No Fury Like That

by Lisa de Nikolits

  “Thank you,” I tell her and I pay her.

  She picks up her purse and leaves. I had told her I was Junior’s wife and that I wanted to catch him cheating so he wouldn’t be able to lie to me any more. She had nodded casually when I told her to put sleeping pills into his drink, and I realized the less said, the better; all she cared about was being paid.

  I had pulled a classic switch hustle. I had sent the glamour shots to Junior and Teddy and those were the girls they had spoken to on the phone. But a second, different set of leggy women arrived for the hookups. There were no glamour shots of these girls and no one would have any idea who they were or where they could have come from. I instructed the first set of girls to be in the public eye during the time the whole thing was going down and, when questioned, they were to say yes, they had dropped their shots off, and they’d spoken to the guys on the phone but neither Junior nor Teddy had set up an actual date. The second girls would be ghosts in the night and as for the concierge at the Bellagio, he had seen exactly what I wanted him to.

  I look at Junior who is lying on his back, snoring.

  I pull him across the bed, using the satin coverlet to drag him and he flops easily into the suitcase. I tuck him in, all nice and cozy and I hope he will have enough air. I don’t want him to suffocate before I have the chance to kill him.

  I also hope he won’t wake up in the elevator and start banging around.

  I slap some duct tape across his mouth and bind his hands and feet. Granted there is not much space inside the suitcase for banging or thrashing around.

  I ease the suitcase upright on its wheels and I give the room a careful once over. I have removed the girl’s glamour shot and I have worn gloves the whole time I have been in Junior’s room, but I am still worried. Did I miss anything? I can’t torment or second guess myself. I have been careful and cognizant; I need to trust the plan.

  The ride down in the elevator takes a lifetime. I am joined by an elderly couple and a family with four young kids who are excited by the prospect of a buffet dinner. It is a tight squeeze and my breath is trapped in my throat until we reach the ground floor where I exhale and take a big gulp of air.

  I exit through the main doors and I am relieved when none of the porters or valets stop me and offer to help. I wheel the suitcase to the car and I open the rear passenger door.

  One thing I have not calculated is how heavy the suitcase will be with Junior in it. After a number of tries, I realize there’s no way I’ll get be able to get it onto the back seat. Sweat is pouring down my face and I wipe it away. I’m stuck, and I have no idea what I am going to do.

  “Want some help?” A burly man stops.

  “Yes, please,” I say. “Too much shopping. And my trunk is already full. I know I should have split this into two smaller cases, but this just seemed easier. Thank you for your help.”

  By the time I am finished babbling, the man has hefted the case into the car and he shrugs and smiles.

  “Piece of cake,” he says.

  “You’re a lifesaver,” I tell him as he leaves, and I am well aware of the irony of what I have just said. I wipe my forehead with a tissue and I drive away with Junior in the suitcase on the backseat of my car.

  I drive until I am out of central Vegas, and I pull into a dimly-lit side street and turn off the engine. I get into the back of the car and open the suitcase without too much difficulty, having practiced this maneuver.

  To my relief, Junior is still breathing, and he is out cold. I roll the suitcase out from under him and he falls onto the backseat, and I check the bindings on his hands and feet.

  For good measure, I stretch the seatbelt around him and manage to get him buckled in, just in case he wakes up and gets any ideas about trying to lunge at me even with his hands tied.

  I cover him with a blanket, and he looks like a sleeping kid.

  I put the suitcase into the trunk of the car and I hit the highway and drive into the desert, taking my carefully mapped out route. My car is full of gas and things are going well.

  But I start shaking uncontrollably. My whole body is vibrating, and it is hard to breathe and my chest feels tight. I am overcome with dizziness and I can’t see and there is a loud, high-pitched ringing in my ears. I pull over onto the dirt and lean my head on the steering wheel.

