Zorie
The park reminded me of that other time with Reuben. The whole peaceful communing with nature thing had always worked for me. It’d be awful if I lost that. I stood under the spreading fig that overhung the car parking area and took a moment to let the stillness wash over me.
I’d dressed in shorts, exercise top, and gym shoes again, so I could pretend I was jogging. The second time in one day. At least I was getting fit. Now all I had to do was pretend I didn’t know Heller? Why did he think secrecy was good? Come to think of it, would Reuben care?
Mister Black had thought other men would bother Reuben.
Though Grimm wasn’t my lover. He must think I was being blackmailed. It was logical, if he thought me an innocent sort. Which, I had been.
I wasn’t now and not ever again. I shook my head, dismissing that whimper from my past.
Moving on.
In a twisted way, blackmail was right. This wasn’t happening of my own volition.
There he was, over on the grass beside the lake. Ducks were cruising past. The jogging path was behind him and on the other side of that, beneath the shade of trees, was a seat.
He wanted to help. I took a deep breath and started running. He wanted this to look like an accidental meeting. As if someone watched? Unlikely, but okay, play the game by his rules. From past experience this was going to be pure frustration. Speaking to him about what had happened to me would be impossible.
I jogged up to him, slowly, and heard him say to the air, when you come back around, sit on the seat. Feeling very secret agent, I did as he suggested, went around the circular path then slid onto the cool gray metal of the seat. Grimm had half turned and was throwing bread at the ducks, making plonk noises in the water. Masterful planning.
“This is all a bit silly, don’t you think?”
“I’m thinking ahead. You don’t want me here? I’ll go, forever.”
Panting lightly, I slumped back against the slats of the seat then wiped sweat from my face with one hand. The sun was out and glinting on the water and across the top of Grimm’s hair. The ducks were doing duck gymnastics and wing flurries to get at the bread. And Grimm was the most persistent man, ever.
“What are you doing?”
He eyed me, warily. “I’m going then?”
I swallowed, thought about saying more about everything and blanked out.
“I can’t say...anything.”
Grimm went to rise, hand on the grass, those big male legs gathering under him, biceps tattoo rippling in the sun. Automatically, I did a swift appraisal.
He wasn’t stirring me quite like he had before but that was only natural after everything that’d happened. Jeans and a plain brown T-shirt, cinched-back blond hair, and he rocked it. And he was leaving.
“Wait. Please.”
“Sure.” He waited, threw more bread. “Listening. Look. Like I said. If you need help. I can do it.”
“This is...” I waggled my hand, then half-covered one eye while I tried to think. “Beyond you. You’re a librarian.”
I’d said that easily. Could I sort of circle the subject, hint at things? But then what? Could he shoot Reuben for me? Go to jail? Hah. No. I didn’t want him arrested, or beaten up, or killed, if he failed. Like I might be too, if I ever confronted Reuben with the gun.
And I’d deny any wrongdoings by Reuben and his men to the cops, if they asked me directly. Doomed. I’d be Reuben’s fucktoy until he cast my aside.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Violence was all around me when I was growing up, Zorie. My brother...did bad stuff, had some of it happen to him. If you’re in a hole, I know people who know people.”
Mouth agape, I thought that through. Grimm knew bad people? And he’d been a bouncer, which led to nightclubs. Depending on where, that could mean he’d been around crime. Or so I gathered. What was he talking about? Drug dealers? Biker gangs? Prostitution?
Maybe he meant he knew the ice-cream-van man? I was out of my depth here too.
A willy wagtail, eye cocked, long-feathered tail twitching, hopped across the grass chasing worms. The ducks quacked.
The day was too damn bright for this.
Did everyone around me have a sordid past?
I curled forward and buried my head in my hands. “Even if you could do something about...whatever. I...can’t talk.”
“Whatever?” He muttered something else and yanked up a stalk of grass, then twirled it, idly. “I think I’ve established there’s something. You’re here. You want me here. But I need you to talk. At least you aren’t saying, I’m fine.”
“True.” I lowered my hands to peer over them at Grimm. Yes. I wasn’t saying that. I’d edged closer to the real topic than ever before.
Skirt the topic. How?
“Graffiti. Haiku.”
He stared at me directly now, maybe thinking I’d lost it. So much for secrecy and pretending they weren’t talking to each other.
