Drew was barreling up I-95, engine rattling, Christmas music quietly humming on the car stereo, wind whipping past his ancient Toyota Tercel. Just him, the car and mile-after-mile of hard, unchanging interstate.
He tapped the wheel with his right palm, mouthed out the words of a song a little, figuring hell, passes the time, don’t it?
Drew pinched his eyes. They were getting heavy. The sky had turned a bruised purple, like a welt under the eye of a beaten prizefighter. The late December air was cold and gusty and Drew needed a jolt.
He took the next exit, drove down a street filled with chain restaurants, seedy motels and open all-night gas stations. Headlights burned from cars and cut through the darkness. Hotel would be good about now, Drew thought jealously. Big fluffy bed, crank the heat up and warm my hands, take off my shoes. But he knew it was just an errant thought, a silly wish. Nothing more. Drew couldn’t afford a hotel right now, not for the time it’d take away from the road, not the fifty bucks he’d have to spring, either.
Coffee would have to be a consolation. Yeah, coffee. Drew pulled into the parking lot of an all-night diner and went inside.
“I’ll take a coffee and a slice of your apple pie,” Drew told the waitress. He was seated at the Formica counter, scattered newspapers to his right side, a half-filled ashtray of half-smoked cigarette butts resembling a mini mountain of volcanic ash to his left.
“Cream or sugar?” she asked him.
“Neither. Just black.”
Drew took his hard pack out of his shirt pocket and lit one up. He drew in a lungful of smoke, felt the nicotine buzz kick through his tired body. He’d been on the road for damn near fifteen hours now and still had nine more to go.
She brought the pie and coffee. Steam rose off the drink and the pie took up most of the plate. Thick chunks of apple spilled out of the crust and hugged the corners of the dish.
Drew nodded his approval and took a long sip of the coffee.
“Where you headed?” she asked. She was chewing gum. Spearmint, Drew could tell. She had too much lipstick on and although her face was pretty in a youthful way her teeth were crooked and patched with streaks of yellow.
“Atlantic City.” He stabbed the pie with his fork and put a big piece in his mouth.
“What’s there?”
Drew chewed, shook his head. “Casinos.” He looked at her.
“Oh,” she said. She smacked her gum and kept her mouth open. Drew could see the gum moving in her mouth, up-and-down, up-and-down. “I love casinos. I played on a riverboat once. Biloxi. It was great. I played the slots.”
Another waitress yelled at her, told her to get somebody’s order. She nodded, grinned at Drew. He half-smiled back, took another bite of his pie and pointed to his coffee.
“Can you get this for me in a go-cup?” he asked.
The road. Always the road. It was midnight now and Drew was kicking it between tired and exhausted, his bladder full of piss from two cups of bad tasting but strong roadside coffee.
What’s in Atlantic City? Fucking waitress. Fucking question. What you think’s in Atlantic City, sister? You don’t go there for any reason other than casinos. Drew scratched his beard. Casinos. Harrah’s, Bally’s, Trump Plaza. Roulette, blackjack, craps. Caribbean stud poker. Cocktail waitresses with heavily teased hair and cleavage. Double down, let it ride, cool green velvet. Pit bosses. Cigar smoke in the air, an idle hooker in a tight black cocktail dress, feeding an occasional quarter into the slots and waiting for a John, any John, as long as they have cash. Blue, red and black chips and the hope of hitting it big. Casinos.
That’s what’s in Atlantic City, Drew thought. He pulled off the interstate again, more road ahead of him but he needed more coffee and to drain the main vein.
“Hit me.”
The dealer shoveled Drew the card, upturned. An eight, to go along with Drew’s five. Thirteen. Drew gave the cards a quick look, glanced at what the dealer had. A six.
Drew pushed his right hand to the side to hold. The dealer turned his second card up. A jack. Sixteen. The dealer had to hit. Seven. Busted.
Drew had forty bucks on the table. The dealer doubled that. Eighty on the table now. Drew left it. Got to bet big to win big.
Break time. Drew was tired. Eyes heavy, brain dulled from no sleep, vision blurred. He needed sleep. Coffee would give him a good thirty, forty minutes more, then he’d crash. Hell, he hadn’t gotten any decent sleep in the last two days anyway. A body could only go so long without rest.
Drew looked at his stash of chips. His $800 had become $2,200. Good, but not great. Drew needed great. He needed fan-fucking-tastic. He looked around for a pit boss, for somebody, anybody who could comp him a room. But nobody was around. Shit. He’d have to pay for one himself.
