Orchard Grove

by Vincent Zandri

  But just looking at the foot made my back teeth hurt. It looked like a long, narrow, chunk of newly butchered beef.

  I did my best to clean the entire foot with warm soap and water before applying a Band-Aid to the tip of my toe and over the inch and half of exposed, bent, metal rod. Then, I applied an additional two, wider bandages to the incision that had been reopened. I slipped on a clean sock I’d taken from my underwear drawer earlier, put the splint back on, making sure the Velcro straps were tight but not too tight so that I didn’t cut off the circulation on the swelled foot. The last thing I needed was to encourage the formation of a blood clot. A blood clot meant instant death.

  Taking hold of my crutches, I went back into the kitchen and downed four Advil with cold tap water that I drank right out of the faucet. Then, I sat myself back down at my typewriter, refocused my eyes on the words I’d typed only moments ago, and I waited… waited to once more hear the sound of Lana’s car pulling back up into her driveway.

  Maybe a half hour went by.

  But I couldn’t be certain. Time had become warped since Lana’s arrival in Orchard Grove. I measured it now not by the seconds or minutes that clicked away on the stove clock in the kitchen, but by the steady and consistent throbs of electric pain that would begin at the tip of my index toe, shoot at lightning speed up into my brain and then back down again to the tip of my toe.

  I thought about having another drink or maybe reigniting that green joint. But in truth, too much dope made me paranoid. I was already paranoid or neurotic anyway. Better that I stick to the booze in order to curb the pain. Something strong, like Jack. But then, what the hell was I doing? I’d already talked myself out of drinking anything else, earlier. As a result, I’d gotten some writing done. Maybe not a lot, but it was a start.

  Pulling the sheet of typed paper from the typewriter, I set it to the side with the others, and fit a clean sheet onto the spool. I sat there at the dining room table, staring at the newly typed pages, knowing that I should have been adding words to the new sheet. I’d done enough characterization study for one day. Now would be the time to begin my story. Maybe I would begin with a man staring out of his bedroom window onto a most beautiful apparition. A blonde beauty who’d just moved in next door with her cop husband, and who sunbathed on her back deck in the nude.

  I raised both hands, extended my index fingers, and typed, FADE IN.

  I was about to set the scene when the doorbell rang.

  The sudden noise startled me, as if someone sneaked up behind me and screamed “Boo!”

  I laid my hands flat onto the tabletop, pressed myself up, took a look over my shoulder out the living room picture window. I couldn’t see anyone, but then that made sense since whoever was ringing the bell was hidden behind the closed door.

  Fetching my crutches, I lifted myself up from the table, made my way through the living room to the front, solid wood door. When I made out Lana’s face through all three of the small clear glass panels embedded into the door, my pulse picked up, and for a brief moment anyway, I forgot all about the pain in my foot.

  Unlocking the deadbolt, I then twisted the opener counterclockwise. In order to open the door, I had to hop backwards on my good leg.

  “Don’t fall,” Lana said as she carefully stepped through the door, her lavender scent once more filling my senses.

  “I’ll try not to,” I said, feeling my throat constrict, and the center of my chest grow tight. “At this point, I might elect to have the whole damned foot amputated.”

  “Pain?” she said, brushing back her hair with an open hand, as if she were staring not into my eyes but into a mirror.

  “You have no idea,” I said, glancing down at the foot, seeing the small round spot of fresh blood that had formed on the new white sock that covered it. “Please come in, Lana.”

  She stepped into the vestibule and crossed over into the living room. I closed the door, locked it. But before joining her in the living room, I took the time to peer through the wooden door’s top most pane of glass onto the driveway and the Orchard Grove road beyond it.

  “Expecting somebody else?” Lana inquired. If I were writing this for my script, I would have said her voice sounded more sarcastic than inquisitive.

  “Just looking out for your husband. I’m in enough hurt as it is. I don’t need a bullet in my back.”

