Misisipi

by Michael Reilly

  “Not likely to be sitting over any right now, am I? Stubs?” she asked.

  “I doubt it. I think the last time we went was The Aviator, just before Christmas. Still had the Sable then. That was a bad date.”

  “So you got promoted at work, ran right out, and bought yourself some prestige?”

  “Fuck knows why. It’s not like I could really afford it, well hardly.”

  “What did she say when she saw it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Where are you headed anyway? You never said.”

  “Dallas.”

  “By yourself? Are you two meeting up there?”

  “Hah,” he grunted. “That’s a story and a half.”

  “I’m all ears. Let me ask you one question though. Are you holding back on messing this car because you don’t expect to keep it for much longer or because you’re going to keep it anyway, albeit for all the wrong reasons in the first place? Keepin it perfect outta stubborn guilt?”

  Scott looked at her with total puzzlement. “I don’t understand any part of that whatsoever.”

  “Just women talk. It’s still a nice car.” She lit another cigarette. “You got kids?”

  Scott lowered his eyes. “That’s a story and then some,” he whispered, looking on the road ahead.

  Darkness set in as they skirted Roanoke. Signs for the interstate chain hotels came and went. With each, Scott waited for some cue from Charlie. By the fifth, he decided to force the issue.

  “Look, it’s getting kinda late. If you want to catch a ride tonight or tomorrow, these kinda places are probably your best bet.”

  “You’re right. You’re gonna push on for a while longer, huh?”

  “Not tonight. I’ve had way too weird a day. I stay on much longer, I’m gonna nod off. Enough wrecks, doncha think?”

  She laughed. “Well, ok. I guess the next place suits us both.”

  “If it’s ok, I was just gonna get you to the door and take off.”

  “Thought you were stopping?” she said, surprised. She sat up tensely and stared at him. “Look, Scott. You don’t have to worry about me trying to tag along with you to the restaurant or the bar. You’ve done your good deed. I pay my own way, bud—always. Plus, I’m not gonna try and put a move on you. You’re married. And, in case you’re worried about me worrying bout you, don’t. I know you wouldn’t try anything. You’re definitely not the type. I don’t think I’m yours anyway.”

  Scott had been shaking his head all through her speech, had tried to interrupt her with several polite ‘No’s.

  “Ok. Look. It isn’t any of that,” he said. “Honest. Any other day, I’d be happy to help you out. But I’m kinda in the same boat. I’ve got to find something cheap. I can’t swing for one of those pricey places, is all.”

  Charlie slapped his arm. “Jesus. You and your scouts honor. Why didn’t you just say? You’d have left me standing there outside some country club I couldn’t afford either. I didn’t grab much cash before I split. I’m sure Dan’s cancelled his card by now.”

  “Ok,” he said, “We’re both slumming it then.”

  “Yes. Separate rooms, separate tabs. You have to be your way tomorrow. So do I. But I am sleeping in, I swear to Christ.” She leaned back. “Won’t you let me give you something for gas though?”

  He shook his head. “You’ve a harder road than me from here on.”

  She stroked his shoulder. “Ok. My Knight in German armor. Case closed.”

  A few miles farther, they met the sign for a motor lodge: ‘The Roanoker’.

  “Looks promising,” he supposed. She agreed.

  The Roanoker was an old-style road motel, a strip of rooms with parking right outside the doors. Scott pulled into a space beside two adjacent rooms. They went to the office and registered. On the walk back, Charlie spotted an ABC store across the street and checked her watch.

  “Hey, those things close at, like, Nine,” she said. “It’s a quarter of. I’m gonna go and get a bottle of something. Can I buy you a six pack of anything? Last chance.”

  Scott shook his head. “Thanks, but I’m gonna turn in. You knock yourself out.”

  “I guess this is goodbye then,” she said. “This is ‘Thank You’,” she warned as she stretched up and gave the corner of his mouth a heartfelt peck. “You are an angel,” she added, walking toward the liquor store.

  “I hope you’ll be ok, Charlie,” he called after.

  She turned and threw her arms up, flipped the double-bird skyward, and yelled, “Free at last, free at last. Fuck you Dan! I am free at last!” She gave Scott a double thumbs-up and a reassuring smile.

