Columbus has to be one of the cloudiest cities ever. But the clouds don’t come to drop rain, although sometimes they do. Mostly they float in and hang out just to block the sun. Long ago, Columbus must’ve pissed off the sky and the sky’s revenge has been to deny Columbus more than two sunny days in a row.
Florida has to be the opposite of Columbus in every way. We have cornfields and they have sandy beaches. We wear coats and they wear shorts. We see clouds and they see the sun, like humans should. The sky, dang it, should not be silver all the time.
I turned from the misery in the sky, but there was Adam, a different kind of misery. I wanted to blindfold him. His eyes were brown daggers and I was getting tired of dodging their pricks. My bad sleep was catching up with me. He was trying to guilt me and my resistance was wearing down.
Well, I should’ve been a little guilty. I kept hearing the line, “Don’t lower yourself to their level.” Can’t remember what movie that’s from. Probably more than one. The line was probably true, too. If I saw was better than him, I needed to act like it. So far I hadn’t. I hit him three times and that probably wasn’t the worst of it.
I played a game where I put myself in his shoes. I’d probably be thirsty.
I set a glass of water in front him. I peeled off the tape from his mouth. Adam heaved back and forth as he caught his breath. I didn’t buy the act. He’d been breathing fine through his nose. Again, trying to make me feel bad.
“See. I ain’t like you. I knew this con up in the joint. Their water’s shitty, so he had his peoples bring him bottled water. Know what? The pigs opened every bottle to make sure it was really water. Thing is, water goes bad. So this guy, really nice guy too, he’d have to drink the full batch all at once or else it’d all be ruined. But they didn’t care. They just didn’t care. So you see, I ain’t like you. I’m better.”
“You’re nuts,” he said, still panting.
“Could be. But you’re tied to a fucking chair, so what difference does it make?”
He begged. “Please don’t do this” and stuff, over and over, not even giving me a chance to say, “Okay” if I was going to. But then he said, “Don’t do this to Brenda,” so he wasn’t even begging for himself. It took me a few seconds before it registered who he was talking about.
“If she draws on Zeke, he’ll go ballistic.”
“She has the element of surprise. It’ll be fine.”
“She’ll go to prison.”
“These are--what do you call them? Something circumstances?”
“Extenuating?”
“Yeah. She’ll be fine.”
He didn’t believe me. I’m not sure I believed me. And just when I was an inch away from reconsidering my plan, he blew it by saying I was “just a kid” and had no idea how the real world worked. I haven’t been a kid in years.
“Gonna drink your goddamn water?”
“I’d love to.”
“Well?”
“Well?”
I got a knife from the kitchen and freed his left arm. He drained the glass in one gulp, then panted for real.
“Can I get some more?”
“Can I get some gratitude?”
He thanked me but I could tell he didn’t mean it. He took his time with the second glass and left some water at the bottom.
He scratched his red and irritated chin. “I’ve been wondering. How will you know?”
“Know if I’m crazy?”
“No. How will you know if Brenda does what you want? Is someone really watching her? How’d you know she’d be home? How’d you know I even had a wife?”
All good questions. And I hadn’t asked myself any of them. I remember one day in class, I think it was sixth grade, Mrs. Luntz taught us decimals. It was depressing to learn that our previous teachers had lied to us, that moving from one to two was no longer a short, simple step because an endless amount of numbers came in between. My whole life, as soon as I figure something out, it turns out a million details I could never imagine so could never anticipate pop up and threaten to throw me off track and I have to hurry up to regain my balance.
“You got me. It was a bad plan. Lot of luck on my side, though. After all, you’re tied to a chair and she was home, so my plan could’ve been lots worse.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Justice.” I could’ve gone on. I could’ve explained how he had torn apart my family and that society demanded retribution. But I left my explanation at that one word. I had an unforeseen problem to tackle.