by Piper Denna
“Knowing you rich people, it’ll probably be some designer monogrammed shit anyway. I’ll be standing up with Buffy and Boom-boom, and…”
“Shurre. Our news?”
She grinned and laid off the back-and-forth for a few.
“We’re pregnant.”
Her mouth fell open and she stared, much as she had the day I first told her and Kerri I’d been doing the cable guy.
Then she recovered and quipped, “Not an unplanned pregnancy? Not Ali-the-Unblemished? Holy shit. Oh, Ali. You must be devastated.” Next to me, Cam tensed. “I thought you had one of those things. A DUI or whatever.”
“I’m fine. We haven’t told our kids yet, so…”
“Your kids,” she laughed, folding her hands smugly under her arms. “Ha! Now you’ll see how complicated my life is, Babes. Hooo, boy. What fun.”
Cam’s arm went around my shoulders.
“When’s the little bundle of joy due to make his appearance?”
“Well, sometime in late January. And it’s two bundles of joy. Twins, so they’ll probably be early.”
Cam’s arm squeezed tighter.
“Wow! That’s… big fuckin’ news, hon. Big. Your mom will just shit herself. I’ll come along with you when you give her the news, if you want. I’ve had lots of practice with that kinda thing. Well, I better get back to the salt mines. Don’t, um, work too hard. Get some sleep, huh? You look beat.” She made as much noise when she left as when she arrived.
“Does she ever say goodbye and leave like a normal person?” Cam asked.
“Nope.” I kissed him and asked, “Shall we pick up where we left off?”
“Looks like a bad idea, considering,” he answered.
I followed his gaze to the driveway. Kerri and our kids had just arrived. Shit.
*
“Sorry to intrude,” Kerri told me when she came in the house. “But the kids wanted to camp out tonight. I brought both tents, one for boys and one for girls.”
“It’s fine, Kerr.” It wasn’t; I wanted a do-over for the night Cam and I had just spent alone and wasted. Now we were stuck with all our hoodlums, plus Kerri’s. It was only fair, but it didn’t feel fair. When Cam and I moved in together, we needed a big house. With our room on its own floor, far away from the kids so we could get jiggy without them hearing.
*
“The Today Show? Are you shitting me?” I’d just told Kerri why I was leaving town Thursday. “Oh! My! God! This is the biggest thing to hit this town, like, ever! I have to throw a party Friday morning at my house!”
I felt a little sheepish, but Kerri’s enthusiasm was contagious. “I’ll go see Mom and ask her if the boys can stay with her while I’m in New York.”
“Oh, bullshit! She’ll give you the riot act and ruin your trip. They can stay with me. Christ, Mom would have you quoting bible verses to Katie and Matt. The fucking Today Show. Who’da thunk it?”
*
The camp-out was a huge success, the boys and girls trying in vain to scare each other with creepy noises. Cam succeeded where they all failed by having me hold a flashlight behind him so he could cast hulking, freaky shadows over their tents.
Kerri’s kids stuck around all of Tuesday also, building forts out in the pasture and splashing in the irrigation ditch with the others. It was exhausting just listening to them, but I managed to nap and recover nicely. The kids voted to stay another night, so Cam and I were inside getting burgers ready to grill when my phone rang.
It was Shurre.
“Ali?” I heard tears in her voice.
“Yeah, hon?”
Cam glanced over at me when he heard my worry.
“I need you. Please come?”
“Shurre, where are you? What happened?”
“Ronnie’s. Please come quick.”
The line went dead.
“I have to go,” I told Cam while rinsing my hands. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’ll have my phone. She’s at Ronnie’s.”
“You think he died or she did him in?”
“I don’t know.” My intended quick kiss ended up being a furtive, fearful one from him.
“Ali. Be careful. Please.”
I nodded and took off.
*
Shurre’s SUV was parked at a rushed angle in Ronnie’s driveway. I hurried to the door and knocked. Having expected Shurre, I stepped back in surprise when a glassy-eyed Ronnie opened the door. His shirt was unbuttoned to his waist, showing nasty red fingernail scratches along one side of the death-white chest where his pecs must have been years before.