  Scott smiled back. He watched until she was safely into the liquor store then let himself into his room. There he stood, just inside his door, and listened for her return. When he was certain Charlie was in for the night, he quietly slipped out and hurried across to the ABC. He barely made it; the store manager had his key in the door as Scott barged his way in.

  “Two fucking minutes, Man!” he barked in the manager’s face.

  The manager shrugged. “Make it fast then and keep it pain-free, friend,” he warned, stepping aside. At every closing, he knew it was always smarter to take an angry customer’s cash rather than their crap, more profitable too. You got to recognize the ones in a hurry to get smashed in double-quick time. When the clock was against them, they bagged heavy, just to make sure.

  Back in the room, Scott set his bag down on the dresser: a liter of Jim Beam Black, another of Aristocrat Vodka, two six-packs of Old Dominion, and two packs of Pall Mall’s. He uncapped the Aristocrat and began to drown Josh and Jules from his thoughts, glass-by-glass.

  Chapter 29

  By midnight, the vodka and most of the beer was gone. He unscrewed the Jim Beam and poured two glasses. He held one to his reflection in the mirror.

  - You still don’t want one? Shame, this pity party is in your honor after all.

  - You’re drunk. Stop now. Get some sleep.

  - No. You’re not shutting me up.

  - I don’t have to stay and listen to your crap.

  - You are my crap! Til death do us… etcetera, et—cet—er—a. You’re staying.

  - Fine. What’s on your mind, Scott?

  - You had a termination. You killed our child. You kept it from me. What else would be on my mind right now?

  - What are you most pissed off at right now? That I had the termination? Or that you won’t move past that?

  - How can you claim to love me? After what you did?

  - I don’t claim to love you. I do love you.

  - Yet you killed a part of me. Of us.

  - I didn’t want kids, Scott. I couldn’t accept them. I took precautions and it still happened.

  - I don’t know why I accepted it, after I learned. I must have been mad.

  - Now I wished you’d left then.

  - And tell people what? They’d just think I was abandoning you after a miscarriage. Defective products. What could I have told them, huh Jules? The truth? Ha! No one would have believed it.

  - You stayed because you wanted to protect me, protect us.

  - Protect myself, more like. What would they have thought of me? Hey Jonathan, here’s your nutty daughter back. I didn’t read the full spec. My bad. Didn’t know she was damaged goods when you handed me the pink slip. Turns out you got stiffed on the plumbing job.

  - Shut up!

  - No worries. It’s a 30-year warranty. Just wheel her back in. We’ll run her the ramp and have her purrin again in no time. And you won’t have to pay a lot.

  - Stop it! Please!

  - Did he know?

  - Who?

  - Jonathan. Did he know? Did he bankroll it? God, you two must have been laughing at me outside the church doors in Dedham. It’s a wonder you got your game faces back on in time.

  - You think it’s all one big conspiracy?

  - Why did you have to know what he was?

  - What who was?

  -
Josh.

  - Stop calling him that.

  - Josh. Josh. Josh. Joshua. Joshua Jameson! What do you wanna call him—the trash?

  - He… I don’t think about him.

  - You were curious enough to want to learn his sex. You waited long enough before you had him killed. 19 weeks. What other reason could there be?

  - Why is this important?

  - Even though I don’t get it—cause you never ever gave me an explanation—I can understand enough. You were in shock when you found out you were pregnant. You thought long and hard about it, you must have. You waited until the last minute, before I’d have noticed, but long enough that you coulda learned what sex he was. That’s what I can’t figure. Why does that matter? He’s fucking dead, Jules. He’s medical waste. Bag and tag. Whoosh! Who gives a fuck what sex he was?

  - You do. You’re the only one that does.

  - Fuck you, you bitch!

  Scott picked up her glass and hurled it at the wall above his bed. Then his own. The Jim Beam bottle might have followed. Instead, he found himself rushing to the bathroom, retching as he went.

  Chapter 30

  Scott pounded Charlie’s door. She flung it open on the second barrage, cell in her hand.

  “Jesus, Scott. You scared me.” Her shoulders dropped with relief.

