September 14th, 2016. 7:30PM
Burlwood, Indiana
Nikki quickly stripped off her work clothes, she couldn't stand the smell of grease and cheap food that followed her home from Uncle Jim's Pancake House every day that she worked. It was severe enough a problem that she had a hamper with a lid into which she immediately pitched everything she was wearing after each shift that she pulled. When the hamper built up, she carried the sealed vessel to Kay's Laundry on Route 4 and plugged her nose as she dumped the contents into an available washing machine to rinse away the stench of less than minimum wage and sausage links.
Once nude, she would hop into the claustrophobic shower of her rented home and washed the stink from her hair and flesh with strong exfoliating cleansers and conditioners. Refreshed and clean, she would pull on a pair of fresh leggings and slip into an oversized t-shirt to lounge for the remainder of the evening.
A typical night lately involved the microwaving of a TV dinner, usually purchased from the discount grocery store since tips had been light in the weak economy, and then parking in front of the nearly microscopic television she owned for an evening of whatever happened to be on the broadcast channels she received over the air.
It was as she was examining what remained in the freezer on this particular night, which wasn't much, that a heavy yet gentle knock sounded out on her door. Possibilities raced through her mind when she heard it, and she cycled through many scenarios nervously for a moment before closing the fridge. It couldn't be the landlord, as she had paid him a few days ago. It couldn't be a repo man coming to ask for the keys to her car, because he had come last month and simply towed her vehicle away in the dark of the night. It couldn't be the sheriff's department, because she didn't have any issues outstanding that would bring them to her home. It couldn't be DCS, because Sammy had been living with her mother for nearly two years now, she couldn't endanger him if she tried.
It could be her friend Genie from work who gave her rides to and from the restaurant asking for her payment, but why would she wait until an hour after she dropped her off to come back and insist on collecting her debt? Wondering all the way, she walked nervously to the door and looked out through the peep-hole to see who was bothering her.
To her surprise, or more accurately to her delight, she saw that it was Jacob standing on her doorstep looking both apprehensive and disturbed. She looked down at her clothing for a moment, making sure what she was wearing wasn't too ratty to expose to him. Finding that her black leggings were clean and in one piece and that the Indianapolis Colts T-shirt one of her ex-boyfriends had left her was presentable, she quickly unlocked her door as she'd decided that her outfit was as good as it could get.
"Hey!" She greeted him excitedly.
He didn't hold her enthusiasm against her, as she couldn't have known the depths of the depression that he was in. This was due in part to his being careful to keep its hands from pulling at his face in the way it generally did. This episode had started as he drove back from Garthby, having learned that he was fighting City Hall even more directly than he realized in his quest to clear Chucky of the charges leveled against him. That set of facts coupled with the memories of his mother that were stirred, the memories of crystal meth and Ron Boudreaux, combined to forge a dejection that was mighty and tyrannical. The memories of lies, the memories of death, the fear of what was to come -- it all gelled and ran together like the innards of an ice pack to take him on a journey to a cold and lonely void.
In the throes of this episode, he longed for someone to reach out to and realized just how incredibly alone he was. His marriage was over, he would never see his wife again. With her went his son, who he would similarly never hug or tuck in for the evening forevermore. His ally in this affair, Donnell, was so angry at him that they were likely as estranged as he was from Tracy. Chucky was in jail, and it looked as though he'd be staying there for a good period of time. There was no one for him to turn to, no one to soothe his soul or offer comfort in his time of need.
It was strange to him that losing touch with Launchpad mattered as much as it did, since he hadn't talked to the man in nearly twenty years and had never meant to speak with him again anyway. Still, in the suffocating embrace of this loneliness, losing Donnell seemed like a big deal. There would be a visit with Chuck the next morning, and that would be his only contact with anyone he'd ever held close before double indemnity, which seemed eminent now in the face of the mounting evidence that -- innocent or guilty -- his friend was likely bound for prison, if not for the execution chamber.
All in all, for everything that Jacob Garrett Gigu?re had or had not managed to be, in the sunset of his life, he found that had no one.
Except, of course, for this girl. This child compared to him, who seemed to give half a damn whether or not he was still breathing at the present, which was more than he could say for all of the others. Stricken with that knowledge, understanding what it meant, he felt an uncontrollable urge to be with her as the black waters rolled and frothed in his mind. He could feel the sadness in his chest, an emptiness and vacancy that was almost painful as he cruised his busted vehicle towards Chucky's trailer. It was this hole in his heart that led him to stop at fourteen-forty Applewood, with no clear conception of what he expected to gain in stopping. He knew he couldn't be alone right now, because if he was it would be the end, so perhaps this was a last ditch effort to stave off that final solution.
