by Marcus Sakey
The Xterra honks twice.
Laney jerks her head up.
A large DELIVERY TRUCK is right in front of her.
LANEY
Shit!
She drops the phone, grabs the wheel with both hands, yanks to one side.
The front of her car barely clears the bumper of the delivery truck.
But now she is in the wrong lane, facing oncoming traffic.
She gasps, starts to turn back to her lane, realizes she’ll collide, and instead puts the accelerator to the floor. The Volkswagen is moving past the delivery truck, but slowly.
And in front of her, a battered OLD PICKUP is approaching fast. It holds down the horn. LANEY
I see you.
She continues racing forward, playing chicken at reckless speeds.
Bennett has followed her into the wrong lane. She is now hemmed in, death on all sides.
The pickup is incredibly close.
Laney grits her teeth, glances at the delivery truck beside her. Almost there.
The pickup brakes hard, rear tires smoking and slewing sideways.
At the last possible second, Laney throws the wheel to the right, shooting in front of the delivery truck.
Squealing tires and angry horns fill the afternoon air as the pickup loses control. Its rear end slides too far, and suddenly it is sideways in the road.
The delivery truck reacts, jerking aside to try to avoid the collision. Too late. The pickup broadsides the truck, and both spin out of control.
But Laney is past.
And better still, as the two trucks drift to a stop, she sees that they have blocked off the PCH.
Bennett’s Xterra is trapped behind them. Laney yells, laughs, punches the roof of the car.
But she’s going a hundred miles an hour on one of the most dangerous roads in America. And there’s a curve coming up, a ruthless twist with nothing but empty air and a long drop to the ocean below.
She brakes hard. The car jumps and swerves. She wrestles with the wheel to fight the fishtail.
Her car sideswipes the barrier rail. Metal screams and sparks fly.
The world spins as she loses control. Out the windshield: sky, tree, canyon wall, sky.
Laney fights back and manages to stop the spin. But the Beetle is now heading directly into the barrier.
LANEY
No!
She screams as she slams into the metal.
Her body is thrown against the seat belt. The air bag explodes.
The world is chaos and breaking glass and smoke. And then, suddenly, it’s over.
Laney groans. She reaches up with fumbling hands, touches her face. Her lip is split, and there’s a smear of blood on the air bag. But she’s alive.
Out the cracked windshield, she can see only sky and water. The Volkswagen’s engine coughs and shudders.
LANEY
Oh god.
She throws the vehicle into park, struggles with her seat belt, panic setting in. She gets it on her third try.
On the passenger seat, her bag has fallen open. Makeup, wallet, sunglasses, pepper spray spill across the seat.
As do five neat bundles of twenty-dollar bills.
Laney hesitates for a fraction of a second, then stuffs the money back in the bag, retrieves her cell phone and wallet, and leaps out.
Wobbly on her feet, she looks around. The VW has broken through the barrier. The front tires are inches from the cliff’s edge.
But she’s alive.
Laney looks behind her. The accident is out of sight around the curve and has temporarily blocked traffic from that direction. There are cars coming the other way, but they are far off. No one can help her.
And Bennett will be here in seconds.
An idea occurs, and she is in sudden motion. She climbs halfway into the Beetle, presses the brake, and shifts the engine to drive.
Then she guns the gas as she leaps out of the car, landing in a clumsy heap.
The V W lunges for ward. Momentu m carries it over the cliff.
It slams down the rock face like a dumbbell down stairs, every impact stunningly loud, and then there is a splash, and the sound of waves.
She edges to the cliff, looks over. Her little car is upside down in the surf, and sinking. One tire spins lazily.
From behind, the roar of an engine.
Laney rushes across the PCH and into the low scrub brush on the other side. She flattens herself in the ditch, wriggling beneath the thin cover of dry brush.
The engine is near.
The Xterra brakes, coming to a stop near the mangled barrier. The door opens, and Bennett hops out.