  “Shit. Sorry. Sorry,” he stammered. “Didn’t mean to spook you.” He rocked on his heels. The tails of her shirt hung partway down her bare legs and he turned to leave.

  Charlie saw the bottle in his hand. “Wait. You didn’t. You probably saved me from doing something stupid.”

  “Huh?

  “I was maybe thinking bout calling Dan. Woulda been a bad idea. Sorry. Just been a rough day.” She shrugged.

  “Oh man. Shoulda thought. Bangin your door like that.” He winced. “Probably thought I was him.”

  She grinned. “Yeah. You’re lucky I didn’t reach for the mace.”

  “Pologies.” He held up his hands as he staggered back.

  “Are you ok?” She indicated his bottle.

  Scott stopped and his whole body sagged. “She had a termination. She had a termination and she kept it from me.” A whimper escaped him.

  “Come on.” Charlie put her hand on his shoulder and guided him. “Come inside. It’s ok.”

  Taking the bottle from Scott, she settled him into the armchair by the bed. “Just let me shut this off, ok?” She held the cell up. “Then we can talk properly.”

  She walked to the dresser and turned two glasses upright. She tossed her cell in her bag, rummaged for her smokes. Scott heard the zippo snap and her long first draw, the bottle unscrewing and the gurgle of it pouring. She sucked on the cigarette once more and stubbed it out. Returning with full glasses, she handed Scott’s over and raised her own.

  “To the people we love, eh?” she toasted. “Not all our scars are physically inflicted.”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled, chinking hers and gulping his own grimly.

  Charlie climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged, sipping slowly. “It looks like I’m playing catch-up,” she said. “Go easy, ok?”

  “I shouldn’t be laying this on you. You have enough shit.”

  “It’s ok. Tell me, when was the termination?”

  He snorted. “Right before we got married. I didn’t learn for years.”

  Her eyes widened. “I am sorry, Scott. It might just have been a dumb pre-wedding fling.”

  “No. No. No.” He shook his head. “For fucks sake. She never cheated on me—neither of us did.”

  Charlie covered her mouth. “I… you mean?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. It was mine.”

  “How did you learn?”

  “We were at my firm’s Christmas bash. She was sick. I thought it was food poisoning. She was wearing a red dress. I didn’t know it was serious til she went to the bathroom and I saw blood on her seat. Found her collapsed in the stall.”

  “She was having a miscarriage? I thought you said—”

  “I thought she was gonna die. Sat in that damn ER waiting room over four hours. It was Christmas, ‘03. War’d been going for months. They’d just found Saddam, showing him on TV having his mouth checked. I remember thinking, ‘I’ll swap places with you, man, right now, just to have her be ok.’ I didn’t think I could feel any worse. Someone musta heard me. That’s when it got worse.”

  Scott rose unsteadily to refill his glass. “The surgeon came and got me,” he continued. “He told me she was gonna be ok. Man, I cried. I had to hold onto him just to stay straight.”

  Charlie waited while Scott sat back down.

  Scott took a deep breath. “He said an ectopic pregnancy was a risk with ligation, that we were just unlucky. Or lucky.”

  Charlie blinked. “Ligation? How could she be pregnant then?”

  “You should have seen the surgeon’s face. He tried to backtrack. I wouldn’t let him. I dragged it out of him. What the fuck’s a ligation? Who did it? When? I mean, why would she anyway? She’s a teacher. She loves kids. She fucking adores them. Why would she have her tubes tied? She woulda been a terrific mom.”

  “And I’m sure you would have been a fabulous father,” Charlie added. “She had no right to deny you that experience.”

  “Didn’t stop her doing it though,” he grunted, “twice.”

  “Twice?” Charlie asked, confused. “Oh, the original termination, right?”

  Scott nodded. “The surgeon said the ligation wasn’t recent and that the D and E had to predate it, obviously.”

  “D and E?”

  “Polite word for child murder. He found scars, old scars. He thought I knew, assumed I was in on it. She didn’t want to have a child with me. That’s the upshot of it. She killed him and tried to prevent it from ever happening again. It was my son. He’d be five now. This month.” Scott drained his glass.

