Savage Lane (11 page)

Kyle ran upstairs.

Owen didn’t remember leaving the house. An instant later—well, it
seemed
like an instant—he was suddenly in his car, backing out of the driveway. Then he saw Raymond on the lawn, half of his hairy, disgusting beer gut showing under his wife-beater. Raymond was saying something; Owen couldn’t hear him, but he didn’t give a shit. He three-point turned and was about to pass the house when he had a sudden impulse to yank on the steering wheel and run Raymond over. Just one little yank and the ugly asshole who’d been making all their lives miserable would be gone, mowed down like a fucking weed. Owen could say it was an accident, the steering wheel jammed. Maybe they’d believe him, maybe they wouldn’t. Who gave a shit?

Just do it
, he thought.
Come on, just fuckin’ do it
.

But he was speeding up the block now. His neck still hurt from where Raymond had squeezed it and his heart was thumping. He wanted to get out of the house so badly, live on his own, but where would he go? He couldn’t rent an apartment without money, and he was only making about four hundred a week as a groundskeeper at the country club, and it was a temp job. His mother always got on his case about how he should’ve gone to college. He could’ve done better in high school—he was smarter than everyone there—but he didn’t see the point of trying. He didn’t care about his grades because he didn’t want to go to college and have to leave Deb.

He needed to see Deb—right now. When things got shitty at home, she always made him feel better, like there was a reason for living.

Twenty minutes later he pulled into the lot of the country club, spotting Deb’s blue Pathfinder. He parked and when he got out he had to adjust his hard-on. It was 1:18, so he had like twelve minutes to kill before seeing her.

Heading through the clubhouse, he nodded ‘hi’ to Julio, a Mexican dude he worked with, then he continued past the pro shop to the employee locker room. He changed into his work clothes—work boots and a dorky Oak Ridge Country Club collared shirt.

Owen didn’t know shit about grounds keeping when he’d gotten the job, but he was great at faking things, and he was a fast learner. Within a couple of days he could cut grass and landscape as well as the Mexican guys who’d been doing it their whole lives.

He was excited about Deb—she was probably really horny or she wouldn’t’ve called for a second booty call in one day. Thinking about what fantasy he would do this time—stepmother-son? mother-son?—he headed back through the clubhouse, then out past the patio overlooking the first hole. Then he went past the far end of the club toward the storage shed.

As he approached it, maybe a hundred feet away, he could smell her. Not her perfume—
her
. He didn’t know how this was possible; maybe it was some kind of sex, animal type thing.

She was waiting for him, but what was the deal? She had all her clothes on. Usually she was naked, or at least
half
naked, wearing something slinky and sexy. He smelled alcohol, which was a good sign, because a lot of the time she liked to get wasted before their hook ups.

“You just get here?” he asked, looking at the time on his cell phone.

They always arrived and left separately, a few minutes apart.

“It’s over,” Deb said.

“What?” Owen asked, though Deb had spoken clearly and loud enough.

“I said it’s over,” Deb said. “We can’t do this anymore.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Don’t call or text or try to see me again,” Deb said. “And stay away from my daughter.”

“Riley?” Owen was lost. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

“You’re pathetic,” Deb said. “And I’m pathetic for ever getting involved with you. I’m lucky you didn’t give me a disease, and if you gave my daughter a disease, I’ll kill you. I swear to God I will.”

Owen didn’t get this at all. It was like a nightmare.

“I have to go,” Deb said.

She tried to get by. He grabbed her by the wrist, hard.

“Let go of me,” she said, angry, not screaming, but she was about to.

“Chill,” he said. “Just chill.”

“I’m telling you for the last time,” she said, “get your fucking hands off me.”

Then something clicked—she wasn’t actually saying this. Yeah, she was
saying
it, but she didn’t
mean
it. This was just an act, one of their—what did she sometimes call it?—role plays. Yeah, it was a role play, like when he was the teacher and she was the naughty student. But now, she was Miss Innocent, and he was the Mean Stranger. Sometimes she liked it rough—wanted him to hold her down hard and pull her hair and bite her.

So he didn’t let go. He tugged on her fiercely, trying to throw her down onto the floor. But she didn’t fall; she slapped him, hard across the face, and he had a flash of Raymond hitting him, and he pushed her away and she fell back over an old lawnmower, onto her side. He knew he was probably going too far because this wasn’t Raymond, and he wasn’t really angry at
her
, but she wanted to be angry, to be rough, that was the whole point, so when she cursed at him again and told him to stay the fuck away from her, he went after her again and grabbed her and held her down onto the floor. Okay, he was right, this was what she wanted—some rough sex. He grabbed part of her skirt, tried to pull it down, and then she bit him on the side of his neck. He liked it—well, at first. Then the good pain turned to just pain and he screamed and must’ve let go of her because she was up, heading toward the door. He lunged after her, stumbling over the lawnmower, and tried to grab her legs, but couldn’t. Then she left the shed, letting the door slam.

When he got to his feet and opened the door she was already about twenty yards away. He was about to chase after her but there were other people around—the practice putting green was off to the right and Luke, a pro at the club, was giving a lesson to some old guy. Okay, now Owen was confused. What kind of role play was this if she was actually
running away?

Whatever, he decided. She was drunk, maybe having another bad day with her husband. He knew she didn’t actually mean that she didn’t want to see him again, that was ridiculous.

