Iain
The night was beyond cold as I sat perched on a fire escape attached to a shitty tenement, training my camera across the street. My fingers felt like blocks of ice, no longer parts of me but something else. Something vicious and cruel.
I always agreed to the shit jobs, so here I was, like a male version of Jessica-fucking-Jones, crouched in a terrible neighborhood with a camera, freezing my ass off in the middle of the night.
I shifted slightly in place, allowing my left shoulder to relax. Ever since my last deployment, it hasn’t felt the same.
People were walking a hundred feet below me, no doubt talking about their shit jobs and stupid roommates, ranting about the cost of organic eggs and how unfair it was that their dads cut off their allowances. I gritted my teeth, refusing to look down to see what these assholes looked like. I needed to stay focused, to get the shots so I could get the hell out of here.
Tuning out the sounds of the streets, I scanned the building, looking for movement in the two windows belonging to the husband I was scoping. I had uncovered his secret apartment the other day and had been squatting here for the last three nights, waiting for him.
Becoming a private investigator wasn’t my idea of a career. I was fresh from the Army a little over four years ago, with a bum shoulder and a broken heart. I had no clue what to do with all that time I suddenly had - and boy, was time my enemy for the first six months or so. With my dad being a cop for the NYPD, I knew I didn’t want to go that route. I’d seen enough of the shit he had to deal with to know that it wasn’t for me.
And then, one day, one of my old friends from high school called me up to welcome me back home. After all the small talk was done, he admitted to me that he and his wife were having trouble, swearing up and down that she was cheating on him, but he couldn’t prove it.
He’d asked me, in a roundabout way, for help. In the state I was in at the time, having a little direction was exactly what I needed to do something; otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have climbed out of the hole I’d found myself in. Not long after that phone call, I was able to prove that his wife was definitely cheating on him. Solving the case had been the kick in the ass I needed, because the clients haven’t stopped.
I froze the second I saw a shadow. A light clicked on, and a man came into view. It was the husband, removing his shirt and watch. A second figure was in the room, a woman, and I snapped a shot.
She moved toward him, touching his bare chest. They kissed. I snapped again. He ripped her shirt off, pressing her against him. I snapped again. I zoomed in closer, able to get a good one of the expression on his face as he kissed this woman.
He loved her, which either made all of this better or worse. After four years of doing this, I still wasn’t sure.
In an ideal world, I would have been able to call it a night. But this wasn’t an ideal world, so I continued to snap. The wife wouldn’t be happy without full ammo, the whole deal. Something to take to the courts with mascara running down her face to show how much her heart had been broken. Something to burn to memory, something to fall back on to know that all this time, she wasn’t crazy. She was right.
After four years, I still didn’t know why people get married. It always ended in tears, resentment, and pain.
I was on autopilot now, snapping photos every other second, even while he was balls deep, taking his mistress from behind, pulling her hair like I was sure he never did to his wife. Why the hell she would want to see that, I really couldn’t comprehend. But she asked me for the works, and I always delivered.
Always.
xxx
The sound of my phone ringing jarred me awake. My eyes snapped open and I shoved my hand under my pillow, pulling the stupid thing out and silencing it immediately. My head pounded, dull and harsh, behind my eyes.
For a moment, I lay in bed, covering my eyes, hoping the darkness would help my head. It didn’t.
After I had gotten home last night, I decided it would be a great idea to crack open the bottle of Jim Beam collecting dust on top of my fridge in efforts to celebrate finishing up the case.
Or rather, that was what I had told myself at the time.
The truth, though? I was fucking lonely. I had nobody to celebrate with, so I got drunk alone in my apartment.
I forced myself up, squinting, the bright sun hitting me full on. I didn’t usually hit the bottle so hard, and I was paying for it. I looked down at my phone, seeing a missed call from a number not logged in my contacts and a new voicemail.
I’d get to it later.
Getting out of bed, I forced myself into the shower to wake myself up. The hot water steamed the room, the heat making me feel a little better. I scrubbed, letting my thoughts drift.
Why had I let myself drink so much? Getting drunk alone wasn’t something I did a lot, but every time I did, I was repulsed with myself the next day. I felt terrible now, not only mentally but physically, too. My back and neck were sore from crouching on the fire escape for so long, and my throat was dry and thick, like I’d shoved a cotton ball in it before I fell asleep.
Forcing myself to stop wallowing, I finished up my shower and got dressed. The half-empty bottle of Jim Beam sat on the counter, and I poured the rest of it down the drain, disgusted with myself.
I needed something to do. I thought of those photos I still needed to put in zip files and decided to tackle them before I did anything else. At the very least, the distraction would make me forget my headache.
It was just after ten, and it would take me about an hour to filter through the photos and compress them for my client. This part of the job was definitely the most boring, but at least I wasn’t outside in the middle of the night in February, worrying about freezing my nuts off.
I heard my phone ringing again but let it go. I was too far into the groove of getting these photos ready to care about hearing another sob story just yet. Halfway through, I brewed a pot of coffee, drinking it black.
My head felt better already.
xxx
Around noon, I dug my phone out from under my comforter and checked it. Two missed calls from an out of state number. Odd, but not out of the ordinary. Sometimes my clients disguised themselves; it made them feel more secure. I also had a text message from my buddy Erik, asking if I wanted to grab a beer and watch the Knicks game this weekend. I usually said no, because I had a case, but this time I said yes.
I listened to that voicemail.
“Hi Iain, it’s Brandon Coffey. I know you haven’t heard from me in a while, but I was hoping you’d give me a call. I need your help.”
He rattled off the number that was on my caller ID and the voicemail ended. What on earth could Brandon, my lieutenant from my early army days, possibly need from me? He lived in Indiana, and I hadn’t seen or heard from him in years. Last I heard, he was working for some bank in Indianapolis, living the dream.
But I knew all too well how quickly things can change, how dreams can turn into nightmares.
I opened my call log and went to call him back, but before my finger could get to the screen, my phone rang again. This time, it was my dad.
“Hey, Dad. What’s up?” I turned toward the window, opening the blinds and looking at the street below, watching the traffic and people drift by.
“Son. I haven’t heard from you in weeks.”
His voice sounded angry, but I knew he wasn’t.
“Well, I’m breathing.”
“Now I can sleep tonight.”
We both laughed, and I turned away from the window, grabbing my cold coffee.
“What can I do for you?”
“Well…” I heard some fumbling in the background, the sound of his radio. “There’s just no real easy way to go about this. Your mom called me.”
“Oh.”
“She’s in a bad way, son.”
“I see.”
There was silence on the other line, actual silence. Not even a breath. I downed my cold coffee and set the mug down on the counter, too hard. My dad was trying to fake me out, to make me talk. But when it came to her, I had nothing to say.
“Iain, when are you going to talk to your mother?”
I clenched the phone. It was unlike my dad to get between us. They’d been divorced for five years, and my relationship with my mother has been strained my entire life.
“It’s not exactly something I marked in my calendar, dad. She fucked up. She’s done nothing but fuck up my entire life.”
More silence on the other end of the line, and I sighed.
“She’s sorry,” he said finally. “She told me to tell you that.”
Gritting my teeth, I shook my head, knowing he couldn’t see it.
“I don’t care.”
I heard his radio again, someone calling in a 10-16 somewhere in Park Slope.
“I have to go. Gotta handle this.”
He ended the call, and I stared at my phone for a moment, wondering how such an indifferent piece of metal and glass could make me feel so numb.