Purgatory Blues (2013), page 18
“Andy?” Melissa prompted, wondering if he was still with her.
“Yeah, sorry”, Andy said, shaking away the remnants of his ethereal encounter, “take him in to the office and keep him there, I’ll come talk to him after I speak to the guys, just a few minutes”.
Melissa walked back inside and Andy pulled out one of the two parcels of uncut that he had on him. He put a little clump of the powder on the platform between his thumb and forefinger and snorted it. He felt awake again. He left the car and made his way in to the main building. When he walked in he found Eddie and Dennis exactly where he’d left them.
Dennis had a fresh bandage on his arm. “No sling?” Andy asked.
“Thought you’d left”, Dennis replied without making eye contact, “he said the stitching would hold if I didn’t move it too much, I don’t like looking like an invalid”.
Andy nodded his understanding and paused briefly. “I’m sorry about what I said before, I didn’t mean it”, he said earnestly, “you saved my ass back there, I owe you one”.
“You saved my ass right back”, Dennis said, “I want to say that makes us even but we shouldn’t have been there in the first place. It was a stupid call Andy”.
“What’s done is done”, Andy said, back to his take-charge voice. “There’re a few things we need to do, let’s call them precautionary measures”.
“Yeah bro?” Eddie asked. His entire demeanor was different. Far from the jovial, happy guy he normally was, he seemed pensive, tired and scared. He had the reservation of a man who’d done something unspeakable. There was guilt and remorse etched on his features.
“First, you’re not taking your bikes home today”, Andy began, “they’re going to stay here, tomorrow we’ll re-spray them so that they’re completely unrecognizable”. Andy looked at both of them to see if they were in agreement. They both nodded.
“The second thing”, Andy continued, “the PM9 and the Glock, hand them over”. Eddie passed Andy the PM9 but Dennis shook his head. “What?” Andy asked. Dennis said nothing. “Give it!” Andy said sternly. Dennis pursed his lips and handed over the gun.
“I like that gun”, Dennis grumbled.
“You like freedom more”, Andy said, “I’m gonna get rid of these”, he added and stuck both guns in his belt. “Now, alibis, last night I left Sink, I drove to Dennis’s place and picked him up, we went back there for a few. Sharon will back me up”.
“You mean Liz”, Dennis interrupted.
“Yes, fuck! I mean Liz, just listen”, Andy said impatiently. “Anyway, I picked up Dennis and we went back to Sink for a few. You left your gun in my car. When we were driving back, I realized I was too drunk to drive so I pulled over where we were, in the middle of nowhere. We called a friend to pick us up. Tomorrow morning when we go back for the car, it’s not there. It’s been stolen along with your gun. Clear?” Andy asked.
Dennis nodded.
“And me?” Eddie asked.
“You brought your bike down here because you and your best friend Dennis are getting matching logos put on tomorrow. You had a few drinks over some pool with Melissa. She was going to take you home but your friend Doc showed up for a couple as well. He took you home, you left your bike to get sprayed”.
“Okay, that sounds cool”, Eddie said.
“Dennis”, Andy said, “once you got home last night you brought your bike down here as well, but you arrived after everyone had left so there was no one to take you back, you’re staying the night”.
“Didn’t feel like going home anyway”, Dennis mumbled.
“That’s that”, Andy stood up, he wanted to say that he was sorry about everything, he wanted to say thank you for everything, they could see it on his face, but he didn’t have the words. Everyone was silent. It went unspoken. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow then”, Andy said dismissively, as though it was only another day and they hadn’t just been through the ordeal of their lives.
At the same time Dennis chimed in, “yeah, see you tomorrow”.
Eddie joined them with “yep, tomorrow”.
Another moment of silence followed. Andy put out both his fists. Eddie and Dennis both put theirs out and held contact for five seconds. Andy nodded, “okay, I’ve got to get rid of these guns, come on Eddie”.
