I waved back and watched him disappear inside the double doors. I felt like I’d made a friend. I stared after him a moment longer, then turned to the phone. I picked up the receiver and dropped all four quarters into the coin slot. I dialed a number I’d dialed a hundred times before. The phone rang, and rang, and rang—
“Allo.” A very tired, just awakened male voice answered with a French accent. His name was Michel. I knew that much. Stupid name! I held the receiver in my hand, frozen. This was new. Sometimes my Voice could be so irritating in its accuracy. I said nothing. Again, “Allo.” He drew out the “o” in a patronizing manner.
A rumbling started in my chest, slowly rising up through my lungs into my throat, gaining force as it moved through my vocal chords, forcing my mouth open into a scream of terrifying proportions, loud and incoherent, primal. I directed the noise into the receiver with all the energy I could muster, and after several seconds of this, the scream dissipated into a garble, then to silence. I was completely spent, drained. I placed the receiver back to my ear.
“Connard.” Click. Asshole. I looked it up when I got home.
And that was that.
Broken. I felt broken. I was broken. I slowly hung the phone back on its hook. I leaned against the booth, trying to gain some semblance of order in my head but realized there was no order to gain. My head was empty, as was my soul. A French guy was sleeping at my lover’s—ex-lover’s—house. And if he was sleeping at her house, then of course they must be—
See, what did I tell you? You should have listened—
Just shut up.
Okay.
I was tired, defeated.
I turned my back on the booth, lowering myself down to a crouch, my head falling into my hands. I felt numb. I knew it was over. I leaned against the booth for an indeterminate amount of time. When I finally gathered the energy to stand, I had trouble getting vertical. Both my legs had fallen asleep. Head hanging low, I stumbled over to my car in an aimless stupor. I drove the two interminable hours home, pulling up to the ugly, pink building that housed my one-room cave, feeling far worse than I felt when I’d left, which I didn’t think possible. Even through my depression haze, though, I noticed a not-so-nondescript black Lincoln Town Car parked in front of the building. The windows were tinted, so I couldn’t see inside. Pulling into the underground parking lot, I glanced in my rearview mirror for another look at the Lincoln. It creeped me out, as if the car were watching me. I passed through the security gate to the external set of stairs and climbed up to my first-floor apartment. In the hallway, twenty feet away, a man wearing a black suit exuding forceful nonchalance was leaning against my doorframe.
He was taller than me, with large shoulders and lean, angular features. I knew immediately I had never met him before, but he had official written all over his face. It was 6:00 a.m. This guy was not good news. But I was not in a frame of mind to do anything other than walk right into the gaping jaws of fate. I closed the distance between us in seconds.
“You’re Jon Fixx.”
“Since I was born,” I answered. But he wasn’t asking. I waited.
He pulled out his wallet. I could see a shoulder holster holding a .357 tucked under his jacket. At this point, I didn’t care if he arrested me or shot me. Over the last few months, as my life fell apart, I’d done a good job at pissing off some very powerful interests so I figured this guy was sent by one of them to clear the air.
“I’m Ted Williams. FBI.” He flashed his badge at me proving he was, in fact, an FBI agent. My instincts were right. Official. But why the FBI was paying me a visit, I had no clue. Keeping my cool, I squinted at the badge, indicating confusion with my look.
“Isn’t he dead?”
Williams stared at me, a grim look on his face. He didn’t find me amusing.
On a roll, I said, “Where’s your bat and glove?”
“Do you know why I’m here?”
“You didn’t see any good trannies on Santa Monica Boulevard? Thought you might have better options in the Valley?” I figured whatever this guy was planning on doing to me, it was preordained, so what I said, or didn’t say, would not affect the outcome in any way. He was going to do what he was going to do, regardless. I was feeling reckless. Something inside my soul had unlatched earlier in the night when I heard the new guy’s voice on Sara’s phone.
My response to Ted Williams’ question earned me a punch in the solar plexus. I doubled over for a second, realizing maybe I did care about what happened to me. The punch hurt. I was in more trouble than I thought. I took a deep breath, steeled my solar plexus, and leaned upright. “Wrong answer?”
“Open your door.”
I complied. He followed me into the apartment, turning on the overhead light by the front door. He took a quick once-over of the place, taking in the messy apartment, the empty pizza boxes and clothes strewn all about. His eyes settled on the dartboard hanging on the wall near the front door. I’d put a picture of Sara up on the board. At the moment, every dart was sticking somewhere in her face.
“Michel said you were strange.”
Michel! That got my attention. Standing in the middle of my room, I stared at him.
“That’s right, Jon. I’m here because of the phone calls. And the late night stakeout-stalker sessions.”
Oh yeah, the stakeouts. Forgot to mention those. I’d been parking outside Sara’s house at night so I could see for myself what was really going on with her. The first few nights I was there nothing happened. Then one night, a man I had to assume was Michel pulled up in a Jaguar with Sara in the passenger seat. Over the next few weeks, I saw Michel go to the building on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday nights. He usually showed up around 7:30 p.m. and left about midnight. I had to grudgingly admit he was a good-looking guy. Blond hair, probably blue eyes, though I never got close enough to find out. He was fit, I could tell. I knew enough to know that the general public would not consider my behavior healthy, so I never did more than observe, though the thought of confronting Sara and Michel crossed my mind many times.
