Something Fierce (28 page)

He was a student from last semester. Jonathon. A kid in his early twenties who wanted to be a fireman. No, not Jonathon. James. James from last semester said, “Are you okay?”

Seth nodded that he was though he didn’t know if he was or not. He couldn’t catch his breath. His whole face was throbbing. His ribs hurt. He spit a mouthful of blood on the ground. “Fuck.”

Two guys had Levi on his feet. His face was covered in blood, his eyes ferocious under the parking lamps. “This isn’t over you prick!” he shouted to Seth. “This is not over!” The two guys stepped in front of him. A police siren was wailing in the distance. People were coming out of the club, rubbernecking around the side of the building, muttering “oh my God,” one guy laughing and his girlfriend telling him it wasn’t funny.

Levi turned and stumbled off in the opposite direction like a wild, wounded animal.

“Let him go!” one of the two guys said to the other. “Just let him go.”

“That siren is for you,” James from last semester was saying. “I’d get out of here.” Seth was still trying to get his bearings and he stupidly remembered that James had a hell of a time with the thesis-driven essay, particularly introductory paragraphs. “Look, you helped me and I’m trying to help you.” That was true. Seth had no doubt that James would have never made it through Composition One without the countless times they’d worked together after class. “Seriously, dude,” the guy said, looking toward the sound of the siren getting louder, closer, “you do not want to be here when the cops show up.”

“Thanks, James.”

“Thank
you
. Go.”

Seth nodded, waved and started off.

K
erri hated, hated, hated
that she had to go to her house first but there was no choice. She couldn’t show up at Seth’s place looking like she’d been out dancing. Damn it! She raced home, calling Seth, but the bastard wasn’t answering. Fine. She’d just keep hitting redial until he did answer.

No one was home when she got to her place. Timmy was spending the night with a friend and Mother was off with her bank president. The emptiness of the house howled through her like an icy wind; it was haunted when she was here alone. She moved fast, getting out of her clothes and into the shower long enough to wash the makeup off her face, get the product out of her hair and the smell of the bar off of her. She put on the most boring pair of underwear she could find, sweat pants, no bra and a hoodie. She took a bottle of cough syrup from the medicine cabinet and swished it through her mouth, gargled with it.

Then she was back in the car, leaning forward over the steering wheel, driving fast, hitting redial every few minutes, rehearsing what she was going to say. “Why weren’t you answering my calls?” she said, angrily, then in a tone more hurt, concerned, “I was worried. I had to get my sick ass out of bed and come here and check on you.”

She couldn’t think about it anymore. She just had to get there. She wouldn’t know what to say until she heard what he had to say. She was good at that. The best. Mr. Open and Honest would always spill what he knew—what he thought he knew—in the first few minutes. She just had to get there!

The house was dark when she whipped into the driveway. She ran to the garage window and cupped her hands to see inside. His SUV wasn’t there. It was 12:30. Where the hell was he? She couldn’t fix this, damn it, if she didn’t know how it was broken? She started to cry. How dare he treat her like this! After all they’d been through.

What if he was still at The Abyss? With some girl? She’d go there right now and walk right up to them! But what if he wasn’t there? What if they were on their way back here? No, no, no she couldn’t think about this anymore. Even if there was another girl—and by God, there better not be—he’d have to come home sooner or later, and when he did, she’d be waiting!

She moved her car out of the driveway and parked out of sight so he wouldn’t know she was here. She tried to put on music but it was no good. She was too anxious, too wound up. She couldn’t wait in the car. She ran across the street and went around the house to let herself in through the back door. She paced the kitchen like an animal in a cage, her phone in her hand, hitting redial. Every time she heard his voicemail start, she screamed and finally, she threw the phone across the room.

She was so mad she didn’t know what to do with herself. No one did this to her! No one! She grabbed a plate that was sitting out and smashed it on the counter. She saw the block of knives then. She pulled the butcher knife from its home and pressed its sharp point into the fatty part of her hand between the forefinger and the thumb until it broke the skin. She cried out and began to bleed. Good pain, she thought, good, sweet pain as she took the blade away and caught the blood in her other hand. It was so lovely, blood, deep and warm.

