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I’m guessing he’s a Carl with a C rather than Karl with K like Karl Marx. The latter would suggest parents with an intellect, a sense of irony, and uppitiness for lack of a better word. But the former suggests quite the opposite. Average parents who gave him an average upbringing in an average city like Albany where nothing too good or too bad happens. I’m guessing he was super jock in high school, a chick magnet (maybe the girls gave him a nickname like “God” or something), and maybe quarterback of the football team, but not quite big or fast enough to make the squad in college, meaning that by the time he’d been handed his high school diploma, his life had already peaked.
He attended JuCo for two years before deciding to be a cop since, in his rather simple mind, it was as close as he could come to his high school football glory days without going back in time. Not a leader, but a follower who hates Cattivo’s guts but will follow the superior officer’s orders without hesitation or question nonetheless. A man who believes in the concept of team and refers to his fellow officers as “brothers in arms.”
Is it possible he’s in love and lust with Lana as much as I am?
Another bewitched man reduced to a useless emotional pile of rags and bones. I’m guessing that when I saw him on the phone behind the wheel of the black Suburban, his face in distress, lit cigarette dangling from his lips, he was leaving Lana a long message about how he can’t possibly live without her. That’s the way I’d write it anyway. A message that will only be listened to half way through before she deletes it and makes herself another iced coffee.
Should I be jealous of Carl?
Not in the least. I’m just as pathetic as he is.
(To Be Continued...)
10.
The doorbell startled me out of my writing daze.
Shooting a glance over my shoulder through the big living room picture window, I spotted the big brown UPS truck parked up against the curb at the end of the drive. Standing on one foot, I shoved the crutches under my arms, crossed through the living room to the front door, opened it. The stocky young man was dressed in his summertime brown shorts and shirt. He held a small package in one hand, and a clipboard in the other. Looking down at the box, I could see that it was from Victoria’s Secret.
“Looks like the wife is trying to cheer you up, pal,” he said, handing me the electronic clipboard. “Sign on the dotted line,” he added.
I signed and he handed me the package.
“Thanks.”
“Enjoy yourself,” he said, tossing me a wink. “Careful of the foot.”
Shutting the door, I stared at the box. It was addressed to Susan. I didn’t think a whole lot about it since my wife was always ordering things online. Clothes that we couldn’t afford, for the most part. So some new underwear came as no surprise.
Shoving the box under my arm, I carried it with me into our bedroom, set it down onto the small antique dressing table that Susan used when she made up her face and also to do her bills or write the occasional letter. It was then I noticed a few new additions to the tabletop. A brand new bottle of perfume, for one. Also, a new leather-bound notebook filled with expensive paper. Like something an artist would carry into the woods for sketching.
Why hadn’t I noticed the new items by now?
Maybe I’d been far too busy looking out the window and, at the same time, ignoring Susan’s table. After all, it was none of my business what she kept on top of it or didn’t, and for all I knew, the notebook and the perfume had been there for more than a year. After a while, you stop noticing certain things in a marriage.
Still, I couldn’t stop my curiosity from getting the best of me. Picking up the notebook, I opened it to the first page. That’s when I saw her name. Lana, scrawled in blue ballpoint in feminine cursive. Below the autograph was a simple XO and directly beside that was a lipstick red kiss made from Lana’s actual lips pressed up against the page.
My heart pumped.
Only an hour or so ago, Lana told me that she and Susan hardly knew one another. That their only connection was the P90X class. I thought about the WhatsApp message on her phone. The word “Baby.” Did Susan and Lana know one another better than she was letting on?
I took another look at the Vic Secret box. In all the years I’d lived with Susan I’d never once opened her mail. That is, unless she asked me to. Did I start now just because I sensed a deception in the works?
I felt the slight, almost featherweight of the package in my hand. Felt my fingers pressing into it. Then, just like that, I was tearing it open. Inside I found a pair of thong panties. Pink and, as far as I could tell, made of pure silk. Expensive stuff.
There was a note that came with it.
A small pink envelope about the size of one you might get along with a dozen roses. Susan’s name had been written on the envelope in blue ballpoint.
I opened the envelope.
“How nice it would be to see you in these,” it said. It was signed, “You know who.”
I felt my pulse beating in my temples. Returning the note to the envelope, I put the package back together as best I could. When Susan came home from work, I would have no choice but to lie to her. Tell her it arrived this way. “You know how the mail can be sometimes,” I’d tell her.