He took his stash, walked over to the cashier, slid her a black hundred-dollar chip. She handed him a crisp hundred-dollar bill. Room money.
He slept hard, though not long. When he woke, rays of fractured sunlight slid through the shades, landed right near Drew’s chest. He smacked his lips, tasted his breath, mingled with cigarette smoke, old coffee, and time. He got up, wearing only his two-day old boxers, splashed cold water onto his face, and, instead of brushing his teeth, took a dab of toothpaste from his shaving kit, placed it on his index finger and rubbed the paste on the back of his tongue. He slid the finger over the back of his tongue two, three times, stroking over the bad breath parts, nearly gagging. He spit into the sink, cleared his throat. It was still early. More work to do.
He took the two grand with him downstairs. He had to turn it into $12,000 by the end of the weekend. Had to. Twelve’s what he owed. Skokie, a loan shark/betting “consultant” as the motherfucker called himself, was the guy waiting for the twelve down in Miami.
Blackjack had been going well enough so Drew stuck with it. He sat at a ten-dollar minimum table with a guy whose eyes bugged out of his sockets every time the dealer dealt him a card. Drew sat an hour and patiently counted cards, betting high when it made sense, low when it didn’t, the cards coming at him rapidly, like a machine, each hand dealt and each chip bet blending into the next, never stopping. The other guy left after an hour. He’d been losing more than winning, anyway. Drew smirked. Him and the dealer now. Mano-y-mano. A gambler’s dream.
Drew upped the stakes. Fifty a hand. Have to bet big to win big. He got a four and an eight. The dealer showed a queen. Shit. Tough hand to play. Drew hit. He got a nine of hearts, the blood red of the heart glaring right at him, smirking. The dealer flipped over his card. Eight. Drew collected fifty, kept it on the table. A hundred for the hand. Drew got a seven and a four. The dealer had a five showing. Time to double down. Two hundred on the hand. The waitress brought Drew a coffee. Drew threw the dealer a ten-dollar chip as a side bet — if Drew won the hand, the dealer would get double the chip for a tip.
“Thanks, sir,” the dealer said.
“Just give me a face card,” Drew said.
The dealer nodded and flipped Drew a seven. Eighteen.
The dealer turned his over. Jack of diamonds. Fifteen. The dealer had to hit again. The odds were in Drew’s favor that the dealer would bust. Drew saw a waitress saunter behind him, black pants clinging to her ass like a tightrope. Perfect ass. The dealer flipped. A five. Twenty. Shit. Goodbye, two hundred. Goodbye, tip.
Drew sipped his coffee. He’d been one-on-one with the dealer for forty minutes. He checked his stack of chips. Two grand. Staying even. Even wouldn’t do shit for Drew, though. Maybe get his arm broke. They did that. Broke arms and legs and kneecaps. He had to make something happen. The dealer switched on him. Replacing him was a bald, heavyset guy with a short but powerful looking frame.
Even though the new dealer had a long sleeved white shirt on, Drew could tell he had powerful arms, probably developed from lifting weights, doing hammer curls, an exercise that made your forearms swell like country hams, veins popping out, coiled like barbed wire. The dealer’s arms were short and they dealt the cards out in quick, harsh strokes. There was nothing delicate about the dealer.
Drew lost three consecutive hands before she sat down next to him.
Part Two
She played the first couple of hands silently. Had a basic blackjack logic, he could tell. She won two hands in a row and Drew noticed she was smiling a little, lips painted hot pink. She fingered her stack of chips, rubbing them together seductively, like Drew did with his, but it looked better when she did it.
She was good looking. No doubt about that. Her face was lean with slender cheekbones, light mascara applied to her face. Expensive tan business suit, cut off just above the knees. Nice calves. Older. Maybe late 30s, early 40s. But good looking nonetheless.
Drew held back a smile. Yeah, you go ahead and bet, lady, he thought as she won a third hand in a row. Go ahead and win all the fuckin’ money in the world.
By hand number four Drew noticed her glance over at him. It was a quick glance but a glance just the same. Drew was still hovering around two grand, thinking, I’m up shit’s creek without a paddle but at least there’s somethin’ nice to look at here. The dealer laid down a two and a ten for Drew and a ten for himself. Drew hit. Queen of diamonds. Bust.
