Monday's Lie

by Jamie Mason

“We’ll get to that.” I let the elastic in the socks snap the knot back into place over his teeth.

  He patiently planks himself, bracing rigid between the floorboards and the headrest while I wrestle his work keys from his pants’ front pocket. My grand scenario doesn’t include Patrick’s driving up while I’m in mid-fiddle with the padlock on the gate. My heart pummels its pulse into my vision, banging out of rhythm in its suddenly too-tight slot under my sternum as I drive us back to the front gate. I shoot desperate looks down the dusty road. I need more time, whether he’s coming right this second or not. I can hardly breathe.

  I shake out the tangle on the key ring to find the right one. It sinks home on the first try, and the shank pops free without a protest. The tiny victory lets me take in a steady inhale and send it out through a smile. I feel better. I’ll take every little sign that I should be here, in this place, right now, doing what I’m doing. I give a hard yank and the chain clatters through the wide mesh of the fence on the weight of the dangling padlock. I drag the gate wide and run for Jim’s car.

  • • •

  Not more than a minute later, a faint dust cloud rises above the crest of the hill just ahead of Patrick’s car sweeping into view around the ridge. I drive Jim’s car a short way into the compound and stop it on a slant, slightly uphill from the entrance. The last of the molten light pours over us, hopefully dazzling away the specific details of Jim’s front seat and how many passengers it holds, and what they look like.

  I’ve figured out the difference between getting low and what would be getting too low. I can’t risk drawing Patrick’s notice. I need him feeling free to come close. I slouch down in the driver’s seat to the least suspicious end of the scale. I motion Jim down lower than me.

  I set the paintball gun once more into his crotch. “Now, Jim, I’ve changed my mind.”

  His eyes spark bright and worried.

  “What I’m buying now is your silence. Same price. Not a peep from you. No matter what happens. Do you understand?”

  He nods.

  “This might not be a big-boy gun, but you can either be just a failure at killing me tomorrow or you can be a permanent failure at peeing standing up for the rest of your life. Not—a—sound. No matter what. Okay?”

  I don’t bother to read his face for compliance. I ready my phone in my hand and snug the gun deeper into the crook of Jim’s legs. Patrick pulls up close to Jim’s car. I hit the Call button and immediately mute the speaker when a woman answers. “Please just listen,” I say into the silenced phone, praying for an ally on the other end of the line. “Don’t hang up. I only have one chance. Please stay with me. This isn’t a joke.” I check the icon. The call is still live, the timer rolling off the seconds since I’ve added her to my team. With the speaker off, I can’t hear her reply. But Patrick won’t be able to hear her either, if he ever gets out of the car. I have to make him talk, and it has to be over here. Please let him be loud enough.

  I wait in Jim’s car. Patrick waits in his. The palms of my hands are tingling, and restless needles dance over the back of my neck.

  Patrick finally gets out of the car, squinting into the sun. I let him come on.

  “Here he comes,” I say to Jim, and also to our other silent partner, still waiting, the timer marking the seconds on the phone. One step. Two steps. Three. Then I loosen the reins off my twitching foot. The tires of Jim’s borrowed sedan churn up a fog of orange dust as I wheel the car around to block the open path behind Pat’s parking job. I clamp my hand down over my purse to keep it and my phone from launching into the footwell. I stop behind Patrick’s car, blocking the easy path back to the gate. I buzz down the window.

  • • •

  He gapes at the roar and dust of the gambit, Jim’s blue sedan now freshly spun around behind him, but Patrick’s expression fades to loose, blank confusion at seeing me behind the wheel instead of its usual driver.

  “Jim’s over here.” I tick my head to the right.

  “What the hell? How did . . .”

  We stare at each other and the weight of the day rams the foundations of my detachment. I see Patrick, the boy at the front of the class, now thinned and changed under almost fifteen years of too much I haven’t known. Until it was too late, I hadn’t known on purpose, and it’s left me stranded here in this impossible moment, trembling between a long-ago transformed man who wants me dead, and an indifferent man who would have done it without cringing for a cut of my mother’s money.

