The River Valley Series

by Tess Thompson

  “You’re out of time.”

  “I just don’t have it.” She tasted blood and realized it was from inside her own lip.

  “We’ll give you another week. I’ll meet you right here a week from now.”

  “What if I can’t get it? What then?”

  He threw his cigarette on the ground and stomped it with his heel. “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

  She shook her head no and put her hand to her mouth. “I want you to know, this is not who I am. I’m a respected businesswoman in this town. I’m an honest person. This was all a terrible mistake.”

  He took another cigarette from his pack and held it in the air almost as if he expected her to light it for him. “Lady, it don’t matter to me what kind of person you are. I’m hired to get the money owed to my boss. Nothing more nothing less.” The corners of his mouth turned up in a smirk. “A fact’s a fact. You owe my boss this money and he don’t care one whit if you’ve been deluding yourself about who you really are or who your husband was. This money you owe, that’s who you are to him.”

  She chastised herself silently, telling herself to stop talking and just get out. He was correct, she had been delusional but her eyes had been recently pulled open like a person on a torture device, one sickening revelation after another. She said, “Fine, I’ll see you next week.”

  “Don’t stand me up, Lee Johnson. It wouldn’t be pretty.”

  “I won’t,” she lied. There was a woman headed towards the glass door and Lee scurried behind her into the lit lobby.

  * * *

  A few moments later Lee sat on the master bedroom toilet, wearing a bra, her panties around her ankles. She held a new pregnancy test in her hands. It was shaped like a pen and had two display windows. She pulled off the plastic cover and stuck it between her legs, aiming her urine stream at the spongy end of the stick like the directions said. Some of it splashed her thighs. Holding the test in one hand like a sword, she cleaned up with toilet paper. Sweat dribbled between her breasts. She waited, never taking her eyes from the test. The line in the first window turned pink. According to the package it would take at least a minute for the line in the other window to appear. If it did she was pregnant. “Please be negative,” she whispered to herself. “Please.”

  This was torture, she thought. Couldn’t they make a faster test? Her eyes landed on the soaking tub, wondering bitterly if the new owners would love it as much as she had.

  She breathed in through her nose and out her mouth like in Pilates class. She counted to twenty. At twenty-one, she peered at the test. Two dark pink lines showed in the second window.

  She was pregnant. She’d known it. But here it was in pink and white. She said inside her head, “No, no, no. This can’t be.” She crossed her arms over her tender breasts, fighting the urge to cry. She ordered herself to hold it together as she pulled up her panties and threw the test in her bag, on top of a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Then she pulled on a traditional Islamic dress and fastened a full Burka over her head. She looked in the mirror. She didn’t recognize herself. Maybe no one else would either.

  She went to the window and moved the drawn shade a crack to see that it was still drizzling. A layer of fog hovered just above the center of the skyscraper across from where she stood. She looked to the street below. The black sedan was still there.

  She grabbed her bag and went out to the living room. Her friend Linus paced by the front door. He stopped, staring at her. “Well, it’s a good disguise, I’ll give it that.” A muscle twitched in his cheek. “But keep your head down anyway.” His voice was grave and shaky. He plucked nervously at the purple knit scarf around his neck.

  “I know. We’ve been over and over the plan.”

  “What took you so long?”

  She paused, and for the first time in their fifteen-year friendship she held something from him. She wouldn’t tell him she was pregnant. It was too much for him to absorb, after all they’d gone through these last several weeks.

  The moment had come to say goodbye. She wanted to express her love and gratitude to him but she felt awkward, clumsy. She tried anyway, clearing her throat. “Linus, I don’t say it enough, don’t know if I’ve ever said it, but I love you.” Her voice broke. “I want you to know that, in case anything happens. Maybe if I’d said it more to Dan, he’d still be here.”

  He put up his hand to quiet her. “Please, Lee, you’ve got to stop punishing yourself. What he’s done is not your fault.” His voice was angry now, his cheeks flushed.

  “It occurred to me this morning that when I disappear it’s not only from these awful people but from you too. It didn’t sink in until today. Isn’t that stupid?” She started to cry.