She had a four and a seven so she doubled down, even though common blackjack strategy said it was risky to double against a face card. But she did it anyway and pulled a nine. The dealer pulled a seven. Four hands in a row.
“Luck’s on your side tonight,” Drew commented. He waved to the dealer to let him know he was out. Drew would have to go to higher stakes now, go somewhere else, too. This table wasn’t working.
“Lady luck or just luck?” she said playfully, running her hand across the table to pick up her newly-won chips.
“I wouldn’t know a thing about lady luck. Not a damn thing.” Drew picked his chips up, stuffed them in his pants pocket. He stood up and turned away from the table.
“Are you still playing, ma’am?” the dealer asked her as Drew walked off.
Fucking blackjack table. Fucking debt. Twelve grand in the hole and Drew needed to come up with the cash quickly. It was his own fault, betting big on games he thought were a lock, betting big even though he knew he didn’t have the reserves to back his bets in case he lost.
Looking back at everything, it was hard for Drew to see how it’d all come down to this — him in the hole, back against the wall, in Atlantic City, scoping for a game, any game, hoping to make something happen. And knowing that if he didn’t do what he needed he was in for some serious shit. Skokie didn’t like late payments.
Drew watched a cocktail waitress stroll by, carrying a tray of mixed drinks, thinking, you dumb sonofabitch. You had brains. You had talent. And where’d it get you, man? Where? Here you are, working as a low-rent P.I. in sleazy South Florida, doing shit jobs — spying on people, taking pictures. Just enough to cover bills, rent and beer.
Lately, Drew’d had a hard time even coming up with that.
It was true. Sure, because of the betting, there’d been flush moments — a $2,000 bet on a victorious 4-1 underdog in a middleweight title fight financed a trip to Colorado last year, but for the most part, Drew was living paycheck-to-paycheck, starving and scratching.
He needed a game, looked over to the craps table, where big money could be won and lost in the blink of an eye. Drew started moving in that direction, thinking, hell, you can turn two-to-twelve in no time if you get on a roll. He strode confidently on the plush casino carpet before a hand touched his shoulder from behind. He turned around. The woman from earlier. She looked nervous.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said. “But I was wondering if I could have a second of your time?”
He felt like saying, “Sister, if I had a free minute, would I be here in Atlantic City, trying to hustle a buck so my knees don’t get cracked?”
But instead he said, “What can I do for you?”
She rolled her eyes quickly, like she was embarrassed to be there. “I need some help. And you looked like a nice guy so I was wondering, well, if I could talk to you later on, when you’ve got some time.”
He looked her over. Yeah, she was attractive, all right. Like he thought before. Nice figure. Real nice. He couldn’t figure out if they were fake or not. If not, they were probably the result of daily workouts with a personal trainer. But no. He didn’t drive all this way, with this much on the line, to hear a sob story.
“Lady, listen. Free and time, those two words don’t go together real well in my vocabulary.”
She touched his arm, touched it lightly, starting at his elbow, running her fingers down to the top of his hand. “I really need to talk to somebody . . . and you just look . . . I don’t know . . . honest.” She stopped, stared at him. She had big blue eyes. “You’ll be compensated for your time.” She pulled some bills out of her shiny black purse — five one-hundred dollar bills — and placed them in his hand. “This is just a retainer, a fee for meeting me later on, at the bar over there.” She pointed. “That money, it’s just for showing up. If you’re interested in what I have to say, there’s more where that came from.”
Drew nodded, tried to look bored, tried to make his eyes vacant and his mouth plain, because a look of boredom might get her to jack up the cash she might pay later. Five hundred just to meet for drinks. She definitely had his interest.
“What time you want to meet?”
“Midnight,” she said. “What do you drink? I’ll have it waiting for you.”
“Just coffee. I like it black. No sugar.”
Drew walked into the bar a little after midnight, about three minutes late but he’d been making a little on the craps table and didn’t want to ruin the flow.
He now had $4,700 but that was still way behind where he needed to be.
She had a table for them in the far corner of the bar. A cup of hot coffee sat steaming next to his empty chair. She sat smoking on the other side, holding a tall martini with three enormous pitted green olives inside the glass.
He walked toward the table and sat down.
“How’d you do?” she asked, stirring the martini casually with a red plastic piece that resembled a miniature sword.
“Okay.”
“How good is okay?”
“Okay is okay,” Drew said. He took the coffee and sipped it. It was good and hot.