  I have missed something. I know I have. I’ll be caught, tried for murder, and put away for the rest of my life. And what on earth am I thinking? I have a man bound, drugged, and gagged in the back of my car and I am planning to kill him in cold blood. I can’t do this. This is wrong, evil, on so many levels. I’ll have to drop him off somewhere off the Strip and hopefully when he comes to, he’ll just think it was a sex game that went wrong or something. There’s nothing that will lead them to me. I’ll leave Vegas and get on with my life and put this whole mess behind me.

  But then I turn and look at Junior on the backseat and it all comes back to me. The humiliation, the beating, the pain, my ruined face, my damaged body. His phone calls, his brutality.

  No. He is not going to get away with it. He’s not going to win. And if I let him go, he’d come after me again, no doubt about it. I have no choice. I have to kill him. I can do this. I will do this. I repeat my mantra again. And I tell myself the same thing I told myself in the hotel, that I need to trust myself, my plan is sound. I take a few deep breaths and drink some water. My head clears and my heart slows down and I feel resolve settle into my bones. I sit up straight and start the engine.

  And I carry on driving, out into the desert.

  49. JUST DESERTS

  WHEN HE COMES TO, Junior is sitting on the ground in front of the car, with his hands behind his back, securely tied to the front bumper. His legs are spread out in front of him and his ankles are tightly bound. I am sitting cross-legged in front of him, wrapped in a thick blanket.

  The desert night is cold although it is high summer. Junior is illuminated by a flashlight that I am aiming at his face.

  “Hey baby,” I say, and I turn the flashlight on myself.

  It’s safe to say that Junior is not happy to see me. “What the fuck? Sharon?”

  “I look like her, don’t I?” I say and at the sound of my voice, he goes ashen. It’s satisfying to watch the colour drain from his face.

  “Julia? What the fuck? Why do you look like Sharon?”

  I shrug. “It just worked out that way. Trust me, when I first saw myself, I wasn’t too ecstatic. A leftover cheerleader from the eighties isn’t what I would have chosen, but the surgeon did what he could with the pieces you left, and this is the result. But,” I add, and I casually wave my hand around, “it worked out fine for me.”

  He peers into the darkness that surrounds us. “It did? We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere,” he says and then he realizes what that means.

  “Yeah, the middle of nowhere,” I say. “Just you and me. Isn’t this romantic?”

  “You fucking bitch,” he says.

  “Gee. Even now you can’t be nice. I’m waiting for the charming Junior to appear, the one who can sell anything to anyone, anytime, anywhere. I know he’s in there. You’ll bring him out as soon as you realize how serious I am and that this isn’t a joke.”

  As if to make my meaning clear, I take out my gun. And in that moment, I see him realize that I am not joking.

  “Julia,” he says quietly, “I—”

  “I was right,” I interrupt him. “Here comes Mr. Nice Guy. ‘Julia,’” I mimic him, “I’m sorry for what I did to you. C’mon, baby, let me go. We’ll leave here and be the best of friends and everything will be hunky and dory, like I never tried to kill you twice.”

  “Julia,” he says and his voice is even, “I was going to say that I will never regret having beaten you to within an inch of your motherfucking cunting life and if I had the chance, I would do it all again, only this time, I’d do
it even more slowly and I’d make sure to hurt you much, much more.”

  “I guess I should be relieved that we’re having an open and honest conversation,” I reply. “I thought you’d try and sell me a story, like you did when we met.”

  “I never sold you anything. You think I’m a terrible person? No more than you. We’re a match made in hell. You think what I did to you was bad? I can never go anywhere, EVER, without people thinking about that photo when they see me. How would you like that?”

  “You fired me,” I retort. “You didn’t even have the decency to do it yourself or give me any kind of warning or do it in a way that would have been kind. You took away the career I spent my whole life building. You took away every single thing that mattered to me, and you did it in the worst possible way. And then you went to breakfast with your little buddies, while I was walking home by myself, fired, with nowhere to go and no one to be with. You took away our friendship that day too. We were lovers, friends, allies, business partners. You amputated me, Junior, and you threw me out like garbage. You got what you deserved with that photo.”

