Strangulation

The first sound would be the crack of the hyoid bone, but only after he stopped struggling. His realization that his 115 pound wife was on top of him with her perfectly manicured hands wrapped around his brain’s only source of oxygen would take at least two of the ten seconds necessary to end his miserable life. The ridges of her fingerprints would flatten against the skin of his throat, causing bruising which would show any coroner worth his salt the obvious cause of death. The jury wouldn’t believe her to be the killer; her diminutive stature would appear no match for his hulking frame. She watched him sleep, waiting for her moment.

   They say we weave a tangled web when we deceive, but she knew differently. His web untangled when she pulled a single blond hair from the inside of his discarded T-shirt. He was too smart for the obvious clues; no lip-sticked cigarette butts, no strange charges on joint credit cards, no hair bands hanging from the gear shift. She never enlightened him that she knew, but he didn’t have to look too closely to notice it wasn’t love burning behind her eyes, it was rage, and she was damn near starting her own forest fire.  She didn’t care about the other woman; she didn’t blame a whore for being a whore. She blamed her husband for betraying her. She shifted her weight to straddle his heaving, sleeping chest.

   She weaved her hands into each other around his throat. Weaved. Web. Deceit. Yes, this is the way he should die. Poison was for pussies.  She didn’t apply pressure at first. She relished the way his throat felt there, in her hands. She wondered if the last breath that convulsed out of his body would release his bladder and bowels. She’d have to do something about the sheets. Then there would be the thin line of mucous and blood mixing their own drink and running down the side of his mouth. She’d have to wash that out too.  That goddamned luminal, though, if they used that goddamned luminal, they’d see the trail right back to his little wifey-poo, his hon, sweetie, sugar-lips and the fact that her champagne-colored tips fit perfectly into the little half-moons under his ears.

   She exhaled softly. This was not the way. She didn’t live with this cheating bastard to go down like that. She didn’t follow the asshole to the whorehouse so she could sleep on a metal cot while he slept with the whore in her bed.  She couldn’t strangle him.

II

   One supposes there is grace in beauty, but the truth is there is only beauty in grace. Beauty is the result of some of the most violent aggressions in nature. Take the sunset, for example. The daily expiration of a heavenly body and burial in the horizon.  She can see the whole process because of her madness; you and I, we only see a part of it. She sees the fingers outstretched on the hyoid bone of the day, the bridge between the ghastly thumb and forefinger pressed on both the carotid artery and the jugular vein, pressure applied, and the sun falls. The final protest of pink is the fatal mixed drink of blood and mucous, smeared violently across a perfectly good blue sky. The sun finally succumbs to its nightly grave, protesting in colors, and she wonders daily if there is involuntary defecation, the final release of the bladders, and the last post-mortem expulsion of strangled air in the lungs.

She sees the day. It dies a thousand deaths.

III.

“Pam!” He bellows, his eyes squinted in the uncomfortable light of day, raking a hand through his bed-tousled hair, shoving the business-end of a Marlboro in his mouth. Light becomes him. Caresses his stubble, picks out a few orange-ish natural highlights out of his medium brown hair, and lights the backdrop of his brown eyes until they glow a dark red. His hand raises to push the light back to where it belongs.

“PAM??” She wasn’t in bed. The bitch. She was probably on that damn Stairmaster again, trying to prove something. If he knew the post-adolescent he married would have angles that refused to roll into curves, even a baby bump, he would have re-thought the whole mess.
   “In here!” She, standing at the stove, in a matching camisole and panties, could have graced the cover of any fashion magazine. Long brown hair, beautiful face, thin, lithe body; at 37 she looked 17. Trouble was, he wanted to be married to a real woman.

   She leaned across the stove, cell phone to her ear, and rescheduled her waxing appointment. “Rosa left breakfast on the dining room table and ran out on errands.” Dispassionate. Angry. She starved all of the love out of her under-fed body, he mused.

   He couldn’t divorce her; it was not the family way. That left him with two choices: have her killed, which fell out of favor in the heyday of the Prohibition era; the Mafia simply didn’t DO that anymore and if they did, it wasn‘t for cover girl wives who couldn‘t grow up, or cheat. Amy.. Amy was nothing spectacular and that was the most spectacular thing about her. At 6:00 in the morning, she whisked pancake batter, wiped her forehead, moving the blond curl out of her line of vision, and talked middle school football with her middle son. She was enchanting in her ability to be completely ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. To her, the stove was more than a prop for a cell phone order and she never had anything professionally waxed; she was above the superfluous in a way Pam couldn’t be.