She stirred some more. “You must think I’m crazy to be paying you five-hundred dollars just to show up and talk to me.”
Drew shrugged his shoulders, held the coffee in his hands. “Everybody has their reasons. It’s your dollar anyway, isn’t it?”
She bit into one of the olives, slicing into the meat of it, the red pimento peeking out. “Actually, that’s why I wanted to talk to you . . .” She waited until Drew picked up her drift. His name.
“Drew,” he said.
“Drew. Yes. Drew. I’m Deborah. We’ll leave out last names. They’re so formal, aren’t they?”
Drew was staring at her neck. Yeah, she could be in her early forties, now that Drew saw the neck. He could see a couple wrinkles here and there. But for the most part, nothing major. Just age lines.
“Last names, they’re so formal. I mean, what is a last name, anyway?”
“You got me,” Drew said. He picked up a menu.
“Anyway, I’m thinking that I might not even have my last name for too much longer. I mean, if my s-o-b husband keeps up his philandering ways, there’s definitely no chance of me keeping the last name . . .” She was speaking in this powerful, rhythmic voice, the words flowing together, it seemed, but Drew didn’t know what to make of it.
“Lady,” he said. “You want to tell me why I’m sitting here with you right now. Give me a clue, will you?”
She stopped what she was saying and gave Drew a long look. Drew figured she was either going to break down and cry, tell him what she wanted, or slap him. He could deal with any of those scenarios, though, because he already had five hundred cash in his pocket and he’d be out of there as soon as he got some food in his stomach.
Calmly, she said “What I need from you, if you’re willing to work with me, is to take some pictures of my husband.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
A waitress came by and asked if they were going to order any food. He hadn’t had a chance to look over the menu yet but asked for a bacon cheeseburger, coleslaw instead of fries. She didn’t order anything.
“They have huge steaks in here,” Deborah said after the waitress left with the order. “New York strip, ribeye, prime rib. I’m paying for it. You could have ordered one of those to eat. Not a bacon cheeseburger.”
Drew mouthed the words silently at first, then said it out loud: “Prime rib.” And he laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Deborah asked.
“Prime rib — that’s what’s so funny.” He looked down at the table and smiled. “Lady, I am bacon cheeseburger.”
She told Drew the rest: she needed pictures of her husband because she was certain he was cheating on her. It wasn’t the first time. He’d done it before, she knew, but she hadn’t gotten proof. Now she was going to get some and he was going to pay because she was going to divorce his ass and the pictures would grant her a nice chunk of his considerable estate.
“So you want me to get pictures of him actually cheating on you?” Drew asked. He was on his second cigarette and second cup of coffee. “In the act?”
“No, no,” Deborah said. “Just some photos of him coming and going to her apartment.” She said her bitterly.
Hell hath no fury like a woman fucked over, Drew thought.
“Just photos of him over there, then,” he said. He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Why not just do it yourself?”
“No reason, really,” she said. “Other than I’d rather have somebody else do it. That a problem with you?”
“No problem.” And it wasn’t. Drew’d done it before, taken pictures of men fooling around, leaving hotels in the middle of the afternoon, kissing some honey with wet hair, wrapped in a bathrobe and probably nothing else, while he should have been at work. It was a boring but easy gig, all in all. You just sat in a car, waited, then took some shots.
“Only problem I see . . .” — he tried to remember her name — “. . . Deborah, is that I need more money than I’ve got to take care of a personal matter. And I doubt taking some pictures of your husband is gonna land me enough to take me out of my debt.”
“Try me,” she said.
Drew just laughed. He finished the coffee, finished the smoke. “Been nice talkin’ to you, it really has. But I’ve got some money to win. That don’t happen, my health becomes seriously affected.” He stood up.
She placed her hand on his and pressed down. “I said try me.”
Drew looked at her like she was crazy. Hell, maybe she was. Most women were, anyway. “I need eight grand,” he said.
She nodded and sipped her martini.
Drew turned around, ready to hit the tables again.
“I’ll write you a check. You can cash it here, make out a cashier’s check of your own, send it right away to whoever it is you owe. Will that work?”
He faced her. “Why are you willing to pay me eight grand for one week of work? First, you don’t even know me. Second, you could get any P.I. around here to do this for five hundred bucks, max.”
“I need you for a week,” she said, her words measured. “I have money. The money doesn’t matter to me.”
“And . . .”
