by Evelyn Glass
But while we cheerleaders—or stand-up comedians or actors or ballerinas or motivational speakers—can spot things in the crowd, little snapshots of people, a crowd member would have a difficult time if he tried to spot something in us. All of us are smiling widely, all of us are grinning like madwomen.
We bounce onto the court with our pom-poms waving and our butts wiggling, smiling radiantly at the crowd.
I get into position without having to think about it. I’m twenty-five now and high school seems way further back than it should, but I was a cheerleader then and my body remembers. I’ve danced this routine live four times now; it’s rote. My arms and legs pump to the beat without me having to think about it.
As I dance, my gaze moves naturally over the crowed. I can’t look here or there whenever I like. I have to turn my head as the dance dictates. About halfway through, my gaze moves across the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.
I’m not one for ogling, gawping, leering, creeping—or any other nasty verb which means openly declaring to a man with my eyes that I want him. I’m shy by nature. I don’t ogle or gawp or leer or creep. I just glance at the man each time my eyes move to him in the course of the dance. I’d guess he’s around my age, perhaps a few years older. He’s blonde with close-cropped hair, and he wears an expensive-looking gray suit. His face is square, clean-shaven, strong. And his eyes, even from where I dance in the court, are blue. Not just blue, but summer-sky-blue, deep-ocean-blue.
My body responds to this man almost instantly, my heart speeding up past what the dance demands, my palms sweating more than they usually do. Because this man is watching me. His piercing blue eyes are trained on me. And then they move. I follow their trail. They glance to his left, to the man two people over from him.
It takes all my training as a dancer not to fumble. I have no idea how I manage to keep the rhythm of the dance. I’m reminded of when you’re walking a dog and a car backfires. No matter how well-trained the dog, it will invariably bolt—at least on instinct—before you call it back. But somehow I manage to keep going.
The person who the gray-suited man watches is my ex-husband, Eric.
Until just now, I didn’t know he was out of prison.
Eric.
He was a hurricane of violence and stress and anger and hate. The kind of man to hurl a mug at the wall and watch as it shatters into dozens of pieces and then gesture at you with a broad-faced hammer and demand that I pick it up. What the hell is a nineteen-year-old girl in too deep meant to do against a brute of a man like that? More of a silverback gorilla, without any of the nobility. Just a big lumbering ogre, all bulging mounds of muscle, a dormant sack of power waiting to twitch into action. Two heads taller than me and three times as wide.
He was charming at first, as they always are. I know that now because I’ve read up about it on the internet. That’s how narcissists and psychopaths get you. They play the proverbial Prince Charming, make all the right gestures and do all the rights things. They compliment you and they give you flowers and they always open doors for you and they make you believe—believe without question—they are this man they’re pretending to be.
And so you move in, and get married. Then it starts. Odd little things. That was the way with us. I remember putting on a dress for one of my friend’s birthdays, a short pink dress I’d bought in the January sales a few weeks ago, a dress I’d been waiting for a chance to wear. Standing in front of the mirror, looking myself up and down, thinking I looked pretty good. But then Eric appeared at the door, filling the doorway with his unnecessary bulk, and sniffed the air as though something rotten.
“What the hell is that? Are you tryin’ to show the world your pussy or what?” he’d growled. Pussy! He’d never used the word before. “Take it off. Wear something that doesn’t make you look like a goddam hooker.”
He’d never been like that before. He’d always been kind. If he’s getting angry, the logic of my warped brain told me, it must be my fault. Instead of nipping this in the bud, defying him and wearing the dress and showing him that I wouldn’t be bullied, I changed. I changed, and that was it. He had me.
Two years of my life wasted on that man. I’d wanted to go to college earlier, but Eric insisted that I worked as a waitress so he could have pay check from me every week. When I asked to put some aside to save, he laughed. When I told him I wanted to save for college, he laughed even louder, a mean laugh which didn’t reach his eyes.
“You’ve got a life, haven’t you? You’ve got a husband and you’ll have a kid soon.” He had said. But I didn’t want a child, not with him, and I didn’t want the life I’d been tricked into.
The first time he hit me, it was because I’d accidently dropped the television remote and the batteries had fallen out and one of them had rolled underneath the dresser. The gap between the bottom of the dresser and the floor was too small for even my hands, and when I stood up and told him it was no good, he backhanded me across the face. Casually. That was the worst of it. It wasn’t dramatic in the least. It was mundane. Just a casual backhand across the jaw.
It took every ounce of willpower I had to leave him, gathering my things in the night and running into the dark corners of New York’s underbelly, staying at hostels and women’s shelters until I could get back on my feet. The only things that really made it alright—apart from the restraining orders—was when I heard he’d gone to prison for assault. A bar fight, apparently, and Eric was locked up.
I was staying at a women’s shelter at the time. When I returned to the room I shared with a Nigerian women called Asor, I fell into my bed giggling like a hyena, wrenching giggles that sounded barely human. She asked me if something was wrong. “No, everything is alright now,” I’d giggled.