   The dining room table at home, in contrast, looked like the result of ordering hotel room service; pancakes stacked, choices of toppings in perfectly matched china, a carafe of hot French café, all prepared the way he liked it by Rosa; it looked clinical.. Absent of love and care because the maid didn’t love him and no one really cared. He grabbed a piece of toast and headed for the shower, and then to work. After all, there would be hell to pay if the Mastercard was declined after Pam had her hoo-hah waxed.

   “My client refuses. Her injuries are too severe for her to sustain a normal life; the attending physician’s statement clearly describes her condition. She will NOT be settling.” Johnny, to his friends and clients, and Giovanni, to his opponents and the business world, tapped the white end of the Marlboro on his antique cherry monster of a desk. He had long ago stepped out of the category of ambulance chaser, and found himself at the top of his game, one of the top negligence and tort attorneys in the city, above the cheesy advertisements and ethical meanderings of the masses. It was 3:30, his day was booked solid until 5:00, when he would go to the ‘convention,’ where his face would weave into Amy’s fragrant blond curls, and his arms would protect her from the world.

IV

   “What do you mean you have to go to a convention all weekend? Why do you have so many conventions.. You’re a goddamned attorney.. Yeah.. I know.. Best in the city.. Responsibility to mentor.. Yeah.. I love you too.. See you Sunday night, then, Johnny.” Her Revlon Champagne 410 tips banged on the counter violently through the entire conversation. “Convention my ass..” she thought.

   The art deco silver and black analog clock read 10:30, but it was one of those clocks you would never recognize as a clock unless someone enlightened you.  She had already changed into a two-piece swimsuit, tucked her hair into a swim-cap, because no one came across honey brown number 805 naturally and she didn’t want to take any chances, and grabbed her towel for her morning swim before the phone rang. Her swim shoes now sounded like work boots as she pummeled the marble flooring with them on her way to the pool.

   Pamela de Soto was the personification of ‘rich bitch.’ She had no close friends, only acquaintances and admirers. She was breathtakingly beautiful; brown hair framed a tanned face holding aquamarine eyes, absent of wrinkles, a small upturned nose, and thin, aristocratic lips. Her face held a quality that was almost too good to be human, too haughty to be divine. Even when she had procedures done to cure first her appendicitis, then her scars, then the possibility of a scar on the scars, she never had a hair out of place, never a molecule of overrun mascara, and most were sure that even the physicians who had a look-see inside her reputedly perfect anatomy did not find a capillary or corpuscle that could be construed as grotesque or flawed.
   Outside of her beautiful face and form, however, few knew the real Pamela. Even Johnny only got so far when he bashed his massive frame against her defenses. He knew she wouldn’t talk about her family or her days being whored as the next Miss America, Georgia Peach, or some similar shit. He knew the first time he saw her, huddled in the Civic Center lawn, still wearing her sash, roses in her hands, crying her eyes out, he needed to save her.  What he never knew was that she used him to save herself.

   Her legs were beet-red and limp; she was only able to escape the pool with the strength of her shaky arms. She beat the shit out of herself. ‘Fucking Johnny.. Fucking bastard..” she thought. Exercising the hell out of herself was the only way she dealt with the rage.
   
   Ever since she saw that hair, something changed. Some talk about seeing red, but she didn’t. Rather, her vision was tainted by the orange-pink in the sunset; a horrific mix of fluorescent and surreal. It was the lipstick too commercial for her to wear. She watched the day die a thousand deaths.

   She showered, dressed, and made herself up again. Pamela de Soto then did what no one ever expected her to-- she grabbed one of Johnny’s law books from his study, found the bookmark she left half-way through, and continued to read the minutiae that surrounds tort law.

V

   Johnny was home in a way home never could be. He smelled meatloaf in the oven, apple pie on the counter, and drugstore perfume on the neck right under his nose. One of Amy’s curls escaped her hair clasp and tickled his nose. He pulled back and looked her, always just as if it was the first and last time he saw her.

   Amy’s hair was twisted loosely into a clasp at the back of her head, curls escaping here and there, falling over her face and neck. Her tired brown eyes softened the second she saw him, her full lips curved into a smile. Lines defined her eyes completely naturally and streaks of gray flowed into her blond hair. She was short; not more than 5’2”, and her frame rolled in curves, from a full bosom to round hips and a rounded stomach. Her hands were calloused in places and her nails were worn. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.

