by Nancy Adams
“I killed someone, Jules,” she cried bitterly into him.
“No,” Jules said out loud. “You didn’t kill anyone, you understand. It was me.”
“What do you mean? Nothing makes sense anymore.”
“Look, while we been lying here,” Jules stated solemnly, “I been thinking of what to do if the police catch up with us. Now, you gotta promise to listen to me.”
Jules took Juliette’s face once more in his hands and brought it up to face his own, so that his eyes glared directly into hers.
“Juliette, my love,” he began in a somber tone, “if they ask what happened, you’re to tell them that you were waiting on the dirt track while I was looking around the farm. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, but I don’t—”
“You don’t have to understand,” he interrupted, “you simply have to be able to repeat this. You’re to say that you waited by the bike while I went off. It was then that you heard the gunshot and I came back covered in blood.”
“But what about my lip?” Juliette asked pointing to her swollen lower lip where she’d been hit with the gun.
“You tell them that I did that,” Jules commanded her.
“I couldn’t say such a thing.”
“Well, you have to,” Jules cried down at her. “I’ll tell the police that you went crazy when I wouldn’t let you call the police after I told you that I’d shot the guy. That’s when I hit you to shut you up. You tell them that I often do such things. That way there’ll be no accusations that you were an accomplice. They’ll think that you were in my thrall; battered and frightened.”
“What are you saying, Jules?”
“Isn’t it obvious, my love? I’m saying that if the police catch us and pin it on us, I’ll say that I shot the guy while breaking into his barn. I’ll tell them that it was self-defense, but I’m sure they won’t care. I’ll tell them that you had nothing to do with it and wanted me to go to the police when I told you, but I hit you to stop you.”
“But what about getting out of here?”
“That’s plan A, of course. First, we need to destroy our clothes and everything we got blood on. But we can’t do it here, someone will see us burning it for sure. I was thinking that tonight we’ll head out of here under the cover of darkness. Once we’re clear, we’ll burn everything that went anywhere near us last night. After that, we won’t go to New Orleans but head back to Texas. From there, we’ll check the situation and, if it’s clear, we’ll cross the border into Mexico.”
“I hope that will be true, Jules,” Juliette burst out grabbing ahold of him.
Jules let go of her face and she nestled it into his chest, sobbing into him.
That night, as they slept, the door was kicked in and both of them found themselves pressed into the mattress by the hefty knee of a county sheriff in their backs as he cuffed them roughly. The motel owner had spotted traces of blood on Jules the night he booked him in, Juliette having stayed outside with the bike. Initially, the owner had thought nothing of it. However, the next evening the guy opened up the local newspaper and saw the report on the murder of local farmer Robert Barrymore. Being the good citizen, he instantly rang it in. The bloody clothes, of course, were discovered the moment the police looked about the place during the arrests, and the two were immediately charged with murder. In a complete daze during interrogation, Juliette recounted perfectly what Jules had told her to say and when it was corroborated with his story, her charges were dropped. They only needed one killer and were happy to take Jules’s confession and close the case quickly. To attempt to go after Juliette would have been a waste of time, as the best they could get was an aiding and abetting charge. The local police had what they needed. The small town didn’t need to fear its own, as the killer was an ‘outta-towner’, and the locals got another reason to fear the outside world. After eight hours, Juliette was released without charge.
She immediately booked into a local motel, slept for almost a week and then got up one day, took the bike and headed back to California in shock, not knowing what she was doing, the image of the dead man always a second or two away from her withered mind.
*
Juliette woke up, sweat drenching her all over, her heart racing in her chest, trying desperately to catch her breath. As she sat bolt upright in bed, she looked to the far corner of the hotel room and let out a scream, until she managed to stifle it with her hand.
