He Started It

by Downing, Samantha

  Not long after entering Colorado, we check into our first Holiday Inn. It’s the only place we’ve stayed that has interior hallways, a continental breakfast, and coffeemakers in the rooms. They also have a bar, which is where we end up.

  It’s dark, everything is made of particleboard, and the bartender is a bored-looking young woman who would rather be texting. The other customers appear to be locals. They all know one another and seem to have a somewhat incestuous relationship with one another. If they weren’t so intoxicated and so loud, we wouldn’t know that.

  ‘We sort of ganged up on him,’ Eddie is saying. He’s half watching a football game on the TV and half talking to us.

  Felix turns to me. ‘You ganged up on your grandfather?’

  I shrug. We shouldn’t be talking about this, which is why I’m not drinking much.

  ‘Not in a bad way,’ Eddie says. ‘But we all told him we didn’t want to go to any more places where people were shot or ambushed or memorialized in wax.’

  Krista sips her wine spritzer but says nothing – she’s still surly about what happened with the police earlier. Portia is on her third vodka tonic and starting to get on a roll.

  ‘I mean, how many of those “so-and-so was shot here” places are there in this country? Why do we memorialize this? How come we don’t have markers that say “so-and-so was conceived here”? The way we stigmatize sex in this country is an abomination.’ She slams her glass down on the table for emphasis.

  ‘Exactly,’ Eddie says, still staring at the football game. ‘No more death places, no more weird museums, and no more Bonnie and Clyde. We’re really, really done this time.’ He pauses and motions to the bartender for another round. I go to the bar and bring them all back in one trip, a skill I learned in college.

  ‘What’s next, then?’ Felix says.

  Eddie smiles, showing off his dimples. ‘It’s a surprise.’

  ‘I hope it’s a good one this time,’ Krista says.

  I hand her another spritzer, heavy on the wine.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Felix says. ‘Tell us.’

  Eddie won’t budge, and he doesn’t mention that we’ll be doing some backtracking. There are a lot of reasons why this trip took so long.

  ‘If you aren’t going to tell us, then stop talking about it,’ Krista says.

  ‘Done,’ Eddie says.

  ‘Good. Then can we get back to the truck?’

  I say nothing. The truck is on my mind too, along with the woman in the back. I got bored watching Eddie tease Krista a while ago. Instead, I constantly glance around the bar, keeping an eye out for the Alabama Godfather.

  ‘To the truck,’ Portia says, holding up her drink. Only Felix toasts her. Eddie and Krista are too busy glaring at each other.

  ‘We’re doing the stakeout thing, aren’t we?’ Krista says.

  Eddie nods.

  Krista pulls out that napkin with the schedule, the one Felix wrote out and Krista now maintains. ‘Your shift actually started two hours ago,’ she says to Felix.

  Felix shrugs. ‘I guess we all got a little excited about this luxurious hotel.’ He stands up and stretches. ‘I can see the truck from a window in our room. I’ll go sit in front of it.’ He kisses me on the forehead and walks out of the bar.

  Krista watches us and then turns to Eddie, still glaring at him.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he says.

  She melts a little. It’s a physical transformation that begins in her watery, drunken eyes. ‘That’s not going to work.’

  Lie.

  Eddie holds out his hand and she takes it. ‘Time for us to go,’ he says.

  She huffs a little, pouts a little, and finally takes his hand. They weave out of the bar and toward the elevator.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Portia says, shaking her head.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say.

  ‘You want another drink?’

  ‘Probably shouldn’t. I’ve got second shift.’

  ‘Ah, of course.’

  Tonight she’s wearing her signature boots with jeans and a faded Tulane shirt. She looks like she should be a student, not a dancer on her night off. No judgment.

  ‘Coming?’ I say, standing up.

  She points to her drink. Not empty. ‘When I’m done.’

  I pause, probably due to some provincial idea that women shouldn’t hang out alone in random hotel bars. I’m sure it came from a list of rules written by a man, so he could weed out the good girls from the bad ones.

  ‘Jesus. Go already,’ she says.

