Payback (12 page)

“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you here,” Chris said.

“No,” I answered. “It’s all right.
I’m
all right. It was worth a shot. And, well—it’s good to be out of the house with someone. I guess maybe I was getting lonely.” Embarrassed by what I had just said, I sneaked a peek in his direction. “Don’t take that the wrong way. I just mean—”

I watched a slight smile part his lips in the moonlight. The smile was both gentle and sad. Still, he seemed glad I had said what I said. “I know what you mean, Tyler. You don’t have to explain it.”

I thought of the gun resting in the backpack on my dining-room table.

“I want to get back at them,” I said, once again staring out at the lights of the city in the distance, once again feeling my fingernails dig into the palms of my hands, breaking the scabs that were already there. “I’ve never felt like this before. So full of hate. So goddamn mad. I’m like a fucking teapot that somebody forgot to take off the stove. Boiling. Boiling.” I clenched my jaws shut until my teeth hurt. I’d said enough. I’d said too much, maybe.

I could sense Chris watching me in the darkness, but I was afraid to confront his stare, too ashamed to look his way. I felt tears begin to burn my eyes, and that made me even madder. I had cried more in the past month than I had cried my entire life, and I was getting sick of it. Sick of the futility of it. Sickened by how weak and helpless it made me feel.

When his hand came up to rest against the back of my neck, it was all I needed to push me that one step farther and make the tears finally fall. I brushed them angrily away as his fingers gently massaged my neck. His other hand took mine from atop my leg and held it like a bird, carefully, as if my fingers were made of spun sugar and might snap off at the slightest pressure.

“Tyler, I think it’s natural for you to feel this way. My God, how could you
not
be angry after everything that’s happened to you? But you can’t let your anger destroy you. You still have a life to live. It’s entirely up to you how you want to live it. I understand you miss your lover.”

I narrowed my eyes and turned to glare at him. “Spence was my husband. He wasn’t my lover. He wasn’t my boyfriend. He wasn’t my trick. He was my husband. And I was his.”

Chris nodded, solemn, accepting his mistake. “I know. I’m sorry. I guess I’m just not used to thinking of gay relationships in terms of matrimony. The gay marriage laws are still so new. The words seem, I don’t know,
odd
. I even have gay friends who find the wording awkward. Even some of the married ones.”

I shrugged, giving him the benefit of the doubt. “I suppose that’s true.”

Laughter rang out from the trees down the slope beyond the perimeter of the park. It sounded eerie ringing through the darkness. Spooky. A scream tore through the night, followed by a burst of female laughter. Young people fooling around.

Chris stared into the darkness for a moment listening to it, then he turned back to me. His hand was still at the back of my neck, his fingers caressing the hair at my nape. He was being a friend. He was being concerned. Nothing more. But my body was reacting differently. I gave the faintest shudder when his fingertip skidded across my vertebrae. We were so close I could feel his body heat as he sat there next to me. I wondered what he would do if he knew what his touch was doing to me. It had been a long time since I had been touched by a man other than Spence. Hell, it had been a long time since I had been touched by
any
man.

I slid from the fence, and in the process, pulled away from his hand. Purposely. “Maybe we’d better get back.”

He dropped to the ground beside me. “If you wish,” he said softly, stuffing his hands in his trouser pockets and sucking in a big gulp of night air. He looked up at the emerging stars, and I followed his gaze. The sky was beautiful. The air smelled of ragweed and lilacs. Night birds were singing in the treetops.

I took a step toward the park gate and home, but Chris snagged my sleeve and pulled me to a halt. He waited until my eyes were on him before he spoke.

“I want you to be careful, Tyler. I want you to be careful of yourself. Don’t do anything stupid. Promise me. Don’t try to take the law into your own hands. Don’t make that mistake.”

I studied his face, considered his words. It was almost as if he knew about the gun back at the house. But that was silly. There was no way in hell he could know about the gun.

