My Ugly Suitcase

"Um, sorry." I shrugged my shoulders, to gain some time. "I'm a bit stuck with this bolt."

"Try heating it, buddy."

With that, he slapped me on the back, which made me jump, and left the shop. What the hell had just happened? I looked back to the office and just saw Doris pointing at me as they were all laughing. Was it because I had just embarrassed myself or because they were already dividing my money? Wait, did I just call it "my" money? Seriously? I had to remind myself that my main objective was still to get rid of it without having myself killed in the process.

After a while, Doris joined me at the car, but avoided touching any of the tools.

"When will you be finished?" The new Doris was back on duty. Impatient, ungrateful, demanding. As if the previous night had never happened.

"Doris, I'm just a vending machine technician. Nobody here is offering to help me, and I have no real idea how to do this at all."

"Try to have it fixed by the evening, okay? I'd like to visit Monica tomorrow morning for a late breakfast."

Wow, even for Doris, this was a rare form.

"What about helping me?"

Of course, she just ignored that absurd idea. "You know what, Vinnie told me about a way to make some money. Remember that beautiful turquoise suitcase I gave you... Well, someone's looking for one just like it and is willing to pay for leads."

My blood froze instantly, and I was sure Doris noticed.

"What? Why would someone pay for such an..." I almost said 'ugly thing,' but that wouldn't be wise. "...for a suitcase like that?"

"I don't know, and it might be better not to ask too many questions, if you know what I mean. There has been some kind of mix up at the airport, it seems. You're sure you picked up the right one? There can't be too many of those around."

"Sure. My clothes and tools were in it, so it had to be mine."

"I see. Say, where is yours anyway? I couldn't find it this morning."

Damn, she had already started to look for the money. The gig was truly up. The only question was whether she had already sold my life.

"In my trunk."

She nodded approvingly and smiled, before adding. "Glad to hear it, Honey. Glad to hear it," she repeated, sweet as honey. "It just seems the other contained some tools, just like those a vending machine technician would need."

Damn, I was toast. She definitely knew what was going on. That was quick. I expected to be found eventually, but not that soon, and not by my own wife.

"Just out of curiosity, how much are they willing to pay, Honey?" How much was my life worth?

"Two hundred grand, Honey. That's a lot of money."

Shit. She had already sold my life. I was certain now. Two hundred was way too much for Doris to pass up.

"So what do we do now, Doris? How do we handle this?"

"We don't need to do anything, Honey. Please have this fixed by the evening, okay?"

"This?" The suitcase, the car, or my miserable life?

"The car, Honey. The car."

"Sure, Honey."

With that, she just turned around and left me on death row. We had taken my car to come here and I still had the key, so I had no idea who would take her home. I was still in shock. Not knowing what else to do, I looked around and realized I was completely alone. When had that happened?

Okay, time to take stock. First, forget about the gearbox. That thought made me feel good. Second, go to the police? Not an option; they would either not believe me, not be able to protect me, or arrest me on general principles. What else could I do? My only advantage was the money. I had to use it to vanish, and I had to do so quickly. How does a person go into hiding? I didn't have the slightest idea. I was just a vending machine technician. Still, it seemed to be my only option.

What about Doris? I was still not sure if she had ratted me out or not. Could I really leave her behind, alone and without money? What if she hadn't said a damn thing to Vinnie? Just for my conscience's sake, I needed to find out without getting dead.

Tentatively, I sneaked out of the shop through the roll-up door. There was still no one around. The botanical parking lot in the back seemed empty. Why had they left in a hurry? To get their weapons? Unlikely, I was no match for them, even unarmed. To get instructions from the boss in the background? That might be possible. They probably didn't discuss such things on the phone and they certainly weren't anywhere near the top of the pecking order.

I vaguely heard my wife squeaking in the distance. Failing to fight my curiosity, I sneaked behind an old school bus that would more or less cover me until I reached the small run-down caravan Vinnie seemed to live in. I knew that Vinnie had money, so the caravan was either understatement, a cover or simply ignorance. The thing was in an appalling state. My guess was that it once must have been white or beige. That guess was not based on its current state, but on my experience that those damn things were all either white or beige. It was currently somewhere between green and brown and generally seemed in the process of being reclaimed by nature.

