Bentley Little - The Ignored

“I will,” he said, and his voice was soft. “Take care.”

I wanted to cry, and a tear did escape down my cheek before I could wipe it off. I looked at Philipe, and on impulse I gave him a quick hug. “ You take care,” I said.

“Yeah.”

I got into the car.

“Good-bye,” he said to Jane. “I haven’t spent much time with you, but I feel like I know you anyway. Bob did nothing but talk about you the whole time we were traveling together. He loves you very much.”

She smiled. “I know.”

They shook hands.

I started the car, backed out of the driveway. I looked toward Philipe. He waved, smiled.

I waved back.

“Good-bye,” I said.

He ran after us as we pulled away, and he jogged behind us as we pulled onto the road out of the city. He stood there, in the middle of the street, waving, as we left Thompson.

I honked back at him.

And we continued east until Philipe was lost to sight and Thompson was only a tiny irregular speck in the distance.

We lived in motels while we locked for a home.

There was no property available in Laguna Beach, no uninhabited houses for sale, so we moved up the coast to Corona del Mar.

I suggested that, since we were invisible, we should just pick the house we liked and live there. We shouldn’t worry about finding a place all to ourselves. There was no reason we couldn’t find some big house and co-exist with the owners. We’d be like ghosts. It would be fun.

So we lived for a time with a rich couple, in a too-large mansion on a bluff overlooking the ocean. We took the guest room and the guest bathroom; we used the kitchen when the owners were gone or asleep.

But it was unsettling to live that close and that intimately with others, to be privy to their privacies. I felt uncomfortable seeing people when they thought they were alone, watching them scratch themselves and mutter to themselves and let their true feelings show on their faces, and we moved up the coast, to Pacific Palisades, finally finding a white elephant belonging to a has-been entertainer no longer able to keep up with the payments. It had been on the market for the past two years.

We moved in.

The days flowed from one to the next. We’d get up late, spend most of the day on the beach, read and watch TV at night. It was pleasant, I suppose, but I had to wonder: what was the point of it all? I had never really bought into Philipe’s idea that we had a specific destiny, that fate had some plan in mind for us, but I had thought that my life would eventually lead somewhere, that it would have a purpose, that it would mean something.

And it didn’t.

There was no point. We lived, we died, we tried to make the best of things in between. That was it. Period. No pattern had emerged from the series of disjointed events that were my existence because there was no pattern. It had made no difference to anyone that I had been born.

And then Jane announced that she was pregnant.

Overnight, everything changed.

This was the point, I thought. Maybe I would make a mark upon the world and maybe I wouldn’t. But I would leave behind a child, and how that child turned out would depend on me and Jane. And maybe that child would make a significant mark upon the world. And maybe not. But maybe his or her child would. And whatever happened, however far down the line it might be, it would be because of me. I was a link in that chain.

I had a purpose.

I remembered Ralph telling me that the children of Ignored people were always Ignored themselves, and I told Jane, but she didn’t care and neither did I. She said that she didn’t like the lifestyle in Pacific Palisades, that she wanted our son or daughter to grow up in a different environment, and once again we moved up the coast, settling in a beachfront house in Carmel.

The first trimester passed, and Jane was showing, and both of us were happier than we’d ever been in our lives. We tried contacting her parents, but they could neither see us nor hear us, and though it was expected, that was a disappointment. But it didn’t last long. There were too many other things to do, too many other things to be grateful for. We pored through books of names. We read manuals on parenting. We stole baby food and furniture and clothes.

We had been taking long daily walks along the beach, but when Jane began to get bigger and to tire more quickly and easily, she switched her allegiance to indoor exercise equipment. She told me to keep up the walks, however, and though I protested at first, I soon agreed. She said she didn’t want me to balloon up to her size. And, she admitted, she wanted to have some time alone, without me always hovering around.

I understood.

I even grew to like my solitary walks along the beach.

And then it happened.

I had walked a mile or so down the sand and was on my way back when I saw a strange disturbance in the air some ways ahead. I jogged forward, squinting.

Flickering across the sand was the faint outline of a purple forest.

My heart leaped in my chest. I was cold all over, and I could not seem to catch my breath. Terrified, I ran back toward the house. I reached it, bolted up the steps.

Jane shrieked my name.

I had never heard her scream that way before, had never heard the sound of pure abject terror in her voice, but I heard it now and it caused my insides to squeeze painfully in a viselike cramp of fear. I doubled over, barely able to move for the pain, but I forced myself to keep running.

“Bob!!” she cried.

I dashed down the hall into the bedroom.

And there was the murderer.

He was on our bed. He had ripped off all of Jane’s clothes and was straddling her, holding a knife to her neck. He had survived somehow. He was alive and had come back and had tracked us down.

He saw me out of the corner of his eye, and he turned to face me.

His zipper was down, his penis out.

He had an erection.

“Oh, here you are.” He grinned. “I was wondering when you’d show up. I wanted you to watch your wife blow me.” He reached next to him, picked up her torn panties, held them delicately to his nose, sniffing loudly. “Mmmmmm,” he said. “Nice and fresh.”

I took an angry step forward, and he pressed the knife against her skin, drawing blood. She screamed in pain.

“Don’t try anything,” he said. “Or I’ll slit her fucking throat.”

I stood in the doorway, paralyzed, not knowing what to do. In some hopeful, overly imaginative part of my brain, I thought that maybe Philipe had faded into that other world by now and that he would pop out of nowhere and save us and drag this guy back where he had come from.

But that didn’t happen.

The murderer leaned forward. His erect penis pressed against Jane’s closed lips. “Open your fucking mouth,” he ordered. “Or I’m going to cut that baby out of your stomach.”

She opened her mouth.

And he pushed his penis in.

Instinct took over. If I had thought about it, I would not have done what I did. I would have been afraid for the life of both Jane and our unborn child, and I would have done nothing. But I did not think. I saw his erection slide into Jane’s mouth, and I reacted instantly, crazily. I lunged forward, leaped, and landed against his back, my hands on his head. He probably would have shoved the knife into Jane’s throat, but at that second she bit down, hard, and he screamed in agony, temporarily losing control. I yanked back on his head, pulling him off Jane, and grabbed for the knife. It sliced through my palm, and I can’t say that I didn’t feel the pain, but I did not stop, and I twisted his neck as far as I could to the right until I heard it crack. His screams were silenced and he went limp, but he was still holding on to the knife, and Jane pulled it out of his hand and shoved it through his crotch. A wash of blood poured over her distended stomach, cascading onto the sheets.