Laney holds her breath. If he looks on this side, he’ll find her.
Bennett hurries to the cliff edge. He leans over. BENNETT
Oh, fuck me.
He rubs his forehead.
Then he turns and hurries back to his truck. The Xterra races away.
Laney waits only seconds before she climbs out and begins limping the other direction, bag slung over her shoulder.
LANEY
Jesus. Jesus.
(beat)
You should be dead.
A steep path winds up the side of the cliff a hundred yards away, and she aims for it. LANEY
You are dead. Laney Thayer is dead. You’re no longer Laney Thayer.
(beat)
You’re . . . Belinda. Belinda Nichols. As she begins to climb the hill, sirens sound in the distance.
5
“At first,” Laney said, “I was only thinking of getting away from Bennett. But then I realized that if he thought I was dead, he might back off. Of course, for that to work, everyone had to think so. Even you.”
“Why—”
“You know how smart Bennett is. He would have been watching the house. Maybe even tapped the phones. He liked to do that, plant microphones and cameras. And if he realized I was alive, he’d come after you.”
“So your plan was, what, lay low forever? That doesn’t make any sense.”
She shrugged. “You’re the writer. You plan things. I was improvising.”
“Improvising.”
“It’s what actresses do, love.”
“So you were just going to let me think—”
“Only until I could find a safe way to get in touch with you. A day or two at the most. I knew it would be terrible for you, I just didn’t see any choice. But then you were gone. And I figured, well, if Bennett thinks I’m dead, maybe that’s useful. Maybe it will give me a chance to get close to him. So I dressed as a cleaning lady, became a woman named Lila Bannister, and went to the house for one of your guns. Then I started looking for him. And for you.”
Daniel stared at the ceiling. His mind screening footage of the car chase, of her limping away. “I see how you’re alive, but why was Bennett chasing you in the first place? Who is he? How do you know him?”
Laney laughed humorlessly. “Yeah, right.”
“I mean it.”
“I don’t want to go through it all again, okay? I don’t want to fight. It was a long time ago.”
Daniel stiffened, stomach going sick. What was a long time ago? Every time he got one answer, two new questions popped up.
Then he realized. He had known all of this. He must have. It’s just that it was gone, along with the rest of his memories.
“Besides, it’s not like you don’t have things in your past,” Laney continued, voice rising. “What was the name of that skank you used to sleep with? The one who got pregnant and told you and four other guys that they were the father, asked for money. What was her name, huh?”
“I don’t know,” Daniel said. He rubbed at his eyes.
“Yeah, I bet. So don’t you—”
“Laney.”
“I never thought he’d come back into our lives. I thought that was behind—”
“I need to tell you something.” He took her hands. How are you going to explain this? It’s one thing to tell Sophie you don’t remember her. But
this is your wife. “You know that woman you asked about?”
Laney’s shoulders tightened. “What about—”
“I don’t remember her name. I don’t actually remember her at all. In fact,” he tried to laugh, but the sound was wrong, “I don’t remember most of my life.”
“What? What are you—are you being philosophical again? Because now isn’t the time to go all Sartre on me.”
“No. Literally. I don’t remember. I have some kind of amnesia.”
She stared at him. He met her gaze. After a long moment, she said, “What are you talking about?”
“I’m still figuring it out myself. Things are coming back, a lot of them. But most of my past, it’s . . . I can’t remember it.” Haltingly, he took her through the last week of his life. Waking in panic and pain, half-dead on the wrong side of the country. The pursuit, the endless drive, the loneliness, the dreams. The revelations about their life—okay, yeah, he downplayed the complete shock to discover they were married—and the discovery that she was dead. His grief and anger and attempts at revenge.
Laney listened, her face neutral. She seemed to be consciously withholding judgment, as if someone were telling a joke that might be offensive and she was waiting for the punch line to see which way it landed. Her reserve made him talk faster, wedging words between words, embroidering his statements, spinning the tale as best he knew how, trying to paint for her the state of his life, the edge of madness he’d haunted, the constant uncertainty.
