looked around at the four other patients in the room. Two played cards. One slept. The fourth was writing a letter. The prison doctor passed through her like she wasn’t even there!
“I tried to find you,” Tom said with a weak voice. “When I heard you were dead, I just didn’t believe it … ‘til now. What did you do to me? Some kind of curse?”
“You always were the smart one, Tom. That’s why I asked you for help with Physics class. Remember?”
Oddly enough, he did. He remembered that Vivian was failing the class, swallowed her pride, and came to him for help. He offered to tutor her for free. But as a prank, he showed her flawed equations and basically set her up to fail her midterm exam. His buddies bought him a six-pack of beers for that one. It seemed like a good idea, back then.
“When I failed Physics, my dad beat me down really bad and left me in the basement to bleed,” Vivian sadly reminisced as she sat at the foot of Tom’s bed. “That’s when I just gave up.”
“What’d you do?” Tom asked.
“I swallowed a bottle of pills,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I died, Tom. My parents ‘withdrew’ me from school and didn’t tell anyone.”
Vivian’s expression darkened as she remembered her early days as a ghost. “They just had me cremated, left my urn on the front porch, and blew town. The cheap fuckers didn’t even have a wake!”
Vivian stared off with a vicious smile.
“But I came back, Tom – with powers. And my parents were the first to die.”
Tom looked down at his right hand and remembered the pain he felt when he shook hands with Vivian.
“I’ve been settling old scores ever since,” Vivian said with a shrug. “And the best thing of all? My stutter went away.”
Tom sank into his mattress and felt like slime.
“You lied to me about Physics, so I thought it fitting that I turned your life into a lie. The most amazing thing is that if you lie hard enough – I mean just right – you can bend reality to your whim.”
Tom thought about apologizing but realized it wouldn’t help. Nothing would. But something inside him refused to give up – even now. His mind searched for a solution.
“Well,” Vivian said as she rose to leave. “I’m done with you. I think I’ll pay Skip Hunt a visit. Remember your ol’ buddy, Skip?”
“Wait,” Tom painfully sat up. The other prisoners curiously looked at him. They thought he was talking to himself. “You can fix this!”
“I am ‘fixing’ this, you son of a bitch!” Vivian snipped. “I’m going to take out every last one of you. Maybe then I’ll find some peace.”
“No!” Tom begged. “Listen! If you can bend reality, can’t you go back?! Back to those shitty years?!”
Vivian paused, surprised that she hadn’t considered that possibility.
“You could lose the stutter, become the most popular girl in school, and make your dad a non-violent hippie – if you lied just right.”
“But you’d just do what you did to someone else.”
“True,” Tom admitted, his voice thick with desperation. “But it beats being dead, right? You’d have your life back! You could have anything you wanted! Right?!”
Vivian glared at him, unsure if he was trying to deceive her (yet again).
But the rationale was so solid …
COME AGAIN?
It took me a while to stop crying. Miles Yarlbrough had just left my office with his hat in hand (and $10,000 richer). The P.I. truly earned the hefty check. Scanning the stack of photos, typed transcripts, and a loaded flash drive on my desk – I had all the proof I needed that my husband was sleeping around. The bastard was banging some Yale grad student on the side … and a call girl in New York … and a Japanese stewardess … the list just went on and on!
I should’ve been happier. After all, I was a gold digger (in the technical sense). Andre D’Armane’s personal net worth was at $459 million dollars, as of last week’s financials. By all rights, I could gut him in court. And, for good measure, I could see to it that photos of his “sexcapades” ended up all over the news, just to add insult to injury. After all, the only thing my “loving” husband loved more than his wealth and good looks was his sterling reputation. Strangely enough, the press hadn’t bothered to dig into the D’Armane family’s background.
The D’Armanes made their fortune smuggling drugs out of Quebec. During our wedding, Andre’s older brother Bernard threatened to kill me if I ever broke his little brother’s heart. When I mentioned the scary asshole’s threat, some weeks later, Andre confided in me that I had indeed “married into the mob.” Yet, he assured me that he had absolutely nothing to do with the family business. I remembered how Andre kissed me with those perfect lips and promised to protect me.
I believed him.
Well, the funny thing here was Andre ended up breaking my heart. While I did marry him for the money, I actually fell in love with that piece of shit over our four years of marriage. Andre didn’t treat me like a trophy wife. Rather, he helped me transition from over-the-hill runway model to entrepreneur to the point where he loaned (versus gave) me the startup money for my own modeling agency … a fantasy I had all but given up on.
Even when I had access to his millions, I figured that I’d simply be good “arm candy” and push out a few babies. But Andre wouldn’t let me abandon my lifelong dream. He stole time from his own interests to help me set mine up. I actually repaid the loan and turned my agency into a profitable enterprise. That’s when I realized that I loved him. Anyone who’d do that for a silly, aging blonde from Toledo was just –
I succumbed to my grief and freely sobbed.
Afterward, I picked up the flash drive and slowly rotated it between my right index finger and thumb. Maybe I should forgive him. Andre had been so good to me. Better than I had deserved …
I slipped the drive into my computer. Through photo after photo, betrayal after betrayal, my grief flew away. No wonder Andre was so good in bed. He had more women than JFK! And he was seeing them right under my nose. Were it not for some strange late-night calls made to our home, I never would’ve known. When I called Yarlbrough, I suspected that Andre might’ve been in danger.
The last straw was the footage of him banging my therapist on her couch.
My blood felt like fire and I grabbed some tissue, dried my tears, and collected my thoughts. Leaning back in the ergonomic office chair, I grabbed an empty notepad and picked up a pen. I scribbled a note to fire my therapist. I also added a reminder to get myself tested. For all I knew, Andre had given me something incurable.
Next, I made a note to send Yarlbrough a bonus check for $50,000 for providing such damning evidence. Then, I scribbled Alvin Normenstein’s name down. The sly old lawyer was the preferred choice among my social circle. He loved taking divorce cases to court (where he rarely lost). These spirited, cathartic notes helped calm me down. That’s when my cell phone
