Page 148 of Demo
“I’ve got her,” Knox says as he helps me to my feet, then wraps an arm around my shoulder. “Let’s go outside and get some fresh air,” he says, and I just love the way his breath tickles my face and blows the strands of my hair to just ever so slightly brush my skin. That feels like bubbles—no, suds. Suds popping against my skin. Like someone scooped up a handful of suds from a bubble bath and blew them into my face.
“Do it again,” I say as we exit the front of the apartment building.
“Huh?” Knox says, and I realize what I’ve asked for, and what the reality is, so I just wave him off. “Never mind.”
Knox stops, and that causes me to look up and take in the scene. Marcus is on his knees in the front yard, hands cuffed behind his back. “John with an H” is in the same position next to him. Sanders is in the back of a police car. I see three other squad cars that look like they pulled up in a hurry and parked like assholes on the street.
Nosy neighbors have started congregating on the sidewalk. And I hear a faint noise … It makes me think of a hummingbird’s wings rapidly fluttering, making a little pitter-patter sound. Except, it’s more of a shuttering, than a fluttering. A rapid shuttering … And I don’t even have to open my eyes to know where to find him.
I turn my head toward the sound, raise my hands and give the double bird, then open my eyes and stare across the lawn several dozen feet and right into the zoom lens of a camera. Suddenly, the sound stops, and I see Monty slowly pull his head away from the camera, disbelief across his face at the realization that the subject he was photographing turned out to be me.
Oh, have I got a story for you.
As we descend the stairs, Clark approaches and tells us we are clear to leave, but we need to stop by the station tomorrow to give statements. Apparently, Sanders called the police but, obviously, they were already casing the joint. Sanders then told them everything he knew and about his involvement.
“Thanks,” Knox says to Clark, before steering me toward his truck.
***
KNOX
On the short ride back to the apartment, Lizzie is chewing her fingernails and bobbing her knee up and down while looking out the window. At one point, she starts running her pointer finger down the window and when I ask her what she’s doing, she says she’s following the raindrops. She continues to do this the rest of the way home.
It’s not fucking raining.
When I park the truck at the apartment building, I get out and quickly jog around to open her door. There is a light shining in the driveway, and with the cab light on, I finally get a good look at her face and my heart sinks. She’s royally fucked up.
Her normally bright, round eyes are droopy and turned down at the edges, and the little bit of her actual eyeballs I can see are bloodshot, cloudy and watery. And they are unfocused as she tries to say my name.
Her skin is pale, although her cheeks are flushed, and she has the slightest sway to her body. I help her stumble out of the car and put one of her arms around my shoulder as I help her up the stairs. Once inside the apartment, I shut and lock the door, keeping a hand on her back to keep her steady.
Of course, Kennedy comes bounding up to us, circling us and yipping. “It’s OK, buddy, it’s just us,” I say to him, releasing Lizzie to lean against the wall as I give the dog attention, hoping that will calm him down.
Lizzie tries to toe out of her shoes but stumbles. I catch her around the waist, then put one of her arms around my neck as I put one of mine under her knees and hoist her up into my arms and quickly march her to the bedroom and drop her on the bed.
And she giggles. She fucking giggles.
“Stay,” I say to her, pointing a finger at her to drive my point home. Then I go back out and put fresh Kibble in Kennedy’s bowl to keep him occupied, which does the trick.
I go back into the bedroom and find Lizzie hasn’t moved. I reach down and pull off my shoes, one by one, as she gives herself a bounce on the bed and giggles some more. “What’s so funny?” I ask as I straighten up.
“OK,” she says, suddenly sitting up ramrod straight, hands out in front of her, fingers wide. “OK. I know the answer to this, and it sounds crazy, but I also know what I’m feeling, and I have to ask.”
I tilt my head to the side as I slide my jeans off, so I’m left in my T-shirt and boxers. “Yes …” I prod.
Keeping her same position, Lizzie looks up at me and asks, “Do we have a waterbed?”
I throw my head back and laugh, then I run my hands down my face and groan. “No, Lizzie, we don’t have a waterbed.”
“Right?!” she replies, then flips herself back onto the bed. “But why is it so bouncy?”
“It’s not,” I say as I make my way to her side of the bed. “Everything just feels exaggerated to you right now.” She mumbles something as she sits back up and almost falls off the side of the bed, and I have to catch her and help her right herself. “What?” I ask her.
“Like Jell-O,” she says. “The bed. It feels like Jell-O.” Then she pulls one elbow inside her shirt sleeve and does a little maneuvering, then pulls the other in, and in a flash, she pulls her bra out through one of her sleeves and tosses it across the room before flopping back on the bed.
“And THAT,” she practically yells, then puts her hand over her mouth and looks like she’s startled at her own volume. She starts again, whispering this time. “That feels like being uncuffed.”
Hands on my hips, I stare down at my wife—she’s still my fucking wife—and see her hair is a wild mess all splayed around her face and the pillow, her breasts are flopping loose beneath her T-shirt, and now she’s unbuttoning her pants and trying to shimmy them down over her hips as she lays on the bed.
