Jessie Ch. 20

Author's note:

This chapter contains no sexual activity. If that is what you're looking for, please return next week.

As always, thanks for reading, and your votes and comments.

###

Sorrow and solitude

These are the precious things

And the only words

That are worth rememberin'

- Nothin', Robert Plant & Allison Kraus

###

"You're quitting?" My teacher looked shocked.

"Yeah, dropping the class." My heart hammered and I wished I could meet Mr. McLaughlin's eyes. I respected this man. He was a brilliant professor who could distill complex topics down to basic building blocks. He always had time for his students, and he always brought snacks. He'd throw candies at you if you looked like you were nodding off. Good candy too, like Hershey's bars.

He sighed and leaned against his desk, scratched his bushy goatee. "Is it all your classes, or just mine?"

"All of them. I don't think I'm gonna be a nurse."

"Really, Miss Rigg? A semester from graduating and you just discovered this isn't for you?"

That's not what I said.

I gave him a sad smile. "My boyfriend was blown up in one of those recent car bombs. He's gonna need more help than I can give him while going to school."

"So you'll be back to finish your studies eventually? It'd be terrible to see all your potential leave this field. You're really smart, and you've got a way of putting people at ease..." His voice trailed off. "I'm proud of you, miss Rigg. I don't get a lot of students over thirty, you really stood out."

I blushed and held out my hand. "Thanks."

He shook my hand with one of his massive mitts. "I hope to see you in class again someday."

"I hope so too."

I headed out, down the offwhite halfway, towards the exit doors. Time to go see my lawyer.

###

The bells on the door jingled and Ashley looked up from awkwardly sweeping the floor. Gunshot wounds take longer to heal in real life than on TV, and her arm was still in a sling. Her hair had started to regrow too, and while it looked short and shaggy, she'd obviously made an attempt to style it.

"Hey Jess, what's up?"

"Nothing. How's the arm?"

She waggled her eyebrows at me and motioned with the broom. "Everything's slowly getting better. How's Sienna? How's Gary?"

"See is slowly getting better. Gary's the same. Still in a coma. Sienna is actually why I stopped by. You still have that car for sale? I want to get her something cheap for going back to college."

"Yeah, it's still parked in the alley behind the store."

"How much?"

"Thirty-five hundred, but I'll knock five off for you guys."

I snorted. "The hell you will. Rehab on a shot shoulder can't be cheap." I dug in my purse, pulled out an envelope. "There's five grand in there."

"You don't need to do that."

I smiled warmly. This woman had been a fixture in my life and Gary's life for nearly five years now. She wasn't just a great friend, she was a great person. "Consider it an early Christmas gift."

"Fine. Twist my arm."

"Think I'll pass."

Ashley dug in the change drawer, came up with a key that she tossed to me. "I'll title it over tomorrow, that ok?"

"Perfect."

"You want me to drive it over to your house?"

"Nope, I walked."

"In this?"

"Yeah, it's just a little brisk."

We stood there, looking at each other, awkwardly thinking of what to say next. So much history and damage hung between us now. Previously we'd been good friends with great benefits. Now, my life had intruded upon hers, and everyone involved was broken by it.

Fuck.

"One more thing and then I'll leave you alone."

"Yeah?"

"This isn't the best neighborhood..."

Ash snorted. "You can say that again. And that was even before the terrorist attack."

"Do you know where I could find...find, uh, some under-the-table pharmaceuticals."

Her face hardened. "Why?"

"I can't tell you. I just need you to trust me that it's not for anything bad."

"There are better and more legal ways to deal with Gary being in the hospital or school being stressful. You can always come talk to me if you need to."

"Not for that. I drink, I smoke, recreational hard drug use is a bridge too far for me."

"So what do you need it for?"

I sighed. I didn't want to explain this. I COULDN'T explain this. "Just trust me, ok? I'm not starting, I just...I need you to help me."

"What do you need?"

"Opioids. Heroin if possible."

"Shit."