The windows were tinted in that brown 80s style. It would have been impossible to peek inside, had not one of them been open.

I hated Vinnie. The caravan was repulsive. I didn't even care much about my wife anymore. Why was I even sneaking up on that window to get a look at the combination of all three? Did I really need to know? Would it change anything? Did I wait until I'd answered those valid questions? No. Driven by morbid curiosity, I just went ahead and looked inside.

My first thought was how well the thick gold chain on his massive, hairy chest matched the 80s caravan. He was humping away on top of my wife, grunting like he was dubbing an old porn movie. He kept looking at her expectantly, as if waiting for any kind of reaction. Doris was never really active during sex, but this was taking it to the extreme.

She was looking around, focused on nothing in particular, as there certainly was nothing worth looking at inside that shitty caravan. That clearly included Vinnie. She even inspected her nails at one point, which just seemed to spur him on even more. The whole caravan was shaking. That must have hurt, but she was doing her best to keep her blasé attitude.

This was their game, I realized, and they had perfected it over a long time. He got off on aloof and ignorant partners. He wanted to be humiliated during sex. I had no idea what had gone wrong in his life to make him tick this way, but in that moment, I almost pitied him.

His sweat dripped onto her chest. She ignored it, just like the rest of his efforts. Just as I broke my reverent observation and moved back to the shop as quickly as I could, I heard him roar like a bear, announcing to the world what a sick puppy he was.

Okay, Doris had cheated and she had obviously done so often enough to perfect their sad version of sex. She always had a thing for bad boys, and especially for Vinnie. It was almost a bit insulting. I was of average build, under no illusions of being exceptionally intelligent and I certainly wasn't a fighter. Still, on occasion people had assured me I was very good looking. Doris was never among them, but I could at least assume I wasn't hideously ugly.

What did she see in Vinnie? It was almost absurd. His face was never pretty to begin with, and the numerous battle marks didn't lend him character. They just made him even uglier. He was almost bald, had a lot of ugly scars, even more ugly tattoos and his whole face was somehow distorted. On the other hand, he was huge, muscular and an accomplished fighter. He was the complete opposite of me, so her choosing him as my replacement was a bit disturbing.

The sex was obviously physically unsatisfying for her, so I had to assume she got her kicks out of the underlying power game. She could humiliate and dominate this dangerous man. Or maybe all of it was a purely financial consideration. I didn't know and realized that was absolutely okay.

In any case, she could have him. They seemed to be happy with one another in their own unique way. Time to leave for good.

I decided to leave the Miata and its broken gearbox in its new home: Vinnie's garage. It wasn't my problem anymore. I briefly wondered if Vinnie would be able to loosen that damn bolt by heating it.

Still, that wasn't the most important problem at that point. Staying alive was. Where could I hide? How could I get the money without being killed? Were there really guys out there who sold new identities, like that guy in Breaking Bad? How could I find them? Did I need a gun?

I had few advantages on my side, but one was my stealth car. I had an older Toyota Corolla that hadn't been washed for a few years. I doubted even Doris would be able to recognize it. To her, it was just that lump sitting in the driveway, but she never deigned to look at it closely. Vinnie probably didn't even know such cars existed. It was as nondescript as a car could be.

I decided to buy a few supplies, hide my car behind a supermarket dumpster, calm down and wait for the night to fall.

The wait seemed endless, especially as I imagined Vinnie and Doris frantically busy, tearing down our house in search of my money. The sudden boredom also meant I couldn't look away from some hard facts anymore. My life was what specialists call a steaming pile of horse shit. My life being in danger and me not caring about that was a good indicator about the state of things. My wife banging her junkyard cousin and me not particularly caring about that, either, was another one.

Yes, my life was shit and I had been too busy looking away from that glaringly obvious fact for years. I was finally about to do something about it, although I had been pushed into action against my will. However this played out, I would most certainly not continue living the shitty life I had, which was a big relief.