“How do you know Michelle?” I asked, doing my best to stand tall, appear confident.
“It’s Michel.” He pronounced it mee-shel, accent on the second syllable.
“I prefer my way.”
Williams ignored my comment. “Michel is my cousin.”
“But he’s French.”
“They have cousins in France.” He stared at me, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Jon, it stops today. Leave Sara and Michel alone. No more phone calls. No more drive-bys. No more parking outside her building. You understand?”
I felt completely betrayed. Sara and I had shared our most intimate secrets, dreams, desires, everything together. Only weeks before we were lovers. Now, I was her stalker.
“If I don’t?”
“I was hoping you would say that.” Williams smiled wide, sadistically. He slowly took his suit jacket off, his arms reaching out behind his back, the jacket easily sliding off his shoulders.
“Do you practice that move in front of a mirror?”
His smile disappeared. I noticed his button-down shirt was a size too small, intentionally, I figured, to show off his bulging biceps. He circled around behind me. “On your knees, Jon.”
“Thanks, but no, that’s not my thing. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, if that’s what you’re into.”
I felt a solid impact against my shoulder blades, my knees buckling involuntarily, dropping me to the ground. Williams stepped behind and leaned over to be extra menacing. He threatened me with all types of terrible images about arrest and jail, anal sex, and an inmate named Bubba. This guy had a way with words. After a few minutes of this, I relaxed a bit. He was not here on official business. He was doing a favor for his cousin. Therefore, I was probably not in much danger. Then I turned this thought on its head, thinking that maybe I was in mor
e danger specifically because this guy was not on official business. He didn’t have to check in with anyone, so he could do whatever his personal moral code would allow him to because there was no official oversight. But the FBI was the least dangerous of the many different government protection agencies as far as I knew. The CIA and the NSA—those guys meant business. The FBI consisted of Boy Scouts compared to the other organizations.
“Stand up,” Williams demanded.
I complied, my initial fear now replaced by a slow burning anger. Hearing Michel’s voice on the phone had sent me over the edge. My relationship with Sara was over. I understood that much. Williams circled around to my front. He took a step toward my dartboard, pulling a dart out of the wall.
“You’re not going to torture me with that, are you?”
“Shut up.” He turned around, regarding me. “Michel told me you’d be a piece of cake, wave the badge and the gun around a bit and that would be that. But you’re not scared, are you, Jon?”
I shrugged. Williams crossed behind me. The dart whizzed past my ear and struck the bullseye on the dartboard. Williams leaned into my ear.
“You should be. Let me show you why.”
He proceeded to illustrate several different ways in which he could immobilize and then kill me by breaking or slicing my neck, piercing my heart, crushing my brain or, my favorite, shoving a key into my temple. As he moved me through these variations of near death, he usually stopped the moment before the final blow would have finished me off. I remained limp throughout the exercise of intimidation, figuring my relaxed compliance and lack of fear would be the best way to upset him. Standing before me, car keys in his right hand, he had a hint of satisfaction on his face. This was his Achilles’ heel, as far as I could tell. His arrogance and cocksureness would get him into a situation one day that would be more than his capabilities could afford. Williams looked at me. I stared back at him. He wanted a response.
“Are you going to show me dance moves next?” I asked.
Williams scowled. He pulled his gun out.
“Do I need to show you how this works?”
I shook my head. I felt empty inside. I’d had enough. I wanted Williams to leave so I gave him what he wanted. “I’ll leave Sara alone.”
And I meant it. Even if Williams hadn’t shown up with his unorthodox and illegal display of government power gone astray, I knew I would not be contacting Sara any more. Beyond that, I had no idea what my future looked like. My mind felt fuzzy and unclear, not like I’d come to a crossroads but rather that I’d hit a brick wall head first, and no matter how far I looked to the left or to the right, the wall stretched as far as the eye could see. I would have to sit in this spot until I found the tools to take the wall apart a brick at a time. Williams peered at my face to see if he could find any hints of irony or deception, but I gave him back only the truth. He put his gun away, grabbed his jacket, and threw it back on in one move, then stepped to the door. He turned around.
“A piece of advice, Jon Fixx. Be careful who you associate with. You could find yourself in a world of trouble if you spend time hanging out with the wrong people.”
And then he was gone. What the hell did that mean? Standing in the middle of my apartment room, I stared at the closed door, the image of Ted Williams in the doorway still visible in my mind.
Now what? No more Sara. It was over.
In retrospect, our breakup could not have come at a more inopportune time in my life. Over the last several months, my professional status had drawn me into the service of some unusually powerful clients, clients whom it was extremely unwise to disappoint. But my mental and emotional faculties had been so compromised during this same period that my decision-making skills had diminished below any healthy, rational level. The attorney general of California was threatening to sue me, or worse. I was mixed up with a Mafioso boss and his family, which I didn’t yet fully understand the ramifications of. Now, to make matters worse, I’d bothered my ex-girlfriend so much that I had just received an unexpected visit from an employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation waving around a .357 magnum Colt and doing his best Dirty Harry imitation. My biggest problem, however, was that without Sara, I felt like a complete and total loser, and if I wanted to avoid making my situation even worse than it already was, I had to figure out how to stop feeling that way.