I set the box back down onto the table and ran the possibilities over in my mind. Either Susan and Lana were far closer than I thought or some strange man who referred to himself as “You-know-who” was sending my wife sexy underwear. Maybe she’d been seeing him for some time. It’s only been the past year that Susan and I started to drift. It’s possible she’s been conducting an affair for that entire time. But then, why was my gut telling me that you-know-who was Lana?
It’s precisely what I was mulling over in my mind when I made out the automatic chirping that can only come from a car lock being electronically opened. Sure I had other neighbors, but by now I’d learned to recognize the sound of her particular vehicle exclusively. The sound of its locks engaging or disengaging, and the gentle purr of its motor sounded like a thousand other vehicles in Albany alone. But somehow, hers was different. Everything about her was different and unique in ways that might not have been immediately discernable judging from her outwardly appearance. But she was unique all right, and that uniqueness could only be measured in terms of my growing obsession.
Turning, I started not for the bedroom window, but the window in the full bath located off the front hall vestibule. It would give me a better view of her driveway.
Crossing over the living room as fast as my crutches could carry me, I jammed my bad foot into the door jamb. The collision of swelled, surgically lacerated foot with the solid wood jamb nearly sent me through the roof. But still, I kept moving, knowing all the time that the real pain would be delayed. It was more important that I catch a glimpse of Lana as she was getting into her car than it was to perform a damage check on my foot. Just that one simple glance could make or break the remainder of my day.
The single slider in the bathroom was identical to the one in the bedroom. I stood maybe a foot or so away from it while I watched a now fully clothed Lana get behind the wheel of her red, two-door, Ford Shelby GT500 convertible. As the electric pain travelled from my toes to my brain and back to my toes, I focused my gaze on her as she adjusted the rearview mirror to just the right position, and then slipped on the same pair of sunglasses she’d been wearing out back.
She was sporting a black satin button-down shirt that was unbuttoned low enough to expose just a hint of red pushup bra, and both her wrists were supporting at least a dozen different silver bracelets. Her lips were painted bright red and her cheeks were tanned golden from the many mornings spent sunning on her back deck. Her hair hung down against her shoulders, but a colorful silk scarf was wrapped around it. From where I was standing in pain and no doubt bleeding, she looked every bit the Southern California transplant, which was something foreign for Orchard Grove. Didn’t matter that she was born in Albany. Everything about her exuded California confidence and sexuality.
My foot began to throb with every pulse of my heart... Not a good sign.
Looking quickly down at it, I could see that the index toe had indeed begun to bleed. The pain was so bad my brow had broken out into a cold sweat and I felt vaguely nauseas. As my knees grew weak, I also thought I might pass out.
But I didn’t care.
The pain was worth every second watching her power up her sports car, and back out of the driveway. But once she was gone, I was again filled with an emptiness that was far greater than my pain, more disturbing than the blood soaking into my thin black sock, more confusing than knowing my wife and Lana were quite possibly striking up a secret friendship.
Obsession... it had invaded my flesh and bone like a cancer.
What the hell was happening to me anyway?
Ten years ago I was a successful screenwriter living the kind of life any writing student would kill for. I had talent, money, notoriety, and the respect of my industry peers. But then, it all went bad because of a few bad choices drowned in booze and the tears that can only be shed by a husband whose wife is getting her orgasms elsewhere.
But the tears dried when I met Susan. It’s true my career was still in a tailspin, but at least Susan had become my rock, my love and my happiness. But then, she left me too. Sure, we still lived together. But in many ways, she was already gone.
And now that Lana had entered into our lives, all I could think about was being with her. Making love to her. Could she make me happy? Could she love me more than Susan ever could? Could she be the muse that I’d been looking for?
Maybe my foot was a bloody mess, but I had become a very sick man. A man sick with love and lust. What I didn’t realize at the time was that my disease would turn out to be terminal.
11.
Inside the medicine cabinet, I located a box of Band-Aids, set them on the edge of the sink. Seating myself on the lid-covered toilet, I undid the Velcro straps on the black, plastic and nylon, knee-high splint, pulled it off and then gently peeled off the now bloody sock. The long incision that ran the length of my second toe (the index or Morton’s toe) had been reopened. The metal pin inserted into the very center of the toe, where the surgeon had drilled vertically through the bone, was now slightly bent so that it hooked upward at a thirty-degree angle. When the time came for the doctor to pry it out of my foot... and they would do so with a pair of workman’s pliers, or so I was told by the assisting nurse... it would hurt like a son of a bitch. No two ways about it.
