Текст книги "Fear Itself"

Автор книги: Duffy Prendergast

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

15

Despite the lock on the door Melanie had trouble sleeping at night. All through the weekend she seemed to be groggy and tired. The next week wasn’t any better. She tossed and turned through the nights to the point that I couldn’t sleep. Our lovemaking had ceased completely. Melanie was far too stressed; far too edgy to think about intimacy. “What’s the matter?” I asked as I tried to initiate the act.

“I keep thinking of Sarah…cutting Amber’s throat. I can’t get the image out of my mind. I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. I’ve lost my share of sleep over it too. Maybe you should see a doctor; maybe get some pills; something to relieve your anxiety or to help you to sleep.”

On that Monday night Melanie slept quietly with the help of her doctor’s prescription. She took a pill about an hour before we went to bed and she began snoring in the middle of making love to me for what would have been the first time in almost two weeks had we completed the act.

The male ego is such a fragile thing. I was actually a little wounded at her having been able to fall asleep while I tried to make love to her despite my knowledge of the reason. I found it interesting how uninviting her body became, warm and supple as it was, as she snored through my effort to copulate. It was like screwing a corpse. Her body lay flaccid beneath me and her listlessness killed my mood, but I was pleased to see her sleeping. I knew that she must have been exhausted. I hoped that she was dreaming of better things.

Melanie said that the she didn’t like taking the sleeping pills. She said they made her wake up in the middle of the night feeling dehydrated so she started to keep a bottle of water or a glass of iced tea on her nightstand. She would fill it at night and in the morning she would not remember waking up but her glass would be empty. She said the pills also made her groggy in the morning. Too groggy to get up and make my coffee and breakfast, and apparently too groggy to pack my lunch. I felt bad for her that she needed a pill to fall asleep. I knew that it was partly my fault. But I didn’t see why she couldn’t pack my lunch the night before.

Melanie tried her best to maintain her loving relationship with Sarah but I began to notice subtle differences in the way she behaved when they were alone. From the living room I watched as they worked together in the kitchen and while Melanie was just as helpful in teaching Sarah to prepare new dishes she would seldom touch her. Melanie used to put her hand on Sarah’s head and muss her hair a little after Sarah had performed a task particularly well. I would sometimes come home to find them nestled together on the sofa watching television; but no more. Melanie used to kiss the top of Sarah’s head before she sent her to her room where as now she would simply lead her to her room by the hand and close the door behind her; and Melanie used to ask Sarah to sit next to her sometimes just to cuddle while we watched television at night but now she was content to have me be a buffer between the two of them. I knew that Sarah noticed Melanie’s unintentional rebuffs and I could tell that she was hurt by them, but what does one say to console a sociopath? I was hoping not to draw any extra attention to the matter. I was hoping that it was a phase; that Melanie would slowly return to her loving ways.

But over a month passed and the subtle slights grew greater instead of fewer. Melanie would send Sarah off to bed early with some silly excuse like “Come on now, we have a big day tomorrow. You need your sleep.” rather than to invite her to snuggle with us before bedtime. If this had been the norm I would have understood. If Sarah were back in school, again it would have been justified. But Sarah was used to staying up with us and there was no good reason for Melanie to change our routine. She was deliberately pushing Sarah away.

I tried hard to feel the same way about Melanie as I had before our little secret had been revealed but those subtle indiscretions, I felt, were the difference between love and cohabitation. To love Sarah was to love me; and after all, despite her homicidal tendencies, Sarah had never given any indication that she might harm Melanie. In fact Sarah got upset when Melanie and I bickered with each other. She wanted Melanie and me to be happy together and to get along. She knew that we slept together with the door closed at night and she never once complained about being excluded from the intimacies that we shared. Melanie had nothing to worry about. I wondered why she chose to poke the bear.

* * *

One night as we undressed for bed Melanie approached me with an unusual question.

“How would you feel about it if I went back to work?” she said.

