No Fairy Tale

I could hear the rain coming down hard outside. It sounded like a giant was drumming his fingers on the roof. My office was dark. I had the Venetian blinds shut, the lights off. I sat at my desk alone, about a third of the way through a bottle of dangerously cheap scotch. I couldn’t afford anything better, and right now I felt like I didn’t deserve it even if I could.

My head felt heavy, and not just from the booze. My chest felt tight, as if someone had my heart in a chokehold. I felt myself nodding off for a minute, but forced myself to stay awake. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to sleep so that eventually I could wake up and have this whole thing be a dream.

I heard a knock at the door. No such luck for me. This was real as death and income tax.

She was here.

I saw her shadow in front of the door to my office. At first, I didn’t move. I hoped somehow she would go away.

She knocked on the door.

“Simon, I know you’re in there.”, I heard her say in that terrible voice that called out to me like the sirens calling Odysseus.

“Simon, stop playing games and let me in.”, she continued with a playful giggle.

Slowly, as if my feet were made of lead, I dragged myself up out of my chair, shuffled over to the door, and opened it. She ran inside, threw her arms around me, and kissed me. It was one of those beautiful kisses, where it feels like the whole world falls away and you’re the only two things left in the entire universe.

I never wanted it to end. But it had to.

Eventually she let go of me and turned on the lights in my office. I could see her in all her beauty now. Flowing auburn hair, ruby red lips that matched her red shoes, black wrap that partially covered the dark green dress that clung to her like grease to the fingers of a mechanic.

“Simon,” she said as she turned back to look at me, “why did you have the lights off?” Then she saw the open bottle on my desk. “And are you drunk?”

I stared at her stupidly, like a kid in school who couldn’t figure out a math problem.

“Simon, what’s the matter?”, she cooed. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“That’s just it baby.”, I replied after a long sigh. I felt at though I was about to fall over.

“Simon, you’re worrying me.”

“Baby, you better sit down.”, I told her as I motioned to one of the chairs in front of my desk.

She sat down in one of the battered old wooden chairs, as I sat down behind my desk again and took a big swig from the bottle.

“Baby, it’s about the DelRey kill.”

“The case I hired you to investigate? But Simon, you told me you solved it. My sister shot Mister DelRey, just like I thought, remember?”

“I know it was you baby.”, I said, almost choking on the words that I wanted more than anything else in the world not to have to say.

“What?”, she replied in disbelief. “Simon, what do you mean?”

“It wasn’t your sister, baby, it was you. You killed DelRey, and set your sister up to take the fall.”

“Simon, how could you ever accuse me of- “

“Damn it, Vera, don’t play games with me!”, I yelled, finally loosing control. “If any part of you still loves me, then come clean!”

She went silent, slumping in her chair, looking at me like a dog that had just been scolded for peeing on the living room rug.

“I did some checking with the doorman over at the Hawthorne again. He says the night DelRey got it he saw the shooter walking with a little limp on the left side. Exactly the same kind of limp you have from that old tennis injury you told me about.”

“Simon, you can’t possibly believe that idiot!”, Vera almost screamed as she bolted up out of her chair. “Besides, didn’t you tell me that the first time you talked to him he said the shooter had blonde hair, just like my sister does?”

Quickly, I opened a drawer in my desk, pulled out a blonde wig, and put it on the desk in front of her.

“Where, where, where did you get this?”, she stammered, sitting back down again.

“After talking to the doorman, I decided I might as well check your car again too. Found this in the glovebox.”

She looked like she was going to cry.

“It all fits together, baby. You hated old man DelRey because he found out you’d been stealing from the safe at the Red Lotus Club for the last two years. He fired you, threatened to call the cops too. So, you decided to get rid of him before anyone else found out. Disguised yourself with a blonde wig and a dress you borrowed from your sister. Hid in a dark alley and shot him as we coming out the front door of the Hawthorne. Almost no witnesses, and the few there were couldn’t tell you from your sister in the dark. And then, to top it all off, you hire me to investigate the case, then feed me bogus clues so I’ll support your story that your sister pulled the trigger. Am I right?”

She sat for a moment, frozen like she’d just looked Medusa in the eye. Then she nodded her head, slowly and silently.

“Simon,” she said quietly, almost whispering, “what are you going to do?”

“What I have to do, baby. What I have to.”, I answered before taking another swig from the bottle.

“Simon, how could you! You said you loved me!”

