Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets

by Miles, Matthew

  She laughs. “I don’t know, a girl can hope, can’t she?”

  “So maybe we’re both just normal people after all,” he tells her with a smile, which she answers. “So what do you normally do on these blind dates?”

  She just grins at him again. “Well, I usually get laid, at least,” she tells him, giving him a coy laugh. “Weirdoes can be pretty wild in the sack. But I hope that, one of these times, it’s actually somebody I want to be with a second time. Sometimes I’m afraid I’m going to die alone.”

  “What’s wild in the sack?” he asks her.

  “That’s the secret,” she tells him. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “For sure,” he promises her. “How do I find out?”

  “Buy me another drink,” she insists.

  He is happy to oblige.

  It’s all he has money for.

  But it proves to be enough.

  An hour later, they’re in the passenger’s side of her car, his face buried in her chest. He can’t breathe, but he finds that only drives him crazier, the lack of oxygen - until he’s actually truly gasping for air.

  He has to pull his head free to breathe, looking up at her.

  It doesn’t feel right – he doesn’t know who this person smothering him even is.

  But he knows she doesn’t look like Jaime at all to him anymore.

  He’s suddenly boiling with rage, blood pounding in disgust at the way she’s grinding against him and moaning like some frat party prey pretending this is first love or something, not the coupling of a pair of barnyard animals that it really is.

  He finds himself clawing for her mouth, tired of hearing her, wanting to silence her, wanting this to end.

  She’s not going to die alone.

  He can promise her that.

  *****

  Siobhan’s funeral hits Dodge like a slap to his face. A punch to his gut.

  He hasn’t been feeling well the last several days. Understandably. But it’s suddenly different now. He has to confront the reason for real.

  Funny how lying to the police can keep your mind, and heart, off what’s really going on.

  There’s nothing like a funeral to make you stare reality in the face - especially when that face is the cold, unresponsive - vacant - stare of the person whose life you know best. Whose life you shared.

  Now, the police, the plots, Jaime - all of it - mean nothing to him anymore.

  Listening to a priest drone on, Siobhan’s mother standing at his side, betrays the brutal meaninglessness of life for Dodge. He knows he’ll likely never see Siobhan’s parents again - that the only bond he had with them is being lowered into the ground.

  He remembers the first time he met them. They were more like objects than people to him - Siobhan dragging him home for Easter - how awkward it felt going from the freedom of their college dorms to being a guest in her parents’ home.

  How real that had felt, compared to anything now.

  So real he was crawling underneath his own skin the whole time - playing the good, young, new boyfriend, wanting her parents to trust him, to feel good about him, feeling like a fake doing all of that.

  Knowing that all he wanted was to have sex with their daughter every waking second, and knowing he wasn’t fooling anybody - until the second night he was staying there that weekend, she slipped into the guest room despite her parents’ rules.

  So, sure, he felt true love for the first time, even if only for a moment, but it was clear from that moment on that they meant more to each other than anything else ever would. Eventually that would mean more than just breaking rules to have sex - it would mean helping her through her father’s death, moving here to help her launch her career, and eventually her own business.

  Giving up his career plan so she could do what she always wanted to do - rule the roost.

  But maybe that makes it sound worse than it was, Dodge thinks. He was happy - he had no responsibilities. He didn’t have to scrape and fight to find work to prove he was a capable journalist - he was instead free to pursue writing what he wanted.

  And maybe Siobhan thought it was crazy that he fixated on the most ridiculous things - like quantifying how the imposition of order amplifies the inherent chaos of the universe - but maybe she was delighted too to foster that passion in him, to rebel in her own way while also upsetting the whole gender dynamics of the corporate workplace.

  In their own way, without ever obsessing over the pie-eyed romanticism of the whole idea, they were what people mean when they say soul mates. People whose flaws define their relationship, and their attraction to each other, as much as their strengths.

  Dodge knows there is no language, no poetry, to soften this.

  The only woman he ever loved is gone. And not of old age, or cancer, or some car accident - she’s gone by the sword - literally - in a tangle of adultery and simple, brutal misunderstanding.

  Dodge doesn’t know what she was doing at Dressler’s. But he thinks she found out about him and Jaime - something that was merely thirty minutes of transgression over a whole life together. But it may have catalyzed this whole mess just the same

  And, if so, Dodge knows he deserves it - that he deserves to suffer - and he embraces that suffering - that the sobs wracking him, swaying over his wife’s grave - are real.