I thought it was. Assault and he’d gotten eight years for it. That was three years ago.
And now he’s here, looking at me with that big dumb bulk of a face, his eyes deep set and shadowed beneath a Neanderthal’s jutting forehead. As I watch, he rubs his hands together.
The handsome man moves toward Eric, stands behind him, and then begins talking. It looks like they’re friends. When Eric turns around, he laughs, a strange sound even in the arena, with thousands of people cheering and screaming. It cuts through the noise like a foghorn, alien-sounding. The two men laugh and talk together.
The dance ends and it’s like I’m being carried off the court, even though my legs are carrying me. It’s instinct, part of the routine, and before I know it I’m back in the locker room and Elle is grinning at me, exhilarated as she always is after a dance. I’m rarely the same. Mostly, after a dance, I’m thinking about money and doing equations in my head. How many hours of college did I just buy? How much closer am I to becoming a vet? But today, as Elle babbles on, all I can think about is Eric.
When did he get out? Why was he released so many years early? How did he find me? For the rest of the night, these questions circle my head. It’s a good thing I have all the dances memorized. I remember nothing, doing nothing, seeing nothing, except Eric’s face. The next thing I know, I’m back in the locker room, and all the girls around me are changing out of their uniforms.
I think about asking one of the security guards to walk to my car with me, but I decide against it. I don’t want to have to explain why, open a crack to my past life and the woman I used to be. Elle and the other girls respect me. That’s how it seems, anyway. If I tell them that I was once beaten, defeated, that might change. Instead, I get out my college book and begin reading.
“Are you coming?” Elle asks, standing over me.
“Just going to sit here for a little while,” I answer, as calmly and casually as I can.
Elle nods, looking at me suspiciously, but she doesn’t press. The sight of me sitting there with a book in my hand, reading it when I don’t have to, isn’t suspicious enough to cause any problems.
Soon she leaves me, the locker room empties, and I try to focus on the book.
My plan is to wa
it until everyone, the girls and the fans, are gone. There’s no way Eric will wait around that long. And even if he did, what’s he going to do with all the security around?
###
The parking lot is surprisingly still crowded with fans and police. Not security, but actual police. Their blue lights bounce off the asphalt. It’s dark, autumn, and the car park is glazed with a fine sheen of rain. The moonlight and the police lights combine to make the floor seem bright, too bright for my eyes. I walk through the crowd, squinting. I try to ignore the police cars and the people, but soon I realize I’m walking through the crowd, toward the lights. A coincidence, I tell myself. The lights just happen to be in the same direction as my car. Anyway, I’m constantly scanning the crowd, waiting for Eric to spring out on me. A can of hairspray bulges from my pocket. If he appears, I’ll blind him and run.
Finally, I thread my way through the crowd and reach my car. I stop abruptly at the police barrier. An officer waves his hand in front of my face and tells me to back away. People nudge me from all sides, peering over my shoulders at the car; the car which the police have surrounded. My car.
My mind conjures up stories which make no sense. I imagine Elle planting drugs in my glove box. She would never do that, doesn’t do drugs as far as I know, but I imagine her all the same dropping the drugs into my car with a sly smile. Or perhaps someone has attached a bomb to my car. Or something . . . what? What?
“What . . . what . . .”
I realize I’m shouting above the crowd. The officer who waved me back—a beanpole man with a thick brown mustache above thin lips—approaches me.
“Ma’am, step back, please.”
“What happened?” I shout.
“Nothing to worry about, ma’am—”
“That’s my car!” I roar.
My heart gallops in my chest, hooves thudding against my ribcage.
“Oh,” the police officer says. “Wait here.”
The news reverberates through the crowd, but I barely hear it:
“It’s her car!”
“Who is she?”
“A cheerleader! The short blonde cheerleader!”
“Her car? What the hell?”
A man wearing a long black coat returns with the beanpole officer. His face is haggard and his eyes are pits and he looks world-weary. He’s a detective, I guess.
“This your car?” he spits.
“Yes,” I answer.
“Can I ask you, ma’am, if you’ve ever heard of a Eric Lewis.”
I swallow. “He was my husband. He’s my ex-husband.”
He leans in, and already I know it’s a detective’s trick. Perhaps I saw it in a crime documentary once. He’s going to tell me something and gauge my reaction, try to see if I’m in on it. Whatever it is.
He leans right in, his lips close to my ear so only I can hear. “We’ve just found him dead in the trunk of your car. Please, come with me for questioning.”
I take a stunned step back. “Really?” I gasp.
The officer chews his lip, studying me. “Really,” he says, and some of the tension seems to go from his face. He lifts the tape and waves me through. “We may need to take you to the station. Nothing to worry about. Just a few routine questions.”
“Fine. But . . . Is he really dead?”
The detective nods. “Dead as dead can be.”
