He looks to his left at the women in line. “Sorry to interrupt, ladies. This won’t take but a minute.” He turns to face Nadine, speaking to them as he regards her. “All my wife needs to do is tear up these papers while I watch, and then I’ll be on my way.” He takes another pull from the bottle, then adds, “Right, Nadine?”
“This isn’t the time or the place for this,” Nadine says, the words thick in her mouth. “We can talk after I get off work.”
Tommy gestures at the four women. “They’ll wait.” He turns to them again. They all stand, mouths agape, seemingly frozen to the floor with fear or shock or both. “Won’t you?” he asks them.
They all nod even as Sylvie eyes the door and considers fleeing. But she is not as fast as she used to be, and running will only escalate what is, for now, a potentially resolvable situation. There is no need for alarm yet. Morrow debates running out too. But she also thinks this will blow over. No sense overreacting. She thinks of Maya, who claims she overreacts all the time. So she stays.
Blythe doesn’t think of running because she is debating how she can get her package back. With everyone’s eyes on Tommy, maybe they wouldn’t notice her reaching over the counter? The woman on the phone isn’t on the phone any longer and just stands there looking puzzled.
Tommy faces Nadine. He jabs at the envelope with his index finger as if he is driving a stake through it. “Tear it up,” he says through his clenched teeth.
“I can’t,” Nadine says, lifting her chin in a defiant sort of way. “I worked hard for the money to have those papers drawn up.”
“I don’t care what you did,” he says. “We are husband and wife. And that’s the way it’s gonna stay.”
“You did this to yourself, Tommy,” Nadine says, looking her husband square in the eyes. Sylvie knows Nadine is trying to appear big and brave, but she suspects that inside she feels small and scared.
Still, Sylvie sees her words hit Tommy, the barely perceptible flinch in his shoulders and head. “We can talk about that,” he says with less swagger. Then adds with a plea in his voice, “We can fix it.”
“I don’t want to fix it,” Nadine says, but her words sound sad as she says them. Nadine turns suddenly to look to the part of the post office that is behind the petition, her face hopeful. Sylvie looks too, as if someone has appeared back there, coming to their rescue. But there is no one.
Sylvie turns back to look at Tommy, and as she does, it takes her a moment to process what changed when her head was turned. It is hard for her to rectify that there is something in Tommy’s hand that was not there before. And that something is a gun that is pointed right at Nadine.
Chapter 7
Morrow yelps, the noise jarring Sylvie, who still hasn’t registered that this is really happening. She is not panicked like perhaps she should be, definitely not to the point of yelping.No, Sylvie persists in her thinking,things like this don’t happen in Sunset Beach.
The yelp gets Tommy’s attention as well, and he turns toward the sound, keeping the gun raised, but now he points it at the four women in line. Sylvie reaches back to Morrow and lays her hand on her forearm, hoping to calm her. “I think,” Sylvie says to the room, “that we all just need to take a breath here.”
She makes eye contact with Nadine, who has gone deathly pale. “Perhaps you two could set up a time to talk... later?” She hears the words as they leave her mouth, how inane they are. She fumbles for the right thing to say, scrambling to recall things she’s heard before. “It sounds like you’ve got some things to sort through,” she adds.
Tommy grins as he shakes his head. “There ain’t nothing to sort through.” He faces Nadine and uses the gun this time to jab at the envelope on the counter. “But there is something to tear through.” He raises the gun and points it directly at his wife.
“Tear it up,” he tells her. “Now.”
They all watch as Nadine raises her arms from where they hang at her sides. Her hands hover in the airspace just above theenvelope as she seems to consider her options, her gaze flitting from Tommy to the four other women. Aside from their collective unsteady breathing, the room is silent. She lowers her hands toward the envelope as they all inhale in expectation.
With any luck, she will just tear up the papers and, satisfied, Tommy will slink away. After he’s gone, Sylvie decides, she will help Nadine gather the bits of paper. She will throw them away for her, get her some water, and assure her that tearing up the papers doesn’t mean she’s torn up her chance to get away from this crazy man. It is not about the papers but the intent behind them. Even if the step she has taken has failed, it is just a temporary setback.
Nadine picks up the envelope and stares down at it. A feeling of unity hangs in the room as everyone wills her to tear it in two. The ripping sound will be the best thing they’ve heard all day. “I—” Nadine says.
Just then the door to the post office opens and they all turn to see a woman walking in, her arms full of a large basket wrapped in cellophane and tied with a huge bow. The woman is so focused on managing the basket that she doesn’t notice what is going on at the front of the room. She doesn’t notice anything until Tommy turns the gun on her. He runs toward her, yelling, “Get the hell out of here!”
Seeing Tommy coming at her, gun drawn, the woman drops the basket and runs out, shrieking. The basket crashes to the floor and the cellophane pops open on impact. The contents spill out over the floor, and Tommy has to do some fancy footwork to miss tripping over the items, which is pretty remarkable considering his level of intoxication. But he continues chasing the woman, who gets away before he can reach the door.
Muttering a string of expletives, Tommy shuts the door that leads out to the vestibule. He pushes a large display of greetingcards in front of the door, then reaches for another display case, this one smaller and full of travel brochures. He attempts to pull a heavier cabinet full of mailing supplies over, but it is too heavy and he only pulls it halfway before giving up. As he does, the women register a shift in the situation: He is barricading them in.
With Tommy’s attention focused elsewhere, the woman who’d been on the phone turns and bolts toward the back, darting behind the partition that Sylvie had been trying to see past earlier. The other four women follow her lead. But she has a head start, and she is fast. She wasn’t lying about all those workouts. All that protein consumption has clearly served her well.
As she runs, Sylvie hears the blood pound in her ears. She is amazed at the strength of her beating heart, at the ability of her legs to carry her. She would not have thought herself capable of such a feat at her age. But here she is, running alongside women much younger than her.We can, she thinks as the doors that lead outside open wide, the daylight streaming through,do a lot of things we don’t think we can do.She hears Tommy calling for them to stop, but they just keep running through the warehouse area, her eyes intent on the lettersE-X-I-Tover the double doors at the back of the building.
Blythe hears the gunshot at the same moment a bullet whizzes past her head and the doors close behind the woman on the phone, who has gotten away. The bullet hits the exit sign, cracking it as pieces of glass rain to the floor. The four remaining women stop in their tracks, staring at the mosaic of shards on the floor between them and the now-closed doors.
Tommy reaches them and walks across the glass, which crunches under his boots until he comes to a stop in front of them. The exit is behind him, only a few feet away. But they will not be getting out through it now.
“Now, where do you think you’re going?” he asks Nadine.He uses the gun to point at the remaining three. “I’m sorry, ladies, but it doesn’t look like any of y’all are going anywhere.” He shakes his head. “You should’ve torn up the papers when you had a chance,” he tells Nadine. “Now look what you’ve done.”
“I was going to,” Nadine says. “I had it in my hands. You saw me.” She gestures at Blythe and Sylvie and Morrow. “They saw me.” All three women nod in agreement as Nadine continues. “I just didn’t get the chance because of the lady with the basket.” Was she really going to tear them up? No one knows. And it doesn’t matter now.
