by Julia Derek
“Can you please follow that cab?” I ask the bearded driver with the turban. To my surprise and relief, he doesn’t say a word but instantly drives after Jason’s cab. The traffic isn’t quite as heavy now, and the closer we get to the Queensboro Bridge, the lighter it gets. We have no problem tailing Jason’s cab. We’re clearly heading someplace in Queens. Most likely to Claire’s apartment, I think bitterly.
We zip across the bridge, staying close behind Jason’s cab. We drive into Queens, deep into the borough, into parts where I grew up. I haven’t been in this area in a long, long time.
“You still want to go, miss?” the cab driver asks me. It’s the first thing he has said since I stepped into the car.
“Yes, please,” I reply. “Please just follow that other cab until it stops.”
We drive along dark roads and quiet neighborhoods for another ten minutes and then Jason’s cab stops.
This girl can’t be making much money living this far away from the city, I ponder. Must take her an hour to get into the city if she’s lucky with subway connections.No wonder she’s working her claws into my husband, I think, stewing.
I tell the cab driver to stop and let me out. After having paid him, I leave the car and run up to the nearest building behind which I hide. There are several streetlights illuminating the area, which would make it fairly easy for Jason to see me, especially since there aren’t a lot of people on the streets here.
Fortunately, he doesn’t appear to see me. I can watch him being let inside an apartment building.
As soon as he is gone, I run after him and freak out when I find that the building’s front door is locked. Which is to be expected, of course. This is not the hood. Terrified I’m about to lose Jason when I’m so close to catching him in the act, I press all sixteen apartment buzzers hard and at the same time. Only seconds later, someone lets me in.
Thank God.
I tiptoe inside, but moving quickly. I’m determined to catch my husband. There is no elevator, so the footsteps I can hear climbing the stairs must belong to him. As quietly as I can, I stalk after him, treading softly up the stairs.
When I have reached the second floor and he the third, it sounds like he stops climbing the stairs. Taking even more care to be quiet now, I bring myself closer and closer to the third floor. I hear him knock on what sounds like an apartment door then. It’s a distinct, pounding sound that echoes inside the quiet building. That just has to be him.
I’m only two steps away from the third floor when I hear a door open. Hiding behind the pillar that separates me from the third-floor landing, I don’t dare to even breathe.
“Hi honey,” a girly voice exclaims. “What took you so long? I was beginning to think that you weren’t coming after all.”
“I just had something I needed to finish at work,” the unmistakable voice of my husband says in reply. “But here I am. Are you going to let me in?” There is a pleading note in his voice, as if he won’t be able to handle a no from the girl.
A giggle rings through the building, feeling like a bouquet of small icicles stabbing my heart one after another in staccato mode.
“Maybe,” the girl finally says slowly, teasingly. It’s obvious that she is enjoying herself right now. “If you promise you’ll be a good boy tonight and let me do exactly what I want with you…”
I stick my head around the brick pillar keeping me hidden from both my husband and his new mistress then. I need to know who he is talking to, if it really is Claire. Her voice sounds different from what I can remember. I’m so livid with what is going on that I don’t care if either of them can see me. Which they might because it’s not exactly dark in this building. All I want to know is if this is in fact my husband speaking to the blonde bombshell. I need to see with my own eyes if that’s what’s actually going on. I don’t trust my ears; I need the full picture, the visual one as well as the audio now that I’ve gotten this far.
It is Claire who is standing in the doorway, only about five yards away from my hiding spot.
The girl I have suspected to be my husband’s new mistress all along is wearing sexy, red baby doll tulle lingerie that only serves to enhance her tall, slender frame in which the breasts are large and firm. One of her long legs sticks out from the apartment and is encased in black fishnet stockings. She is pressing her chest in the direction of my husband, licking her red-painted lips suggestively as she keeps talking to him. Jason’s eyes go between her lips and breasts, as though he can’t make up his mind which are the most compelling and deserving of his attention. He stands with his back to me, seeming completely unaware that someone watches him. Claire, too, seems unaware that I’m there and staring at the two of them. Or maybe she simply doesn’t care that she has an audience. Based on what I know of her so far, this sure is possible. She obviously doesn’t give a damn what her neighbors think.
