by Shawn Inmon
“It’s sad that you did so much to ruin my life, and you didn’t even take notice of it, but by the end of tonight, all our scores will be settled.” Her voice became eerily calm, rhythmic, confident, even enchanting. “Before the night is over, everything you hold dear will be gone. Your wife? Gone. Your beautiful twins? Gone. Your money, your career, your business? All gone. Even your precious face…“ She trailed off, but the wistful smile on her face was downright creepy.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, and neither do I. I think you need therapy. You’re right; I don’t remember you. But if you ever threaten me, or my wife, or my children again, I will have you arrested.” Even as he said it, it sounded hollow and lame.
“Oh, Brett, it’s fine. You can go now,” she said. “Go and lick the wounds you’re about to get. But remember this: all the good things that have happened in your life were because I cursed you with perfect fortune. I wanted you to have known only goodness in your life. Now, when you need it, you have no ability to handle adversity.”
“You’re insane,” he said, but a part of what she said rang true. He couldn’t remember what it felt like to fail.
She smiled as if she could read his thoughts and they pleased her.
“I know you’ll be wondering, so I want you to know right now that this isn’t a negotiation. I’m not asking for anything from you, and I won’t take anything from you. I do have one way out for you, but right now you think this is all bullshit, so I’ll save that for later.”
By the time she was about a dozen steps away, Brett had convinced himself that she was completely unhinged and belonged in a rubber room on medication. He massaged the back of his neck, shook his head, and blended in with a crowd of people moving toward the multipurpose room where dinner was to be served.
The room hadn’t changed since he had eaten his last meal as a senior. Since some of his classmates probably worked in its kitchen by day, the food likely wouldn’t have improved either. Row after row of folding tables with uncomfortable-looking benches filled the middle of the room. Framed pictures of every graduating class since the school had opened in 1952 lined the walls.
Brett walked along the tables until he saw his name on a place card. He slid gracefully into the bench seat, flashing his polymer smile at those nearby. The crazy woman grew less important and more pathetic with each minute. One last eye roll was all her memory deserved.
Someone was looking at him. “Oh, hello,” he said with a trace of embarrassment.
“Hello… Brett,” said a mousy brunette across from him, reading his name tag. She doesn’t recognize me? Wonder what cave she lives in. “I’m Brenda.”
“Very pleased to meet you,” Brett said by rote. He was already casting around the table looking for someone more interesting when the big fat guy from the men’s room sat down next to Brenda. His eyes lit up when he recognized Brett.
“Hey, man, we’ve got to quit meeting like this, or our wives are gonna get suspicious.” He laughed and made the sort of sound that gets a little less bearable every time you hear it.
Brett showed a tight smile, but couldn’t even work up a pity chuckle.
“Honey,” Bill said, “this is the guy I told you was hiding from the cheerleaders in the boy’s john.”
Brenda looked appraisingly at Brett and then away, disinterested. His lips tightened a bit more. He wasn’t accustomed to being ignored by anyone, let alone a plain-Jane housewife in a flower print K-Mart dress.
When she looked back at him, she said softly, “While you’re here, do you know where your beautiful wife is? I do. I know she’s home, getting serviced by your personal trainer. In your own bed. Unlike you, she’s enjoying herself.”
Face flushed, Brett lost some of his cool. “What the hell is wrong with everyone here tonight? My wife couldn’t be here because she’s at a children’s charity event!”
Both Brenda and Bill stared back without expression. Bill raised his eyebrows and shrugged in the ‘you know how women are’ universal male body language.
“I don’t expect you to believe me,” Brenda said. “Why don’t you give her a call? See what she’s up to?”
“Why don’t you… Oh, screw it! Is everyone at this reunion crazy? I don’t need to call my wife. She would never cheat on me.” Brett stood up too fast, banging his knee on the table’s underside. Fighting down the pain, he refused to limp as he walked away. The nearest exit, if he remembered correctly, was a set of side doors leading to blessed fresh air.