Finally she broke in. “You don’t remember anything.”
“Like I said, it’s coming back. Some of it. And I’m hoping that now that we’re together . . .” He broke off, realizing how lame that sounded.
“You’re not joking.”
“No.”
“This isn’t some weird game.”
“No.”
“Last Christmas, when I roasted a chicken and we lay in the backyard looking at the stars. You don’t remember.”
“No.”
“Our wedding day, on the beach in Maine.”
Slowly, he shook his head.
“The day we met.”
“I’m—I’m sorry. It’s not something I chose, believe me.”
She turned away. “Do you remember me at all?”
“I . . .” He took a deep breath. Guilt and shame had been constant companions for the past week, but now they found new ways to twist within him. “I know that I love you. I have certain things, images, little . . . vignettes, I guess, that come to me. I don’t control them. But I can tell how precious you are to me.”
She made a sound that might have been intended as a laugh.
“I realize how that . . . especially . . . I mean, you know.” He gestured at the twisted bedding.
“That’s what you were trying to say in the elevator.”
“Laney, I’m so sorry. If I could turn this off, get rid of it, I would. It’s been tearing me apart ever since I woke up on that beach and realized I didn’t know how I got there.” He reached out to touch her, stopped before his fingers made contact. Held them there for a moment, and then lowered his hand. “I know this much,” he said quietly. “Even when I didn’t remember anything at all, I knew you were out there. I knew that I had to get back to you. I followed a television show, a fantasy, across the country. I chased you before I knew your name. I was trying to get home. And home is you.”
She knit her fingers together, palms up—this is the church, this is the steeple, open it up, see all the people—and spoke to them. “You need a doctor. It could be a brain tumor, or an aneurism—”
“No,” he said. He told her about the MRI clinic, the radiology tech shrugging, saying, Man, you want to see a doc, up to you, but this is your brain, and there ain’t nothing wrong with it. Physically, at least.
“It could be something else. Something that doesn’t show up on an MRI.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you know about medicine? I mean, if it’s not physical, then how did this happen?”
“I’m only guessing.”
“Okay.”
“I think maybe my brain was trying to protect itself.”
“From what?”
“From . . . dying.”
“Dying? What do you mean?” She turned suddenly, her eyes gas-burner blue.
He looked away.
“Daniel?”
“I don’t know for sure. I think maybe I was.” He sighed. “Maybe I was trying to kill myself.”
“What?”
“I don’t know—”
“Trying to kill yourself? What are you talking about?”
“Well, I mean, it’s . . .” He tried for a sheepish grin, failed miserably, turned away again. “It’s my best guess of how this all started. My amnesia. I thought you were dead, and so I tried to kill myself.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, all right? I don’t remember. All I know is that I thought you were dead, and next thing I can put together, I woke up on the beach where we got married. So I figure that I was . . .” He shrugged. “Lost. Miserable. And I ran from L.A., and kept running until I made it to the beach. I had a gun with me, and I’m guessing maybe I planned to use it on myself, but then decided to swim into the ocean instead. That seemed more fitting, somehow, and—”
“Asshole!”
Daniel blinked. “What?”
“Was that supposed to be romantic, all Romeo and Juliet? Did you stop to think for half a second what that would do to me? Did you?”
“Well, I don’t remember. But seeing as how you were dead at the time, I’m going to guess not.”
Laney looked like she wanted to keep yelling, but his words threw her. She shook her head. Laughed emptily. “Yeah.”
“I’ve been feeling this terrible guilt, I mean, just unbearable guilt and shame. Ever since I woke up. And these dreams. One in particular that keeps coming back, where I’m standing in front of this dark tunnel, and there’s something horrible about it, something I can’t take back. Which would make sense if I tried to kill myself, wouldn’t it?”