It’s only when she snakes a slender hand with short, red-painted fingernails around his neck that I finally realize that she can’t be much older than twenty-two. As he leans in to kiss her, I get so nauseous bile rises in my throat and I must cover my mouth for it not to erupt beyond my lips. Sharp pain shots through my heart, as if I’m being impaled. Even so, I keep staring at the two of them kissing each other, Jason embracing Claire while she rubs up against him like a cat in heat.
They don’t last much longer in her doorway. After a long, passionate kiss, they part and disappear into the lit space behind Claire, the door closing after them.
I keep staring at the door, the sound of it shutting going through my mind over and over. I don’t know what it is with me, why I keep having this hope in my chest that my husband will suddenly realize what he is doing and push Claire away. All I know is that I’m praying in my mind that he will somehow wake up and do so, and then come running out of that door again. Finally wake up. By going through with this, there is no way out for him. No matter how deeply I search myself, I know that there is nothing I can come up with that will explain, excuse what he is doing.
No amount of silent pleas reaches him; the door remains shut.
Well, there is no mistaking it any longer then, I conclude bitterly. This man is an adulterer and a murderer who only cares about one thing—his own pleasure and the way the world perceives him.
Chapter 18
After I have watched Jason disappear into Claire’s apartment and realized that he is perfectly happy where he is right now, there is nothing left for me to do in that building. Still, I sink down on top of the staircase and lean against the brick pillar behind which I have just hidden. I’m so devastated with grief that I’m literally paralyzed and feel as though I’m about to choke. I keep gasping for air as large tears roll down my cheeks and continue along my throat. My heart is broken and I don’t think it can ever be repaired. I can hear the sound of Claire laughing from within her apartment, then Jason’s laugh, and I cry harder.
Yes, he is not coming out of there any time soon.
The tears keep streaming down my face and I have to press my hands against my mouth so no one can hear the sounds of anguish I want to cry out. A young couple passes by me, ignoring me completely. Somehow, I do find the strength to stand up at last and begin to make my way down the stairs, the same way I came several minutes ago now. Every part of me is aching, trembling with sorrow and pain.
It takes me some time before I’m all the way down to the building’s front door and out on the street again. The crisp night air hits my face as I leave the building, having a surprisingly sobering effect on me.
As I walk along the quiet street, my tears soon dry and I’m feeling a little better. In fact, the farther away I get from Claire’s building, the better I feel because anger is building within me now.
A few blocks later, I’m no longer sad in any way, only furious, so furious that I have begun to shake. I fist my hands and wish that I could punch both Claire and Jason right then, punch and kick them both until there is no life left in either of them. In my mind I hear the
m scream for me to show them mercy, but I just laugh and kick and punch them harder. Each time my fist or foot connects with a part of their bodies, euphoria runs through my blood. It’s with a stomach full of lead and a mind so poisoned with hate, pain, and jealousy that I feel I have fully transformed into that other person, the person that began taking root inside me this morning as Jason and I shared that cab to work.
I know there is only one thing that will make that person go away, that will make me feel like myself again, and that is if I get to see these two dead. Neither of them deserve to live, they are so disgusting. My husband is a psychopath I can now determine beyond a reasonable doubt, and the girl he is with doesn’t care about anyone except herself. That was clarified to me as I overheard her coworkers discuss her when I visited her workplace. According to her friend, Claire even seems to take pleasure in making other people suffer, which makes her at best a narcissist with sadistic tendencies and at worst a full-blown psychopath like my husband. In either case, a girl like that will only cause more grief in other women’s lives, tear families apart, destroy lives, just because she wants something right then. This is why it’s better if she, too, dies.
