be like to have her hair streaming behind her as they
made their way down the highway.

The thought of leaving class right then and calling him was
too much for her. Her legs shook, her mind drifted and she found herself
drifting in thoughts of their night together. He knew how to move. He knew
things about her body that she didn’t even know.

When class got out, it was too much. She whipped out her
tiny flip phone and called him.

“Marie?” He answered on the first ring.

“Yes.” They waited silently for a second. It was as if what
had happened was so magical that both of them were convinced that it wasn’t
real.

“Oh, god. I love you, Marie. I have to tell you that. I love
you.”

“I love you too.” She was smiling. Nothing else existed
except for his voice. “Can I see you now?”

“I have to deal with something first. I wanna leave town.
Can we do that?”

“Of course. I’ll go with you anywhere.” She knew that she
wanted to leave.

“You want to see the beach? We can go to Cali.”

“Yes.” She’d always wanted to go there. Her mother told her
it was Satan’s summer home, so she figured it was probably the most amazing
place in the entire world.

“I want to do you in the sand.” The vulgarity of is
expression stabbed at her in the same way he did last night.  “I gotta do
something before I see you, but I want you to meet me at the park near your
house—with the pines.” It had pine trees that rose above all of the buildings
around it. They called it Forest Park.

“I love you.” She didn’t want to stop talking to him, but
her class was starting soon.

“I love you too.” They were silent for as long as they could
be then, when she couldn’t wait any longer, she hit the end button and walked
to class.

Drake had his feet over his lime green couch in his studio
apartment. His heart was pounding. It could all end now. He could leave this
place and get away from everything. He just had to do this one last thing.

Johnathan Harper was an up and coming mayoral candidate in
Pinehurst. He’d been making headway in the economic field and had promised the
logging industry a huge patch of land that the city owned.

Even local politicians are bad, but the things that Drake
had heard about him were unspeakable, even for a man who’d killed for years.

Drake never listened to his teachers or his parents. He
wanted to have a good time, and as far as he was concerned, they were getting
in the way. He thought he could make his own way, and he could if he really
wanted to. At 16, his parents were living in a two bedroom shack in the ghetto
and he had a bright red convertible with rims. He had more drugs in the back of
that car than most people see in their entire life. Half the school was getting
their grass from him—including the faculty. Then he found that there were other
things that were more profitable. The Mexicans he’d been getting his stuff from
gave him a call, and he had to listen if he wanted to continue doing what he
was doing.

They gave him a gun and they told him where to go, and they
asked him if he wanted to do it again. Once he saw how much they were handing
him, there was no question about whether or not he was going to listen. Of
course he was going to. He had a nice house and a nice car, but there’s always
the risk. It’s the reason there’s violence in the first place.

You have to kill somebody who might go to the authorities,
because otherwise you’re going to lose your life. You’ll be locked up for the
rest of your life, and everything you’ve worked for will be taken away from
you. You simply cannot take the risk.  There isn’t a sane person in the world
that wouldn’t do what it takes to protect themselves and their family. People
know what they’re doing when they go to the authorities, and Drake had seen it
in their faces before they died. They knew that they were doing something
terrible, and they knew that that was what they were facing for trying to do
it.

At the same time, their faces haunted him. Hit men aren’t
supposed to learn about their targets. They aren’t supposed to talk to them.
They are supposed to stay as far away from them as possible, but that doesn’t
mean that every time you close your eyes you don’t see their faces, or that you
can go to sleep at night without wondering whether or not you’re doing the
right thing. Honestly, sometimes he knew he was, and sometimes he knew he
wasn’t, but the money took him places he never thought he would go.

He knew where he was going today, so he took his beer and
down the last bit so he could think about the day’s events. He’d been with a
million women but when he thought about Marie’s long legs and her beautiful
body, he knew that she was the one. She was innocence and he was evil.
Opposites are supposed to attract.

As innocent as she was, he was going to have to do this for
her.

* * * * *

He had on a pinstripe suit and geek glasses with his black
hair swiped to the side, and his shoes were polished perfectly. When he walked
into the office building and smiled at the receptionist, he gave her the
perfect charming smile. She melted immediately.

“Hello, I have an appointment with Ralph Rosen,” his voice
was deep and sultry.

She stared for a moment then shook her head. “Oh, just go up
the elevator to the fourth floor and it’s the second right.” She sighed and
watched him walking past. He added a little rhythm to his step.