"Ash, please..." I tried to make my voice as pitiful as possible.

She gave me an address that I plugged into my phone, and then glared daggers at me. "If I find out that you've started using..."

"You'll kick my ass?"

The look on her face softened. "Soon as my arm heals up, yeah."

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it. To anyone. Seriously, don't mention it."

"I won't." I paused. "Ash?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for being such a good friend to us. I...I really like you. You're a good person."

###

I picked up two large doses of heroin from the dealer Ashley knew. The apartment looked like a dump, and I kept my hand on my Colt in my jacket pocket the entire time. Another fifty bucks bought me a leather pouch to store them in.

The hospital was my next stop. I parked in the cold multi-story garage and hurried for the stairwell, climbing the floors. The hallway was deserted when I exited, and I moved silently through the corridor. I avoided the main nursing station and headed down the halls leading to patient rooms. I'd memorized the layout when I'd gotten here, Gary's paranoia about always knowing the exits having rubbed off on me.

I paused to collect myself before walking into the room. Maybe a miracle had happened. Maybe he'd be up, sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for someone to take him home.

He wasn't. He looked sick, paler than usual, paler than the sheets around him. Something inside him was killing him, and the medicine being pumped in to fight it was almost as bad.

How had this happened? How had our perfect life gone so horribly wrong so fast? How did the world just...break?

I held his hand for a long time. It was bigger than mine. Just as pale as mine now, but in an unhealthy way. I remembered every loving gesture made with those hands...

The way he'd reached out to wipe salad dressing from my chin with a napkin that night we'd had our first expensive dinner together.

Hugging me from behind while playing drunk, life-size Jenga.

His hand on my neck as he held me down and pounded into me.

The way his hands would lift my hair when he put my collar on me if I didn't hold it up first.

The flexing of muscles under his skin as we dried dishes together.

We'd never stand in the kitchen and dry dishes together. Ever again. Strange how something so inconsequential seemed so monumental now.

I sat there, remembering as many moments of our life together as I could, trying to hold back the tears, trying to accept the mental pain like I accepted the physical pain of my stiff, wounded body. Trying to let it flow over me and through me and leave nothing in its wake.

There was nothing to say. No pleading with him to wake up would open his eyes. No begging for a longer fight would prolong his life.

I rose, leaned over, and kissed his forehead with trembling lips. "I love you, Gary. Goodbye."

I past only one orderly in the hall, and then I was descending the steps to the parking garage and the chilly, wet November day.

###

I stopped at the corner store down the street from my old apartment and bought a prepaid phone, activated it while I sat in the car and watched rivulets of rain twist and bleed down my car window.

The rain spattered my leather jacket audibly as I walked fast towards the old repair garage, and my key still worked on the locks. I climbed the steps and catwalks instinctively in the gloom, and let myself into the apartment.

It looked different without the furniture. Dustier than when I'd seen it last, a few years ago. Without curtains on the windows, my footsteps echoed loudly on the floor. I sat down on the wood planks, stared up at the crazy-painted wall. How many times had I painted over that? How many dresses had I sketched on that wall with a charcoal pen, only to paint over the next day?

I'd wanted to be a fashion designer once.

The map of the United States was still painted on the upper corner, a spider web of stops, each of them a memory from a happier time. Gary had given that to me. He'd made my dreams come true.

I looked around the room, remembering my life here. I'd eaten a lot of lonely meals at that bar. Shivered a lot of cold nights in the bed that used to sit right there. Gary and I had made love on the couch in front of the fireplace right there, and I'd hit him when he told me he was going to miss me.

I was gonna miss him too. More than he could've ever imagined.

I pulled out my phone, called McKenna. She picked up on the third ring. "Jessie. What's up?"

"Can't talk long. I need a favor. Well, two, actually. Can you meet me at Don's range and then bring me home. Like, in an hour?"

"Uh, sure. Why?"

"I'll explain there."

"What's the other favor?" Her voice grew suspicious.

