Chapter 5

It took a full hour for her to lay it all out for me. It had started some two years before, more actually, but in a big way just two years gone. She’d wanted to lose weight; that’s all. She’d tried diets. She’d tried exercise. She’d even tried yoga. Nothing worked. But then she’d heard about the effects of some kinds of drugs. Somebody at the grocery store had heard her talking to Bea.

That somebody, a man, had propositioned her. Told her she could lose all the weight she wanted and not need to worry about diets or any of that stuff. She’d blown the guy off; he’d just wanted into her pants, and at the time she was still a virgin.

Later, she’d talked to Bea. Bea had told her that, yeah, the drugs would get her weight down, but they would also ruin her financially and likely get her addicted. Bea told her to forget it.

The guy had returned and told her she could get the stuff for free and gave her a number to call if she decided she wanted to get some, but, that any more after that would not be free stuff. He was clearly trying to impress her. He hadn’t said what the cost would be, but she had assumed it would be kinda expensive. She made the call and did get the free stuff as advertised. She’d tried the stuff and lost five pounds in a month. She’d been impressed; and, she didn’t feel bad or addicted or anything.

Out of the stuff, she’d called the guy again from a phone in the store. He’d showed up and told her the cost. It was too much; her Julian would notice the hit to the bank account and that in short order: they did have a shared account. Julian was no dummy, no indeed. She was about to walk away when the guy, whose name turned out to be Dante, Dante Rodriguez, made her a proposition. Her body would be his to have fun with each time she wanted a refill, no strings beyond that, he’d said. She’d agreed, reluctantly, and accepted his proposition.

And then she’d made her weight goal, sixty more pounds, and she’d been able to keep it off, the weight. She’d told him it was over, that on Halloween as it happened. She was done with the stuff. Then Julian had proposed, then Dante had shown up and learned about Blake’s money from Bea more or less by accident.

Now she’d come to this house on this day to shut the man down once and for all. She’d brought the gun with her just in case, and maybe to try to intimidate him. And well, now they were where they were. Was I stunned? Oh yeah, I was stunned. All of this just to lose weight! But I didn’t immediately say anything or criticize her. For a long moment after her confession, I just stared. She broke the spell.

“I am so sorry, Julian. I was crazy, and now I’m going to pay for my mistakes. I need you to go on. Forget me. I don’t deserve you. Ever since high school you’ve been there for me, and now I’ve screwed up, irredeemably screwed up. I deserve to be punished and I will be; I will be going to prison. Just—please my good man, don’t hate me, please,” she said, choking back her tears. I finally found my voice.

“One question, Ava,” I said. “Do you love me?”

“Of course,” she said. “You know that.”

“Okay then, this is how this is going to play out. Over the next while I made the argument that she had to let me take the fall for her. She all but assaulted me trying to get me to not do what I needed to do. She could not handle prison, not on any level. It would be hard for me, but impossible for her. I finally got her to settle down and do what I told her to do.

“Okay, then, the only thing I need from you is to promise me that you will be there for me when I get out. I will need my woman then for sure, and my woman is you and only you forever. Can you do that for me? Will you do that for me? Will you be that woman for me?” I said.

“Yes, of course, but...”

“No buts. I can do this knowing you will be there for me. It’s going to be a long time, but if you can get up to see me wherever they send me; you know, once in a while, I’ll be able to make it. It’s all I’ll need; I will need that, to be reassured from time to time, but it will be enough if I can depend on it, on you.

“Blake will take care of things while I’m gone, take care of you. Tell him I need to see him as soon as possible. Oh, and he is not to know what really happened here. He is just to be told what we’ve talked about: I went nuts when I found out that the man had threatened you and me and I decided to put an end to it. Ava, no one but you and I must ever know. Understood?” I said.

“Julian, I...” she started, and began to sob all over again.

“Okay, okay, the cops will be here soon. You need to leave and do what I told you with the clothes and the rest. I will clean up here and call the cops. Just go, go now, and call Blake as soon as you’ve taken care of the other stuff.” I said. She launched herself at me and kissed me and hugged me hard. I knew it would be a long time before I would experience the like, a very long time.

I found an unopened bottle of wine in the house and drank the whole damn 750 milliliters. I cleaned up the place and fired the last two bullets into the bed beside the body. I waited near two hours overall before calling the men in blue: I had to give Ava enough time to do what she had to do. I’m glad she was gone. I did not want her to see what was certain to go down when the police arrived. I just hoped she’d follow my instructions. If she did, we’d likely be okay.

“Shit!” said the man in sergeant’s stripes. “You the shooter?” I knew better than to answer any questions, but in this case, I answered the man. I wanted all of the evidence to point to me so that Ava would not be a suspect. She might be anyway, since it was her, according to the story we’d be selling, that I’d killed the man for. But at the least I had to minimize her exposure.