Standing among the shadows was a blood-drenched man, part of the left side of his head missing, the cavity pouring incessantly with blood. His left arm hung loosely by his side, the shoulder of it sporting a large wound. All over him, blood poured down in trickling streaks, a puddle reaching out from his feet. The man’s remaining eye glared at Juliette, and his teeth were gritted together in an angry snarl aimed directly at her.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door and Juliette turned sharply to it, taking her eyes momentarily away from the man. When she returned her gaze to him, the man had vanished and Juliette watched the space with curiosity.
“Love? Are you okay?” Margot cried out through the door. “Your scream woke me.”
Juliette got up, shaking all over, and answered the door to her friend.
“My word,” Margot let out taking one look at Juliette. “You look awful. Have you got a fever?”
“Maybe,” Juliette croaked. “It would explain things.”
“Can I come in?” Margot asked.
“Sure.”
Juliette opened the door wide and went inside, sitting down on the bed. Margot followed her in, closing the door behind, and then took up a seat on the bed next to her friend.
“Bad dreams?” Margot inquired in a gentle voice.
“Bad dreams,” Juliette repeated.
Margot moved her arm around her friend and Juliette rested herself up against Margot’s flank.
“He was in that corner just before you knocked on the door,” Juliette explained gazing at the spot.
“Who?”
“Robert Barrymore.”
“In that corner?” Margot asked, pointing to the shadowy corner of the room.
“Yes. He often pops up and stands glaring at me.”
“Yes—you’ve told me before.”
“He won’t leave me alone, Margot. Not until I’ve been punished. He wants to send me into madness.”
“You told me,” Margot began seriously, “that he was strangling Jules at the time, so what choice did you have?”
“It still doesn’t take away the fact that his family lost their father. Robert Barrymore was a family man, a farmer who had been broken into four times already that year. We should have never smashed that lock off and we should never have been in his barn. If we hadn’t, his family would still have him at the top of their table looking down at them each Sunday. Instead, they have nothing but a space. I should have been punished for it, not Jules.”
“Oh, Juliette,” Margot let out as she cuddled her friend, unable to find the words to soothe Juliette’s enfeebled sensitivities.
The rest of the night, Margot slept in Juliette’s bed with her and the two snoozed comfortably. Juliette had no more nightmares and felt comforted by her friend’s presence, her battered soul finding some respite for the moment.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jules sat in the cafe holding a hemp rucksack tightly on his lap. Every so often he would peek inside the bag and smile. That night, after arriving in the bus and finding a guesthouse, Jules had been unable to sleep, even though it had been late when he’d gotten there. He’d spent the night pacing the room, his mind in a fevered state, nervous that he was about to see his love for the first time in so many years. Hoping that she would accept him, that within an instant of seeing his smiling eyes, all her guilt would be cast away and their souls could continue on their duel pathway.
Jules knew from Margot’s letters that the friend was concerned for Juliette. Margot had stated that Juliette had changed a lot in the past years and wasn’t the conf
ident woman that Jules remembered. The whole experience in Louisiana had broken her a little. Jules knew this would be the case. That’s why he had pleaded with Margot to help Juliette all those years ago; he knew his love would disintegrate in on herself without him around to guide her. It was this that made Jules all the more determined to reach Juliette now, and the main reason that he couldn’t simply leave her alone in the world.
“Jules!” Margot exclaimed as she reached his table, making him turn to face her.
With a broad grin on his face, Jules put his rucksack on the floor beside him and stood up. When she reached him, the two embraced in a warm hug.
“How’re you, darlin’?” Jules asked her as they parted and then sat down opposite one another at the table.
“I’m good, Jules.”
“How’s that fella o’ yours? The French guy.”
“Claude’s good. You’ll hopefully get to meet him soon.”
“I sure hope so,” Jules replied, picking his bag up and placing it back on his lap.
