Best Day Ever

  It’s at that moment, as we’re studying each other, contemplating our next moves, that I hear sirens. The sound is faint but growing louder. Definitely coming toward us.

  Mia must hear her rescuers in the distance and finally manages a smile, possibly the most genuine smile of the day. It’s the half-moon kind of smile, like the one she gave me this morning, like she gave me when we first dated, a smile of love. But then her face falls, as if that smile is not for me, not anymore. “Wrong, Paul. I am much more than you. And I’m so much better off without you.” Her ridiculous paring knife is clutched in her hand pointed at me. It would be so easy to grab it, turn the blade toward her, plunge it into her traitorous chest.

  The sirens are closing in. She does have a fucking panic button. Now I must decide. Finish what I started with the poison, or get out before the Keystone Cops arrive, grab my kids and start over. Because clearly, she hasn’t thought of everything. Our kids, our precious boys, are at home asleep. Blissfully unaware of all of this strife, like little lambs just waiting for their shepherd to save them.

  Red and blue flashes are lighting up the street. I’ve got to get out of here.

  “This isn’t over, Mia, but for now, good night, honey. Sleep tight. We’ll see each other again soon. Perhaps when you least expect it,” I say before turning and running out the back door, through the yard to my car. The cops drive past me as I sit low in my front seat, flying into our driveway at speeds that could only be considered excessive. You’d think there was an actual crime taking place inside. Instead they’ll find a crazy woman huddled by the front door with a tiny knife, and eventually, a former special ops guy knocked out by his precious strawberry plants. Losers. Both of them.

  My poor little wife. She thinks she is so clever. Outsmart Paul Strom? Never.

  I push the gas and drive by quickly. Decision made. I find myself constantly checking my mirrors, rearview and side, until I escape through the Lakeside gate.

  I know I’m driving too fast, even if all of the cops from this entire little township are busy at my cottage for now, and I pull my foot back from the gas pedal. I need to conserve fuel until I make it to a bigger town where there will be an open gas station. It would not be prudent to run out of gas somewhere in the middle of these dark country roads tonight. I have too much more to take care of for that.

  1:45 a.m.

  29

  I haven’t noticed another car on the road with me for miles, and believe me, I’ve been looking. At night, if you are aware, you can spot a tail. It’s easy when you have to keep your lights on to see. And out here in the country, you need your headlights. If Buck or his people were following me, they aren’t anymore. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel, remembering how Buck’s people followed me around Grandville, spied on my life. How could I have missed them?

  The gas station is a still life. Pumps ablaze in too-bright fluorescent light, but everything is eerily motionless except for a large moth diving in and out of the scene. I roll to a stop and climb out of the Flex. It’s interesting to me how much my palms are sweating, although I hadn’t registered in my mind anything like fear. My body feels tense, on edge. I remind myself to breathe as I look around. I’m the only one here, except the person working in the station.

  As I walk toward the silhouette of a man sitting behind the counter, I smile and notice the camera. That’s fine, too. We are all being videotaped all the time now. If anyone cares to retrieve that tape it will simply prove that I decided to drive home instead of spending the night in the musty inn. No crime there.

  The gas station door is locked. I shake the handle as the employee, a burly man whose other job could be biker, leans forward and presses a button.

  “Need gas?” the voice booms through a speaker.

  No, I just wanted to stop by and say hi, my busy mind thinks. I wonder why I don’t just move to another country. People here are such simpletons. His brother is probably one of the cops assigned to protect Mia. Equally effective. So stupid, all of them.

  “Yes. Pump 1. Forty dollars,” I say. I’ve located the after-hours pay drawer. I pull out my wallet as he slides the drawer open. I place two crisp twenty-dollar bills in the drawer and he closes the hatch.

  I wonder if he feels safe, locked inside a fully lit glass building. He shouldn’t.

  “Pump 1 is on,” he says. His voice is impatient, as if he has better things to do than supply gas to late-night drivers. But that is his only function. I shrug him off. I’m the one in a hurry, I remind my tense body.