  “I know. Me too.” He wrapped his arms around her.

  “We’ve spoken almost every day for fifteen years.”

  “I know.”

  “I even called you on my honeymoon. Remember?”

  He smoothed her hair and rested his chin on the top of her head. “This isn’t forever. Just get your mother’s house sold so you can pay off this bastard. Then I’ll come pick you up. You can stay with me when you come home. Start a new life. I’ll give you a job at Figs when you get back.”

  She smiled, hiccupping. “I don’t know anything about food.”

  He chuckled. “And you don’t drink. You can’t work in a restaurant without drinking. It’s against the restaurant code.”

  She tried not to cry but tears fell from her eyes one after the other. “Don’t forget about me. I don’t want to come back and find you’ve replaced me with some other woman.”

  He moved his hands to her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Unless George Clooney whisks me off to his villa in Lake Como, I’ll be here.” His eyes were full of tears now too. “I’ve got to go before I lose it. Please be careful.” He kissed her on the cheek and left through the door he’d come and gone through so many times before.

  She looked around the bare condo for the last time, at the vaulted ceilings, granite counters, marble fireplace, designer paints on the walls. Everything had been decorated just so. “We’ll be so happy here,” her husband had said the night they moved in. And now he was dead. Out of habit she touched her ring finger to play with her wedding ring. But it was no longer there, sold for cash like everything else. There was nothing but the slight indentation in her skin to prove their five-year marriage ever existed.

  * * *

  She peered down the length of the eighth-floor hallway for human shadows. There was no one, no sounds or movement. She punched the elevator button and held her breath until the doors opened and closed. All the way down she fidgeted until the elevator came to a stop. She walked into the lit lobby and out the door. The rain was coming down harder than before. A car passed but the street was mostly empty. Across the street the man still sat in the black car, reading a newspaper. He might have glanced at her but she couldn’t be sure. She forced herself to walk at a casual pace, watching out of the corner of her eye, holding her breath. At the corner there was a homeless man, his bearded bleary face half hidden behind a cardboard box. She saw the man in the sedan turn the page of the newspaper, uninterested in her. He hadn’t recognized her, she thought. She put her head down and walked up the hill to Fifth Avenue.

  Parked in the alley behind a bar was a friend of Linus’s in a blue Prius. Lee got in the passenger seat without speaking. He nodded and gave her a half smile, white knuckles clenched on either side of the steering wheel. Then they sped down the alley, up Denny Avenue, and onto I-5 South, on their way to a gray Dodge Minivan and new cell phone that waited in Olympia, registered under a false name.

  Chapter 2

  In the minivan, Lee headed up Olympia’s main street to the I-5 South entrance. At each stop light she looked in her rearview mirror to see if she was followed, but saw nothing suspicious. Rain pounded against the windshield as she merged onto the freeway, holding her breath each time a car passed. For several miles there were no lights behind
her. She relaxed somewhat and began to feel cold from the sweat that had soaked through the Islamic dress. She adjusted the heat and thought longingly of the heated seats in her BMW. The seats in this van were cold. It smelled of cheap plastic and a vanilla- scent air freshener shaped like a tree that someone had hung around the mirror.

  She’d been chilled for three weeks now. It was an iciness that had seeped into her bones and made her teeth chatter with the emptiness that comes with a sudden grief.

  Three weeks ago—to be exact, 21 days, 5 hours and 8 minutes ago—Lee’s assistant Paula had stepped inside her office conference room in the middle of her company presentation to representatives from the press and distributors about their new product. Paula’s face was ashen and Lee knew something was wrong with Dan. She’d known it when he hadn’t shown up for a day he’d been working towards for months. But she’d pushed it aside in order to do the presentation and appear as if everything was normal.

  Paula stammered, gripping the handle of the conference room door. “I, I’m sorry but there’s something—we need Lee to come out to the lobby. It’s urgent.”

  She began to shake and her legs were like liquid under her as she made her way to the front desk. There were two policemen standing at the reception area.