As the doors began to swing closed, he fished out his phone and dialed Monique. With the charity auction in full swing, his wife might not hear the ring, but even her voicemail greeting would be a reassurance.
The phone rang and rang. Images began surfacing from his subconscious mind. He thought about working out at the gym with Monique and Ted, his personal trainer. Ted was a triathlete in his mid-twenties, in better shape than Brett would ever be again. He also remembered the way Ted worked with Monique, spotting her as she lifted, changing the settings on the equipment, paying attention to her.
When her voicemail finally answered, it provided Brett no comfort at all. He spoke after the tone: “Monique, it’s me. I’m having a crazy night, and I need to talk to you. Call me as soon as you get this.”
He punched “End.” On a whim, he dialed his home number.
After three rings, he heard the phone pick up. After several seconds of silence he heard a masculine voice answer “Hello?”
“This is Brett Mann. Who is this?”
Brett heard sounds like a hand trying to muffle the transmitter. He strained to hear, distantly: “Shit. It’s your husband! I’m an idiot, I thought it was my phone…” It clicked dead.
He hit “Redial” and listened as the phone rang and rang, then eventually heard his own voice say “This is the home of the Mann family…” He hung up and called back, getting exactly the same response. He leaned against the cool brick of the building, trying to gather his thoughts and emotions.
“Screw it,” he said again, taking a deep breath.
The phone in his pocket vibrated. Now he would get some answers. A glance at the caller ID, though, told him that it was the office. Odd. “Brett Mann,” he snapped.
“Hello, Brett, sorry to bother you. This is Rita.” Her voice was worried and faded out at intervals.
Rita was Brett’s executive secretary of fifteen years. She was in her mid-sixties, built like a piece of granite and just as dependable.
“Sorry, I’m having an unbelievably bad night. What’s up?”
“I hate to make your night worse, but we’ve got serious trouble here at the office. I mean trouble like I’ve never seen before.
“Okay. Okay, hold on. What’s going on?” Brett glanced at his watch. 7:15 on a Friday night. She often worked late, but this was an unlikely hour for any sort of crisis.
“I had just run the last of the quarterly reports and I was scanning them to your email and getting ready to lock up when two men came in. They asked for you, and when I told them you weren’t here, they showed me a badge and a warrant and said they had a team on the way to search the office, including all records and computers.”
“What?” Brett’s baritone voice went falsetto. “What the hell? Who are they?”
“The badge said FBI, but they said they also had people from the IRS coming with them to conduct a forensic audit. They said they were setting up a base of operations and would be here for the duration. I don’t know what to do; they aren’t letting me near any of the computers. Can you get down here?”
“I can, but it’s going to take me a few hours. I’m not in the city; I’m at my damned 25th high school reunion. I knew I shouldn’t have come to this thing. Goddamn it, why did this have to happen tonight, when I’m a hundred miles from the city?”
In the back of his mind, he heard the contralto again. Your money, your career, your business? Gone.
He ran his hand through his hair and said, “Listen. I�
��m leaving here now. I’ll be there in two hours. Keep them away from my office and especially my computer.”
“I’ll do my best, but these guys look serious and have Federal warrants. I’m afraid they’ll throw me in jail. I love my job, but I can’t do that, Brett…”
“Just…just…do what you can. I’ll call the lawyers and get them down there as fast as possible to stop this bullshit. In the meantime, lock my office and tell them you don’t have a key. I’m on my way.” Brett ended the call and slipped his phone back into his pocket. He ducked back into the multipurpose room and saw that someone he didn’t recognize was making a speech at the front of the room. He slipped along the back wall, trying not to be too obvious. He hit the double doors to the hallway with enough speed to make a satisfying thud.
The doors flew halfway open, then stopped with a thud of steel on flesh and bone. A feminine voice squealed in shock and pain. Brett drew up short by reflex and saw that he, the doors and Brenda Stinson had all tried to occupy the same space at the same time. She had a red mark on her forehead where the door had bonked her. The splash of two plastic cupfuls of Merlot all down the front of her dress made a rather larger red mark.