  That the loss of her, and of her love, is more overwhelming than even the joy they knew together.

  Dodge can’t believe the police approach him only moments after the last shovel full of soil is thrown, buried in the ground and walked away from. As much as it feels impossible to be separated from her, some understanding of the reality, and the finality, of death, seems to finally sink in.

  The only thing he can do is walk away from her grave, because there is simply nothing else left to do, or gain, there.

  Leaning against the hearse, the driver waiting to take him back to the funeral home, Dodge watches Broonzy shamble toward him.

  “Really, Broonzy?” Dodge asks. “You’re harassing me here, now?”

  Broonzy looks genuinely human, but his demeanor still betrays the hubris of all police work - that whatever is important at that moment to them is more important than anything else.

  “Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Broonzy tells him. “You’re going to want to know that you weren’t ID’d as being with them doped up chicks in Amsterdam when they died.”

  Dodge just stares at him, trying to comprehend the implications - mostly, if this makes him a suspect in his wife’s murder again.

  “So what’s happening here?” Dodge asks. “What’s going on?”

  Broonzy just stares with his head cocked, one eye squinted at him.

  “That’s the thing,” Broonzy explains. “Don’t nobody know the truth of what’s going on, really. Maybe you, if anybody.”

  “Truth’s bigger than everybody, Broonzy – nobody ever knows it,” Dodge tells him. “I really don’t know how any of this happened,” he promises.

  Not unless he wants to admit all of the little decisions, little lies, little secrets that set all of this suffering into motion.

  All of this murder.

  *****

  Chuck knows two things.

  One - he better clear town - maybe for good - before anything catches up to him.

  A dead Craigslist girl will not go unnoticed.

  Especially if no one takes her ad down.

  In this town, at least.

  That’s the other thing he knows - he wants to find another woman soon, to hold her against him, until he can’t take it anymore, until he explodes, and blasts the life right out of her eyes.

  He can’t describe this feeling – the risk, the thrill.

  Just that all he wants is to feel it again.

  And he knows where he’s going to look for it.

  Las Vegas.

  What happens there stays there, he hears.

  He hopes.

  *****

  Stupid me. Dodge makes himself laugh, test
driving his new navy blue Crown Vic, giggling at the way it makes cars scatter. It definitely looks like a trooper car. A quick acceleration up on anyone’s rear end, in any lane, sends them scrambling to get out of his way. The Thule ski racks on top only help. He knows from experience any dark car, Crown Vic or not, with ski racks sends the pulses of drivers racing, looking like a cop car at first glance.

  Even more so with the Crown Vic. Hell, with a flashing light, he could pull somebody over. He wouldn’t mind playing bad cop. Bad lieutenant. Emitting his own desperate whine. A siren for help.

  He needs help.

  There’s no doubt about it.

  The smart thing is to get a lawyer.

  But getting a lawyer makes him look guilty.

  Buying a Crown Vic makes him look crazy.

  Sometimes crazy looks suspicious.

  But looking guilty always looks suspicious.

  In his heart of hearts, he knows Jaime is the only one who can really help him.

  Not a lawyer.

  She has a way of making things happen.

  In his heart of hearts, he knows this.

  And if he wants to, he can make her make things happen for him.

  He doesn’t have a specific plan.

  Just articulating the possibility, though, conjures the vision, the confidence.

  Jaime uses him.

  It’s okay for him to use Jaime.

  And not just in the way that Jaime wants him to use her.

  *****

  Jaime changes direction, takes an unplanned right at the stop sign just past Dodge’s house. She sucks on her vodka and cranberry from a fountain soda cup, wrapping her lips around the straw and pulling the sweet booze into her mouth.

  It doesn’t surprise her she picks up a tail at Dodge’s house.

  She’s being followed.

  When she passes his house, whoever is staking him out starts following her.

  It’s a sure sign he’s not there.

  She catches a glimpse of a cop car sliding into traffic behind her after she passes the gate at his driveway.

  She doesn’t care if she’s being followed, as long as she doesn’t get pulled over. She’s drunk. Wasted drunk. Her nerves have been getting to her. Tension is growing on these streets.

  She wonders if it’s the little boy cop with the little boy crush on her.

  Or hopes. Then she might not mind getting pulled over.

  She could make his day.

  And then make an anniversary out of it.

  The lights never come on, though.