“A tunnel?” Something flickered across her face.
“Yeah. Somewhere made out of concrete, and there’s a tunnel.” “And that’s all you remember?”
“Of the dream? Yeah.”
She nodded slowly. “So you don’t remember anything about Bennett.”
“No.”
“Nothing from the last couple of weeks?”
“No.”
“Nothing? At all?”
He cocked his head. “Is there something—”
“No, I’m just getting used to this.” Laney looked like she might continue, but then she closed her mouth, gave him an empathetic wince. “It must be scary.”
He nodded. They sat for a moment. Daniel said, “So who is he?”
“He’s . . . a nightmare. My nightmare.”
“What does that mean?”
She stared at her hands again. It took an effort of will not to fire questions at her, to just wait for her to be ready.
“I started modeling when I was fourteen. Small stuff, local. Ads for the kids’ clothing store in the mall, that kind of thing. But when I was seventeen I went to this casting call for Abercrombie. There were a couple of hundred girls there, and that was just in Chicago. Somehow they picked me. It was a national campaign, in all their stores. Suddenly I was a capital-M Model. I got an agent, and she got a lot of calls. My dad didn’t know what to do about it, but I was almost eighteen, and he knew he could only put it off for a couple of months, so he gave in. I spent that year flying all over the place. Making ridiculous money. Seventeen, and I made more for a week’s work than Dad brought home in a year at the garage. I thought life was one big adventure. Beautiful clothes, famous people, fabulous parties. And at one of them, I met this guy.”
“Bennett.”
“He wasn’t like anyone else. The world was a game to him. He had an angle on everything. He knew things about people, funn
y things, embarrassing things.”
“He’s a con man?”
She laughed humorlessly. “And Michelangelo did some painting. Bennett destroys people. He cons, he blackmails, he toys with them. Finds out their secrets. He always said, ‘Everybody sins. I’m just there to see it.’ ”
“What was your sin?”
“Stupidity.” A loose curl of hair had fallen across her face, and she brushed it back. “I was seventeen. Seventeen-year-old girls are stupid. They like boys who ride motorcycles. He was mysterious. Charming. Smart.”
“So what . . .” His words stalled. Did he want the answer to this question? “What happened?”
“You have to understand, my life had gone surreal. Other girls were trying on prom dresses, going to football games. I was posing for ads in Vanity Fair and Esquire. At the time I thought it was great, but I look back now, and I think, Oh, you stupid, stupid child. I mean, those ads. Boobs forward, head tilted, lips open, tongue on teeth,” she struck the pose, “the point is sex. That’s what the industry is about. Models don’t sell clothes, they sell the fantasy of sex. And so the fact that I was still a virgin seemed, I don’t know. Immature. False. I thought of my virginity as something I wanted to get rid of. I knew it wasn’t love, but it felt glamorous. Most girls lose it in the back of a car; for me it was the penthouse at the Four Seasons.”
Daniel’s skin crawled. You evil, evil fucker. You let her give something she couldn’t get back, just for fun. I already wanted you for what you did to Sophie, to our lives. Now . . .
“And the next day.” She paused. “The very next day, Bennett tells me about this guy running for Congress. A man with family money. He says the guy likes,” she made air quotes, “ ‘young pussy,’ and that I was going to help blackmail him.”
Daniel’s thoughts were sewage, stinking and black.
“He’d hidden cameras in the hotel. Pictures of me naked, of us . . . doing things. He said he’d send them to my father, my brother, post them in my high school.” She shook her head. “Now, I think, Who cares? My dad wouldn’t have liked it, but teenagers have sex, and the world still turns. It wouldn’t have killed him. It wouldn’t even have killed my career. But that’s now. Imagine being seventeen. Everyone pointing. Imagine trying to go to church with your family, and everyone in the congregation glancing sideways, all of them picturing you naked, and not just naked, but . . .” She stopped. “Stupid. Vanity. But that’s how Bennett works.”
