Bram
Hennessy is a bustling town three and a half hours north of Percy Bay, so I’ve pitched for a hotel room. Correction—Smile Wide has pitched for a hotel room, a nice one with a balcony facing a river to my left, the trash receptacles behind the hotel to my right.
There is a full bar and a shower roomy enough to fit my entire family, and how I wish they were here with me to fill it. Not that I’ve made it a practice to shower with them all in number. Lena’s old swimming pool was as close as we ever got to that endeavor. But being here without them, anywhere without them, makes them feel less real, a dream that is slowly evaporating.
A very real part of me is frightened that I will wake up and it will be the day after Simone’s body was discovered—the body I discovered. That my beautiful wife, present tense, my beautiful children, were just a work of my overactive imagination. It’s terrifying to think about. My old life, the one I shared for years with Simone, was tense, cloying, filled with terrors far before our kids ever set foot into the lake that fateful day. Simone had the skills to suck the air out of the room and leave you choking for your next breath. She may have been witty and intelligent—she certainly could do anything better than me as she used to sing. She was as sharp as a blade in every arena, but she was a loaded gun that was pointed at my temple, at my beating heart every minute we shared together.
The dental convention is held in a cavernous hall somewhere buried beneath this labyrinth-like structure. Tarquin, one of my colleagues who happens to own the practice, gifted me the honor to attend today’s riveting panels. As the low man on the totem pole, it was apparent it would be me going from the start. One might think in a large practice of nine dentists there would be an outcry over who had the chance to enjoy a free night in a hotel with the peace and quiet of the river—the dental convention itself is somewhat interesting if not strictly informative, but, in truth, dentists by and large are content residing in their own habitat. Fingers flexing in and out of other people’s mouths. It’s not nearly as sexual in nature as it sounds. It’s quite mundane, but I will admit, it is personal, intimate in some respects.
That’s why when our neighbor, chicken lover extraordinaire, Astrid Nelson, strutted into the office yesterday and landed in my chair—my chair—I marveled at the coincidence, but when she gave that sly bedroom-eye look, I quickly realized it was most likely no coincidence. Perhaps the secretary’s palm was greased a little money, perhaps it was a twisted version of fate, but something did not feel right. And as soon as I started probing around at that problem area she claimed to have, her tongue caressed my gloved finger in a manner that let me know she was up for my probing fingers to land elsewhere.
I try my best to brush Astrid and her wet mouth out of my mind as I take the elevator down. I’ve missed the initial sign-in, the keynote, and most likely the first session. The traffic over was thicker than expected. Soccer moms seemed to fill the highways and every side street at ungodly hours, bussing their sleepy children to better schools far out of range.
The elevator spits me out on the lobby level and I step out, the convention an entire floor beneath me, and I cringe as the doors whoosh shut from behind. I press the button and wait impatiently with my hand clutching my briefcase, a caramel leather box my mother bought for me last Christmas. My mother was a gossip columnist in New York, a successful one at that, but her time has come and gone. The era of paparazzi had eaten her career in a single bound, and now she is relegated to the odd interview on what it’s like to have gone from a who’s who to a has-been. I give the button a few more spastic twitches, looking like the quintessential businessman, an important one at that, who has far too many places to be at once. I like the narrative far better than the real one, the dental practitioner who lost his family, his practice, and his mind all in one year’s time. The low man on the totem pole who is stuck on the wrong floor at the wrong hour wondering if he is going to spend the rest of his life in this strange limbo, anticipating someone to point the finger at me and say those words I dread to hear: it’s you.
The click of heels struts by, and like some testosterone-fueled ape, my head turns lazily in their direction. My eyes hook on a somewhat familiar frame, petite, wavy dark hair that seems to bounce in rhythm with the girl’s footsteps, and I do a neck breaking double take. My entire body does a one-eighty, and I hear the elevator doors open and close behind me.
My eyes latch over her person with a macabre sense of wonder, of outright fear. My feet move swiftly toward her. The businessman with too many directions to move in has chosen the wrong one. I step in line with her, ten paces behind, six, then three. I’m close enough to touch her, and as soon as we hit the end of the foyer, I snatch her by the elbow and spin her around. My hands fall over her shoulders, caging her in.
“Holy shit,” I mutter as I take her in, same dark eyes, those easy lips that have wrapped themselves around every part of my body.
Her lips part, a strange croaking sound dislodges as if she wasn’t sure who I was, and she steps backwards cautiously at first, her face, still pretty, hardened with time, knife sharp lines embedded around her mouth, evidence she still smokes.
She gives a subtle shake of the head before darting in the opposite direction, her strides evening out as she darts down a carpeted corridor, and just like that, it’s over.
Loretta. I lean against the wall as if I needed it to hold me upright. I’m so very relieved not a word was exchanged, and why would it be? She doesn’t want to know me. Nobody in their right mind does. I close my eyes a moment, and those countless hotel rooms zoom by like a slide show. My eyes spring wide again, and my feet start working as I head to the nearest elevator, ambling my way to the hornets’ nest of dental pride on this side of the coast. A couple of girls, no older than teenagers, sign me in and give me my badge to wear with pride, Bram Woodley Liar at Large, and my hand shakes as I take it.
Someway, somehow, my present collided with my past this afternoon. Those blood red pots that took up residence on the stove this morning ring through my mind like a bell. I don’t absorb a thing about thrilling new dental products as I wander aimlessly up and down the cluttered aisles with their euphoric sales teams and shiny new gadgets. I pay little attention at the seminar regarding insurance. There is no volition in me to try out the new dental products when I’m asked to participate. No. I’m only here in body, not in any other capacity. At noon, I sit alone facing a stone wall on the outdoor patio while pretending to eat a generous portion of prime rib. I can’t take a bite.
And once the final breakout session of the day is over, a refresher course on computer solutions, I head straight for my room, lock the door, and meander to the window to catch a glimpse of the river, something calming, and God knows I could use a tranquilizer right about now. But I don’t look left to the river. Instead, my gaze shifts right. It has to. It’s practically demanded of it. The asphalt around the dumpsters is inundated with men in navy jackets, and miles of bright yellow caution tape cuts through the monochromatic day like an obstruction, sunny lasers that eat up your eyes. A white blanket lies over a body in the center of the melee, and I can’t breathe. There is no air left in this room. My body slaps numb with shock, and a bite of sweat ignites under my arms. One dark clump of wavy hair peers out from the tarp they’ve set over her, and my stomach churns hot.
Holy shit. It’s happening. A strange feeling comes over me. I’ve stepped onto a haunted carousel, and there’s no way to safely get off.
My body bucks and I stagger for the bathroom, but vomit hard into the wastebasket instead. I run my face under the faucet for a small eternity before coming to and throwing my things back into my suitcase. I don’t spend the night. I head home to my family, drive three and a half hours listening to the news. Homicide behind the Hennessy Continental Hotel. An unidentified young woman found strangled, her hand maimed.
I slam my palm over the steering wheel as I eat asphalt trying to make my way to Percy, to Ree, to my children whom I’m terrified will never know me past their youth. Everything is unraveling. Everything is coming undone.
Everything I’ve feared has come to pass.
Loretta is dead. Is she? How I wish it were anyone else. But this is me, my luck I’ve tainted her with. Just one touch and she’s gone.
Something horrible has happened.
It’s still happening.
