Keep Calm and Kill Your Wife

by Lucky Stevens

  “Hart?”

  It was her. He felt such relief at hearing her voice. It was nothing. Just Brandy saying his name. But in that context it felt like a warm blanket. And the feeling of solitude melted away. He stopped pacing, instead resting his elbows on the kitchen counter. He clutched the phone, feeling the impending reassurance he knew was about to overcome him. He was no longer alone.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Baby.”

  “Oh my God! I was afraid you were dead. I’ve been listening to the news and was just too scared to call you.”

  “You did the right thing,” he said. “God, it’s great to hear your voice. I have missed you so much.”

  “I’m so glad you’re okay, Hart. I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too, Baby. I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Me, too.”

  “We just have to play this the right way and we’re home free. It’s going to be great.”

  Brandy sighed happily.

  “I’m going to kiss you all over when I see you,” Hart said, smiling.

  “And I’m going to let you. And then—”

  “Wait! I heard something.”

  Hart strained his ears. Then he heard it again. It was the front door. This time somebody was clearly knocking.

  “Shit, the cops. I’ll call you back,” he whispered, and hung up. As he walked toward the door, his mind raced. Why hadn’t he talked to Brandy about what to say to the cops? Just relax, just relax.

  Hart stood up straight and flung open the door. Then he turned white

  TWENTY-ONE

  SUMMER WATCHED THROUGH the driver’s side window as Hart did his double-time walk to the restroom. Poor guy, she thought. And still no underwear. She shook her head.

  And then she sat very still and listened. She loved the sound of the birds. It seemed to be a constant background, the soundtrack of the forest. And she thought about how easy it was to take it for granted. She wanted to appreciate it all, realizing that that had not always been the case. She was so lucky that her grandmother had a cabin up here. It was the perfect getaway and it really was beautiful.

  She looked out the passenger side window, across the road, at the vast valley. It seemed that every square inch was covered and dripping with beauty. Great pines as far as the eye could see. And that soundtrack. That ever present background melody that gently drove the point home. Nature had thought of everything. And a sudden urge came over her to stretch her legs. She glanced around the car. Cell phone. Purse. Ahh, camera.

  Flinging her purse to the floor, she stuffed it under her seat, grabbed the camera and jumped out of the car. She was about to slam the door when she remembered the shaky nozzle that was stuck in the gas tank, opting for a gentle close instead.

  Then camera in hand, she ran toward the road, looking back only once on the off chance that Hart might emerge. Nope. The only sign of life she saw was Whitman. He was in the store yucking it up on the phone, oblivious to the world around him.

  As she ran across the road she wondered if people like Whitman, whom she was sure had lived here forever, no longer saw the beauty of the forest. No longer heard its song. Could be. Maybe it’s just human nature.

  The road was a two-laner. Sometimes busy, usually not. It was funny, she thought, how these kinds of towns, so isolated, often gave her the creeps. It really was ghost townish. But something about this particular atmosphere gave her a different feeling and she felt overcome by its tranquility. She could finally appreciate why her grandmother liked to get away up here.

  On the other side of the road was a relatively small strip of land, nothing exciting. What made it beautiful, however, was its precipitous nature, one of the many natural foyers that overlooked Cardsdale’s picturesque valley.

  Careful of her footing, Summer stood about five feet from the edge of the drop that lay before her. She took it in for awhile and was soon snapping pictures, thoroughly engrossed and at peace with the world.

  _______________

  Harry Mondran’s opportunistic ways had always served him well. Due to other aspects of his nature, however, they would never allow him to thrive, but only to survive. His naturally solid mind had years ago succumbed to the ravages of drugs, alcohol and a generally hard and unsanitary lifestyle. It all seemed to be the result of bad choices, one after another, that snowballed and in a sense snuck up on him so gradually that he had never really known what had hit him.

  A straight-A student in high school, until his senior year, Harry’s upper middleclass upbringing seemed defenseless against a young man who had come to the conclusion that the world was “bullshit” and that there had to be more to life than just getting good grades and taking the traditional path of college, culminating in a boring job, a house in the suburbs, a wife and a couple of kids.

  Maybe originally, had he thought in less extreme post-adolescent terms, he might have been able to achieve his goals in a more moderate fashion, but those days were long behind him. He just never seemed to learn the lesson that a party can be fun, but that a party everyday has consequences.

  Like an animal, unable to think conceptually, in any meaningful way beyond the present, Harry survived anyway he could now, his plans for a natural existence in some Thoreau-like utopia having died years ago.

  Those opportunistic instincts of his, however, were very much alive when he pushed his way through the bushes on that bright and hopeful summer day. He had arrived just in time to see a young woman emerge from a beautiful late-model Acura, closing the door with a certain dainty quality that somehow intrigued him.

  Quickly surveying the rest of the scene, Harry liked what he saw. An unattended car, nozzle pumping away with no one in sight. A car so nice the owner’s bitch wouldn’t even dare slam his doors. Go.

  “Come on,” he said as he glanced back. Her smile was half-hearted.