He tapped his foot while he was waiting. He had to time this
perfectly. If he didn’t it wouldn’t work. The timing was right, he just had to
get into the office in less than two minutes, which he should be able to do if
the elevator wasn’t coming down from the sixth floor and stopped at the fifth.
His heart was racing a little too fast. He took a moment to breathe and catch
his bearings. It should work fine. He’d get there.

It was barely passing the third and he had a minute and
thirty seconds left. It was at twenty why the door finally opened and he walked
inside. Nobody was there which meant he could make his ascent quickly. He
tapped his finger on the metal guardrail. Why did this elevator move so slowly?

He had a trick he used where he said each state
alphabetically to calm himself down. He started with Alabama and moved down. He
got it from the Krishnas. They were always a little too weird for his tastes though.
The door finally opened and he ran to the empty lobby and into the empty
office.

There was nothing there. The place was vacant. It had been
rented for his purposes under a false name. They just wanted to get into the
right place. He opened his briefcase and took out his gun. The man would be
standing in the correct position in less than twenty seconds. He had the sniper
rifle put together in less than that. His sight was state of the art, and his
bullet was perfect.

Why wasn’t he there? Something was in the way, but he could
see the lower half of the body. That would be enough. He pulled the trigger,
and Drake fell over, bleeding out on top of the roof of the Red Bank.

“Can anyone tell me what quantum teleportation is?”
Instructor Black, a skinny blond woman, looked around the room at the stylishly
dressed airheads who were either glued to their phones or the computers in
front of them. None of them heard her. They simply didn’t care what she was
saying, their social lives were too important.

For once in her life, Marie wasn’t any different. She didn’t
care about quantum teleportation, or wormholes, or anything else. She knew
exactly what it was and could coherently explain the mechanics of it, but she
was too far gone into his world. In a matter of moments, she would leave
everything behind and this didn’t matter at all. All she needed were the
transcripts in her binder. They would get her a transfer to whatever university
she wanted to go to, and her financial aid wasn’t going anywhere.

She was going to be free from all of this, and she didn’t
want to hear what this woman had to say. It was like a voice talking to her
when she was about to go unconscious.

“Marie? Marie?” It took a second for her to look around. The
entire class was looking at her, which was strange because they’d been so
intent on their screens before. The teacher was looking at her too. “Can you
tell me?”

“You know what,” she got up out of her chair. “I don’t have
time for this.” The students around the room started giggling. One boy actually
got up and left with her. The teacher was clearly furious, but this kind of
thing happened all the time.

Marie made her way to the bus stop. She had to handle this.
Her mother would be home from work after a little bit, and she wanted to make
sure she had everything. She wanted to do it properly.

In truth, she should be saying goodbye, but the thought of
doing so simply hurt too much, and she knew she wouldn’t get very far. Her
mother would be heartbroken, but she wouldn’t show it. Her reaction would
always be anger to everything she did. She couldn’t just act right. Instead,
she had to control her every move. She wanted to keep her there so she could
watch her and make sure that she did everything she said, and if she told her,
she was certain that her mother would do something to try and stop her. She
might even succeed at doing so.

In fact, that was Marie’s worst fear. She really didn’t want
to go home, but she couldn’t just walk out of her room with her suitcase while
her mother was standing there. The driveway was empty and the house was quiet.
Her mother didn’t give her a key, but she did keep one under the doormat that
Marie wasn’t supposed to know about.

When she used it, the familiar smells of her old home came
back to her. The parlor was dark, but she knew every single nook and cranny.
She knew just what the angels on the coffee table looked like and she knew what
they were saying when she stopped to admire them.

She went into the kitchen, which was the center of the home,
and remembered all of the time she’d spent there learning to cook and clean.
Her entire life was here and she was giving it up, but she had to. She loved
Drake and she couldn’t live like this any longer. She had to see the world.

Her mother kept a tiny pad on the refrigerator with a pen on
it so that she could leave a note if she needed to. She pulled it off and
walked to the counter. If she couldn’t say goodbye in person, she could at
least say goodbye in another way. She took the pen and poured out her feelings.
She told her mother how she would live a good life and that she would always
love her, but she knew that she wouldn’t ever be able to let her go. She told
her how she was wrong, that the world wasn’t bad and how she wanted her to live
her life too. The one thing she probably should’ve left out but didn’t was the
part where she talked about her father.

