When love is not madness, it is not love.
~Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Chapter One
I'm standing in the darkness of the mid-day sun. The fog of my future sits before me in the form of a 1972 Cadillac Eldorado convertible. Its engine is running, rumbling, gargling like a beast in a dentist's chair.
The car is mine; now. Given to me as a settlement of sorts. A reparation for what came before. The ironic familiarity of the exchange stings and reduces the intent of the gift. It feels disingenuous.
In the car are papers. They're loose, strewn across the passenger seat in messy piles. Certificates of ownership, identifications, a stack of cash wrapped in a paper band. It puts a brick in my stomach. I'm going to be sick.
A man stands next to the car, offering me the restitution. He's tall and good looking with striking features; chiseled and professional. He's clean shaven, dark manicured hair and glasses that give him a sense of importance. Myself. I still have blood on my sleeves.
"Time to get going..."
He pauses.
"Jim."
It's not my name, at least it wasn’t.
"Jim," he says again with ephasis.
I look at the black leather seats, the leather wrapped steering wheel, the chrome shaft of the gear shift.
I nod.
It's what's next, after everything that came before. Another choice I don’t get to make for myself.
The car is mine; now. Given to me as a settlement of sorts. A reparation for what came before. The ironic familiarity of the exchange stings and reduces the intent of the gift. It feels disingenuous.
In the car are papers. They're loose, strewn across the passenger seat in messy piles. Certificates of ownership, identifications, a stack of cash wrapped in a paper band. It puts a brick in my stomach. I'm going to be sick.
A man stands next to the car, offering me the restitution. He's tall and good looking with striking features; chiseled and professional. He's clean shaven, dark manicured hair and glasses that give him a sense of importance. Myself. I still have blood on my sleeves.
"Time to get going..."
He pauses.
"Jim."
It's not my name, at least it wasn’t.
"Jim," he says again with ephasis.
I look at the black leather seats, the leather wrapped steering wheel, the chrome shaft of the gear shift.
I nod.
It's what's next, after everything that came before. Another choice I don’t get to make for myself.
Chapter Two
Getting to there, that moment standing in front of the car, the moment of fracture where one life ended and another began, was complicated. It wasn’t the first time actually. My life had been taken from me and replaced with a new one twice before. Three times if you count my parent’s divorce when I was only seven years old.
I guess it happens to everyone. Times when a sudden change, a choice or a consequence upends your existence and it seems as though who you were; your very being ends and in your body stands a new person. A person almost wholly separate from the person you were before. I imagine that’s a hallmark of humanity. Death and rebirth. The stuff of religion.
I imagine it was hard for her.
I hasten to assume it was as hard on her as it was for me, but who am I to say. That’s the problem with stories, with life. I can only tell you how I felt. I can only know what I experienced, but as I am a man (as in mankind, although in terms of gender the statement is appropriate as well) I can empathicly presume other’s feelings, but in terms of pure narration I can’t for certain say what another experiences.
So let me just say that I expect it was hard on her. I expect that what happened to her, and to me, was a difficult thing for her to cope with. She, maybe, blamed herself, but it wasn’t her fault. It’s, as I said, just part of being human.
I guess it happens to everyone. Times when a sudden change, a choice or a consequence upends your existence and it seems as though who you were; your very being ends and in your body stands a new person. A person almost wholly separate from the person you were before. I imagine that’s a hallmark of humanity. Death and rebirth. The stuff of religion.
I imagine it was hard for her.
I hasten to assume it was as hard on her as it was for me, but who am I to say. That’s the problem with stories, with life. I can only tell you how I felt. I can only know what I experienced, but as I am a man (as in mankind, although in terms of gender the statement is appropriate as well) I can empathicly presume other’s feelings, but in terms of pure narration I can’t for certain say what another experiences.
So let me just say that I expect it was hard on her. I expect that what happened to her, and to me, was a difficult thing for her to cope with. She, maybe, blamed herself, but it wasn’t her fault. It’s, as I said, just part of being human.
I was sitting in the club when the news was delivered. I was always sitting in the club, mostly. I didn’t really have anywhere else to be. The world, my world at least, was a fishbowl. It was small and I was always being watched. Except for when my owners let me out to do what they needed doing. It’s not a stretch to call them that. In fact they had told me that very thing many times. Never forget Gavin, we own you.
