After Midnight

When she said that, I pushed too hard or flinched or something. I’m not sure exactly what went wrong, but my knees let go of the knife and it fell to the ground. I blurted, “Shit!” and almost felt like crying, myself.

“Just come here and I’ll take care of you,” Judy said.

“Okay. Okay.” I squatted, picked up the knife, and walked over to her with the long end of the cord trailing behind me.

“Do you know what I think?” Judy asked.

“What?”

“I think we should go away together.”

“Huh?”

“Just disappear. You and I.”

“Yeah, right.” Crouching behind her, I slipped the knife blade under the taut line connecting her hands and feet. With one hard tug, I severed it.

Judy said, “Ah.” She straightened her legs. “Oh, God,” she said, and stretched. “That feels so good. Thank you.”

Her feet were still tied together. I decided to leave them that way, and started to cut through the rope binding her wrists together.

“No funny stuff,” I said, “or I will kill you.”

“I mean it about going away together,” she said.

I stopped cutting. “The hell you do,” I told her.

“These guys have a van,” she said.

“I know.”

“Maybe we can find it. They sure as heck don’t need it anymore. We can use it for our getaway.”

“You don’t want to run away with me. Hey, I was pulling the same stunt with Steve. So were you, apparently. It’s not a bad ploy if you can pull it off, but…”

“This is different.”

“Oh, yeah? How?”

“I hated him. I don’t hate you.”

“You should. Everything I did to you.”

“You were just scared, that’s all. Trying to protect yourself.”

“By killing you.”

“But you didn’t kill me,” she said. “And you saved me from Steve and Milo. I owe you.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t owe me for anything. After all the awful things I did to you…”

“Forget about that stuff, Alice.”

“Sure.”

“I think we’d be great together. We could take their van and hit the road.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You know why.”

“You tell me.”

“Because we’re in this whole thing too deep,” Judy said.

“You’re not. You’re just a victim.”

“The cops won’t know that. My ex-boyfriend’s body is in the trunk of his car—in the parking lot of my apartment building. I’ll be a suspect right from the start. And one look at me, they’ll know I’ve been tangling with someone.”

“Right. Milo and Steve. And me.”

“That’s the point, Alice. I can’t tell the truth without telling on you. And I won’t do that. So I’ll be in deep trouble if I stick around.”

“I guess you’re right about that,” I admitted.

She was right. We’d gone way past the point where all might be explained by a few simple lies.

The truth would get Judy off the hook—if the cops believed her—but it would destroy me.

“You’d really…give up everything and go away with me?” I asked.

“What’s to give up? I’ve got no family, no boyfriend, a crummy job. We can drive off and start all over, just you and me. Change our names, maybe dye our hair…Wouldn’t it be great?”

“Sounds pretty good to me,” I said.

If we went away together, I supposed I would miss my room above the garage, and Serena and Charlie and their kids. But my life hadn’t really been all that spectacular so far, anyway. I wouldn’t be giving up much, that’s for sure.

And the idea of going off with Judy…I felt almost like a kid on the eve of a great adventure.

Not that it’s going to happen.

“Do you really mean it?” I asked.

“Yeah. I mean it.”

I went ahead and finished cutting her hands loose. “Oh, that feels so great,” she said. She rolled onto her back. Sighing, she rubbed her wrists. “Thanks. Give me a second or two, okay?”

“Sure.”

While she stretched and rubbed her wrists and tried to recover, I crouched by her feet and sliced through the rope between them.

She said, “Ah,” and “Thanks.” Then she sat up and rubbed her ankles. “Feels so good.” Smiling up at me, she said, “Now, let’s take care of that cord.”

On our knees, we faced each other.

I still held the knife in my right hand.

“What’re you gonna do with that?” she asked.

“It’s just in case.”

Leaning forward, Judy put her hands gently on both sides of my face. She gazed into my eyes.

God, she was so beautiful.

“What kind of friends are we going to be?” she asked. “If you feel you need a knife…?”

“You don’t really want to go away with me,” I said.

“Yes, I do.”

I swallowed hard, and said, “Bull.”

“Trust me, Alice.”

“I’d like to trust you,” I said. “But I can’t.”

“Yes you can. You can trust me. You can depend on me. We’ll be best friends, now and forever.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. My eyes filled with tears.

Judy put her hands on my shoulders. “You won’t have to be lonely anymore. Neither will I. We’ve both been so lonely…and hurt. But no more. We have each other, now.” She leaned in closer and gently kissed each of my wet eyes and then the tip of my nose.

I let the knife fall from my hand.

Judy sighed as if very relieved. Then she whispered, “Thanks,” and leaned back and picked up the knife. With a strange smile on her firelit face, she said, “Now I’m the one with the weapon and you’re the one tied up.”

“That’s right,” I said.

I suddenly felt cold and sick inside.

“You believed me?” Judy asked. “You really believed you could trust me?”

“I guess,” I said, my voice shaking. Her beautiful, golden face was blurry through my tears.

“You really thought I wanted to be your best friend? And run away with you?”

“Yeah. No. I guess not. But…but I wanted to believe you. I wanted it so badly.”

Then I was bawling like a kid with a crushed heart and I couldn’t stop.