I will go to my parents’ house and find the gun that I know my father has somewhere, probably in his bedside table. I will take it and then I will find another moment when these two are together so I can shoot them both. At the rate they seem to be seeing each other, I’m sure it won’t take more than a few days before that happens. It doesn’t matter to me if I will go to jail for having done such a thing. Deep in my heart I will always know that I did the right thing—I saved the world from more grief, kept families intact.
For now though I will go home and when Jason joins me, I will of course not let on what I know. I will act as well as I did in the cab this morning, make him believe that everything is okay between us. That I’m still his poor, pathetic, clueless wife. It won’t be hard; all the hate in my heart will guide me, help me say and do the right things until I get my revenge on him and the slut. If he tries to have sex with me, I will reject him, claiming that I’m on my period or that I’m simply not in the mood. He will understand. What else can the fucker say?
I laugh as I make my way down into the subway station that I have finally bumped into while walking along the dark streets. It must be late because I haven’t run into a single person since I left Claire’s building. I can only imagine that Jason is currently enjoying some form of punishment administered by his young mistress. It hadn’t sounded like he wanted to be the dominant with her the way he prefers to be with me.
I guess he doesn’t feel enough respect for me, I ponder acidly. Well, I hope he feels it’s worth it. Worth getting his dick blown into pieces. That is the first place where I intend to shoot him. We’ll see if he won’t respect me then... Laughing hysterically, I swipe my subway card in the turnstile and enter the station.
It takes me more than an hour to get back to the Upper West Side and our apartment building, just as I had suspected. I keep my head down as I walk inside the lobby, barely acknowledging our doorman, who greets me as usual as I arrive. In the same black mood, I take the elevator up to our floor and enter our apartment. I jump in the shower to clean up quickly and then I slip into bed. Not that I think that Jason will arrive anytime soon—it’s only eleven—but I’m not about to take any chances. The way I feel right now, I’m not entirely sure that I’ll be able to perfectly fake my emotions. I need to sleep before I can be sure I’ll be convincing enough to fool him into thinking that everything is just A-Okay with me when it’s never been more wrong.
As I lie in bed and stare up into the ceiling, waiting for the heavy duty sleeping pills I’ve taken to kick in, I think about Matthew for the first time in weeks. Tears fill my eyes as I wonder if the reason he was born dead has anything to do with what I’m about to do—the matters I’m about to set straight in the world.
I can’t help but wonder if my son’s dad had turned out to be normal, not a sociopath and a murderer—which made his mom kill his dad—would God have let him live? Was Matt spared only because the truth would be too much for any child to bear? What would have happened to Matt without his parents? Would it destroy him? Or would he be glad, thankful that people like us were out of his life? We are both terrible, terrible people.
I force myself to stop thinking morbid thoughts about Matt and flip over on my side as I wait for sleep to come. Fortunately, it doesn’t take long before I do fall into a deep, deep slumber in which no dreams appear.
***
“…Lexi. Lexi.” Someone calls my name. I want to tell the person to go away, that I want to keep sleeping, but the person keeps shaking me. Finally, I give up my fight for more sleep and open my eyes. Jason is looking down at me. I move my head to the sides and see that I’m in our bedroom and that it is morning outside our bedroom window. The blinds are up.
Jason is smiling at me. “I think you have to get up now or you won’t make it into work.” He leans in to kiss my head, like I’m a child. “Wow, you must’ve been really tired, babe!”
As I rub my eyes and the fog that has kept my brain in a daze evaporates, all of what happened yesterday floods back into my mind. Stark images of Jason and Claire kissing in the bright stairwell outside her apartment flash through my mind. It’s with the utmost amount of willpower that I make them go away and smile back at Jason.