She looked down, saw the stain and started to cry. “I never get a new dress, and now when I do…” Only then did she look up to see who was responsible. “You!”
Brett didn’t care how often Brenda was permitted to splurge at Wal-Mart, K-Mart or whatever mart she considered her couturier. He pushed past her just as Bill turned the corner and surveyed the scene. Now Bill’s ruddy face flushed the kind of scarlet usually associated with rosacea attacks, and his formerly jovial expression was twisted in a sour knot.
“Sorry,” Brett said casually to Bill. “We had a bit of a collision.”
As a boxer, Bill’s form left a lot to be desired. The swing started at his knees. With any warning at all, Brett could have easily backed away from it, but no one had ever before swung a fist at him in anger.
First came a muffled, thudding crack as Bill’s workingman fist broke the cartilage in Brett’s nose, then a clang as Brett’s head left a massive dent in locker #101.
As Brett began to black out, he heard Bill saying, “No, you stupid son of a bitch. That was a bit of a collision.”
When Brett opened his eyes, he expected to see paramedics, or at least a crowd of concerned onlookers. Instead, he was alone where he had fallen. He started to get up, then felt enormously queasy and decided to roll over and vomit instead. He threw up everything but his toenails and still didn’t feel any better. Too dizzy to stand, he laid back down. In the process, he managed to drag the right arm of his suit through his vomit. He remembered a feeling like this from long ago: waking up the morning after he’d pledged Betas during his freshman year. An isolated memory: a Tri-Delt from the night before, too drunk to consent or decline. Cheap beer in industrial quantities.
When he felt a bit of clarity start to return, he stood up, leaning heavily against the dented locker. The glow of a cigarette indicated that he wasn’t alone after all. Mirela stepped out of the shadows wearing her tiny, mocking smile.
He reached deep inside for whatever reserves of strength he had left.
“There’s no smoking on school grounds, you little mental case.”
“Strange,” answered Mirela. “I guessed you’d have come up with ‘witch’ or ‘bitch.’ You’d have been closer to the truth with either one.”
“More likely both,” he snarled. Her smile widened, but grew even colder.
“I think you’re more open to listening to me now, aren’t you, Brett?” She moved closer and reached a hand out, as if to gently probe his broken nose. He pulled his head away angrily, which sent another wrack of nausea through him.
With his eyes pressed nearly shut, he hissed, “What do you want from me?”
“For a big shot executive, you have a lousy memory. I told you before: I’m getting exactly what I want from you. There’s nothing else you can give me. I don’t need your money, and if I’d wanted to live the life you’re living, I could have had that any time. Instead, I gave it to you. Now, I have one more gift for you.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out a small pistol. Gripping it by the barrel, she offered it to Brett.
He glared at her suspiciously.
“It’s all right. Take it. It’s loaded with one bullet, but you can’t hurt me with it anyway.”
He reached out his shaking, bloody hand and snatched the gun away, immediately pointing it at her.
Mirela sighed. “Brett, Brett, Brett. Do you really think I would work this hard to ruin your life and then hand you a gun that you could use against me? Use your head. It is loaded, but it’s as enchanted as your life has been until tonight. The only thing that bullet can do is put an end to your suffering.”
His gun hand wavered, then sank toward the floor. “If you’re saying I should use it to kill myself, you can go fuck yourself.” Even to his own ears, he sounded like a petulant child.
“Very eloquent, Mr. Bestselling Author. But you’re probably right, because I don’t think you’ve got the guts to do it either. Especially since you seem to have left most of those on the floor,” she added, taking a fastidious half-step back from the puddle.
“I really hope you don’t kill yourself, and here’s why. As bad as today has been for you–getting your nose smashed into a pulp, finding out your wife’s having an affair, finding out you’re being investigated for criminal fraud by the FBI and the IRS--”
“How…?” He caught himself. I will not give her the satisfaction. I don’t ever want to see that smug, creepy smile again, and I’m not going to play into her little game.