“Come in.” It wasn’t an invitation, it was an order.
My instincts screamed that he was danger and I should run. I shook my head. “Where’s Shurre?”
“Shurre’s in the bedroom, where she belongs. Get your ass in here.”
“Look, you sick old fuck, I’m not going anywh—”
The dark, business end of a pistol halted my words.
I stepped back, thinking to run for it.
“It’ll be the last you see of Shurre,” he warned.
While I hesitated, the gun clicked and I knew it was ready to fire. With one hopeful look around behind me, wishing for somebody passing on the sidewalk but seeing no one, I hugged my arms around myself and went in.
“Where is she? What did you do to her?” I demanded.
Ronnie gave me a shove between my shoulder blades with the pistol. My hands went out to keep my balance, and I kept them up. I remembered playing cops and robbers with my cousins. If the person had their hands up, it wasn’t fair to shoot them. Like the old west rule of not shooting anyone with their back turned.
Would the sicko holding the gun abide by those ethics? As we neared his room, I decided any guy who raped his thirteen-year-old niece was below ethics of any sort.
“Shurre! Oh God. What did he do to you?” She slumped on a corner of the bed, her eyes glazed. She was dressed, a good sign.
“You shouldn’ta come,” she whispered. A tear slid from her eye across her nose and dripped to the bed.
“You called me, hon. You asked me to come.”
“He made me.”
I touched her face, smelled the pot in her hair, on her clothes. And the Jim Beam on her breath.
“Shurre, why are you here? I thought you were staying away from him?” The pistol stabbed into my back.
“Shut your mouth, you meddling bitch,” Ronnie hissed.
“Alice?” Shurre sobbed. “Ali, find Alice. He has Alice.” Her sobs tore at me.
Imagining the fear she felt over that monster getting near her daughter, I whirled on Ronnie.
“You fucker! You better not have hurt that little girl.”
The pistol swung dangerously near my nose, then he whacked my temple with it, just hard enough to hurt like hell and make me wish it knocked me out. I held my head and tried to think how to get away.
“I told you to shut up. I don’t have Alice. I just said I did to get Shurre over here. But thanks to you, even stoned she won’t do what she wants to do. You’ve ruined it for her. She used to like it.”
“I hate you!” Shurre screamed at him. “I never liked it, you bastard! Your dick is so tiny, even when I was a virgin I couldn’t feel it!”
“See how she talks to me now?” Ronnie growled. That hard gun waved close to me again, threatening another knock. My hands and arms went up to shield my head. “You corrupted her. This is your fault. The only woman who ever loved me—”
“I HATE YOU!” Shurre repeated.
“Shut up, slut, or I’ll shoot her right now.”
Cold steel rested against my temple.
Shurre’s eyes widened in slow, stoned fear. “Don’t hurt Ali. Please?”
They exchanged a look, and she pulled her t-shirt off.
“No, Shurre. Don’t do it! Stop!”
The pistol pushed harder against my head. Shurre continued to strip.
I knew I should shut up, but the venom toward Ronnie kept m
y mouth running. “You sick old fuck. I hope you can’t get it up. I heard you had a real problem with that. Probably made yourself sick looking in the mirror. Can’t even please yourself anymore without Viagra, huh?”
His hand jerked mine to his crotch, where the evidence of his prescription pressed against my palm.
“He had to take it twice.” Shurre laughed hysterically, pulling off a black thong. “It was extra-limpy.”
Wasn’t taking two Viagra dangerous? Hopefully. Shurre’s mood was changing—she was still cracking up over her own joke. Was she done fearing for her daughter or was she taking herself to a far away mental place to do what Ronnie demanded?
I ducked my head and looked away when she lay spread-eagle on the bed and touched herself.
“Oh no,” Ronnie said to me, his voice thick with desire, rough with cruelty. “You’ll watch this time.”
“No.” I kept my eyes turned, until he jerked out a handful of my hair and yanked my head around to face him.
“You will, or I’ll shoot her. If she doesn’t enjoy it, or if I don’t, she’s dead.”