He led Eddie over to the office and opened the door to find Melissa and Doc deep in conversation. “Doc”, Andy called, “I assume Melissa’s taken care of the bill?”
“Yes Andy, very generous, thank you”, Doc answered.
“Give Eddie a lift home and you’re done for the night”, said Andy.
“Of course, no problem at all”, Doc replied.
“Nothing about this to Cat”, Andy whispered to Eddie as he gave him a quick hug.
“You got it bro”, Eddie replied.
“Melissa”, Andy called, “you’re with me”.
“Okay, one minute”, she said.
“Meet you outside”.
When Melissa got outside Andy was already in his car with the engine running. “Where are we going?” She asked.
“Field trip”, Andy said, “follow me”.
She put her helmet on and mounted her bike. Andy pulled out of the lot first with Melissa right behind him.
They drove for almost ten minutes. He took the quickest path towards the city and when they got there he went deeper in to the heart of the nastiest place that he could find. He looked for the kind of poverty stricken area where someone would sell their grandmother for a couple of bucks. He pulled over on the side of the road, leaving engine running. He rolled down both front windows, got the bag out of the trunk and then held down the horn for a full six seconds. For a moment he considered leaving the guns, but thought better of it. They could easily find their way into the wrong hands to be used against innocents. He took the bag and the guns and walked away.
As he made his way to Melissa he wiped down both guns for prints and dropped them in to the sewer drainage access on the curb. The next rain would send them out to the ocean. When he got to the bike Melissa moved back so that Andy could ride and he mounted up. He traded her the gym bag for her helmet before he moved the bike fifty meters down the road and waited to see what happened. In less than a minute he saw someone get in to the car and drive away.
“That’ll be spare parts by morning”, Andy said to Melissa.
“Where to now?” She asked.
“Home”.
Melissa held him tightly as he sped of. Somehow she was able to ignore all the time that they hadn’t been together, making it seem like they’d never been apart. She made him feel like they were a part of each other, two halves of the same thing that were meant to fit together.
He took a long ride home. He needed the road to unwind. He needed to feel Melissa pressed up against him to remind him of better days. He needed the speed, he thought that maybe, just maybe, he could outrun the evil growing inside him.
When they finally reached Andy’s apartment, he didn’t take the bike in to the garage, he parked outside on the street. He dismounted and chose to use the pedestrian entrance. He didn’t want to tell Melissa that she shouldn’t come up. He didn’t want to be alone, but he also knew that it would be wrong to lead her on. He was with Sharon now. Parking where he did should have given her the hint, he expected to enter alone.
He didn’t say goodbye, he didn’t say anything at all, he just walked up to the entrance and she followed him, but he didn’t tell her not to. He was silent the entire walk up to his door. When they got inside Andy disappeared into the bedroom, Melissa didn’t follow. She was too shocked to move. She’d never seen an apartment in such a state of chaos before.
“It looks like a bomb went off in here”, she said.
Andy grunted in acknowledgement.
“Did you kill the maid and stick her in the closet?”
Andy laughed in his head at how inappropriate the joke was, thinking “If only you knew what we’ve been through tonight”. He stashed the remainder of the two parcels of cocaine and the money in the bedroom closet where no one but him would think to look and then emerged from the room naked. He walked directly to the bathroom and got in to the shower, no words were exchanged.
He stood under the hot water for a full minute with images of the night flashing through his mind. He wondered why he was still alive. He’d never believed in any higher power, but couldn’t help feeling that even in the infinite sea of probabilities within which they resided, the universe was being a little too forgiving with him. “How could one person beat the odds time and time again? How could one person guess right that often?” It was an incredibly long shot that the money would be there, but he was right, it had been.
His questions went unanswered and his mind went blank when he heard the shower door open, but he didn’t turn around, he hoped that it wouldn’t be her and at the same time he hoped that it was. He felt Melissa’s body against his and his defenses dropped. “Why is she always here when I’m vulnerable, always when I’m weak?” He turned and drew her in. It was like trading one addiction for another. The taste of her flesh was exquisite. Everything else faded away, there was nothing left in the world but the two of them.