“One question. One, Grimm.” I took my keys from my shorts pocket and began to scratch at the paint on the seat then said quietly, “I’ve never vandalized before.”
After a few seconds he looked out over the small lake again. “Lost me. I don’t understand. Is this a strategy to defeat your lack of talking?”
Too direct. My tongue tangled.
Go around.
“The sky is blue. Yes.”
“What the fuck?” Grimm muttered. “So that’s a yes.”
A statement, that. He was catching on. Lucky I had a librarian and so he’d hopefully read some strange books.
“We need a dead letter drop. Invisible ink. A code book.”
“Not... Uh.” I wanted to tell him it wasn’t just the need for secrecy stopping me. Resistance was growing in my head. I massaged my temples. “No. Fuck.”
All the mind wrestling I was doing. I was stuck. The world squeezed in whenever I tried to elaborate.
“Graffiti, hey? I hear conflict, stress, in what you’re saying. How you’re saying it. I’m probably nuts. But, hypnotism? Has someone made you unable to talk?”
The man was a goddamned genius.
I stared, feeling bug-eyed, and wondered if I was going blue. With all the messing about I was doing in my head, I wasn’t breathing.
Answer him!
I gasped then drew a long, zig-zaggy scratch with the key on the seat. Breathe. Looking down through the gaps at the ground and some migrating ants let oxygen return to my blood.
“Prove me right. Graffiti?” He’d torn up another grass stalk and was playing sword fights or something with them while pointedly not looking my way. “One question. I’ll be back tomorrow, here, same time. I’m on holidays until university starts. I’ll make it simple. Tell me this. Yes or no. Do you want me to help you?”
Then he rose to his feet, dusted off the back of his jeans, and he strode away, just in time to avoid us confusing an old man on a walker coming along the path.
I nodded to the man and waited for him to stomp on past, before placing the key’s tip on the paint.
At first I was frozen. Then I remembered Mister Black’s lesson. I remembered how to side step. How to push against the compulsion.
Took me half an hour of stopping and starting, but I carved out a big Y.
If he didn’t return to read that, I’d given myself a headache for no bloody reason.
When I opened my car, and slid into the seat, I realized I’d brought the gun after all. It was underneath the magazine on the passenger seat. Totally illegal to carry one about like that.
That wasn’t what bothered me. When had I decided to bring it? This side-stepping in my mind might be causing side effects. Or was there another reason?
What if none of this was happening, and I was simply going mad? I snorted. I wrapped my arms around the steering wheel, and lowered my head until it touched the leather.
I contemplated the twig pieces, dirt, and grass in the foot well. The floor in here needed vacuuming.
“Well. After all the horrible stuff, I’m due for something nice, like going insane.”
Killing a person was said to be hard to do. Reuben though? I had a world of hate and disgust stored up in the sewer part of my mind. If I didn’t have Reuben’s eyes on me, watching me, I might do it. Except that would be murder. Imagining was easy.
I’d killed before but that had been accidental. Accidental at first, anyway. He’d asked for it. Deserved it. It’d been night time. Seeing him dead afterward had wrecked me – the police walking around, lights strobing across the scene, with me shivering and clutching the blanket someone had given me.
I pulled an ugly face. If Reuben didn’t simply make me put down the gun, if I made myself do it, what were my chances he’d stand still? He’d know. Mister Black had seen when I meant to do things.
When I failed, he’d beat me, or worse. Reuben wasn’t a man to stop at mediocre. He’d do worse. Much, much worse. My imagination stuttered; my hands tightened on the wheel.
Ugly, ugly thoughts. Me, bludgeoned and dying, blood spreading.
Maybe he wouldn’t go that far. Maybe.
Fear would stop me from shooting him.
If I couldn’t do it, could Grimm, my librarian who knew bad people? He wanted to help.
Oh, that was such a sucky idea – turning him into a murderer.
Wait... I let my thoughts play with each other.
Was that why he didn’t want anyone knowing we’d talked? If Reuben died, would the police ever connect A to B? Librarian to lecturer? We’d only had one café date.
“Shit! No!” I banged my hands on the wheel. “What am I thinking?”
I started the car and drove off, trying hard not to think about anything bad for a while. Failing, but trying.