So I was sitting at my table in the club. It was a dark place, old and smelling of must and decayed leather, like the basement of a library. It was underground, literally speaking. It sat under an abandoned storefront on the Southside of Chicago.
The inside was large. Larger than the building it sat under. There was a formal host stand that occupied a wide platform at the entrance. A step down was the dining room full of small two person tables that sat low to the ground with deep armchairs at opposing ends. Each table had a small oil and wick candle that provided just enough light to shadow the face of whomever was sitting across from you.
There was a bar, long and worn. The blonde boards on it’s surface were chipped and stained and the leather rail was oily and tearing in places exposing yellowing foam padding. The glassware was foggy and mismatched and the liquor was in unbranded bottles bought at a drugstore or supermarket.
My table was in the back. A booth built into the far corner and separated from the rest of the establishment in a manner that one would certainly not call subtle. From my seat I could see the whole place; the door, the several patrons talking in hushed tones across their glowing glasses of cheap booze. I could see the bar and the bartender, lazily polishing glasses like the brass rails of the Titanic. I could see the curvy redhead Amelia playing at the worn out upright piano next to the kitchen doors.
I sat and I smoked and I drank. It’s what I did almost every night. Almost. I was refilling my cigarette case when the door to the club swung open. The woman who stepped in wore a confidence that was foreign there. Most people who came to the club did so to avoid being seen. They would walk in hunched over, scarves and glasses and hats. Big coats wrapped around them in the sweltering summer months. They were closed and they were quiet.
She was not. She strode in with purpose, her back straight and her chin up. She was tall and fit. She wore a casual white cotton button down shirt and a narrow black skirt that ended just below her knees. She was in stockings, nude, and black paten leather heels which, actually, was important.
The woman was Detective Megan Hinde of the Chicago Police, and the heels were a message. Not to me mind you. They were a message to the others in the room. The were telling the patrons not to worry, she was off duty. She would never have been in heels is she was working.
Detective Hinde was, you might say, my handler. That’s probably not quite right, but it’s close enough. She delivered my instructions and sometimes my gratuity. She was the only person outside the club I was allowed to have any contact with, which probably requires some explanation, but that will come later.
She wasn’t my friend, that’s important to point out. Detective Hinde and I were not friendly. She was simply the one that couriered the messages between the other woman and myself. That said, she never visited me there. She never came to the club. We would meet in alleys or parking garages. She was a big fan of the loading docks at McCormick place, especially in the winter months. To come to the club, to where I lived, that would be too close. There would be a chance she could be seen, identified, connected to me. They were too careful for that. To come to the club to see me was unprecedented and it made me nervous.
She crossed the room in wide strides, heels clicking on the ancient walnut floors. She was making eye contact from the moment she occupied the room and her face wore a strange combination of anger and fear.
When she reached my booth she stopped and seemed to freeze. Not posing exactly, not for effect, but rather like she was trying to decide what to do next. She stood for a moment, the two of us eyeing each other in an uncomfortable silence. I nodded at the chair across from me and after the merest of hesitations she took a seat.
“Megan,” I said.
She gave a sad smile by way of response.
I let out a long sigh and took a sip of bourbon from a short glass on the table. It was good stuff, Redemption. Not the swill they pour the other guests. I have my own stash here, and Lauren, the bartender, always makes sure my glass is full.
“Well, you’re not dressed for business,” I say posed as a question.
She stared at me, scanning my features and expression. She was trying to read me. She was figuring out how to say what she needed to say. The action didn’t set me at ease.
“It’s-” she started, but cut herself off.
“It’s what?” I asked.
“Well Gavin,” she paused. “It’s Weather,” she spat out like the words were poison.
I didn’t say anything. I don’t think my expression changed. I knew the name of course. It crossed my mind a hundred times a day despite my best efforts. Hearing it though, hearing it come out of her mouth, it made my blood simmer. I felt my insides fill up like a pressure cooker and had to fight the urge to make a movement that would alarm the detective.
“It’s about Weather how?” I asked finally with slow and measured speech.
Detective Hinde broke eye contact and looked down at the table. She shifted in her seat and tried to look back at me, tried to regain the confidence and authority that she showed up with, but she couldn’t hold my gaze and ended up just staring at my hands.
