Resolution
Fiction
I wanted to win the hand and the heart of Gloria. I made that conquest the goal, the ultimate achievement, the new year’s resolution. I pictured her in my apartment, in my kitchen, in my bed. I laid out a plan to make her mine.
Winning Gloria will be the greatest challenge I have faced, a trophy worthy of the depth of my desire. I know, fat chance. I’m a bit of a nerd, a tightwad Scrooge who saves my money and my time and my energies for my future bride, my dream girl. My wardrobe comes from thrift stores, my home décor from Dollar Trees, and my mode of transportation a twenty-year-old Ford pickup purchased to assert my masculine nature. My favored form of entertainment is space operas and fantasy fiction. I’ve got the money to pamper her. We are going to live in happy-ever-after land.
She is a high-maintenance babe, the archetype of every heterosexual male fantasy. A chick. Had she lived, she would have married a high-demand high-paid doctor who specialized in the beautification of the human form — a man too busy to spend the fortunes that rolled into his financial accounts. Gloria, though, needed no further beautification and could provide valuable assistance and companionship in making use of the fruits of his labor. She possessed that uniquely feminine quality of transforming each moment and every movement into magic. Gloria would have been, in other words, a trophy wife.
New Year’s Day fell on a Friday. I texted a sincere wish for a happy new year to Gloria while holding the image of her last June as she laid in the sun on the apartment building’s pool apron. She soaked up the sun in a black bikini. I wanted more than I wanted anything, life itself, to touch her. I asked her out.
She rewarded me with a dazzling smile. Smile lines at the corners of her eyes revealed sincerity, maybe even some regret at having to refuse me.
“Aww, thanks, but I can’t,” she said. “I have a boyfriend.”
I read her mind. That is so cute, she thought.
I was the class nerd asking the prom queen for a date. That is so cute.
I didn’t let that stop me. I showered her with jewelry and flowers until she gave in. We ate a fine dinner at Al Biernat’s, a fine dining establishment in what was once the city’s premier hippy hangout. Everything was perfect. She laughed at my jokes and smiled at me over her steak. She even flirted a little. Afterward, we went to a dance club in the city’s Deep Ellum entertainment district, and then to her place for a nightcap. I didn’t push it. I didn’t do anything that would turn her off or lead her to think her body was my only consideration.
I took the success of that evening as an opening to ask her out again. Thievery Corporation was coming to town. I got tickets. Great tickets. Excited, I called her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “But I have plans for that night.”
The news deflated me. “What plans?” I wanted to ask, but that would have been bad form. “Maybe another time,” I said instead.
I called again the following week.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll be tied up.”
What the hell. We had a good time. Why was she avoiding me now?
On the night that she was to be “tied up,” I turned the TV to a movie that I had seen before, one whose script I had studied in a scriptwriting course. Nothing else on the movie channel interested me. Bored, I decided to drop in on Gloria, real casual-like.
“Oh — hi, Bernie. What’s going on?” she said when she opened the door.
“Nothing. I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by.”
“I’m a little busy tonight, why don’t you come back another time?”
“You’re busy every time I ask you out,” I said. “What’s going on with you. I thought we had some good vibes. Why are you avoiding me?”
Didn’t she feel my love?
“Let’s talk about this another time.”
She started to close the door. I pushed back against her. Damn it! I had invested time and money and hopes and fantasies in her, and she was by God going to deal with me.
Gloria staggered backward as I gave the door a hard shove. A man appeared in the room behind her.
“Okay, Buddy, I think it’s time for you to leave.”
He put his hands on me to guide me toward the door, but he did it in a way that had his chin under the elbow that he held. I jerked the elbow upward, caught his chin, and heard the distinctive crunch of breaking teeth.
“Why, you son of a bitch!” he lisped through blood as he scrambled to his feet. I caught him off balance with a nice roundhouse kick, knocking him out.
Gloria came at me with a shriek, manicured nails curled toward my face. A small table in the apartment’s entry held one of those big cut-glass ashtrays that people in these non-smoking times use as a place to drop their keys. I picked it up and struck her in the head with it. She, too, was out. I stood there for a few seconds, prepared for a renewal of the fight. Blood poured from Gloria’s wound and onto the carpet. I felt for a pulse. None.
A rising panic told me to get out of there, but a voice of reason warned me that the guy — her boyfriend? — still lived and was a witness, not to the actual killing, but to the events that lead up to it. With the heavy ashtray still in my hand, I struck him until blood flowed from his wound. And then, I struck again. And again.
Satisfied that I’d left no witnesses to the retribution for Gloria’s rejection of me, I checked to assure myself that I did not have blood on my hand or shoes, wiped the splattered blood from my face on a kitchen towel. I pocketed the towel, stepped into the night, closed the door behind me, and avoided the security camera mounted on a pole at the edge of the apartment building’s property.
At home, I settled into the sofa with paranoid thoughts of the city police banging at my door. I imagined them cuffing me, treating me with the contempt of the self-righteous toward the fallible, and shoving me into a police car to rush me to the Justice Center at the edge of downtown. I saw myself in prison, awaiting execution, all legal avenues expended. Sleepless nights followed. On the job, I waited for the call to the boss’ office where I would find police officers who waited for me. At home, I watched the door for the hard-knock demanding a response.
The police did show up. I was taken downtown to be interrogated. I told them I had fallen asleep on the night in question while watching Herself on a movie channel. I had seen the movie before. I had acquired the script. I read it twice, cover to cover. When questioned about the finer points of the movie, I had all the answers. Neighbors who passed my door heard bits of dialogue through my door. The police reluctantly turned me loose after several hours of high-intensity grilling.
As the year wore on, the double murder faded from the news. My worries about capture began to diminish until, finally, I felt safe. A new year has begun, and I have met Kathleen, my dream mate, a dazzling blond with movie-star looks. She says my nerdery is “cute.” She and I have started work on my new resolution: I’m going to write a book with her this year.
We are going to live in happy-ever-after land.
