A feeble attempt at Thriller
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“Hello, Alex?”
The call had woken him up, and he had answered the phone half asleep, about ready to rain down curses on whoever had decided to call in at two in the morning.
It only took a moment for the voice to register with his memories, a voice that -a few years back- he would have given anything to hear, but things have changed now.
He hanged up without saying a word, grabbed a cigarette and went out into the balcony.
I guess God did not intend for me to sleep tonight, he thought bitterly.
She had left him without prior notice six years earlier, leaving him a two-month-old child and a shattered heart. He had only started making sense of what happened when the divorce papers came in the mail, three weeks after the fact.
He decided to call his brother, he needed to tell someone,
“Somebody better be dead!” came the bored familiar voice through the phone, he didn’t sound sleepy at all, he was probably still awake.
“Sylvia just called me.”
“That qualifies, what did she want?”
“I don’t know, I hung up.”
“Good man.”
He knew she was going to call again, but unsure how to proceed. There was no step-by-step guide for dealing with narcissistic ex-wives who call in the middle of the night after disappearing for six years.
He never married again, never even had a long-term relationship after she had left him. His psychiatrist had said that he had developed a general mistrust of women.
Naturally, he didn’t believe her…
On the other side of town, in the bathtub of a four-star hotel room lay Sylvia. She is quietly staring at the dark screen of a cell phone in her right hand, as if taunting it to make a move. Joy Division’s album ‘Unknown Pleasures’ is playing on the room’s stereo.
It did not surprise her that he had hanged up on her.
Hell, I would have been disappointed if he didn’t.
However, she needed to get in contact with him, and she’d rather not drop off at his apartment uninvited.
Our apartment, she reminded herself, I used to live there too.
She hasn’t been to the city for years, but she was happy to find out that he didn’t move, that would have made things complicated. He was never the type to like any kind of change.
She redials his number and lays there, waiting for the call to connect, dreading the moment it would connect yet unable to stop herself from calling.
What will I even say if he answers, how am I to explain myself.
But the call never connects.
I’ll have to go there; she’s not going to like that.
She gets out of the bathtub, wears her bathrobe and goes out into the bedroom, there’s a gun in the bathrobe’s left pocket.
She puts on leather pants, a tank top and a long overcoat, all of them black.
Out in the suite’s common room, sits another woman, looks to be in her late fifties but she moves with surprising dexterity. She’s sitting at a desk with different documents scattered all over it. One of the documents is a recent picture of Sylvia’s husband, another one is of his brother.
“He’s not picking up,” says Sylvia.
The older woman is visibly annoyed at the news, but she makes no attempt to answer.
Sylvia doesn’t say anything either, she knows the woman well enough by now, she’s thinking about the next move.
He immediately left the house after his brother hanged up, got into his car and started driving.
He makes a call through the car’s speaker, the answer comes in a strange high pitch, seems to be computer generated.
“What is it?” Says the voice.
“She’s on the move.” He replies, his voice is tense and his tone serious, losing the bored nonchalant manner with which he had replied to his brother earlier.
“You have your orders, carry them out. She cannot get a hold of it.”
The strange voice hangs up.
Cheerful as always, he thought to himself, but I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.
He opens the glove compartment and pulls two guns out of it.
