A SICILIAN PIE warmed in the oven, a deluge submerged the city outside his window, and a virgin fifth of Seagram’s Extra Dry begged to be consumed.
He’d been trying to wait for Reuben, who promised to stop by after his dinner party. In the interim, Reg cleaned the apartment, discarding weeks of pizza boxes, gin bottles, and old newspapers. Even the Hoover was paroled from its closet prison, and the floors given a good suction.
Fare had roughed him up pretty good, both in the ambush and underground bunker. Captain Freeman was right. He looked like burnt black licorice two nights ago, and still did. The golf ball sized lump had shrunk to a marble, but still hurt. His ribs weren’t managing any better. Jeremy’s kick bruised two of them. The reflection staring back at him was as painful as it was grotesque. Bah, it doesn’t matter, he thought. The case was solved, the Animal was out of commission, and he had a feeling things would be looking up.
He flipped off the bathroom light and abandoned his chilly porcelain surroundings to check on his pie. All the way, he shook his head at the clip of Johnathan Fare playing in his head. Of him screaming, clutching his chest, and collapsing to the ground. A shame he had to die. Reuben said he couldn’t be helped. Reg disagreed. The hammer fell in Reuben’s favor. Now that Johnathan was dead, he couldn’t be helped.
Reg closed the oven door and cranked the heat up a notch on the dial. Crispy crust is the only way to go.
Johnathan Fare getting help may not have been in the cards, but perhaps justice for the atrocities he suffered will be. Captain Freeman promised to get in touch with Frankenmuth authorities, to investigate the Artemisian cover-up. Reg hoped that meant inserting an enema up their asses, and slamming them on whatever came out.
As for his own troubles, he would bring flowers and Madelin’s favorite sparkling wine to her house next week, and apologize. One of his uniformed white friends would have to go with him to get her to open the door. But once she did, he was confident he could coax her into receiving his peace offering. Under the influence, Madelin is susceptible to sound reasoning. He might have remembered that the first time, if he wasn’t so preoccupied with Carol’s leaving, and catching the Animal. Now that the bad guy is caught, scratch that, dead, there was only Carol’s leaving to focus on.
Sometime after making good with Madelin, he would take a few weeks off to look for his wife. Their blissful, matrimonial reunion setting would entail a candle lit dinner, Luther Vandross, lasagna baked from scratch, and the blissful part, Carol Hanson Williams. Her hazel eyes of seduction would be all the aphrodisiac he needed. The same eyes captured as a monument to beauty, in the picture he kept in his wallet.
A giddy spell shook his body at the thought of holding her in his arms again. I’m coming for you, baby, I’m coming. He scampered back into the bedroom to change out of his robe before Reuben arrived. The nightstand alarm read 10:30 PM. He thought again on his wife’s eyes, and even about the funky little beaded necklace she liked to wear.
As he slipped on his favorite black cotton T-Shirt, Reuben’s knock echoed through the apartment. A cheerful hum on his tongue, Reg hurried to let him in.
"What's shaking, partner?” he said.
Reuben carried an overnight bag. His face was shiny with rain. His frown like that of someone who had lost his best friend, in some horrific accident. Along with the puffy sacks under Reuben’s eyes, Reg put two and two together and came up with dinner party marital dispute. Must have been a whopper to make Reuben cry. Hope Gloria is okay, he thought.
Reg took the overnight bag, closed the door, and ushered him to the living room sofa. He sat beside him, placing the satchel between them.
"Want a shot?"
"Sure, Reg, I'll take one."
Reuben sounded possessed by the demon of depression. He wouldn't look up. He sat, slumped like a lump, with tears streaming down his cheeks. A trembling hand clasped the offered drink. He gulped the shot.
"Rube, I don’t know what happened, but I got your back. Stay here for as long as you need. Mi casa es su casa, hermano. Don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, too."
Reuben extended his shot glass. Without a word, Reg filled it again to the top of the line. Same as before, Reuben gulped like a thirsty man, then cleared his throat.
"I love you like a brother, and Gloria likes you too. There’s no easy way to tell you this, and if I don't just say it, I’ll never get it out."
Reg rubbed his back for support. "I‘m here for you."
"They found another of Fare's victims underground, not too far from the bomb shelter."