  Turning my back to the thug, I return to my car and begin pumping gas. I’m now standing in a pool of light, exposed to anyone who drives by on the country road. But who would be looking for me now? Buck and Mia have handled everything, they think. Meanwhile, Buck is watering the backyard with blood and Mia is cowering with a knife. The authorities either know I’ve left Lakeside, or they think I’ve checked into the inn. Or, they think I’m lurking somewhere in the darkness, ready to strike again. No matter what, they are wrong. All of that extra police security is totally unnecessary. I’m here, pumping gas at a desolate country gas station. I’m a tired man just hoping to make it home to his boys soon. Sunrise isn’t until about 6:45 a.m. I have plenty of time.

  My boys. The joys of my life. Mikey and Sam will be so happy to see me. I might even sneak into their bedrooms, give them each a fatherly hug. They loved having me take them to school this morning, begged me to take them to the lake, too. Their disappointed little faces haunt me a bit right now. I’ll make it up to them. Maybe a trip to Disneyland? Gretchen would like that, too. Maybe I’ll bundle them up and put them in the car and take them to her apartment tonight. It would be such an adventure, way better than Lakeside. We could get on the road before sunrise. I smile at the thought. The four of us, Gretchen, the boys and I, headed to the happiest place on earth. The boys would be thrilled.

  The pump stops. I pull out the nozzle, screw the gas cap on and hurry into the car. As I pull out of the bright white light of the gas station and back onto the country road, I wonder if it’s too late to call Gretchen. She has called me four times since I left on my trip with Mia. That’s not like her. For my part, I’ve been declining her calls. She knows better than to leave me a voice mail. It’s against our rules.

  As I pull onto the interstate, I feel a flood of relief wash over me. I’ve escaped the country bumpkins. No one has followed me. I sigh, relaxing. I know it’s late, but I call Gretchen. The phone rings loudly over my car’s Bluetooth system. One ring, two rings.

  “Paul?” Gretchen says. She sounds sleepy. I wish I were in bed next to her.

  “Hi, my love,” I say. It’s important to have different terms of endearment, I’ve learned. Mia is honey. Gretchen is my love. Caroline, well, she is now the bitch. Before, she was babe. Lois was sweetie, until she wasn’t. Buck talked to Lois, my busy mind recalls. I need to deal with Buck. I should have killed him in the backyard of my cottage earlier. Soon I’ll finish him off. He thinks he’s so cool, so tough. He’s not. Did you notice how fast I took him down? He dropped like a rock. All talk, no substance.

  “Why didn’t you take any of my calls today?” Gretchen asks.

  “You know why, love. I had to be with Mia,” I say. “But I’ve got some good news. I’ve left her. Everything you’ve dreamed of for the two of us can come true now.”

  “Paul, some man came to see me early this morning. He said his name was Buck. Said it was urgent that we talk. So I let him in,” she says. Her voice is sounding awake now. Urgent. I should have taken her calls. “He wanted to talk about you. He... Paul, he said such ugly things. And he had photos of a woman’s face all beaten up. Said you did it.”

  Fine. The bastard tried to convince her I’m evil. I will convince her otherwise.

  “Oh, love, I’m so sorry. Buck is crazy. The guy is totally jealous of me. He??
?s our neighbor up at the lake, and he is not right in the head. It seems he’s developed a fixation with me. He actually wants to ruin my life with lies and innuendos. Please don’t think twice about it. You know I would never hurt a woman. No one loves women more than I do. No one loves you better, right?” I say. My hands grip the steering wheel once more. I want to turn around, drive back to the lake and kill Buck, even though I’m not that kind of guy. It takes everything inside of me to keep heading home to my boys and Gretchen. “This is just some cruel game Buck is playing. He’s twisted. You don’t actually believe him, do you, love?”

  “I don’t want to, Paul,” she says. Now her voice is shaky. I imagine her sitting in bed, knees pulled up under chin. She’s naked. Maybe I’ll drive there first, pick her up and bring her to my house. “I just don’t know what to believe.”

  What I cannot believe is how Buck and Mia have messed with my life. They will not get away with this. As much as I want to go comfort Gretchen, and I may still, I realize the true power play is back at home, asleep in their beds waiting for their beloved dad to come home.