If he would've continued to Chucky's, if he were to find himself surrounded by the dank and darkened walls of a condemned friend's home this evening, a place where there had been so much positive energy in the past but was now no more than a void of any such emotions, he would surely fire his Beretta a second time on this day. That scared him, because it wasn't really what he wanted deep inside, even though he craved the rest so severely. When he thought about the taste of the steel, the flavor of the gun oil, the smell of the cordite, his heart would start to pounding with anxiety again and he would feel that terrible screaming in his mind; the screaming that wanted both. The schizophrenic angel and devil on his shoulders that both wanted life and death and were confused between themselves, and their screaming -- fuck -- that horrific discordant screaming from the two of them.
When he imagined the blackness that would follow when he granted and denied their wishes together and all at once, when he considered the complete and total absence of being that was kin to the oblivion of the days before his birth, his chest felt heavier yet and his breathing became strangely labored as his heart played a back-beat with abnormal syncopations. He wanted to die, but not on this particular night, so he needed to reach for Nikki... the only thing he had left.
"Hi," he said in a tone that was considerably muted as compared to hers. "How are you?"
When he spoke, she heard what she couldn't see as a result of his deception. She knew where he was, she understood the darkness of his world. "I'm doing fine," she said softly, holding out her hands in front of her for him to take if he so desired.
Like lightning to a rod atop a building that scrapes the clouds, his hands were drawn to hers. He took them both immediately, feeling their softness and warmth, and he wished to never let them go. His grasp was tender at first, as gentle as her offering, but it quickly grew to a powerful squeeze as though he was holding on to life itself in her palms. Closing his eyes and losing himself in the feeling, he said nothing and did nothing.
"It's okay," she said, and her voice was angelic to his ears. On its wings he drifted further away, his essence lifting from his body yet again until it was swirling, swirling over his head and he was looking down on the two of them in their connection.
The vision disturbed him, because he could see his weakness, he could see his frailty. Never before had he beheld such things in himself, and never before did he imagine such a depth of the bottom was possible. His psyche cried out in objection, beating a gavel of imagined strength and artificial bravado, both
of which had fled from him with his desire to exist so long ago. The cries were pathetic, and their call to order would go unanswered as his legs shook with a level of anxiety and fear that he had never known.
"Come in," she said, pulling with her arms at the manly hands that had fully engulfed and overcome her own to the point that they were beginning to go numb.
When she'd dragged him across the threshold, his sight returned to the level of his own eyes and he forced his lids to open upon the place. At first, he saw only her. Gentle and serene, she appeared as an angel to him with her kind smile and loving eyes. Looking down, he realized her wrists were turning red with the squeeze he'd applied to her hands, so he struggled against his urges to let them go. Once they were free, she tried to be casual in her shaking of them to restore blood flow, but he saw it and felt guilty at once.
"I'm sorry," he managed to say through the distortion of his reality, through his temporary loss of control.
"For what?" She asked kindly, as though he'd done nothing to hurt her while her hands were cherry red.
"I didn't know where else to go," he added honestly, his voice as shaky as his legs upon her brown shag carpet.
"You're always welcome here," she replied. "I'm glad you came."
Wondering if this was true or just a front, wondering if it was even real to begin with, he simply nodded. Everything was a blur to him, all of the feelings and emotions had congealed and left him in an altered state. A state of darkness and despair, a state of misery and desperation, a state of uncertainty and confusion. Even as he stood, he wondered what he was doing in this place.
Or was he at this place at all?
Had he already pulled the trigger?
Had he already eaten a bullet?
Had he run the light at Hacker road and been killed in a collision while chasing the blue LeSabre?
He wasn't sure, everything was so disjointed, so disconnected. Everything was so surreal. In the haze, he wondered what exactly he sought from Nikki Spencer. She was just a young girl with whom he really had no business being at such a vulnerable time in his life.
But was he really with her?
Or was this just where he wanted to be?
Why did he want to be there?
"Are you hungry?" She asked, and he realized that he was. He hadn't eaten all day, hadn't given it a second thought until she posed the question.
"A bit," he replied, trying to downplay even his most primal urges to avoid being swallowed by the more arcane.
"That could be a problem," she chuckled, turning to the refrigerator. "I haven't been shopping in a few days, I don't really have a lot!"
"Do you like pizza?" He asked numbly, not intending to impose anyway.
"Who doesn't?" She smiled, but the smile quickly fell when she went for her miniature purse and continued. "I'll go in for half with you."