“Then your one and only piece of ass is gone. Then what? You gonna take up necrophilia?” I spat. “Or eat her body, you sick bastard?”
“You sanctimonious little bitch. There’s nothing sick or dirty about a man and woman loving each other.” Don’t vomit, don’t vomit. “Is there, Shurre?” He jerked my face toward the bed, where Shurre was shaking her head no.
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I prayed it was Cam and pushed the SEND button, hoping to God he could hear what was happening.
“Over here.” Ronnie shoved me against the wall, between the headboard and a nightstand. “Maybe you’ll learn something. I better see your eyes on us every minute, or I shoot.”
The bedroom door was open. If I ran for it, would he shoot at me, or Shurre? I scanned my immediate area for any kind of weapon, but found nothing.
With the gun pointed her way, Shurre undressed him with sickening familiarity. She was like a zombie nymphomaniac, like an actress caught up in her role. Until I sobbed when she pulled his boxers off. Then I saw a tear run from her eye, and the miserable look on her face made me wonder how she’d refrained from suicide all those years.
He lay with his head at the foot of the bed so he could see Shurre and me at the same time. The gun stayed aimed at me to make sure I watched. Tears flowed down my face, and he seemed even more excited by having us both under his control. I sobbed again when she climbed on him, and fought back the need to vomit as she mounted. God, his finger was on the trigger. What would happen when he came? That moment wasn’t far off.
Then Shurre stilled, refused to go on. “Let her fucking go, Ronnie. Or I won’t finish.”
“You’ll finish,” he panted, aiming at her chest.
“Not ‘til you let her go,” she vowed, her voice cold as the gun in his hand.
They stared one another down, each intent on winning this final power struggle. I was sure Shurre didn’t care if he killed her. He smiled and I saw her back muscles relax.
Without warning, the gun swung toward me and as if it were a firecracker, sparks fired with a not-very-loud pop! I coiled sideways without thinking, then my body convulsed and I felt something unimaginably hot where my lower back met the wall.
“You son of a bitch!” Shurre’s words were far away, and I was intent on getting the hot thing off my back. I grabbed it and found only blood. My hands were covered in it. I looked down. It was on my front, too. As if in slow motion, I looked at the gun and understood that it had shot me. A bullet had gone through me. I couldn’t be shot in the abdomen. I had babies inside me. Babies. You can’t shoot a pregnant woman!
Shurre’s fists were punching Ronnie’s head and then the gun was hidden behind her and with another crack a small red spot appeared and spread on her back. A couple more whacks with her fists and then she collapsed on him. I saw his body jerk with spasms and heard his moans mixed with her agonized ones and then it was silent.
I gave up the fight and vomited hard all over the nightstand, before I slid down the wall and it got dark.
*
“That way!” Kerri’s voice was far off like Shurre’s had been. “CJ! In here!” Only her voice was getting closer. Things brightened up.
“Kerri? Cam?” They were there. How did they know to come? “Call 911. He shot Shurre. Please. Oh God.” I crawled over to the bed and held Shurre’s limp hand. As Cam tried to drag me away, I felt a pulse in her wrist. “She’s alive! Call 911!”
“We did, Al,” Kerri soothed. “We heard the shots when we were coming in the door. Oh, honey. Oh God.”
She held my head in her lap as Cam pulled Shurre off Ronnie and lay her on the floor nearby.
Shurre was breathing, but slowly.
I looked back up at Ronnie and saw his eyes roll up. He was alive, and in pain. Good. His hand went to his chest and I didn’t say a word. I smiled, hoping to God it was a heart attack.
*
It was. Ronnie was dead before the ambulance arrived. Shurre was unconscious and went into cardiac arrest before we got to the hospital. Meanwhile, I cried and begged and prayed to the God my mother worshipped, the God Shurre was certain wanted us to use our bodies for pleasure, any God, to not let my babies be hurt. My lower abdomen hurt. Not like cramps. Much worse. Cam held my hand while I apologized and swore I didn’t know I was putting them at risk by going to Shurre.
