Skidmarks On My Heart
Eric Beetner
We met after a car crash, and it was a car crash that brought us back together. Weird, I know. But that was me and Emma.
She rear-ended me on a night when the streets were rain-slick, and I think she was about three cosmos in. I got out of the car in the middle of the lane, ready to punch some guy’s face in for busting my tail light. She got out of the car laughing.
“This is a joke to you?” I said. “What, you liked getting plowed into from behind?”
“Sometimes.”
She smiled a snaggle-toothed smile and even in the rain I could see a light in her eyes radiating from inside. The rain went from misty to downpour and we both stood and laughed. That night she took me to her place and apologized for the tail light. I accepted that apology.
And yes, we did it from behind. We’d known each other three hours and we already had an inside joke that made us both think about sex. Not a bad way to start.
Of course, when you meet in the rain and fuck on the first date, it’s going to be all downhill from there.
There were signs, little things. A dark streak. A bad girl.
She used to carry two-dollar bills in her purse. I asked why. She showed me. Out at a bar she told me to order a drink for a girl at a specific moment. I rolled with it. She held up a twenty like a flag for the bartender to see. Always worked. She ordered two double shots of Jameson. He scuttled off to pour and she swapped out the twenty for a two, neatly folded over.
When the bartender set down her drinks, I leaned in and spoke too loud.
“I need a vodka martini and hurry it up. I might get laid tonight.”
He smiled at the idea that he might be my wingman and gave me a quick nod as he reached, eyes on me, for Emma’s two-dollar bill. He brought her back six bucks in change and she walked away with two free drinks and four dollars profit. When he dashed off to mix my martini, we retreated to a dark corner of the bar and left him to wonder if my girl got cold feet or skipped the drink and went directly into the sack.
But life steps in and you can’t have a job and go out to bars on the grift every night. Things settle down. A match flares up, then dies a little into a steady flame. Eventually it will burn out and singe your fingers.
She stayed over less and less. The laughs got shorter. We used umbrellas when it rained.
I got invited to a party and I didn’t invite Emma. I don’t know why, I just wanted a night with other people.
It was a strange slowdown in our relationship. We didn’t want it to end. We wanted to recapture the magic. It was like we were each on opposite ends of a tug of war rope and both pulling like hell to keep from falling in. But when you do that you have to pull against each other, not toward each other.
Our nights apart stopped getting the full explanation when we saw each other again.
“How was your night?”
“Good.”
“Good.”
That covered it. I hadn’t slept with anyone else, but I noticed girls more. I wondered how they’d look in the rain.
I got my tail light fixed. Seemed symbolic somehow.
I was in that same car, different street, rain-less night, when I saw Emma. She was getting into the front seat of a BMW. Front seat meant it wasn’t an Uber, but I checked for a window decal to be safe. Nope.
I followed them. Like a jealous husband. Like an asshole.
They parked in front of her place. I could see them in silhouette on the front seat, a streetlight glaring through the windshield like they were on stage. They kissed.
I felt the rope sliding through my hands. I was losing the war.
My foot was on the gas before I even knew it. I rammed the back of his Beemer and the jolt knocked me back to sense. Enough to know I’d fucked up.
He got out of his car with the same righteous anger I had when Emma bumped me. His fists were already clenched. I reversed, but that made him madder.
“Hey, motherfucker. Get out of the car.”
I could see Emma climb out of her seat dabbing a hand at her lip, which was bleeding. Cut on his teeth when the impact hit and his mouth was on hers. My blood heated up again.
He stood directly in front of my car. I could see the hood buckled a little, a curl of smoke coming out from under. He aimed a finger at me like a weapon.
“Stop right there, asshole.”
I think Emma recognized me. Didn’t matter though. I gunned it.
I clipped his knees—he was tall—and he slapped the hood once with his torso and then flopped back. I was braking by then and he kept moving with the momentum of the impact. He flew about three feet and landed on his ass, his head whacking off the pavement.
So that was bad enough, but when I went to back away, I neglected to put the car in reverse. I shot forward and felt the crunch when the front of my vehicle found him on the ground and shoved him forward until he sandwiched between our two cars.
Emma screamed.
I got out. More smoke from the hood drifted up between Emma and me. It was like a thin veil that held our secret, we only needed to wrap it around us.
“Emma, I—”
“What the fuck?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for—”
“What do we do now?”
The street was empty, aside from us. And one of us was dead. The hourglass was dripping sand. We had to move.
“This is heavy shit,” I said.
“Yeah. You think?”
“We could call the cops…”
She waited for plan B.
“…or we could dump him.”
She swiveled her neck up and down the block. No witnesses that we could see. Some granny in a window might be peeping but we’d have to risk it.
When she turned back to me, the glow had returned to her eyes in a way I hadn’t seen since that night in the rain.
I don’t know if she’d ever seen a dead body before, but she wasn’t squeamish. She got right to work. I backed up. A dark smear of him where he’d gone under my bumper for a ride. A mess of his skin and blood on the back bumper of his BMW. I didn’t want him in my car, so I hauled him into his own trunk and gave Emma the keys, told her to follow me.
