I walk over to the back of the house, look at the ocean and the white sand. The ground beneath me seems soft, unstable.
“Annie, what’s this about?”
“The night...” I begin, then stop. I was going to say the night you killed Briggs but I don’t want to say those words out loud. “When you said all threats had been neutralized, you meant Briggs.”
Gray is behind me, his hands on my shoulders now. “Why are we talking about this?”
“Just answer me,” I say quickly.
I hear him release a breath. “Yes, that’s what I meant.”
I lean against him, my back to his front. “What’s happened?” he whispers.
But I can’t bring myself to say the words. I can’t bring myself to tell him about the Ray Harrison I knew. Not now, not when my husband has started to believe in my sanity for maybe the first time.
“Annie,” Gray says,
I suppose it’s possible that, like Ray Harrison, she was a person I met, someone I knew in passing, and that the fuller relationship we shared was something created in my mind, a fantasy established to fulfill some deep need in my psyche.It’s equally possible that she was someone who worked for Drew, someone hired to keep tabs on me; this is what Gray believes, though he has no evidence or knowledge to support his theory. Sometimes I search my memory for clues that might have indicated that my friendship was a fantasy - like the white shock of hair my imaginary Ray Harrison had, or the searing headaches that were the inevitable backdrop to my encounters with him. But there’s nothing like that. Whatever the case, Ella Singer was friend enough that I feel her loss deeply. And that means something in this world. It means a lot.I am less hard on myself these days. I try to treat myself the way I treat my daughter - with patience and understanding. I str
The party was scheduled for six p.m. that evening. It was to hold at Cubana's Luxury and all the classy, rich, fun lovers would be there, including tourists who visited the city on weekends just for the sole purpose of enjoying the inexhaustible recreational activities it has to offer. Annie was a thirty three years old independent, city, young woman. She was tall as a few shorter people would describe her. In fact, she was about 5.4ft tall and weighed about fifty seven pounds. Slim, fair, chocolate skinned, and a figure to die for. Annie visited her hair stylist, and got a make over. She preferred for this weekend that her lush black hair be packed all the way to the top and wrapped in a huge circle on the top of her skull. She had her lashes fixed, her hands manicured with nails as thick and long as every twenty first century young lady liked it. She was mostly a loner, living alone in a one room self contained apartment on the twenty third floor of a victorian building. The weeke
About an hour later, Gray's suffering didn't seem to get any better. "You're depreciating, man," Michael said. "He's too old and his body is rejecting mortality," Joey said. "Should I bite him?" "No, it's not that simple,""Should we summon your parents?" Michael asked Gray. "Yes, take me home." * * *Annie was awake again. She was dazed just like before, and wasn't sure if she was awake or dreaming or in a trance. She looked towards the walk-in closet where she'd previously found the gapping door and there was only silence. The doors were also closed as if nothing had happened at all, but she was hearing a sound such as could only come from the shores of a river or sea or ocean. She hadn't noticed before that the house had a beach behind it. She stood from the bed and glided towards one of the French windows. She knew it was still night because the house was dark and the room she was sleeping in was dimly lit. If it was daylight, the windows should have been enough to allow a
When my mother named me Lolita, she thought she was being literary. She didn’t realize she was being tragic. But then, I’m not sure she understood the concept of tragedy, the same way that people who are born into money don’t realize they’re rich, don’t even know there’s another way to live. She thought the name was beautiful, thought it sounded like a flower, knew it was from a famous story - play or novel, she wouldn’t have been able to tell you. I guess I should consider myself lucky, since her other choices were Ophelia and Gypsy Rose. At least Lolita had some dignity.I’m thinking this as I push a cart through the produce aisle of my local supermarket, past rows of gleaming green apples and crisp blooms of lettuce, of fat, shiny oranges and taut, waxy red peppers. The overly familiar man in meats waves at me and gives me what I’m sure he thinks is a winning smile but which only serves to make my skin crawl. “Hi, honey,” he’ll say. Or “Hi, sweetie.” And I’ll wonder what it is abou
It’s as if the sun has dipped behind a thick cloud cover and the sky has gone charcoal. Only they haven’t. It is a bright, unseasonably cool, spring day in Florida. The parking lot is packed, populated by moms and nannies with their kids of all ages on spring break before Easter. I hear laughter, a gull calling; I smell the salt from the Gulf of Mexico. But inside I am quaking. There’s cool black ink in my veins.I slip into my SUV and lock the door, grip the wheel, and try to calm myself. I’ve had these panics before. Usually they are isolated incidents, intense but brief like the summer storms here. In the last few days, though, they’ve come one after another, surprising me with their ferocity. False alarms, Gray calls them. I’ve always thought of them more as an early warning system.This one is deeper, blacker than I’m used to. I am truly afraid, sweating and going pale. My breathing starts to come ragged, and I glance in my re
Gray is late coming home, and Victory is already sound asleep upstairs in her room. I am sitting on a leather sofa I didn’t choose and don’t actually like, watching the high, dancing flames in our fireplace as he walks through the front door. For a second he is just a long shadow in the foyer; he could be anyone. But then he steps into the light and he is my husband, looking strained and tired. He doesn’t know I’m watching him. When he sees me, though, he smiles and looks a little less world-weary.“Hey,” I say, getting up and going to him.“Hey.” His embrace is powerful and I sink into it, hold on to him tightly. There is no softness to him; the muscles on his body are hard and defined. In this place I am moored. The churning of my day comes to calm.“Want a drink?” I ask as I shift away from him. He holds me for a second longer, tries to catch my eyes, then lets me go.“What are you having?&rdquo
He’s quiet for a moment, and I know he heard the lie in my voice. Takes one to know one. I listen to him breathing as he ponders what to say. I remember a lot of heavy silences over long-distance lines with my father, me desperate, him inadequate or unwilling to help. At last I say, “Tell me again, Dad.”“Oh, honey,” he says after a slow exhale. “Come on. I thought you were past this.”I sigh and listen to Victory chatting to her doll in the other room. “You’re so pretty,” she tells it. “On the outside and the inside. And you’re smart and strong.” She’s mimicking the things I’ve told her about herself, and it makes me smile.“Loli, are you there?”My father always thought my name was silly. He calls me “L” or “Loli” or sometimes just “Loli.” As if those aren’t silly things to call someone. I think he used them to
Today something interesting happened. I died. How awful, they’ll say. How tragic. And she was so young, with everything ahead of her. There will be an article in the paper about how I burned too bright and died too young. My funeral will be small…a few weeping friends, some sniffling neighbors and acquaintances. How they’ll clamor to comfort my poor husband, Gray. They’ll promise to be there for our daughter as she grows up without me. So sad, they’ll say to each other. What was she thinking?But after a time this sadness will fade, their lives will resume a normal rhythm, and I’ll become a memory, a memory that makes them just a little sad, that reminds them how quickly it can all come to an end, but one at which they can also smile. Because there were good times. So many good times where we drank too much, where we shared belly laughs and big steaks off the grill.I’ll miss them, too, and remember them well. But not the same way. Because my life with them was a smoke screen, a caref