Seeing right through her, knowing she was broke, he refused her offer. He would pay the bill. For all he knew, it didn't much matter anyway because he was in Heaven... or, more likely, in Hell.
She found a menu she'd received in the mail from a local parlor and they quickly realized they both enjoyed the same toppings. Before five minutes had passed, they'd decided on a large deep dish with pepperoni, sausage, green pepper and mushrooms. This only furthered his perception that this was all an illusion. There had been no disagreement, no back and forth debate. Nothing ever went that way. Why should this?
The back and forth banter and the agreement they made so easily pulled him up just a bit. If this was death, it wasn't so terrible. If it was life, there were signs of promise. Trying to focus on whatever this was, he started looking around her place as she called in the order. The trailer itself was in pretty rough shape, worse even than he'd found Chucky's to be in on close inspection. Her furniture seemed a perfect fit for it, though; all of it old and worn down, the wooden items clearly being constructed of cheap particle board that was struggling to hang on in the face of passing time and the weight of junk and cheap decorations upon them. Her small and practically antique television was fitted with a digital converter box, and she was still using a landline to communicate via telephone. It was obvious in the blight that the girl lived on a shoe-string budge, that much required no expert analysis.
Among the faux-wood pieces of furniture was an oblong table against the wall next to the television stand. On it were several framed photos, which drew his attention. One picture seemed old and featured people likely in their thirties with a little girl, presumably her parents with her as a child. Another was one of her senior pictures, marked Class of 2013 which immediately made him feel old and like a creep on the whole. He'd graduated thirteen years before her, which meant she was probably a toddler when he was marrying his estranged wife. Hell, he had an eight year old son struggling to learn how to live when she was still in school.
There were two more pictures on the table that drew his interest much more than the ones that were easily deciphered. The first was clearly a hospital photo of an infant, and there was a card near the baby that read Samuel Spencer, December 7th, 2012. This was a conundrum, as he was forced to either assume that her parents had conceived a child very late in life or concede that Nikki had given birth during her junior year of high school. Neither option was entirely unheard of, but there had been no mention of a son on Nikki's part since they met. Did that mean she'd given the child up for adoption? If that were the case, why did she have the kid's picture on her table? Wouldn't that be terribly painful? Were her parents were raising him? If that were the case, why hadn't she mentioned him? Was she ashamed?
In thinking about it, though, he realized she really hadn't mentioned a whole lot of anything to him. She had been like a sponge, absorbing what he put out and offering little of herself in response. Their relationship had been pretty one-sided when it came to the exchange of information. When it was all boiled down, he barely knew anything about her at all. This revelation troubled him, because it meant he'd been the same man to her that he'd been to everyone else in his life. Always dishing out, never reciprocating, never thinking about anything beyond himself.
Christ, he was an asshole.
The fourth and final picture looked very recent, and it featured Nikki holding a terrified looking boy of about four years old on her lap as it cried and reached for the camera. That didn't bode well for a fantastic motherly relationship with the child, if it was her child, and it seemed like an odd choice for its own frame and place amongst her treasured memories.
"He's mine," Nikki said just after thanking the pizza parlor on the phone, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking. Hanging up the phone in the kitchen, she strolled to his side and looked over the photos with him. "I tried to raise him once I got out of school, but I couldn't afford day care. My mother has him in Saint Louis, where I'm from, for now. As soon as I can get on my feet, he's gonna come back and live with me again," she explained.
Jake was at a loss for words, as he was still half engulfed in his crisis and half unsure what was appropriate to say in such a situation.
"He's cute," he offered half-heartedly, even though it was true. He wondered who and where the father was and why he wasn't involved, but decided that those things were neither his business nor pleasant topics to touch on in light conversation.
"Eighteen dollars for the pizza," she explained. "I can get the tip, if you want."
"No," Jake said as he reached for his wallet. "I've got it. Based on the size of your purse, you can't have more than a few dollars to your name or you'd have a blowout on your hands."
"Hey!" She chuckled sweetly. "I paid a lot of money for that purse! It's a Michael Kors!"
"Right," he returned her smile, "and you probably couldn't stuff the receipt in it to save your life!"
Digging out twenty-one bucks, he didn't even process the fact that this meant he was down to one-hundred and seventy-seven dollars for the
balance of his investigation. Knowing wouldn't have mattered anyway, he could feel that things were winding down to an end... and not a good one, either.
Wiping such deeper thought from his mind, he deferred to the comfort of being with Nikki and tried to keep it all as superficial as possible. He would keep it light, and he would be unselfish; those were the goals.
