Snapshots of Modern Love (17 page)

A figure jumps over the hood of Debbie' s car. A ski mask cover its face and it swings a baseball bat. The bat lands on the side of Ken' s head with a thud and Ken drops to the ground as if his legs had become boneless. Debbie screams and jumps back. The assailant starts to move toward her with the bat raised above his head. Debbie knows that Billy' s face is under the mask. She is still screaming when Billy falters in his advance. Ken is holding onto his ankle, a feeble hold, but enough to make Billy look down. Billy starts to wind up for another swing at Ken' s head. Before he can bring the bat down, Debbie uses the unexpected distraction to pull her revolver from her waist.

The first shot hits Billy in the stomach and he flinches. The second shot quickly follows and it is higher, on his sternum, and Billy takes a step back. The third shot is slower to come because this time Debbie takes deliberate aim and cocks the revolver before pulling the trigger. Billy' s head jerks back when the bullet strikes his forehead. Billy falls on his back and the bat bounces on the parking lot with a hollow sound and rolls away from him and his convulsive departure from life.

Hospital Dreams

The coffee from the vending machine is bitter and it tastes like disinfectant. Probably is not the coffee but the smell of the hospital itself, a smell that gets into everything. The detective has left her alone finally after asking the same questions over and over and writing the answers in his pad. Not once had Debbie given a different answer to the same question. She had stuck to her story with consistency and assuredness. She had called 911 and in a few minutes the parking lot had sparkled with bright spot lights and flashing red and blue strobes. During those minutes she had to wait for help to arrive she had kneel next to Ken and had held his hand, squeezing it and praying that his skull was not cracked beyond repair, his brain damaged forever, saying to him “ hang in there” without knowing if he could hear her. She could see that Ken was breathing but could not tell how bad he had been hurt.

Amanda had come running after the shooting and had stood next to Debbie, shaking her head in disbelief.

“ Who is that?” she had asked Debbie while pointing to the masked body.

“ That, ” Debbie had answered in a cold voice, “ was my ex.”

Amanda had witnessed the attack and the shooting from behind the wheel of her car as she was getting ready to pull out of the parking lot and she had given her statement to the cops. Debbie had seen them interrogating her out of her earshot. At least hers and Amanda’ s stories should match and nobody should doubt her own statement. Score one for her, Debbie thinks.

Billy’ s body lay face up, inert and heading for rigor mortis. Apool of black blood grew from the back of his head and his middle and Debbie could smell it but despite her aversion, she didn’ t leave Ken’ s side. The cops had come, had taken the hot revolver still gripped in her hand but had been quite polite. They had asked questions and she had answered them straight because she had nothing to hide. She had wanted them to pull the mask off the stiff so she could confirm it was Billy. They had said to wait until the crime lab showed up. When they finally pulled the mask off, the cops had looked at her and she had said, “ that’ s him alright.” Nobody at the scene had seemed surprised. Debbie recognized among the uniforms the female cop that had told her that Munch was dead.

The paramedics had come and had plugged Ken with tubes and wires and had bandaged his head.

“ How’ s he?” she had asked them.

“ Stable ma’ am.”

“ Can I go to the hospital with him?” Debbie had pleaded to the sergeant next to him and to her surprise the cop had helped her climb into the meat wagon.

“ The investigators will talk to you in the E.R., ” he had said. The doors had shut and the ambulance had taken off with a roar of diesel engine and screaming sirens.

All that now seemed a far away memory, a bad dream in another life. Debbie sips her coffee and waits for Ken to come out of surgery or X-rays or whatever they are doing to him.

“ Are you his wife?” had asked a nurse with a clipboard.

“ No. Just a friend.”

“ Do you know a next of kin we can contact?”

“ No. All I know is that he’ s married and lives in Colorado Springs.”

The nurse had asked to confirm his last name and Debbie had to shrug her shoulders in ignorance. Funny, after all the shit they had gone through together, Debbie ponders, she doesn’ t know his last name, and she is sure he doesn’ t know hers either. She knows him and he knows her yet there are so many things they don’ t know about each other, essential things, basic stuff. They share things that cannot be explained to people with clipboards, things that cannot be measured or gaged but that are as solid and strong as steel to them but that would look like flimsy excuses for a friendship or love to strangers. Love, she thinks, that’ s a funny word.

The numbness of overdue fatigue slows her down; she has been up since five o’ clock in the morning. She wonders what is going to happen when the investigators find out she is a convicted felon and had a gun in a bar. With her record, some assistant D.A. is going to throw the book at her. Well, she thinks, getting nailed for carrying a concealed weapon in a establishment that sells alcohol is far better than ending up in a body bag in a cold morgue, like Billy is right now. The shooting was clean. Debbie assures herself that the law cannot make a case against her; it would be hard to convince a jury that she was not right in fighting a crazy ex that came at her with a baseball bat and a masked faced.

