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chivygirl · 1 year

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Be who you want to be, he said.

She stared at him over the wreath of smoke

What a sap, she thought. Snaps his head at whatever passes by. How could I have been so very stupid as to believe… ..

She had felt something incredible with him, but now? Where was that bright, fulfilling prophecy?

At the bottom of the barrel

Really, all those bright dreams had been extinguished as if under the heel of a Nazi boot

The ugly face of conquering reality: she was not so special… she had no reason to ever have believed it.

As on every Friday, they were at Chile's: a local bar/upscale fake trattoria with lots of vegan dishes and pretentious people. A good people-watching spot.

He looked lasciviously at the fresh young woman who came to take their order, and she forced herself to be still, to concentrate on the menu while he was engaged in light hearted banter. She scanned the list of appetizers, but they streamed past her eyes like shiny trout in a fast moving stream.

He was still talking, so she checked out the waitress, who was maybe just shy of 30 but obviously horny as hell and willing to listen. He was blabbering about how much he loved Pinot grigio, and how much it tasted like cork and old coins. This she had heard before, but the waitress hadn't, so she laughed.

In the meantime, Erin glanced over at the couple in front of her. Here, the roles were reversed: the attractive brunette was munching on the sexy waiter with her big doe eyes, and her boyfriend was obviously feeling ignored. They exchanged glances for the breadth of a second, seeming to breathe in that palpable sense of heartbreak, mixed with humour. Love and disappointment.

"Well then, what can I bring for you ma'am? "

The waitress said in an exaggeration of good manners. Erin detested the term, as it made her feel 100- years old.

"A Caesar salad please. And a Beck's. Very cold" She handed back the menu with a pointed stare and a big, vacuous smile.

Bernie looked at her, puzzled.

"Everything ok? You don't seem so well. Didn't you want a steak?" He gave her a look which said he thought she was nuts.

"Can't. On a diet. " She stared around his balding head to the young man, who was staring at her. She blushed.

Suddenly, she stood up, walked towards the bathroom, and left her business card in the qlonely man's hand, pretending to have slipped up against him by accident. His girlfriend, who had ignored him up to that moment, looked at Erin, disgusted.

Bernie had suggested she go to a shrink, which she did. He was a strange man who made sudden movements about the room, reminding her of a large moth. She thought he might be able to use therapy, preferably electro shock.

She told him that she didn't love her boyfriend, because he seemed so disinterested in her. The doctor asked her if she was looking for a real relationship or just attention. Maybe just attention, she said, but so? Everyone wants attention.

Of course, replied Dr. Grips, but only children demand it.

Slowly, she had lost all her interest for anything other than chocolate chip cookies, wine and the occasional night out with the girls, which tortured her as her bestie Gilda was incredibly hot and always gloating about her most recent conquest and where they went on holiday. Daphne, instead, was stoic not even stooping to depression.

"Men are like that" She commented to Erin, if the latter ever whined about Bernie.

"What did you expect? Barbie in the Maldives and pink n pretty? "

Her metaphors were indecifrable but somehow worked.

"I didn't expect anything, " Erin sighed, waving to Sally for another Beck's, "just not a flat line. Our relationship is officially dead, and he seems more excited about literally anything aside from me, even a discount at Whole Foods. "

She decided it was time to take action. She packed her things in a light duffel, grabbed the keys to the truck and headed for the desert. The heat and the dryness seemed to dry out her mind. She started to have visions.

When she stopped at a diner on the first afternoon out, she was dead tired. There, she saw a man get off his motorcycle and mosey up to the bar, carefully dusting his feet off on the welcome mat. He ordered a cup of coffee and sat down.

She noticed a key ring with what reminded her of a ball and chain. In a flash he was throwing at her, and she caught it, dropping it quickly on the linoleum countertop.

"You out of your mind!? "

The damn thing had spikes on it. She tossed it back to him hard, but he just laughed. Her bitterness had turned her stupid. She got up and left, dropping a ten dollar bill next to her greasy plate. The doorbell jingled as she left..

Outside, the sagebrush trembled in the high desert heat. The air wiggled into waves which distorted the view. It was purple, red, green. She almost expected a Navajo to come dancing out, full headdress flying over the sandy sea.

But it was quiet.

After driving for a half an hour Erin stopped. Her phone was ringing with that irritating high pitched warble. She fought an urge to toss it into the ditch. She pulled off the road, greeting Bernie calmly. He asked where the hell she was.

What's it to you? She answered back, calmly.

He said he missed her, but wanted to say goodbye as he had to take a flight to Portland for a conference. He would call from the road.

The next morning, she woke up early, had a fantastic continental breakfast at the Days inn. Sausage links, pancakes, good old fashioned coffee with cream.

She had dressed in a worn old pair of jeans and leather jacket, a pink t-shirt.

She headed out on route 40, past Sun Valley. Before the petrified forest and the tourist traps, she stopped, creeping down into a hole beneath a wreath of dead logs, the wood so dry it looked like it might burst into flames.

There was Tony, his teeth rotted out of his head and his body marbled with green. He must be full of gas, she thought.

Maggots were feeding on eyeballs and genitals. His foot stuck through his sock, the bones starting to poke through after months and months of hot Arizona sun. Years ago, he had been her one and only, and they had snuggled up together at night. Then the rain came, and she was left alone, discarded, and her phone calls went unanswered for days.

The Phoenix police department had just been assigned a string of homicide cases. Very unusual victims: young, handsome, and successful. Unmarried. Well-liked and popular.

He had treated her like a princess: bottles of expensive wine, foreign clothes, elegant holidays. Gave her compliments.

Until she realized it was simply a game. Her so-called boyfriend started to have hobbies, which took up too much of his time. When his flirting got obvious, Erin went into overdrive. She would rev up into action. She would go work out to get out her excess energy, sweating for hours so that she would simply collapse into a heap at home, later, forgetting to even check her phone for the messages that would rarely arrive from Luis, from Roger, from Dominic.

She had looked for a cute guy to hook up with and she had found it. But somehow, along the way, she had lost her cool. Her fangs had showed, and somehow, the men were scared off.

Inspector Stanley Criss had little to go on, as usual. The most recent victim must have had dozens of lovers, but getting had to identify: who would have been the one with a screw loose. Which didn't seem like a likely hypothesis, since women who killed were proportionally rare.

Outside his penthouse, a few reporters and a few good looking women, looking a bit sad. Stanley was able to obtain an interview, and one, named Shirley Tyler, gave him a tiny lead. She told him that Roger (the victim) received hundreds of calls a day from a woman he referred to as the stalker. Asked if she had ever seen the woman, Shirley mentioned only that she had seen a letter at the house, hidden in his desk. It was a kind of dramatic declaration, mentioning that she would move on, don't forget me and the like, something an adolescent could have written, not a grown woman. "I could tell she was crazy. No one throws it all on the table like that. A woman always keeps a bit of mystery to keep a man"

Shirley seemed sure of her words.

She had also seen a picture, identified by Roger, of a slim brunette dressed boyishly.

"A beautiful woman" Shirley said it with a touch of envy. She was a bit thick about the midline.

"Beautiful is as beautiful does. Better an old bag with a good heart that a shiny new tart who's gone crazy"

Shirley wasn't ugly or old, just realistic. She didn't believe in love or being anyone's one and only.

Thank god. Tony had believed in all of those things, but had ended up in a ditch in Hopi country, without a chance of redemption. His gorgeous girlfriend hasn't waited for his corpse to melt before moving on. Just like every man moved on to his next prey.

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