  We sit in silence for a while after that.

  “So you’re pretending to be Sharon,” he says. “Like that’s going to work. Sharon does a thousand things in her day. She’ll have more people to alibi her than the police will know what to do with.”

  I shrug. “Yeah but at least it won’t have been me here. Remember J.J.’s birthday party? I took Sharon’s driver’s license. You guys should be more careful, the house was wide open and no one even noticed me.”

  “Right, silly bunny was here.”

  “And look,” I say brightly and I unwrap my blanket, “all Sharon’s clothes. I bought the same things she was wearing that day, right down to the purse, although I got a knockoff because my days of Michael Kors were over the moment you canned me. But I’ve been Sharon all the way and my alibi back home is tighter than a duck’s ass.”

  “The girl in my room, she came from you?”

  “Yeah. And Teddy’s too. I got him one so you wouldn’t feel special, being singled out. I thought if Teddy bought it, you would too.”

  “But the girl who showed up wasn’t the same as the one in the picture?”

  “There were lots of girls,” I say. “I wanted to change them up, create confusion. They came from different places, so if you’re thinking that either of Teddy’s girls will be helpful to the police, think again. The girls don’t know anything about each other, or about you.”

  “And now you’re going to kill me.”

  “Yeah, I am. Any final words of wisdom for the world?”

  He sighs. “You may or may not want to believe this but being with you was the best time of my life. You were beautiful and powerful and you had the greatest fuck-you attitude ever.”

  “Ah, now we reach the point where you try to sweet talk your way out of this.”

  “Like I said, you can believe it or not. And, believe this or not, I was gutted when they let you go. It wasn’t my decision. There wasn’t anything I could have done about it. It wasn’t personal.”

  “It sure as fuck felt personal. And if you were so gutted, why didn’t you tell me yourself? Why didn’t you text me afterwards or contact me or anything? Oh yeah, you were gutted alright.”

  “I wasn’t legally allowed to,” he says. “It was a mandate. They told me I had to stay away from you.”

  “They? Who the fuck is they?”

  “The Board of Directors and the human resources department. They said if I did, I’d get fired and I wouldn’t get any kind of package either and you might think I’ve got money but I don’t, it’s Sharon’s. So I couldn’t get in touch with you even though it nearly killed me.”

  “And yet, talking about killing, you managed to find me and try to kill me, not once but twice. Really, Junior, do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “I’m telling you the truth. I may have tried to kill you but I’ve never lied to you. Think about it. Think about us. What we had was spectacular. Don’t you think I would have been with you if I could have? Don’t you think I would have warned you, if I could have? I couldn’t do anything, my hands were tied.”

  “A situation you find yourself in once again,” I point out.

  I am silent for a moment. What he said made sense. I had seen people walked off the property in a matter of minutes, and I had always felt smug, incredulous at their stupidity for having let it happen. And it was true that we were told not to get in touch with anybody, but to let a cooling down period create some distance and perspective. It had never bothered me before because I had thought those who were fired deserved it in some way and besides, I never got close to anybody I worked with; everyone was replaceable.

  “But why me? Why was I fired?”

  He shrugs. “They bought the Buffalo Bills and couldn’t afford them. They needed to make cuts to save money and they brought in some numbers guys who looked at the books and chopped a whole bunch of people. You weren’t the only one let go that day, hundreds were, across the country. You would have seen it in the papers if you weren’t so busy trying to humiliate me.”

  “But still,” I say, “there must have been something you could have done—written me a note to say you’d be in touch, something.”

  “And you would have kept your mouth shut?”

  He has a point there.