“She’s been arrested,” she said.
“For what?” I said without breathing.
She looked me in the eyes.
“Murder.”
I exhaled, quietly, through my nose. I sat back in my seat then pulled back up to the table. I grabbed the flat silver cigarette case and pulled out a long black paper cigarette. I used to smoke Camels, cheap and easy to get, but I wasn’t allowed to go to the store anymore so I got what I was given. In this case it was Treasurer Aluminum Blacks. They’re one of the gratuities I am granted. Gifted from an unknown patron for a job I didn’t choose to do.
I screwed it between my lips and snapped opene a narrow gold Zippo lighter, another benefaction, and pulled the flame to my face. I puffed twice on the coffin nail then clicked the lighter shut and dragged hard on the smoke.
“Let her go,” I said finally, blowing smoke as I spoke.
“Gavin-” the detective started.
“No. Just tell the Lieutenant to let-”
“Gavin, he can’t.”
I stopped speaking. I was rigid and I felt my pale Irish face flushing red with anger.
“He can’t,” she said again. “Gavin, she killed a Fed. Some DOJ lawyer. We’ve got her now, but the FBI is on its way down there. They’re going to take her. We can’t do anything here.”
I shook my head trying hard not to shake my whole body.
“No. No she didn’t do that. Come on Megan,” I was shouting now, standing up and leaning across the table, my palms flat on the surface. “You fucking know she didn’t do that.”
Detective Hinde put on a wincing smile. She nodded understandingly.
“Maybe. Probably. You’re probably right, but it doesn’t matter. They found her at the scene Gavin. They found her there naked. There’s no way we can let her go. There’s nothing we can do.”
There was a moment of tense quiet. My breath was heavy and hot across the expanse between us. I felt myself loosing control, something that couldn’t happen. I sucked air between my teeth and tried to find the calm that I had spent the last thirteen years mastering. I sat back down and smoked my butt.
“And Gavin, you can’t-”
“What?”
She stopped.
“What Megan? I can’t what?”
She flinched slightly at my anger.
“I can do all the other shit you guys ask me to do!”
The detective shifted uncomfortably and straightened up into a professional posture.
“Gavin, we never-”
“Bullshit!” I screamed.
The restaurant went quiet. The music stopped and the various guests of the establishment started to silently get up from their seats and retreat out the front door one by one.
“Don’t tell me it’s not you,” I said. “Do you think I differentiate? Do you think I care whos fucking office those little packages come from. Ask yourself if you think I see any difference between you and her.”
I said the word with a venom that even scared myself.
“You go down there. You go down there and you let her go. You fucking do it. Fucking do it right now!”
Megan looked at the floor. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes swollen and glossy. She stood up silently and, after a pitying sigh, walked towards the door. At the step to the main dining room she stopped. She paused while she gathered her confidence then she turned.
“I’m sorry Gavin. We can’t help her, and if you get into it with the feds, well, we won’t be able to help you either.”
That was it. I roared and lifted the table in front of me then smashed it back down to the ground. Debris crashed to the floor and a cloud of ash filled the space between us. Detective Hinde turned and walked across the room and out the door making it squeal and slam shut behind her.
So I was sitting at my table in the club. It was a dark place, old and smelling of must and decayed leather, like the basement of a library. It was underground, literally speaking. It sat under an abandoned storefront on the Southside of Chicago.
The inside was large. Larger than the building it sat under. There was a formal host stand that occupied a wide platform at the entrance. A step down was the dining room full of small two person tables that sat low to the ground with deep armchairs at opposing ends. Each table had a small oil and wick candle that provided just enough light to shadow the face of whomever was sitting across from you.
There was a bar, long and worn. The blonde boards on it’s surface were chipped and stained and the leather rail was oily and tearing in places exposing yellowing foam padding. The glassware was foggy and mismatched and the liquor was in unbranded bottles bought at a drugstore or supermarket.
My table was in the back. A booth built into the far corner and separated from the rest of the establishment in a manner that one would certainly not call subtle. From my seat I could see the whole place; the door, the several patrons talking in hushed tones across their glowing glasses of cheap booze. I could see the bar and the bartender, lazily polishing glasses like the brass rails of the Titanic. I could see the curvy redhead Amelia playing at the worn out upright piano next to the kitchen doors.
