Fade In:
SLIP BACK INTO RAND’S SKIN
If there’s one thing you can’t stand, it’s coming home after work to an unexpectedly empty house, like yesterday. Even worse is when a call to Cami’s cell goes unanswered. Voice mail doesn’t count, especially when there’s no call back.
She has no right to ignore you, Rand,
no right to make you worry
about where she’s spending time.
When she finally came in, Waylon in tow, her excuse was flimsy.
“I was running errands.”
“You were running errands before lunch,” you complained. “What kind of errands took you all day?”
“Well, there was a problem. . . .”
She went on to recite what seemed like an implausible story about an armed robbery at Denny’s. But then you caught it on the news, and it was incomprehensible that your wife and son had actually been embroiled in it.
Waylon noticed the scene on TV. “Bad guys, Daddy. And guns going bang, and cops, too. We was under table.”
Cami did the right thing, taking cover, but if you’d been there, those guys would’ve gone down, that’s for sure. Yeah, the guy who tried to interfere got shot, but you’re way too clever to take a bullet in an armed robbery. You have to be sneakier than the crooks. It’s too bad about the old lady, who’s fighting for her life in the hospital. The very idea that one of those jerks might’ve wasted Waylon or Cami makes you livid. If you wore a badge today, you’d prioritize tracking them down.
You’d prioritize taking them down,
taking them all the way out.
However, your family stayed safe and when you thought about it, even after Cami recovered from the shock, she had plenty of time to go to the grocery store like she promised. But there was no chicken chili, no fresh milk, no produce or paper towels. No groceries at all. So where did she go? When you asked, her explanation changed.
“I needed to chill, so we visited some friends.”
“Friends? Like who?”
“You don’t know them.”
That refrain again.
It’s becoming too familiar.
that you don’t?
“Waylon plays with their kids,” she added.
“Kids,” agreed your little boy. “Hot Wheels. An’ McD’s.”
When you gave her the what the hell look, she whined, “He was hungry, and it was all I could afford after they stole my money. Our money.”
“They robbed you? How much did they get?”
She hesitated, and her face creased, as if she either couldn’t recall or couldn’t concoct a decent lie.
“You don’t remember?”
“No. I do. You’re not going to like this.”
“Okay, I won’t like it. How much?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
It was like she’d slugged you. A third of your paycheck. She shouldn’t have been carrying so much cash.
As if reading your mind, she explained, “I was going to pay the cable bill and go to the grocery store. I’m sorry. Wait. No, I’m not. It wasn’t my fault, you know.”
“Obviously.” You totally realize that, but that much money doesn’t come easily, and you’ll never see it again. “I don’t get paid until next Friday. Are we okay?”
She nodded. “We’ll get by. We might have to eat peanut butter most of the week, but we won’t starve.”
“PB and J!” Waylon was agreeable.
You didn’t get chicken chili for dinner, but you weren’t stuck with peanut butter. Cami managed to scrabble together grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, which happen to be favorites of yours, so all was pretty much forgiven.
Truthfully, you’ve remained mostly in the dark when it comes to banking and bills. Cami’s good at it, and it would just be another chore you don’t need. But you don’t really like being this blind to your finances, so maybe you should pay better attention.
As for surviving until Friday, you can always bum a little cash from your dad. You value autonomy and hate when you have to ask, but it’s become necessary a few times over the last couple of years, and he’s always been generous. He doesn’t even try to make you feel like less of a man.
That matters. Which is why you couldn’t let the thing with Levon go at work yesterday. Only a pussy would’ve backed away. The old “boys will be boys” idiom does not apply when it’s your woman some dude’s slobbering over. Any reaction other than the one you chose would’ve made the whole crew lose every ounce of respect for you.
You learned to fight at age ten, not long after the camping trip.
It wasn’t that you were small, at least not short. You were always one of the tallest boys in your classrooms. But your mom fed you garbage. Worse than McDonald’s. Thank God she acquiesced to your dad’s demand that you get hot lunch at school (an expense he personally paid for) or you might have withered completely away.
As the gawkly loner with the drunk mom, the bullies picked on you relentlessly until one day you decided you’d had enough. You were outside on the playground when a big, buff kid called you “fag.” And when the others started laughing, you went off. Came at him, swinging. You connected a few times, but your feeble strength against his ample meat, the blows were meaningless. His, however, were anything but.
He kicked your spindly ass.