  I go. If she can handle drunk tourists in New Orleans, she can handle Nowhere, Colorado.

  Just as I head out, I stop and look back. Portia has already moved from our table to the bar, and she starts talking to the bartender.

  She’ll be fine, I tell myself. If the people in that truck wanted to hurt us, they would’ve done it by now. Even as I tell myself this, I walk back to her.

  ‘You sure you’ll be okay?’

  Portia laughs. ‘I’ll be fine. I promise. Get out of here.’

  I leave.

  Our room is on the third floor, overlooking the back parking lot. I take the stairs, hoping the walk will wake me up a bit. I’m not exhausted, but the thought of staring at our car for several hours is getting me there quick.

  The second-floor landing has a window overlooking the side of the building. Nothing there except a road to drive from the front of the building to the back parking lot. Beyond that, a small green space and a path that leads to the street. This is where I see my husband.

  Felix is hard to miss, even in the dark. His light hair and skin still stand out. He’s standing on the footpath, not quite hidden by the trees on either side of him.

  What strikes me is the glow. Not the glow of a phone screen, the burning glow of a cigarette.

  Felix does not smoke. Never has.

  7 Days Left

  Instead of marching outside to confront Felix about the smoking, I decide to test him. I wait until he’s done with his cigarette and comes back into the hotel, then give him time to get back to our room. By the time I walk in, he’s already sitting by the window to watch the car. He stands up and stretches like he’s been there for a while.

  I lean in to give him a kiss. His breath smells minty fresh with a hint of beer, but I get a whiff of cigarette smoke from his shirt. ‘You smell like cigarettes.’

  ‘I know,’ he says, turning up his nose. ‘I went out to check the car and walked by a whole group of smokers.’

  ‘That must be it.’

  He takes a shower. I take my seat at the window. Up until I saw him smoking, I had no intention of watching the car half the night. Now I’m too keyed up to sleep.

  The thing is, we can’t smoke. We work at International United – International Goddamn United – and they don’t hire smokers. They have far more health problems, which means the company has to pay more for insurance, and we were tested for tobacco before being hired. No-smoking policies are legal and companies like IU enforce it. Felix isn’t just putting his health at risk; he’s putting his livelihood at risk. Then who would have to support him?

  His wife, perhaps? The one with the inheritance?

  In the time I’ve known Felix, I’ve only caught him in one other lie. Yes, only one, and that was five years ago. One lie is nothing. My family lied on a daily basis. You couldn’t win at Risk without a little lying.

  Felix didn’t even lie about anything important, either. Just a bachelor party that got out of hand. I knew about the party, though not everything that happened at it. A more forthright man told his girlfriend about it and she told me.

  The smoking is different. It’s not a lie by omission, like what I do. When I told him why I wanted to move to Central Florida, I said it was for work and that was the truth. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

  This, on the other hand, is an outright lie. Felix was smooth about it, too – no stumbling, no stuttering, none of the signs I’ve learned to look for. Thinking about this k
eeps me awake throughout my shift, during which I see nothing. No one goes near our car. I think about my phone in that motel room, wondering if it was Felix who had turned it over and not some unknown intruder. Maybe he’s been lying about a lot of things.

  Still up?

  Eddie, texting to see if I’m on the job.

  I’m awake. All quiet.

  He responds with a thumbs-up emoji and says:

  I don’t give a shit about those guys from Alabama. I’m just sick of finding our car damaged. Time + Money.

  Eddie can be a real asshole, but sometimes he’s the only one who makes sense.

  Three hours of sleep is all I get. In part because of my shift, in part because of Felix’s alarm. He set it to get up and walk this morning. I don’t go with him. Instead, I wonder if he smokes when he walks alone.

  I wish I never saw that because I don’t want to think about this now, in the middle of our trip. Today I have to think about the aliens. Nikki had never shown an interest in them before, had never mentioned little green men or UFOs. She didn’t even like Men in Black, but all of a sudden she wanted to look for aliens in the middle of Colorado. A place known as the UFO Watchtower had just opened and Nikki drove us there. She was seventeen and knew how to drive, although her license had been revoked because she got too many tickets.