Still, there are butterflies in her stomach. She is a nobody with along record and unable to afford a lawyer; an assistant D.A. may want to charge her with something and then scare her into either taking a sorry deal or face a court room with an overworked, underpaid, inexperienced public defender by her side. Debbie knows that taking the deal would be a better choice, no matter how unfair. The system is not designed to work for people like her.

At least the cops had not even handcuffed her so that was a good sign. The butterflies dance in her stomach but there is also relief in knowing that Billy won’ t be coming back to hurt anybody else. The image of the masked face in her sights as the hammer came down and then watching that head jerk back after the flash and thunder of the shot, keeps on repeating in her head, and she finds pleasure in it. He got what he deserved and she is satisfied with that thought. She didn’ t expressed it to the cops though. She made sure that the cops had heard only the bit about how she had feared for her life and Ken’ s, which was true anyway, but had kept the satisfaction of revenge to herself. It had not been a deliberated lie but just a careful truth.

A pair of doors swing open and Ken is wheeled out through them pushed by a group of people in scrubs. He’ s wired and tubed and unconscious. Debbie stands up and follows the entourage to a room where Ken is parked and hooked to drips and monitors.

“ How is he?” Debbie asks a tall and young doctor.

“ His occipital has a small crack and his brain had swelled too much so we did surgery to relieve the pressure.” He smiles. “ He should come out of this with a good headache only. We don’ t see any brain damage.”

“ Thanks doc.”

The doctor smiles and in a swift second all the people who had been working on Ken are gone leaving her alone with him. Debbie wonders what she is supposed to do now. She flops herself on a chair next to Ken. Her haggard eyes look at his bandaged head. His breathing is soft and steady. He will probably be out of it at least until the anesthesia wears off. When he wakes up, then what? Will he look around with crossed eyes, see her and then ask, “ who are you?” Will he say, “ it’ s all your damned fault?”

Debbie sees and hear cops talking to the doctor just outside the room but she is too tired to try to eavesdrop on their conversation. If they want to talk to her or haul her ass to the station, they know where to find her. There are curtain partitions on each side of her and Ken. Feet shuffle, people sob, the overhead speakers in the lobby call names, paramedics, nurses, doctors, orderlies and cops move through the halls, trying to patch a wounded city, trying to understand why these people are here. But they leave her and Ken alone. There is nothing else they can do for now.

Who is this man next to her? This Ken Somethingouski. She remembers him telling her he was a Pole. What’ s next? She thinks that she should get up and leave, leave for good. This Ken doesn’ t deserve more of her and her troubles, and that is what she is, trouble. This is the second time she ends up shooting somebody to save him, but somehow she feels is all her fault that Ken gets in the middle of her messes. He would have never been in that parking lot if it hasn’ t been for her. And the Atlanta thing, it had been her who had brought the Hillbilly from Hell to meet Ken.

Her eyes close and the sound of waves lapping on the sand comes to her. The surf swirls around her whole legs, both of them, and her toes sink into the sand to fight the undertow. Ken stands next to her watching airplanes fly overhead, towing banners that flap in the breeze. Their shoulders touch and there is happiness in that feeble touch, in that stupid accidental and meaningless rubbing of skins. She would never be able to explain the peace and satisfaction she feels to a person with a clipboard. Maybe there is nothing to explain because there is nothing there; nobody can see it, can measure it. Yet, why can’ t she shake such memory off, why can she for sake such feeling?

A few minutes later Debbie sleeps on the chair and her breathing pace matches Ken’ s.

Family Awakening

A hand squeezing her shoulder awakes Debbie from her sleep. She opens her eyes and has a difficult time focusing on the person standing in from of her. She rubs the sleep off her eyes and now she can see a rather plump woman looking down on her. She has a face like a bulldog and friendliness is nowhere on her features; rather, she stares at Debbie with a decisive hatefulness.

"Who are you?" barks bulldog face.

"Debbie. And who are you?"

There are two more people behind the woman, all looking as if they had just gotten out of bed, which they probably did, guesses Debbie.

"I' m Helen," says the woman and then points to Ken who is still asleep under the influence of sedatives. "I' m his wife."

Debbie remains seated. Her missing leg itches even though there is no limb where the itching seems to be coming from. So this is what Ken is running from? Debbie tells herself. No wonder. Debbie knows that Ken' s marriage is none of her business and that dreams of beaches and happiness are just that, tenuous dreams that fall apart when touched by reality, like tissue paper trying to soak a water stream.

