I Didn't Mean to Kill My Best Friend
Page 4
It’s really not fair that fatty foods are so bad for you. Fatty foods should be good because they give you energy and make you feel better. Steve could eat whatever he wanted and never picked up any weight. Perhaps his thinness caused his disposition. Women don’t really go for skinny guys, thus it was fated that I was supposed to kill him. But on the upside, his lack of weight makes it easy for us to move him around. Well, most of him anyway. Maybe his thinness also explained his skewed view of tipping.
“Oh, man, this is great stuff!” Steve cried.
Steve watched the video of Maurice and the woman again. I eased back in my chair, amused with Steve’s reactions from across the table. Behind Steve, a group of people left with their boxes of food.
No special shake cups. Obviously they are new in town or passing through, because the locals know you come here for the shakes.
Their car displayed out of state plates. A feeling of superiority swelled in me. But died when I realized the plates didn’t guarantee my guess had been on target.
Steve laughed at the video again.
I have lost count of how many times he has watched the clip. I enjoyed it, but lost interest when our milkshakes arrived.
Cindy, our waitress and classmate from high school, knew Maurice. When Cindy first saw the scene play on Steve’s camera, she almost dropped her tray of food in shock. She called over her coworkers so they could all watch it. Now they were clustered over each other to view the clip.
Even in high school Maurice perfected his creepy vibe with women. He always tried taking revealing pictures of Cindy and her friends. They all won beauty contests and are still considered the most beautiful women in the county. I’m sure from those bad memories, Cindy is watching the video with much enthusiasm. Maurice had a bad name before, but now he is ruined because news travels fast in our town.
Steve held up his phone for the girls behind him. “Look at this part!”
His words didn’t matter since everyone knew what was going to happen.
The choir of repeating “oh my God” and laughing was suddenly replaced by the unison of a disappointed groan.
“Damn phone battery,” Steve grumbled as his viewing group broke up.
I stirred my half done milkshake with my straw. Steve’s milkshake remained untouched.
He wiped a tear from his eye. “That alone made the night.”
“Yes,” I commented. “About the night.”
“Well, we tried the lake, and that got us some great video, but did not help us with our initial problem. Too bad we’re landlocked.”
“What?”
“Well, if we lived on a volcanic island, Hawaii for example, just toss the sack into the lava. Done! Problem solved.”
“Yeah, but we are not in Hawaii.”
“I want to go to Hawaii.”
I ignored him. “So, ideas?”
He squirmed in the hard plastic chair. “I got it! You said earlier that we could drop it in front of a train, right?”
“I said something involving a train,” I answered hesitantly.
“We may not be on an island, but we are landlocked, so we have bridges.”
“Okay,” I replied, still not following his logic.
“We have really tall bridges over deep ravines—”
I like ravines. I even like the word “ravine.”
He slid his milkshake closer toward him. “So we go to the tallest bridge and drop the duffle over the side. On impact of the river it goes splat, everything gets carried away by the current, and any remaining elements get dispatched by vultures or other thingies.” Steve ate the cherry that topped his milkshake.
“Okay. . . .”
“Come on!” Steve moaned. “This is easy. All we have to do is make sure our aim is right, because I know the exact bridge we should use.”
“What if our aim is off?”
“Then it’s off. We make our way down the ravine and toss the parts into the river.”
“Hey! Why didn’t you put the rest of body in the sewer, with the other bits?”
“I tried, but I didn’t want to take the risk of clogging up the line. The sewer opening was very small, and the critters in the sewer wouldn’t have eaten the bones. Unless alligators were down—”
Steve froze and looked at me with clarity.
“No!”
“Aw, man, come on! We’re not that far from New York!”
“No!”
“Fine,” Steve pouted. “So we drive down to New Orleans—”
“No!”
“Florida—”
“We will resort to this plan as a final option.”
“Good! So where do we go in the meantime?”
My thoughts seemed to linger on the word that haunted my mind: “Ravine.”
Chapter Five