  “Julia,” he says “I mean it, we were special you and me. Things got out of control when it all went down. Let’s face it, we’re dynamite together and instead of blowing up the world, we blew up each other. I’m sorry I tried to kill you. But can you imagine my humiliation? I couldn’t go to work, I couldn’t face my friends or the guys at the golf course, anyone. You destroyed my life and so I tried to destroy you. But if you go back to before you got let go, it was so great. You were the best friend I ever had. Being with you, my whole life made sense. I didn’t have to be the good husband, or the good father, or the good buddy. I was just me, nasty me, who got off on being powerful. You made me feel like I was a god. When I had you on my arm, it was like the whole fucking universe was mine. And fucking you was incredible. But it wasn’t only that. You were my soul mate. You were. Tell me you didn’t feel that too?”

  “Of course I did, you idiot. Why do you think I was so shocked when you dumped me like you did? I also thought we had something real. But clearly we didn’t.”

  “But I’ve explained that,” he says and he sounds desperate. “There was nothing I could do. Nothing.”

  I can’t think of anything to say to that.

  “You know my best memory of us?” he asks. “Remember that charity ball that went on for hours and we stayed up all night? We drove down to the lake and watched the sun come up. It was cold as a witch’s tit, but you looked incredible. You were wearing that gold sequined dress and we held hands and watched the sunrise.”

  Bastard. Why did he have to bring up that? It was a magical moment, one I had even told Cedar about.

  “Everything was golden,” he says. “Nothing else mattered. It was just you and me, with the rest of the world fast asleep. I didn’t want anything or anyone except you.”

  “Yeah, that was a good time,” I say and my voice cracks.

  “We can have that again,” he says and his voice is quiet and sure, but I laugh.

  “Yeah, really, Junior? And how can we do that?”

  “I’ve got money now. After what the company did you to you, I found a way to shave off a couple of mill that I’ve got in a Swiss bank account. I figured if they did that to you, they could do it to me too, and I didn’t want some little payoff. I wanted it to be worth my while, all the work I’ve done for them. They’re so stupid, they’ll never even realize what I did.”

  “So what, you and I, we’ll run away together?”

  “Yes. Leave today. Do you think I care about Sharon or my kids or anything? I
don’t. I only care about you. We could go and live in Monte Carlo or anywhere you like, start again, just you and me.”

  “Sure. And I’d sleep soundly at night, next to the man who tried to kill me twice.”

  He winces. “Look Julia, like I said, I reacted to what you did. I know how terrible it must have been for you that day they let you go, but you should have trusted me. You should have believed that I would have come to you as soon as I could. Nothing mattered to me except you.”

  “You seemed pretty happy at home the day of the party,” I tell him. “Mr. I’ve Got Everything. Great wife, great kids, great house. Mr. Perfect.”

  “You were gone! I didn’t have anything left except for Sharon and the kids. What did you want me to do, sit around crying? For fuck’s sake, Julia, think about it. What else could I have done?”

  “But I don’t even look like Julia anymore.”

  “You’re still you. And you’ve got that killer body. Oh man, I’ll never forget that day on the stairwell. I get hard just thinking about it. Come here, feel me, if you don’t believe me.”

  I cannot believe this guy. I am there to kill him and he wants me to feel his hard-on. Feeling stupid but unable to help myself, I shrug off my blanket and edge towards him, keeping my gun trained on him. I reach down and the crazy bastard is right, he is hard as a rock, with that little cock straining at his underpants.

  I undo his belt with one hand, unzip his pants and stroke him. I lean down and take him in my mouth, pulling away just before he comes.

  He groans. “Why are you stopping?”

  “Because I want to kiss you.”

  I lean into him and we tongue like teenagers, kissing for what feels like hours and then I lean down and finish what I started.

  Junior. There has always been something electric between us, something irresistible. I wipe my mouth and move away from him, and wrap myself in my blanket.

  “Come on, Julia,” he says, his voice low and disarming. “Let’s run away together. You and me. We’ll rule the universe and be happy. Tell me you’ve ever loved anybody like you love me. We were made for each other and you know it. We’ll put the past behind us and conquer new worlds. Get into movie making, try some different shit. We’re a powerhouse together, baby and you know it.”