With a sluggish effort Debbie gets up, using Ken' s bed to propher self on her one leg and one prosthesis.

"Good," says Debbie now standing. "Now I can go home."She starts to walk away from her chair but Helen blocks her exit. Helen breaths with difficulty, her sinuses making a wheezing noise as angry air expels out of her lungs.

"You stay away from my husband!" yells Helen. "You ...You whore!"

Debbie is paralyzed neither by fear nor by anger but by confusion. Whore had been her profession for many years, and a junkie, and a drug mule, and a killer, thrice now, but until now those things had been her problems, her life, and nobody had given a damn about it. Now this woman is shouting whore at her face and Debbie is disoriented, not knowing if the insult fits like a glove - thus it is not an insult but the truth - or if she is supposed to raise in anger and protest. Helen keeps on heaping insults on Debbie and faces in the E.R. are now pointed in her direction, amused by the raucous Helen is creating.

"Bitches like you just want to steal my husband and his money!"Helen' s spit falls on Debbie' s face. Skinny Debbie is not a match for corpulent Helen if the shouting turns into shoving. Debbie sees a by now familiar cop watching from across the hallway, slowly making his way towards them. Debbie knows better than getting physical at this point. Let Helen touch her first so it would be Helen who gets charged with assault.

"Stay away from him! Stay away from him or ...!"

Debbie looks straight into Helen' s eyes and Helen' s furor falters at the coldness' s of Debbie' s stare.

"Or what? whispers Debbie. "I just shot a man three times and killed him. Get out my face." Debbie takes advantage of Helen' s hesitation to step around her and head out. With her back to Helen and looking at the cop standing by the entrance to the ward, Helen lets out a grunt akin to something coming out of a feral animal. Helen grabs Debbie' s pony tail and yanks on it hard with her meaty arm. Debbie let' s out a short cry and falls back a step. Debbie tries to turn around on her heels but Helen' s grip on her pony tail stops her from finishing the turn. Before Debbie has time to stabilize her body on her prosthesis and use it as a pivot point to kick Helen with her good leg, the cop jumps in.

"Break it up! Now!" He jumps between both women and grabs Helen' s arm. "Let it go ma' am or I' m gonna arrest you for assault."

Helen let' s go but her mouth starts going again.

"That whore got my husband almost killed!" Helen bawls more insults while the cop and the two people that had come with her try to calm her down. The cop steps back and comes to Debbie' s side.

"Are you OK?" he asks Debbie. His lips are hidden under his cowboy mustache and Debbie cannot see them move but the words come out alright. Debbie nods.

"I better get going," says Debbie. "I don' t need to be here." This time it is the cop who nods.

Debbie steps out of the ward and all the eyes from people in the hallway, other rooms and behind desks fasten on her. Debbie who has walked streets almost naked offering herself for sale, who has flashed men just to snare a john, who has snorted coke and done drugs in public, that same Debbie now feels her face burning with shame because a fat woman called her names, covered her with misdirected insults. That' s the rub though, Debbie thinks, were they really misdirected?

With hurried steps Debbie reaches the ambulance unloading area and steps out through the wide doors where a cold night air greets her. She has no idea where to go. Her car is at the bar and it is a long walk to it and also to her motel. Ernie must be starving by now. To hell with the five cigarettes at day. Debbie lights her sixth and then realizes that now is tomorrow so she is having her first cigarette of a new day. She smokes and a mixture of fatigue, anger and confusion whirls inside her.

She doesn' t want to be a home breaker, a husband snatcher, a marriage buster. The fact that Ken has to wake up to Helen' s bulldog face is not her problem, Debbie thinks. He can believe his marriage is over, and act like it, but it is obvious that the fat lady has a different idea, and Debbie doesn' t want to, doesn' t need to get in the middle of that mess. That ethereal connection between her and Ken, it is there, Debbie can feel it, but she also is afraid of it because it flies against common sense and reality. That feeling for him, it is nothing but a stupid longing, a relic of a lost youth, an empty desire with no substance. The only rewards for indulging in such a stupid longing exercise were her getting insulted by a stranger to her and Ken getting clocked by a stranger to him. What a pathetic pair they make, losers to the very end. Debbie throws the cigarette butt down and heads back into the building.

She is gonna have to call a taxi to take her back to the parking lotto pick up her car. She wonders if the bloody spot will still be there or if somebody has cleaned it. She shudders at the idea of seeing that black spot again. Even for a seasoned murderer like herself, killing doesn’ t come easy.