  “I know you’re frightened, my love,” I say in a soothing voice while checking my rearview mirror. I pass a semitruck, but no one else is on the road. No one is following me, I’m certain. “It was reprehensible of Buck to involve you in his ridiculous vendetta. He’s a sick man, he needs help. How about this, love? I’ll bring over breakfast in the morning, we’ll talk all of this through. You’ve been dreaming about going to the beach together and now we can. Sound good?”

  “I need to think,” she says quietly. “I need some space. I’ll call you in a few days. Don’t call me, Paul. Okay?” She is crying. I hear a big sob as she hangs up on me.

  My mistress just hung up on me. How is this happening? Somehow, in the space of one day, my wife leaves me for another man and my mistress tells me not to call her. This is all Buck’s fault. I should have shoved the pen in his neck or stomped on his trachea in the garden. I want to scream or throw something at someone but I’m driving and that would be ridiculous. I need to calm down and focus. I’m sweating and I crank up the air-conditioning. I tip my neck from side to side until it cracks satisfyingly. I am still in charge of the situation, or I will be as soon as I am home with the boys. Maybe we’ll leave for Disneyland tomorrow? If Gretchen changes her mind, she can join us.

  I forgot to tell her about Disneyland, I realize. I push the button for Gretchen’s number. Her contact information is disguised as a restaurant named Savory. Clever, I know. The Bluetooth kicks in and the phone rings. One. Two. Three. Four.

  “This is Gretchen,” her voice mail announces. “Leave a message.”

  I cannot believe she is ignoring me, ignoring my call. How dare she. This is not acceptable. Rage overtakes me as I hurl my phone at the passenger window and hear the thud as it falls into the crevice between the door and the seat. The only sound in the car now is my ragged breath. I squeeze the steering wheel as my jaw clenches and I stomp on the gas pedal. I’ll listen to my playlist. I push the button and my favorite song, Bobby Darin’s rendition of “Mack the Knife,” blasts through my sound system as I sing along.

  I glance in the rearview mirror and see the flashing lights of a police car. I am out of control. I will make a mistake. My heart is thudding as I slow down to sixty-five miles per hour. This is not the time to be pulled over. The lights are behind me now, and I can hear the sirens. The cop car speeds past me. It’s a sign. My shoulders relax, I loosen my hold on the steering wheel, and I turn up my song. Smooth jazz: calm and structured and in control. Just like me.

  2:45 a.m.

  30

  The bright lights of downtown Columbus are a welcome beacon in my agitated state. I am making great time; there are hardly any other cars on the road, just long-haul truckers and me. I check my watch obsessively. I am anxious to get home but I realize I may have a couple of other things to attend to before I am reunited with my boys. I mean, they’re asleep, so they’re happy, but I am not. There are still at least three hours of darkness left tonight, giving me enough time to tie up some loose ends.

  Ironically, the freeway exit I take isn’t just the way home; it’s the exit for my office, too. It was convenient, driving from my stately suburban home to my gleaming office building in under ten minutes. The two worlds, home and work, close in proximity but so very different. The office building is a square of glass and steel, situated on a hill with direct views of the downtown skyline. It was a convenient location and the partners were hailed for building here when they did. It made sense, of course; a quick turn onto the freeway got you downtown or to the airport in minutes, while a few minutes in the opposite direction led to home. Very convenient if you forgot something or wanted to check to be sure your wife really was taking a nap with the kids. For the record, she always was doing exactly what she told me, my sweet Mia. After a few years, I didn’t even need to check in on her so often. Funny, how one becomes complacent, accepting things at face value. When did she stop asking if I’d be home for lunch? Possibly work got in the way, or perhaps it was Caroline’s fault.

  Caroline is no Mia.

  Mia never lied to me. Well, not until now. Caroline did from the very moment I met her. She flirted right back. She felt the heat between us in that elevator, and she knew what we could be together. I wanted to be what she needed. We had that potential. But all along, she had Chadwick.

  Chadwick. What kind of name is that? I guess it’s better than Paul, as far as Caroline’s concerned.

