Marked for Vengeance (4 page)

The sluggish
elevator stopped on the ground floor, and Isaac wound his way through the parking
lot to an old truck with chipped, navy blue paint. The engine squealed as it
struggled to turn, and when it finally cranked, it sputtered on its way to
Jordan’s house, which was fifteen minutes away.

On the ride
there, dread seeped into the cabin of the truck like a growing cloud. Jordan’s
mom --
Carla
. Newly divorced and on the prowl, she would often answer
the door in the skimpiest thing she could find. Last weekend, she left her silk
nightgown untied, revealing a white tank top with no bra and a thin pair of
cotton underwear underneath. Why she felt the need to go that far, to literally
put herself out there like that, he couldn’t understand. She was attractive
enough in her own right and didn’t need to flaunt everything God had blessed
her with. The first time he brought Micah over, she grabbed his attention
momentarily with her wild, curly blonde hair and a face that reminded him of a
young Shirley Maclaine, but desperation oozed from her pores, completely
turning him off.

Isaac never
considered taking advantage of a sexually-frustrated woman before, and even
with Carla – who would have more than likely pounced at the chance – he
couldn’t bring himself to do it. But he couldn’t deny that he daydreamed about
it occasionally. He was a man after all, and it had been a long time since he
had been with anyone. His wife passed away five years ago this weekend, and in
man years -- when it came to sex -- that’s a
long
time.

After her death,
he mainly grieved for the first three years. The car accident that had taken
her away from them was so sudden. He had focused solely on being there for his son
and making a living, working two jobs. But now that he and Micah had settled
into their ‘new normal’, Isaac toyed with the notion of dating again, except he
hadn’t found anyone he was remotely interested in -- including Jordan’s mom.

Isaac parked the
truck in front of Carla’s two-story, mossy green home with beige trim. He
scratched the top of his head as he stared at the front door, delaying the
inevitable onslaught of her flirting. He hadn’t seen his son since the morning
prior, and knowing he lingered inside, he finally found the will to move and
ambled up the steps to ring the bell. Before he reached the door, it swung
open. The whoosh from its abrupt opening wafted the smell of her cheap perfume.
“Hi, Isaac!” she warbled in her sugary southern accent. “How’s my favorite,
single dad?”

He flashed a
lazy grin in return and fought the urge to pinch his nostrils shut. “Doin’ good,
Carla. How are you?”

“I’m doing
great!
Why don’t you come on in to the living room, and I’ll tell Micah you’re here.
I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

He stepped into
the foyer but stayed as close to the door as possible with his arms tightly
crossed and watched as she made her way up the stairs to get the boys. To his
pleasant surprise, she had toned down her wardrobe this time to a pair of tight
jeans and a sweater.
She must have found someone.

Carla pranced
back down the stairs and made her way into his personal space.
“
So when
are we gonna go out on a date and make these boys stepbrothers?” she said as
she brushed his forearm with her manicured hand, looking him over like a piece
of meat that she just couldn’t
wait
to sink her teeth into.

Here we go
again.
He opened his mouth to respond, but there was nothing he could say that
wouldn’t either hurt her feelings or encourage her behavior. She didn’t appear
interested in what he had to say anyhow, because his reply wasn’t behind the
zipper of his pants.

When Micah finally
tromped down the stairs, Isaac stepped away from her, relieved that he had
interrupted their moment.
“
Hey, buddy!” he shouted. “Let’s hit the road,
and maybe we can swing by your favorite pizza place on the way home.”

Micah’s ears
perked as he knelt to tie his shoes. “Sounds good, dad!”

Micah looked
like a shorter clone of his father, lean with dark hair. The only differences
were that his eyes were both green with flecks of gold around the pupil – a
trait that he acquired from his mother – and he didn’t have his dad’s Irish
accent.

“Thank you for
havin’ him,” Isaac said as he opened the door.

“Yes, thank you,
Ms. Bradford,” Micha echoed.

“Oh, any time!
We’ll see you boys soon.”

Like a bitch in
heat, that one,
Isaac
thought as he shut the door behind them.

“Dad,
seriously!” Micah said, glaring at his dad’s shoes, “I’m going to hide those
from you. Better yet, I’m going to throw those away.”

Isaac jabbed him
in the arm. “Not if you want pizza tonight you won’t.”

Micah reared his
hand back in retaliation, an open smile lighting up his face.

He ducked out of
the way and ran down the stairs. “I may be an old man to you, but I’m still
faster!”

*
* *

The clock on
their stove read five thirty, and with an empty pizza box on the table and Micah
in his loft playing video games, Isaac returned to his studio. His memory still
clung to the imagery within his dream, and he feared that if he waited too long
he would soon forget the details.

He rested atop
the stool, and as he brushed long, vertical strokes of emerald green on the
bottom of the canvas for the blades of grass, he reminisced about his late
wife. He didn’t do it often, but figured it was a combination of this being the
anniversary weekend of her passing and that he had been to Carla’s house that
afternoon. Her undignified nature caused him to miss his wife’s sweet, tender
spirit. 

Isaac met Rachel
in Dublin, Ireland when she was twenty and he was twenty-two. She was visiting
for the summer with her parents, who were both accountants for a Fortune 500
company in Atlanta, and they had rented a summer vacation home back off the
road across from theirs. The first time he laid eyes on her, he couldn’t tear
them away. Her white blonde hair curled around her face in wispy tendrils, and her
green eyes squinted as she smiled when asking how to get to the closest
supermarket. It was all he could do to make his eyes linger above her chin as
the short, floral sundress she wore accentuated her shapely figure. His
favorite quality, however, was her near perfect smile, thanks to a tooth on the
side that had slightly turned, melting his heart.