I sat and I smoked and I drank. It’s what I did almost every night. Almost. I was refilling my cigarette case when the door to the club swung open. The woman who stepped in wore a confidence that was foreign there. Most people who came to the club did so to avoid being seen. They would walk in hunched over, scarves and glasses and hats. Big coats wrapped around them in the sweltering summer months. They were closed and they were quiet.
She was not. She strode in with purpose, her back straight and her chin up. She was tall and fit. She wore a casual white cotton button down shirt and a narrow black skirt that ended just below her knees. She was in stockings, nude, and black paten leather heels which, actually, was important.
The woman was Detective Megan Hinde of the Chicago Police, and the heels were a message. Not to me mind you. They were a message to the others in the room. The were telling the patrons not to worry, she was off duty. She would never have been in heels is she was working.
Detective Hinde was, you might say, my handler. That’s probably not quite right, but it’s close enough. She delivered my instructions and sometimes my gratuity. She was the only person outside the club I was allowed to have any contact with, which probably requires some explanation, but that will come later.
She wasn’t my friend, that’s important to point out. Detective Hinde and I were not friendly. She was simply the one that couriered the messages between the other woman and myself. That said, she never visited me there. She never came to the club. We would meet in alleys or parking garages. She was a big fan of the loading docks at McCormick place, especially in the winter months. To come to the club, to where I lived, that would be too close. There would be a chance she could be seen, identified, connected to me. They were too careful for that. To come to the club to see me was unprecedented and it made me nervous.
She crossed the room in wide strides, heels clicking on the ancient walnut floors. She was making eye contact from the moment she occupied the room and her face wore a strange combination of anger and fear.
When she reached my booth she stopped and seemed to freeze. Not posing exactly, not for effect, but rather like she was trying to decide what to do next. She stood for a moment, the two of us eyeing each other in an uncomfortable silence. I nodded at the chair across from me and after the merest of hesitations she took a seat.
“Megan,” I said.
She gave a sad smile by way of response.
I let out a long sigh and took a sip of bourbon from a short glass on the table. It was good stuff, Redemption. Not the swill they pour the other guests. I have my own stash here, and Lauren, the bartender, always makes sure my glass is full.
“Well, you’re not dressed for business,” I say posed as a question.
She stared at me, scanning my features and expression. She was trying to read me. She was figuring out how to say what she needed to say. The action didn’t set me at ease.
“It’s-” she started, but cut herself off.
“It’s what?” I asked.
“Well Gavin,” she paused. “It’s Weather,” she spat out like the words were poison.
I didn’t say anything. I don’t think my expression changed. I knew the name of course. It crossed my mind a hundred times a day despite my best efforts. Hearing it though, hearing it come out of her mouth, it made my blood simmer. I felt my insides fill up like a pressure cooker and had to fight the urge to make a movement that would alarm the detective.
“It’s about Weather how?” I asked finally with slow and measured speech.
Detective Hinde broke eye contact and looked down at the table. She shifted in her seat and tried to look back at me, tried to regain the confidence and authority that she showed up with, but she couldn’t hold my gaze and ended up just staring at my hands.
“She’s been arrested,” she said.
“For what?” I said without breathing.
She looked me in the eyes.
“Murder.”
I exhaled, quietly, through my nose. I sat back in my seat then pulled back up to the table. I grabbed the flat silver cigarette case and pulled out a long black paper cigarette. I used to smoke Camels, cheap and easy to get, but I wasn’t allowed to go to the store anymore so I got what I was given. In this case it was Treasurer Aluminum Blacks. They’re one of the gratuities I am granted. Gifted from an unknown patron for a job I didn’t choose to do.
I screwed it between my lips and snapped opene a narrow gold Zippo lighter, another benefaction, and pulled the flame to my face. I puffed twice on the coffin nail then clicked the lighter shut and dragged hard on the smoke.
“Let her go,” I said finally, blowing smoke as I spoke.
“Gavin-” the detective started.
“No. Just tell the Lieutenant to let-”
“Gavin, he can’t.”
I stopped speaking. I was rigid and I felt my pale Irish face flushing red with anger.
“He can’t,” she said again. “Gavin, she killed a Fed. Some DOJ lawyer. We’ve got her now, but the FBI is on its way down there. They’re going to take her. We can’t do anything here.”