  My voice whispers over my suddenly dry tongue. “Why?”

  I follow Patrick’s gaze as it drifts beyond me. Jim’s eyes flash bright warnings at Patrick, while Patrick scans the pathetic state of his hired murderer. “Why is he all green?”

  “Pat . . .”

  He flinches, and his attention scalds back onto me. His mouth works for some time, his jaw grinding side to side before he speaks. “You don’t know anything, Dee.”

  “Well he certainly does,” I shout. “A hit man? Really? What movie do you live in? Who does that?”

  Jim’s bound legs twitch in the footwell, his eyes bulging from his red face.

  “The money’s all legit. There’s paperwork. I’m careful. There’s nothing to be able to prove it was for that.” Patrick’s words are more confident than his knees and he braces himself against the open window frame between us. His composure wavers and he struggles to keep his anger and amazement at just under a scream into my face. “I’m not stupid, you know!”

  “Is that what it was all about, Pat? Is that why you were so worried that I might have my own lawyer. Someone who knew we were a wreck? All that smiling, the kissing, the fucking trip to Europe? What was that? So that when I was dead, they wouldn’t automatically look to you, except to say, ‘Poor Patrick, you loved her so much. Anyone could see . . .’ ”

  He laughed at me. It actually straightened him up from using the car as a crutch. “I knew trying to be happy would feel like a trick to you, Dee. It’s just not your thing, is it? So I just didn’t bother at home.”

  “You could have just divorced me!” I yell back.

  “And what? Started over again? With no money, no credit, staring down middle age with nothing to show for it? Or were you just going to give me everything—since you’re not using it!” He scrubs his hands over his red face and forces down a breath. “When I wanted to go off with someone who could actually make a real life, would you have given it to me? There’s not enough there for my half to pay for an entire reboot. My whole life was wasted on you. You don’t even care what I do. Right or wrong, I’m nothing. I’m a prop. An inanimate, goddamned fixture in your Still Life with Attached Garage. Half of all of the savings we’ve got isn’t worth it, if I’d even get half. I was at least as kind to your mother as you ever were. And I put up with your shit on top of it all. I earned that money, Dee.”

  “My mother earned that money.”

  He sneers and spits his accusations into my face. The words are almost hot in the air. “What difference would it make? Huh, Dee? What are you fighting for? You don’t even live a real life. You just bide your time trying to be part of the goddamned wallpaper when you’re not pouting on a barstool next to your loser brother. Your mother must have been so proud of you two. Small-time cop and small-time—what? Nothing. You shun anything that remotely hints at living. Deep down you know those pills weren’t even about me. You knew not to trust your own body with any more life.”

  “You can’t kill me because I was a disappointment.”

  “It’ll never stick. I was careful.”

  “It’s over, Pat.”

  “Not yet, it’s not.”

  • • •

  Patrick bolts off around the front of the car, hurling abuse at Jim. “You stupid shit. How did she get you . . .” His voice goes muffled through the distance and the glass of windshield as he hurtles past the front bumper. I can barely scramble out of the driver’s side before Patrick has already ripped open the passenger door and taken up h
andfuls of Jim’s jacket to haul him out.

  I know I won’t stand the odds of me against Patrick’s full fury plus Jim untied.

  Jim had righted himself higher in the seat. His mutely jerking head draws Patrick’s eyes again, signposting as best he can to the center console, where my cell phone sits, propped in the folds of my handbag. I stop my fingers just short of Patrick’s collar. I don’t pull him back, don’t try to prevent him from leaning in past Jim and snatching up the phone. He stabs at the home button. The screen lights up and 911 stares back at him, at us, from the display, just atop the speakerphone icon and the counter showing that the call has been running for more than three minutes.

  Patrick spins to face me and our eyes meet. I watch his fall out of focus as he plays back what he’s just said, searching for any hope that he’s left himself an out when he’s inevitably faced with explaining away this recorded conversation. He drops the phone into the footwell of the car.

  “No,” he says. Just no.