Yes, but as he pummeled you black and blue, you stepped outside of your body, observing his moves and programming them into your memory banks. He was cool in his delivery, and that impressed you the most. Later, after the school nurse stanched the blood and the vice principal suspended the victor for three days, you would meditate on the nuances of hand-to-hand battle. The next time a fistfight necessitated itself, you fared better. The time after that, you won.
What a rush that was, dropping him!
And the hard-won respect
made a bruise or two worthwhile.
It’s Sunday, and while others go to church or watch basketball, you’ll spend a good part of the day working. Most of the guys relax on Sunday, but you always ask for extra hours, and since tomorrow is a holiday, not to mention the fact that your bank account is two hundred dollars lighter than it should be, it’s especially important this weekend.
You’ve stirred early, just a thin trickle of light announcing that it’s morning. And while you consider yesterday’s events, you notice Cami twisting and hissing within her dreams, distressed at whatever is chasing her there. So you coax her into your arms and wake her with a kiss. “Morning.”
“What time is it?” she whispers.
“A little after six.”
“Why are you awake already?”
The drowsy husk of her voice is sexy as hell and coupled with the heat of her skin, she is a total turn-on. And, for probably the millionth time, you think how incredibly lucky you are that she’s all yours. “So I can get laid before work?”
“Oh,” she sighs. “That.”
Sometimes she says no, which is why you framed your request as a question. But that is rare, and today she’s more than willing. She’s ready, as if whatever was stalking her in dreamland was as much man as monster. Can’t fault her for that, and for that reason or another, her lovemaking this morning is a tango—hot, slick, complicated moves requiring dexterity and skill.
After all this time together, she still surprises you. Usually that’s good, but sometimes it bothers you. Like when she wants to be in control. You’re the stud; she’s the filly. This morning, however, she just wanted to please. “You been taking lessons or what?”
“Lessons?” she asks.
“Yeah. Like, sex lessons. You keep getting better and better.”
Cami grins. “No lessons. Just lots of practice.” Noting your consternated expression, she quickly adds, “With you, Rand. How do you think I know what you like?”
Good point, although she couldn’t have known how much you’d like the unique position she pretzeled herself into this morning. “We have done it a time or five hundred, huh?”
“At least.” She runs her hand down the length of your torso, and you might take that as an invitation to be accepted, but the alarm blares.
And today, you’re on a mission.
You toss back the covers. “Have to get ready for work.”
Cami follows you into the bathroom, watches you soap away the evidence of this morning’s bedroom adventure. “What time do you think you’ll be home?”
“Not too late. Today’s just some light framing. Chuck gave me the extra hours I asked for. Everyone else is taking today and tomorrow off.”
“But you’re home tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I was thinking about spending a little time with Noelle, and was hoping you’d babysit. It’s hard to talk with Waylon running around, getting into everything. My parents’ house isn’t exactly what you’d call toddler-proofed.”
“Is your sister okay?”
“Sure. We just don’t get to hang out much anymore.”
“Okay. No problem.”
But it kind of is. Cami, at least, has her playgroup friends to do stuff with. Your old buddies don’t even ask to include you anymore. Not that you can blame them, really. It’s not like they’re partnered for life, or doing the daddy thing. Their topics of conversation revolve around basketball and Hooters, not Nickelodeon and Little People.
Besides, even if you still kept in touch with them, you have no spare time at all. Classes. Work. Home. Classes. Work. Home. Once in a while, the odd night out, like on Friday. And look how that ended.
or at least a diversion.
You deserve it.
“Oh. I am going to stop by my dad’s on the way home. See if he’ll front a few dollars to make up for what we lost yesterday.” Way to make that plural.
“Your dad’s skiing, remember?”
“Oh. Right. Okay, then, tomorrow, when he gets home.”
“Are you sure?”
“Uh-huh. PB and J gets old after a day or two.”
“As long as you can handle it today. It’s all we’ve got for your lunch.” Off she goes to slather Jif.
Maybe you’ll stop by your dad’s house later anyway. Grace is there, alone with Daniel. It would be good to check up on her. You don’t know the guy very well, and while he seemed okay Friday night, something about him bothered you, some indefinable undercurrent that made you uncomfortable.
Even more uncomfortable than the Cami-Grace tiff, and that was pretty bad. Both girls are quite vocal when it comes to their opinions. Sometimes it’s better to keep one’s thoughts to oneself.
You get dressed, then join Cami in the kitchen, where you pour yourself a big old bowl of Froot Loops.