But just looking at the foot made my back teeth hurt. It looked like a long, narrow, chunk of newly butchered beef.
I did my best to clean the entire foot with warm soap and water before applying a Band-Aid to the tip of my toe and over the inch and half of exposed, bent, metal rod. Then, I applied an additional two, wider bandages to the incision that had been reopened. I slipped on a clean sock I’d taken from my underwear drawer earlier, put the splint back on, making sure the Velcro straps were tight but not too tight so that I didn’t cut off the circulation on the swelled foot. The last thing I needed was to encourage the formation of a blood clot. A blood clot meant instant death.
Taking hold of my crutches, I went back into the kitchen and downed four Advil with cold tap water that I drank right out of the faucet. Then, I sat myself back down at my typewriter, refocused my eyes on the words I’d typed only moments ago, and I waited... waited to once more hear the sound of Lana’s car pulling back up into her driveway.
Maybe a half hour went by.
But I couldn’t be certain. Time had become warped since Lana’s arrival in Orchard Grove. I measured it now not by the seconds or minutes that clicked away on the stove clock in the kitchen, but by the steady and consistent throbs of electric pain that would begin at the tip of my index toe, shoot at lightning speed up into my brain and then back down again to the tip of my toe.
I thought about having another drink or maybe reigniting that green joint. But in truth, too much dope made me paranoid. I was already paranoid or neurotic anyway. Better that I stick to the booze in order to curb the pain. Something strong, like Jack. But then, what the hell was I doing? I’d already talked myself out of drinking anything else, earlier. As a result, I’d gotten some writing done. Maybe not a lot, but it was a start.
Pulling the sheet of typed paper from the typewriter, I set it to the side with the others, and fit a clean sheet onto the spool. I sat there at the dining room table, staring at the newly typed pages, knowing that I should have been adding words to the new sheet. I’d done enough characterization study for one day. Now would be the time to begin my story. Maybe I would begin with a man staring out of his bedroom window onto a most beautiful apparition. A blonde beauty who’d just moved in next door with her cop husband, and who sunbathed on her back deck in the nude.
I raised both hands, extended my index fingers, and typed, FADE IN.
I was about to set the scene when the doorbell rang.
12.
The sudden noise startled me, as if someone sneaked up behind me and screamed “Boo!”
I laid my hands flat onto the tabletop, pressed myself up, took a look over my shoulder out the living room picture window. I couldn’t see anyone, but then that made sense since whoever was ringing the bell was hidden behind the closed door.
Fetching my crutches, I lifted myself up from the table, made my way through the living room to the front, solid wood door. When I made out Lana’s face through all three of the small clear glass panels embedded into the door, my pulse picked up, and for a brief moment anyway, I forgot all about the pain in my foot.
Unlocking the deadbolt, I then twisted the opener counterclockwise. In order to open the door, I had to hop backwards on my good leg.
“Don’t fall,” Lana said as she carefully stepped through the door, her lavender scent once more filling my senses.
“I’ll try not to,” I said, feeling my throat constrict, and the center of my chest grow tight. “At this point, I might elect to have the whole damned foot amputated.”
“Pain?” she said, brushing back her hair with an open hand, as if she were staring not into my eyes but into a mirror.
“You have no idea,” I said, glancing down at the foot, seeing the small round spot of fresh blood that had formed on the new white sock that covered it. “Please come in, Lana.”
She stepped into the vestibule and crossed over into the living room. I closed the door, locked it. But before joining her in the living room, I took the time to peer through the wooden door’s top most pane of glass onto the driveway and the Orchard Grove road beyond it.
“Expecting somebody else?” Lana inquired. If I were writing this for my script, I would have said her voice sounded more sarcastic than inquisitive.
“Just looking out for your husband. I’m in enough hurt as it is. I don’t need a bullet in my back.”
“Oh, John wouldn’t hesitate to shoot you in the face while staring you down.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“You heard us arguing earlier?” she said. “Or couldn’t you hear us well enough through the bedroom window once you cracked it open?”
I could feel her sly smile as if she’d squirted me with a squirt gun filled with holy water. Turning, I hobbled into the living room.
