Marked for Vengeance (10 page)

Worried
that his pizza had burned into a hard brick of charcoal by now, he made a bee
line for the elevator with the empty basket tucked under his arm. When he came to
their flat, his flip flops skidded to a stop. Their door was open.
 

It
was only cracked an inch, but enough to raise suspicions. He didn’t leave it
that way, at least he didn’t recall it, and it wasn’t time for Micah to be
home. As he ran through the possibilities in his mind, a sudden dread climbed
his throat, closing it tight.
I didn’t lock it.

He
nudged the large, metal door with the basket and it creaked open.

Thump.

It
hit the wall just hard enough to make a sound. He smacked his forehead with the
palm of his hand.
Effin’ idiot, I am.
He might as well have announced
his arrival through a bullhorn.

His
wide eyes searched the living room. He didn’t see anyone, and everything remained
in its rightful place, but he was leery all the same. Crouched over with his
senses on high alert, he crept through the flat as his eyes darted in every direction
to look for any sudden movements.

The
oven buzzer and the TV were the only noises heard, only slightly above his
racing heart as his imagination ran wild with whom the intruder could have
been. Was it the man in the black suit that hadn’t finished terrorizing him
yet? Were there more than one of him? Was it a thief or a bum from the street
looking for some valuables or food? Rachel used to tell him that his highly
active imagination as an artist worked against him in these types of scenarios,
but he reasoned that being overly cautious meant the difference in living and
dying.

He stopped
in the center of the living room and peered up to Micah’s loft. He couldn’t see
the whole room, but from what he could tell, nobody lingered there.

As
he made his way toward the kitchen, he thought of the movie he and Micah had
watched the night before where a man came home to a serial killer who hid in
the kitchen behind the cabinets with a knife, waiting for the perfect moment to
pounce and slit his throat. Isaac’s hand clasped his neck, and he gulped from
the imagery. If whoever had broken in meant him harm, he had nothing to defend
himself with except the plastic laundry basket he held under his arm. He gently
sat it on the floor and looked around for something to use as a weapon, but
their flimsy IKEA lamps and picture frames would hardly do any damage. All he
had were his fists. He balled them in front of his face and inched toward the
kitchen.

When
he came to the corner of the cabinets, he paused and forced another gulp down.
He
swore
he heard someone breathing above the buzzer and just
knew
this was their moment of confrontation. He lifted his left foot from the ground
to jump into the opening -- so he would at least have
some
element of
surprise -- and leapt into the air. His flip flops hit the ground with a smack,
and he scanned the room. Nobody awaited him. Everything was in place. He let
out a sigh and made his way toward the bathroom, his fists still ready for a
possible altercation.

When
he made it to the door frame, his imagination ran away with him again. The
breaking news story that morning as he dropped Micah off at school was about a
crazed, homeless person who had broken into a lady’s home and helped himself to
a soak in her tub. She came home early from work, and he strangulated her with
the shower curtain. Her body wasn’t found until days later.

His
heartbeat accelerated at the thought of Micah coming home to find his father
lying on the floor, blue in the face. If anything happened to him, his son
would be placed in a foster home. There were no living relatives except his
dying grandfather to take care of him.

He
tiptoed to the knife drawer in the kitchen as sweat trickled down his temples
and pulled a serrated bread knife from underneath the cheese grater. The long,
dull blade wasn’t an ideal weapon but would do more damage than his fists. He rushed
back to the open bathroom door and closed his eyes.
Here goes nothin’
.

He
shot off of the floor again and into the center of the room, landing squarely
on the shaggy bathroom rug. The open shower curtain revealed that his fears
were again for naught.

Now
that he knew the main rooms of the flat were clear of any threats, he felt confident
that everything was alright, but couldn’t rest until he laid his eyes on every inch
of the house.

He
slid open the studio door. All of his paintings and utensils were accounted for
and in tact. The closet in the living room was untouched, as well. He wiped the
sweat from his face with his shirt and carried the knife back to its rightful
home.
I must not have closed the door all the way,
he surmised and shut
all of the doors and drawers before pulling his overdone dinner from the oven
with a dishtowel.

As
he crunched on his pizza in front of the TV, he thought back to the other night
when Micah’s disturbing dream woke him from his slumber. He would definitely
not
tell him about any of this.

* * *

Alyx
stirred awake and glanced at the alarm clock.
Eight o’clock.
Her nap had
turned into a five hour snooze-fest. To strengthen her now dwindling decision
to move in with Benjamin, she looked around her bedroom while contemplating
what it would be like to not live there anymore. She loved her apartment. It
was the first
place of her very own, but Benjamin’s had plenty of room for the two of them
and was in a better location. Her only worry was that no matter how many square
footage they shared, she would eventually become claustrophobic.
Will he
smother me?
she worried.
Will he want to know where I am every second?
Even if she didn’t give up her rooftop nights, attempting to explain away her
missing hours throughout the night would undoubtedly cause rifts between them.
Something she hadn’t had to worry about until now.

But it wasn’t
just about the rooftop nights. She also worried that his jealousy would fortify
once they shared an abode.  That he would begin to think of her as one of the
fine home furnishings he possessed. If she were out with Cindra on a girl’s
night, would he still wonder where she was and speculate as to what she was really
doing? Despite her ponderings having the exact opposite effect on what she
tried to accomplish, there would only be one way to find the answers to these
troubling questions – to take the plunge as she had promised the night prior.