"I'll explain everything there. Please."

"Ok... Are you alright?"

"Yeah. I'm fine. Better than usual actually."

"If you say so. I'll meet you there in an hour."

"Make it two."

"Aye aye, captain."

I hung up and pulled out the prepaid, and Morgan's business card. I took a breath, dialed the number.

"Thank you got calling, how may I direct your call?" The woman who answered gave no indication that this was the polite face of a terror group. "I'm, uh, I'm calling for a 'Handsome Jack?'"

"What's your phone number?" Her voice grew slightly dark.

I read it off, and she hung up on me. "Now I wait," I said to the empty room.

The burner rang a few minutes later. "Hello?" Morgan's voice was altered, he was affecting a different accent than his usual southern, but I could tell it was him.

"Still want your flash drive more than anything in the world?"

"You know it."

"I'll meet you and give you it and Sienna tomorrow."

He laughed. "That's a change of heart."

"You and her have ruined my life. I want you both out of it for good."

"That's the spirit. I'll meet you tomorrow at our church."

"You guys operate out of a church?" I asked, incredulous.

"That's what we call it. Write down this address."

I copied down the number he gave me. "I have conditions."

"I'm sure you do. Come alone. No electronics. No weapons. Certainly not that fucking baton. Do what you're told. I see a cop, a shooter, a gun, a wire, everyone you've ever met will die really, really ugly."

"I don't want to involve the police," I gritted out. "I just want you gone."

"We'll talk tomorrow."

Morgan hung up and I stared at the phone. No going back now. What was that expression Gary liked? Crossed the Rubicon?

I crossed the shit out of that Rubicon.

I rose and looked at the cheap prepaid phone in my hand. No need to keep it. I snapped the SIM card in half, heel-stomped the phone into shattered glass and plastic. The crunches echoed around the cold, dusty apartment where I'd spent a third of my life.

"So long," I said to the ghosts and memories.

###

I rented an Airbnb well outside the city while I waited for McKenna to arrive. The rain stopped and started constantly, silent for minutes then drumming the roof of the Grand Prix I'd bought from Ashley. The news said snow would start developing within the next forty-eight hours and I laughed at the thought of the Milwaukee landscape looking like it had when I'd met Gary at the museum here. My laughter choked off at the memories of walking through the downtown with him in a snowstorm.

"Shit, I miss you," I breathed.

McKenna knocked on the window sometime later and I got out, hid the key in the wheelwell. "You know this place closes for winter, right?" she growled good-naturedly.

"Yup."

"So...?"

"Had to drop off this car for Don. He's been looking for a car for his gunfighting-around-vehicle classes, and I got it for ridiculously cheap."

"Really, you made me drive all the way out here for this?"

"Doing something nice for a friend."

McKenna exhaled loudly. "Ok. Sure. I know he'll appreciate that."

We climbed into her gigantic Ford Four Fifty and listened to the drumming of the rain on the roof. "How's Gary?" my friend asked finally.

"Not good." It took me a while to get it out, to admit it. "Infection. He's gonna... He won't..." I mastered my emotions, gritted the words into the air. "He doesn't have much time left."

She put a hand on my knee. "I'm so sorry, Jessie. I know... Shit. Fuck. FUCK!" She shouted at the dashboard in anger and frustration. I wished I could do that. I was too worn out. Too resigned.

"Yeah."

"So what's this second favor?"

I sighed, tried to muster the words. "It's a big one. And the last one I'll ever ask you, I promise. It's that big."

"That sounds ominous."

"Yeah." I dug in my jacket pocket and pulled out Morgan's flash drive, held it out to McKenna. Such a little thing to contain so much pain, to inspire so much pain. "Tomorrow night at midnight, send the contents of this to the world. Newspapers, television channels, Wikileaks, put it on fucking Reddit."

Mike eyed the little piece of plastic like it was uranium. "What is it?"