“Why not?” I said, “Sarah will be going back to school soon. Why should I mind if you got a job?” Melanie had run into a friend who she knew to have helped a Mexican dancer to obtain a false birth certificate and driver license. She inquired about getting some false identification for both Sarah and I. Through a friend of a friend of a friend he had come through for Sarah with a birth certificate from a girl who had died some three years previous. It seemed that getting Sarah a new identity was a much simpler task than creating a new me. In any event I had registered Sarah at the local public school and she was scheduled to start back in the fall. I was to remain Mohamed Assad.

“I meant…working at night.” Melanie averted my eyes.

“Doing what?”

“Well…I only know how to do one thing.” She looked up at me but closed her eyes as she spoke.

“And what would that be?” My voice was purposely calm and monotone.

“Dancing of course.”

“That’s not dancing!” I felt the blood rush to my face but I forced my voice to remain cool. She was deliberately pushing my buttons. I didn’t like the way it made me feel but I also didn’t want her to know how upset she was making me.

“It was okay with you when we first started seeing each other.” She looked away from me again, “And besides, we sure could use the money.”

“You said you didn’t need to work anymore…that you had saved enough money to live on for a long time.” I kept my voice placid once again but inside my chest my heart was pounding like a like a sledgehammer and I felt the muscles in my wrists clench.

“I know, but you wouldn’t want me to use up all of my savings would you?”

“You can’t have had to spend much. I give you my whole paycheck every week. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, it’s not.”

I drew a long pause, “You’re a big girl. If you want to prance around naked shoving your cunt in the faces of scum-bags…if that’s what does it for you, then who am I to stop you. It’s not like we’re married.” I knew that I was losing it, but what was I supposed to do? I was of course opposed to my girlfriend prancing naked before men and grinding her pelvis in an undulating simulation of intercourse. I felt threatened and jealous. Who wouldn’t?

“I think you spent too much time around Amber!” her expression was terse; “Her dirty language seems to have rubbed off on you.” that.”

I drew a long breath, “I’m sorry I said

“I was just asking. I don’t have to do it.” She waived her hand at me as if she had just suggested something as innocuous as taking a walk. “Forget I asked.”

I knew what Melanie was doing. She had been slowly distancing herself from Sarah and now she was trying to finish the job by pushing me out. Perhaps the stress of living with a murderess was just too much for her. But she didn’t have to go to such lengths to get rid of me. I would have rather she had asked me to leave. She’s the one who wanted me to move in with her. I felt betrayed by her asking to go back to dancing. If she wanted me to get out of her life I felt that she should have asked me in a more direct way.

She took her pill that night right before going to bed. We slept side by side deliberately not making contact with each other. No effort was made by either of us to couple or to reconcile; and it wasn’t easy to sleep together so deliberately avoiding even the slightest touch since we had grown accustomed to sleeping with our bodies intertwined either at the feet or the waist or spooned and cupped or sometimes still attached like a pair of knotted dogs. I tossed and turned and did not sleep well at all and to be honest I found her quietude annoying. Her pill had, as was the norm, knocked her out cold and she snored provocatively.

After several hours of sleeplessness my agitation with Melanie welled up inside of me like a volcano seething to eruption. Melanie’s tranquility vexed me. She had riled me up and then dissolved her tensions with a little pill and a glass of cherry Koolaide. I laid in the bed fuming until I fell into short fitful spurts of sleep only to awaken again.

The next evening when I came home from work Melanie was gone and Sarah was sitting on the couch watching television. I felt a dull ache in the pit of my stomach as I sidled up next to Sarah and hugged her.

“Where is Melanie?” I asked.

“She went to work.” My heart was broken but I did my best not to reflect my pain.

“What’s for supper?”

“Melanie said that you were going to take me out to get something to eat.” I felt that Melanie was sending me a final message. She had gone back to stripping and she had left us to fend for ourselves for dinner. My heart could not sink any lower. Her message was clear.

“Come on, let’s go.” I said and I pulled

Sarah by the hand.

“Is this a date?” she smiled up at me. We had not dined out alone for quite some time. She had not called me lover or suggested a date since our little humping incident. I didn’t want to encourage her. I certainly didn’t want to resume espousing her, but her smile indicated that she had missed our little playful intimacy and in my weakened emotional state I caved.