Her mother lived the way she did because she was
overcompensating for her father’s loss and she was bitter because of it. She
urged her to move and meet somebody, or at least to have some fun in life. She
didn’t have to stay cooped up forever.

When Marie was done, she left the note above the sink where
her mother would find it as soon as she got home. She made her way to her
bedroom to get her suitcase and her things. She got the cross of the wall and
decided to keep it with her. She wanted it to remind her of home. She stuck it
in the case and left.

Her mother jumped out from behind a corner. She had the note
in her hand and tears were flying down her face. Her stone cold demeanor was
struck with despair like nothing Marie had ever seen before. She was striking a
chord and that hurt, but the woman had done it to herself.

“You ain’t leavin’!” Phyllis ran at her with her fists
flailing, weakly slamming against her chest. She fell to the floor in a pile of
tears at her daughter’s feet. “Please. You’re all I have.”

“Mama, I’m going and there’s nothing you can do. I love you.
I’ll call you and you can come see me.”

“No! You stay here with me. You ain’t married yet.” Marie
tried to push her aside but she couldn’t. Phyllis was too strong. She hit the
back of Marie’s knees and the girl fell to the floor.

“Mama! You know I’m an adult. I can call the police.” The
girl was crying too now. She went to hug her mother but the woman sat up and
raked her fingernails against Marie’s face like a badger.

Marie shrieked and warm blood fell to the carpet. “Now
you’ve done it, Mama! You push me away. You treat me like a prisoner!” She was
on her feet. “You take every single bit of joy out of my life and then you
attack me,” she kicked the woman in the head, “when I’m trying to gain
my
life
back. You will
never
see me again.” She’d never talked like that before
to anyone. “I can promise you that.” She mustered strength she didn’t even know
she have when she stomped the woman’s head into the carpet till blood poured
out and walked over her.

When she got to the parlor to leave, she took one of the
white and gold ceramic angels on the coffee table and picked it up, she pulled
her arm back to swing it onto the wall, but a firm hand stopped her then there
was a sharp butcher’s knife to her neck.

“Get it your room,” the woman growled. “You ain’t leaving it
for a week. You can go in a bucket for all I care, but you’re
not
disgracing
my family.”

With one hand on Marie’s shirt collar and the other holding
a knife to her throat Phyllis dragged her daughter to her room to lock the
door. “It will
not
stop me!” According to Phyllis, defiance was one of
the dirtiest words there ever was and that was exactly what was driving Marie,
but she was a woman being forced into a cage. She was being asked to give up
any chance of living, loving and seeing the world like she needed to do.

Her mother had her suitcase or she’d be out the door. She
had to figure out a way to get it. She could try going out the window and into
the front door, but Phyllis had locked that for certain—she always did. She
could try banging down the door, but it was solid wood. The thing wasn’t hollow
and she wasn’t going to get out that way. The best she could think of was to
make her way out the window and hope that her mother didn’t lock it behind her.
That way she could get Drake to come and get her out of there.

Reached down in her pocket. She couldn’t believe it. She
should’ve called Drake the moment this stuff happened, but it didn’t even enter
her mind. He could get her out of this. He’d put her in her place for certain.

She dialed his number and waited. He didn’t pick up on the
first ring, which might not go through on his end, and he didn’t pick up the
second either. All that could mean was that he couldn’t reach it in time. Then
the third ring came and she was starting to worry. The seconds were passing and
they were supposed to have met by then. He wasn’t answering. Each and every
single time she called, he didn’t answer. Something must’ve happened to him,
but what? He said that he had to do something before they met, but what did
that mean? Was he in danger?

She paced around, calling as much as she could. She hit the
button, put it on speaker and waited, and when it didn’t work, she tried again.
She must’ve called him at least 600 times by the time she plopped onto the bed.

Maybe he missed her when he didn’t see her. He might’ve just
gone home thinking it was a waste, but if that was the case then why wasn’t he
answering? He probably lost his phone. He loved her. He wouldn’t ignore her
calls. He loved her.

She couldn’t think about the unthinkable, but also the most
obvious thing. He just used her for sex. All he wanted was to be with her that
one night, and he got it, and now he was toying with her. Her wailing sobs
shook the whole house. She pounded the walls and kicked the closet doors. She
nearly broke the window.