  "Are you Dan Johnson’s wife?”

  She nodded, unable to feel her arms. “Yes, I’m Lee Johnson.” There was a high-pitched scream inside her head.

  The heavyset, ruddy policeman looked at her without blinking. The wiry bushy one stared at the beige carpet. “We're sorry to inform you that your husband has been found dead. We found his body with what we believe was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head in his car at the waterfront park downtown.”

  She heard herself say, “No,” like it came from someone else. “Dan doesn’t even have a gun.” She wasn’t sure if she said the words or if they were inside her own head.

  The older one rested his hand on her arm. “We’re very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Johnson.”

  The room tilted and her knees buckled. The fuzzy policeman reached to steady her, his thick eyebrows knitted together in concern, his mouth moving, but the whirr between her ears drowned the words. She staggered to the potted plant by the glass doors and heaved three, four, five times, until her stomach cramped and she gulped air, unable to stand upright. Her eyes focused on the policeman’s black shiny shoes. His hand was on her back. His speech sounded like gibberish down a deep tunnel. The younger officer guided her to a chair. She looked past him to Paula, who stood slumped against the reception desk, hands clasped and her face white and stricken. Lee had whispered, “Call Linus.”

  * * *

  Two days later, Linus held her hand as they walked towards the lobby of her condominium complex. They had come from the funeral home, where Linus made the arrangements while Lee stared helplessly at her hands that seemed to have lost all their blood.

  Afterwards she slumped against Linus’s sturdy frame as they rode the elevator up to her condominium unit. There was a man lurking near her front door, dressed in tan pants, a white button-down shirt, and tennis shoes. He leaned against the wall, ankles crossed, holding a newspaper in his right hand. His index and middle fingers were stained with what Lee recognized as nicotine and tobacco smoke. Her mother’s fingers had been the same.

  "Can we help you?” Linus asked, tucking Lee’s arm under his own.

  The man approached them, favoring his right leg with a slight limp. "I work for Gaspare DeAngelo. You owe my boss some money." She got a whiff of musk aftershave mixed with cigarette smoke and garlic.

  He scowled at Lee’s blank look. “Don’t play dumb with me, lady. Y’know, Mr. DeAngelo, the guy who gave you a million bucks last year to keep your little business going while Danny boy worked out these, whad’ya call ‘em, bugs, yeah, bugs in the software.” He coughed and his lips parted, showing teeth stained the same brown of chewing tobacco she remembered from the men who stood on the sidewalk outside of her mother’s grocery store job when she was a child.

  "I know we have an investor but I don’t know the terms of the deal. Dan handled it,” said Lee.

  "I’m sure you know the terms better than I do, lady. But maybe you’re a little stressed, so I’ll review the highlights for you. Listen close. Mr. DeAngelo gives you and Danny a million bucks at twenty-five percent a year, payable by February 21st. Otherwise Mr. D. takes the company, if he wants it. February 21st was yesterday, but Mr. D. starts thinking, Danny’s brain is the company and now it’s splattered all over his fancy car, so now Mr. D.’s thinking he just wants his money.”

  Lee heard what he said, but her mind seemed incapable of understanding.

  Linus took a step forward. “Let me understand this. Are you threatening her?”

  The man kept his eyes on Lee. “Very good. At least your, uh, friend is starting to catch on.”

  She stared at him. “Even if what you say is true, I don’t have a million and a quarter to give you.”

  "My boss said to give you a few weeks.” He gave her a business card with his name, Von Marshal, and a phone number printed in black and white. “You call me to make the arrangements. My boss isn’t someone who likes to be played. People who don’t understand that have a way of, uh, not showing up at work one day, y’know what I mean?”

  Thirty minutes later, Lee sat shaking in front of her gas fireplace. Linus brought her a heavy wool sweater and they stared at one another for a long moment, too shocked to think of anything to say. After a few minutes, Linus got up and went into the kitchen. Lee heard him rummaging through cupboards and then a pop of a wine cork. The doorbell rang and she turned to see Linus rush in from the kitchen, holding his hand up to indicate she should stay on the couch. He put his eye to the peephole. “It’s just Paula,” he said, relief in his voice.