The gun. Why
had
I bought it? What had I hoped to accomplish by purchasing it? Had I really bought it because I was suddenly afraid of the world, or did I have other plans for it? Plans even I hadn’t fully decided upon? Was Chris smarter than I thought he was? Had he nailed the truth about my intentions even before I did? And just what the fuck was the purpose of buying a gun unless you intended to use it?

Chris watched me closely. And I watched him right back. Meeting his gaze. To my surprise it was he who looked away first.

And to my even greater surprise, he trailed the back of his hand along my forearm, brushing through the hair there, almost lingering with the touch. Then I watched as he squeezed his eyes shut and pulled his hand away.

“I guess we should go, then,” he said softly. I felt a brand-new sense of loss settle into me. But a loss of
what
?

We turned our back on the park, on the settling dew beginning to sparkle the grass, on the coolness of the night breeze stirring the leaves in the trees along the sidewalk leading back through the city streets to my house. I had the strangest sensation that something had happened between Chris and me. Something important. But I couldn’t begin to explain what it was.

Occasionally, as we walked the quiet sidewalks, our shoulders brushed, and once the backs of our hands made the slightest contact, gently bumping against each other. While it was the lightest of touches, it was enough to jar me to the core. He felt it too. I know he did.

I cast surreptitious glances at him when I thought he wouldn’t notice, and his face was somber. He watched his feet as we walked. He had stuffed his hands in his pockets. His shoulders were hunched inward.

“I appreciate everything you’re doing, you know,” I said. “Please don’t think I’m ungrateful.”

He shook his head. “No. Of course not. I understand this is hard for you, Tyler. How could it not be? You’ve lost—everything.”

“Thank you,” I said, staring down at my hand, once again eyeing my ring finger in the light of the streetlamp we were walking under, wondering where my ring was now—on whose finger it was resting. Was it on the hand of Spence’s killer? The fat man with the mole, maybe? Or the skinny fucker with the crappy moustache? Or maybe it was the other man. The man I didn’t remember at all, except for a burst of cruel laughter coming from the shadows of that reeking toilet that night. Who had the ring? And who had
Spence’s
ring? Were they both decorating the same murderous hand?

That thought was so crushing I had to shake it away. I felt suddenly weary to the bone.

“I need sleep,” I said quietly.

Chris took my arm yet again, steering me along the darkened street like a ninety-year-old relative.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s getting late. You must be exhausted. I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“No,” I said. “I’m glad you did.”

I was lying, and we both knew it. The silence that settled over us said as much.

“Let me just get you home,” he muttered. “Then I’ll take off.”

I nodded, too disheartened to speak.
My home
.
My empty home.

Chris kept his hand on my arm the whole way. There was something about his touch that made me want to cry. Guilt, I guess.

I wondered if Spence could see my guilt. And the wondering broke my heart.

I managed to hold back the tears until I was alone inside my front door. I listened, holding my breath, as Chris’s car started up and pulled away.

Once he was gone, I walked through the silent house, switching on lights as I went. I spotted his jacket and tie still draped across my dining room chair. He had forgotten to take them. Then I saw the backpack lying on the table. The backpack with the gun inside.

Again, the question clawed at my mind.
Why did I buy it? What did I intend to do with it?

I stood in the silent house, my fingers caressing the fabric of Chris’s jacket. I slid his tie through my fingers. In my imagination I felt the heat of his body still warming the clothes he had left behind. Lifting the jacket from the chair, I pressed it to my face, inhaling its scent. A surge of desire stuttered through me.

I closed my eyes against the hunger, pushing it away. I draped the detective’s coat and tie back over the dining-room chair. Still, my fingers lingered on them until I forced myself to pull away.

And then I reached for the backpack. I unzipped it and tugged the gun free. The pistol felt cold and hard in my hand. Heavy. With my other hand, I tipped the backpack up and a clatter of gleaming bullets spilled out across the mahogany tabletop. I sucked in a deep breath and began slipping the bullets into the gun as the Latino kid had taught me to do.

When the pistol was fully loaded, I flipped the safety to On.