  He reaches for me, his voice full of tears and rage. “No, no, no.” Over and over. He flails for my face, lunging with open hands, pawing, scratching at my neck, slapping my eyes. He’s gasping and grabbing, choking, twisting, blind with pitch and yaw. He is a drowning man.

  I know this one.

  My eyes are streaming and I taste blood from where his loose fist has crushed my lip against my front teeth. I sweep my left arm in a wide circle and drag Patrick’s thrashing arms down, away from my face. I step in close and reverse the arc of my swing, slamming my forearm against Patrick’s jaw and ear. His struggling stops instantly in the shock of the strike.

  I wrap my other arm around him and draw him in close. I feel his heart banging against his chest. In a single second I meet the forward edge of disaster, the wave of sorrow that is surely coming. The people who loved him will have to find a new way to see him now—the criminal, the cheat, the face on the news, someone they didn’t know and would have sworn didn’t exist.

  Except I am the only one who knows that neither of us has ever existed. Not the us we’ve shown to the world, or to each other.

  I hear the rumble of an approaching car engine.

  Patrick rears back to drive his head down into mine. I don’t give him the chance. I widen my stance and twist around, driving his off-balance weight over my right thigh. He clamps down and drags me over with him.

  The engine roars louder, then there’s a bang behind us, but I can’t look away from Patrick’s teeth snapping at my face, snarling like a dog. A screech of metal-on-metal sings out in the haze. Out of the far corner of my eye, I see Jim’s car jolt out of its position next to our sprawl and realize it’s been hit. Two points for me for multitasking.

  Patrick lands hard and I knock the air out of him, crashing down on his chest. I roll away and he grabs for purchase, any handhold to reel me back. Grit stings my palm as I slap the ground and I scrabble for any inches I can get with my left arm. Patrick’s fury holds my right arm useless. I thrash away from his pull, but it’s not working. He’s dragging me to him. I heave in mouthfuls of air and dust, which melts into metallic panic down my throat. I try to scream it out, but the bitter-tasting, strangled bawl I manage doesn’t match the effort. My throat clicks shut, the fear of Patrick’s gripping progress up my arm is winning an edge, drawing me in from the only advantage I’ve had.

  I quit fighting, on the outside at least. I fall completely limp to sell defeat. A tidal wave of silvery terror rolls through me while Patrick takes the slack bait. He grunts his effort to haul me in, but he has to loosen his grip to get a better one. He doesn’t have the best hold. He’s got half a hand’s worth of sleeve and I’m deadweight to drag now. I have to get the timing right. There won’t be another free second.

  His hand opens. I launch myself through the dirt.

  My wrist, then pants leg, then knee, then ankle, slip out of his grip. I kick him in the face and struggle away, an ungainly roll of elbows and toes. I look up to see the new car coming on. Patrick scrambles after me.

  31

  I had heard the other car coming. I had heard it hit as it forced its way past the loose barricade I’d made of Jim’s car. But only now does the first glimmer of wonder over who might be driving it spark in my mind. Police? A Carlisle employee? Please, not a partner of Jim’s. I have some fight left in me, but not three grown men’s worth.

  I regain my feet.

  And Patrick gains his.

  We run.

  The driver guns the car, swerving toward us, but then it turns at a sharper angle to herd Patrick wide of my path.

  Well beyond any guess I had in queue to entertain, Brian Menary runs down the driver’s window.

  “Dee!”

  “Don’t let him get away!” I point at Patrick ducking in behind the wheel of his own car. “Please. I need him! Go!”

  Patrick wrenches his driver’s-side door shut. The engine catches and the whole car bucks as the transmission knocks into drive. Patrick shoots off down the track that leads deeper into Carlisle.

  Brian follows.

  I run behind them both, falling exponentially farther behind with every half second.

  The dirt road churns up a spray of clay and dust-smoke. I tear through the haze as best I can and find that the road splinters, opening up into a rough wagon-wheel array of sheds and equipment with cleared, truckwide paths between them. I see Patrick’s car disappear, sliding into a turn behind one of the larger barns. Brian drifts in behind him. The clamor rings off the metal buildings, disorienting the sound trails, the only clues I have to track their race through the complex.