I shook my head trying hard not to shake my whole body.
“No. No she didn’t do that. Come on Megan,” I was shouting now, standing up and leaning across the table, my palms flat on the surface. “You fucking know she didn’t do that.”
Detective Hinde put on a wincing smile. She nodded understandingly.
“Maybe. Probably. You’re probably right, but it doesn’t matter. They found her at the scene Gavin. They found her there naked. There’s no way we can let her go. There’s nothing we can do.”
There was a moment of tense quiet. My breath was heavy and hot across the expanse between us. I felt myself loosing control, something that couldn’t happen. I sucked air between my teeth and tried to find the calm that I had spent the last thirteen years mastering. I sat back down and smoked my butt.
“And Gavin, you can’t-”
“What?”
She stopped.
“What Megan? I can’t what?”
She flinched slightly at my anger.
“I can do all the other shit you guys ask me to do!”
The detective shifted uncomfortably and straightened up into a professional posture.
“Gavin, we never-”
“Bullshit!” I screamed.
The restaurant went quiet. The music stopped and the various guests of the establishment started to silently get up from their seats and retreat out the front door one by one.
“Don’t tell me it’s not you,” I said. “Do you think I differentiate? Do you think I care whos fucking office those little packages come from. Ask yourself if you think I see any difference between you and her.”
I said the word with a venom that even scared myself.
“You go down there. You go down there and you let her go. You fucking do it. Fucking do it right now!”
Megan looked at the floor. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes swollen and glossy. She stood up silently and, after a pitying sigh, walked towards the door. At the step to the main dining room she stopped. She paused while she gathered her confidence then she turned.
“I’m sorry Gavin. We can’t help her, and if you get into it with the feds, well, we won’t be able to help you either.”
That was it. I roared and lifted the table in front of me then smashed it back down to the ground. Debris crashed to the floor and a cloud of ash filled the space between us. Detective Hinde turned and walked across the room and out the door making it squeal and slam shut behind her.
For thirteen years I had worked on two things; staying calm and forgetting Weather Rose. The latter was a fools errand. I knew it. I could never forget a person who changed my life so completely. The goal was never supposed to be success oriented, not consciously anyway. It was about the effort. Trying to put her out of my mind was the important part. Loosening her grip on my heart, on my mind, on my actions.
The former though, staying calm, that was a real goal. That was important. I recognize that my anger played too big a role in my life. It was probably always there, but the point at which I know it came to control me was my parent’s divorce. Death number one.
My parents split up when I was seven years old and to call it traumatic would be like calling the ice caps melting away to nothing a bummer. It broke me. It broke me for trust and for faith and for love. It let the anger out, and when it got out it consumed me and I became its vessel. From that point on my anger was my compass and rage was my true north. Ironically it was Weather that helped me keep all that in check. She was my anchor that stopped the anger from capsizing me on the brutal sea.
Of course the double irony was that it was my anger, my rage, my unchecked furry that took her away from me and set me adrift. Lost at sea, drowning in my own failures, it became up to me to find a way to right the ship and calm the riptide of my emotions. It took me eighteen months in prison to find that calm and eleven and a half years to finally feel I had mastered it and tamed the monster inside myself.
Now it was loose again.
It was a dark and angry ride from the club to the nineteenth precinct where I assumed they were holding Weather. It wasn’t a completely random assumption. The nineteenth was Megan’s precinct, that’s where her desk was, and she had said we have her, not they have her. I could have been wrong, but in my experience when she said we, she wasn’t talking about the police.
It was around 9:00 PM when I made the hard right off of Marquette onto Lake Shore Drive. I’d been doing seventy on the side streets and out of concern for sheer physics let the mint condition 1974 Firebird that had been donated to me drop to fifty-five before making the turn. Once on the straight-away of LSD, however, I pressed my foot to the floor and was doing ninety miles an hour before I made it off the Jackson Park peninsula. My rage was running the show now and I knew that that was never good.
Part of me was still crying out to let it go, to calm down and regain control of myself, but my emotional core was impenetrable to logic now. It didn’t want to level out. It didn’t want to think critically. What it wanted was to kill every single person that had made my life into that nightmare that I lived in everyday.