I mused about how life used to push me around and soil my dreams. Doris and I had been wildly in love at some point. She had been a completely different person back then, but I guess so had I. She was vivacious, caring, interested, full of life and optimism. I had been ambitious, thoughtful and loving. Where had that gone?

It was a gradual, insidious thing. I should have noticed, but I didn't. Our love slipped away, little by little, unnoticed and unmourned, until one day, one moment, I realized that we were dead: walking, going through the motions, but dead. We never talked about it, but it seemed we each blamed the other. As a result, we pulled away from each other even more, waiting for the first move, trying to punish the other when it didn't come.

I fled from the tension by working more and more, even demanding to be on the road as much as possible. I hated it, but I hated being at home even more. She retaliated by perfecting her insufferable bitch persona. It might have been her helpless way of trying to reach me, I realized. It didn't matter, though, it was much too late to fix anything even back then.

After a while, sex was used as a weapon. She withheld it, I retaliated by not caring about it. The game evolved until we lived as brother and sister. Then we became enemies.

Money became one of the main bones of contention. She was focused more and more on it. She insisted on staying at home at some point, probably to increase the pressure on me. I reacted by choosing a career path that precluded any chance of promotion. We were a completely fucked up couple. Someone should write a book about us, except I suspected we weren't that unusual at all.

Did I mourn losing Doris? Strangely, I didn't. I mourned the loss of the dreams we once had, the life we could have lived, the way we squandered that for a petty power play. I didn't mourn losing her as a person.

Finally, it was dark outside and I was released from my unpleasant reflections.

I felt like a pervert, hiding behind a bush in the dark, watching a house. In this case it was my own house, well, Vinnie's to be precise, and it was unlit. This was either a trap or Doris was still enjoying the luxurious splendor of Vinnie's caravan.

After an hour, I decided that further observation would bring no new results. I could either go inside or leave. Problem was, I had nowhere to go to and no real plan. I at least needed my damn money and a few personal effects. That meant going into the backyard and probably springing any trap they might have prepared.

For a guy who had pondered suicide for years, I was behaving surprisingly cowardly. I finally decided just to get it over with, but with the added finesse of entering the house through the back door.

I probably would never have fixed the squeaking door if it had been just Doris' demand, just to spite her, but it had annoyed me enough to do it a few weeks before. I now thanked my thoughtfulness and WD40, as I could enter the house noiselessly, like a ghost. Okay, I would have, had I not stepped onto one of Doris' Amazon packages that the delivery guy used to put right behind the usually unlocked back door. Some bubble wrap popped, announcing my presence to whatever army was hiding to ambush me.

Still, everything remained silent. I stood in the darkness with a pounding heart, just managing not to soil my pants. Nothing happened. Luckily, I knew my way around the house and managed to reach the bedroom without any further incidents. My plan was to grab a few spare clothes in the almost perfect darkness and vanish before anyone knew what was happening.

I found my gym bag, which had never been used for its intended purpose, and threw it onto the bed. Next were a few socks. I tried to feel the bag's position in the darkness to put them inside. Instead, I felt what was clearly a foot. Surprised, I jumped backwards a bit, knocking over the hideously ugly floor lamp Doris had bought just to spite me.

With a pounding heart, I waited for anyone to come and check what the ruckus was about and kill me in the process. I really hadn't expected to find a foot in my bed. More important, the owner hadn't reacted to being touched at all. Okay, the time for my perfect stealth operation was over, I grabbed my phone and switched on the flashlight.

Doris.

She lay in the bed, which was not unusual in itself. I mean, it was her bed after all. She was naked, which was a bit more unusual. She had made huge efforts to hide her body from me for years, even when we had sex that last time. It still looked nice, but didn't really appeal to me, nonetheless. One reason was the hole in her forehead and the pool of blood underneath her.

This was absolutely not the time to reflect on anything, but I ignored that and still thought about our life together. I was sorry to see her dead, but wasn't exactly wracked with grief, either. I postponed deciding if I should feel bad about my lack of emotions when I heard someone climbing the stairs. Someone who didn't know where the creaking board was. Only Doris and I knew which one that was, so that distinction wasn't exactly helpful.