  “Oh, John wouldn’t hesitate to shoot you in the face while staring you down.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “You heard us arguing earlier?” she said. “Or couldn’t you hear us well enough through the bedroom window once you cracked it open?”

  I could feel her sly smile as if she’d squirted me with a squirt gun filled with holy water. Turning, I hobbled into the living room.

  “I’d make a real crappy spy,” I said.

  “Yes, you would, Ethan. A very bad spy indeed.”

  I noticed then she was holding something in her hand. A copy of my novel, Break Up, it turns out. There was a scantily clad, busty blonde woman depicted on the paperback book cover. She was aiming the barrel of an automatic at a desperate man who was down on his knees, his arms raised to the heavens. The look on her face was one of fierce determination and hatred. You didn’t have to read a single word to know that the man was as good as dead.

  “You’ve been doing some shopping at the used bookstore,” I said. “I could have provided you with a copy for free.” Releasing my hand from the crutch grip, I pointed to the bookshelf pressed up against the far windowless wall in the living room directly to my right, the top two shelves of which contained copies of my one and only novel.

  “I wanted to support the author with my five-fifty,” she said.

  “You’re only supporting the used bookstore owner,” I said. “That book was remaindered years ago, almost as fast as it was released. But that’s very kind of you and your husband.”

  She held the book out for me. “He has no idea. Now would you sign it for me?”

  I gazed into her blue eyes, until I ran my eyes up and down the length of her body. She was wearing the black button-down shirt that I recalled from an hour earlier, and a worn jean skirt that barely covered her thighs. For footwear she wore Cleopatra sandals, the thin leather straps to which wrapped around her ankles. I guess I never noticed it before, but she bore the blood red tattoo of a broken heart on her left ankle. Three red teardrops were crying, or bleeding, from out of the broken heart.

  She noticed me staring down at the tattoo.

  “Do you like my heart?” she asked.

  “I didn’t notice it earlier,” I said. “Out on your deck.”

  We both gravitated out of the living room and into the attached dining room, where my typewriter was set beside the bowl of apples.

  “You were looking at other things.” She smiled again. “Until we were so rudely interrupted.”

  “Yes,” I said, my eyes locking on the pages I’d written that morning, seeing the name “LANA” on the top page in capital letters. “Interrupted by your husband who’s a top cop, carries a big fat gun, has an ill-tempered partner, and sports a nasty attitude about life.” Slipping my hand from the crutch, I gently took hold of the pages, turned them over on the table.

  That’s when she took a step forward, coming even closer to me, apparently without noticing my maneuver with the pages. Or just not caring perhaps. She came so close that her lavender scent became almost overwhelming. It seemed to fill the dining room like a vapor. It made my throat constrict even more than it already had, and my stomach tie itself into knots. Christ, I felt like a teenager again gazing upon his first crush. That’s the kind of power she had over me. When I focused my gaze upon the portion of her cleavage that was exposed under the unbuttoned portion of her silk shirt, I began to grow hard, and I didn’t care in the least if she noticed. In fact, I wanted her to notice.

  Again, she ran a hand through her thick hair, and when she lowered it, it brushed against her breast, arousing her ni
pple so that it immediately became erect through her thin bra and shirt. If I weren’t on crutches, I would have stepped into her then, kissed her on the mouth. Hard. But she must have been thinking the same thing. Or wanting the same thing anyway. Because she came at me, not only with her mouth, but with her free hand, grabbing hold of my arm. We stood there for a while, over my typewriter, kissing and petting, until she pulled back to come up for air.

  “Did I take you by surprise?” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

  “A little,” I said, wiping my wet mouth with the back of my hand.

  She was still holding onto the book. I glanced at my watch. I knew that Susan would be home in one hour. But I didn’t care. Or, at least a part of me didn’t care. I hadn’t felt this good about myself in ages. Not since I’d left LA.

  “Let’s have it,” I said, holding out my hand for the novel.