Owen was going to get in a cart and head to the fairway near the sixth hole to do some pruning, when he heard some commotion coming from the clubhouse. It sounded like a woman screaming; was it
Deb
? So he jogged over to the clubhouse and stopped when he saw Deb screaming at Karen Daily, Elana’s mom. Mark was there too, trying to calm Deb down. Okay, now it was all starting to come together for Owen. Deb’s bad mood definitely had nothing to do with him—it was all because of Mark and Karen. Deb had probably walked in on them fucking or some shit which wasn’t a bad thing at all, because if Deb and Mark were officially having trouble that meant Deb might be ready to kick him out of the house, and if he was out of the house, that meant Owen could move in.

Now Karen and Deb were fighting—wrestling on the floor. Ha, shit was so funny to watch, these two women, acting like crazy kids, and Owen took out his phone and filmed some of it. Karen was holding big clumps of Deb’s hair and then Deb spat in her face. Then Mark was pulling Deb out of the café area, onto the terrace, Deb trying to get away, maybe to go after Karen. Then Deb looked right at Owen, and he smiled, wanting her to know that he knew what was going on, that it was all cool but, for some reason, probably because she was too angry at Karen, she didn’t smile back. She just looked at Owen, with no expression at all, until Mark pulled her around the building toward the front of the club and she was gone.

D
EB COULD
have killed Karen. If they weren’t in public, if it had just been the two of them, she wouldn’t have been able to stop herself. She would have attacked her, torn that skinny little home wrecker to pieces.

“You’re crazy,” Mark said. “You’re out of your mind.”

Deb, still into the fantasy, believed Karen had said this and thought,
Yeah, I’m crazy, and I’m out of my mind, and I’m gonna kill you
, and it took a couple of seconds, or maybe much longer, till her drunken brain realized that they were in Mark’s car, driving somewhere, probably home. Yeah, that’s right, Deb had wanted to take her
own
car because the last place in the world she wanted to be was in a car with Mark, but he’d insisted she couldn’t drive, that she was too drunk. Yeah right, she’d only had a few, but when she tried to get to her car, Mark grabbed her, she cursed and kicked him, wanting to kick him in the balls, his
cheating
balls, and then a security guy from the club came over, and she kept trying to get away, to drive the hell home, but Mark wouldn’t let her go, and the security guy was talking about how he might have to call the cops, and then she finally gave in and got in the car with Mark.

Now Mark was saying, “You know what you just did to us? You know what kind of damage you just did? We might get kicked out of the club, and you know what people will say? Those are my friends, they’ll think you’re crazy,
we’re
crazy.”

Deb, exhausted from fighting and screaming, stared out the window, watching the scenery race by, still imagining having her hands around Karen’s neck.

“You listening to me?” Mark asked. “Do you even
care
?”

Mark’s voice was so grating, Deb couldn’t take it. She felt like such an idiot for staying with him for so long, listening to his lies.

“I want you to call the club and apologize,” Mark said. “I want you to call the manager, Dave Thompson, and tell him how sorry you are. And I want you to apologize to Karen too.”

“
What
?” That had snapped Deb out of it.

“You heard me,” Mark said. “I want you to call her right now, tell her you were drunk, you have a drinking problem, and—”

“You really think…” Deb was so upset she couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. “You honestly think…”

“You humiliated her,” Mark said.

“
I
humiliated
her
?” Deb said. “What about
me
? What about what you did to
me
?”

“What did I do, except work my ass off for seventeen years?”

“Seventeen years,” Deb said. “I’ve been putting up with your
shit
for seventeen years.”

“You mean spending my money. When was the last time you worked?”

“I sacrificed everything.”

“Sacrificed! Please. The kids are older now, you don’t have to stay home. You can go back to work, but you don’t want to. You want to sit around and get drunk all day.”

“My life,” Deb said. “I threw my life away for you.”

“That’s what you call raising a family?” Mark said. “Throwing away your life?”

“Your distance, your self-involvement, your pathetic stupid everything about you.” Deb knew she wasn’t making much sense, but she didn’t care.

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” Mark said. “Most women would kill for a guy like me.”

“I want a divorce,” Deb said.

She hadn’t planned to say this, but she liked the way it sounded, and the way it made her feel, as if a secret she’d been keeping for years had finally been told.

“Okay, let’s stop with that crap again,” Mark said, staring at the road, making that expression Deb hated, the one where he scrunched up his nose and flared his nostrils.

“I’m serious.” Deb’s voice was suddenly strong, certain. “I’ve had it with you and this ridiculous fake life. I’m not staying married to a cheater.”

Deb had a flash of herself earlier, bent over the teacher’s desk, looking back over her shoulder at Owen while he told her how naughty she was.

“I’m calling Scott Greenberg tomorrow,” she said.

Scott was a friend—well, one of Riley’s friends’ dad—who was a divorce lawyer.

“You know what I’m sick of?” Mark’s face was red. “I’m sick of you threatening me all the time, pulling the divorce card. And you know what else I’m sick of?” Mark looked away from the road, directly at her. “I’m sick of your moods, that’s what I’m sick of. One second you’re talking about a trip to Italy, the next second you want a divorce. You’re like Jekyll and Hyde, I don’t know what I’m gonna get from you next.”