That was a lie too though. If I listened to the reasonable voices in my head I knew that revenge wasn’t my goal. I wasn’t really mad at the people who held my greasy marionette strings, not anymore than I was yesterday at least, or even an hour ago. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, I never wanted to hurt anyone. Not really. All I really wanted, all I had ever wanted was to save Weather.
That was what it all boiled down to. The only thing that had ever really mattered was her. She was my impetus, my reason for being. If I had it all to do over again, every moment of the last decade and a half; if I could take it all back and change that one night, I knew I wouldn’t. I knew that, no matter what, any time Weather was concerned, I would do whatever had to be done, and that would always lead back to where I was at that moment. Cresting a hundred miles an hour around deadman’s turn on Lake Shore Drive heading for what certainly was going to be the end of my life. Again.
The former though, staying calm, that was a real goal. That was important. I recognize that my anger played too big a role in my life. It was probably always there, but the point at which I know it came to control me was my parent’s divorce. Death number one.
My parents split up when I was seven years old and to call it traumatic would be like calling the ice caps melting away to nothing a bummer. It broke me. It broke me for trust and for faith and for love. It let the anger out, and when it got out it consumed me and I became its vessel. From that point on my anger was my compass and rage was my true north. Ironically it was Weather that helped me keep all that in check. She was my anchor that stopped the anger from capsizing me on the brutal sea.
Of course the double irony was that it was my anger, my rage, my unchecked furry that took her away from me and set me adrift. Lost at sea, drowning in my own failures, it became up to me to find a way to right the ship and calm the riptide of my emotions. It took me eighteen months in prison to find that calm and eleven and a half years to finally feel I had mastered it and tamed the monster inside myself.
Now it was loose again.
It was a dark and angry ride from the club to the nineteenth precinct where I assumed they were holding Weather. It wasn’t a completely random assumption. The nineteenth was Megan’s precinct, that’s where her desk was, and she had said we have her, not they have her. I could have been wrong, but in my experience when she said we, she wasn’t talking about the police.
It was around 9:00 PM when I made the hard right off of Marquette onto Lake Shore Drive. I’d been doing seventy on the side streets and out of concern for sheer physics let the mint condition 1974 Firebird that had been donated to me drop to fifty-five before making the turn. Once on the straight-away of LSD, however, I pressed my foot to the floor and was doing ninety miles an hour before I made it off the Jackson Park peninsula. My rage was running the show now and I knew that that was never good.
Part of me was still crying out to let it go, to calm down and regain control of myself, but my emotional core was impenetrable to logic now. It didn’t want to level out. It didn’t want to think critically. What it wanted was to kill every single person that had made my life into that nightmare that I lived in everyday.
That was a lie too though. If I listened to the reasonable voices in my head I knew that revenge wasn’t my goal. I wasn’t really mad at the people who held my greasy marionette strings, not anymore than I was yesterday at least, or even an hour ago. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, I never wanted to hurt anyone. Not really. All I really wanted, all I had ever wanted was to save Weather.
That was what it all boiled down to. The only thing that had ever really mattered was her. She was my impetus, my reason for being. If I had it all to do over again, every moment of the last decade and a half; if I could take it all back and change that one night, I knew I wouldn’t. I knew that, no matter what, any time Weather was concerned, I would do whatever had to be done, and that would always lead back to where I was at that moment. Cresting a hundred miles an hour around deadman’s turn on Lake Shore Drive heading for what certainly was going to be the end of my life. Again.
Chapter Three
It was brisk I remember. Chicago has cold winters, but I don’t remember it being frigid, just brisk. We held hands and walked across the quad at the University of Chicago. It was chilly enough that we could see our breath in the dim yellow light of the street lamps. It hovered around us, whisping past our faces and trailing behind like the thin tail of a comet. Weather, as usual, was over dressed and under bundled for the winter climate of the city, but it was charming, and probably intentional. She was giving me the opportunity to be chivalrous. I took it and offered her my coat.
It was New Years Eve and we were on our way to a party at Snell-Hitchcock. It was the end of my first semester at college. Being away from home was a relief. Life after my parents split had been chaotic and emotionally exhausting. I was glad to be on my own, taking control of my life and leaving the baggage of my broken childhood behind.