   “How was your day?” She asked and waited for an answer. He missed that.
   “Much better now, sweetheart.” He smiled at her.

   Amy Jo Randall’s boys were in protest; though they liked Johnny, they didn’t like the fact he was married, so the three teenage boys had decided to stay the weekend at their father’s house. His house had been their refuge since the divorce five years ago. It wasn’t that they didn’t love their mother; they just knew who Pamela de Soto was, and knew there was no way this affair would end well. Amy missed her boys, but respected their feelings enough to not challenge the situation.

   They ate dinner in the kitchen, almost wordlessly. Johnny missed the mealtime rituals as much as he missed the compassion and attention. Amy was exhausted with single motherhood. It was a match made in necessity, but it would have been obvious from any onlooker the two were deeply in love.

VI

   Pam put the medical journal aside, removed her reading glasses, and checked the clock. It was 2:45; she had a fitting at 3:00 for the gala that night, and to her dismay and causing her ire, she would be going to yet another gala alone. Somewhere, Johnny was with his little blond butterball, yeah, she saw her, and maybe he was playing touch football with her kids. Pam did her research. It wasn’t that Pam necessarily loved Johnny; it was that this whole mess threatened her way of life, and besides, Suzy fucking homemaker was not going to win.

   Jimmy Choos clacked on the slate walkway and down the stairs to the cherry read Beamer waiting in the lot below. She looked up at the house in the hills, overlooking the lesser gods, much as Zeus must have at the peak of Mt. Olympus with a gut-full of ambrosia. At least she was living in a loveless marriage with these kind of benefits. She couldn’t imagine enduring the circumstance in poverty.

   She stepped in the drivers seat, checked the mirror, and accelerated toward the gate, which opened at the notion of her. She was not-so-secretly the muse of half a dozen designers, and were she a model, she would have served as a clotheshorse extraordinaire, never lacking for a catwalk or a one-of-a-kind to borrow. The fitting was a formality. Her dimensions were static and a well-known entity. In less than an hour, another designer would be drooling at the thought of Mrs. De Soto gracing the society pages in his creation. She smiled at that.

   She drove aggressively through the West End, passing on the right, challenging the speed limit, and throwing back her honey brown number 805. She pulled up next to the small boutique, recognizing her likeness in the mannequin in the window. The mannequin’s head was upturned, lips slightly parted, eyebrows painted as if she were earnestly surprised that she emerged as fashionable as she had.

   Pam barely ventured one sandal out the door before a thin Chinese man with white-blond chin-length hair ran out of the boutique to help her out of the car. She loved the flattery. He loved the publicity.

   “Mon cher, entrer, s’il vous plait,” he bowed, extending an arm toward the door. He spoke French like a high school student and she knew the difference, but she was impressed by the intent.

   “Bonjour, comment êtes-vous?  Vous parlez du français. Thank you, I am glad to meet you, Mr. Tokiashi.” She curtsied back. Though she was a woman full of rage, she was also newly a lady of refinement, at least in this life. She gave him her best beauty-pageant charm and hoped like hell for world peace and a design that would put her form on the front page.  Judging from her study of his shop, he was more than capable of delivering.

   His smile grew infectious at her use of the vernacular; she would not take him to task on his grade school French. He had expected to impress a pretty lady, and instead, was blown away by her diction and usage. He was found out, for sure. Now there was just the dress.. No.. THE dress. It seemed made of icicles; pale blue with shards of material sewn in moved with the wearer, danced in lights, captured movement in crystal. It weighed over 30 pounds, but then again, it wasn’t made to be comfortable. She was elated. The ice queen. It would be delivered to her house in the hills by 7:00.

VII

   The ex-waitress, once plaintiff, now millionaire reached for the hand of her attorney in the fading day. Johnny smiled back at Amy and leaned back in his patio chair. He missed the boys and wished they hadn’t made the decision they had, but respected them for taking a stand. He may have done the same if it was his mother. Otherwise, he would have been playing touch football with them in the yard, roughhousing in a way they never could with their mom. When her foot was rested on the lounge like it was, he saw the line where the prosthetic attached. If anyone out there could function  as a waitress with a prosthetic leg, it would be Amy, but thanks to him, she didn’t have to. She still functioned though, because she was above the superfluous.

