Falling in Love Read online

  Scene Two

  After several weeks she thought he had forgotten about it, but that wasn’t Chauncey’s way.

  He was putting some thought into it. Buying her a dress and delivering it to her room. Sending flowers, making a mockery of courting her, winking at her, being solicitous of her comforts, paying her little flatteries in front of every employee and all the customers, it was all a bad business and her fear built. It was his way of telling her.

  He was showing her off.

  They had dinner at the finest restaurant in town, far away in the brilliantly lit uptown area, Chauncey’s bodyguards relaxed and confident as they stood in an alcove off to one side. He plied her with compliments and champagne, and she forced herself to smile, and to be flattered, and to eat and to drink. She remained polite but aloof.

  After drawing it out for hours, peering into her eyes and trying to read her every thought and feeling, he seemed satisfied with her discomfort. Calling for the check, the boys came and escorted them, not out the front doors as she expected, but around the back of the kitchen, down several crooked alleys and then into the back of a barn-like red brick building. Her fears mounted. They climbed an impossible number of stairs past smelly male bodies and the reek of beer and tobacco.

  The light above was bright but the stairs were dim and her flesh crawled as Chauncey held her hand and assisted her. She climbed the stairs with ladylike grace, in her ridiculously high heels and tightly-constricting red silk dress, her cleavage exposed to leering faces peering down from above.

  He stood and beckoned proudly.

  They were in an amphitheatre, square in plan, with rows and rows of white-painted plank benches plunging down into a centre well. The noise was horrendous, with hundreds of people smoking and drinking, all of them speaking at once. The room was brightly lit, except for the mysterious hole in the middle of the room, which was dark.

  Chauncey’s boys cleared a way, and he led her to a small door along a passage on the right side of the hall.

  “Private box.” The boastful tone annoyed Chauncey for a second, and his face darkened.

  “Very impressive.” She did her best, and his face cleared up in a beatific smile.

  They sat as an announcer barked and nattered at the people from a long brass megaphone. The lights over the audience began to dim as the lights over the centre well went on one by one.

  There was a man in there, a huge man with a sword hanging in his right hand. From behind, she made out the head and shoulders of another man, but he was obscured from the neck down by the intervening heads of people in the front row. The noise began to abate.

  Her hand flew up to her mouth.

  “No!”

  Olaf’s head came up and the great chin lifted and their eyes locked.

  His mouth opened but no sound came out.

  The sword dropped from his hand just as the bell rang and with a snarl, the smaller man stepped forward quickly, perhaps sensing his only chance at life, and with a wild swing of a heavy scimitar, stuck Olaf in the side of the neck with all of his strength and a grunt of exertion.

  Olaf’s head fell to the sand, staring off straight along the sandy floor as she gasped. The magnificent body tottered and then fell as his opponent stepped back and then flung his arms upward in a wild gesture of triumph and relief.

  “Damn!” Chauncey was furious.

  She would be lucky to survive the next few minutes.

  His eyes turned and locked on hers.

  “I had a lot of money invested in him.” He grimaced and then spat out the front of the booth, drawing a curse from someone out there who glared until the bodyguards glared back and showed signs of restlessness.

  “Still, I suppose it’s not your fault.”

  She tried to pull herself away from Olaf’s dead eyes as the victor strutted around the ring and Chauncey marveled at his bad fortune in the foulest tones.

  Scene Three

  The night ended as she knew it must. Chauncey had all the power and his mood was artificially boisterous one minute and then bloody murderous the next. Chauncey hated disappointment, and he’d had a big one tonight.

  She knew she was in for it when he dismissed the boys outside of his bedroom.

  She had made no protest, simply clinging to the purse and maintaining her dignity.

  “Well, come in. Come in.” The lights were always on in Chauncey’s room.

  She stepped through the door. Chauncey flung his jacket over a chair and went to the side table where decanters stood.

  He came over with wine and helped her out of her wrap.

  “Are you all right, old girl?” He lifted the glass to his mouth and stepping back, looked her over from head to toe as she desperately tried to look bold and brassy, and not wither under his gaze from disgust.

  “You, are a very beautiful woman, Selena.”

  She swallowed wine, to numb herself.

  “Thank you. You’re very kind, sir.”

  The prim formality was a lucky impulse. He smiled, drinking again, and then putting down the glass.

  Taking the glass from her, he set that aside too.

  Selena’s heart began to throb in her chest and she was afraid he would feel it within her as he drew her in close.

  He kissed her, long and deep and hard, and she tried to respond as best she could.

  His feet rocked from side to side as his hands crept ever so slowly down to her buttocks. Her arms came up and she held him lightly by the shoulders as they rotated in a half circle. He kneaded her bum firmly, the breath noisy through their noses and the sound of light music coming in through the open window from half a block away.

  She kept her eyes closed and feigned unbridled passion.

  He walked her in reverse until the backs of her knees hit the bed.

  He pulled his mouth away. Looking down, he took the dress in two hands and ripped it down, until the thing fell away and dropped past her knees. She lifted her feet and it fell away. She stood stock still, wearing nothing but her shoes and a string of artificial pearls, waiting.