It had been a smooth four and a half months. My grades were good. Not top of my class, but perfectly respectable. My professors, well mostly P.A.s really; at a big university you don’t get much real face time with the actual prof, seemed to like and respect me. I had friends. Not many, I wasn’t a very social person and more than one or two people in a room at a time made me anxious.
Weather was a year younger than me, but infinately smarter. She was the kind of person who could become an expert on any topic in about three hours. She was with me that night as my date, but also to celebrate her early admittance. She was top her her senior class. She’d actually had the credits to graduate at the end of her junior year, but she was a creative type and had stayed on to participate in her senior year musical. Now, having graduated Plainfield South high school a semester early was headed to U of C to start classes after the winter break.
It was a reunion of sorts. We had dated on and off, but mostly on, throughout high school, and if honesty is to be employed, we had actually been together since pre-school. Our Moms were friends so we had been forcibly attached at the hip since toddlerhood.
When I graduated the previous spring we knew that it was foolish to try and maintain a romantic relationship. Well, she knew it. I argued against the breakup. I felt that panic start to build up in my chest and the anger working it’s way through the back of my neck and into my shoulders. Weather was simply calm and rational. She pulled me back from the fulcrum of my emotional lever and made me see things her way. She always did.
We decided to break up amicably and, if we were both single in the winter when she finished up, we could get back together as adults. We could have a real relationship. I knew that wouldn’t be a problem for me, but even though I knew she wouldn’t come to school with a boyfriend for the same reasons that we were breaking up, it still made me nervous.
So there we were, two childhood sweethearts reconnecting in maturity and walking hand in hand to a party in a Gothic downtown building, unencumbered by curfews or parental supervision. We didn’t have to hide affection publicly or keep the door open when we were alone in a room. Finally, we were free to be ourselves and be together. It was the most romantic feeling I’d ever experienced.
The party was a huge affair, taking up the entire Snell Hall portion of the combined buildings and attracting attendees from all over campus even though it was officially a residents only event. We went in though a side door that had been propped open for the occasion by the some of the residents so that non house members could sneak in without going through the front door where IDs were checked.
The building was beautiful. It felt the way college is supposed to feel. The white limestone tiles that covered the outside peeked through dense vines of ivy. The window panes were green with oxidation and the windows fogged ever so slightly at the edges. Inside, the walls were paneled wood and intimidating stair cases that wound up the four floors of dorm rooms. The combined houses only held about a hundred and ten students, give or take, and of that Snell was somewhere in the area of fifty, but that night the place was packed. There had to be four hundred students shouting and dancing and drinking and playing. It was chaos riding the thin end of a wedge teetering toward bedlam.
Weather and I pushed our way slowly through the swarms of partiers, down the hall to the Tea Room where the heart of the party was located. I could feel my anxiety starting to build from the noise and the bodies pressing against me from every direction. Then I felt a squeeze. The gentle grip of Weather’s hand around mine, calming me and focusing my energy and attention on her.
In the Tea Room Weather let go of my hand and looked around.
“Introduce me,” she said eagerly. “I want to meet people.”
I darted my head around looking for anyone familiar. I didn’t go to parties much and the faces in the room may as well have been pictures on milk cartons. I knew nobody there.
“I don’t know any of these people,” I said leaning into her ear to be heard over the cacophony of the party.
Weather smiled and kissed me on the cheek.
“We should do something about that,” she said. “Come on, introduce me.”
She grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me over to a corner where a small group of girls was chatting with light, but serious faces. Weather walked right up to them and cleared her throat for their attention. It worked and they all looked at us with curious expectation. There was a moment of silence, then Weather jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow.
“Oh, um, ladies,” I said in an awkward attempt to be charming. “I’d like you to meet Ms. Weather Rose. She is my beautiful and brilliant girlfriend who will be joining us as an English major here at this prestigious institution of learning.”
The group of girls stared at me blankly with slack jaws and thousand yard stares. Weather grimaced.
“Sorry for my boyfriend,” she said meekly. “He’s an engineering student.”
There was a mild chuckle from the group and one of the girls put out her hand for Weather to shake.
“Welcome Weather,” she said, “to our prestigious institution.”
Weather smiled.
“We were just talking about our favorite instances of the Chekhov’s Gun principal.” Another of the girls said. “Any thoughts?”
“Oh, we’re not really gun people,” I said.