  “I almost forgot,” she said, her breathing still labored.

  She set it into my hand. Looking down at the novel, I could see that it was in very good shape for a used book. No dog-earing. Maybe the previous owner hadn’t read it at all.

  “I have a pen right here,” I said, setting myself down hard in my chair before my typewriter, and placing the book on top of the pages I’d written earlier. At the same time, I leaned the crutches up against the table to my left-hand side. Opening the book to the front title page, I picked up the pen that was set in between the typewriter and the bowl of apples, and brought ballpoint to paper.

  I had a choice here. I could either write a profound, authorly inscription. Or, I could keep it short and sweet and to the point. Knowing in my gut that Lana was going to turn out to be as much trouble for me as that blonde on the cover of Break Up, I went with the latter and penned …

  For Lana,

  For a wonderful fruitful life on Orchard Grove.

  Love Ethan

  XOX

  Maybe “Love” and “XOX” was a little over the top considering I barely knew her. But what the fuck. Closing the novel, I handed it to her.

  Turns out, she was one of those people who had to gaze lovingly upon the inscription only a split second after you’ve written it. Being a scriptwriter who’d only penned one novel, and not a very popular one at that, I hadn’t had the good fortune of signing a lot of books, but I’d signed a few. And truth be told, I preferred fans who chose to read the author inscription later on when they got home.

  In my mind, Lana seemed the type to enjoy her instant gratification however, and she did nothing to prove me wrong. Her face lit up when she read it. You could almost identify the very moment she eyed that XOX as if it were an open invitation for her to jump me inside my own home. Inside a home-sweet-about-to-be-gone-baby-gone-home I shared with a woman I loved. Even if we had drifted apart over the past year. A woman whom I’d never cheated on, as God as my judge. And I might not have been a church going man, but I believed in God, or something like Him. I also believed in good and evil and that we had a choice when it came to embracing either one.

  Setting the book gently down on top of my typewriter, Lana smiled. She held out her hand, grabbed an apple, brought it to her mouth, took a bite. Without uttering a single word, she held the apple to my mouth, as if I had no choice but to take a bite. As I bit into the apple, I realized that she didn’t need to speak. That her actions spoke far louder than words ever could. They were the actions of a woman who wasn’t the least bit in love, not with me necessarily, but any man. A woman who, more than likely, had never experienced a single day of love in her entire life. They were instead the actions of a lust-filled woman who also lusted power. Power over a weaker man like me, and a man like her husband. A man who only pretended to be strong.

  But that’s not right either.

  Lust was one thing, but hatred was another. If hatred was her motivation, then lust was simply a tool or a weapon that she used for seizing power over a pathetic man like me. I’ve lived long enough to recognize pure hatred when I saw it, and Lana Cattivo possessed more than her fair share of it. I could see it in her blue eyes, smell it in her lavender scent, see it in the way she chewed and swallowed that apple. And the hell of it is, it made her all the more attractive and alluring. For her, hatred wasn’t just a base emotion, it was a physical substance that, if need be, could be manipulated, like clay or, in this case, blood. You could feel it and taste it. Like the apple she made me bite, you could ingest it and digest it. It was the force behind her, her motivator, and in some ways, it was the primal source of her charm and ultimately, my unstoppable attraction to her.

  It didn’t come as a surprise when she set the half eaten apple back down onto the table, dropped slowly down to her knees, helped maneuver my legs out from under the table so that she faced me directly. I spread my legs apart a little to give her the room she required, and she began to undo my belt and unbutton my jeans.

  Pulling her up, I began to unbutton her shirt and pull down her bra, exposing her suntanned breasts. Lifting up her skirt, I felt for her panties but she wasn’t wearing any as if she’d scripted it that way.

