by Dan Taylor
And although I didn’t think about it earlier, it was an ominous sign that Grace hadn’t been in contact with me since I spoke to her last.
I look at her and smile. She looks at me and smiles back, though her heart isn’t in it. Then I say, “Grace, I have something to tell you.”
She swallows hard, and says, “Oh.”
“Before I tell you, I want you to know I love you dearly. I always have. It’s just…” My voice trails off.
“What is it, silly dummy? You can tell me anything.”
I smile again. It feels fake on my face. “Not this I can’t. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to tell anyone.”
She frowns. “You’ve got me worried. You’re speaking in clichés.”
“I’ve fucked up—”
“Big time,” she says, interrupting me and finishing my sentence.
“Yeah. I’ve—”
“Been caught in a traffic jam again all night?”
It’s my turn to swallow hard. “No. But that time that I said I had, that isn’t where I was.”
She goes to speak, but I stop her by putting a finger on her lips. I saw it in a movie once. I feel ridiculous.
I say, “Marriage is difficult…”
She frowns, so I begin again: “Just let me finish before you say anything. It’s important you hear me out. Last week, when I said I was caught in a traffic jam, I spent the night at a lady’s house.” I show her my palms. “Nothing happened. Not even a kiss, or even second base. But I feel shitty about it, because it’s bad enough that I even ended up there in the first place. It’s been difficult to live with myself this last week. And before you go ahead and start thinking our marriage is on the rocks, or that I’m a piece of shit, I want you to know that this experience has made our marriage stronger—at least I feel so. There were no feelings between me and her, and you’re sexier than ever since we’ve had Ellie—since you’ve had Ellie. I think we should—not sweep it under the rug—but work through this. Together. As a family.”
I pause, during which Grace’s eyes flit over every square inch of my face.
Then I say, “So, what do you think?”
57.
2 weeks later…
I have a nagging suspicion that my marriage to Grace Hancock may be over. It could be that I’ve been forced to live in a motel the two weeks since I confessed, or that every time I phone her I can barely get a word out of her.
For this motel room, I’ve been paying by the day. Every time I slot my card into the machine at the front desk, the young lady manning it looks all embarrassed, and asks me if I’d like to pay for a long-term stay, as I’d get a lower rate. And each time I tell her it can’t be too long until I’m let out of the doghouse.
It’s about that time again now, where I go and pay. I go to the bathroom, urinate, and then look at my appearance in the mirror. I thought it appropriate to not shave these last couple weeks, and I try to avoid smiling outside the confides of the motel room, just in case someone Grace and I mutually know spots me. I need to look the part—crinkled pants and shirt, the latter of which is kept open to reveal a white vest that’s most definitely only for underwear use. Part of me thinks that if one of her girlfriends spots me and reports to Grace that I’m a mess, that’ll inspire her to feel a little sorry for me and might make her pick up the phone to entertain the idea of having a proper conversation with me.
I apply cologne, go out the door, and check that it’s locked after closing it. And then I go to the front desk. When I first checked in, I was so beside myself at Grace’s reaction to my admittedly overconfident and sappy confession that I could barely talk beyond a mumble.
So when the young lady manning the desk spots me, she smiles her fake smile and says the same thing she has every day the last two weeks: “Hey, Jabe! Are you having a nice stay?” repeating the name she thought I said that morning.
Jabe isn’t a name I’ve ever heard of, and isn’t the name I wrote in the sign-in book, but I let that shit slide.
“It’s perfect,” I say.
“Great! Is there anything I can get for you?”
“Sure,” I say. I lower my voice to a whisper, and say, “You can have a day off. You’re due one.”
“I’ll be sure to let my employers know your feedback.”
“You do that…” I read her name pin, reminding myself of her name for the fourteenth time. “Polly.”
I pay for the room. This time, Polly doesn’t ask me if I want to pay for a longer-term stay. She just smiles and waits for the payment to go through.
Before I leave, she says, “I hope I’m not prying, but how’s it going with your wife, Jabe?”
“You’re definitely prying, but I don’t mind. My wife’s a little angry, but she can’t stay that way forever, right?”
She doesn’t say anything, as she doesn’t need to. It’s written on her face.
“She can?” I ask.
She nods yes. Her face is grave, like she understands something I don’t have the ability to.
“May I ask what it is you’ve done wrong?”
I tell her, making sure to emphasize we didn’t have sex, and that it made me realize how much I love my wife, and that I feel it will make our marriage stronger in the long run.
She winces. So I ask, “What?”
“On top of sounding like something a character in a bad movie would say, you’ve admitted to your wife that some other woman was required to strengthen your marriage.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“It doesn’t matter. That’s what she heard.”
“From what I said?”
“Yep.”
“Huh. Thanks for the advice.”
“No problem.” Then she says, automatically and like we haven’t just had a conversation about things deeply intimate to me, “You have a nice stay now.”
I walk away from the front desk feeling like I’ve just received marital advice from a cyborg or robot or some shit—and she understands women more than I do, despite not being fully human herself.
But maybe Polly the robot was right. Maybe I messed up my confession to Grace more than I thought.