We drove him out to the warehouse district, set the car on fire. No prints that way. None of her hair or DNA. I asked her because I was curious.
“Would the cops have you on file?”
She gave me a no-shit-Sherlock look, then she asked, “You?”
I shrugged and avoided the question.
We went to my place and fucked in the shower. Her idea. I think she was trying to capture a little of that rain-soaked feeling.
For a week it was can’t-keep-our-hands-off-each-other and calling in sick to stay in bed with her. The fire in her eyes, the vision of his crushed skull behind mine.
That was three months ago.
I read news reports about the personal trainer found dead in his own trunk. They had zero leads, zero suspects other than some husbands who might’ve caught wind of his extra services for clients who happened to be their wives. Our names never came up.
So, Emma and I are back together and stronger than ever, reunited by another car crash and a deep secret. Except…
She started looking at me. I caught her staring several times. Not like loving adoration. It felt like she was plotting something. Or measuring me for a coffin.
The sex turned intense. She bit me a few times. Drew blood once.
There was the laundry room incident. My machine is in the basement of my complex, down a set of concrete steps and in a cinderblock bunker apparently designed by some ex-Soviet architect with a fetish for gray. At least the lighting was fluorescent and hideous.
I was coming up the steps with an armload of clothes fresh from the dryer, the warmth making me feel all cozy like a childhood I never had. I got to the top step and the door slammed right in my face. I tumbled back, ass over forehead, and spewed warm laundry like body parts as I rolled. I managed to land on a thick enough pile of T-shirts and flannels that I didn’t break anything when I hit the flat concrete floor of the laundry room.
Emma was at the top of the steps. When I groaned and grabbed at my lower back, only then did she get a stricken look on her face and rush to me.
“Oh my God. I saw a spider and jerked to get away from it and I didn’t see you coming up the steps and I slammed the door and oh my God are you okay?”
Okay was relative. I wasn’t dead, which seemed the other option.
Here’s my theory: she saw how easy it was to kill a guy and make him disappear and get away with it. Whether it was curiosity or whether she wanted me gone, I don’t know, but I felt like she was starting to test some boundaries.
She got secretive again. Not quite like before when we just left out stuff we told each other about our lives. This seemed like intentional hiding of things.
There were phone calls too. She got one and had to rush out immediately. No explanation. No reason. I couldn’t help but wonder, right?
I followed her one day, just to see. Like a jealous husband. Like an asshole. Yeah, again.
When I saw her meet up with another over-muscled meathead it damn well hurt. They talked together and kept a respectable distance. No public display equals no risk of getting caught.
When she came back from meeting with him she was extra affectionate. Guilt, I figured. Maybe she was still turned on and horny from their tryst. I’m not one for sloppy seconds, so I declined her advances. I fumed and went off to the bathroom—the only place I could be alone and think.
Standing in the kitchen one night reading a recipe off a website for some kind of stir-fry dish she wanted to make, she kept asking me to check measurements for her. She asked me to look up how many tablespoons of cumin to add. I told her and she asked me to bring it to her. I searched for a spice bottle marked cumin, whatever the hell that was, and when I turned to hand it to her, I felt a sharp pain in my arm. Emma was standing next to me, suddenly, the tip of the knife in her hand an inch deep in my triceps.
If I’d turned to her fully instead of a half turn, that knife would have been in my heart.
She stared at me for a beat before screaming, like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Blood ran down my arm as she apologized over and over. I backed away from her and my suspicion grew like a tick gorging on my blood.
At the ER for what turned out to be nine stitches, the doctor asked me how this happened. I’d been asking myself the same question.
I just said, “Kitchen accident. You know how it is.”
She nodded and looked like she regretted even asking.
I moved my gun. I don’t know if Emma knew where I kept it, but I moved it anyway. With the grip nestled in my hand I could see shattered bone again, blood and brain matter, feel dead weight in my hands. Only it wasn’t him—the trainer—it was her. Emma.
One bullet and I could stop looking behind me all the time. No more “accidental” knife wounds. No more slammed doors on cellar steps.
But that was fucking insane. I couldn’t kill Emma, even if I was a little scared of her. I guess I didn’t know how scared until right then with a gun in my hand and my imagination running wild.
Paranoid. Delusional. The guilt of killing the trainer was scraping at my brain like a cheese grater.
I followed her again. She didn’t meet with the guy, but as she pulled away from a coffee shop I saw his car fall in behind hers. Off to a rendezvous, no doubt. I lost them at a light before I saw what motel they ended up at. Or maybe his place. Maybe the back of his car. Didn’t matter much, did it? I was being used like a chump.
Not that I was going through her purse, it wasn’t that, I was looking for gum. She always had gum. She also had a receipt from the same gun shop where I bought mine six years earlier, only hers was dated a week ago. Some compact purse model, low caliber. It wasn’t in her purse, though. Hidden away somewhere.