Despite the shock of it all, despite the gawping eyes of the crowd, and despite the arm which leads me away from the car toward a police car, I can’t help but smile to myself.
Eric is dead. Eric is dead!
But then the smile slips.
Who the hell put him in my car?
The police car pulls away, and I sit in the back, forehead resting against the glass.
Too late, I realize I left my college book back in the locker room.
Chapter Two
Samson
One last job, I tell myself. One last job and then I’m done. New York can go to hell. I’ll go away, somewhere, anywhere. I’ll meet beautiful women and see beautiful things. I’ll screw a woman from every country in the world and I’ll stand on the Great Wall of China and piss off the edge of it.
The life has been kind to me because I’ve always understood the life. My dad was a killer and so am I. That’s what I am: a killer. Not an assassin or a hitman or a contract man. Just a killer, and when you can come to terms with that, really accept what you are, this life will be kind to you. You kill, you get paid, and the cycle continues until you’re where I am: twenty-nine and rich, all my limbs intact, my face remarkably unscarred. These days I do less work, only take contracts I have some personal belief in, sort of like an artist who’s earned enough to paint or write or sing only what they want to now.
But if I’m an artist, I’m a Jackson Pollock type, the only difference being that my paint is blood.
In this case, it’s the blood of a worm of a man, a barely-human creature who doesn’t deserve to breathe and should’ve been put down a long time ago. A half-life man. Less than a slug. Less than an atom. I was never much good at school—deep in the life, even then—but as I understand it an atom is the smallest thing there is. He’s less than that, this man. Taking him out for a large paycheck won’t be a struggle, and that’s a fact.
I stand a few people over from him, watching Anna Hill. It was her father who hired me, a big-time businessman, wealthy, but with a complicated relationship with his daughter. I knew before I even met with him what he was going to ask me to do. I make a habit of researching my clients. He’s richer than God, or close, and yet his daughter dances to pay her way through college when he could easily pay it. He wants to pay it, too; I managed to get that out of him. So Anna Hill is dancing because she does not want to take his money. Instantly, I respect her. Working for it means more. That’s what my old beast of a father used to say.
Her father, Ian Hill, told me that Eric Lewis was married to his daughter once. I already knew this. But he also told me that he has contacts in prison, and all Eric’s talked about to his cellmates is that when he’s finally free, he’s going to kill Anna. He used to beat her when they were married. This from a man who was released early for good behavior. God bless the justice system.
The man will be dead by the end of the night. The evidence is conclusive, as the boys in blue would say. One of my hacker contacts found encrypted emails on his hard drive, sent through the dark web, containing all sorts of juicy details about how he was going to slice and dice his onetime beloved. Three different cellmates confirmed that he’d bragged about wanting to kill her.
But I like to be sure, which is why I found Eric in a bar two weeks ago and bought him a drink, and another, and another, until he began to talk to me. He talked about his bitch wife and how she never valued him or gave him what he needed. Then he’d leaned in, swaying from how drunk he was, and he’d whispered to me about how he was going to do her, do her nice and proper. I laughed with him, stifling my emotions. I couldn’t kill him there in the bar. It wasn’t one of my bars.
But here, tonight, it won’t be so hard.
I push past the people and tap Eric on the shoulder. With a visible effort—as though he is dislodging his haze—he turns and faces me. I laugh, a fake laugh, and he laughs too. “It’s you,” he grunts, in his stupid slow drone of a voice.
“It’s me,” I say, and we both chuckle. “You’re a fan of the Nicks, then?”
“The Nicks rule, sure,” Eric says. His lips spread into a snakelike grin, all gums. “But that’s not the only reason I’m here.” He stops for a moment. “You’re a good guy, aren’t you, Reed?” I’d told him I was Reed because I never take risks. What if he’d mentioned Samson Black to somebody and discovered that Samson Black is an infamous boogeyman?
“Of course I am, buddy,” I say, and then I slap him on the back.
He nods to the dancers. Anna: short and blonde and bouncy, smiling widely as she waves her pom-poms. It’s a fake smile, of course. I can tell that just by loo
king at her. It’s the same smile I’m using now, forcing the muscles of my face to contract in a certain way, with absolutely no emotion behind it. But when she shakes, wiggles, it’s magic. My mind tries to stray, but I force it back on track. There will be enough time to fantasize about this woman later. Maybe I’ll even introduce myself when this business is done. Doubtful, I think. I’ve never been to prison because I don’t do stupid shit like that.
“That’s my ex-wife,” he says, his beads of eyes glinting. “And tonight’s the night.”
“Wow,” I say, and I say it as though I am impressed, as though this wife-beating psychopath is my best pal, and he grins. I lean in. “When are you going to . . .”
He reaches up and touches my shoulder. Great pals. I want to snap his hand at the wrist. “After the game,” he says. “I’m going to wait for her in the parking lot.”
“Good man,” I say.