“I do love you, baby, I do. But I can’t spend the rest of my life with a murderer and a liar. That’s no life. Nothing is worth that. And if you really love me as much as you say you do, you wouldn’t ask me to either.”

Suddenly, she stood up from her chair, reached into her handbag, and pulled out a 38 revolver, probably the same one she’d used to kill DelRey. She pointed it straight at my heart.

I looked at her coldly. I wasn’t afraid. Without her, I had no reason to live. Shot or not shot, I didn’t see any difference at this point.

“Baby, I already called the cops before you got here, so that won’t do any good.”, I said lifelessly. “Besides, you already hurt me worse than I’ve ever been hurt in my life. Catching a slug or two won’t make it any worse than it already is.”

She stared at me, her face alternating between rage and sadness. Her hands trembled.

“Do what you have to do.”, I mumbled, slumping in my chair.

The gun slipped from her hand and clattered onto my desk. She began to cry. After what felt like forever but was probably really only about half a minute, she managed to pull herself together enough to start talking again.

“Simon,” she sniffed, “you know that I really do love you, right?”

I nodded silently.

“Two days ago, after you said you solved the case and that this whole thing was going to be over soon, I was so happy.”, she continued, barely able to squeak out sounds in between crying. “When you said that you wanted to stay with me forever, even if it meant closing up the office and moving away with me, I felt like I was lighter than air.”

I remembered when I had told her that. I meant ever word of it. I had never felt this way about anyone before, and part of me knew I would never feel this way about anyone else again even if I lived to be a hundred. It had felt like a fairy tale, the kind where the prince and princess go off at the end and live happily ever after.

Too life ain’t a fairy tale, eh?

Suddenly, in the distance, we heard the siren of a squad car screaming. The cops were late as usual, but they were close and getting closer.

Suddenly, I felt a twinge of regret in my heart. What the hell had I done? Turning the only woman I’d ever loved over to the cops? She’d probably get the chair for this for heaven’s sakes!

“Vera, maybe we could- “, I blurted out, my mind desperately scrambling to come up with some sort of way to get out of this.

“No, Simon, no, it’s the end of the line for me.”, she replied, almost choking on her own words, as she raised an open hand to tell me to stop talking, stop planning. “What you said earlier, you’re right. I still do love you, I really, truly do. And if I still love you, I can’t make you cover up for what I did. I did what I did, and now I need to deal with it myself.”

The siren got louder. We heard the squad car screech to a halt on the wet street outside. Then he heard the doors open, then slam as two cops got out, their shoes squeaking on the rain-slick sidewalk.

“Baby, you’ll fry for this!”, I yelled. How funny. A couple minutes ago I was talking sense and she was crazy. Now it was the other way around.

“I know, Simon, I know.”

We heard the heavy footfalls of the cops coming up the stairs. I sprang out of my chair, grabbed her like a drowning man groping for a life preserver, and we had one last kiss, like we wanted to hold on to this moment forever. I suppose we did.

Then there was a knock on the door.

“Vera Jones? Miss Vera Jones?”, the cop called out.

Vera pulled herself away from me, straightened out her hair, and opened the door.

“Yes officer?”, she replied, acting as if nothing was wrong and she was just being stopped for speeding instead of arrested for blowing a man’s head off.

“Miss Jones, you’re under arrest for the murder of Carlos DelRey.”, the first cop said almost mechanically as she put her wrists out for him to cuff her.

“You have the right to an attorney. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”, the second cop gave the speech he’d given a hundred times before at the first one finished cuffing her. When he was done talking, he turned around and noticed me standing in the doorway, looking dead like a puppet with his strings cut.

“Oh, sorry to disturb you sir. Have a good evening.”, he said awkwardly as he tipped his hat. The two began to march her down the hallway and towards the stairs. She turned her head and took one last look back at me, like Orpheus’ wife looking back at the underworld and just as doomed.

“I love you.”, she mouthed.

I said nothing. Did nothing. Just stood there dumb like a statue.

Soon, the three of them disappeared down the stairway. I ran back into my office and over to the window that faced the street. After a little while, I opened the blinds and saw them walking over to the squad car. She ducked her head and got in the back, then the two cops got in the front, turned on the lights and sirens, and drove off into the dark and rain. I listened to the siren as it got fainter and fainter and eventually I couldn’t hear anything at all anymore except for the rain on the roof.

And I never saw Vera Jones again.