She hadn’t told me she bought it. I was afraid to ask her about it. But a week already. If she wanted to do me in, she’d have done it by then, right?
I kept the lights on. I kept my eyes open. Even when we screwed. Hell of a way to go with a bullet to the temple while finishing off, but still not the way I wanted to go. Maybe when I’m ninety that would be my choice, but not now.
I saw her hide a letter. She was about as subtle as a fart in church the way she crumpled it into her lap below the table edge. I let her think she’d fooled me. With her armed I didn’t feel like a confrontation.
And if I dumped her, I had a feeling I’d be even less safe. I’d be more easily disposable.
I had no choice but to think preemptively.
A gun? My car? (It’d worked once) Her shrimp allergy?
But every time I got close to figuring out a decent way to save myself from what I knew was coming, I backed down. I called myself paranoid. I realized how much I loved Emma.
Even when I thought she was trying to kill me.
The heart, man. What a funky, fucked up little organ.
The breaking point came when I arrived home to see the meathead leaving my apartment. I’d parked and was reaching into the back seat for my jacket when he came out of the door—my door. He skipped off down the steps and got into his Escalade I’d followed before.
I fumed. The stitches weren’t even out of my arm and she was being so brazen as to have him in my apartment. And why not hers? Sure, she barely stayed there anymore, but still. I finally knew what a knife to the heart felt like.
Then it hit me—what were they doing besides fucking? Planning to get rid of me. How could it be anything else? Oh, Emma. You sick, sick girl.
I imagined her new life of hopping from boyfriend to boyfriend, using the new one to kill the old one. The only way she could get off was by seeing another dead body stuffed into a trunk. It was like she’d gotten a hit of heroin and now booze would never get her high again.
I couldn’t pretend to really understand this sick new fetish of hers, but the pieces added up. I went and got a few drinks to help me decide what to do. Two beers and some bad music on the jukebox got me a little more used to the idea of life without Emma.
This was survival.
The bartender set a third beer in front of me and I noticed the tattoo on his forearm. Semper Fi. A vet.
“Hey, man, when you’re in combat and you know someone is trying to kill you…you gotta do what you gotta do, right?”
He nodded with a memory playing across his eyes, something he’d seen that made my point crystal clear to him. “It’s them or you, man. A or B. Black or white. No thinking, you just do it.”
“Them or you.”
“And you don’t let it be you.”
I tipped the neck of my beer to him and he went off down the bar. Them or me.
I got home, and Emma was at the kitchen table, her gun out and a mess of bullets lose all around it. She was loading. I tried not to react.
She looked at me, trying not to react herself. “Oh, it’s you.”
I didn’t say a word, crossed to the bedroom and reached up under my side of the bed.
“We have to talk,” she said.
I got my hand around my gun and felt better. Safe to talk.
“I saw him, you know.”
Emma was still down the hall. Our voices carried through the walls and over empty rooms.
“You saw him?”
“Leaving here earlier.”
“I was going to explain to you.”
“I know about the letters too.”
“I didn’t want to get you involved.”
“But I am involved. No way around it.”
“You’re right.” I could hear tears in her voice. “I know you’re right. My God I was gonna—”
Gonna what? Kill me? She didn’t have to say it.
I came around the corner, saw her at the table, the gun loose in her hand. She saw my gun, too.
“I don’t think I can do it,” she said.
“I think I can.”
“You would? For us?”
Did she mean her and him? Her and me? What sick games was she playing?
“I think…” There was only one way to find out. “I can.”
I fired. One shot and she fell. The loose bullets on the table rattled to the floor around her.
I heard her last breath leak out.
On the table was a note, one bullet stuck in its folds. I put a finger on it, turned it toward me and read.
I know what you did to my brother.
No clue what that meant. Her purse was on the chair, a fat stack of hundred-dollar bills poking out. I realized I was standing in her blood.
The door pounded behind me. Fuck, police already? Someone was quick with the speed dial.
I peeped through the hole and it was the meathead.
“Time’s up,” he said. “Give me my fuckin’ money.”
Since I held the gun, I opened the door.
He balked for a second at seeing me and not her, then pushed in without noticing the gun in my hand which I held down near my thigh.
“What are you, the backup? Well, fuck that. Bitch owes me money, or I talk some serious shit to the cops.”
He froze when he saw her body in the kitchen, the bloodstain spreading. He turned back to me.
“You’re the guy who was with her.”
“With her when?”
“That night. With my…my brother.”
Okay, so I had a few things wrong. This meathead was the other meathead’s brother. And he wasn’t fucking Emma—not in the traditional sense—he was extorting her because he knew she was with him the night he was killed. I don’t know how much he really knew, but enough to scare her into paying him and contemplating killing him to make it all go away.
That’s what she didn’t think she could do. This is what she didn’t want to involve me with. Those were the letters, the meetings, the phone calls. The accidents were just…accidents.
I got it wrong.
He saw the gun in my hand. He did the math.
What I got right was that I’d had practice. Where to take the body, how to torch the car. And he drove an Escalade. Big enough for two.