She asked if he wanted to try to find something to watch on television while they waited for food, and he agreed to do so. Initially, he sat on the right end of the sofa while she took up a position on the left with an empty cushion between them. She clicked through her limited channels and found little that caught either of their interests, so they settled on some totally unfunny sitcom and watched in silence as the laugh-track went insane with the hilarity.
When the pizza arrived, they ate at the kitchen table and made small talk about Burlwood and The Meadows. She didn't dig into his past in the town, and he didn't offer any details because those were not things he was keen to share at this point in his life, and this wasn't all about him. He didn't ask anything probing about her either, figuring her story was her own business and she would offer up whatever she felt comfortable offering, which amounted to practically nothing.
There was no deep conversation, there was no discussion about the circumstances of one-another's lives, there were no soul-to-soul moments... and that was perfect, at least for Jake. Once he got over his feelings of disconnection and uncertainty, he actually started to feel good. For the first time in quite awhile, his mind was clear and he was concerned with nothing. That was glorious, and he reveled in it as they spoke about the weather and the terrible smell of sewage that permeated the trailer park.
They talked, they chuckled, they laughed and they just were. It was as if they'd constructed a giant bubble around fourteen-forty Applewood and had locked everything and everyone besides the two of them out. They were stranded alone on a desert island, they were stuck together in a comfortable but broken down elevator, they were the last two people on Earth, and it was phenomenal... for the both of them.
Once dinner was over, both of them were feeling rather tired from all of the talking about nothing and the fullness of their bellies, so they reported back to the lumpy couch and television. Nikki turned off the lights, so that the darkness was broken only by the images on the TV. There was a romantic comedy movie on, which would never have been Jake's first choice, but they settled in to watch it for a few minutes in the same positions they had sat in previously. After about a half an hour it was passed nine, and Nikki announced that he should take his shoes off and stay awhile. With a slight chuckle and smile, he did just that by simply kicking them off.
Not long after he'd shed his first piece of clothing, Nikki decided it was time for her to get a bit more comfortable for the remainder of the movie. With no hesitation or pretense, she shifted right in her seat and threw her legs up on the couch, resting her head directly on Jake's upper left thigh. At first, he was afraid that she would feel it tense and lock up, but it did no such thing in response to receiving her. Apparently, he was very much relaxed. Reaching for the back of her head, she removed her hair tie and let her long onyx locks spill over his leg and crotch, which was remarkably stimulating to him.
As he sat there, almost enjoying having her there with his arms still locked at his sides, he felt that stirring that she had inspired in him so frequently over the course of the past several days. As near as she was to him, she likely felt the stirring too -- there was nothing he could do to avoid it. The denim of his pants tightened, things shifted and changed, it had to be obvious. Within seconds of it starting, just as it was reaching totality, she rolled onto her back so that her face was looking directly up at his, which he turned down to meet eyes with her once again.
Just like she had at the carnival, she lowered her voice to something just above a whisper as she started into his eyes and asked "what are you thinking about?"
There was no lying in this situation. There was no ducking or dodging that he could do, she was right there. She certainly knew full well what was on his mind, though this instance required less intuition than the first time she'd called him out on it.
Still, he couldn't look into her gray eyes and say exactly what he was thinking about. He couldn't possibly tell her what he was imagining her doing. He couldn't spell it out in so many words, he couldn't verbalize something so obscene as what he was fantasizing while the weight of her head pressed against a place where only Tracy Swete's had pressed before. He couldn't say I'm thinking about you blowing me, because that just wasn't the kind of man he was.
Seeing her waiting for her response, seeing her want him to spell it out in so many words, he simply pulled his left hand from beside his body and gently ran his fingers through her hair. She smiled slyly, intuiting exactly what he was thinking and being fully open to it, being fully receptive to the idea.
There was a hesitation in his eyes, though, which she could see just as well. There was a hard-stop, there was an objection that he couldn't overcome. He wanted it, but he wouldn't have it -- he wouldn't allow it... not yet, at least.
Respecting that, respecting him and his boundaries, she sat up and pulled at his legs until he swung them up onto the couch. Being a thick man, he took up much of the space. Being a petit girl, however, she still had room to shimmy up from his waist until her face was buried in his chest and the rest of her body was pressed against his. Turning her head up to him, she offered and was taken up on another single, solitary and sweet kiss. Taking a deep breath, she laid her right arm over top of him and closed her eyes. Running her hands up and down his torso, she felt his gun strapped to his side in its shoulder holster. That turned her on more than he could ever know, more than even what she felt below, but she left it alone and moved on, running her palm from his thigh to his shoulder and back. She felt him take a similar deep breath and release it slowly, then felt his big left hand on her hip.
In time, they fell asleep. And they slept peacefully.
FORTY-SEVEN