“And I like you. I think you’ll do an honest job for me. That counts for something in my book.”
He laughed again. Hell, she wanted to hand him eight grand, fine. He’d send the check to Skokie right away, call him up and tell him to expect it in the morning. Fuck it. Money wasn’t an issue for her, that’s her deal.
“You said you need me for a week. Where we gonna go and where am I gonna stay?”
“Central Jersey. I have a home there with a guest bedroom. You can stay there.”
“What about your husband?”
“What about him? He spends the week in New York City. Although he does come back to town twice a week — unbeknownst to me, of course — to frolic around with his local little plaything. That’s where you’ll take the pictures — at her place.”
This was an interesting scenario. What did he have to lose? If her check cleared then he’d be hers for a week, do whatever the fuck she needed. Then he was out of there. Back to Miami. No more gambling, no more debt, no more meeting weird broads in casinos. He had to straighten himself out. He knew that much for sure.
Part Three
Drew followed her some 150 miles north of Atlantic City. She drove fast, about 70, sometimes 75. Drew kept pace, went through six or seven smokes, smashing the butts into his overflowing ashtray right below the radio dial, figuring the next week was going to be boring as hell but the check had been cashed and he’d wired his debt to Skokie. He was in the clear.
They arrived in town near early evening. Frost began forming on the edges of Drew’s windshield and the air had a nasty bite. He drove through town, past an area of remodeled buildings — cafes that promised old-fashioned cooking, trendy coffee houses, clothing stores, banks and service stations. Christmas lights were everywhere, mixtures of greens and red and whites that gave Drew a homey feeling he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
They moved onto tree-lined streets with large Tudor homes, splendidly trimmed front lawns, green and neat and fresh, carefully hedged bushes, houses painted crisp whites and blues, driveways filled with minivans and utility vehicles, the entire area reeking of suburban success.
Drew laughed, remembered where he came from. Dingy apartment, right off I-95 in Miami, north of downtown. One bedroom with a leaky faucet, facing half a brick wall, the constant buzz of traffic shaking his bed from the interstate. A cheesy, tiny pool outside his front door that nobody ever swam in because nobody ever cleaned it. Strange looking neighbors whose comings and goings were, at best, questionable. A $500 a month version of hell, South Florida style.
First night. She showed Drew to his room. Decent size. Two other bedrooms had belonged to her children. She didn’t mention anything else about her kids: their age, their gender, what they were doing now. Drew didn’t ask, didn’t care.
He was suddenly tired when they got there and turned down the offer of a sandwich. He would just rather get some sleep, he told her. She said she’d like him to be outside the girlfriend’s apartment complex tomorrow morning, no later than nine. She would wake him at eight and make him breakfast. As Drew showered in the master bathroom, getting rid of all the Atlantic City grime and road-dust that had covered his exhausted body, she placed a camera and fresh roll of film on the dresser in his room.
She woke Drew around eight, lightly tapping on the bedroom door. He sat up straight in bed, well rested but slightly confused. The room was incredibly dark and Drew, for a moment, couldn’t remember where he was.
“You up?” Deborah said through the door.
Drew nodded, then realized she couldn’t possibly see the nod. “I’m up,” he said.
“Would you like eggs or pancakes for breakfast?” she asked. He was still sitting in bed, shirt off, covers around his waist. He remembered the film on the dresser and the one-week commitment and stretched his arms over his head.
“Just coffee will be fine,” he told her. “I can grab something else later.”
After two cups, Drew was off to shoot some photos. Deborah gave him directions, drew out a map, wrote down every single street name and turn and landmark to look for at the turn. “There’ll be a Burger King to your right before this street!” she wrote. And: “If you hit the Seventh-Day Adventist church up on your right, then you’ve gone too far!”
He laughed at the preciseness of her directions and was about to grab the camera when she held it in front of him.
“Let me get one shot of you,” she said, the camera up to her face now. “Take a step back, towards the stove.”
“What for?”
“Because I want to,” she said. “Come on. One picture is all I want. We’ll make sure the camera’s working. I haven’t used it in a long time.”
Drew took two steps back until his backside was next to the stove. She was about to snap when she noticed the sleepy look on his face.
“Smile,” she said.
“It’s too early to smile.”
“Come on, now. Just one tiny, little smile.” She spoke like a baby. Um-on. Jes wan tiny widdle smile.
Drew couldn’t help it, gave her the slightest of grins, then saw the flash go off. She handed him the camera and he headed out the door.