  Nikki not only took control of our road trip; she also took control of the music. She liked it loud. As she roared down the highway – as much as a minivan can roar – she blasted her favorite songs by Oasis, Radiohead, and Garbage. Especially Garbage. Her favorite song was ‘I Think I’m Paranoid.’

  Grandpa started refusing all pills, even the real medication, no doubt in an effort to sober up and take back control of the trip. Underestimating Nikki was one of his many mistakes. She dissolved the pills in water and he couldn’t refuse to drink that. Not unless he wanted to die.

  I sat in the passenger’s seat next to Nikki, my head halfway out the open window. Eddie and Portia were in the back seat, and Grandpa was all the way in the back, not saying a word. The rest of us talked about what aliens looked like.

  ‘I hope they aren’t green,’ Nikki said. ‘I hate green.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said.

  ‘I hope they’re black and blue,’ Eddie said. ‘That’d be cool.’

  ‘Purple!’ Portia yelled. ‘With trunks, like elephants.’

  ‘And polka dots,’ I said.

  Nikki said no. ‘I hate polka dots.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘What about stripes?’

  She shrugged.

  We ate a mountain of candy, enough to make us sick, and we still ate more. The night before we had pizza delivered to our motel. Nikki also made us call Mom and Dad because, at that point, we didn’t know if the police were looking for us or not. Nikki didn’t think they were, because we were still in the same car with the same license plate and no one pulled us over during the trip. We had a whole conversation about it while eating the pizza.

  ‘Bet Mom won’t call them,’ Nikki said. ‘She’s not going to put her father in jail.’

  ‘Dad might,’ Eddie said.

  ‘No way. He’s not going to make Mom mad,’ Nikki said.

  Eddie started to feel sick from all the junk food. He was laid out across one of the seats, holding his stomach. ‘Why don’t we just go home? Why are we even staying on this trip?’

  ‘We can’t,’ Nikki said. ‘I’m not done yet.’

  ‘Done with what?’ I said.

  Nikki nodded toward the back seat, where Grandpa was knocked out. ‘I’m not even close to being done with him.’

  We all looked at her, waiting for more.

  ‘This is for Grandma,’ she said.

  I sided with Nikki because I always did. If she had a plan, I would follow. ‘Nikki’s right, let’s keep going. Mom and Dad have no idea we’ve figured out what Grandpa did. They think we’re having fun,’ I said.

  Nikki nodded. ‘That’s the key. We act like everything is fine and normal and we’re just having fun with Grandpa. And …’ she held up a finger like she was pointing at us. Giving us an order. ‘No hinting about where we are. Pretend Grandpa is right there.’

  She dialed the number and spoke first, saying Grandpa was standing next to her.

  Not a lie. He was next to her, and he was asleep.

  She passed the phone to Eddie, who said the usual everything-is-fine-we’re-having-a-great-time and then passed the phone to me.

  I was too enthusiastic – although at the time, I didn’t know that. I was just trying to impress Nikki.

  The last one was Portia. She didn’t say much, but at least she wasn’t crying anymore. No one knew how much she understood or what she thought about any of this, but she did trust Nikki.

  Nikki gave her very specific instructions about what to say. ‘Everything’s great. So fun. I ate M&M’s today.’

  Random phrases, the kind of thing six-year-olds spit out for no reason. Sometimes Portia was really good, other times she wasn’t. I held my breath as Nikki put the phone up to Portia’s ear.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Great, so fun. I love M&M’s.’

  Good enough.

  We made it through the first night on our own. That’s how we thought of it – as being on our own. Grandpa was asleep most of the time, and when he wasn’t he looked a little afraid. Couldn’t blame him. I also thought he deserved it.

  Our only problem was money. We were almost out of it.

  On the first trip, I didn’t see any aliens or UFOs. Now the UFO Watchtower is much larger, more crowded, and it has a campground, a rock garden, and a gift shop, but I still don’t see any aliens or UFOs.

  ‘It’s daytime,’ Portia says. ‘Hard to see UFOs when the sun’s out.’