   Her prosthetic was her dirty little secret; the dirtiest the secrets got, besides her affair with Johnny, of course. Her boys knew; they were there when the ambulance rushed the bloodied remains of their mother to the Washington General Trauma Room number 4, called a code blue, and they sat with their dad and prayed for the best.  Since that night, six years ago, they caught the bastard who waited in Amy’s car for her shift to end with the axe from outside the kitchen door. When he couldn’t wait any more, he rushed the dining room, attacking Amy’s legs with the axe, before running out into the night. When he was caught and asked why he did this to this poor woman, his only response was “the day dies a thousand deaths.” Knowing that would have made all the crystal shards on Pam’s dress stand on end.

VIII

   There is no grace in this beauty, just the violent remains streaked through clouds and stars as the coup of the night regains control. Twilight has strange powers. Its light changes white to violet, blinds the driver, and glows a swan song of the light of day. There are bulging aquamarine eyes, practically flopping out of the owner’s head, but still beautiful, honey brown number 805 in a sexy murderous tangle, and a flared upturned nose, which at its fiercest, still astounds with its cuteness. Tonight, as luck would have it, the night skips twilight and the shade is drawn. A crystal dress sways  in sparkling starlight.

   Rays shoot off her like a disco ball. Her dress is lifted over her head. The driver knows better than to turn around. He doesn’t have to. He can smell sex and Cristal from the back seat. She couldn’t kill him. But she’s not going to be That Other Woman if she can help it. The young actor admires the wax job her husband paid for. Fingers paint the car window and the driver adjusts the mirror.

IX

   Regret slammed into her temples like a charging semi.  Too much drink and backseat sex left a lump in her throat and a brick in her stomach. If the fantasy of betrayal tasted sweet, the reality tasted like rotten strawberries mixed with ipecac; putrid sweet, nauseating, terrible. She never cheated on Johnny before, but fair was fair. Fair also poured hot coffee down her throat because without it, the Excedrin would only stick half way down and this hangover would never go away.

   Her main solace was that Dexter Davis would not kiss and tell and she made sure of that. His head slumped onto the pillow in the hotel room, the way it should after she fed him a cocktail containing a handful of vicodin, vodka, and a little cranberry juice for color. When he passed out half way through, she poured the rest down his throat, massaging his adam’s apple so he would ingest the toxic mixture. If he woke up, his only memory would be pissing himself into a catheter and hoping to god he could make himself breathe as well as the machine made him breathe. She cleared herself by leaving him at the door of the hotel with her driver, the witness.  No one would ever suspect the aristocrat of sneaking onto his balcony and walking right through his back door. Her carefully gloved hands never left a print on the glass.

   Sex with him fulfilled her body; after all, he was incredibly experienced and thoughtful. She hadn’t expected, however, her physical ecstasy would stop at her body and he would never be able to touch her heart. She blamed Johnny for that too.  Johnny rejected her for her childlessness. Johnny rejected her for her slender figure. Johnny rejected her for her intelligence.  He married a trophy to put on a shelf and that’s where he kept her, while he whored around with his blond butterball Suzy fucking homemaker. She loved Johnny and hated him with all of her being.

   Rosa prepared an old family recipe. The smell of eggs cooking reached through Pam’s shirt, into her small intestine, grabbed it, and twisted. Pam lurched in pain and nausea. The thought of Dexter dead in his hotel room because she panicked added to the pain in stabs of guilt. She really hoped she hadn’t killed the bastard. When he wasn’t staring at his reflection in the car window behind her, he was a hell of a good lover.

X

   “Dexter, goddamnit, you better get up!” The young man shook the actor vigorously. If he had known this gig meant dragging a drug-addicted drunk out of a hotel bed every morning and pouring enough caffeine into him so he could function, he would have definitely passed.  Playing Dexter Davis’ nursemaid effectively killed the acting bug that had bitten him before he had taken this job. Besides, Dexter had pissed himself. He was such a mess he wasn’t even continent at this point.
   Dexter’s head lolled in the young man’s hands. He drooled a thick red fluid, gurgled, and fell over. A stream of dried blood ran from his nose.  The water glass full of booze and empty prescription bottle laid on the nightstand. Hydrocodone. Like he needed it.

   Dexter rolled to the side, vomited in his bed, and coughed. The young man was used to this; he was dealing with a narcotic-addicted drunk whose liver looked like a cat ran over on the road and left out in the summer heat. It was most likely furry, swollen, covered in holes, and mostly dead. Dexter, however, was not. The 5 mg dosage was a trick. It replaced the usual 15 mg he ate like candy and he never knew the difference. The ‘fatal’ cocktail fed to him by the sweet Mrs. De Soto wasn’t as potent as the actor’s Saturday night special. A cup of coffee and a kick in the ass later found the actor ready to tantrum on set during and between takes. Even the piss-stained sheets recovered fully.

