Near Death Read Free Page B

black.
    “This it?” the girl asked.
    He nodded, pulled into the stubby driveway, and told her he’d be back in a second.
    He left the car idling and slid open the garage door. When he returned, the girl said, “You couldn’t do that where I live.”
    “Do what?”
    “Leave a garage unlocked.”
    “It’s a safe neighborhood.”
    It was more of a shed than a garage, too narrow to park at the midline if you wanted to open the driver’s side door without bumping. She noticed right away that the wall was hugging her passenger side and there was no way out. While she nervously lit another cigarette, the john wriggled out his side, flicked an overhead light switch and shut the garage door.
    When he got back in he said, “There.” He seemed more relaxed.
    She rested the cigarette in the ashtray.
    “You smoke a lot,” he said.
    She ignored him and reached for his crotch.
    He told her to wait.
    “Why?”
    “I want to talk first.”
    “You want to talk?”
    “Yes.”
    “About what?”
    “Anything.”
    She pouted. “Time’s money. I need to get back to my block.”
    He had another hundred in twenties, folded and ready, as if this were planned out. She suspiciously took the money and quickly put it away in her purse. “So, start talking,” she said like a wiseacre.
    He evenly told her that he was paying and he wanted
her
to talk. She shrugged and asked for a topic. To her surprise, he mentioned her birthday.
    The suggestion made her uneasy. “What about it?”
    “Tell me about the best birthday you ever had.”
    She retrieved the cigarette from the ashtray and took a deep drag. “You’re weird, you know that?”
    “Any age,” he said smoothly, “the best one you can remember, that’s what I want to hear about.”
    She accepted the assignment and went quiet for a while, sorting through memories until she signaled she’d found the item by resolutely pressing her lips together. “My birthdays were always all mixed up with Halloween, their being so close to each other. When I was eight, up in Bangor, you know, my aunt and uncle had a barn back behind their place and after dinner my parents told me I was going to get cake at my aunt’s house. But instead of going inside, they took me up to the barn. And my mama opened the door and inside it was dark except that it was filled with jack-o-lanterns, all carved up with smiley faces, glowing from candles inside. And there was a big sign, Happy Birthday, Carla, and my aunt and uncles and cousins were there. And a cake too.”
    He startled her by saying her name, “Carla.” Then, “How did that make you feel?”
    She welled up. “It made me feel like they loved me.”
    “What’s the matter?” he asked.
    “My mama died a few years after that.”
    He said he was sorry then mumbled he was cold as he slipped on leather gloves. She hardly noticed and took a diaphragm-deep hit off her cigarette. A large cloud of exhaled smoke hit the dash and blew back into her eyes. She closed them, waiting for the irritation to pass, and inthat moment of darkness she saw the magical barn and her beaming mother again. Lost in thought, happy and sad, she reluctantly blinked and returned to the passenger seat of her john’s car.
    She reopened her eyes the instant before his hands clamped down on her neck.
    She felt her larynx being painfully crushed beneath his digging thumbs.
    This isn’t happening
.
    This isn’t how it’s supposed to end
.
    The panic of air hunger set in, crowding out the pain. She couldn’t breathe in or out.
    And then, she decided to give up without mounting any fight, any resistance.
    She felt her arms go limp.
    She was almost bewildered at the way she was abandoning her life so easily until she realized she was captive to his voice, his hypnotic voice, soothing her as he was killing her, uttering through the strain of his exertion, “Carla, listen to me. Don’t be mad and don’t be scared. Right now you are being loved as much as you’ve ever been