Reg’s rubbing hand stiffened.
"I-It was C-Carol." Reuben wiped his face on the back of his jacket sleeve. “Freeman thinks it happened when Fare’s medication was first changed, five months ago. Like maybe Jeremy wasn’t fully back, but still influencing him to kill.”
Reg’s hand fell limp off Reuben's back, plopping on the overnight bag. He felt himself floating. The air around him grew thinner, making it hard to breathe. He had heard the words, but wasn't sure what they meant. He needed to hear them again, needed to clarify their meaning.
"What did you say?"
"Reg, I just want you to know—"
"My question was, what did you say?” Reg glared at him. His chest felt heavy.
Reuben stared glumly down at the vacuumed apartment floor. Between tears rolling down his cheeks, he said, "The Animal killed your wife, Reg, and I’m sorry."
There were the words again. No mistaking them this time. His suspension returned. Ten feet in front of him, he fixated on the black, thirty-two-inch television screen. Reuben was no longer in the room. Then there was no more room. Reg stared deeper into the darkness, swearing he could make out an image within the onyx heart of his Mitsubishi.
It was just him and the black screen. A screen on which he had watched the lives of others play out, and often laughed at the outcome. A screen which was now broadcasting a show of a different kind, because the image he thought he saw came into focus.
It was himself. He was slipping on a banana peel, and falling into the abyss.
He felt the falling where he was sitting, and realized he was no longer watching it on the screen. He was in the abyss. Falling toward what, he didn’t know. It was strange. He had just heard that his wife was killed, and possibly sliced up a hundred different ways, by a psychotic, homicidal maniac, and he was as light as a feather.
"Reg?” Reuben said, snapping him back.
His head turned buoyantly in Reuben's direction.
"I called your sister. She said once I told you, she wanted you to call her right away. Kris thinks you’ll want space, but said she would come tonight if—”
"You told her before you told me? You bastard.”
"I was looking out for you. That’s why I bought my bag to stay the night."
Reuben’s words reached his ears filtered through the abyss. The only thing Reg heard was that his best friend told someone else first, that his wife was dead. Sister or not, he should have been the first to know. Suddenly, the man sitting across from him wasn’t his friend at all, but a stranger invading his space.
"Leave, Rube."
"I bought my bag. I’m staying the nig—"
"Get the hell out, now.”
Reuben saw the wicked in Reg’s eyes, and relented. At the door, he said, “I’ll sleep downstairs in the car. If you change your mind, buzz me and I’ll come up for a drink.” His heartfelt offer was answered by a slamming door.
Reg floated back to his seat on the couch in front of the screen. Maybe he shouldn't have kicked him out. If Reuben hadn’t found the blue prints for an underground bomb shelter, he would be dead right now.
Screw him. He should have told me first that Carol is... that Carol is...
"Oh, baby, I'm sorry. I should have been there to protect you. I should have listened to you." He lowered his head into his hands and wept.
His stream of tears became indistinguishable from the falling rain outside his window. The rain cleansed the atmosphere. His anguished tears washed away his compassion for humankind. If the world could take someone like Carol, it deserved whatever it had coming.
He was sobbed out, six shots in, and suspended again when his sister’s call came through. He couldn’t think of any more names to call himself, so he started from the beginning. By the time the phone stopped, without being answered, he’d covered half the book.
Burning food stench wafted through his dark place. On his way to chucking the bulk of his dinner in the trash, he took the phone off the hook. The rumbling in his belly forced him to salvage two of the least charred slices. If he was going to sit in front of the television, drinking and floating all night, he should at least eat something.
Reg hovered back to his perch of air, slices in tow. He snatched up the remote to distract himself from the ironic thought which popped into his head.
Carol was the one who feared a visit, telling her he had died by a suspect’s hand. He was the one who had received it instead.
He pressed the power button, and an announcer's voice joined him in the room. It was the tail end of a late night infomercial.
“… Bought to you by KIWI Incorporated. And remember, if it is not built KIWI, it's not built right.”
Rage entered Detective Reginald Thomas Williams’ soul. He now had a companion down in the abyss. A companion that wasn’t the silent type.
{Are you going to let them get away with this?}
"No, no I’m not.”
FIN.
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Irony 2—Gin Soaked Dreams
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