There was no thinking, no pretense…just two bodies, pieces of a puzzle that had been missing from each other for too long. This made sense to him. Out of all the madness that had become his life over the last year, this one thing made sense. Here, he could lose himself. Just for this moment, he didn’t feel dead inside, he felt a glimmer of hope.
It was an hour later when they were in bed together, Melissa’s back to Andy’s chest, while he gently stroked her thigh, that he came back to reality…wondering why he’d risked everything for Sharon on a foolish whim, yet here he was with Melissa. He felt so far removed from morality, consequences and human emotion that he couldn’t understand why Melissa kept coming back to him.
She followed him without question, she trusted him to make the right choices and she respected him, but he didn’t know why she did any of it. The moonlight streamed in through the open window, caressing the curves of her body in ways that made Andy remember that she was beautiful, but then he remembered the day that she turned from the woman he was in love with into just Melissa.
His mind raced through the sequence of events…‘If she hadn’t betrayed me I’d never have left the MC, I’d never have met Elsa and I’d never have written that first book. I’d also never have had to lose Elsa and my son, I’d never have spiraled into this personal hell and maybe I’d be giving a shit about waking up in the morning. Maybe all of this wouldn’t be happening. Maybe Melissa and I would’ve been married and living a good life somewhere far away from all of this’.
Andy thought about the law of equivalent trade, somehow as much as life gave you, it took away just as much in other ways. For one year he’d asked life for oblivion, life had given it to him, but it took away time in exchange. Not just the hours in the day, but his health as well. He knew that there was only so much punishment the human body could take before it gave up on you.
“What happened tonight”, Melissa asked, suddenly breaking his train of thought.
“I can’t talk about it”, Andy whispered into her ear.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both, maybe”, he answered.
“You can tell me Andy”, she said softly, pulling his arm closer to her.
It honestly did feel to Andy like she wanted to help, as though she wanted to share his burden…but he knew that this wasn’t something that she’d want to know. She was there in the arms of a man who’d taken someone’s life. Not a long time ago, not a year, not a month, not even days ago…he’d done it hours before they were in bed together. He absently stroked her leg while he thought about what to say. “We can talk about something else if you want”, he offered.
Melissa turned over and looked into his eyes, “I want to know what happened tonight. Whatever it is, you can tell me. I know it’s upsetting you”. She held the side of his face for a moment and then kissed him. “You can tell me”, she whispered.
Andy thought for a moment, he looked back at her and saw someone that he could trust. He considered that Melissa knew pretty much everything about him and she was still there. If he died tomorrow, he’d want to leave someone behind that really knew his life in its entirety, for better or worse…maybe she was that person. He realized then that this was the first time he’d been in his bed since Elsa’s death…and he was there with Melissa, it was as good a sign as any.
“Okay”, Andy said, “could you turn around though, I’d prefer you weren’t looking right at me when I tell you”.
“Okay”, she said with a quizzical expression.
Melissa turned around and Andy pulled her closer to him, more out of instinct than anything else. He didn’t know how to broach the subject. There was certainly no easy way to say it. There wasn’t any way that he could sugar coat it. He decided that he’d have to just say it. He’d use the Band-aid rip approach.
“I killed someone tonight”. The words scraped his throat as they left. It felt like they were taking a piece of him on the way out.
Melissa was silent. She didn’t budge. Andy couldn’t sense any change in her whatsoever. Waiting for her reaction felt like the seconds ticking away on a bomb, but there was no detonation, instead she said something that he wasn’t expecting. “If you did it then I know you must have had a good reason. You wouldn’t have done it unless there was nothing else you could do”. She turned around to face him.
Andy didn’t know if she was saying it to convince herself or to make him feel better. “You don’t know that!” He exclaimed, stunned by her reaction. “How could she know?” He immediately resented the fact that she could absolve him the way she did without really knowing what had happened. “You weren’t there!” Andy said, sitting up.