She sighed deeply and felt better. Calmer. Cleaner. Better, better. She laid the blade against her neck. The carotid artery. One deep slice and Seth would come home to find her lying on the kitchen floor where fucking and loving first overlapped, pale and cold and dead in a sea of blood. This is what he did to her. This is his fault. He would never get over that. He would be so, so sorry for not answering her calls and he’d miss her so much. He’d give anything to hold her again, kiss her again, but he’d killed her. Ruined her. He would cry at her funeral, cry so hard that everyone would see how much he’d loved her. He’d be broken beyond repair. He’d visit her headstone every day for the rest of his life. His illusions of a benevolent universe, a place of design and beauty where everything happened for a reason and there was always hope and guidance for those who asked for it, gone for good. He would have to grow up. That would be her parting gift to him: reality.

But she didn’t want to die alone. She didn’t want to die without kissing him one last time, and she couldn’t bear the thought of him ever being with someone else. Ever.

But the concept of death was so beautiful right now, so freeing. He would be home sometime tonight. Maybe any minute now. He wasn’t with some other girl. At least he wouldn’t bring her back here. This was their space. Her stuff was all over the place. No. He wouldn’t do that.

She would cut the lights and burn some candles, maybe build a fire in the fireplace, open a bottle of wine. She could greet him with a kiss and using a razor or a smaller knife cut him first. He would never expect that and then she’d sever her own life line. They would bleed out fast and it would only take seconds for him to realize there was nothing to be done. No one to save them. No way to save themselves. They could only surrender to it, give over and hold on to each other. Kiss one last time. God, it would be beautiful. Dying in a kiss. Kissing until their hearts stopped beating and their souls were un-caged…

A
drenaline was still pumping
so wildly through Seth’s body as he drove back to the house that his hands were shaking. The fight had knocked an upper tooth loose, split the hell out of his lip, torn one of his good shirts, blood-stained his jeans, and cracked the screen of his cell phone. “Fucking freak,” he said, considering the phone and knowing it could be months before he would be able to replace it. It still worked at least because Kerri’s calls had been coming nonstop. He silenced it and tossed it on the passenger seat next to a bag of recently refilled prescriptions.

He was getting on to Route 2 when he realized that he was driving down the off ramp and was about to drive into oncoming traffic. “Shit!” He whipped the SUV into the grass, bouncing and bounding back on to the on ramp, and though his heart was in his throat, he was feeling lucky until he saw a cop car light up in the opposite lane, racing towards the median strip.

“Oh, God, no,” he said, flooring it and tearing across the median on his side putting him and the cop in opposing lanes once again. The siren went off then and Seth took the exit opposite of the one he’d just come down, watching the cop in the rearview slide broadside across the median only to be trapped there as approaching traffic filled both lanes. Seth raced off the exit, through the red light, and pulled into the Perkins right there, parking and jumping out of the SUV. He ran across the lot and out of the reach of the lights.

The cop came off the exit two minutes later, lights flashing, but the siren off. It was obvious that he was unsure of his target. He drove slowly past the Perkins, looking but not stopping, then checking the McDonald’s parking lot, turning around at the Arby’s and came back again like a shark trolling for what should have been an easy meal. Seth stayed in the shadows, bleeding, aching, whispering, “Keep going, please, please, please keep going.”

The cop circled back a few more times and finally sped off.

Seth tried to think. It wasn’t a good idea to go into a restaurant looking like he looked, and, obviously drunker than he thought, he wasn’t about to risk getting back behind the wheel. He had no wallet, no money, and no credit cards. He tried to think of what he was going to do. He thought about sneaking back into the SUV and sleeping it off but he couldn’t risk that either. Just last week one of his students was sleeping it off in his car—in the backseat even—and got slapped with a DWI anyway.

Seth was outside of himself again, looking at a picture of a man who kept getting worse. Now beaten, bloodied, exhausted, drunk, half out of his mind, hiding in the shadows, gazing longingly at his vehicle and wondering, again, how the hell he got here. He pulled the flask from his pocket, filled his mouth and rinsed. It burned like hell. He spit it out on the ground, his eyes watering. Then he took a drink. More burning, the taste of whiskey and blood.