I switched off the flashlight and retreated into the corner, hoping the darkness would conceal me enough to give me some kind of surprise element. That always worked in the movies.

He simply switched on the light and looked straight at me.

Shit. It was Heated Bolt Guy from the repair shop. He looked at me in a surprisingly friendly way.

"So did you loosen that bolt?"

"No," I croaked.

"You're still not the most talkative guy, right?"

"What happened to Doris?" I asked, not making any sense at all. I'd be dead within a few minutes, so why did I even want an information about a woman I didn't even care about anymore?

"Just business, man. It's always just business. The boss decides what needs to be done."

"And you do it?"

"Sometimes, sometimes he does it himself," he said, nodding towards the bed.

I noticed the sheets were rumpled, so it seemed they had their usual joyless jackhammer sex for one last time before he ended their torrid love affair for good. Her being dead also meant she had lost all usefulness for them, so it was safe to assume they already had all the information she could give them.

"So it was cheaper to kill her than to pay her?" I asked, mimicking the good guys from the movies, getting all the important info from the villain before they were about to be killed. Only they were always saved in the last minute, which didn't seem likely in my case.

"Right. As I said, just business."

"Okay," I croaked. "What's going to happen now?"

"More business," he answered while starting to move towards me. For some reason, he put his gun on the table behind him. It had no silencer, and he probably didn't want to disturb the neighbors. That was very thoughtful, Mrs. Anderson was pretty fragile and easily worried. I wondered whether Vinnie had used a gun with a silencer when he shot Doris, or if he just didn't care.

"Nothing personal," he added, as if that excused everything. He calmly grabbed my neck as I stood there like a rabbit watching a snake. While I felt the pressure on my neck increase, I learned that my arms were too short to reach him. They flailed around helplessly while he calmly watched me die. He looked at me in a way that made me think the guy liked me, although we hardly knew each other.

As a final insult, the last thing I'd ever feel was this appalling heavy snow globe Doris had bought for a ridiculous amount of money. As soon as she learned how much I hated it, she decided to keep it on the window sill, not just for Christmas, but all year long. I was already starting to get light headed when I gripped it firmer and swung it towards Heated Bolt Guy's head without much thought. He seemed to have bent his arms a bit by then, or I wouldn't have been able to reach his head.

There was a dull thumping sound, followed by me gasping for air and another dull sound when he hit the floor.

I enjoyed the simple and underrated luxury of being able to breathe for a few seconds before I looked at a second pool of blood, leaking from yet another head. Dying was becoming the thing to do in my bedroom, it seemed, and I decided to leave before I joined the trend. I hastily resumed packing, which was greatly expedited by the light Heated Bolt Guy had switched on. I quickly grabbed some documents that might be important and even took his gun. I never felt the need to own one before, but it seemed a good idea when being hunted down by a drug cartel. Or whoever. Afterwards, I did the obvious thing, which was taking stock of my life.

I was a widower, I had killed a person, I had lost my whole existence, and all of my belongings fit into one large gym bag. I felt good. I felt all that I needed right then was a few million in cash, which I happened to have. I suddenly panicked, realizing I hadn't yet checked if they had found it. When I hid the money, the spot seemed brilliant, but right then it seemed idiotically obvious.

I rushed back out of the back door after stepping on that damn package once again and quickly climbed the huge tree, using the remains of the steps some previous tenant had nailed into it. There it was. The turquoise monstrosity had never looked as beautiful as in that moment. I loved that thing. I briefly opened it and checked if the money was still there before realizing they could just as well have replaced it with a bomb.

There I was again. The usual clueless fool with my usual ugly turquoise suitcase. I stood on the street, looking back at what had once been my home. Walking away should be easy. The place was rented, I didn't like anything inside, we had no kids and not too many good memories.

Inside of what was once my bedroom, my wife was lying dead in her own blood. We might have hated each other in the end, she had tried to sell my life, she had cheated on me with her ugly cousin. Still, this was the woman I once loved, the woman I had wanted to share my life with, the woman I shared my dreams with. Something had clearly gone wrong at some point, long before I got the damn money against my will. Something had gone off the rails, and leaving like this felt like a monumental failure.