Dave Zeltserman: Small crimes

I looked over and saw her shit-eating grin. Her eyes were blackened by the sunglasses but she was grinning her big grin. Like only she knew the joke.

'Buy me another drink,' she said. I bought her another one. After my burger was brought out, I bought her one also. When we were done eating she told me she wanted to go for a ride. 'Come on,' she said as she took my hand, and I let her lead me out of the bar.

When we got to the parking lot she told me that we'd take her car. She breathed lightly in my ear, 'I know a place where nobody will bother us. And I'm going to do things to you tonight you'll never forget.'

She had a later-model green Taurus. 'I'll drive,' she said. It had gotten dark. I got in the passenger side and sat quietly and watched the shadows as we went by. Within minutes we were out of downtown Bradley and heading towards Eastfield. I guess neither of us was in the mood for small talk. As we drove, I could at times make out her face in the moonlight and could see the intensity burning in it.

It took a while before we got to where she was going. We first had to turn down several narrow country roads to get to what was nothing more than a dirt path. Then we drove on that dirt path for miles. Eventually she stopped the car.

She moved herself around so she was sitting sideways and leaning against the driver's side door. I could see her plainly in the moonlight. Her skin looked as if it were smoldering. I moved towards her. She put out an arm to keep me away.

'Wait,' she said. I want to hear your secret first.'

My head was buzzing. It had been almost eight years since I'd been with a woman. I could barely talk. I did something pretty bad a long time ago,' I said.

'Come on, you have to tell me.' She started to lift up her shirt, teasing somewhat, showing off a slightly rounded belly and the bottom area of her breasts.

'Let's just leave it at that. I did something bad.'

'Come on,' she pleaded. 'You're not playing fair. I told you my secret.' She rolled her shirt up farther to fully expose her small breasts for a few seconds before lowering the shirt to just barely cover them.

I shook my head. I figured she was a wack job who got off on bad boys and violence, but I wasn't going to play her game. Even though it had been eight long years since my arrest, I wasn't going to play her game. I wanted her badly – at that moment I would've wanted anyone badly – but I was still going to tell her that it wasn't working out when she exclaimed, 'Oh my God!

'You were in the paper today!' she went on. 'That's why you looked familiar. You're the guy who stabbed that DA! Holy shit!'

I just stared at her, stared as she gave me back a crazy smile.

'What was it like to stab someone like that?'

'Why would you want to know?’

‘Come on, it must have been a rush.'

'No,' I said, 'it wasn't any rush. I'd give anything not to have done it.'

She seemed taken aback by that, at least for a few seconds. Then her crazy smile flashed back on. Her shirt had a little rip near the top and she took hold of that and ripped it the rest of the way. Her small round breasts were fully exposed. I could see her chest heaving wildly. The whole thing was crazy, she was crazy. 'Tear my pants off,' she moaned as she writhed in front of me.

When I reached for her, she whispered, 'You don't even know my name. It's Clara.'

Something clicked in my mind. I usually observe everything around me. Even if I'm not fully aware of it, I'm noticing things and filing them away. In my mind's eye I could see her green Ford Taurus idling a few doors from my parents' house. I could see it pulling away from the curb when I left earlier to drive to Zeke's. I reached up quickly and knocked her dark sunglasses off and saw pure hatred boiling in her eyes. She still had her crazy smile plastered on her face, but her eyes were nothing but black holes of venom and hate. I could see the resemblance then. I should've seen it earlier, but it's hard for me to remember the way Phil used to look. I did remember that Phil had a daughter named Clara.

She started screaming rape then. She was screaming at the top of her lungs, screaming so loud that I thought something inside her was going to rupture. It's funny what goes through your mind at a time like that. For a split second I just found it kind of interesting how wrong I had been. How what I thought was lust heating her up was in fact a completely different and more violent emotion. Then I realized I had to get out of there.

As I turned towards the door, she was on me. One hand was clawing at my face, her other arm wrapped tight around my chest. All the time she was screaming rape. I saw them off in the distance then. Two guys running towards the car.

I tried to push her off but she kept clawing and screaming. I had no other choice so I used my elbow. I swung it behind me and felt it hit something hard. She made a short moaning noise and her grip loosened enough for me to get away from her. I was out of the car and watching as those two guys ran towards me.

They were less than thirty yards away. They were both big boys, probably played offensive line on their high school football teams. The guy leading the charge was holding a tire iron. What I did next surprised them. I raced right at them.

The guy with the tire iron was caught off guard – he just wasn't expecting it. He was off balance somewhat as he tried to hit me with the tire iron and only glanced it off my arm. The blow hurt but didn't do too much damage. I was right on target with my punch, though. I put my whole body into it and caught him flush In the jaw. His mouth exploded into a pink spray and he was out before he hit the ground.

I turned to face his partner. He had stopped in his tracks. I could see he was scared – I was more than he had bargained for. I guess they thought their job would be nothing more than pulling me out of the car and beating me senseless. He took a cautious step towards me and looked like he was going to throw a haymaker at my head. I feigned left and then hit him hard with a right jab to his stomach, and then followed that with a quick rabbit punch to the side of his head. My last punch knocked him off balance, and before he could regain it, I kicked his feet out from under him. As he lay on the ground, I grabbed his arm, swung it behind him and broke it by kicking down hard with my foot. He screamed and then I think he passed out. In any case, he stopped moving or making any noise.

I could make out a jeep parked off in the distance. The guy on the ground in front of me couldn't have been more than twenty-two. I regretted what I did to his arm – he'd never be able to use it quite the same again – but I wanted to put him out of action as quickly as possible. It was a tough lesson to have to learn. I searched his pockets but couldn't find any car keys.

I went over to the other boy, the one with the busted jaw. He was still out cold. Like his friend, he was also only in his early twenties. I searched his pockets and found a key for the jeep. As I was standing up, I was pushed hard from behind and almost knocked to the ground. Clara had jumped on my back and was screaming every vulgar obscenity I'd ever heard in my ear. She was also scratching up my face and trying to get to my eyes. I threw myself backwards and landed with a thud. The blow knocked the wind out of her. She looked a little woozy, but she was still conscious. I got to my feet and started running towards the jeep.

When I got in it I looked in the mirror and saw that she had scratched me pretty good under my cheekbone and had missed my eye by only an inch. I put my hand to my cheek and felt a warm stickiness. Blood was beginning to trickle down my face. I put the jeep in Drive, turned it around, and started back down the dirt path. The headlights momentarily caught Clara and her two accomplices. Clara was sitting with her face in her hands, her thin shoulders convulsing as she sobbed. The two boys were still lying on the ground as if they were dead. Even though they had tried to frame me for rape, and possibly had even planned to beat me to death, I couldn't help feeling sick to my stomach about what happened to all three of them.