“—but as bad as this day has been, this will be the best day of the rest of your miserable life. And here’s the fun part! If you don’t do yourself in by midnight tonight, I’m going to make it so that you can’t escape by dying. In fact, if you survive the night, I can guarantee you that you will die a very old, lonely, miserable man.”
She turned and walked a few steps down the hall before she turned and said “But be careful, Brett. There’s only one bullet. Don’t miss. You don’t want to end up as a vegetable on top of everything else.”
Brett suddenly sneezed toward the lockers, hosing a crimson spray onto #101 and #103. The explosion of pain made him weak in the knees. For a moment he felt like vomiting again, but fought it down as he put a hand on the locker to steady himself.
When his eyes focused again, she was gone. He weaved down the hall in the same direction she’d gone, which led to the parking lot. He tried desperately to conjure up a happy image of his own bed, softly lit by the glow of his bedside reading lamp. Instead, his mind’s eye could only see an image of Monique riding Ted like it was the last race of the day at Churchill Downs.
He pushed that thought from his mind and remembered the conversation with Rita. He dialed her cell phone to see if the FBI and IRS had come back yet, and if they had gotten their hands on his personal computer. If they had, his next phone call might be to his lawyer from a holding cell, because there was enough on that hard drive to put him away for twenty years. The number rang and rang and eventually went into her voicemail.
“Goddamn it! Can’t one goddamn thing go right for me tonight?” He bit his lip, realizing he was doing exactly what the little wacko had wanted him to do. He walked slowly outside and saw his car sitting right in front of the school, moonlight reflecting softly off its perfect body. The sight gave him strength and hope. That ‘Vette would be the envy of any man. For a moment, he remembered who he was.
“I am Brett Fucking Mann. What the hell is wrong with me? I can figure all this out! Jesus Christ, I almost let that dumb bitch take over my mind. I can fix this. I can fix anything. I don’t care what kind of a goddamned witch she is.”
His phone vibrated and he looked at the screen, expecting to see that it was Rita or Monique calling him back. Instead, the caller ID showed an unavailable number. He took a dee
p breath, steeling himself for more bad news.
“Hello?”
Static distorted the female voice on the other end of the line. “…ello? Hello? This is… bercrombie. I’m trying to reach Brett Mann.”
“This is he.”
“Hello? This is the…I have…for Br…Mann. Is this…?”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Brett said, raising his voice several notches, even though it cost him a blast of pain from his ruined nose. “This is Brett Mann!” he all but shouted.
“Oh. Mr. Mann, this is Officer Abercrombie with the State Patrol.” The patrolwoman’s voice conveyed somber sympathy even through the static and noise. “Can I ask where you are? I’d prefer to speak with you in person. I’ve been trying to reach your wife at home and on her cell phone as well, but she’s not answering.”
Brett stumbled forward, light-headed, feeling like he was about to pass out. Steadying himself with a large handprint on the Corvette’s front bumper, he sat down on the curb.
“Please. I’m not in town right now. Please just tell me what’s happened.”
The silence stretched out for several seconds as Brett waited to see if he still had a life or not. For the first time in his adult life, he began to pray.
Just don’t let it be Cheyenne and Avery. Not them. Please God, anything but my children.
“Mr. Mann… I would really prefer to talk to you in person. There… there’s been an accident and I wish I could speak to you face to face. What I have to tell you is very difficult.”
“Oh… no. No.” His voice was a pleading whisper. Tears spilled down his face, mixing with the drying blood.
“Mr. Mann? There’s been an accident, and I’m deeply sorry to inform you that both your children were seriously injured. There was very severe trauma. Neither survived…”
Officer Abercrombie kept talking, but Brett didn’t hear her. His phone slipped from his grasp and clattered against the pavement. He blinked, trying to focus.
Memories swirled through his mind. Cheyenne at age two, jumping up and down on him, screaming “Body slam, Daddy, body slam!” Avery, chubby arms and legs pumping, running down the driveway and jumping into his arms.