Drew placed the camera in the passenger seat and put the extra film in his glove compartment, next to his gun.
It was simple. So simple. Drew sat outside the complex for a good twenty, maybe thirty minutes, smoking, listening to the local DJ’s make prank calls to listeners about something Drew didn’t care about. He thought about what he was going to eat when he was done with the job: maybe a cheese steak. He was definitely in the mood for a cheese steak.
Then the car drove up. A tan Lexus, clean as spit-shined shoes, the rims of the wheels sparkling in the early morning light. The car pulled up carefully to Building No. 12, just like Deborah had said. Drew, who was parked in front of Building No. 11, sat hunched in his seat and stabbed out his cigarette. A man got out of the car. Mr. Deborah, he presumed.
The guy was wearing a blue pinstripe suit, clean black shoes and his jacket hung on him importantly, kicking up just a bit in the back when he moved. He walked with great confidence towards the stairs, which required him to turn and face Drew’s car. The man was looking at the ground and Drew fired off a series of shots — four, maybe five pictures in all.
So easy. Drew dozed a while, dreamed about a big cheese steak sandwich, piled high with onions and green peppers, the grease of the steak pooling with the juice of the vegetables, mingling all together in one big, sloppy mess.
He opened his eyes momentarily, saw a woman walking Mr. Deborah to his car. Drew couldn’t believe his luck. There they were, together, facing him. Click, click. Click, click, click. Pictures taken. Them none the wiser. Project, as Drew saw it, completed. Hell, yeah. Easiest money he’d ever made.
“You got them together?”
“Yep,” Drew said. He was back at her house. He’d stopped and gotten the cheese steak first. She was mulling around in the kitchen when he came in, watering some plants. “She followed him right outside, gave him a big hug and kiss. I took a bunch of shots. They were facing the camera the entire time.”
She put her hand over her mouth. “I always suspected,” she said softly, very softly. “But I never knew for sure.” Her chest started to heave. Drew just stood there, thinking, okay, job over, right? But he didn’t say anything. Nothing at all.
Deborah started to cry.
“I was pretty sure all along,” she said, her voice breaking. “I mean, I would’ve had to have been a fool not to suspect him, wouldn’t I? I’d see his car there and God, that’s where she lives . . .”
She laughed, this forced laugh that lasted just a moment. “All of it added up but I was never sure . . . until now! Oh, God!”
She fell into Drew’s arms and he awkwardly put his arms around her shoulders, holding them and she crushed her face against his chest, still sobbing. “You’re married for so long, you think you know somebody . . .” Drew’s shirt was getting wet and he wanted to tell her to move her head back some but he didn’t have the heart. She continued to cry, mumbling things Drew didn’t understand.
She had moved her face higher, so it was pressed against his neck, her nose pressing into his skin and before Drew knew it, she was kissing his neck, right along his Adam’s apple, planting firm baby kisses on it, small, delicate pecks, her lips moving up and down the entire area and when he inevitably swallowed, she kissed it as it moved, running her hot tongue along the ridges, Drew thinking that he’d never felt anything as erotic in his life.
“Listen . . . Deborah . . .” he said. “We really shouldn’t . . .” But it was no good. He was aroused.
“Shh,” she said, running her hands with the hot pink fingernails through his hair, the nails touching the sides of his head, then his scalp, her face close to his the entire time. He was able to feel the warmth of her breath on his face and when she moved her lips close to his, he didn’t resist.
Part Four
Next morning. Drew woke up, Deborah at his side. He was naked, looked to the side of the bed, saw his boxer shorts lying on the floor, wrinkled and alone. Her back was turned to him. He noticed the curve of her hips, placed his hand there, moved it up-and-down, up-and-down until he felt what he felt and when she turned to face him he lowered his mouth to hers and it was like they’d never slept.
Mid-afternoon. She had showered, made them a huge breakfast and he was hanging out on the couch watching TV when she came back from getting the pictures developed.
“They’re all here,” she said, holding the pictures in her hand. “Good clarity, nice close-up shots. Shots of them hugging and kissing. I’d say this will do very nice in court.” She smirked, leaned over and gave Drew a long kiss.
He glanced through the shots he’d taken. They were good. He’d made sure to get close-up shots and there was one in particular that stood out: Mr. Deborah, face pressed hard into whatever-her-name’s, kissing. Must have been an intense kiss. A vein, a tiny vein, bluish-purple, was popping out above his temple, like the kiss was requiring great effort. Drew looked it over a couple times, studied the vein, figured it was maybe the passion of the kiss that made the vein flare out.