  ‘Is that right?’ I say.

  She nods, raising the binoculars up to her eyes and gazing upward. I’m shocked she even brought binoculars. For aliens.

  ‘I had no idea you believe in UFOs,’ I said.

  Portia gives me a bored look. ‘I just don’t believe we’re the only ones around. There has to be other life out there.’ She takes out her phone and glances at it. Someone is calling but I can’t read the name. ‘It’s my roommate, I better take this. Be right back.’ She walks so far away I can’t hear anything she says.

  I turn to Felix. ‘What about you? Do you believe?’

  He shrugs. ‘Sure, why not?’

  I’ve been asking him questions all morning, trying to catch him in another lie, trying to figure out if I know him. It’s typical for him to go along with whatever is easiest when he doesn’t care. Aliens don’t rank very high.

  ‘Do you?’ Felix asks me.

  No, but who cares about the truth at this point? ‘Sure,’ I say.

  ‘You do not,’ Eddie says. ‘You made fun of it last time.’

  ‘I was twelve.’

  ‘Still.’

  It’s true, I made fun of this place and the whole idea of it, but it was mostly because Nikki put me in charge of Grandpa. I wanted to be with her but was stuck with him. We couldn’t leave Grandpa by himself in the car, so we had to help him to the platform, and I was in charge of standing by his chair, keeping him propped up. He wasn’t asleep but he wasn’t really awake, either.

  So no, I never saw any aliens and I didn’t believe in them. Bet Nikki didn’t, either.

  Just below us on the platform, Krista is walking around the rock garden. Discarded items are strewn about, notes, tchotchkes, articles of clothes have been left as energy gifts to the vortexes. There are two here, near the watchtower, along with a circular view of the sky.

  Next to me, a group of older women take this all very seriously. The watchtower is a pilgrimage for them twice a year and they have pictures from all the trips. One of them shows me a picture of glowing dots in a dark sky. UFOs, they say. The women have seen many of them.

  Maybe that’s what Felix is. An alien. You think you’re married to a human only to find out he’s from another planet. That would
change things up.

  ‘You okay?’

  Not Felix. It’s Krista. She’s back from the rock garden, looking tired and hung over, but she’s in a good mood. It’s a nice surprise, and when I nod to her, she smiles wide. Happy up to her eyes.

  ‘I love this place,’ she says.

  ‘You believe in aliens?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Why not.

  Eddie is standing behind her. He’s wearing sunglasses, making it impossible to gauge his reaction. I can guess, though.

  I introduce Krista to the women on the pilgrimage to get her out of the way. When Felix leaves to find the bathroom, I finally have a minute with Eddie.

  ‘Tell me the truth,’ I say.

  He raises an eyebrow. ‘It’s a good thing Krista doesn’t say things like that, otherwise I’d start running.’

  ‘Have you ever seen Felix smoke?’ I ask.

  ‘Smoke? You mean weed?’

  ‘Cigarettes.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Never. Why?’

  ‘It’s probably nothing.’

  A lie, mostly. If it was nothing, I wouldn’t have searched through his bag when he went out for a walk.

  I’m not the kind who snoops. I’ve never felt a need to search through Felix’s phone, computer, or e-mail. My thing has always been if he’s going to do something bad, he’ll do it no matter what. No way to stop it, but plenty of ways to drive yourself crazy. Like I did this morning.

  I didn’t find anything. No cigarettes, no lighter, nothing. He probably took them with him on the walk, or maybe they’re hidden outside. For half a second I considered rushing out to follow him.

  I decided against it because I don’t want to be that woman. That wife. You know who I’m talking about because we’ve all seen her before.

  One day, a woman appears to be in a healthy, happy relationship; the next day she’s in a movie of the week. It’s that dramatic. It’s that quick.

  I think it happened to Eddie’s old girlfriend. He met Krista when he was still with Tracy. I hadn’t seen them for a while, but out of the blue Tracy starting e-mailing and calling, asking how I was, how Felix was, and had I heard from Eddie lately? It was so odd that I called Eddie to ask what was going on.