  “Stelly” Parker loved being with Harry when she was wasted, which it turned out was most of the time. The periods in between getting loaded, however, were often torturous for her. It wasn’t Harry that was her problem. She just wasn’t much of a go-getter. Even if it involved doing what she had to do in order to score the only thing that made life worthwhile for her.

  In the past, this slothful reticence could go on for nearly a week, until the pain became so bad Stelly would resort to almost anything for “a slice of junk,” as she called it. When it got to this point, she would become a one-woman trail-blazing ringleader of vice. Desperate and impromptu armed robberies, chain-hooking in feverish twenty-four hour marathon sessions, brazen snatch-and-grab muggings, you name it. If it wasn’t planned out, dripping with mania, and had a high degree of self-destructive risk, it was for her.

  That’s what was so nice about Harry. He was a steady earner. And he rarely insisted she come along. He brought home the bacon, cooked it and injected it. Usually, she’d hang out at “home” which was nothing more than a lean-to in the woods, but may as well have been the Trump Towers for all she knew most of the time.

  But this was one of those occasions when she and Harry had ventured off together. A nice little walk in the woods to break the monotony, he had told her. And then back to their little forested sanctuary.

  And it was nice. They held hands and talked. She told him again how Hollywood had screwed her over, leaving her nothing but a toothless and desiccated little waif, alone and strung out on those fabled cinematic streets that broke promises, and hearts. And she told him without bitterness, with a smile even. As if because it was a long time ago, it had somehow happened to someone else.

  Harry smiled, too, taking simple pleasure in her pleasure. In some crazy way, this cracked shell of a human being gave his life some meaning. It was a horrible existence by most people’s standards, but at least he had someone to share it with. Someone who never judged him. Never maligned him. And never made him feel like anything other than her savior, protector and provider.

  This being the case, whether by habit or pure coincidence, Harry had led her to the pe
riphery of Huncke’s. And when the doorbell rings, dammit, you answer it.

  Stelly’s smile, already weak, quickly faded all together. She needed desperation to do this. When Harry saw her face, he reached into his back pocket. The flask was three-quarters filled, the top quarter drained on their short walk over. He handed it to her, telling her to hurry. As she tilted her head back, the straight whiskey filled her throat, the burn familiar and comforting.

  Harry, meanwhile, took his already lit cigarette from behind his ear—an odd habit he had picked up from his father—and placed it loosely between his lips.

  Then he pulled the flask from Stelly’s lips, grabbed her hand, and the two of them ran to the car like greedy pirates toward a treasure chest. She muffled her giggles which were nothing more than a manifestation of pure fear.

  As they got closer, their hands separated, he bolting toward the driver’s side and she toward the passenger’s. It was beat the clock and they both knew it.

  “Close the door, quietly,” Harry said, noticing Summer standing across the street, eyes still soaking up the valley.

  Stelly closed the door and began rifling through the glove box, her eyes continuously looking side to side. In contrast, he kept his eyes on his work. If he had to confront someone, he’d deal with it then. He’d become a madman if he had to. No one was going to stop him from taking something he wanted.

  “Bingo,” he said. Then he nudged Stelly’s legs and reached down to where Summer’s purse was with one hand, and blindly whipped his cigarette around his back and out the driver’s door with the other.

  Stelly grabbed for the purse, eager to see what was inside.

  Harry closed it. “Later,” he said, and they continued to search the car like a pair of honey badgers.

  By the time they felt the heat it was too late. The windows were orange, fusing into the rippling air. A partition, a fiery wall of flames, rose like a burning tide, laying siege to the driver’s side port. They both pawed at the passenger side door, inadvertently thwarting each other’s efforts. But only for a second. All at once they were floating like lotto balls, sucked to and fro into a swirling vapor of heat that instantly melded into an amorphous cloud of gaseous destruction.

  _______________

  The explosion was like a starting pistol that marked Summer’s literal slide into the depths of the unknown. Unable to pilot her own body, she felt the air push her as effortlessly as any concrete object may have. In an instant, she was off her feet, whipping randomly as if on a ride that had not been very well thought out, and certainly never checked for safety. She crashed downward into the lip of the cliff’s edge. A solid surface true, yet only for a brief moment. Scrambling fingers and fruitless grasping could not save her from the fate once cautioned by the masses to Columbus himself. She’d fallen off the end of the earth.

  _______________

  Her tumble was a brief but scary one, tree branches a blessing and a curse as they both slowed her descent and scratched her at the same time. Like a Pachinko ball, her direction was decidedly downward. How far she’d drop and the exact trajectory of that drop, however, was a complete mystery.

  Her screaming, meanwhile, was as non-linear as her fall had been, continuously muffled as her voice caught in her throat each time her ratchety decline suddenly altered direction. Not that her cries would have mattered anyway in the midst of an explosion.

  Hitting the ground was a relief, given the circumstances. But only for a moment, as her sense of consciousness cut out just as a battered feeling seemed to permeate her body.

  When she woke up, whatever bruises she may have had, seemed to quickly take a back seat to feelings of fear and confusion.