  • • •

  An engine howls close by and I swivel my head to the nearest alley. But Patrick doesn’t break from the nearest alley. He plows past a wall of stacked gutters and crates directly across from where I stand. Then he buries the pedal into the floorboards. The overtaxed machine bellows and heaves and rips fresh tracks through the weeds as it chews toward me over the raw ground.

  I break left, but so does he. I lower my head and run past the math that’s laughing at me. I will never make the shelter of the nearest building in time.

  Brian’s car shoots from the nearest lane and clips Patrick’s bumper, spinning him off my position. Patrick catches the circle almost on the opposite side and disappears between two long ranks of lumber bins. Brian turns his car around and vanishes down the same chute.

  The nudge Brian had given to Jim’s car at the gate had been a hearty thump and a growl of denting steel panels. The tap to Pat’s bumper just now had been one quick, heart-jolting clang.

  The crash that rings out ahead of me now is a protracted groan of crumpling bodywork and exploding glass. I sprint toward the echo.

  Patrick had hurtled unheeding through the maze of sheds and pallets with Brian’s tires eating up the road behind him. They hadn’t got far from the hub when Patrick had tried a tricky right turn, sharp and too fast.

  The movable platform at the top of the turn is slightly less than a barge on wheels. Its payload of concrete blocks and wooden slats is also bristling with a haul of long metal struts. Patrick has plowed the nose of his car up under the base, between the wheels. Smoke is billowing from under the crumpled hood. A bundle of rods has speared through the windshield.

  The accident has sheared off most of Patrick’s jaw and troweled a spurting, red furrow from the side of his neck. A few of the rails must have been launched off their pile, and they struck wider, nailing him to his seat through his chest and shoulder. His life is raining down from every spear.

  • • •

  Brian is already tearing at the caved-in door of Patrick’s car.

  “Brian, be careful!” I run to his side. “Oh, God. Oh, look at him. My God. It’s too late.”

  “Oh, shit.” Brian grips the door handle and the bent door and shakes it with all his strength, but he thrashes with no payoff. Patrick’s car rocks mildly, mockingly, under Brian’s desperate pulling. But the door won’t let go.
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  “I’m so sorry. Dee, he cut that turn so hard. He couldn’t control it. What the hell was that? What is going on?” Brian looks at Patrick, but I look only to Brian and leave my husband in the peripheral vision, a red-and-white blur at the corner of my eye. So much howling red.

  The meat state of him is a bland fact, a sudden, plain subtraction from the universe. No shrieking whirlwind marks the rip in the bubble of my little world. The supply yard is quiet now and golden, all the same as it was only a few minutes ago. The same, minus one. Birds are chattering on the wire overhead in the quickly cooling vanguard breeze of twilight. And my husband is gone, lifeless in seconds when he’d been seething with every human desperation only a handful of minutes ago, over the short, but vastly deep chasm of the time in between.

  “We have to get some help,” Brian says.

  “No one can help.” My numbed lips barely work. “You know that. You can see it, same as me. There’s nothing anyone can do.”

  Brian ignores me and rocks the door into its bent frame again, yanking the door handle to force it to release the latch.

  “Don’t touch him,” I scream, and startle up a flock of sparrows that had taken up the balcony seats for the show. Patrick is dead, immediately and permanently in the past tense. I am alive, but everything I was, or insisted that I was, has slipped away into the same past tense. So what am I, if not Patrick’s wife or Jim’s target?

  That Patrick wasn’t wrong isn’t the same thing as his being right, but the shame still burns. He flayed the lie off me with all that he’d said, everything recorded for whoever will hear it. It will damn me right along with him. They’ll put the blame on him, he’ll be the bad guy. But they’ll still know about me, that I had never been straight with him, that I had never been straight with myself. What kind of person does that? And what does she deserve?

  But I am alive. Breath and hope go together, baby girl.

  I have to get out of this day.

  “You can’t be here,” I say to Brian.

  The horror rolls over me. My knees go soft. Brian catches me up.