Tuesday, October 8, 2013
The last nine years of my life have been an unrelenting hell. Since I lost my daughter, with whom I was allowed to share only a few days, everything has been going from bad to worse.
I torture myself thinking that if I hadn´t met her, she´d still be alive. She´d be fourteen, a lovely teenager. I would still be unaware of her existence, would have never stepped into a children´s park, never read Peter Pan... And Meredith would have lived without a father figure in her life. But she would have been happy. She would still be alive... alive...
Samantha stopped talking to me for months after she returned to the agency. She transformed into another person. It wasn´t just the deplorable physical change that shocked me. She was distant and cold with me. I knew our affair was over, but for the good of the agency, our professional relationship was quite formal.
I still worked till all hours of the night. I kept pushing myself more than anyone else did. I won many awards, but also lost others. Charlotte and I got together again.
She had never stopped loving me, and through these years, regardless of my multiple infidelities and my sever addiction to cocaine, she was always there for me. She left the agency after we got married and I am so sorry to have pushed her into the drug scene.
A few months ago, we had to skip our idyllic vacations at La Toscana, Italy, because she was hospitalized with an overdose. It was a miracle that she survived, yet she still continues to consume the drug daily, getting thinner and more emaciated every day. We promised to give it up, and from now on everything will improve. We will become parents and lead a healthy, normal life. We don´t want to end up in Vermont again, at three in the morning, not knowing how the hell we got there.
It´s seven PM and Paula is still in her office. She looks over at me with those demented eyes, as she always does. I know that sooner or later, she will come to my office to try to seduce me. A month ago I fell for her tricks and we started doing it again. After so many years, in which not a day has gone by without her constant harassment, she caught me in a weak moment when I was high on snort. I couldn´t refuse.
I wonder why I haven´t fired her. Why do I still keep her as one of my assistants? Why, after the thousands of threatening messages – which I promptly erase – in which she tells me she will kill herself if I don´t screw her again, that she can´t live without me... Why do I still keep her close? I can´t deny that I´ve always been attracted to her, but something about her makes my hair stand on end. I try to keep our relationship as professional as possible, but I can´t treat her the way I do Lisa of Nicole. I can´t look straight at her and smile, she might take it the wrong way.
She gets up from her chair, smooths her provocative pencil skirt and comes into my office.
“Do you need some help, Josh?” She asks.
The truth is I do. We are working on an important campaign, with millions riding on it, and we are behind schedule.
“Let´s go over to the meeting room. We will be more comfortable there.” I reply without looking into those fiery green eyes that, not too long ago, seemed the most fascinating in the world.
She sits beside me, paying close attention to each of the ideas for the story board. For the first time in a long time, she is more focused on the work than on me, and I feel relieved. I´d hate to be pushed into doing something I don´t want.
It´s a quarter past nine. We are tired, and before I can suggest breaking for the night, she takes the lead.
“Should we take a break?” She fondles the inside of my leg.
I pull back at once, getting out of my chair, picking up the pile of papers scattered on the table top.
“No, I want to get home early. Charlotte´s expecting me for dinner.” I answer curtly.
“Come on Josh, quit playing hard to get. The other day you were making eyes at me. What are you waiting for? We´re alone, there´s no one left in the office.”
She stares at my crotch, gets up and takes my cock in her hand, roughly. I pull back again, staring her down frostily.
“Besides, you´re so hot...” she whispers, coming closer and closer. Again, I pull back. But before I can get out the door, she grabs my arm with surprising strength and looks at me with those demented fiery eyes I´ve gotten used to.
“Do you think you can just fuck me and then leave me?” She asks with a threatening tone. “Who do you think pushed all those pills down your little girls throat?”
Totally taken aback, I look at her. I can tell she´s telling the truth.
“What are you saying, Paula?”
My voice breaks, I feel a knot in my throat that prevents me from speaking and my legs turn to rubber.
“Sit down!” She orders, raising her voice.
I sit and pay attention. I want to hear what she has to say, I want to know the truth, though I´m terrified at what it might be.
“Meredith, right?” She nods, walking back and forth in the meeting room. I look at my watch, it´s twenty to ten. “She was a lovely child, and easy to deceive, too. She was on a swing in the park when I approached her and told her I had a puppy I wanted to show her. I took her to my car. No one saw us. I´m quite resourceful, you know?”
I´m struck dumb. I can´t utter a sound. Only a snort has put me in this state in the past.
“She quickly discovered there was no puppy, but it didn´t matter, she said she was glad I had taken her because she was mad at her mommy and daddy who had left her with the sitter. They didn´t want to take her with them. We went to my parent´s house. Oh, by the way, I´ve already told you about my parent´s death. A drunk driver killed them in the spring of 1987, but I didn´t tell who it was. Can you guess?”
Before she can say another word, I know who it was.
“It was your father, Josh. Your father, a drunk, reckless driver who snuffed my parent´s lives that night in the damned car accident. But that´s not the story. I´ll get on with it. On Saturday night, Meredith and I had pizza and watched a movie. Then, when it was time to go to bed, I read her a book: Peter Pan. She told me you read it to her every night since she met you. She also told me that I read it much better than you did.” She laughs, shakes her head and stops in front of the table from me. “On Sunday afternoon, I told her we were going to eat some delicious candy. She swallowed three pills without complaining. I had to shove the rest down her little throat. She had a sweet death, Josh. She didn´t suffer. I promise, I took care of her.”
I hold back my fury and frustration. I could kill her. Smash her against the glass and crush her skull.
“And if you think I´m going to let you walk out that door, knowing what you know, well, you are very wrong.” She mutters.
“Go ahead, Paula. Kill me.”
I surrender. I want to go. I deserve it.
With superhuman strength, she swings her clenched fist at the glass partition. It shatters and I am amazed that her knuckles are unscathed. She comes towards me, brandishing a shard of glass, sharper than any knife. Before she slits my throat, she looks at me and laughs, waving a little bag of cocaine she had hidden in one of her folders.
It´s ten o´clock when she strikes. I´m glad to join my little daughter, who, as Peter Pan, has been in Neverland for the last nine years.
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