  “How could you know that? The termination could have been anytime, even before you two met.”

  “I waited for a few days. Played dumb. Played the concerned husband. Waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, I lost it. I confronted her, just about the ligation. She couldn’t deny it. She knew she’d been rumbled in the ER so she didn’t even try to. I asked her, ‘Why?’ She just started to cry. She didn’t admit to the termination so I asked her, ‘Did you have a termination?’ She broke down, admitted it, admitted she got the ligation after, to make sure.”

  “How do you know it would have been a boy?”

  Scott gave Charlie a stabbing look. “Was a boy!”

  “Sorry.”

  “She told me she waited til the limit.”

  “She must have anguished a long time before she went ahead. Did she tell you why?”

  “The reason for the termination?”

  “I meant the reason she waited. You said that she told you it was a boy.”

  “She didn’t tell me that. She wasn’t anguishing. She was checking. The moment she knew it was a boy, she killed him.”

  “That’s a leap, Scott. You could be wrong.”

  “The worst night of my life. I never so badly wanted to be stupid again.” Scott let the empty glass fall into his lap and started to cry. “Instead, I took away any chance of that ever happening again.”

  “How so?”

  “I hit her. Right then I hated her. I wanted to kill her. I just lashed out.”

  “Oh Scott, no.”

  “I know, right? Mister Nice Guy. If she hadn’t gotten to the bathroom and called the cops, I probably would have.”

  “You were angry. You had every right to be.”

  “One swing of my fist, I killed any chance we mighta had. I guess it just took all this time for that swing to finally connect with her.”

  Charlie shushed him. “Come on here. It’s ok, babe.” She extended her arm. “It’s ok,” she whispered, over and over.

  Scott set his glass on the floor and took her hand as she guided him onto the bed and placed a soothing hand to the side of his face, stroking
slowly.

  “I’m sorry. Here you are running from one bastard, holed up with another,” he sobbed.

  “You’re not a bastard, Scott. Don’t do yourself down. You’ll never been in Dan’s league or guys like him so don’t judge yourself by their fucked-up standards. Be proud of that, ok?”

  He nodded against the comfort of her touch.

  She ran her fingers across his forehead. “You have so much passion. Maybe too much. Sad thing is, you probably think you have none.” She smiled when he winced. “Hmmm. Looks like I touched a nerve.”

  Scott laughed nervously and Charlie put her fingers to his lips. “And such a beautiful smile. One no truly bad man could ever fake. If you ever begin to doubt yourself again, just look in the mirror.”

  “Thanks,” he whispered. “I haven’t liked going there in a long time.”

  She leaned in and kissed him, putting both hands against his face, holding him firmly even after she sensed that he welcomed her mouth.

  He let her lips guide his. Her mouth was smaller, more delicate than Julianna’s, its owner more dominant. He put his hand to her short slender neck. Her head tilted, offering him the full sweep of it, her eyes intently locked on his. Suddenly, he broke the kiss and she saw his gaze begin to question. She pressed a finger to his lips to silence any doubt, to center him to her.

  “Stay the night. Please.” she begged, the tips of her fingers caressing his lower lip, ready to pluck any objections away. Her other hand began to open the buttons of her shirt. “I need you, Scott. I need that tenderness again. I think we both do.”

  She let her finger linger on, then inside his lips. He closed them around it, his eyes no longer questioning, fully shut now.

  She opened her shirt. Her naked heavy breasts lifted and parted as she arched her back and widened her knees. Scott brought his hand down and brushed it across her belly, then higher, running his palm across her nipple. She moaned, a soft sybarite affirmation of its arousal. Emboldened, he gripped her breast, plucked the hard tight peak of it. She lifted on her legs, clasping the back of his head, pulling him down as she rose up, emitting ragged gasps when his mouth met her nipple.

  As Scott mawed the pebbled pleasure of her areola, she brought his hand to her lips and kissed the map of lines on his palm. She traced her tongue in a wet circle around its outline, then up the length of his middle finger, where she slowly closed her lips around its tip. She began to feed on its fellatio, swallowing it. Her tongue flicked mischievously along its form and she hummed her need of it.