"All of Morgan's crimes. And all the people he worked with. Every bigwig, senator, movie star, captain of industry. Everyone, and everything. It's his insurance policy. Sienna stole it, that's why he's been coming for us."

"Fuck me..."

"Yeah."

She took the flash drive. "Sounds like fun."

"The moment that hits the world, there's a LOT of people who are gonna be looking for you. Who are gonna want you dead. You're gonna break this country if you do this."

A moment's thought. "It's the truth, right? It's all real? Stuff people need to hear?"

"Yeah."

She exhaled. "Don's been wanting to take a vacation. I'll buy a used truck, pay em not to title it, and we'll go pay cash to drive around and stay out west for a few months. It'll be like when we went to Denver, but longer."

"You sure? If you want to show me how to do it..."

"Yeah, why aren't you doing this? Seems like the kind of revenge that'd be right up your alley. Piss off Morgan."

"I'm..." I struggled to put the words together. "I'm leaving."

McKenna went very, very still. "What about Gary?"

Tears wanted to come, but I wouldn't let them. I still heard them in my voice though. "He's dying. He's gonna go in like, less than a week or two. Maybe a couple of days. He doesn't even know when I'm in the room with him, holding his hand, reading to him. He doesn't know. My staying here... It can't help him, can't comfort him. Mike, you remember how it fucked me up when my dad died, I CAN'T be here for this. I can't...I can't...I can't do this. His sister will come down from Alaska and handle it, I'm gonna call her tonight."

She glared at me. "I don't...I don't like this. But I get it. Shitballs, this is fucked up."

"Yeah."

"So where are you gonna go?"

I thought about it. Laughed, short and bemused and harsh. "I really don't know."

Tears formed in the corners of McKenna's eyes and she blinked, looked away for a long while. "I'm not gonna see you again, am I?"

I shook my head. "Probably not. Mike...I need to go. I need to put this city, this state... Behind me. Everything hurts here. I need to start... Over. I'm... I'm just gonna go."

"OK."

"Hey Mike?" I reached out and put my hand on her cheek. She was warm. She felt GOOD. "Thanks for being there for me. Always. When I moved out, when I was alone for so long. Thank you." We had so much history together, best friends through school, business partners, occasional lovers. She'd saved my life and Gary's life twice. She'd ALWAYS been there for me, and now I wasn't gonna be in her life anymore.

I loved her. And I was gonna miss her.

"Jess, you're scaring me."

I sat back heavily. "Sorry, I... I've just got to - "

"I'll miss you too," Mike said in a rush. "Send me a postcard or something?

I chuckled. "Yeah."

###

I did an errand in the garage, then cleaned the house and made dinner, and it was relaxing. All by myself, I put our house, my house now, my empty house, back in order. Everything in its place. Looking spotless.

Each room held a memory of Gary and me, a happier day not so long ago. Cutting wire and pex pipe for him to run. Painting. Holding up drywall JUST RIGHT for him to screw in. Roughly a thousand dinners in the dining room. Roughly a thousand nights watching TV together.

I took dinner up to Sienna, and we ate together and chatted about nothing in particular, lost in the melancholy of a life absent one person, a life lived under siege.

I washed dishes, poured myself two fingers of Wild Turkey, and sat in the living room, staring at the blank television. I couldn't think of a single thing I wanted to watch.

I emptied out my backpack, recycled my papers. Stacked my books on the table. Wrote a letter. Remembered riding Gary on that chair. Had my hands been cuffed? Was that Valentine's Day or Halloween? Why couldn't I remember?

I showered and cleaned the bathroom, stood at the mirror and looked over my naked body. It had been mine for more than thirty years. Gary had loved it. Loved me. Thought I was beautiful, even when I didn't.

I tried to imagine what he'd felt in those last few moments.

Had it been fear? Determination? Had it hurt when the SUV exploded behind him and threw him through the air? Had he been able to feel it when the shrapnel pierced him? What had it felt like to lose consciousness as his head smashed into the pavement?

I crawled into the big bed alone.