If that part about feeling like the whole experience had strengthened our marriage was interpreted in such a cynical way, it makes me wonder what other words of mine were twisted into an assault on womanhood.
I head out to the motel’s parking lot and get in my rental. Then I head to my office.
You’re probably wondering how the murder investigation into Tracy’s death is going. Needless to say, the police found Eric Holloway’s collection of video tapes. The word on the grapevine is that’s the motive the State will be running with when this thing goes to trial—that Eric was so concerned about being discovered as a grade-A Peeping Tom he did the only thing he could and silenced her. It’s not difficult to punch holes in their logic, as the only threat to Eric being discovered, based on the evidence, was himself and the collection of tapes that he’d amassed and planned on keeping and which he didn’t destroy before killing Tracy. But it’ll probably be a slam dunk, that conviction, especially with me as the State’s star witness.
As for Detective Lucy, he’s taking some time off, with pay, pending an investigation into his actions that night. Knowing the LAPD, they’ll find little wrongdoing.
I arrive at my office a little before eight. I take the elevator up to my floor, and find the door to my office unlocked. As usual, Daisy’s arrived before me, and when I go through the door to my small reception area, she puts down her mug of coffee and pretends to start typing.
“Good morning, Daisy.” I give her a twirl. “How do I look?”
“Like you’re handling your separation from your wife really badly.”
“Excellent. When’s my first appointment today?”
She consults her computer. “In three hours’ time.”
I’ve made it to my office door, but upon hearing I’m free for most of the morning I do a U-turn. And tell Daisy
, “I’ll be at the gym if you need me. I think a six-pack would go great with this new look I’m rocking. Oh, I nearly forgot. Have you managed to retype my ad?”
She hands a hard copy to me.
I read it and say, “Well look at that, it does read better with the word discreet taken out.”
I’m not going to the gym.
I’m going somewhere else.
During the investigation into Tracy’s death, I made a whole bunch of mistakes, and a whole bunch of assumptions at the start of it that turned out to be incorrect. You know that saying about assumptions making an ass out of you and me? I’m the ass, the you, and the me. But I got one thing right the first shot I took at deducing their role. The car keys.
During her career seducing bored married men since her separation from Detective Lucy, Tracy amassed a whole fleet of rich-guy cars. My guess is that they weren’t given to her because she was good in the sack.
Unluckily for their owners, my hacker friend Scottie McDougray, a Scottish lunatic incarcerated for white-collar crimes, has recently been released from a minimum-security prison where they serve up steak and potatoes for dinner. It takes him less than two hours to locate the long-term storage garages Tracy kept the cars in, presumably for a rainy day. He’s also hacked into the EZ Storage’s database, and changed Tracy’s name to mine for the lease of the garages.
After informing by phone the guy at EZ Storage I’ve lost the key to one of the garages, I drive to their offices, pay the nominal fee for the replacement, and pick up a new key. I’m on my way to their garages now, and in one of them there’s a Jaguar F-Type with sleazebag written all over it, belonging to, Scottie’s research has told me, a Geoff Hanky who lives a thirty-two-minute drive away, and who didn’t transfer or hadn’t got around to transferring the title of the car with the DMV.
When I get there, I take the Jaguar out, park my rental in the garage, and then get back in the Jag. I sit in the leather driver’s seat, relishing its luxury, and whistle. Geoff must really love his wife, if he was willing to give up this car to save their marriage.
I take out my cell phone, on which I have Geoff’s address saved, and read it off the screen, typing it into his Sat Nav.
On the way, I explore Geoff’s taste in music. Looks like he had taken all his CDs with him before he gave it Tracy, as the CD holder is barren. But he forgot one, which is in Slot 5 of the five-CD tray to his car’s sound system. In his haste, it looks like Geoff forgot his copy of At Your Birthday by Steppenwolf.
It makes a great soundtrack for my short drive to Geoff’s.
Despite the sun shining in Hollywood, today is that rainy day.
58.
Geoff lives in a gated community in South Hollywood, and is home when I press the button on the intercom to his house. At least I think that’s him looking at me skeptically via the camera above the intercom. I smile at him and wave. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t wave back. He presses the button and says, “Who the fuck are you?”
I press the button to speak, but instead of greeting him, I turn Steppenwolf up louder. I see the cogs in his head turning, and my smile grows wider. When Geoff speaks next, it’s in a whisper and with grave concern written all over his upper-middle-class face: “What the hell do you want?”
“I’m just bringing your car back, Geoff.”
I hear presumably his wife in the background, asking him who it is. Geoff turns his head to address her but doesn’t speak. He wouldn’t, as he doesn’t know who I am, but he does know what it means. “No one, honey,” he manages to get out.
“Are you going to buzz me in, or should I just park outside the gate?”
He turns back to me, and says what I expected him to say, “Drive away. Now. We’ll talk later.”
“No can do, Geoff old boy.”
The gate starts to open inwards, towards Geoff’s exclusive street and away from me. For a second I think Geoff’s misguidedly buzzed me in, until I see one of his neighbors has driven out of his drive and pressed the button on his remote control to open it, in preparation for his commute.