  I pushed her back onto the dining room table, but I didn’t enter her right away. Instead I became filled with an insane desire to taste her first. Kissing her breasts, I shifted my way slowly down past the area where her jean skirt had gathered. I never moved an inch as her hips gyrated, the warm wetness pouring out of her body and into my mouth. My world was Lana and nothing mattered at that very moment in time on Orchard Grove.

  Or did it?

  Out the corner of my right eye, I sensed movement immediately outside the big living room picture window. I managed to steal a quick look. There was a person standing in the window watching us.

  I couldn’t be entirely certain. But for a brief and frightening instant, I swore that person was my wife, Susan.

  Sometimes you can’t help but believe your own lies.

  Especially the ones that you tell yourself over and over again. Like when you purposely distrust your eyes, accuse yourself of seeing things, all because you’re getting your rocks off and holy Christ almighty, you just can’t seem to stop yourself. Maybe you think I stopped myself as soon as I saw Susan in the picture window, looking in. That I immediately jumped away from Lana. Maybe you think I grabbed hold of my crutches, told Lana to get dressed, get the hell out, and never come back. Maybe you think I put my tail between my legs, hobbled to the front door, and opened it to face not an angry Susan, but a seething Susan. Maybe you think I’d beg for her forgiveness. Do it from down on my knees, if only it were physically possible.

  But I did no such thing.

  I just kept going. Kept making love to Lana like my life somehow depended upon it. Such was the power Lana had over me. Such was the serpent’s spell.

  But something else kept me going. When I took a quick second look at the window, the person was gone. Vanished. It led me to believe… rather, it made me want to believe… that a person wasn’t there in the first place. That the face I had taken for Susan’s wasn’t hers at all. That I’d only imagined my wife standing there outside the picture window, seeing everything we were doing only a few feet away on the dining room table. Imaged her perhaps, out of fear.

  Yes, the lies can be sweet sometimes. But they are still lies.

  But I’m not so sure I would have stopped even if I hadn’t been lying to myself. I wasn’t going to stop until Lana had enough of me and I’d had enough of her. That moment came just a few seconds later when she let loose with a scream that would have woken up the entirety of Orchard Grove if this were the middle of the night. Raising herself up onto her elbows on the wooden table, she demanded that I enter her, her voice deep, throaty, and insistent, like I had tapped into the beast that lived in her soul, and only now was being swallowed up by it, becoming one with it.

  Regardless of who or what witnessed me selling myself body and soul to this beautiful Satan, I proceeded to do exactly what she insisted.

  It didn’t take long to finish.


  Didn’t take me long anyway. When it was over, we paid no mind to hugging, kissing, cuddling, or engaging in pillow talk of any kind. The sexual act or should I say, process, at that point, was an academic fact. Nothing more. What we were left with was shared bodily fluids that needed to be wiped away and the feeling of having sunk so low, that not even hell would take me. But I knew the feeling wouldn’t last. That soon, I would want Lana all over again. And when I did, the want would be as obsessive and overwhelming as it ever was.

  I stood up, more or less balancing myself on one leg, and she slid off the table, pulling her jean skirt back down with all the clinical indifference of a patient immediately following a physical. It was all very business-like and ordinary for her, which I suppose should have scared me to death.

  But then, what the hell was I saying?

  Lana was too good to be true, and too bad to be believed. It’s not like I was in danger of falling in love with her. It’s not like I was about to leave Susan, regardless of our problems, and declare my undying devotion to the new girl next door. I was in lust with her, and in lust I would remain, until whatever it was I was going through, ran its horrid course.

  More lies?

  Maybe.

  As she continued gathering herself together, buttoning up her shirt, straightening out her hair, applying a fresh coating of lipstick, she suggested that perhaps it would be prudent if she took her leave through the back sliding doors. I knew that if she stayed even a minute longer, the demon would return and I would want more of her. I was just about to tell her what a good idea it would be to go now, when the mechanical sound of a key being inserted into the front door lock snared our collective attention, as if a bolt of heavenly lightning had just burst inside the front vestibule.