  So she just pulls over. She’s too drunk to drive anyway. Maybe they can just haul her off to prison and she can stop worrying about what she’s done. Spend the rest of her days as some butch guerilla’s sex slave. Maybe that’s what she needs right now.

  She doesn’t know, she might be serious about making this cop’s day.

  Maybe she needs to start playing another game besides the Dodge game.

  She’s so serious about these stupid thoughts that when she sees Dodge walking toward her, she bursts into a smile. He climbs out of some absurd, ridiculously cop-like Crown Vic, grinning for the first time in weeks, walking with a swagger he lost a long time ago.

  She laughs out loud, biting her lip to suppress it to a giggle.

  He’s such an asshole.

  A stupid, funny asshole walking toward her car like he’s some super cop.

  Just beside himself.

  Which she’s so happy to see.

  He arrives at her window.

  She really wishes he was in a uniform. That would make the whole scene perfect, a little bit crazy.

  And now she’s just smiles at the thought even of how uptight she’s been lately.

  Of course, she stops laughing when she remembers why she’s so uptight, all of the things she’s done over the last couple of weeks. And feels a little more shame than anything.

  But what’s worse, she realizes about herself, is how when Dodge sticks his face in her window, she acts no differently whether this is lust or laughter, shame or disgust.

  She slams him with a smile she knows destroys men.

  But what she realizes is that the very same smile destroys her too.

  In a more culpable way, though.

  Is it mommy jealousy or daddy hate, nature vs. nurture, or any – some - other, dumbass psychobabble that makes her this way?

  Or is it just simpler?

  It’s not so hard to understand.

  She wants a man.

  She wants money.

  Dodge is both to her at this point.

  So she reaches up and just touches him dearly on the face.

  He is so precious, she thinks, looking into his eyes.

  “Dodge,” she whispers, full of love, and sincere about it.

  She’s not happy about all of the emotions she has, but she knows too that she loves Dodge, and has to take care of him. Not just herself.

  If she takes care of Dodge, she takes care of herself.

  She remembers the only other time she ever held him like this, all of the things she wanted then, and how little of them she still has now.

  She would do anything to make him hers.

  The horizontal dance for the vertical chance.

  It seems inevitable.

  But the moment is broken as soon as she sees the lights - real cop lights - out of the corner of her eye.

  It’s her tail.

  The boy cop who’s been following her all around town.

  “I’ll do anything you need me to do,” she promises Dodge.

  He knows, sharing a slight grimace with his nod.

  Their fleeting moment of joy is gone.

  *****

  Dodge doesn’t know what the hell Jaime’s doing, just sitting there grinning goofily at him. She seems pretty hammered, just caressing his face. The uninhibited affection warms him.

  He needs it more than he let himself admit before.

  He’s feeling horribly alone.

  Which makes it even more disappointing when a cop suddenly shows up behind him.

  It’s only a townie cop, though, at least, and practically a kid. A rookie. Dodge figures this isn’t who they’re sending if they’re going to arrest him.

  So he’s got that going for him.

  “Mr. Dodge,” the officer recognizes him as he approaches.

  Dodge watches Jaime eyeing the cop. He’s hit with a pang of both inexplicable jealousy, and worry. Jealous over the way she seems to be looking at the officer, which is the same way she’s looking at him. Worry over just how drunk she might be. He doesn’t want her to get in trouble.

  He still needs her help.

  “What’s going on?” Dodge asks.

  The cop nods to Jaime.

  They know each other, Dodge realizes.

  He frowns as he returns his gaze to Dodge, holding a photo up to him. “You know this woman?” he asks.

  He doesn’t. The woman in the photo looks like a heavy, not so pretty, Jaime.

  “Why do you want to know?” Dodge asks, holding off on giving any kind of answer.

  “We found her body this morning, not far from a bar called Checkpoint Chili’s,” the cop explains. “Ever been there?”

  “So you think it’s me?” Dodge asks, incredulous.

  He has a biting intuition that he doesn’t want to give them any answers right away, until he knows more. It seems obvious he should tell the truth - he’s never seen this woman or even heard of that bar. But he doesn’t trust obvious things right now.

  “Am I the only murder suspect in this town or something?” he snaps at the cop.

  He’s buying time, trying to drag out some more details.

  “You are when your credit card was used not long before the time of death at Checkpoint Chili’s.”

  Dodge can sense Jaime stiffen in the car seat just out of his view. He works hard to keep relaxed, but his brain is racing with the information. It doesn’t take long to reach the conclusion.
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