“Sure.” I forced a smile and then we left on our date.

Later that night I lay in bed unable to sleep as I monitored the L.E.D. readout on the digital clock on Melanie’s nightstand. The minutes turned slowly while I stared at the clock but time seemed to accelerate whenever I turned away and minutes passed in blocks of ten and twenty. Before I knew it the hour was past three a.m. and Melanie still wasn’t home. All the while I jealously pictured her dancing naked on a stage rocking her pelvis in the faces of strangers and parting her legs in open squats as they tucked dollar bills inside her garter. As the hour passed three I imagined that she was naked on a hotel bed, a line of half dressed men trailing down the corridor waiting to fuck her for twenty dollars apiece and the joyless pleasure that it gave her. I began to cry quiet tears at her imagined defilement and my projected betrayal. When I heard the back door squeak open I quickly dried my eyes and turned my body to the side of the bed and feigned sleep.

I heard her undress. I listened as the silk of her shirt slid across the tiny invisible hairs on her back as she pulled the garment over her head; as she unsnapped her lace bra and the weight of her breasts tugged at the fabric as she removed it; as the cotton of her tight jeans glided across the flesh of her thighs and the nylon of her socks slipped across her smooth delicate feet; and as the shimmering fabric of her panties shimmied down to her ankles and she stepped out of them one foot at a time. I felt her weight, light as she was, as she sat on her side of the bed. I listened as she opened the safety cap to her sleeping pills and laid one on her tongue and I pictured her open mouthed with her tongue sticking out, wincing at the taste of the pill as she rushed to poor the liquid from her glass into her mouth to wash it down. The sound of glass on wood as she set her drink down on her nightstand made a brief muffled clunk; then she resealed the lid to her pills and placed them next to the glass and laid down facing away from me…being careful not to touch any part of her flesh to mine as she shifted beneath the covers seeking a comfortable shape.

As I lay stewing in my jealous brew I consoled myself with the fact that Melanie had not bathed upon her return. If she had slept with another man she would have bathed to wash away his scent. I realized too that despite my anger and my jealousy that I still loved her very much and I didn’t want to lose her. I wanted to find some way to salvage our relationship. It wasn’t just that she was all I had. I had truly grown to love her and to appreciate what we had. I reached over and even though I knew that she would not know that I had visited her in her sleep I kissed her and then turned on my side and I wept in self– pity until I finally fell asleep.

We didn’t share a wakeful moment together as Tuesday through Friday night Melanie was gone when I arrived home from work and I left before she woke. I pretended, for Sarah’s sake, as though all was well between us and that Melanie had simply found a legitimate job. I listened each night as she undressed (pretending that I was asleep) and took her pill and slipped into bed. Each night my pain grew exponentially as wild thoughts riddled my subconscious filling me with an ugly resentment. In my mind, whether true or imagined, I was a cuckold to the woman I loved. I was inextricably tied to Melanie through a bond of an inexplicable emotion and yet I was as tortured as a boy in the throes of unrequited love. My soul was wounded and I hardly slept at night and my strain was showing at work, as I became a worthless broken tool to Tony, plodding through my days in one continuous yawn. By weeks end I was exhausted and I slept soundly for the first time Friday night until I was awakened by what I thought to be the clicking sound of my bedroom door being shut. I wasn’t sure but I thought I heard the patter of tiny footsteps trotting away down the hall. I sat up and looked around the room but in the dark of night I could see nothing out of place.

Then a horrible thought crossed my mind. I quickly jumped up and backed away from the lump that occupied the other side of my bed. I stared at the lump which was Melanie. The pink quilted blanket we shared covered her body and her head. There was no sign of blood but she appeared too still, as though she were not breathing. I was too scared to pull the covers back for fear that she was dead. I just couldn’t take finding another lover dead in my bed. I couldn’t stand to lose Melanie. I loved her so. I needed her so. I vowed at that moment that I would put up with her behavior no matter how agonizing the pain if only God would let her be alive when I lift the covers.