  And here we are, my old stomping grounds. I park in one of the two Thompson Payne partner-only spots—pompous jerks—and scan the rest of the lot. Empty. I reach across to the passenger seat floor to retrieve my phone, relieved the screen didn’t break when I threw it across the car. I need to make sure to keep myself under control. This is a time for calculation and calm. The fire can come out later.

  Of course, I know there are security cameras trained on this parking lot, on the building entrances. But the partners are both pompous and cheap. I also know they reset every morning at 6:00 a.m., recording over the past evening’s tapes if the alarm wasn’t triggered.

  It won’t be. I slip my key into the door and, as predicted, it opens. Yes, Rebecca made me hand over my key. Yes, I’m savvy enough to have made a duplicate years ago. I hurry to the security code keypad, type in the same four numbers the company has used since it was founded—a combination of Thompson and Payne’s birth dates—and the beeping stops as the little button turns green. I’m a go. I knew they wouldn’t change the code, or rekey the whole building. I was a token fire, a take-one-for-the-team-because-we-take-sexual-harassment-seriously dismissal. I’m not a threat, not really. I’m just a sad footnote in the otherwise spotless equality history of the firm. Right.

  It’s nice to be back home, I realize, stepping inside the stainless steel elevator, pushing the button for the top floor. My floor. Also on this floor: the partners, HR and, yes, precious Caroline. I hurry down the luxuriously carpeted hallway, past the numerous framed awards lining the walls, many of them for campaigns I worked on, campaigns I created. I stop for a moment and stare at my office, now filled with someone else’s possessions. I know Rick Jacobs got the promotion, took my job. He was the only guy who wrote to me after I left, the only one who said he missed me. I move on.

  Rebecca’s office door is locked. Of course. She is the only person in this entire company who would actually lock her door. But that’s fine, because my position came with many privileges, not the least of which was a master key. Her door swings open and I recoil from the smell of manure. Good God, who allows this woman to create a jungle in her office? It is against common courtesy, I mean, the poor folks on either side of her. What is she subjecting them to with all of this pesticide use, this damp musty air caused by her incessant watering? I’m probably saving someone’s life, I realize, as I yank the first pla
nt out of its pot, tossing it on her desk.

  She considers these plants to be her kids. I’d heard that somewhere, not long after our first meeting. She’s worse than Mia with her strawberry daughters, a sick woman.

  I quickly eliminate all of her children, making a leafy green pile of debris on her white office chair, her desk. I squish a particularly large, mushy green plant into her area rug—from her trip to India, I hear—the stain adding a touch of forest green to the otherwise tan and brown carpet. I’m an artist.

  Finished gardening, I pull on the file drawer, and it’s locked. This I don’t have a key for, this is not part of the master plan. Rebecca is such a mistrustful, nasty woman. I don’t need her files anyway.

  I’m out in the hall and inside Caroline’s office. The small space smells like cinnamon and jasmine, the scent of the candle she always had lit on her desk, and I take a moment to breathe her in. I sit down in her chair and close my eyes, resting both hands on her desk, feeling her energy. Such a missed opportunity, such a stupid girl. We could have been so great together.

  I open my eyes and stare at the framed photo next to the candle. It’s Caroline with her arms wrapped around the waist of a jock. He’s blond, at least six-four and an idiot, I can tell. He’s wearing his football jersey from their college team. College sweethearts, how lovely. But she told me she was single, didn’t she? Yes, I’m sure she did. And when I was still here, there was no Chad on her desk. That I would have noticed, of course. I am the first one to respect a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. So here we are, Chad, Caroline and me. What could I possibly gift to the happy couple that they don’t already have? A potted plant perhaps? Well, unfortunately, we’re fresh out of those at Thompson Payne. I do need to leave her with something, some way for her to know I was here, and that she picked the wrong guy.

  I grab the frame and pop the photo out. On the back, in Caroline’s writing: “C&C forever.” I fight the urge to rip up the ridiculous photo but instead I pull out my new pen, scribble out the C&C nonsense and replace it with P&C forever, adding a little heart. I smile as I place the photo back in its frame and position it perfectly next to the candle.