“I’ve been thinking. Not sure how we’ll work it out, but once the semester is over, we should take a couple of days and go somewhere.”
“You mean, like a vacation?”
“Yep. Maybe take Waylon to the Grand Canyon or something.”
Her face lights up. “Maybe Disneyland?”
“Um . . . That’s an expensive trip, Cami. I don’t think we could afford it.”
She deflates, and you hate how that makes you feel. “I know. Maybe I could get a part-time job or something.”
“Cami, we’ve talked about that. Child care would eat every penny.”
“But maybe Noelle . . .”
When her voice trails off, you notice you’ve been shaking your head no. It’s okay if Noelle babysits once in a blue damn moon. But every day? No way can you take that chance. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair not to compensate her.
You take your half-eaten cereal to the sink, leave it drowning in food-colored milk, pull Cami into your halfhearted embrace. “Let’s find a way to do Disneyland.”
The part you leave off is “someday.”
If she intuits the unvoiced addendum, she keeps it to herself. Still, the tone of her voice betrays upset. “Okay. It will be our goal.” She pushes you away. “Go to work.”
The planet tips sideways, throws you off balance. Cami’s disappointment is a stinging indictment. One day, you vow, you’ll be able to vacation anywhere you please. Disneyland. Disney World. Hawaii. Alaska. Farther. Europe. China. Yeah, sure. How will you do that? Ever?
Dig down deep, Rand. Labor hard. Save up. If others can do it, so can you. But, damn it all, you’d give your right nut to be worry-free for a while. Imagine, being a regular nineteen-year-old kid, living with your parents, all expenses paid, while you finished school.
Too late for that.
Your life is a giant shit pile of worry.
Thermos of coffee in one hand, brown-bag lunch in the other, you start toward the door, only to be stopped by a sleepy voice at your back. “Daddy?”
When you turn, Waylon bounds into your arms, and despite your hands being occupied, your gentle squeeze promises you love him. Just like that, your world rights itself.
“Okay, killer, gotta go. See you later.”
It’s a twenty-minute drive to the apartment complex you helped construct a while back. Today’s job is building frames for the walkways, to be filled with concrete in the coming week. It isn’t difficult work, rather mindless, in fact.
The problem with that is it lets your mind wander, and you can’t help but travel back to the last time you were here, when you happened to catch sight of Dean. As you wield your level and hammer, you keep glancing around, half hoping, half dreading you might see him again. Though you know he’s real, and lives in this neighborhood, he seems more apparition than flesh-and-blood.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to turn him into an actual ghost, if such things exist? To excise his evil spirit from his vile body and strand it where it could only lust after little boys, lacking the requisite ability to follow through? To make it wander through eternity, hungering to the point of starvation, its appetite whetted every time it passed a playground (or campground)?
Honestly, deliberating about the prick is becoming an obsession. Maybe—no, likely—it’s part of the reason you begged Chuck to let you handle this job today. Beyond needing the hours, and the cash that comes along with them, a very big piece of you craved the excuse to be here, scouting the street and sidewalks.
his movements, trail him
like the criminal he is.
You need to see where he lives,
know where he hangs out,
what kind of car he drives.
You will find a way
to cause him great pain.
Revenge on the scale you have in mind takes planning. You can’t risk witnesses. Prison time would negate everything you’ve worked so hard to accomplish. Ultimately, Dean would win, regardless of how much you made him suffer. There’d be no police academy, no badge at the far end. Your family would be lost to you, likely forever. No more McDonald’s. No more Little People. No more morning sex. No chance at Disneyland and the world beyond.
No, you’ll have to be very careful. But you can’t wait too long, or who knows how many kids he might get hold of in the meantime. Once you finish your work here, you’ll spend a little time cruising the area, and when you have all the information you need, you’ll formulate a strategy.
Logic, you remind yourself, must trump emotion. That will likely be the hardest part because it requires patience. And at this moment in time the one goal you keep circling back to is forcing him down on his knees and making him beg for mercy.
It’s interesting, really. You’re a good guy. Excellent dad. Decent husband, despite the occasional fantasy about some girl other than your wife. But that one episode has carved out a vital piece of your soul.
will make you whole again.
He deserves a slow, terrible death
for what he did to you.
But do you have the balls to do it?
You’ve asked yourself that question dozens of times over the years. All you have to do is revisit that night and your answer materializes, the same every time.
Absolutely.
Fade Out