Maybe understanding how it had come to pass would be the first step. With the feel of Williams’ hand still fresh on my shoulder, I sat down on the floor of my dingy apartment, staring back in time, searching for some clarity. The Sara cold front had been moving in on me since early summer, having a solid, negative impact on my work. Throughout the summer and into the fall, I tried to convince myself, not very successfully, that I’d run into a good case of writer’s block. Then one fateful day while I was in the middle of working on a project that was beginning to feel like it could have life or death consequences, Sara came home from work and turned my life inside out. She threw her keys in the basket on the bookshelf, closed the door with purpose and, standing legs akimbo in the entryway as if she were facing off in a Wild West gun battle, locked her eyes on my face. Backlit by the light peeking through the open space between the door and the frame, she looked beautiful, blond hair cascading down over her shoulders, her trim waist highlighted by the tight blouse she’d worn to work that day. It was almost dark in the room, the light from the hallway blinding me a bit so I couldn’t see her eyes. She stood there for several moments, silent. I glanced back at the computer screen where I’d been diligently working, though the screen was blank. Everything I typed was immediately erased. This inability to write anything worth saving was creating an ever-present panic deep in my gut. Sara’s voice interrupted my mental dithering.
“Jon, I’m not in love with you. You need to move out.”
She may as well have said, “Sure was nice weather today.” No emotion. Flat. I responded in kind, because when you’re in shock, that’s what happens. You go into autopilot.
“Why?” Meaning, “Why should I move out?” I tried to ignore the first part.
“I’ve fallen in love with someone else.”
Three things wrong with this answer. First, I didn’t ask her if she had fallen in love with someone else, I asked, “Why should I move out?” Second, I didn’t ask her if she’d fallen in love with someone else! Third, during my most recent visit to New York, I had decided to pop the Big Question, and this significant a change in our relationship status would severely hamper my sought-after outcome.
After that, things unfolded very quickly because that’s how Sara liked it. Make a decision, then act without hesitation. She had those words taped above her computer at work. She wanted it over. She’d moved on. She was finished with our relationship. That first night, I went overboard. I cried. I begged. I pleaded. I followed her around the condo all night, peppering her with questions about who the new guy was. She was ice. Not a word out of her. After a time, the tears stopped, the threats started. I intimated that when I discovered this guy’s name, I would hunt him down and break his legs. I would make him pay for destroying our beautiful relationship.
She was brushing her teeth for bed when I reached the threatening stage of my process. Her movements purposeful, she picked up a water glass resting on the bathroom counter and quickly and efficiently rinsed out her mouth. Setting the glass down with finality, she said, “Jon, you will do nothing of the sort. You and I are over. If it had not been Michel—” Michel, French! “—he would have been someone else. Our relationship ended a long time ago. I’m doing this because I know you. If I don’t make it final, you will drag it out. I think you are a wonderful person. Someday, you may even realize that. I need someone else. Not you.”
I spent the night on the sofa chair by the front window staring out at the L.A. skyline. She slept in our bed—her bed. In the morning, we didn’t speak. She left for work. I packed up and moved out.
Luci, my best friend in the world, helped me move. I found the small aforementioned studio apartment later that day. It was dark and dingy, just like a cave, and I took it against Luci’s advice. He wanted me to stay with him and Izzy, his girlfriend, but I didn’t want to subject them to my misery, so I politely declined his offer. I bought a TV, futon, and plastic silverware, settling in for the miserable weeks and months to come. Within days, the glow from my computer screen was the only light in my life. The sparse, unkempt, cramped apartment became a metaphor for what I was feeling inside. My better half was gone. Pizza boxes stacked up. Luci stopped in every so often to check on me, to give me a pep talk, but having known me for many years, he didn’t expect much.
Several weeks into my self-imposed exile, I heard Luci’s knock on the door.
“It’s unlocked.”
Luci stepped inside. At six feet, lean and fit, straight brown hair to his shoulders, he looked imposing in the doorframe. He was wearing a white gi and sandals. There was a little comfort in the sight of something familiar, unchanged. He was carrying a picnic basket. He gave me a once-over. My arm was cocked, ready to throw a dart at Sara’s picture. I’d already gotten direct hits in each of her eyes and nose. I was now aiming for her ears. He looked from me to the cardboard frame, taking it all in.
“Well, this is something new.”
I lowered my arm. Luci closed the door behind him, realizing that the only light in the room came from the small light fixture I’d attached above the kitchen aimed at the dartboard. He shook his head slowly from side to side, toeing the stack of pizza boxes near the door. “This is a little out there, even for you, Jon.”
“People hang pictures of their loved ones on the wall all the time.”
“Then spotlight the picture and throw darts at it?”
I shrugged.
Jon Fixx Page 2