I crept over to our bedroom door and I felt for the latch. It was undone. Melanie had forgotten to secure the lock when she crawled into bed. I crept over to Melanie and I slowly lifted the quilt. Her face was pale and her breathing seemed shallow but to my great relief she was alive. I placed my head to her breastbone and I listened for a pulse. I felt the slightest rise and fall of her chest but I could not hear her heart beat. I lifted my head and I tried to gather my bearings. My eyes were still adjusting to the dark so when I looked at the nightstand and saw that her pill bottle was open I thought at first that I was seeing things. Melanie sealed her pill bottle religiously every night. I picked up the bottle and verified that the lid was missing and I tilted the bottle but it was empty. At first I supposed that she had left the lid open because it was empty, but then I noticed that there were six broken capsules on the nightstand. The glass next to the bed was empty. I picked it up and I walked over to the closet and I switched the closet light on. I swirled the backwashed contents of the glass and noticed a powdery residue mixed in with the remnants of her beverage. I turned my head toward Melanie as I realized what had taken place. Sarah had struck again. She had split Melanie’s sleeping pills open and emptied them into her glass after Melanie had fallen asleep. Melanie had drunk from the glass to quench her thirst in the middle of the night. Melanie had overdosed on sleeping pills.

I bolted to the bed and I sat Melanie up and I slapped her face, “Melanie…Melanie…can you hear me?”

Melanie just barely opened her eyes but then she closed them again and she fell back against my arm. Her face appeared bluish in the dim light of our bedroom. I pulled her back up.

“Melanie…Melanie…did you do this?” I thought perhaps, hopefully, that she had tried to end her own life…that Sarah had not plied her craft yet again. Not that that would have been good either, but not as horrifying as the alternative.

“Whaaaat?” Melanie eyes fluttered open but then floated back into the top of her head.

“Did you do this?” “Whaaaat?”

“Did you put sleeping pills in your drink?”

Melanie did not respond.

I panicked. I lifted Melanie from the bed and slung her bare-assed over my shoulder and flung open the door and started to carry her to the car. Then I thought better of that idea and I returned and laid her back onto the bed and I scrounged through her dresser drawers and found and slipped a sweatshirt over her head and pulled her arms through the sleeves and I grabbed a pair of sweat pants and pulled them over her legs and I lifted her, as though I were dressing a child, and I pulled the sweats up to her waist; then I hoisted her once again and I carried her through the house and down the steps and through the darkness and into the back seat of my car where I dumped her with less care than I aught.

Driving to the hospital I pegged the accelerator to the floor making a rushed pause at each stop sign until I reached the main road. I realized then that I didn’t know where the nearest hospital was located, or for that matter where any hospital was located, so I turned right onto the strip hoping to locate a hospital sign or to see someone who might be able to direct me. I cruised through red stop lights, slowing just enough to see that no car approached from the sides. I had gone several miles and I had not passed a single car or a living soul. I looked over my shoulder at Melanie. She didn’t look good. The knot in my stomach grew to the size of a bowling ball and felt just as heavy. Tears were streaming down my face. I couldn’t let her die. I couldn’t’ let it happen again. I punched the gas and I sped down the road no longer slowing at red lights. I was hoping to pass a cop; to have them spot me rather than I having to slow to look for them. I needed help if I was going to save Melanie. I could not bear to have her death on my conscience. I could not bear to lose her.

The speed limit was thirty-five. I was doing sixty-two. I passed through a business district: convenience stores and video stores and computer stores and carpet stores seemed to creep like turtles past my side windows leaving a wake of dust behind me. Then I heard the short blast of a siren and I saw flashing blue lights in my rear-view mirror. I rolled my driver-side window down as I slowed to the speed limit and I waved the police car forward. The cruiser pulled alongside me and lowered the passenger window. There sat a thin young policeman in a blue uniform with glasses too big for his long narrow face and a thin mustache that made him look more like a teenager than a man.

“Hospital!” I shouted as loud as I could, “Where is the hospital?” I pointed toward the back seat of my car to where Melanie lay.

“Follow me.” Was his muffled reply. The policeman turned his siren on and the repetitive blaring whine pierced the deadened silence of night and echoed off of the buildings like sonar to a submarine as we passed them and the sound of the siren faded into the emptiness of space as we flew through open building-less spaces.