There was something else, too. Mr. Deborah’s right eye. The left eye was closed, completely closed, but the right was partially opened, as if Mr. Deborah was squinting, either staring at his girlfriend while he kissed her, was reacting to the morning sunlight, or maybe, just maybe, was looking in another direction, aware that he was being watched.
He tried to figure out what to do with the rest of the week. Drew was enjoying himself: good meals, good rolls in the hay, a nice place to stay. He was comfortable. But at the same time he was getting anxious, anxious to get back to Miami because this time things were going to be different, he was going to do shit the right way, not the old way, the way that led him to coming up here in the first place, worried about getting a knee cracked because Skokie wanted his fucking money.
Drew had the vague outline of a plan: all he knew right now was to advertise his rinky-dink P.I. business somehow, maybe in the yellow pages, maybe in The Herald. Either way, do it legit, save some up, think about getting a better place to live, maybe a house in the not-too-distant future. Get himself a girlfriend, even, the kind who came
over to cook him dinner at night and who’d lay on the couch with him when dinner was over and watch TV with him.
For now, though, for right now, Drew was living in the moment and enjoying every second of it. She had succulent filet mignons delivered from one of the town’s finest restaurants and they knocked back bottles of Cabernet to go with the steak. Dizzy from the wine and food, she led Drew upstairs to her bedroom, where she proceeded to slowly strip with a seductive dance, her hips shimmying side-to-side, wearing some sort of red lace Victoria Secret getup, coming closer to Drew, closer, closer, his mind spinning from the drink, eyes focused on her flat belly, thinking, feels damn good to be here right now: full stomach, good wine and a woman. He admired her body as she removed the rest of her clothes.
After making love for a second time that night, she took the pictures off the nightstand and placed them on the bed. The sheets and comforter were spread every which way, a sea of stormy fabric that looked like a cyclone had hit them, so passionate the lovemaking had been.
“Here he is kissing her,” Deborah said, running her fingers lightly over Drew’s bare arm. She was still staring at the picture of her husband and his girlfriend. “Don’t I kiss well, darling?”
“You do. You kiss fine.”
“I do?” She turned to him, all smiles. “That’s sweet of you to say.” She leaned in and gave him a long kiss, her tongue making circular traces around his lips. “How was that?” she asked.
“Fantastic.” Drew wasn’t lying. The woman could kiss. She had a way of owning his mouth, dominating their kisses with fluid, rapid thrusts of her tongue, making what was normally just foreplay to Drew a frenzied experience.
She went back to the pictures. “And here he is, hugging her tightly,” Deborah said, moving the picture closer to her face. Drew placed a hand around her naked waist. “It’s actually more of an embrace, wouldn’t you say?” she asked. “A hug would be if it were just simple affection. But his eyes are shut in this picture. He seems like he’s enjoying it rather much, don’t you think, darling?”
She had started calling Drew darling last night. It bugged him at first but he had since grown to like it. He liked how she said it, not pronouncing the “r” at all — saying the word with a hint of a Southern drawl instead: dah-ling.
Drew shrugged his shoulders but she didn’t care.
“It’s definitely an embrace,” she said.
“What about the picture with his one eye opened?” he asked. “Did you happen to see that one? It was kind of strange.”
Deborah turned to him, placed her hand on his face. Her hand smelled like fresh peaches.
“That’s actually quite normal for him, to have an eye open,” she said. “He has what you’d call a wandering eye. A nervous tic he’s had since he was a boy, though he has a wandering eye in many other ways, too, as evidenced by your expert picture-taking. Really, darling, you’ve been such a saint to help me with all this.”
Drew placed his hand on hers and held it there. “So you don’t think he was looking at me while I was taking the pictures?”
“Heavens, no. Richard is much too dense to be aware of such a thing. He can be the most oblivious man in the world at times. No, his eye just wanders without reason. He blinks — or winks, I guess you should say — all the time. It can really be quite embarrassing.”
He continued to stroke her hand, enjoying the prospect of another evening in a warm bed with her, another day of lovemaking, great meals and him thinking about how to get his life together when he got back to Miami. Maybe she’d come visit him there. Maybe she’d even ask him to stay longer now that Richard was going to be out of the picture. He could get used to it, real used to it — this posh style of living.