XI

   Light filtered in between the blinds, played in her curls, and fell across the bed. This was the first time he’d ever seen her sleep in and it was beautiful. The sun found gold in her blond hair, copper in her lashes, and kissed every freckle on her downy cheek. He traced her jaw line with his finger. She smiled in her sleep and curled in toward him. He opened his arms and let her in, their shapes forming yin and yang in the early morning sun.

XII

   The actor smiled at the memory. Lifting the skirt of the ice queen in the back of a limo still played in his mind. He didn’t care what her fat lawyer husband did to piss her off. He didn’t even care that she was one of the worst lays he ever had.  He had conquered the Pamela de Soto. Of course, he didn’t remember the fact that she nearly killed him for his silence.

   Jonathan banned him from booze after he woke again in a pool of his own piss and vomit. The water glass, therefore, was really full of Vermont’s finest, chilled to perfection, tasteless, odorless, and entirely free of alcohol.

   Jonathan was impressed with Dexter’s bedding ‘the de Soto,’ as he called her. He knew her as physical perfection and he knew of her reputation as a ‘high falutin’ bitch,’ as they would have called her back home. Dexter called her frigid and said she was a dead lay. Of course, he was used to women eager to do anything to please him. Mrs. De Soto was the aristocrat of aristocrats. She did what she pleased and it never concerned her what Dexter what’s-his-name thought of her sexual prowess.

   Dexter’s amber scarf hid the pallid skin of his neck, ran down his cashmere sweater, and stopped mid-thigh. His black hair was fashionably tousled, spiked at some points, and styled in a way that made him look like he fell out of bed. His amber eyes mesmerized from beneath heavy lids. He had the ability to pierce a soul and to seduce an angel. Not many women, or men, for that matter, looked beyond his striking eyes to notice his pallid, clammy face, sometimes bluish lips, or freezing cold hands. Dexter was one of those people who had the power to change the world or self destruct. He was quickly running toward the latter. He would find a place in hell for those who squandered genius, next to Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Marilyn Monroe. He would, at this pace, find it sooner rather than later.

XIII

   “Shit.” She muttered it when she turned on CNN and didn’t see any stories about the murder or attempted murder of renowned actor, Dexter Davis. Rosa pretended not to notice as help knew they ought to. Pamela eyed her suspiciously.  ‘Nosy goddamned Mexican,” she thought as she looked at Rosa again.

   By all rights, Dexter should have died. After all, who takes six 15 mg Hydrocodone, pours in a little Grey Goose, a little cranberry juice, drinks it down, and lives?  There should have been a press conference, an investigation, something.. Pam bit her pinky nail as she thought. She thought about looking up air flights and getting the hell out of town.

XIV

   Jonathan sat in the plush leather armchair when the phone rang. “Room 203?” He was annoyed with the front desk because they blurted Dexter’s room number to a savvy fan, and now the phone rang off the fucking hook. Here was another stalker, waiting to get a piece of someone who was nothing more than a narcotic-addicted drunk.

   “This is Pamela de Soto. Please allow me to speak to Dexter.” The voice was crispy, like frozen lettuce, and he knew this had to be the ‘De Soto,’ as Dexter referred to her.  He passed Dexter the phone.

   Jonathan understood quickly in his short employ that it was in his best interest not to overhear most of what he should have overheard. It’s what made a good personal assistant a great personal assistant. He didn’t need the money; his family had plenty, but he needed to be here to take care of this schmuck. He learned to care whether Dexter lived or died.

   “THE DAY DIES A FUCKING GODDAMNED THOUSAND DEATHS AND YOU CAN’T DIE ONE!!! THE DAY DIES A FUCKING THOUSAND DEATHS. DO YOU HEAR ME? I KILLED YOU! YOU DIDN’T DIE!” The screaming voice in the phone carried through the suite. It was the voice of a nightmare. Dexter sat back in his chair, shaking. Jonathan looked over at him. This was now Harvey Crawford from Michigan, as all that was Dexter, the confidence, the attitude, had run out onto the oriental rug.

   “I never met Pamela De Soto. Do you hear me? I never met her. Please never mention her to me again.” Dexter’s voice shook as he spoke to Jonathan, the phone not quite hitting the receiver. He raked a hand through his hair and attempted composure, but Jonathan guessed he probably pissed himself.  

   Jonathan left the room to call his mother.

