Look Closer

“I don’t have forever,” Vicky calls out from the living room.

Okay, fine. I walk back into the room. Vicky, thankfully, has kept on all her winter gear, the cap covering her hair, still wearing the gloves. I’ll probably vacuum again after she leaves, anyway, but she’s unlikely to leave any trace of herself.

“To us,” she says, clinking our glasses of Basil Hayden. Mine’s a healthy one, but I down it in one gulp. I’m not drinking for pleasure tonight. I need to stay calm.

Vicky takes a sip of her drink. “Make sure to wash this glass after I leave,” she says.

“Don’t worry, I will.” Okay. Deep breath and calm down. “What did Simon say?”

She sits next to me on the couch. “He asked me today. Point-blank. He said, ‘Have you been faithful to me?’ He didn’t even say it in an accusatory way. It was more like he was resigned to it. He said, ‘I know things haven’t been like they should for a while.’”

That’s not good. That’s not good at all.

“He’s laying the mattress for the divorce,” I say. “He’s breaking it to you slowly. And he’s trying to make himself feel better about it by accusing you of cheating on him.”

That’s how most people work, in my experience, and I have a lot of experience in breaking up marriages. If they feel guilty about how they’re treating you, they want to turn you into the bad guy. They start to treat you with cruelty.

She looks at her drink. “Maybe so. But now . . .”

“Once he finds out Lauren’s gone, he’ll probably be so stunned that it will drown out everything else.”

“At least until November third,” she says. “Which is all that matters.”

Right, that’s the first hurdle—get to November 3, or Vicky gets cut off completely. Get past that, and we can fix the rest of the damage. I need Vicky and Simon to stay together so she doesn’t have to split the money with him in a divorce. I need them “happily” married, at least for a short time—enough time for her to hand control of the money over to me.

Just keep thinking of that day. Twenty-one million dollars.

“Just be really good to him the next few days and play dumb,” I tell her. It feels good dispensing advice, like I’m more in control of events than I feel.

“He’ll probably hear about Lauren tomorrow,” she says. “It will probably be news tomorrow.”

“So that’s November the first. We just have to get you through two days.”

We can do that. Vicky can pull that off. She has it in her.

“I’ll just sit here for a few minutes,” she says. “It calms me down, seeing you.”

It calms me down, too. I’m definitely feeling better. It worked! I did the job and got away with it.

Or did I screw something up? The feeling of dread washes over me again. I consider the worst-case scenarios. But I don’t see them tying me to either Vicky or Simon.

We sit in silence. Vicky sips her drink. I pour myself another one.

The tension starts to ease. It worked. It did. It worked, and everything’s gonna be all right, like that Bob Marley song.

Why do I always worry so much?

Really, I worry too much. It’s fine. It’s all good.

“You okay?” Vicky asks me.

Better. I’m feeling better. Much, much better.

“It’s all going to work out,” Vicky says. “Our alibis are clean.”

Alibi. That’s a funny word. If you say any word enough times, it sounds funny. Alibi. Ali-bi. Kinda sounds like Ali Baba. Like Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. I remember reading that when I was a kid.

And then I became a thief!

That’s funny.

I don’t know why I was so worried.

Maybe I should use Ali Baba for my next alias. Wait, there’s not going to be a next alias because I’m going to have all the money I need!

“What’s so funny?” Vicky asks me, her head cocked.

“I don’t know, I guess not sleep—not sleeping last night . . . I’m just . . .”

Vicky moves over and straddles me, pressing down on my lap, her face close to mine. “You’re exhausted. You look exhausted. You need sleep, Christian. It’s done now. You did it. Now you should sleep. Tomorrow, we’re one step closer to being together.”

I put my head back against the cushion. “I am, I’m . . . Wow, I’m wiped out.”

“And now you can relax,” she says, putting her hands on my chest. “Nobody’s going to catch us. I’m going to get that twenty-one million, and I’m going to give it to you, and you’re going to turn it into a hundred million.”

I close my eyes, feeling exhaustion sweep over me, the weightlessness of near sleep. “Yes. That’s . . . going to happen.”

She pushes herself off me, gets off the couch.

“Where are you . . .”

“I’m going to wash out my glass, make sure there’s no lipstick or DNA, right?”

“Yeah, ex—exact—exact . . .” My eyes won’t open. I can’t fight it.

—

What?

“Hi, I’m back.” Vicky straddling me again, her breath on my face. “You seem tired, Christian. Are you ready to sleep, baby?”

My eyes open in slits. “Yeah . . .”

“Okay, you do that. I washed the glass. And you removed all trace of me from this apartment, right?”

I nod. I think I nod. My head moves, I’m pretty sure.

Her finger, her gloved finger, caressing my face, running down my nose.

“I can trust you, right, Christian?”

“You can . . .”