John Hart - The King Of Lies

“You need me. You won’t make it in this town without me.”

I shook my head. “You might be surprised at how little I need.” But she ignored me and moved across the kitchen floor on feet that were invisible beneath the hem of her robe.

“We have our problems, Work, but we’re a team. We can deal with anything.”

She reached for me.

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

She allowed her hands to drop, but they did so slowly. She looked up at me, and already she seemed to be retreating.

“Okay, Work. If that’s what you want. I won’t fight you. I’ll even act civilized. That’s what you want, isn’t it, a dry, emotionless parting? A clean break. So that you can get on with your new life and I can try to figure what mine will be. Right?”

“My new life might well be prison, Barbara. This may be the biggest favor I’ve ever done for you.”

“You won’t go to prison,” she said, but I merely shrugged.

“I’ll do the best I can for you, moneywise; you won’t have to fight me.”

Barbara laughed, and I saw some of the old bitterness steal into her eyes. “You don’t make enough money now, Work. You never have, not even when Ezra was alive, and nobody made money the way he did.”

Her words rang in my head, and something clicked. “What did you just say?”

“You heard me.” She turned away, picked up a pack of cigarettes, and lit one. I didn’t know when she had started smoking again. She was in college the last time I saw a cigarette between her lips, but this one danced in her mouth as she spoke. “You could barely make it with Ezra looking out for you. As it is, I don’t know a single lawyer in town who makes less money than you do.” She blew smoke at the ceiling. “So keep your empty promises. I know what they’re worth.”

But that wasn’t what struck me.

Making money’s not the same as having it. Hank’s words.

“Would you say that Ezra liked making money?” I asked. “Or did he like having it?”

“What are you talking about, Work? What does any of that matter? He’s dead. Our marriage is dead.”

But I was onto something. The pieces weren’t in place, but something was there and I couldn’t let go of it. “Money, Barbara. The achievement of it or the possession of it? Which was more important?”

She blew out more smoke and shrugged, as if nothing mattered anymore. “Having it,” she said. “He didn’t care about working for it. It was a tool.”

She was right. He depended on it. He could use it, and suddenly I knew. Not the exact combination to his safe, but I knew where to find it. And just like that, opening the old man’s safe became the most important thing in my world. It was something I had to do, and I knew how to do it.

I’ve got to go,” I said. I put my hand on her arm and she did not flinch away. “I’m sorry, Barbara.”

She nodded and looked at the floor, more smoke writhing from her lips.

“We’ll talk more later,” I said, and picked up the keys. I stopped at the garage door and looked back. I expected her to appear different somehow, but she didn’t. She looked as she always had. My hand was on the door when her voice stopped me a final time.

“One question,” she said.

“What?”

“What about your alibi?” she asked. “Aren’t you worried about losing your alibi?”

For an instant, our eyes locked. She let her shutters drop, and I saw into the depths of her. That’s when I knew that she knew. She’d known all along; so I said the words, and with their passing, a weight seemed to fall away, and in that instant even Barbara was untainted.

“You were never my alibi, Barbara. We both know that.”

She nodded slightly, and this time the tears came.

“There was a time I would have killed for you,” she said, and looked back up. “What was one little lie?”

The tears came faster, and her shoulders trembled as if finally exhausted by some invisible load. “Are you going to be okay?” I asked.

“We do what we need to do, right? That’s what survival is all about.”

“It’s just a question of getting to the point where it has to be done. That’s why we’ll both be okay. Maybe we can part as friends.”

She sniffed loudly, and laughed. She wiped at her eyes. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

“It would,” I agreed. “Listen, I’ll be at the office. I won’t be long. When I get back, we’ll talk some more.”

“What are you going to the office for?” she asked.

“Nothing, really. I just figured something out.”

She gestured at the pain-filled space around us: the room, the house, maybe the entirety of our lives together. “More important than this?” she asked.

“No,” I replied, lying. “Of course not.”

“Then don’t leave,” she said.

“It’s just life, Barbara, and it gets messy. Not everything works out the way you want.”

“It does if you want it badly enough.”

“Only sometimes,” I said. Then I left, closing the door on the life behind me. I started the car and turned around. The children were still in the park, tiny flashes of color as they ran and screamed. I turned off the radio, put the car in drive, and then I saw Barbara in the garage. She watched me in utter stillness, and for an instant she did look different. But then she waved at me to wait and ran light-footed to the window.

“Don’t go,” she said. “I don’t want it to end like this.”

“I’ve got to.”

“Damn it, Work. What’s so important?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing that concerns you.”

She wrapped her arms around herself and leaned over as if her stomach hurt. “It’s going to end badly. I know it will.” Her eyes grew distant. She looked down at the park, as if the sight of the children affected her, too. “Ten years of our lives, and it’ll all be wasted. Just gone.”

“People move on every day, Barbara. We’re no different.”

“That’s why it never could have worked,” she said, and I heard blame in her voice. She looked down at me. “You never wanted to be special, and there was nothing I could do to make you want that. You were so ready to be satisfied. You took the scraps from Ezra’s table and thought you had a banquet.”

“Ezra was chained to that table. He was no happier than I was.”

“Yes, he was. He took what he wanted and took pleasure in taking it. He was a man that way.”

“Are you trying to hurt me?” I asked. “Because this is unpleasant enough as it is.”

Barbara smacked her hand on the top of the car. “And you think it’s pleasant for me? It’s not.”

I looked away from her then, turned my eyes down the hill to the flashes of color that stained the dark green grass. Suddenly, I wanted to be away from this place, but something remained to be said. So I said it.

“Do you know what our problem is, Barbara? You never knew me. You saw what you wanted to see. A young lawyer from a rich family, with a near-famous father, and you assumed you knew me. Who I was. What I wanted. What I cared about. You married a stranger, and you tried to turn him into someone that you recognized. For ten years, you beat me down, and I let you do it; but I could never be what you wanted. So you grew frustrated and bitter, and I grew despondent. I hid from myself, as if it would all just go away, and that makes me as bad as you. We married for the wrong reasons, a common-enough mistake, and if I’d been man enough, I would have ended it years ago.”

Barbara’s lips twisted. “Your self-righteousness makes me ill,” she said. “You’re no better than me.”

“I don’t pretend to be.”

“Just go,” she said. “You’re right. It’s over. So just go.”

“I’m sorry, Barbara.”