Next morning. Light spilled through the drawn shades of Deborah’s bedroom, tinged softly on Drew’s tired eyes. He opened them up, instinctively ran his index finger through the bottom of his eyes to remove crusted cakes of sleep.
Drew’s heart raced. Standing at the end of the bed, just a few inches from Drew’s uncovered toes, was Richard, wearing a dark grey suit, maroon tie with a knot the size of a fat fist, white shirt underneath his suit jacket. Richard, standing there, staring at the bed, at its inhabitants, holding a shotgun, a real-life shotgun in his hands, the barrel pointed directly at Drew’s head.
Richard’s face held a grimace, his cheeks wrinkled, eyes narrowed, teeth bared. “I got you, partner,” he said to Drew quietly, his voice just a whisper, and for a moment Drew expected him to start talking like a cowboy, the scene was so perfect for it: vengeful guys shows up at his place, finds cheating wife in bed, in his bed, with another man, says the word ‘partner.’
Richard spoke, though, without any emotion. Deborah was still asleep. Drew tried to sit up but the barrel of the gun moved quicker than he did, pointed hard on Drew’s forehead, the cold steel threatening certain destruction if he dared move another inch.
Drew kept his head on the pillow and cleared his throat. “Easy, now,” he said. Richard’s finger was on the trigger, lightly touching it. “You don’t want to do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.”
Drew remembered reading somewhere once that when a gun’s pointed at you, the best thing to do was talk consequences. Don’t get the guy riled up, Drew remembered, but let him know there’s a reaction for every individual action.
“Looks like you already have done something you’re gonna regret, you son-of-a-bitch,” Richard said. Deborah, Drew noticed, stirred under the covers. She moved closer to Drew to place her arm around his chest. She was almost there when she opened her eyes and noticed what was going on.
“Richard?” she said, sitting up quickly, noticing the gun.
“Don’t you Richard me,” he said, finger still on the trigger. Drew kept his eyes opened — didn’t want to close them because to close them was to lose control.
“Richard, let’s talk this over,” she said frantically. Drew noticed the sheets were hovering around her waist, her naked breasts hanging loosely. “Richard, darling, put the gun away. It’s between you and me, not you and him or even me and him. Oh, sweetheart please do the right thing. Take the gun away and let him go!”
Richard kept the gun at Drew’s forehead. Drew was thinking, so this is how it’s gonna all go down? No chance to start over. Gone from Miami to Atlantic City to Deborah’s to no debt and now this jealous husband with an itchy trigger finger’s ready to blow my brains out. Drew started to close his eyes, resigned to his fate now. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe all you did was close them and wait for it to happen. If this was it, then this was it. No sense in prolonging it.
Deborah was pleading — just background noise to Drew now.
“Please darling, please — it’s between you and me!” she was saying.
Just as Drew was closing them, he felt the gun move away, slowly, from his head. The coldness of the barrel was replaced by . . . nothing. Drew looked over at Deborah, who was leaning on Richard, hugging him at the waist, babbling. The gun was still in Richard’s hands but the barrel was now pointed towards the ground.
“Get your shit and get the fuck out of here,” he said to Drew.
Drew carefully moved out of bed. Not wanting to rattle Richard, he threw on his boxers and jeans quickly, grabbed the rest of his clothes and wallet and keys on the night stand. He ran out of the room, wondering all the while what it would feel like to get blasted in the back. He kept low until he reached the stairs and when he heard no gunfire, he realized he might make it out of there after all.
But what about Deborah, he wondered? Fuck it. They would work it out.
He threw on his shirt as he wildly opened the front door, his heart going a million miles an hour. Barefoot, he sped towards his car, parked to the side of her house. His feet were freezing in the frigid December air but what mattered now was that he’d made it, that he’d gotten out in one piece. The engine roared to life. Drew placed the shoes and socks in the passenger seat. He’d put them on at the next traffic light.
Drew opened the glove compartment and pulled out the gun. He fondled it in his hands, felt the cold metal against his skin, the cold metal that had been on his forehead just minutes ago. He took off the safety. It was loaded. He could go back in, cap the bastard and call it self-defense. He and Deborah would end up together, would split the estate and Drew could say goodbye to Miami, goodbye to that shitty agency he was running and hello to a new life.
All it would take was one shot, one clean shot and he’d have it. He’d have it all — the woman, the money. The ultimate jackpot.
