“Few more minutes my ass. If I lay here any longer I’m gonna be paralyzed. I’m sitting up.”
“Better not. Don’t want to be seen.”
“Fuck that. I’m getting up. Besides, the windows are tinted. No one saw me last time, did they? So no one is going to see me now. We need a pad or some pillows or something back here to lay on. What the fuck are you laughing at?”
“I was just thinking that after this, they’ll probably change the name of this place.” Before Senior could say anything, Junior stopped laughing and started the van. “Here she comes. Get ready.”
Elle pulled into the Safeway Grocery and parked her car between a rust colored pickemup (that’s what daddy always called them, pickemup trucks…gosh she missed him, fifteen years gone now if you could believe that) and a cute little lime green VW Beetle-bug, (dang, she wanted one of those sooo bad) one of the newer models that came with a flower holder that stuck out of the column. She forced herself to look away from the Bug when she walked by. She wanted to stop and look, but time was short. Genes would be home soon and she wanted her shopping out of the way so she could sit with her hubby and tell him all about her shift. The prospect of regaling Genes of the fine work she did this day (three singles and a double!) made her feel so good it caused her to put a little extra scoot in her step. She even grabbed a stray cart that had rolled away from the corral and gave it a shove back where it belonged. A good deed for a good day. Jake and Rocket were right. Life is Good. So very, very gosh-danged good.
Senior looked out the window. “Aw, we’re gonna have to move. I don’t have an angle.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure, god damn it. Move over a few rows. We’ll get her on the way out.”
Junior backed out of their spot and moved the van a couple of rows over. “Take a quick peek. This should be better.”
Senior did, and it was. Elle caught a break.
A short one, anyway.
Twenty minutes later, now seriously behind schedule, Elle pushed her cart toward her car. The Bug was gone, (thank gosh for small favors-she might have spent a few extra minutes looking it over-minutes she didn’t have) but the rust colored pickemup was still there. Somebody taking their sweet ol’, she thought. That was another thing Daddy always used to say. He had all kinds of words and sayings. They were his isms. Elle sighed. Love you, Daddy.
Senior watched through the scope as the woman loaded the groceries into her trunk. They were parked four rows over and one spot further away from the store, close for the scope’s powerful optics. He clicked off the safety and kept the crosshairs centered on the space between her eyes. From Senior’s perspective it looked like she was about a half an inch away. He could make out every feature, every flaw on her face.
Bitch needed to tweeze.
Elle put the last sack in the trunk and shut the lid. She stood still for a moment-something was bothering her, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what it was. Genes had always told her to listen to her gut. That, and situational awareness. Good gosh he was big on situational awareness. He had practically drilled it into her over the years.
And that was the last thought Elle ever had in her ‘Life is Good’ life. The bullet caught her in the center of her brow, right where she needed to tweeze. It snapped her head backwards and blew out the back of her skull just like it did to JFK on the day she was born. The force of the bullet knocked her backwards, her arms pin-wheeling merrily along after her. When her legs realized they were no longer receiving signals from her brain they collapsed under her and what was left of the back of her head made contact with the basket section of an empty shopping cart. The cart flipped forward and came down on top of her and wouldn’t you know it, the next person out of the store, the one who found her lying under the cart like a discarded doll and stroller in someone’s back yard was just some guy taking his sweet ol’ back to his pickemup. When he saw Elle’s body he dropped his bags and spun around, twice. A white van turned a corner at the edge of the lot and was lost to the early morning traffic. Mr. Pickemup never saw it.
When my cell phone rang I tried to slide away from Sandy, but when I did she held tight to my arm. I listened to the ringing, four, five, six times, then a little half ring, cut down by the voice mail feature. A minute or so later, I heard the familiar chime that told me I had a message. I stirred a bit, moved my arm just so-it was starting to fall asleep-and then brushed the hair from the side of Sandy’s face. Her breathing was rhythmic, slow, like she was asleep, though she was not. Thirty seconds later, the phone rang again.
“I should probably get that,” I said. “Could be something happening.”
Sandy untangled herself, sat up and then leaned forward, her forearms resting on her thighs. She turned her head and looked back over her shoulder at me. “Could be something happening here, Jonesy.” A little edge in her voice.
I stood, looked toward the kitchen where my cell phone lay, and then back at Sandy. I took a step toward the other room, but when the ringing stopped, so did I. Something was happening. But Sandy was right. It was here. I sat down on the bed next to her. “Whatever it is, it can wait.”
“I’m not talking about the sex, you know,” she said.
“Hey, give a guy a little credit, will you?” I took a deep breath in through my nose and puffed my cheeks as I let it out. Then I said the only thing I knew how to say on the heels of the most complex discovery I have ever made. “I’m sorry.”
We sat there for a few minutes with that, and when Sandy raised her head and looked at me, I opened my mouth to say something else but instead I ended up repeating myself. “I’m sorry, Sandy. I’m so very sorry”
“You don’t have to apologize, Jonesy. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No. It wasn’t. You were a victim of something that happened a long time ago, just like I was. In a different way, but a victim just the same. I accept your apology, but know this: I don’t ever want to hear you say those words again with regard to the fire. I can’t build the rest of my life on an apology.”
“What did you just say?”
“Tell me you don’t feel it. Tell me we don’t belong together. Tell me you have some logical, even mystical explanation as to how we came together thirty years later as friends, co-workers, and now as lovers.” She reached out and took my hands in her own. “What I’m asking you, Virgil, is to tell me it means something. Tell me I’ve found what I’ve been looking for since I was five years old. Tell me you haven’t been searching for something all these years without really knowing what it is, either. Tell me that what we did last night, what we just had isn’t the reason I lost my childhood, it’s the reward. Tell me that the part of me I thought I lost didn’t die in that fire with my father, but has been waiting for this one single moment where it’s safe to say that this is who I am, that this is where I’m supposed to be, that this is my life, right here, right now, with you. Tell me that my father not only gave you the gift of saving your life, but in some mysterious way that gift belongs to me too. Tell me I’m wrong, Virgil.”
“I can’t.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
Sandy leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the mouth. “Tell me.”
When I looked at her face I felt something inside myself let go in a way I had never experienced in all my years. It was then I said the words that for the first time in my life I knew to be true. “I love you.”
When Sandy crawled into my lap and wrapped her arms around me she sounded childlike, but her words were those of a woman and a lover undivided, freed from something by a gift I knew no one could give her, save me. “Tell me.”
“I love you.”
“Tell me…”