  Paula had dark circles under her eyes and her nose was red and raw. “Lee, when I was cleaning out the offices I found this on top of Dan’s computer.” Paula handed her an envelope with “Lee” scrawled in Dan’s block type print. She took it, splitting the envelope open with her finger while walking towards the bedroom. Alone, she shut the door, sinking heavily onto the edge of the bed. Dan’s red woolen slippers were placed neatly by the end table. She slipped her feet into them, unfolding the papers.

  But it wasn’t a note. There were no explanations, no words of love or sorrow. It was the terms of the agreement with DeAngelo, listed just as Von had described.

  She began to rock back and forth on the bed. And then, like a movie she didn’t want to watch, she imagined his last moments. He sealed the document in the envelope, scrawling her name in a guilty rush and taking a long swig of the whiskey he kept in his desk drawer for the courage to do what he had to do. Then he was in his car, parked in a busy lot at the waterfront park with its view of the Olympic Mountains. Here the reel became blurry. He might have watched the joggers, mothers with baby strollers, truant teenagers sneaking drags from a pot pipe, maybe thinking how much he would miss the world with its simple beauty and pleasures. Or perhaps he merely stared at the dashboard, overwhelmed with despair and panic, and nothing registered in his mind but “get it over with,” so the pain and hopelessness could end. Possibly it was like a tunnel that sucked and twirled him into blackness and he thought of nothing but the doing of it, the mechanics of his own death. The pulling of the trigger.

  She wept into his pillow, yearning to smell his aftershave but it smelled clean, like soap and fabric softener. He’d been sleeping at the office for weeks, working towards the product release date.

  She thought then, where did he get the gun and why did he do it in the car and how did he become that hopeless? What was the last thing he thought as he pulled the trigger? Was it of her or just his failures?

  Chapter 3

  About fifty miles north of the Oregon-Washington border the radio went to static. Lee moved the radio dial until she found the only station, country and western. That would be it from now until Portland, she thought. Sh
e drove another fifteen miles before stopping at a rest stop to use the facilities. It was dark now. She scanned the parking lot and then sprinted to the women’s restroom. The smell of human excrement and damp cement made her nauseous. She stood for a moment over the toilet, thinking she might vomit and wondering if this was the beginning of ‘morning sickness.’

  Outside, she spotted a vending machine and remembered a friend saying she ate crackers during her pregnancies to help with the nausea. She put two quarters in the slot, choosing animal crackers. As she headed for the minivan, she heard a rustle in the bushes. Terrified, she ran the rest of the way to the van, jumping behind the wheel and locking the door. She turned on her headlights and saw a possum creep out of the bushes, scuttling along the sidewalk. Somewhere between a rodent and reptile, his skin, long tail, and pointy nose made him appear like a creature from another planet.

  The gruesome image lingered with her as she drove the I-5 corridor through southwest Washington, crossing the bridge over the Columbia River from Vancouver, Washington to Portland, Oregon, along the flat green fields of the Willamette Valley, and as she wound up and around the mountains near Roseburg. She stopped at one of the small towns along I-5 to refuel and find something to eat.

  * * *

  She stood at the Dairy Queen counter, attempting to ignore the smells of fried meat and old grease. She ordered a Heath Bar Blizzard, thinking this small desolate town was similar to where she was headed. They all had Dairy Queens.

  Since Dan’s death and the subsequent nightmare days and nights that followed, her skin seemed to ache all the time. She fought the urge to put her head on the counter and weep. Instead she stuffed several napkins and a straw into her purse. She watched an older couple in the corner booth. The woman, missing several teeth and with gray hairs hanging from the sagging skin underneath her chin, shoved a breakfast sandwich in her mouth, all the while berating her male companion and rubbing the silver cross that hung below her ample breasts. “It’s your problem,” she said. “She’s nothing but a druggie. I’m not taking her brats into our house.”