Jennifer Hillier: Creep

Morris frowned slightly, touching the French cuffs of the shirt he was wearing. “I don’t think so, my friend. I’m kind of partial to the James Bond look, no cummerbund, no vest. But I’ll come back if I change my mind.”

Pietro’s smile grew wider. “Okay. I give final price to cashier. Thank you for your business, and, please, you tell everyone who needs good suit that your friend Pietro is the best.”

Sheila thanked him. Morris was still fingering the empty holes at the end of his sleeves where his cuff links should go.

“You didn’t bring any with you?” Sheila pointed to the naked French cuffs. “You must have a dozen.”

“Yeah, but there’s only one pair I would’ve worn for the wedding.” Morris’s face was glum. “I lost one of the cuff links Randall gave me. I looked everywhere-I don’t know what the hell happened. I know I had them on last week. I would’ve worn them for the Okinawa conference call this morning, but I could only find one.”

Morris always wore his monogrammed platinum cuff links when he was working on a particularly difficult business transaction. They’d been a Christmas gift from all three of his sons, back when he was still drinking and married to their mother. The cuff links were special. Shortly after that Christmas, Lenore had filed for divorce and his oldest son, Randall, had stopped speaking to him.

That had been over five years ago.

“I’m sure it’s somewhere at your house.” Sheila squeezed his arm. “It probably rolled under the bed or behind the bureau or something. I’ll help you look tonight.”

She shooed him back into the changing room to undress. When he pulled the curtain closed, she dug into her purse and fished out her BlackBerry.

No new e-mails. Damn. Nothing from Randall.

She’d been trying to get hold of Morris’s estranged son for weeks. But he hadn’t lived in the United States for years and wasn’t an easy man to track down. Randall Gardener’s work with Amnesty International had taken him to seven different countries in the past decade, and while Amnesty kept solid records of where their people were at all times, they were stingy about giving out that information. Sheila had been forced to get creative, sneaking into Morris’s address book to contact his other two sons-Stephen, a high school football coach in Orlando, and Phillip, a grad student in San Francisco-to see if maybe they could help. Neither brother had heard from Randall in months.

Frustrated, Sheila stuck her phone back in her purse. While she was fine spending her Sunday helping Morris search for his missing cuff link, the best wedding present she could give him was Randall. The wedding was four weeks away and she was running out of time-and ideas. The thought of speaking to Lenore, Randall’s mother and Morris’s ex-wife, wasn’t too appealing.

She left Morris in the changing area and headed toward the cashier’s counter at the front of the store. Angling her way past the racks of men’s suits and tuxedos, she took her place in line behind a young couple complaining loudly to the frazzled clerk.

Trying to tune them out, Sheila mentally strategized her next move. Dammit, she had no choice but to call Lenore in Texas. She shuddered; that was bound to be an awkward conversation. Morris and his ex hadn’t parted amicably, and Sheila wasn’t even sure if the woman was aware her ex-husband was getting remarried.

Her thoughts were disrupted by a movement at the store window. Through the fancily dressed mannequin displays, Sheila caught a glimpse of a face, blurry through the rain-streaked glass. The little hairs at the back of her neck suddenly pricked.

Someone was watching her.

She strode to the double glass doors where there was a clear view of the street. The man was already walking away. The rain made it difficult to see clearly, but something about him was familiar. Her breath caught in her throat.

She watched through the watery glass as the man sauntered down the wet sidewalk toward his green and chrome motorcycle, hands stuck casually in the pockets of his worn jeans. Zipping up his leather jacket, he threw a leg over the bike and slid a shiny black helmet over his short, mussed hair.

That walk. Those jeans. The scuffed leather jacket bought used from a secondhand shop on Howell Street. Somewhere on the sleeve of that jacket was a streak of red permanent marker where she’d accidentally bumped his arm while grading papers.

She’d know him anywhere.

Her BlackBerry pinged at that moment, but she kept her eyes focused on Ethan as he sped away. When he was completely out of sight, she pulled out her phone and saw she had one new text message.

He must have sent it while he was at the window. There were no words, only an attachment. She clicked on it, waiting the three seconds it took for it to download, her heart beating so hard she could feel her pulse throbbing in her temple.

The photo was small and grainy, but it was irrefutable. Her back was to the camera, as was her naked ass, but there was no doubt it was Sheila on all fours, looking back with a smile as Ethan took her from behind.

A still shot from their sex video. The one she’d been so sure he didn’t have.

Her life, as she knew it, was over.

S t. Mary’s Helping Hands looked and smelled like a shithole because it was a shithole. Overcooked vegetables, salty gravy, and the body odor of eighty or so homeless human beings combined to form a vomit-inducing aroma not unlike that of a garbage dump.

Then there were the sounds. The constant thrum of voices, metal forks clanging against metal plates, the scraping of cheap chairs on scarred pine floors, the occasional outbursts of laughter or shouting.

It was an assault on the senses.

Volunteering here had been Abby’s idea. In theory it was brilliant. What better place to study the psychological consequences of poverty than at Seattle’s premier soup kitchen?

St. Mary’s was a cesspool of living, breathing human beings representing almost every behavioral, mental, and societal issue Ethan had read about in books. These were the forgotten folks, the dregs of society, the people you didn’t notice and made a point not to see while you stood in line wearing your $300 boots waiting to order your $5 latte. These were the people you believed you’d never become, despite the fact that at some point in the past, they’d all had normal lives.

Someone whose name Ethan couldn’t remember now had once described it as Before and After. Before was when they were normal, when they had jobs and homes and loved ones, before the financial devastation, drug abuse, or mental illness had overpowered them and taken everything away. This was the After. And there was nothing after the After, just this, every day, until the end.

It made for a great thesis.

He slopped another portion of green beans onto someone’s plate, managing to avoid eye contact even though the person murmured a polite thank-you. On another night he might have engaged this person in small talk, and if that had been interesting, the small talk might have led to a deeper conversation. But not tonight. Tonight Ethan was in a foul mood, because Dr. Sheila Tao had dumped him. For Morris. An oversize gorilla who’d somehow managed to make him feel tiny and inconsequential.

He wanted to kill them both.

Her lovely face appeared again in his mind, all dark eyes and red velvet lips. Delicate Asian bone structure. The curve of her slender white neck and the sweet spot above her collarbone he liked to kiss. He’d chased her for the better part of a year… only to have it end as if it never even started. Did she really think he would let it go that easily?

It was never supposed to be anything more than a convenient affair. Screwing the professor had yielded some nice perks. Flexible deadlines, a reduced workload, more one-on-one help with his thesis. Plus she could hoover him senseless.