  He stared at her breasts, taking them in his hands and then he forced her back onto the bed, with their eyes locked the whole time.

  She wiggled, and he crawled, mouths locked, until they were higher, with the pillows under her head.

  She gasped and stroked his shoulders and his head. As he bent to kiss her tummy and then came up again to suck on her left nipple, her right hand went up to her hair, elegantly curled and coifed and perfumed just so. Chauncey was paying and cost was no object. Her fingertips found what she sought.

  As he lifted and straightened up, they were face to face. Her legs spread and wrapped around him. He grinned, licking his lips and then his full weight was coming down.

  Stroking his chest, popping the buttons on his blue silk shirt, she found the ribs.

  Chauncey came in for another kiss and she inserted the sturdy three-inch hatpin between the ribs and into the heart with a furious shove.

  His eyes bugged out and he raised up, and she pulled the needle out and plunged it down again just above the collarbone with all of her force, as Chauncey’s right hand in pure reflex pulled back to punch her.

  He never finished the move. A spreading black stain soaked his shirt and his mouth opened and he stared at her in puzzlement. Blood bubbled up from the back of his throat.

  He looked like a lost little boy.

  “Why?”

  She gave a hard shove and Chauncey went face-first onto the carpet beside the bed, legs trailing behind but still on the edge of the mattress.

  Selena got up from the other side and went around and stood over the body. She spat on Chauncey Mifflin.

  “Because I liked him.”

  She gave the inert form a slight kick but he was clearly gone. Whirling decisively, she went to where Chauncey’s wall safe stood habitually unlocked.

  He always bragged that he was the only schmuck in town who never had to worry about locking the safe. Outside th
e room she heard vague mutters from the bodyguards, probably drinking on their hard kitchen chairs, and not paying much attention. They knew all about it by now, of course. Chauncey’s habits. Chauncey’s tastes. His appetites.

  Sure enough, there were stacks of greenbucks and a half a dozen bags of heavy coins, with the door hanging open two inches. Selena made do with the bills, as it was bulky but at least silent in the carrying. She wrapped herself in her shawl after quickly pinning her dress together with paper clips from Chauncey’s desk drawer. The blood stains were all up high, hidden by the shawl. She checked herself in the mirror.

  Going to the window, she stepped over the sill and onto the fire-escape.

  She spared one last look into the dead eyes.

  “Because I liked him. You bastard.”

  She pulled a lever and the steps dropped down with a screech that split the night.

  She tap-tapped down the stairs with her chin up and an air of quiet calm, her bulging purse clutched firmly under her arm.

  The hulking figure of Hal loomed at the mouth of the darkened alley.

  “Evening, Hal.”

  His jaw dropped and he tipped his hat. He watched her walk by. She smiled sweetly, for he had once been a good man and more than most, he was polite. Big, strong and not particularly gifted in the head, Hal was just misguided, even genuinely kind at times, a victim as much as anyone else around here.

  “Good evening, Miss Selena.”

  He stood there with a bottle of beer in one hand and a battered clay pipe in the other and watched with mournful, lonely thoughts as Selena walked up the street into the darkness that covered a multitude of sins.

  The Logic of Love

  Scene One

  Twenty-six years old and still not married, according to her mother. Constable Laine Barrett left the station after shift change and briefing. Her first call was a minor roadside incident which turned out to be nothing much. Pickup in a shallow ditch. That was on Brittelsfield Road, and then dispatch wanted her somewhere else.

  The next incident was just some old fellow who had pulled off to answer his cellular phone and got sucked in by the dense snow, plowed off to one side. He couldn’t get it going again. He was another one with no snow tires. He and the wife were very apologetic. She was legally blind or maybe she would have been able to answer while they kept going. They’d been meaning to get around to buying snow tires.

  Two in a row.

  She’d seen a few of them lately.

  Dispatch advised her to hold up in a central location.

  Proceeding north on Pontiac Road, a north-south gravel side-road with no houses for several kilometres in each direction, there was a car coming towards her. She kept well to the right in the blowing, drifting snow flurries, checking her rear-view mirror as the oncoming car passed her patrol vehicle. It was all open fields out here, and there was nothing to stop the snow from drifting across the road. Her car punched through the small drifts with ease.

  The other vehicle seemed to be going pretty slow, and with a quick look in the side-mirror, she noted the light over the rear license plate was burned out.

  There were no houses and hence no driveways along this stretch. What were they doing there at all? It was the middle of nowhere. She backed off and slowed down. She managed a three-point turn, keeping it on the hard surface, which with gravel sticking out and frozen into it, had pretty good traction. She set off in cautious pursuit.

  The small silver car stopped at the next intersection. He signaled and then turned left. There was nothing down there for at least a couple of kilometres.

  Again, the vehicle didn’t seem to be going very fast. It was an eighty kilometre per hour zone. Most people did go a bit faster than that, even in the worst conditions sometimes. They knew what they could get away with consistently. Laine gradually came up close behind the vehicle and then hit the lights.