Her thoughts
then snapped to Isaac, how her desire had become intertwined to her instinctual
draw toward him. With the right mindset, her desire could hopefully be tamed,
but her draw was something that could not. If she could only pry them apart
again, her life wouldn’t be as complicated. The only way to do that would be to
suffocate the desire again, to tame the lion her desire bred three months ago.
It might always lurk somewhere in the darkness of her troubled mind, but a
timid kitten was easier to manage. In theory.

Tonight’s the
night,
she
surmised.
She would visit the rooftop one last time to say her goodbyes.
Even if she had never known Benjamin and her relationship with him wasn’t at
stake, it needed to be done.

She rolled out
of bed and pulled on an old pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. She grabbed
her purse, binoculars, a camera, and a bottle of wine from the wine rack. “I’m
going out with a bang,” she avowed and slipped into her tennis shoes. Because
this was the last hurrah, she would walk the whole way there to savor the
moment. She would only see him again after this if she were called upon to
fulfill her duty, which if history repeated itself, wouldn’t be an issue.

She made it to
the building with impeccable timing, climbed through the window and up the
stairs as usual. She slid the wine bottle from her purse and uncorked it as she
walked to the edge.
The darkness of his window divulged the callous
truth -- he wasn’t painting tonight. She snickered as she glanced up at the heavens.
“That’s what I get, huh?”  

Her lips encased
the opening of the wine bottle, and she turned it up for a long, comforting
swig. The scarlet liquid slid down her throat, warming her belly, and she
settled onto the concrete to enjoy the atmosphere one last time.

There was
nothing particularly charming about the roof of the old abandoned building, but
it was a place she would forever hold fond memories of. It was the place where
she first experienced true desire. If it weren’t for Isaac, she would have
never known those places within her heart ever existed. No wonder the human
race sought after love so earnestly, so madly, even.

She crossed her
legs and held the bottle in the air, swirling it around by the neck. As she
observed the graceful way it spun within the bottle, she thought about how her
drinking had worsened since first visiting the rooftop. It became quite clear
that she drank now, not purely for enjoyment as it once had been, but to subdue
the nagging remembrance of what she could not have. Tonight was no exception.
It was only appropriate that she drank, and the more she did the warmer she felt.
She would stay as long as she wanted to, even if it meant she were there till
dawn. Nobody waited at home for her return. Although tonight, disappointingly
enough, there weren’t even stars she could gaze at. The storm clouds lingered, persistent
to keep the stars’ sparkling lights hidden. The darker than usual atmosphere seemed
appropriate, however, as it mirrored the grief the wine helped hold at bay. 

To her surprise,
a light flickered through the darkness. Hoping it was him, she shot up from the
roof and fumbled with the binoculars, but her cold, drunken hands made it
nearly impossible to pick them up. By the time she positioned them in front of
her face, his light quickly flickered off.

Shit!

She snatched the
camera from her purse anyhow and zoomed in to the window to take a picture. She
could just imagine him in there.
It’s better that way.

She took another
pull from her near-empty wine bottle and swayed groggily from side to side. Perhaps
she was so anxious to drown her feelings that her body didn’t have time to
adjust to the bombardment of the dry wine. When she settled onto the concrete,
the roof tilted around her as though she were on a wicked carousel. She sat the
camera and wine bottle beside her and rested her head on her purse, placing her
icy palm against her forehead in hopes of keeping the imminent headache away.

* * *

Isaac
made his way to the flat with their newly laundered clothes. His fear of
running into the man again almost prevented him from going back downstairs to
put the clothes in the dryer, and to pick them back up, but he decided he
better get over it. Otherwise, the clothes would either ruin, or end up in
someone else’s home.

He knocked
on the door for Micah to let him in. He wasn’t taking any
chances this
time and had made sure the door locked behind him when he left. Micah answered
with a pencil clinched between his teeth like a dog.  “Finish your homework
yet?” Isaac asked as he shut the door behind them.

Micah
flung the pencil on the end table. “Just did! Going to brush my teeth now.”

Isaac
nodded with approval. “That’s my boy.”

When
he sat the basket on the couch, he noticed the channel he had left it on played
an old movie he watched as a boy with his father. His dad loved old American
westerns, and Red River was his favorite. Speaking in his deep, lilting drawl, John
Wayne ambled onto the screen with a bandana around his neck and a black cowboy
hat perched high upon his head. The imagery conjured memories of Isaac sitting
on his dad’s knee, drinking from a glass soda bottle with a straw.   

Two
nights had gone by since he last called to check on him, so he picked up the
home phone on the end table.
The time was close to ten o’clock in
Atlanta, which meant it was about two in the morning in Dublin, but his
father’s sleep patterns allowed for him to be awake in the early morning hours.
According to his nurses, late at night seemed to be the best time for Isaac to
call.

The
phone rang a few times, and the receptionist answered. “Hi, Cathy,” he said as
he rested on the edge of the ivory couch cushion, “it’s your favorite person
again.”

“Oh,
Isaac!” she replied, bubbling with excitement, “have you decided to come visit
us yet? We’d like to see you in person, you know”.

“Well,
that would have to be up to my dad now.”

“Oh,
that’s right. Hold on, then. I’ll send you through to his nurses’ station.”

“Thank
you kindly.”

The
phone rang two more times, and the head nurse answered. “Hi, Bridget. It’s
Isaac. Again.”

“Oh
hi, deary. Pat isn’t havin’ a good night tonight, but he’s sleepin’ anyhow.
Want me to tell him you called?”

 Isaac
smothered the disappointed sigh that worked its way out. “If you don’t mind,
I’d be much obliged,” he said flatly.

“As
soon as he wakes, I’ll tell him. Have a good evenin’ now.”

“You
as well,” he said
and placed the phone on the charger.