I laid the gun on the dining-room table. Fully loaded now, it frightened me more than I cared to admit. It frightened me because I knew that with just the right amount of courage, with just the right amount of
disconnect
, I could make my anguish disappear in one booming flash of light and sound. I could stop the suffering
now
. I could stop it all.

I hefted the gun once again, measuring its weight, testing the feel of it. I laid my finger over the trigger and extended my arm to aim the gun straight out in front of me. I centered the sights on a painting on the dining-room wall. I applied pressure to the trigger with my uninjured hand, grateful it was the other hand the fucker had stomped on, otherwise the gun would have been useless to me.

Holding my breath, I squeezed the trigger a little harder. My hand began to shake. Then I reached up with my other hand and released the safety. Instead of the painting on the wall, I imagined a face in the gun sights. A fat face. The face was laughing at me. I homed in on the yellow teeth in that evil, laughing mouth. Then I slid the gun a fraction of an inch to the right and aimed the barrel of the gun at the mole on the man’s cheek.

I lifted my finger from the trigger and whispered, “Bang.”

Carefully, oh so carefully, I slipped the safety back to On and returned the loaded gun to the backpack. Exhausted and heartsick, I walked from the dining room toward the bedroom, stripping my clothes away as I went.

Sleep
.
I need sleep.

And by closing my eyes to the world, I postponed my fate a while longer.

I
F
S
PENCE
’
S
family had tried to contact me during the ensuing weeks, I knew nothing about it. They didn’t come knocking at my door, I knew that much. Even Janie did not reach out to see how I was coping. I was not surprised by Spence’s family’s reaction to the death of their son. After all, their reactions were not far removed from my own. They had pulled back. If not from the world, as I had, at least from me. And I understood why they had. I was nothing more than a reminder to them of what they had lost. But more importantly, with Spence no longer dragging me into their midst by the simple fact of his loving me, they no longer felt compelled to accept me as one of them. They carried, perhaps even unknown to them, that cool oriental outlook on life that focused on family and little else. I was not family to them. Not anymore. Even when Spence was alive, I was not truly family. It was only Spence’s father who was brave enough, and honest enough, to let his indifference toward me show. And now I had pulled away from
them
, they felt no compunctions about letting me go.

And I was glad they had. Without Spence in my life, they meant nothing to me either. They served no earthly purpose other than to remind me of what I no longer possessed. And the same could be said for them. Our common thread, the one that tied us together, was broken.

Spence. He was no longer ours to share. Without him, neither of us needed—or wanted—the other. I let them go without a backward glance.

My in-laws were not the only ties I was about to sever.

Ten weeks to the day after I woke from my coma, I received a letter in the mail from work. The letter was terse and coolly scripted. There was no apology in the words printed there. And strangely enough, the only emotion the words in the letter conjured up in me was to be appreciative of the fact that the message was short and to the point.

The letter bore the letterhead of Mrs. Katherine Margolis, Chairman of the Board, Worldwide Enterprises.

In so many words, Mrs. Margolis was letting me know that since I had chosen to sever all communication with the company, repeatedly not answering phone calls or e-mails, she was taking the only action available to her in releasing me from my position with the firm.

“Good luck, Tyler,” Mrs. Margolis ended up. “Everyone here is sorry for your loss and for the road you have chosen to cope with that loss. While we understand it, we still have a company to run. For the interim, Joe Marston will be assuming your duties as Chief Accountant.”

And on a more personal note, in a postscript at the bottom, Mrs. Margolis added, “Take care of yourself, Tyler. I wish you nothing but the best. Your friend, Katherine.” Below her name there was a cc to Joe Marston, newly promoted Chief Accountant for the company.

I smiled seeing his name there. The little weasel finally got what he had been aching for ever since the day he came to work for me. My job.

And amazingly enough, I didn’t care. I wadded the letter in a ball and dropped it in the wastebasket beside my desk.

Twelve hours later, I stepped from the house just as midnight chimed from the old Regulator clock on the living room wall. The filthy backpack was draped over my shoulder.