XV

   Johnny  threw the picnic basket in the back of the convertible and walked around to the passenger door. Amy smiled shyly as he opened the door for her. He couldn’t stop thinking about Pam since the phone call. Amy didn’t even know about the cell phone call he got from his investigator, but she did notice he seemed to be in a great mood.

   Johnny didn’t care if Pam fucked Dexter-what’s-his-name, but he did care that, according to the prenuptial agreement, her infidelity immediately made null any claims she made to his wealth. It took fifteen years, but he was finally out. He could file the petition Monday and possibly be divorced by Friday. Pam would just have to shave her own hoo-hah then.  He hit the gas and pulled away from the curb.

XVI

   Pam’s rage had not subsided. She had been running for an hour straight and she was soaked in perspiration. Her legs pounded the asphalt and her fists pounded the air. Her tank top hung on her skeletal frame. Honey brown number 805 was caught into a ponytail and hung lank in wet clumps.  Some hairs had escaped the hair band and hung to her shoulders. Her face was entirely stripped of make-up. She looked more like a scared child than she did a socialite.

   Her feet missed the curb, sending her plummeting to the sidewalk. She took the scrape in stride, picking herself up before she had even completely fallen. She felt her legs shake in pace, but never slowed and never rested. Her eyes bulged in their sockets and snot dripped from her nose. She ignored the sharp pains in her side and the pounding in her head. Only the dizziness, once it set in, was able to slow her down.

XVII

   When it really comes down to it, the day is all we have. Think of it; the days of our lives, these are the days; it’s all about days. We have the present tense until it is ripped out of reality and thrown into the past. Then these days become nothing more than memories. Even the people who become lost to us; how do we remember them?  We remember the good ole days, the days back at the farm, the college days. The truth is we eventually lose everything we have when times change and the day becomes a memory. These days, they really die a thousand deaths.

XVII

   Pamela ran harder whenever she thought about that night at the civic center. She had been crowned Miss Georgia Peach, 1992; most would have thought when she sat outside in the lawn crying her eyes out it was because she lost. Pamela Sue Greenbush’s victory sealed her into a fate she didn’t want. Her responsibilities with the crown would keep her in the state, but without the victory, she couldn’t afford to leave. She was caught in a bitch of a Catch 22; what she needed was a benefactor with enough money to get her away from her past and get her started with her future. The crown, however, kept her in the state at least for the entirety of 1992, and with her mother whoring her to the best paying beauty pageant, it was entirely possible she’d be a dressed-up piece of ass rather than a med school student next year too.

   Pamela didn’t talk about her family because besides her mother and the stepfather who couldn’t seem to keep his hands to himself, she had none. Pamela’s mother was disowned when she came home pregnant at 17 years old and wanted to keep it. Her father disappeared the way wealthy boys do when there’s a bun in a poverty-stricken oven; he was sent to Massachusetts to prep school and then college. His head was spun so fast he had barely time to realize there might have been a baby involved. Pamela’s mother then married the first guy who asked who had a job and a house, and besides his wandering hands, he made a passable father figure. When, at 14, Pamela won the first ‘Miss Cow Pie” type pageants because she could dance en pointe without a formal lesson and her mother got the first check for $500, she was trapped. From there, it was two pageants a year at least until Pamela met a man strong enough to stand up to her mother.

   Pamela’s running finally slowed to a jog and a walk. Sweat poured off her small frame and her clothes were dripping with it. Her hair clung to her face in clumps. Her legs shook so bad she barely walked straight. Her stomach cramped in the pulsing rhythm of her heart. At this rate, she would never be able to make the five-mile hike back to the house. She called her driver and subsequently passed out on the street.

   Michael thought Pamela didn’t sound well when she called and told him to pick her up at the corner of Sunset and Vine, but there was no Pamela to be found, just a crowd standing at the corner with some kind of accident scene. It was then he knew. Mrs. De Soto was in the middle of that crowd. He parked, ran across the busy street, and parted the crowd. She laid there, soaked in sweat, emaciated, with a large goose-egg on her head. She looked like a sickly child who was trying to break a fever. He lifted her easily, carried her across the street, and put her in the back of the limo. She slept soundlessly throughout the car ride, being carried in the house, and then slept most of the evening.

XVIII

   Amy’s bank balance never affected the rest of her life. She still lived in the same modest house, used the same modest pots and pans, and served dinner on the same modest dishes. Her roast chicken, therefore, was served on her old Corelle ware and they  ate it with their stainless steel utensils. It was still just as delicious.