Margot sat gazing at him for a moment and let out a crooked smile as she realized that he looked to have aged more than the sixteen years she’d not seen him. The last time she had, his beard had been more trimmed and was black with only a few shocks of gray. Now it was completely gray, his hair too. The skin that she saw on his face looked much more aged also, and he even appeared smaller, a result of the fact that he hunched over slightly when he stood now; a consequence of fracturing several vertebrae during a particularly nasty beating he received seven years before in prison.
“So,” Margot let out after a few seconds, “you came.”
“Yes,” Jules replied, smiling at Margot from behind his beard and glasses. “A part o’ me didn't want to, but I guess that part is too much of a minority to mean anything.”
“Do you know what you’re gonna say to her?”
“I’ve been going through what I’m gonna say to her for the past sixteen years, Margot; and it always changes depending on my mood, or how I’m feeling that particular time I’m imagining it all in my head. So I’ll only know when I see her.”
Just then the waiter came over and Margot ordered coffee, before turning back to Jules and asking him what was in the bag. Jules smiled and opened the top of it, pulling out a charcoal drawing on paper held in a clear plastic envelope. Margot took it off of him and brought it in front of her gaze. As she looked at the picture, Jules saw her expression change, a warm smile breaking out on her face.
“You always did catch her so well,” Margot admired as she stared down at the portrait of Juliette’s face, the green pastel used for her eyes the only color other than the black charcoal used for the rest of the drawing, making them gleam out of the picture at Margot. There was a sadness in those eyes and Jules had always captured it so well. “Are they all of Juliette?” Margot asked after a slight pause.
“Yes,” Jules shrugged, “all of them.”
“So that’s what you meant in your letters when you said that you were keeping busy.”
“Sure is. All the walls in my cell were covered in her portrait, all of them sketched from memory, not one photograph to aid me. I wanna show her how much I thought of her while I was away; prove to her that my love is still as strong today as it always has been these past years.”
Margot looked up from the picture and smiled across at Jules.
“She doesn’t deserve you, Jules,” she said softly.
“Perhaps she doesn’t deserve me, Margot, but she sure as Hell needs me. How’s she been these past years? I mean, really. I know you was holding back in your letters to save me the heartache, but how’s she really been?”
Margot took in a deep breath and then let it out gently.
“When I first met Juliette so many years ago,” she began, “it was me who was the one in the terrible state, as you know. I believe with all my heart, Jules, that if it hadn’t been for her assistance in that dark time, I would have fallen into despair forever. When you contacted me all those years ago and asked me to find her, I didn’t hesitate. But what I found wasn’t all of Juliette. There’s parts of her missing now, and also parts of her that weren’t there before. Dark parts, terrible moods, and she gets these nightmares. Sometimes it’s about Danny and other times…” Margot looked around them, leaned forward and continued in a whisper, “Sometimes it’s that guy she shot back in the states. Then, other times, she’ll begin thinking about you and get real guilty and then won’t speak for days.”
“Where was she when you found her back in '87?” Jules asked. “I mean, you just said L.A in the letter, you never said exactly what condition she was in when you got to her.”
Again Margot let out a sigh, before describing the terrible state she found Juliette in when she first arrived at the motel; half dead from booze, lying in the middle of the floor with cuts on her arms, her room smashed to pieces.
“So she was turning tricks again?” Jules added afterward.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s okay, Margot. It was obvious she would, what with no one there to support her.”
“Yeah, she was,” Margot confirmed.
“I thought as much—a girl’s gotta earn, as they say. I don’t blame her for it. The only work she was ever shown was selling her body. She’s been selling it piece by piece ever since. It took me years to convince her that she was worth more than a handful of dollars.”
This made Margot smile gently.
The two spent the next twenty minutes drinking coffee and reminiscing about old times. Soon, it was time for Margot to take Jules to the hotel for his surprise meeting with Juliette. The way there was a nice walk for Jules. As already mentioned, he’d been to Villa de Leyva several times before in his life—always with Juliette—and its cobbled streets and Spanish colonial buildings with their large shutters, terracotta stonework and hanging baskets filled with colorful flowers, immersed his soul in a warm nostalgia. As he trotted along with his rucksack of pictures over his shoulder, Margot pointed out all the changes that had been made to the town in the past years since Jules had last been there.
