Nancy Bartholomew - Sophie's Last Stand

“That bastard,” Gray swore.

“Whatever,” I said, shrugging. “It doesn’t change the fact that he blames me. I lose my world and he blames me.” I gestured to the note. “And now this.” I tried to laugh, but it rang hollow. “Guess it just goes to show, ‘No matter where you go, there you are.’”

Gray reached out, touching the tip of my chin with his fingers, forcing me to look up at him.

“Sophie, I’m not going to let him hurt you anymore,” he said. “You are strong and kind and good. You’re a survivor, not a victim. This is your new life, whatever you choose to make of it. No one has a right to take that away from you. I won’t stand by and let a scumbag like Nick Komassi destroy that.”

I looked at him and felt my eyes welling up with tears. Deep inside I felt a flicker of hope ignite and catch, but the rest of me was thinking, It’s too late already.

“Nick’s already ruined my life,” I said. “He started using drugs. He embezzled money from his clients at his accounting firm. It wasn’t enough that people kept coming up to me on the street and yelling at me, thinking I was in on it with him. It wasn’t enough that his partners in the firm think Nick stashed money away somewhere and that I know where it is. No, he’s somehow followed me down here and will make my life a living hell before it’s all over.”

Gray had said this was my new life, whatever I chose to make of it, but he never put himself in the picture with me, and I couldn’t see how he would, even if we knew each other better. He would always know my life was other people’s pornography. What if we became a couple and one day ran into a friend of his who suddenly realized I looked just like the woman in the dirty movie he had stashed away at home?

“Now,” Gray said, getting to his feet, “I’m going to take this note to the lab, file the report and start looking for Nick. In the meantime, lock the doors. If you go outside, make sure it’s where you can be seen. I’ll have the patrols increased around here, but keep your cell phone in your pocket, program my numbers into it and call me if you even feel funny. Don’t wait for trouble, don’t wait to be certain, call me if the breeze in your backyard so much as shifts direction. Okay?”

I nodded and sighed. It all felt so hopeless.

“Sophie, this is going to go away. I’m going to take care of it,” he said.

“What makes you think you’ll have any success when the feds and the Philadelphia police haven’t been able to keep Nick contained?”

Gray smiled. “Ah, but I have a motivation they didn’t have.”

“And what would that be?”

“I’m a gonna eat a real Italian food, made by a little Italian mama. I can’t let her little girl be troubled by goombahs, eh?”

The Italian accent was terrible but it made me smile, and that’s what he seemed to want. “That’s better. You light up the room when you smile, Sophie Mazaratti.”

“Yeah, and I light up the driveway when my ex blows up my car, and where does that get me?” I smiled, trying to deliver the wisecrack like I didn’t care, but hearing it fall flat as I spoke.

“Hey,” he said, the Italian accent even worse, “count your blessings. That fire burned off half of the bushes along the driveway. That’s bushes you don’t have to pull now, right?”

“Go!” I said, and felt my heart lift like a hot air balloon.

I will be the first to admit that I know basically nothing about renovating a house. It didn’t look that hard, not when the real estate agent showed me the “before” pictures, and then contrasted those with the house as it appeared today. It looked like a walk in the park, like all I had to do was pick out paint and wallpaper. Well, almost…

This honeymoon lasted exactly one week, and then I sought professional help. I opened the phone book and let my blistered fingers do the walking. I knew enough to get several bids for each project. I knew to ask for references and proof of insurance. My downfall was that while I knew to ask for these things, I sometimes hired people just because I thought they were interesting. Not necessarily “nice” interesting, sometimes it was just that I felt sorry for them. However, “nice” did enter into it now and again.

I hired my carpenter because he looked like Santa Claus. He twinkled and laughed. He even drove a red truck. But I hired him without so much as asking if he could drive a nail. I was lucky with him.

I was not so lucky with my house painter. I hired him because he looked like James Dean, only shrunken, wizened with age and cigarettes. He could paint, all right, but not without complaining and whining every step of the way. Every morning I found myself meeting him at the door with a hot cup of coffee and a smile, just so I could entice him into working a full day. It never helped. He started after 10:00 a.m. and knocked off at 2:00 p.m., every single day.

I found my newest employee while I was standing in the driveway inspecting the burned-out frame of my former car. A tall blonde with stringy hair and a tight sleeveless T-shirt was making her way slowly down the street, stopping at every house to stuff a flyer into each mailbox. I tried not to watch her, but it was impossible. She couldn’t walk in a straight line, and not because she was impaired, but because of her side-kick, a gray-black-and-white furball of a dog.

The little dog pranced, leaping from the sidewalk into the street, darting past the blonde, crossing back across the bricks and into someone’s yard. The leash would become tangled around the blonde’s legs, drawing the entire procession to a halt as the girl slowly disengaged herself and tried to continue.

“Durrell,” I heard her say, her voice impatient, “walk right, will ya? This ain’t no parade.”

On they came, closer and closer, until finally they were even with the burned out car.

“Dang,” the blonde said. “I thought I had it rough, but this sure beats my luck all to hell.”

“Guess that’s why there’s insurance,” I said.

The girl’s gaze shifted from the car to me and then up to the house and yard. “Here,” she said, “you might need this.”

I took the flyer she offered and began reading. “Durrell’s Handy Work,” it read, hand done in barely legible block printing. “No job too big. Housework, repairs, yard work. Try us, you’ll like us.”

I looked from the flyer to where she stood waiting. “Who’s ‘us’?” I asked.

The girl smiled. “Me and Durrell, here. Honest. We’ve got lots and lots of experience. I can even get you references. Durrell’s my helper. He goes wherever I go. He’s no trouble and he’s right good at fetching stuff for me.”

She looked down at the little dog. He turned his head and stared up at me. He had huge brown eyes, but that wasn’t what I noticed most about him. The odd thing about Durrell was he appeared to be grinning. His pink tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth, and his lips stretched back from his teeth into what can only be described as a huge doggy smile.

“Durrell, fetch!” The girl balled up one of the fliers and threw it across the driveway.

The dog watched the paper arc in the air and land with a soft bounce on the other side of the car. He looked back at his mistress, yawned and lay down at my feet, his furry head resting on my sneaker.

“Durrell!” She looked up at me. “I don’t know what’s eatin’ him,” she said, clearly disgusted.

“Performance anxiety, maybe,” I said. “It happens.” Durrell looked anything but anxious. Bored maybe, but not anxious.

She threw her hands up in exasperation and turned instead to inspect my property again. “Looks like you got somebody doin’ the paintin’,” she said, nodding to the ladder that stood against the side of the house. Her tone was wistful, as if work had been hard to come by and my house was yet another missed opportunity.