   Amy Jo Randall was never the type to sleep with someone else’s husband. She divorced her high school sweetheart five years ago when he just couldn’t have sex anymore with a one-legged woman. She was devastated and the only one to pick up the pieces was her attorney, trapped himself in a loveless marriage to a rich bitch who cared more for his mastercard than she did for him. If Amy had never seen a picture of Pamela, she would have had serious reservations about the attorney, but, one look at Pamela’s upturned nose, thin lips, and cold blue stare confirmed Johnny’s story instantly. She didn’t see an ounce of goodness in the former beauty queen.
   
   Johnny knew he confided in Amy way too much. It probably wasn’t fair for him to talk to her about how much Pamela’s actions bothered him, but Amy was always such a good listener. He loved that about her. He told Amy how Pamela broke the news of her infertility by refusing treatments, how she refused to give up her workout routine to start getting a normal period again, how she always read his law books and showed off how well she understood it, how she still chased medical journals like she actually made it into med school, how she paid to have someone wax her hoo-hah, how she attended every celebration like she was Cinder-fucking-ella, and how she insisted, even after fifteen years,  he never mention her mother or stepfather in the house. He even told her at one point how he still could be capable of loving Pam; after all, he did marry her. When he said that, Amy couldn’t stop the one tear that escaped her right duct. He couldn’t wait to tell her about Dexter.

   Jonathan’s phone call weighed heavily on her mind, though. Amy’s oldest son decided to get his feet wet in the acting business by taking a job as a personal assistant to none other than Dexter Davis. His voice shook so bad earlier that afternoon Amy didn’t recognize it was her son on the phone. She felt herself turn white when she thought about it.

   “Her voice.. She didn’t even make sense.. She could kill someone and you’re messing around with her husband.. Just be careful.. Ok? She scared the hell out of me. She really meant to kill him, mom. She’s fucking crazy. I’ll never forget it. She kept screaming nonsense.  Just watch your back, mom. I love you.” Jonathan ranted. Jonathan, who never rants.. Jonathan who knew the easiest way to make connections was under the guise of being a personal assistant.. Jonathan who was scared to death of a skinny debutante.

   Amy didn’t take the warning lightly; after all, she’d had one brush with death. She was scared for Johnny even more; after all, on Sunday night, he would have to go home to her.

   Johnny took a moment to appreciate the meal in front of him; it was everything good about suburban America. It was roasted chicken, creamy mashed potatoes with homemade gravy, green beans amandine steamed to perfection, raspberry pie cooling in the window, and all served on slightly mismatched Corelle dishes. Even Amy fit perfectly in the picture with a hastily upswept mass of curls, t-shirt, jeans and an apron. Her soft brown eyes, though, looked disquieted, like a scream on the Mona Lisa. He knew she talked to Jonathan. Jonathan probably knew about Pam and Dexter. Jonathan probably told Amy and Amy should be happy, but she looked terrified. Maybe she was afraid of where these events would leave her.

   “Baby, sit down, you really did outdo yourself; it looks amazing.” Johnny smiled at her, calling her over to the chair beside him. She sat down slowly, making sure the balance of her weight never fell on her non-existent right leg. “Do you know about Pam and Dexter?” Her silence answered for her. “Are you worried about what’s going to happen between us now that I can get that divorce?”

   “No, I’m worried about what she’s going to do to you. There’s more to the story than you know.” Amy blurted quickly. “Do you know she tried to kill him to keep him quiet?”

   “Pam won’t hurt me; I’ll be fine,” Johnny smiled his best lawyer smile; he appreciated her concern, but Pam? Pam was nothing but a skinny rich bitch. She liked to think she was smart and talented, but the only thing she could ever do right was win beauty pageants.  If it weren’t for him, she’d be Miss Cow Pasture 1999, bleached blond, sitting at the corner of the bar, feeding some huge alcohol problem, trying to pick up a guy who could put her dumb ass through med school. Maybe she’d be talking about the glory days.. Those were the days, yeah, the best days of her life.

XVIV

   Pam awoke with a bitch of a headache and cotton mouth. She knew she ran too far, but in her California king bed, it felt like a bad dream. The sunset drove her crazy, and she could see the salmon light sneaking between the blind slats to get her. She watched the days.. The days of her marriage, when love set like the sun and grew frigid into the night, then the days of her attempt at motherhood with tests and procedures and tests until she felt so much like a pincushion and a failure she had to stop, then there were the days between love and hate, when Johnny looked at her with not total disgust, but not enthralled with love; she had become the comfy couch that looked like shit, but the cushions finally sat just the way you wanted.  Before that, she watched the days of her childhood, first as a prodigy, then as a beauty queen whore, quickly wane from one who had promise to one who had some great measurements. Once her measurements were the topic, no one cared about her IQ anymore.