“Look at that,” I tell Geoff. “One of your neighbors has saved you the trouble.”
I back up, letting the neighbor drive out, and before the gate has chance to close I drive through and park on the curb outside Geoff’s home.
Geoff comes out first, followed by his wife. She looks more than a little confused at seeing what was once Geoff’s prize possession being driven by a stranger. She frowns, and then glances at the replacement Jaguar Geoff bought for himself, just to make sure. Looks like Geoff has changed his favorite color from black to dark blue.
Geoff runs up to the car, stopping five or six feet from me, and I press the button to roll down the driver’s-side window just in time to hear Geoff’s wife ask him. “I thought you totaled that car, honey?”
I look around at him to tell her. “There’s not a scratch on her.”
Geoff tells his wife, “Just go inside. I’ll deal with this madman.”
“Who is it?” Geoff’s wife asks him.
Before he can reply, I answer for him. “Just a friend of Tracy Lucy. You might want to ask your husband who she is.”
For my trouble, I have to get a cab back to EZ Storage garages Tracy leased, and Geoff punched me so hard it’ll probably develop into a shiner.
But it was worth it.
I fucked over Tracy Lucy in life, but I like to think if there’s a heaven, she’d enjoy looking down and seeing the expression on Geoff’s face when his wife asked, “Who’s Tracy Lucy, Geoff?”
And I’ve only gotten started. Back at the storage garages, there are a whole bunch of cars owned by rich guys with names like Geoff, Bob, and Neil, and I expect they’ll all want their cars returned. Who wouldn’t?
59.
I’m on my way back to my office when my phone beeps. I take out my cell phone, and open the text message I received.
It’s from Grace, and reads, “Jacob, I’ve had time to think, and we need to talk.”
I make it to my home in record time. During the drive, part of me is optimistic, but another part is anxious about the formal tone she used in composing the message. Grace hasn’t called me Jacob since that time I put a diaper on Ellie both back to front and upside down. There’s also a worrying absence of emojis.
When I’m around a hundred yards away from the house, I see there’s a vehicle parked in my spot, so I have to park by the curb.
It’s the kind of car that would look great with a key mark scratched into it.
I get out, walk over to the front door, knock three times, and wait for Grace to come to the door. She takes her time coming, despite knowing I was on my way.
When she opens the door, she looks better than ever, and says what I hoped she would: “You look like shit.”
And I reply with what I’ve practiced in the mirror multiple times: “My appearance hasn’t exactly been at the top of my list of priorities.”
There it is. The look I was hoping for. There’s still love shining in her sparkly eyes.
“I suppose you better come in,” she says.
“You suppose?”
“Yeah. This conversation can’t be had at the threshold,” she says, making, I’m sure, an intended reference to marriage culture.
I follow her in, and am instructed for the first time since we moved in to take off my shoes at the welcome mat. I get down on my haunches and start taking them off. I see something in the periphery of my vision as I’m wrestling with the shoelaces. There’s a pair I don’t recognize—a man’s pair. Brogues.
We go through to the living room and what I see there inspires me to say: “Who the holy shit is this?”
There’s a guy in a business suit, pockmarked cheeks, thinning hair slicked back, late-forties, attempting to high-five Ellie, who’s sitting and ignoring his attempts. He looks up at me, and says, “Hi, Jake. Nice to meet you.”
He holds out his hand for me to shake. The one with which he attempted to engin
eer a bonding situation with my daughter. Of course, I ignore it, and ask my wife, “What is this, Grace? Have you moved some douche canoe in already? I’ve only been gone five minutes.”
The guy goes to speak, but Grace gets there first. “This is Murray, my attorney.”
I frown. “What’s he doing here?”
They look at each other, concern on their faces. Then Grace says, “We thought it best.”
“We?” I shake my head, feeling like the world is swallowing me up without having chewed first. “Are you planning vacations together too?” I turn my attention to Murray. Jesus, I hate that name. “And you, you bad-guy-from-an-eighties-movie-looking shit head, is it in your job description to go around high-fiving other men’s daughters?”
He ignores me, and says to Grace, “Do you want me to stay? Maybe my presence here is inflammatory.”
Grace thinks a second, then says, “You can wait in the kitchen, Murray.”
As he leaves he does two things that make me want to strangle him until his eyes bulge out of their sockets: 1) he tells Grace she can call over to him if she needs him, and 2) waves at Ellie on his way out like he’s a character from Sesame Street.
The door closes, and Grace is barely able to look at me. She looks down at the carpet and asks if she can get me anything to drink.
I reply, “Maybe Murray can get it for me. I’m sure he knows where the glasses are by now.”
She looks up at me, making eye contact with me for the first time since Murray introduced himself, and she has a pleading look in her eyes. This isn’t easy for her either. But then again, I’m not the one who’s lawyered up before the rolling boil has had chance to reduce to a simmer.
I look at my daughter, sigh, and then calm myself down. I take a seat on the sofa chair, and Grace takes the sofa. She picks up our daughter and sits her on her lap.
It’s a full minute before anyone speaks. It’s me. “I thought we were going to talk?”