It wasn’t long before they made it to the hotel and Jules sat in the little cafe downstairs while Margot went up to see if Juliette had awoken yet. When she’d crept out earlier, Juliette was still immersed in a heavy slumber. As he waited for her, Jules sat staring out of the window at the street outside. He watched as an old chestnut nag came meandering along the street past the window pulling an old metal cart that had big silver metal cylinders containing milk on top of it. The cart stopped outside the hotel and the waiter went to the milkman and took one cylinder from him, carrying it inside.
Jules ignored this, though. He was more interested in the old horse. As it waited for its master’s transaction to take place, it simply stood there with its head hung low. On its face, it gave Jules the impression that it was crying, its milky eyes gazing blankly out. Jules sensed that it was terribly sad and awaiting the day when its master would put the harness on it in the morning one last time and its legs would fail it. The master would then most likely take it into the field, shoot it and then sell the body to the glue factory. That poor horse was harnessed to its terrible fate and Jules felt a shiver of melancholy traverse through him at the sight of it until he had to look away.
He took a portrait out from his bag and began looking at it to take his mind off the horse. As he gazed at the picture, Jules tried to imagine how much Juliette must have changed these last sixteen years. Margot had sent him a few photographs of his love with some of her letters, but he could never get a feel for a person from a photograph and preferred his own renditions of her instead.
It was as he gazed forlornly into Juliette’s green pastel eyes that Jules heard a scream from upstairs and looked up. The waiter and the milkman, who were standing in the doorway chatting, both looked over as well. Jules felt a pang in his heart and quickly stood up and began heading for the stairs that Margot had disappeared up earlier.
As he reached their base, Margot came tearing down them toward him.
“Jules,” she cried the moment she saw him, “come quick. It’s Juliette.”
She immediately turned and Jules followed her up two flights of stairs to Juliette’s room. The door was wide open and Jules walked into it behind Margot. The whole time since the scream, his heart had been beating rapidly and he felt a little weak. When he was inside the room, he looked to the right and saw Juliette laid out on her bed, several pill bottles and pills strewn around her, a picture of Danny during his fifth birthday clasped in her hand, the little boy blowing out candles on a cake. Margot knelt beside the bed, reaching across to Juliette and tapping her on the face, trying to rouse her, Juliette completely unresponsive.
It was the first time that Jules had seen her in such a long time and he couldn’t help but gaze at his love for a moment, frozen in inaction at her vision. He soon snapped out of it, though, and sprang into action, joining Margot at the side of the bed.
“Margot, go downstairs and get them to fetch a doctor,” Jules said. “I’ll carry her into the bathroom and attempt to get her to vomit.”
“Okay,” Margot let out, and off she went.
Jules scooped Juliette up in his arms and immediately noticed that she was much lighter than she had been all those years before. He carried her into the bathroom and positioned her over the toilet, wedging her with his legs, and holding the back of her neck with one hand, reaching into her mouth with the fingers of his other. Jules pushed them down the old woman’s throat and she instantly shuddered, vomit racing up her esophagus as he tickled the back of her gullet. Jules was quick enough to pull his fingers out of the way in time and push her forward as she was sick into the toilet, coughing and mumbling as she did, the effort raising her partway out of her unconsciousness.
Jules rubbed her back tenderly as she finished emptying her stomach. He then looked down into the bowl and saw a handful of pills floating on top of the bile. None of them looked as if they’d been digested that much and he let out a sigh of relief to find that he was just in time. Meanwhile, Juliette lay mumbling in his arms and he took ahold of her lovingly, bringing her into him. Whether she knew it was really him or not, Juliette took him in her own arms and they sat on the bathroom floor in a sad embrace, Juliette crying despairingly.
