Orchard Grove (10 page)

I
nside the medicine cabinet, I located a box of Band-Aids, set them on the edge of the sink. Seating myself on the lid-covered toilet, I undid the Velcro straps on the black, plastic and nylon, knee-high splint, pulled it off and then gently peeled off the now bloody sock. The long incision that ran the length of my second toe (the index or Morton’s toe) had been reopened. The metal pin inserted into the very center of the toe, where the surgeon had drilled vertically through the bone, was now slightly bent so that it hooked upward at a thirty-degree angle. When the time came for the doctor to pry it out of my foot… and they would do so with a pair of workman’s pliers, or so I was told by the assisting nurse… it would hurt like a son of a bitch. No two ways about it.

But just looking at the foot made my back teeth hurt. It looked like a long, narrow, chunk of newly butchered beef.

I did my best to clean the entire foot with warm soap and water before applying a Band-Aid to the tip of my toe and over the inch and half of exposed, bent, metal rod. Then, I applied an additional two, wider bandages to the incision that had been reopened. I slipped on a clean sock I’d taken from my underwear drawer earlier, put the splint back on, making sure the Velcro straps were tight but not too tight so that I didn’t cut off the circulation on the swelled foot. The last thing I needed was to encourage the formation of a blood clot. A blood clot meant instant death.

Taking hold of my crutches, I went back into the kitchen and downed four Advil with cold tap water that I drank right out of the faucet. Then, I sat myself back down at my typewriter, refocused my eyes on the words I’d typed only moments ago, and I waited… waited to once more hear the sound of Lana’s car pulling back up into her driveway.

Maybe a half hour went by.

But I couldn’t be certain. Time had become warped since Lana’s arrival in Orchard Grove. I measured it now not by the seconds or minutes that clicked away on the stove clock in the kitchen, but by the steady and consistent throbs of electric pain that would begin at the tip of my index toe, shoot at lightning speed up into my brain and then back down again to the tip of my toe.

I thought about having another drink or maybe reigniting that green joint. But in truth, too much dope made me paranoid. I was already paranoid or neurotic anyway. Better that I stick to the booze in order to curb the pain. Something strong, like Jack. But then, what the hell was I doing? I’d already talked myself out of drinking anything else, earlier. As a result, I’d gotten some writing done. Maybe not a lot, but it was a start.

Pulling the sheet of typed paper from the typewriter, I set it to the side with the others, and fit a clean sheet onto the spool. I sat there at the dining room table, staring at the newly typed pages, knowing that I should have been adding words to the new sheet. I’d done enough characterization study for one day. Now would be the time to begin my story. Maybe I would begin with a man staring out of his bedroom window onto a most beautiful apparition. A blonde beauty who’d just moved in next door with her cop husband, and who sunbathed on her back deck in the nude.

I raised both hands, extended my index fingers, and typed, FADE IN.

I was about to set the scene when the doorbell rang.

T
he sudden noise startled me, as if someone sneaked up behind me and screamed “Boo!”

I laid my hands flat onto the tabletop, pressed myself up, took a look over my shoulder out the living room picture window. I couldn’t see anyone, but then that made sense since whoever was ringing the bell was hidden behind the closed door.

Fetching my crutches, I lifted myself up from the table, made my way through the living room to the front, solid wood door. When I made out Lana’s face through all three of the small clear glass panels embedded into the door, my pulse picked up, and for a brief moment anyway, I forgot all about the pain in my foot.

Unlocking the deadbolt, I then twisted the opener counterclockwise. In order to open the door, I had to hop backwards on my good leg.

“Don’t fall,” Lana said as she carefully stepped through the door, her lavender scent once more filling my senses.

“I’ll try not to,” I said, feeling my throat constrict, and the center of my chest grow tight. “At this point, I might elect to have the whole damned foot amputated.”

“Pain?” she said, brushing back her hair with an open hand, as if she were staring not into my eyes but into a mirror.

“You have no idea,” I said, glancing down at the foot, seeing the small round spot of fresh blood that had formed on the new white sock that covered it. “Please come in, Lana.”

She stepped into the vestibule and crossed over into the living room. I closed the door, locked it. But before joining her in the living room, I took the time to peer through the wooden door’s top most pane of glass onto the driveway and the Orchard Grove road beyond it.

“Expecting somebody else?” Lana inquired. If I were writing this for my script, I would have said her voice sounded more sarcastic than inquisitive.

“Just looking out for your husband. I’m in enough hurt as it is. I don’t need a bullet in my back.”

“Oh, John wouldn’t hesitate to shoot you in the face while staring you down.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“You heard us arguing earlier?” she said. “Or couldn’t you hear us well enough through the bedroom window once you cracked it open?”

I could feel her sly smile as if she’d squirted me with a squirt gun filled with holy water. Turning, I hobbled into the living room.

“I’d make a real crappy spy,” I said.

“Yes, you would, Ethan. A very bad spy indeed.”

I noticed then she was holding something in her hand. A copy of my novel,
Break Up
, it turns out. There was a scantily clad, busty blonde woman depicted on the paperback book cover. She was aiming the barrel of an automatic at a desperate man who was down on his knees, his arms raised to the heavens. The look on her face was one of fierce determination and hatred. You didn’t have to read a single word to know that the man was as good as dead.