He was silent and strong while I was swabbed and cleaned and scanned and pronounced very lucky. The bullet had travelled a clear path without damaging internal organs.
Cam held me and kissed me while they brought in an ultrasound machine to check the babies.
“Alison?” Mom called from the doorway.
“Mom?” She came to me then, kissed my cheek, looked curiously at Cam.
“Honey, the boys want to see you. They’re really worried.”
“Okay. Send them in.” The ultrasound machine arrived, and my legs were lifted in stirrups. The technician draped a sheet over my lower body.
“Um. Can we get just a minute?” I asked her.
She nodded and brushed past my sons and Emily coming in. Cam helped reassure them all, held Emily in his arms against his chest. Will and Andy, both tearful, held my hands and kissed me.
“You got shot, Mom? That’s so scary. But cool.” Will was impressed. “Does it hurt?”
“Oh, yeah. I wouldn’t recommend it. They’re gonna check out my tummy now, and then you guys can come back in, okay?”
Mom stood behind Andy, eyeing the ultrasound machine and my lifted legs suspiciously. No point in announcing the pregnancy to her and the kids until we knew it was still “viable.” The medical term grated on me. Viable was a road that didn’t have too much snow yet. Viable was a business plan that sounded workable. Not my babies, the ones Cam and I made together with our lovemaking.
Our babies were fine. One bounced up and down, while the other rested and only its little heart pulsed. The technician informed me the pain I felt could be due to stress, or what looked like extreme constipation. The bullet had passed well above my uterus.
Cam brought the kids and Mom back in.
Mom’s face set in a hard line, but she softened when the technician pointed out the little heartbeats.
Andy gasped, “Mom? Those are babies? In you?”
“Are they sisters?” Emily wanted to know, nestled in her daddy’s arms against his chest.
“We don’t know yet, but you’ll be their big sister for sure,” Cam told her.
Will held my hand and breathed, “Cool.”
*
They wouldn’t let me get out of bed to go see Shurre. Robert came by to tell me she woke up briefly and asked about me, and he told her I was okay.
“They said if it wasn’t for all the pot and whiskey slowing down her heart, she probably would have died when her lung was punctured,” he told me. “She, uh, wanted me to pass on some information. They did a rape kit�
�� ahem. There was no semen.”
It was a small victory, but it was good to know Ronnie didn’t get off one last time. Robert’s eyes held a question I wasn’t going to answer.
Cam squeezed my hand when Robert asked, “Um, Ali, has this happened before? With Ronnie?”
“You know what? You’ll have to ask Shurre that yourself. I just hope you’re man enough to handle whatever she has to say.” I hoped he’d rise to the challenge. I really did.
“She told the cops this was the only time, and he was crazy from his cancer and the drugs.” He sounded doubtful.
“Does she have any reason to believe you’d support her if she said anything different?”
Robert’s head hung low when he left.
*
The cops kicked Cam out of my room to get my statement. Not knowing what Shurre had said exactly, I made them drag the answers out of me. I stuck with her story of Ronnie’s dementia, but played stupid and confused with the rest.
It was hard just retelling what I’d seen. I wondered if Shurre wouldn’t lose her mind later on.
*
Cam stayed all night with me in the hospital. I insisted on release the next day, and managed to get in Shurre’s room. She was sleeping peacefully, under a shroud of pain meds. I left her a note. It read,
Hey woman!
Missed you, Sleeping Beauty. They let me out on good behavior, but I doubt YOU’LL be eligible! I love you, even though you got us both shot trying to protect me. Call me when you can, and try to be awake for my TV debut Friday.
Love,
Ali
P.S. Now I know why you have so many exes: that’s where all these flowers came from. Also, now that you only have one uninjured lung, how’s about laying off the Marlboro’s? I prefer your kisses without them. HAHA
All Fore Revenge
Chapter 23
Cam’s ex-wife was just like he’d described her—tall as hell, blonde, a regular willowy bomb-shell. She met us at the airport to pick up Emily and give us a lift to my house. She had copies of signed papers for me, and I needed some things from the house. Namely, clothes suitable for a morning talk show.