“I’d make a real crappy spy,” I said.
“Yes, you would, Ethan. A very bad spy indeed.”
I noticed then she was holding something in her hand. A copy of my novel, Break Up, it turns out. There was a scantily clad, busty blonde woman depicted on the paperback book cover. She was aiming the barrel of an automatic at a desperate man who was down on his knees, his arms raised to the heavens. The look on her face was one of fierce determination and hatred. You didn’t have to read a single word to know that the man was as good as dead.
“You’ve been doing some shopping at the used bookstore,” I said. “I could have provided you with a copy for free.” Releasing my hand from the crutch grip, I pointed to the bookshelf pressed up against the far windowless wall in the living room directly to my right, the top two shelves of which contained copies of my one and only novel.
“I wanted to support the author with my five-fifty,” she said.
“You’re only supporting the used bookstore owner,” I said. “That book was remaindered years ago, almost as fast as it was released. But that’s very kind of you and your husband.”
She held the book out for me. “He has no idea. Now would you sign it for me?”
I gazed into her blue eyes, until I ran my eyes up and down the length of her body. She was wearing the black button-down shirt that I recalled from an hour earlier, and a worn jean skirt that barely covered her thighs. For footwear she wore Cleopatra sandals, the thin leather straps to which wrapped around her ankles. I guess I never noticed it before, but she bore the blood red tattoo of a broken heart on her left ankle. Three red teardrops were crying, or bleeding, from out of the broken heart.
She noticed me staring down at the tattoo.
“Do you like my heart?” she asked.
“I didn’t notice it earlier,” I said. “Out on your deck.”
We both gravitated out of the living room and into the attached dining room, where my typewriter was set beside the bowl of apples.
“You were looking at other things.” She smiled again. “Until we were so rudely interrupted.”
“Yes,” I said, my eyes locking on the pages I’d written that morning, seeing the name “LANA” on the top page in capital letters. “Interrupted by your husband who’s a top cop, carries a big fat gun, has an ill-tempered partner, and sports a nasty attitude about life.” Slipping my hand from the crutch, I gently took hold of the pages, turned them over on the table.
That’s when she took a step forward, coming even closer to me, apparently without noticing my maneuver with the pages. Or just not caring perhaps. She came so close that her lavender scent became almost overwhelming. It seemed to fill the dining room like a vapor. It made my throat constrict even more than it already had, and my stomach tie itself into knots. Christ, I felt like a teenager again gazing upon his first crush. That’s the kind of power she had over me. When I focused my gaze upon the portion of her cleavage that was exposed under the unbuttoned portion of her silk shirt, I began to grow hard, and I didn’t care in the least if she noticed. In fact, I wanted her to notice.
Again, she ran a hand through her thick hair, and when she lowered it, it brushed against her breast, arousing her nipple so that it immediately became erect through her thin bra and shirt. If I weren’t on crutches, I would have stepped into her then, kissed her on the mouth. Hard. But she must have been thinking the same thing. Or wanting the same thing anyway. Because she came at me, not only with her mouth, but with her free hand, grabbing hold of my arm. We stood there for a while, over my typewriter, kissing and petting, until she pulled back to come up for air.
“Did I take you by surprise?” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.
“A little,” I said, wiping my wet mouth with the back of my hand.
She was still holding onto the book. I glanced at my watch. I knew that Susan would be home in one hour. But I didn’t care. Or, at least a part of me didn’t care. I hadn’t felt this good about myself in ages. Not since I’d left LA.
“Let’s have it,” I said, holding out my hand for the novel.
“I almost forgot,” she said, her breathing still labored.
She set it into my hand. Looking down at the novel, I could see that it was in very good shape for a used book. No dog-earing. Maybe the previous owner hadn’t read it at all.
“I have a pen right here,” I said, setting myself down hard in my chair before my typewriter, and placing the book on top of the pages I’d written earlier. At the same time, I leaned the crutches up against the table to my left-hand side. Opening the book to the front title page, I picked up the pen that was set in between the typewriter and the bowl of apples, and brought ballpoint to paper.
I had a choice here. I could either write a profound, authorly inscription. Or, I could keep it short and sweet and to the point. Knowing in my gut that Lana was going to turn out to be as much trouble for me as that blonde on the cover of Break Up, I went with the latter and penned ...