It started to rain.

Fuck.

T
he birds were singing
and a cool breeze was coming through the bedroom window. Kerri stretched between the sheets, naked except for the engagement ring on her finger. She was reborn. Today was going to be a very special day. A brand new beginning.

Kyle was in the kitchen downstairs clanging and banging around, whistling a tune. Until 3:00 Sunday morning, she had waited for Seth to return. She’d been ready to die for him, with him, the two of them together. But he never showed. Exhausted and not knowing what else to do, she’d driven to Kyle’s place. The lights had been all ablaze, but he hadn’t answered the door when she’d knocked. That and the fact that Jinx wasn’t barking, as was normally the case when anyone came to the door, had told her something was wrong. Kerri had used her key to get in and before she could say a word, she heard what turned out to be Kyle weeping over Jinx in the kitchen. He looked up at her pitifully, eye and lip quivering. “I should have had her put down sooner,” he’d cried. “I should have but…she was all I had. I loved her so much.”

Kerri sat down next to him without a word and put her head on his shoulder. They cried together, petting the dead dog’s snout and talking about how much they were going to miss her. Kyle said that he believed Jinx was happiest when the three of them were together. They’d agreed that the best place to bury her was at Kyle’s parents’ estate in Moreland Hills where Jinx had spent many weekends swimming in the pond and chasing tennis balls and rabbits.

“Happy Monday,” Kyle said, coming into the bedroom fully dressed and carrying a white tray which held a steaming mug of coffee, a plate of French toast, a small bowl of sliced fruit, silverware, a red cloth napkin and a bud vase with a single, white rose. “Get yourself situated,” he said, in a paternal tone, as if she should have known this was coming and been prepared.

“This is just like we had at the hotel in New York City!” she said, piling the pillows behind her and sitting up.

“I remembered how much you liked the set and bought it right after we got back. I knew I’d be serving you breakfast in bed with it,” he said, then with a hint of sorrow added, “I just didn’t know I’d have to wait this long.”

“I told you there was a place for us someday,” she said studying everything. “The timing had to be right.”

“You also told me…” he started, then stopped and waved away the thought. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re here. The past twenty-some hours have been the saddest, happiest, and most amazing of my life. I’ll never know how you knew to show up just as I lost Jinx. I thought it was a dream at first.”

“I told you,” she said. “I just knew. I mean, I was in bed for the night. But I got up to get some medicine from the bathroom. That’s when I dropped the bottle and cut my hand.”

Kyle lifted the hand he’d cleaned and bandaged for her and lightly kissed it.

“I knew something was wrong. I was going to call but I knew I should just come to you. And I did: no makeup, baggy old clothes.”

“You were meant to be here,” Kyle said. “It was destiny.”

“I guess so,” Kerri said. “Everything is part of something bigger.”

He smiled at her; his left eye spasmed. “You look happy.”

“I am happy.”

“Do you still have the heart that I carved for you?”

“Of course,” Kerri said, laying the red napkin across her lap. “It’s right where you put it, on the ceiling above my bed.”

“Ever-lasting love,” he said.

She picked up her fork. “Where’s your food?”

“I’m not hungry.”

She took a bite of the French toast. “Mmm. You even heated the syrup.”

“Nothing’s too good for my bride-to-be,” he said. “You have an hour and a half before you have to leave for your first class. Plenty of time to eat and get ready.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, feigning disappointment but glad he was leaving her to eat in peace. He had a tendency to stare at her doing the most mundane things—like eating—and it sort of creeped her out.

“I have a lot of cleaning to do downstairs,” he said leaving her alone in the bedroom. “Enjoy.”

As soon as he was gone, she checked her phone to see if Seth had returned her calls or text messages. He hadn’t. But it was okay. Let him be stubborn for a little longer if that’s what he wanted to do. Kyle’s proclamation of destiny was overstating things a bit, but their coupling this weekend
was
part of a bigger plan that had fallen into place quite naturally. This time with Kyle had restored her, given her back her confidence, her beauty, her strength so she and Seth could start anew. Crawling back to him would never work. It gave him all the power to decide their future and he might choose wrongly.