NANOWRIMO 2022
Will You Couch With Me Tonight?
American Kingdom: Day 9.2
Previous scene:
I’d told Brian and Marion that’d I’d sleep on it. Pray in the morning, I told myself, a little tipsy. If I was going to talk heart to heart with the Lord, better to be needing coffee first thing than be slurring my mental speech and falling asleep in the middle.
And with that thought, I fell asleep.
I awoke to the sound of something wrong. Nothing I could put my finger on, precisely, but I had been woken. There was someone in the room with me. I groped past the fading remnants of a dream — about Duke Francis with a chainsaw, if you must know — and tried to pump my awareness up to the cat-like crepuscular strengths of my Rangering days. Or nights rather.
Crepuscular. Not a word you found in everyday conversation. It meant semi-nocturnal, a creature of the half-light. That was Special Operations all over; we normally moved and fought by night if we had a choice.
Like now, I thought, bringing my senses into focus. There was a dim glow in the room from the streetlights penetrating the chinks in the curtains. Not enough to see in but I did my best to examine the shadows using my night vision techniques.
Don’t look directly at something, use your peripheral vision where there were more low-light receptors. Scan for movement, pick up shapes and look for the edges. It was all coming back.
Couldn’t see a thing.
The sound of breathing.
Not mine.
My hair stood on end.
Oh, right. Kemba. Back from his limo-driving shift, wheeling home the drunks.
“Kemba? Is that you? It’s okay, I’m awake now.”
Nothing.
There was a weight on the bed, like someone resting their hand on the blanket.
A moving pressure.
“Kem?” There was real nervous in my voice now.
Still nothing.
I jumped out of bed and something solid moved as well, touching my bare legs. I screamed like a girl.
Where was the light switch?
I groped as Leonie’s sleepy, worried voice came from the other room. “Molly, are you okay?”
“There’s someone in the room,” I replied. “I’m trying to find the light.”
There. I flipped the switch.
Light flooded the unfamiliar furniture and objects. Just me, standing blinking. Foolishly I’d forgotten to close one eye and my night vision would be shot now.
Just me. And Leonie in her pajamas. And the cat, petulant, lashing his tail at the disturbance.
“Oh, Pillow!” Leonie scooped up the cat. “You bad boy!”
“Oh, sorry, Leonie. I thought it might be Kemba and there was no answer and then the cat ran through my legs and I couldn’t stop myself.”
“It’s all right, Molly. You go back to sleep. Pillow can snuggle up with me. I’ll close the door so he won’t disturb you again.”
“I’m sorry!”
“It’s okay, sweetie. At least I wasn’t snoring. Kem says I shake the house and I don’t know if he’s joking or not. Goo’ night.”
“Night, Leonie.”
It took me an hour to get back under. Leonie closed her bedroom door, settled into bed with a creak of complaining bedsprings, and about sixty seconds later her snoring began. Impossible to ignore. Impossible to sleep through.
My estimation of Kemba’s saintliness notched up to five stars, no six.
The next time I woke, I was sure of it. There was a man in the room with me.
I rewound my subconscious — hey, my old Ranger skills kicking back in — and found that Leonie’s snores had continued unabated but someone had rattled the laundry door, come in through the kitchen, and now stood in the doorway looking down at me. I could hear his breathing.
Kemba, without a doubt. Checking to see that I was okay. So long as he didn’t let that bloody sneaky cat out when he went into the bedroom, I was okay.
I kept my eyes closed, didn’t move.
I jerked my eyes open when he sat down on the sofa.
Ted.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
Perhaps I should have just jumped up and laid him out flat but there was a hard edge of something jutting into my shoulder. Something metal. No sudden moves from either of us would be good.
“I came to take you back home, Moll.”
“That’s not going to happen, Ted. You know why.”
“What kind of life is this? Sleeping on a sofa in a crappy little house. You’ve got a business, a riverside apartment, a man who loves you… Come on home.”
“Leonie is my friend and would never betray me. You, on the other hand…”
He chuckled. “A momentary lapse. It won’t happen again.”
“You had your head down between her thighs and you were going at it so hard you didn’t even notice me clump up the stairs.”
“I’m an artist. You know that.”
“Yeah. And I know you got one last chance from me last year. You’re history. This conversation is over. If you don’t leave right this minute, I’m going to yell and Leonie will come running out and you are going to be beaten over the head with her cast iron skillet and you are not going to like that one little bit. But I will.”
“You wouldn’t do that to your friend. Besides…”
Whatever that cold metal object was that was pressing against my shoulder, it was now pressing against my neck.
“Let’s just chat for a minute. One last friendly conversation before we say goodbye for good.”
Stall for time, Molly. Maybe it’s just the bike wrench he used to pry open the back door. Maybe it’s something worse.
“Well, okay, Ted. As it happens we do need to talk. We have a partnership agreement and we need to wind that up.”
“Oh yeah. I had the business valued. All up we’re worth just under ten thousand dollars. If you want out, you get half that, less five thousand. Send me a check and I’ll get it done.”
Oh yeah?
“Fair enough. You have my lawyer’s card. Send them the details, the appraisal, the valuation for goodwill, and I’ll have them check it over.”
He laughed. Not a good laugh.
“No, Molly. I want the business and the partnership to continue. I think we make a great team. If you want out, you’ve got to draw up a formal request. As per our contract.”
The headlights of a passing vehicle moving slowly down the street penetrated the curtain’s chinks and cast bars of light over the ceiling before fading out.
“Perhaps we could talk about this tomorrow, Ted?”
“No time like the present, you always say.”
That was true enough. He who snoozes, loses, as a certain drill sergeant used to say.
“What time is it, Ted? I’m tired and not feeling my best.”
His e-watch lit up as he raised his wrist.
“Just gone two thirty. Plenty of time to talk. You’re a good Christian, at least that’s what your Pastor says. Perhaps a bit of forgiveness might be appropriate?”
Leonie must have rolled onto her back or something because at that moment her snoring began again, louder than ever.
“I forgave you once already. If I keep on forgiving you it just becomes meaningless. You need to carry your weight, respect me. Respect yourself.”
“It can’t be over, Molly,” Ted said, bending down closer, his lips just inches from mine. “We are too good together. You know that.”
I heard the key in the lock because I was listening for it but Ted probably couldn’t hear anything but Leonie’s snores, and must have been straining to hear my final words to him.
“You’re no good for me, Ted. Not any longer.”
The light snapped on and there was Ted’s face, a tender look vanishing instantly into shock and then anger.
I threw him off the sofa and Kemba grabbed his shoulder. “Hold still, you mofo!”
Leonie’s snores shut off and I could hear her getting to her feet in the next room. Ted’s eyes widened when he saw my stiffened fingers aimed at them and then he was wriggling, dodging, moving, running.
Leonie’s door opened, the cat shot out, Ted tripped and went sprawling, sliding face-first into six empty bottles that had held Palmetto Porter.
He yelled, leapt up, jerked open the door, and ran into the night, leaving a satisfying smear of blood behind.
“Leave him go,” I said. “He won’t be back.”
Next chapter:
Daily notes: He won’t be back. He very nearly didn’t get away except that if he didn’t there would be police and questions and delays and things I didn’t want to write about to slow the story down for no good reason.
We’ve got other things to do now, other places to be.
Hope he suffers, the bastard.
Molly