Time seemed to slow and distort the world around me. Intersections and landmarks crept closer as minutes became hours. I thumped the steering wheel impatiently. We passed a blue and white “H” sign mounted to a light pole near the freeway entrance which indicated that a hospital lay ahead. And then the hospital came into view and slowly grew in size as we approached. We turned into the emergency entrance and through a traffic loop normally reserved for ambulances.

As I opened my car door the normal speed of the universe seemed to catch up to me and clock me from behind as my knees buckled and I crumpled to the ground. I gripped the car door and pulled myself up as two paramedics wheeling a gurney came racing alongside my passenger door. Before I could round the car on my wobbly legs they had Melanie on the gurney and were wheeling her toward the emergency entrance and through two large automatic sliding glass doors. As I weakly followed and entered the emergency room a doctor began working on Melanie applying pressured rhythmic pushes with his palms to her chest while a nurse forced oxygen into her lungs through a large plastic tube.

“What happened to her?” A doctor in a powder blue uniform grabbed my shoulder and spun me towards him.

“Overdose.” I said.

The policeman, who was standing just behind the doctor, looked over the doctor’s shoulder and up at me, “What kind of drugs were you doing?” he said accusingly.

“None.” I heard my voice break. “She took sleeping pills.”

“How many?” asked the doctor.

“Six…maybe seven.”

“Do you have the bottle?”

I fished inside my pocket and pulled the topless bottle out and handed it to the doctor.

“Did she try to kill her self?” said the cop who had moved to stand beside the doctor.

Up close I could see that he was much older than I had originally thought.

“I guess so…I don’t know.”

I turned my head and watched as they wheeled Melanie through a set of doors and disappeared down a corridor. I was in a state of shock.

“I’m going to need to ask you a few questions.” The cop said to me leading me by the arm to a waiting area of plastic lime green chairs shaped like quarter moons with stainless steel legs. A television set tuned to a news channel was mounted to the wall near the ceiling but the sound was turned down and letters appeared on the screen as the anchor’s lips moved. The cop and I sat across from each other.

“What is your name?”

I paused and thought about the question for a moment.

“Your name?” he said impatiently. “Mohamed.” I blurted. “Mohamed

Assad.” I reached for my wallet to show him the driver license of the store owner I had taken it from.

“You don’t look Muslim.”

“I’m not.” I forced a smile, “But my father was and it’s the name he gave me.”

The cop formed a puzzled look as he compared the driver license photo to my face and then he handed my wallet back to me. “What is the woman’s name?”

“Melanie Burke.”

“And what is your relationship to her?” “She’s my girlfriend.”

“Any idea why she would try to kill herself?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t spoken to each other for a week. We had an argument.

But I don’t see how that would make her want to kill herself.”

A paramedic in a white uniform poked his head into the waiting room, “You’re going to have to move your car sir…you too officer.”

I rose from my seat and I followed the policeman outside to the circle where an ambulance was waiting to unload its cargo. The policeman turned his head back towards me. “We’ll finish this afterwards.” He said; then he stepped into his cruiser and pulled out and disappeared into the mass of cars in the parking lot.

I was pretty scared at that point. I hadn’t had any positive experiences with the men in blue. I felt that I would soon be found out. If he had asked my date of birth or my height and weight my cover would have been blown. I had never thought to memorize Mohamed’s personal details. I climbed inside the Mustang and slowly pulled out and I turned to the opposite side of the parking lot as did the policeman and drove sluggishly down an aisle. When I came to a parking space nearest the exit I turned off my headlights and left the car running and got out and closed the door and started to walk back towards the hospital. I saw the cop observing me from the emergency entrance but once he saw me walking towards him he stepped inside the sliding doors and disappeared. I took that opportunity to rush back to my car and with the headlights off I pulled forward and onto the street and I drove down the main drag for a few miles and then turned down a side street and I took the side streets back to Melanie’s house. The car was registered now to Mohamed Assad and it was addressed to my old house so I didn’t have to worry about having the car traced to Melanie’s house.