She was going to have to find him and kill him. It was the
only way she would feel right again. Then she would leave Phyllis and go to
California by herself. She was still leaving no matter what, she just needed to
do it right this time.

She was stupid to think that she could just enter his world.
He wasn’t right for her. He was a street kid, a punk and she was a nice girl.
She shouldn’t have trusted him. Nobody wanted to be with her, not with the way
her mother forced her to live. She was damaged.

Marie plopped on the bed and closed herself off from the
world with her thin blanket covering her eyes. She blocked everything out in
the one place where she could feel comfortable. She sobbed into her pillow. She
never loved him. She couldn’t think about his sweet face or how he was with
her. She had to get that kiss out of her head.

She fell asleep, but she knew that she wasn’t getting any
piece. Instead, she was leaving things behind for a while. Everything would
still be there when she got back, and that was the worst part about it. He’d
shown her how terrible her world was and then he pretended that he was going to
get her out of it. He was a cruel beast.

She was dreaming because he was watching her sleep when her
eyes fluttered open. His sweet smile was right there. “Shh,” he said. “Let’s
go.”

She sat up and looked around to clear her head, but he was
still there. She reached out to touch his face and she felt it, but it was a
lie. She laid back down on her pillow and said, “I wanna wake up.”

“What do you mean? You are awake.” He laughed. “I’m right
here with you, Marie. It’s all over for both of us.”

“You mean you’re leaving?”

“No. How could you say that? I mean we’re leaving, and we’re
going to California. Do you have your things ready?”

“Mama took my suitcase and put it somewhere. She tried to
slit my throat when she found the note I left for her.”

“What? How bad is she? You think I can shoot the door down?”

“Do it.” That was probably the most amazing thing she’d ever
been asked in her entire life. He bent down and pressed his lips to hers then
he got up slowly. She looked over at him and saw that there bandages on his
leg. “What happened?”

“It’s OK. I got hurt.”

“How?” She waited, thinking he would respond, but he didn’t.
Instead, he walked over to the door and pulled out a rifle. “Wait.” It was so
comfortable in his hands. He looked over at her then he sat down. “Now, I do
gotta know what I’m getting into and you gotta tell me before we leave.”

“It’s hard.”

“Talking is easy.” She didn’t beat around the bush. This was
too big. “Whatever it is, though, I just wanna know. I will always be with you
and I don’t take that lightly. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Well then what is it?”

“I worked for some guys for a while, selling stuff, you
know?” She did know, and that wasn’t the end of the world, but more was a
little much.

“They had me try and kill a guy to get out of the game, but
another guy shot me and I couldn’t make it. They let me out because I took the
bullet.” She sighed. She wasn’t completely ignorant. You’d have to be in order
to not understand what he was saying, and she loved him, but she had to be sure
that she was safe.

“Do you have to talk to them still? Will they ask you to do
things for them?”

“I have to call them every few months and let them know if
my number changes, but I want no part in it and they understand why I’m
leaving. People do leave.”

She was pacing around the room again. This was hard. She
could be putting herself in danger. “Why did you leave?”

He sat back on the bed. “Well, it’s scary and it’s weird.
People get hurt, and it’s dangerous. I don’t want to deal with it anymore. I
mean the things these people do, Marie, it’s not something a man can do his
whole life.”

It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do. She loved this
man, and he loved her. He’d be good to her. That wasn’t perfect, but it was
something. “Alright. Shoot the door down and don’t shoot her.”

“Put your fingers in your ears.”

The ensuing crack was so powerful that she jumped anyways
and when he rushed out she followed closely behind him. Her mother was on top
of them as soon as they reached the end of the hall. “Marie, no,” she whispered
frantically as they pushed past her into her room. “He’ll kill you baby. He’ll
kill you.” Her eyes were wide and her voice was soft from lunacy. “He-he gotta
gun, baby. Look,” she pointed over to the pistol he had pointed at her. “He’ll
kill ya.” Her gestures were exaggerated.

“Where the bag?” His voice was calm but poisonous. He’d done
this before judging by the way his hands knew how to move.

“No!” Phyllis tried to push at him, but he kept the gun firm
and she jumped back. She had the look of a woman who believed she was being
persecuted, but in fact was really throwing a fit for nothing.

“Where is it, Mama? He’ll shoot.” Marie wanted to scare her
good.

“C-c-closet.” She fell over onto the bed and lay prone with
her arms out.