“I don’t have to have been there”, Melissa said, certain that she was right.
“Maybe you want to believe that, but believing it doesn’t make it true”, Andy argued. He got out of the bed and stormed of towards the living room.
“Where are you going?” Melissa asked in surprise.
Andy didn’t answer. In the living room there were bottles of scotch, vodka, bourbon and all manner of other spirits of every conceivable variation and brand laying around. He searched among the empties to find something of value.
Melissa quickly threw on a robe and followed him in to the living room. “What are you doing?”
Andy looked frantic as he searched, finally coming across a quarter of gin. He put his head back and drank it all down in one go while Melissa watched in shock. When Andy was done he set the bottle down on the table. His body began to shake. He closed his eyes and put the heels of his palms over them.
Melissa walked up to him and pulled his arms down. She took his face in her hands. He tried to pull away at first but she held him firmly, “look at me!” She said with force, “I don’t believe it because I want it to be true, I believe it because it is true”.
Andy fell to his knees and held his head, to someone else it might have seemed like he was warding off demons. “I watched them burn, I burned them, every time I close my eyes I can see it, I can see them fucking burning!” Andy said shakily.
Melissa knelt down beside him and held his shoulders. “Why did you do it?” She asked gently.
“He was going to kill Dennis”, Andy said, “everything just got so fucked up, I had to fix the scene before the cops showed up, I just did the first thing I could think of, I destroyed everything”.
“Then you did good, I don’t need to know any more than that”, she said. “You did what you had to do. You saved your brothers, you protected your own”. They sat there in silence till Melissa was sure Andy had gathered himself, “come on”, she said, guiding Andy up, “come back to bed baby, you’ll feel better once you get some rest”.
Andy didn’t fight her. She led him back to the bedroom and laid him down. He was more tired than he’d ever been but he didn’t think sleep would come that night. Melissa climbed in next to him and held him close. He pulled her closer still and shut his eyes…then there was nothing.
Chapter 11
When Andy opened his eyes it was just after nine in the morning. He’d jumped up from a nightmare, but whatever it was, as soon as he’d tried to hold on to it, it fled like the darkness from the dawn. He found a note on the pillow where Melissa should have been. It read:
Didn’t want to wake you. Breakfast is in the kitchen next to the stove. See you tonight.
I love you,
M.
Andy slipped out from under the covers and tried to clear his head, he was never much of a morning person. He didn’t experience hangovers anymore but he was always groggy in the mornings. As he attempted to recall the events that had brought him to his current location, an image of the burning house flashed in his mind. “Fuck!” He blurted out loudly and shook his head. His tick had begun to present itself more and more in the last few days.
He lit a cigarette and after one drag broke out in to a fit of coughing. A few drags in, he dropped what was left of the cigarette into a glass of water on the nightstand. When he stepped out of the bedroom he could hardly recognize his apartment. It probably hadn’t taken a long time to do, but the absence of empty bottles and empty boxes of cigarettes made his quarters seem livable again. It had been months since he’d seen what was under all of the mess. The thought came to him that Melissa might be beginning to nest, but he dismissed it as her compulsion for neatness.
He showered, changed and went through his normal morning ritual. When he was done he went to the kitchen to see what she’d left him. There was a cream cheese bagel, fresh coffee in the machine and she’d even put some orange juice in the refrigerator. He ate the bagel and then had a mug of half coffee and half whiskey. He couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t started the day with alcohol in his system.
After his hurried breakfast he retrieved the bag of money from the bedroom closet. He didn’t have a digital counter or any proper means of being accurate with the appraisal, so he counted by brick and by stack. Luckily the cash was already bound by denomination. Fifty notes to a brick, ten bricks to a stack. After twenty minutes of his system he found that they’d got away with a little over seven hundred and sixty thousand.