  The driver pulled over immediately, doing a nice, calm, professional job of it with no games and no hesitation.

  ***

  After reading off the license plate for dispatch and listening for a moment, Laine hung up the dashboard microphone, and stepped out of the car. They had nothing on the registered owner. The owner was a local resident. A ten year-old car, it was really not a desirable item for thieves.

  It was best to keep an open mind, though

  She kept her hand on her holster and approached the driver’s door. There appeared to be only one occupant.

  “May I see your driver’s license, ownership and insurance, please?”

  “Ah, yes Ma’am.”

  His hands were a bit shaky, but then she could smell it and he’d have to be some kind of a fool not to know it.

  She took the documents back to her car for study.

  They appeared to be in order, all matching up nicely. The driver’s license photo more or less resembled the driver. Proper identification was a must. She notified the dispatcher.

  “He’s been burning a blunt or something. I’m going to ask him to step out.”

  “Roger that, Unit Nine. Fourteen’s not far.”

  “Thank you.”

  She approached the driver’s door again.

  “Sir, I’ll have to ask you to please step out of the vehicle.”

  The door opened and the man got out. He was half a head taller than her. Caucasian, brown hair, brown eyes. Good chin. He looked her in the eye, and raised his eyebrows. He gave a funny little sigh when he looked at her. She kind of liked that for some reason.

  “Would you mind stepping around to the back of the vehicle.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  She had him wait there, with the lights of the cruiser full on him. He seemed pretty cooperative. She took out her flashlight, and tried to keep her hand on her holster, which was arguably impossible when you were bending over and off balance. Nuts. Laine was a pretty good judge of characters and situations after a few years on the job.

  She bent in and opened up the glove-box.

  She checked the little compartment in the console and shone her light in the floor-wells of the back seat. She could clearly see him out through the rear window, standing patiently at ease, with his hands out of his pockets and making no sudden moves.

  Nice.

  She crouched way down and took a look under the seats. She dropped the sun visors in case he had stuffed anything up there. Nothing in the door pockets. There were no signs or smell of alcohol. No pills, no mysterious containers…just that smell. A lot of stale tobacco and a little bit of stale cold coffee smell was there too, just to make it interesting. Her nose was trained and experienced.

  She withdrew and went around to the cruiser again as he stood in the cold. Her door thudded. Her footsteps crunched over to him, her shadow large and looming. It was all very dramatic. Their breathing sounded loud in the sudden silence. The only sound other than their two idling engines was the trucks six or eight kilometres over to the west.

  She handed him back his papers.

  “Sir, have you been smoking marijuana?”

  “Ah, yes, Constable.” White vapor hung in front of his face.

  She was facing away from the wind and it just whipped away.

  With the wind chill, they said it was supposed to go down to minus twenty-five.

  “Do you have any on you?”

  “No, Constable. I chucked it.”

  “You chucked it? Where?”

  “On the road.”

  She considered it.

  “I can smell it in your car.”

  “Ah, yes, I know, Constable.”

  “I don’t like it when people lie to me.”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you, Officer.”

  “And you don’t have any on you?”

  “No, Ma’am.”

  “All right, sir. Your license plate bulb is burned out. That’s why I stopped you.”

  The guy took a quick look, and found it was true.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I probably have a spare in my
toolbox.”

  “Not too many people go down that road. Especially at night.”

  He just nodded.

  “How much marijuana have you smoked?”

  “I only had one joint, Constable. I just lit up. Then I saw you go by. Your taillights disappeared, and then I saw headlights, coming up where they had no right to be. There was just no way. I knew it was you.”

  He kept looking at her, blinking at more or less the expected rate…hmn.

  Nothing personal, it’s just that I saw you coming.

  “Okay. I’m going to ask you to put your hands on the back of your vehicle. Lean forward. Feet back. Feet farther apart. Back a bit more.” He was still cooperating. “Hold still, please. I’m just going to check your pockets. Do you have anything sharp in your pockets?’

  “Um. No, Ma’am. Nothing sharp in my pockets.”

  The man huddled there as she rummaged around with her left hand, her tight hand on the butt of her Colt and moving to one side or the other as necessary. Keeping an eye on his face and posture, necessarily much of her search was by feel.

  The keys were in the car, and the wallet was on the seat. He didn’t have much on him, although he did seem to have a lot of pockets.

  “Nothing in your shoes, sir?”

  “Ah, no, Ma’am.” He seemed resigned, not particularly resentful.

  His head turned and he gave her a grin.

  That one came out of nowhere.

  Spontaneity.

  Huh. I like it.

  “All right, I’ll take your word for it.” That grin said something about him, anyway.

  She gave him back his cigarettes and lighter. There were a few small coins. Nothing much.

  “All right, sir. Get back in your car and wait for me there, okay?” It was a standard ploy, almost.

  The really dumb ones, the ones with paper, or warrants, or restrictions on their bail, sometimes took off. They knew they were going back to jail. There were the wild spirits, and every town had a few of those, mostly young and stupid, drunk or whatever, but this one wasn’t one of them.