  TWENTY-TWO

  SUMMER OPENED HER eyes as if time had begun just at that moment, without any feeling of the seconds that had immediately preceded it. A great sense of calm and precise wariness seemed to overcome her as she embraced the needle-strewn terrain which cradled her prostrated body. Take it slow and don’t panic, she told herself, resisting the urge to fling her head upward. Hart and I will get through this. An assessment of the situation will be taken, but it will be done slowly and with exactitude, she told herself.

  And then the pieces of the puzzle seemed to drift back into her consciousness in a dilatory fashion, the facts organizing themselves mechanically, as brains do.

  Within moments, she became aware that Hart was not with her after all. She wondered where he was and if he was okay. She wondered if she’d ever see him again.

  As she stood up, she zoned in on what her body had been through. The bumps, the bruises, the soreness. They were readily apparent but miraculously seemed to be minor and she was grateful that everything seemed to be in working order. She had survived, the trees acting, in a sense, like nets that had lowered her to the ground. Roughly, but safely.

  The next thing she realized was that she was a long way down from where she had been previously standing. As a matter a fact, as best as she could surmise, she wasn’t even straight down from where she started. Her path had seemed to veer diagonally, due to the cut of the land, and it became clear that at some point she must have been rolling from one tier down to the next, deeper and deeper into the valley.

  “Hello!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Hart!”

  After calling out several times without so much as an echo in return, she figured she’d better save her energy. She was on her own and it would be getting dark soon— or at least eventually. The thought terrified her and from that point on, the idea of spending the night out here was expelled from her mind. There was no doubt. She would reach her grandmother’s cabin by tonight, period.

  If there was any silver lining to the situation, it was that the diagonal course that she had tumbled in was at least in the direction of her grandmother’s cabin.

  She walked along whichever of the valley’s tiers she was on, using the sun as her compass, hoping at some point there would be a natural path that would gradually lead upward and out of the heart of the valley.

  As she advanced, she tried to be aware of everything around her, her mind at times battling between getting lost in theoretical strategies and speculations, and a real safety-driven need to remain hyper-alert.

  One of her biggest problems was the pace with which she would settle upon traveling. Not knowing exactly how far away she was from the cabin and how long it would take, she didn’t want to blow all of her energy early on, sapping herself of needed strength later. On the other hand, if she moved too slowly, she might not beat the sun as it lowered itself into the mountainous horizon.

  And then she stopped. Even though there was a glaring absence of Snake X-ing signs, there it was. Slithering across her path. And taking its sweet time about it, too. Summer put her hand to her mouth and gasped, suppressing the desire to scream her lungs out. She had no idea what kind of snake it was, and didn’t care.

  “ Go. Go,” she whispered, waving her arms and dancing in place.

  After what felt like half an hour, but was probably only thirty seconds, the snake complied, settling the matter as to how fast Summer would be walking. Double time it was.

  _______________

  After a few hours Summer couldn’t help but feel as though she had made great strides—assuming, of course, she was heading in the right direction. She had a slight sense of doubt about this, but all in all, a surprising feeling of confidence had seemed to eclipse fear as her new motivating factor. She would make it back to the cabin and she somehow knew this.

  She remembered being lost once at Dodger Stadium when she was about eight years old and how scared she’d been. Would she ever see her parents again? Who knew?—at the time. It’s all so hazy and unstable when you don’t know the end of the story. But looking back, knowing the ending, makes it a lesson; a bit of strength for the spirit that each of us can carry in our arsenal if we choose to see it that way.

  And so it was, with this mindset, that she trucked forward. Grateful that she had survive
d the fall, her will intact. Thirsty and hungry, she knew that when she would eat and drink later, she could look back at this moment with a certain degree of joy, the full story played out, the ending known.

  The fate of Hart was the most difficult of all for her. It was the aspect of the narrative that she had the least control over. She prayed he was okay but that was all she could do for now, pray.

  _______________

  The sun was at her back and sinking fast. Summer hoped she would not have to spend the night out here, but even the prospect of that was accepted with a certain calm that surprised the hell out of her.

  An hour later, this bullishness was bolstered even further when she at last saw a way up from the tier on which she had been tramping for the last several hours. It felt exciting that her movement would now be vertical.

  As the tiers dovetailed, the slope of each became less severe. This gradual flattening had allowed trees to spring forth, where earlier the lay of the land had been too sheer to permit much growth.

  The relative density of the trees would make it possible to scale the walls of the valley as she now had something to hold on to, and so up she went, almost giddy at her new discovery.

  She moved from tree to tree with a new sense of vigor fueled by adrenaline and a positive will. Sometimes she almost leaped to the next tree. And when the trees were farther apart, she’d take steps in between like in the triple jump.

  The real challenge, of course, was when the span between the trees were spaced at a fairly large distance. When this happened, Summer really had to bear down, clutching rocks and clumps of not-so-established dirt in an effort to avoid sliding back down. Sometimes she’d push herself into the rock wall, feeling herself trembling and gradually losing the battle with gravity.

  On one occasion she lost about twenty feet, not to mention some skin. She felt her heart pounding the whole way down and for minutes after. It was at this time that she became aware of the darkening aura that was surrounding her as the sun made its final descent behind the mountains at the other side of the valley.