Leaving the house was a huge step for Gayle. Up until the moment when she gripped the doorknob in one sweaty hand she was positive that it would be an impossible act of stealth and subterfuge, requiring ninja skills she didn’t possess.
Scott was playing Gridiron Champions on his Xbox and only barely noticed she was leaving. He grunted something, maybe at her or possibly at the screen. The kids were in the playroom doing homework. Even the cat was indifferent, entertaining himself by licking his ass. There was a statement of some kind there, but Gayle didn’t feel like decoding it. Things sucked enough as it was.
“See you,” she said to a house that barely acknowledged her at the best of times. Closed the door, heard the lock click, and then she was in the Honda and accelerating out of the cul-de-sac like she was driving a getaway car.
Her house was on the northwestern corner of Pine Deep and driving to the Fringe was a short trip, though between the old and rather odd layout of the town and the newer, even less orderly pattern of streets, it took fifteen minutes to drive a handful of miles. Traffic slowdowns from the rain as well as vast puddles added to it, but when she saw TANK GIRL in slowly flashing white neon, her heart jumped.
She drove right past the club.
Three times.
Circling the block while having increasingly acrimonious discussions with herself. Her personal parasite—a passive-aggressive little bitch that sounded a lot like her mother—whispered in her mind that she was betraying her husband, endangering her marriage, putting her kids’ peace of mind at risk, and generally acting like a slut. That part of her mind was unkind and unflinching. It nearly won, too, because after her third time circling the block she had her flashers on to head away. To go to the Panera up in Crestville and kill the evening doing nothing of value on her iPad.
The light turned green and she began to make that turn.
Then her fingers curled with unexpected strength around the wheel and wrenched it to the right, away from the exit route, into another circle around the same block.
“If there’s no spot in front I’ll just go,” she said aloud to herself and her parasite. “That’ll be a sign.”
There hadn’t been a single space on either side of the street the last three loops. It looked just as full this time, and Gayle’s heart began to sink. To accept.
But then a car pulled out thirty feet ahead of her, angled into the flow of traffic, and left a big spot. Exactly in front of the door.
As signs from the universe go, it was eloquent.
Gayle pulled in, took four minutes of debating before she turned off the engine. Ten more minutes before she got out. The rain was moving along the street in lazy waves, like the tail of a big koi, the drops painted exotic colors by the neon.
“This is stupid,” she told herself.
And got out.