   She didn’t know what she was doing, but she was doing it. She climbed into the shower noiselessly, turned on the water as hot as she could get it, and scrubbed her skin raw. She then wrapped herself in a large white Egyptian cotton bath towel, padded barefoot across the slate floor, and changed into a tight purple sweater and black leggings. She was ready to either fuck or kill.

XX

   Amy curled into Johnny’s chest. He smiled at the way she climbed right inside of him, like Pam did so many years ago, but stopped. He played absently with her curls. She was already softly snoring in rhythm with the rain when lightning flashed outside.. In that flash was a silhouette. Though the light was bad, the form was unmistakable. Pam.

   Johnny started to sit up, his eyes wide in shock. He hardly had time to assess the situation when she jumped on top of him. He wanted to throw her off, but his arms wouldn’t work and then her hands were on his throat.

   Amy awoke at the shifting of the mattress, but knew not to move. She rolled over naturally in her ‘sleep’ and grabbed the handgun under the bed. She felt for the safety and the trigger before she pulled it up around the side of the bed.

   Pam’s aqua eyes bulged and her hair was thrown back and forth into more of a nest than a mane. Her face burned red and her nostrils flared as she dug her champagne tips into his throat under his ears. She never saw the gun. Johnny struggled against her to breathe.

   Amy lifted the gun at Pam and pulled the trigger. One shot, point blank range, found its way into Pam’s sternum. The blow of the blast knocked her back, her murderous expression still intact, as she gurgled, seized, and finally died that way.

   One look in the dead woman’s face though and Amy understood what she had never heard from Johnny. The pageant days took Pam from a promising student to a beauty queen, and to escape that life, she sold herself as a wife-whore to a fat lawyer. When her attempts at pregnancy failed, he put his trophy wife back on the shelf, without even a baby to keep her company, and found a newer, better model, improved so it can give birth. Now, after 15 years of loneliness, she finally found solace in a sex act with a total cad, and couldn’t even deal at that point with that short exchange of intimacy. Yeah, she was crazier than a shithouse rat, but there was a damn good reason.
   Johnny was too busy catching his breath and dealing with the shock of his dead wife  to realize the gun was pointed at him. It was point blank again, aimed through the temple from the left side, the gun wiped clean on Kmart sheets, and placed in his hand before rigor mortis set in. His arm was positioned to tell the tale of a murder suicide. Amy reached for the phone.

   “Hello? This is Amy Jo Randall. I need the police and maybe an ambulance here right away. My boyfriend shot someone and shot himself. Please hurry. They might still be alive.”

Epilogue

   Jonathan hated visiting his mother there. The old magazines and fake flowers never really hid the clinical feel. He stopped at the desk where the nurse knew him. He left his cell phone and checked himself for any pens or anything else that might be construed as a weapon by the insane woman who gave birth to him. He then walked back to her room.

   The police always suspected the De Soto murder suicide had some missing pieces, but putting a woman on the stand who had survived an axe attack with just a prosthetic leg below the knee would have been their own suicide. At any rate, the entire situation caused Amy Jo Randall to be as crazy as they came. She screamed for no reason, sometimes attacking people at random in violent fits, and attempting suicide multiple times. She was already imprisoned with medication; there was no need for the bars.

   Ever since the paramedics carried Amy out while she was screaming the same nonsense Pam De Soto did before she died, Jonathan felt differently about her. She stopped being the soft, loving woman who bandaged his knees and kissed his forehead and became his most common nightmare. He still woke up in cold sweats with “the day dies a thousand deaths” running through his head. He didn’t know that her attacker had before said the exact same thing.

   Today was a lucid day, but those come and go without reason. Some days, he would know her as mom, then some days she would fuel his nightmares. Some days it was Pam De Soto, the ice queen herself, screaming about the days, and sometimes it was her fat husband. Sometimes it was Dexter, white and shaking on the couch, the day he quit working for him. He would simply deal with what was. His brothers wouldn’t visit her at all since the murder.

   Today was a lucid day, but there would be no discernable trend to predict the probability of a good day or a bad day. Even the good old days weren’t always good, and these days, they die a thousand deaths. So far more come along to die in the slaughter, taking our friends and memories with them, leaving us pictures and nothing, air to hug and no will to live. These days.