“Yeah, I was,” I mumble. I push him aside and make myself sit up. Stretching my arms to the ceiling, I pretend to yawn big to buy myself time. I don’t need extra oxygen to awaken further; the second I laid eyes on the monster that is my husband and the memories of yesterday appeared in my head, I was fully awake.
“What time is it?” I ask Jason, who is standing by our bed, watching me. What the hell is he waiting for? He is already dressed for work, which means he must have been up for a while.
“Seven thirty,” he replies, fixing his tie. The dark red tie I bought him just because I love him so much. This is just getting more and more tragic. “You’ll need to hurry to get ready. I didn’t want to wake you since you seemed so tired. I hope that was the right thing to do.”
“Yeah, I needed to sleep,” I say. “Hey, I’m not in the mood to rush. I’m feeling kind of queasy, actually.” I make a face. “Maybe I’m coming down with something. I think I’ll work from home this morning. So no need to wait for me.”
Jason tilts his head in that way that makes him seem like he couldn’t care more, frowning slightly. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” I say and get out of bed. The last thing I want to do is share a cab with Jason to work this morning. “I’m going to start my day with a long shower and see how I feel after that.”
Jason nods. “Okay. Well, I have lots to do at the office, so I’ll get going then. I’ll have breakfast there.” He blows me an air kiss. “Hope you feel better, babe. I’ll check in with you later.”
“Sounds good,” I say and walk toward our bathroom. Jason has left the bedroom before I have opened the bathroom door.
Clearly he can’t get away from me fast enough, I ponder darkly. His rendezvous with Claire yesterday must have gone especially well.
I do take a long shower and when I’m done and wrap my hair in a towel, I decide that I will call my mother and tell her that I’m coming over for a visit instead of staying home working. I have nothing in my schedule that can’t wait until this afternoon. My mother is a homemaker, so she is usually at home, unlike my dad, who’s always working. The sooner I can get a hold of his gun, the better. Hopefully, Jason and Claire will get together for another romp in the next few days. I want to be prepared for whatever happens, so I can get things taken care of. No point in waiting.
My mom picks up the phone after only a couple of rings.
“Hey, Mom, it’s me, Lexi,” I say, almost feeling like a normal person after hearing my mom’s soft “hello.” She has always had a calming, restorative effect on me.
“Hi, Alexandra, what a nice s
urprise! I was going to call you today. I was getting a little worried. I left a voicemail for you a couple of days ago. Is everything okay?”
I remember then that my mom did call. I was going to call her back yesterday, but then other, more pressing matters occupied my mind and made me forget all about her. “Yes, yes. I’m sorry. I’ve just been so busy with work and stuff. Hey, what are you doing today? I was thinking about coming for a visit.”
“A visit today? Could you come tomorrow? I have so much to do what with your father’s sixtieth birthday coming up on Sunday. You haven’t forgotten about that, I hope. I was going to go shopping and I need to clean the house.”
I have completely forgotten that my father is about to have a milestone birthday. Thankfully, my mom, who is always preparing for special events such as this one well in advance, hasn’t forgotten. The thought of my parents almost make me change my mind about killing Jason and Claire.
I shake my head as my eyes well up with tears. No, it can’t be helped. They must still die. I clear my throat. “No, of course I haven’t forgotten, Mom. Jason and I will be there as planned. But how about you go shopping and I clean the house for you?” That way I can also look for Dad’s gun without getting disturbed, I think.
“Oh, no, I can’t let you come here and clean the house, Alexandra!” My mom sounds outraged. “Shouldn’t you be at work today? Are you sure everything is okay?”
“Yes, Mom, everything is fine. And I’m working from home today, so I have time for a big break. Tomorrow I have to be at the office. I just felt like coming over for a visit. It feels like we haven’t seen each other in forever!”
“Yes, well, that’s true. It’s been a while.” My mom sighs. “Okay, well, why don’t you come for a while then. I have time for a quick lunch. I suppose you could help me a little. If you don’t mind, maybe you can fold the laundry while I pick up groceries.”
