Tom Piccirilli: The Last Deep Breath

She turned over in bed, ran her fingers through the wet thatch of his chest hair, and said, “I want you to kill my husband.”

Grey wasn’t surprised. It seemed like every third woman he ran into wanted her husband dead.

No divorce. No let’s get him into AA or rehab. No he’s the father of my children, sweet baby Jesus he deserves a second chance. No smack him in the teeth and leave him bleeding in the gutter.

No mercy at all. These ladies played a serious game. He’d thought things in New York were pretty bad, but out here in the desert all remnants of grace and pity evaporated like a mid-morning shower. They wanted their old men dead. The ring apparently made them homicidal.

He knew he’d never get out the door without listening to the rest of it so he lit a cigarette, lay back against the pillows, and said, “Tell me your plan.”

She did. It was stupid. They were all stupid.

Sweet smell of desert sage drifted in on the hot breeze. Grey looked into her face and saw what he always saw. The seething desperation cresting in heavily shadowed eyes. A hint of dust trapped in the crows’ feet and deep frown lines. Thirty years of unanswered pleas and unresolved daddy issues. A gutted rag doll forgotten in the corner. Another delicate moaner in the sisterhood of pain.

He said, “Let me think about it.”

She got up, drew a slash of lipstick across her mouth, and started to get dressed for her shift at the Main Street diner. No shower. Christ, and he’d eaten there. He tried not to pull a face.

“Bo gets out next Wednesday,” she told him. “Can we get everything ready by then?”

“I think so.”

She smiled in a way he hadn’t seen before. It was girlish and almost cruel, but at least it was authentic.

“Bo is mean. Crazy mean. He’ll kill us if we mess this up.”

“We won’t mess up.”

“If you get hungry there’s some leftover chicken in the fridge.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll be home by ten, honey.”

“I’ll be here.”

She leaned over and kissed him, tried to put some real affection into it this time, but she just didn’t know how to do it anymore. The attempt seemed to embarrass her and she practically cantered out the door.

Grey took a shower, shaved, and got his clothes out of the drier. He did about an hour’s worth of work on the Chevelle, tuning it with Bo’s tools, then topped off the fluids. Bo hadn’t been much of a stickup man but he had a well-stocked garage. Grey stole a few tools he might need on his ride and packed them in the trunk.

A coyote barked in the distance. He still hadn’t got used to the sound, it always made him jerk his head up. Made him think of the wild dog packs that roamed Coney Island in the winter, eating what was left of the frozen homeless.

A storm rumbled across the encroaching dusk.

He got in the car and headed west.

The world grew wide and burned with possibility and misgiving. He looked in the rearview and watched as the east was swallowed by the thickening darkness of night rising up behind him. He stood on the pedal and aimed for the plunging sun.

The next one was different. She found him in a bar outside of Reno.

She was a little older but a lot prettier and much sharper. She hadn’t yet had all the edges sanded off her yet. Her eyes were clear and alive with intelligence and wit. They still held out a touch of hope and they glittered with a kind of bemusement, like she knew this was only a pit stop on her way to the Gold Mile.

Every guy in the place sat up a little straighter. They got change and played tunes on the jukebox that they thought a woman would want to dance to. She moved around the bar and settled in beside anyone who might buy her a drink. She did it without the bullshit flirting that usually led to brawls or back alley rapes and cherry-topped prowl cars. The men joked with her. Nobody laid a hand on her. She’d throw down her Dewar’s and Coke and then move on to the next one, her conversation lively, killing the afternoon slug by slug.

At least that’s what Grey thought was happening at first. About an hour later he reassessed. She was trying to make him jealous, weaving among the old drunks and the truckers hopped on speed. Grey watched her in the mirror behind the bar and, though their gazes never met, he knew she was enjoying being on stage for him. He was a properly attentive audience.

He eavesdropped, his concentration fine-tuned and perfectly focused. Her name was Kendra. If someone tried to call her anything else, the diminutive Ken or Kennie, she corrected them.

She had an easy way about her, an effortless laugh that sounded just a little too natural. It was the soft melody of every woman you wanted to lie beside, your head resting in her lap while she stroked your forehead. You look up into her eyes and she leans down, gives you the killer grin, her bee-stung lips parting to meet your own.

She was blonde, her hair feathered to frame a heart-shaped face, styled in a way that was popular when he was kid and seemed to be making a comeback. It looked good on her. She had high cheekbones that drew you to her hazel eyes flecked with gold. There was some nice meat and jiggle to her hips. Breasts that had just enough bounce to them beneath her blouse to be real. The teeth weren’t. They were so straight, even, and white that they must’ve run into the mid-five figures.

She knew how to throw her head back far enough so that the light caught her perfectly and lit her like the star of a Broadway show. She had the looks but wasn’t vapid enough to be a model, not even an older one who couldn’t do top magazine cover work anymore. That meant actress.

He thought he might’ve seen her before. He guessed she’d had moderate success but had gone into a bad skid. It had lasted a while but she’d pulled herself out and was going to start phoning her producer and director friends and calling in any favors that might still be owed. Not a lot of them would be but there were probably at least a couple. Enough pull to get her back in the door for a few auditions.

Grey used to be a movie buff. Pax had gotten him a first-rate entertainment system for his shitty little apartment down in the Village. Grey walked in one day and the front door wouldn’t open all the way. It was striking against one of the surround sound speakers, the sucker was two-and-a-half-feet tall. He couldn’t get to his hall closet. Couldn’t get to the fire escape because the sill was stacked with the DVR, the DVD burner, the TIVO, the equalizer, other equipment he didn’t even recognize. You couldn’t watch a movie with the volume cranked over 3 or the windows would rattle so badly you were afraid they’d blow out onto 8 thStreet.

The manager stopped by once to bitch at Grey about the noise. Pax walked the guy out into the hall and spoke quietly to him for a minute, and that was the last time the manager ever bothered Grey.

He watched the side of Kendra’s face, listened, and kept a steady buzz going on the weak beer while he tried to place her. Thought maybe she’d been in some lowbrow comedy he’d seen a few years back. Guy’s best friend turns out to be gay and a famous drag queen. Guy has issues with it but decides what the hell. Live and let live, Kumbaya. Then the drag queen best friend turns out to actually be an undercover CIA operative who’s been taken captive by the terrorists. Guy teams up with eight other drag queens-Lola May, Verinia La Fleur, Mistress Lucretia-to go bust him out of Libya. Hilarity ensues-look at the queens doing Judo chops in their high heels, using their feather boas to strangle the terrorist leader before he can turn the key on the nuke.