It wasn’t too
long after that day that they’d fallen in love. For the next two months, he served
as her personal tour guide through the Southeastern counties during the day
where the medieval castles appeared straight from a story book, and her chauffeur
to their romantic dinners at night in the bustling, vibrant city of Dublin. Her
parents weren’t crazy with the notion of her spending so much time with a local
boy, but she was a young, curious woman and could make her own decisions.

When the end of
the summer rolled around, he and Rachel laid on a quilt in the field behind his
house, entangled in bare skin. He cradled her tear-soaked face in his hands and
vowed to visit her in the States, assuring her that his heart wouldn’t survive
away from its counterpart.

After a few
months of late nights on the phone, he more than made good on his promise when
he moved to her hometown to pursue a living as an artist. The day he moved into
his flat, he proposed to her on the rooftop of the building, to which she
quickly and enthusiastically replied with a “yes!” He was her Irish prince, and
she was his American princess. It was a real-life fairytale… until her tragic
and untimely death five years ago.

He still
recalled the knocks on the door as they echoed through the flat and the solemn
stare of the officer who broke the news. He nodded in understanding as the
grim-faced man relayed the devastating events, but it didn’t entirely sink in
until the door closed behind him and Micah toddled from the bathroom to ask who
it was.

He still sensed
her there in the apartment sometimes; her supple skin, her soft hair that
smelled of lavender and mint. He kept her shampoo bottle in the shower and would
smell it from time to time, not having the heart to throw it away. 

As Isaac sat on the
stool with his back turned toward the door, it evoked sweet memories of the way
she would sneak up behind him and softly kiss his neck after Micah had fallen
asleep. With his eyelids compressed, her caress now pressed against his back.
His brush strokes ceased, and a sigh escaped his lips. He had a hard time
believing he would ever find anyone as wonderful as her.

Despite mourning
her lovely presence, there were times he missed her when it came to parenting,
as well. Micah was prone to night terrors that manifested when he was only
three years old and would wake up screaming, insisting that there were men in
his room. He would say that they were regular people, “like you and me daddy”
to which he would add, “but some of them looked like dark shadows, and it felt
like they were shouting at me.” After the episodes, his body trembled for close
to an hour, and hardly anything they said or did would keep the fear at bay. They
had taken him to see a child therapist, but the doctor dismissed his late night
terrors as bad dreams and told Isaac and Rachel that they just needed to “work
through them”.

During Micah’s
late night episodes, his wife would be the first one up there to comfort him,
and on occasion would sleep with him to keep the ‘bad men’ away. As he grew
older, the night terrors became less frequent, and when he did see them, he didn’t
act as terrified. There would still be some nights, though, that Micah would
sleep in Isaac’s bed.

Too distracted
to continue, he sat the paint brush on the wooden lip of the easel and plunked
the rest of them into the glass of water. He glanced out the window at the
skyline to see if the same shadowy figure he had seen on occasion was there
again. It usually stood on the roof, two buildings over on the edge facing his
building.
There it is
.

He wasn’t sure
what they went there for or what they wanted, but whoever it was, he thought
from time to time that they watched him. Maybe one day he would find the nerve
to confront them and see for himself.

* * *

Alyx came home
from her girl’s day with her fists full of shopping bags and fell onto the
couch.  She promptly kicked her boots off and propped her feet atop the stack
of old library books on the coffee table to stretch her sore feet. Food, flicks,
and shopping at two different outlet malls had filled her and Cindra’s day.

The clock on her
cable box read three minutes past seven. The night was young.

Dinner didn’t
appeal to her. Her stomach still ached from all of the food they devoured at
lunch. They had grazed for two hours on hummus and pâté as they talked about
work, what movies they had seen, what movie they
wanted
to see, and of
course Gavin from HD1 -- and every other boy Cindra crushed on. She thought
about scanning over the TV programs or renting a movie On Demand, but knew that
there was something she wanted to do even more. Something she had looked
forward to since the last time she went.

She twirled a
loch of hair around her finger and stared at the bedroom door, knowing that
once she rocked herself from the couch she would make her way there like a
magnet drawn to its opposite charge. After a moment of feeble deliberation, she
went to her bedroom and slid the top drawer of her dresser open. The black,
leather case resting between her socks and underwear stared back at her,
pleading with her to pick it up.

She lifted it
from the drawer and cradled it in her hands. The prospect of using them again
caused her heart to flutter. This wasn’t what she should be doing, but she
didn’t care. It was a
need
at this point. She slipped the case inside
her purse, put on a pair of sneakers, and zipped her jacket. Shame or no shame,
sore feet or not, she was going.

She turned right
at the bottom of her complex stairs and walked three blocks South to the bus
station to take the next one to her final destination. When the driver let her
out at the usual stop, she shoved her hands inside her jacket pockets and
jogged one more block East to the old abandoned building on Ponce de Leon Ave.

She waded
through the waist-high weeds and made her way to the back of the graffiti-covered,
brick structure strangulated by overgrown shrubs and ivy. The broken window in
the center of the building awaited her, and she stepped onto the empty paint can
she had left beneath it so she could climb inside with ease.

Once through,
she skipped up the stairs that led to the roof when the familiar smell of body
odor and urine assaulted her nose from the homeless men that slept there on
occasion. Her face crinkled, and she placed her hand below her burning nostrils
to shield them from the stench.
It’s getting worse!

She busted
through the black, windowless door and inhaled a deep breath of fresh, night
air, shaking her body like a wet dog to ward off the unpleasantries. All of her
troubles to get there that night were a small price to pay, however.

She looked
beyond the ledge at the building she had come to gaze inside of and scanned
over the windows.
Third one from the bottom, corner unit
…
yes!
The
light inside his flat shone through the darkness.
Her toes lined up to
the edge as she pulled the leather case from her purse and unhooked the latch
to reveal a set of binoculars.