Just Fall Read Free

bed. Peers over to examine the pool of coagulating blood near his belly. She’s waited long enough. She squares her shoulders. Steels herself. Then deftly slices off the dead man’s bottom lip. There’s remarkably little blood, which is what she’s planned, why she waited.

    Ellie places the severed lip neatly into a handful of folded tissues and then winds it into a swath of plastic wrap retrieved from her brightly striped raffia beach bag. She plucks a padded mailer from the beach bag. Tucks the lip inside. Stuffs the package back into the bag. She’s trembling. She feels faint.
    She sways, drops the beach bag, reaches a hand to the wall to steady herself. Stands there for a moment, taking deep, steadying breaths. She looks down at the beach bag. It’s done. There’s no turning back. She looks at her hand flat against the wall. Pulls it away as if it scalded her.
    She grabs the towel from the armchair and scrubs at the spot on the wall where her hand had been. Then she wipes down the entire room again. It’s as much wanting to be thorough as it is being afraid to take the next step.
    She picks up her beach bag and checks that all is secure inside, popping in her toiletry kit, tucking the padded mailer deeper, toward the bottom. She stuffs the towel on top. Pulls her white cover-up back over her golden hair. She uses the hem of the cover-up for a last polish of the doorknob. She exits the room, taking a quick look down each side of the hallway to be sure it is all clear. She loops the “ Ne Pas Déranger ” sign over the door handle. Wipes that too. She walks down the hallway toward the elevator bank. She doesn’t look back.
    The lobby of the Hotel Grande Sucre is vast and light and airy, with a clear line of sight from the massive open doors facing the hotel driveway to a view of sand, sea, and distant cliffs. It’s designed to be breathtaking and it is. The vaulted skylight at the center of the lobby filters sparkling light onto its central feature, a rocky pond replete with a waterfall and a selection of lazy tortoises.
    At the front desk, a line of weary travelers checks in. The concierge is busy assisting a family organizing a snorkeling trip, showing on a map the precise location of the beach with the best coral reefs and most colorful fish. The bellmen are concerned, as bellmen should be, with luggage. Overexcited children shriek and race about, delirious with sun and sea and a sense of incipient adventure.

    Ellie crosses through confidently, a beautiful woman with a purpose, emerging with a blink into the afternoon sunlight. No one pays her much attention. She spots a convertible with the motor running, the keys still in, and is in the driver’s seat and pulling away before the valet has even registered her presence. Only when she is cruising along the coast road does she relax.
    Her shoulders slump. And then the tears start to fall. But she has no time for tears. She swipes them impatiently off her cheeks. Distracted, coming around a curve a little too fast, she doesn’t see the rickety open truck in front of her, stuffed full with green bananas. A stand of bananas bounces off the truck, directly into her path! She swerves to avoid it, scraping the driver’s side of the convertible against the cliff side with a horrible ragged shriek of metal against rock. She hits the brakes. The car skids across the median. She wrenches it back to her side of the road before finally slamming to a stop.
    Breathing heavily, she casts her eyes about wildly for a moment as she realizes the danger is past. The bananas missed, the truck gone, the road empty. She drops her head into her hands and slumps over the wheel. Irony. To have come this far and done this much. And she could have been killed. Just like that.

Air. Yes, she thought, I need air. And a moment away from the madness of the wedding, away from toasts and tears and air kisses and music, and her mother, especially her mother.
    Where was Rob? Ellie scanned the