“You’ve been doing some shopping at the used bookstore,” I said. “I could have provided you with a copy for free.” Releasing my hand from the crutch grip, I pointed to the bookshelf pressed up against the far windowless wall in the living room directly to my right, the top two shelves of which contained copies of my one and only novel.

“I wanted to support the author with my five-fifty,” she said.

“You’re only supporting the used bookstore owner,” I said. “That book was remaindered years ago, almost as fast as it was released. But that’s very kind of you and your husband.”

She held the book out for me. “He has no idea. Now would you sign it for me?”

I gazed into her blue eyes, until I ran my eyes up and down the length of her body. She was wearing the black button-down shirt that I recalled from an hour earlier, and a worn jean skirt that barely covered her thighs. For footwear she wore Cleopatra sandals, the thin leather straps to which wrapped around her ankles. I guess I never noticed it before, but she bore the blood red tattoo of a broken heart on her left ankle. Three red teardrops were crying, or bleeding, from out of the broken heart.

She noticed me staring down at the tattoo.

“Do you like my heart?” she asked.

“I didn’t notice it earlier,” I said. “Out on your deck.”

We both gravitated out of the living room and into the attached dining room, where my typewriter was set beside the bowl of apples.

“You were looking at other things.” She smiled again. “Until we were so rudely interrupted.”

“Yes,” I said, my eyes locking on the pages I’d written that morning, seeing the name “LANA” on the top page in capital letters. “Interrupted by your husband who’s a top cop, carries a big fat gun, has an ill-tempered partner, and sports a nasty attitude about life.” Slipping my hand from the crutch, I gently took hold of the pages, turned them over on the table.

That’s when she took a step forward, coming even closer to me, apparently without noticing my maneuver with the pages. Or just not caring perhaps. She came so close that her lavender scent became almost overwhelming. It seemed to fill the dining room like a vapor. It made my throat constrict even more than it already had, and my stomach tie itself into knots. Christ, I felt like a teenager again gazing upon his first crush. That’s the kind of power she had over me. When I focused my gaze upon the portion of her cleavage that was exposed under the unbuttoned portion of her silk shirt, I began to grow hard, and I didn’t care in the least if she noticed. In fact, I wanted her to notice.

Again, she ran a hand through her thick hair, and when she lowered it, it brushed against her breast, arousing her nipple so that it immediately became erect through her thin bra and shirt. If I weren’t on crutches, I would have stepped into her then, kissed her on the mouth. Hard. But she must have been thinking the same thing. Or wanting the same thing anyway. Because she came at me, not only with her mouth, but with her free hand, grabbing hold of my arm. We stood there for a while, over my typewriter, kissing and petting, until she pulled back to come up for air.

“Did I take you by surprise?” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

“A little,” I said, wiping my wet mouth with the back of my hand.

She was still holding onto the book. I glanced at my watch. I knew that Susan would be home in one hour. But I didn’t care. Or, at least a part of me didn’t care. I hadn’t felt this good about myself in ages. Not since I’d left LA.

“Let’s have it,” I said, holding out my hand for the novel.

“I almost forgot,” she said, her breathing still labored.

She set it into my hand. Looking down at the novel, I could see that it was in very good shape for a used book. No dog-earing. Maybe the previous owner hadn’t read it at all.

“I have a pen right here,” I said, setting myself down hard in my chair before my typewriter, and placing the book on top of the pages I’d written earlier. At the same time, I leaned the crutches up against the table to my left-hand side. Opening the book to the front title page, I picked up the pen that was set in between the typewriter and the bowl of apples, and brought ballpoint to paper.

I had a choice here. I could either write a profound, authorly inscription. Or, I could keep it short and sweet and to the point. Knowing in my gut that Lana was going to turn out to be as much trouble for me as that blonde on the cover of
Break Up
, I went with the latter and penned …

For Lana,

For a wonderful fruitful life on Orchard Grove.

Love Ethan

XOX

Maybe “Love” and “XOX” was a little over the top considering I barely knew her. But what the fuck. Closing the novel, I handed it to her.

Turns out, she was one of those people who had to gaze lovingly upon the inscription only a split second after you’ve written it. Being a scriptwriter who’d only penned one novel, and not a very popular one at that, I hadn’t had the good fortune of signing a lot of books, but I’d signed a few. And truth be told, I preferred fans who chose to read the author inscription later on when they got home.

In my mind, Lana seemed the type to enjoy her instant gratification however, and she did nothing to prove me wrong. Her face lit up when she read it. You could almost identify the very moment she eyed that XOX as if it were an open invitation for her to jump me inside my own home. Inside a home-sweet-about-to-be-gone-baby-gone-home I shared with a woman I loved. Even if we had drifted apart over the past year. A woman whom I’d never cheated on, as God as my judge. And I might not have been a church going man, but I believed in God, or something like Him. I also believed in good and evil and that we had a choice when it came to embracing either one.

Setting the book gently down on top of my typewriter, Lana smiled. She held out her hand, grabbed an apple, brought it to her mouth, took a bite. Without uttering a single word, she held the apple to my mouth, as if I had no choice but to take a bite. As I bit into the apple, I realized that she didn’t need to speak. That her actions spoke far louder than words ever could. They were the actions of a woman who wasn’t the least bit in love, not with me necessarily, but any man. A woman who, more than likely, had never experienced a single day of love in her entire life. They were instead the actions of a lust-filled woman who also lusted power. Power over a weaker man like me, and a man like her husband. A man who only pretended to be strong.