The group of girls burst out laughing. Weather was laughing too. I had no idea what the joke was, but I felt foolish and that magma of anger started churning in my stomach again.
Weather put her hand on my back and rubbed it in small slow circles. She stretched up on her tip toes and kissed me on the side of my forehead.
“Why don’t you go find us some drinks sweetheart,” she whispered.
I looked at her for a moment, unsure of what I should do.
“It’s okay Gavin, I’ll be fine and you look like you could use a beer.”
I shrugged.
“I guess. I guess I’ll be right back then.”
She smiled at me so sweetly then. She smiled at me and took my hands in hers and said, “Thanks hun, love you.”
It was the first time. The first time she said that. It was the first time anyone other than my parents had said that they loved me, and she said it so casually. Not a big thing. She just said it. She didn’t even wait for me to return it, she just turned back to the girls she’d just met and was giggling and talking and having a great time. She was at a party and she was at ease and fitting in. I had known it before, but at that moment it really hit me how much I loved her.
The bar wasn’t in the Tea Room. The party, while overflowing with uninvited guests that were being intentionally overlooked, was still a sanctioned University event for minors, and as such, did not have alcohol available officially. There were however, numerous collections of beer and liquor arranged in bar-like setups in the various dorm rooms throughout the building. I made my way out of the Tea Room and started strolling down the hall to find an open door with just such a setup, but without a long line.
I was approaching the end of the hall when I saw Stacy. Stacy DeBruin was my ex, sort of. She was a girl I had met the first week of school, during orientation. She was of average height, slim, fit, and well designed. She was a looker, but not overly impressive when compared to the copious number of other slim, fit, and well designed undergrads that roamed the campus. The one thing she did have that made her stand out from the crowd was a head of long glorious red hair. When you added that to the picture she became a vixen.
I had been smitten with her from the moment I’d met her, and much to my surprise, she had been smitten too. We had known each other exactly four hours when we fell into bed together. In retrospect, that should have been a warning sign, but I didn’t notice because, well, the sex. It was wild and unbridled sex. For the first time ever I didn’t have to be quiet or subtle. We had sex like I’d seen on the internet. It was hot and loud and rambunctious and long. When it was over I felt like overcooked pasta and fell sound asleep in her arms.
We did that a lot, had sex. It had to have been a dozen times or more, each one better than the last. We didn’t talk much, didn’t go into the stories of our lives or dreams for the future. We met up after classes, ate crappy delivery pizza, drank cheap beer and fucked like rabbits until we passed out. It was everything I had ever hoped for in a college girlfriend.
I did feel guilty though. I felt like I was cheating on Weather even though we had agreed it was okay to see other people. Still, this didn’t feel like seeing someone else. This was more. There was a craving that I had never experienced before. A need for her, for her body. It wasn’t the same as Weather, it wasn’t love. It was desire on a primal level.
She, however, saw it differently.
Two weeks into classes, when the workload had built up to the point that we hadn’t had time to hook up for several days, I took a friendly ribbing from a friend in my CAD class.
“So you’re giving up already,” he said.
I remember being confused.
“Giving up on what?”
“School. I hear you’re dropping out.”
I let out a burst of laughter.
“What? No way, it hasn’t even gotten hard yet.”
“Mmm hmm,” he mocked. “That’s not what she said.”
I stopped clicking at the computer and turned to face him.
“What are you talking about?” I asked feeling that uneasy lump starting to form in my throat.
My classmate glanced at me with a smirk, then, when he saw my expression let his own draw serious.
“Dude, Stacy is telling everyone that you’re dropping out.”
My throat closed up and there was ringing in my ears.
“What?” I nearly shouted, then caught myself. “What?” whispering now. “What the hell are you talking about?”
My friend, I can’t remember his name now to save my life, he straightened up in his chair and turned to face me directly.
“Dude, your girlfriend is under the impression that you are leaving school to go work for her dad.”
It felt like someone pumped a pitcher of ice water into my blood and the familiar sensation of a panic attack started to swell in me.
“Wha- Her what? Her dad? Why would- Dude, I don’t even know what her dad does. Why would I do that? Why would she say that?”
He shrugged.
“How the fuck would I know,” he said. “I’m just saying that she says you two are in love and that you are going to go sell cars or some shit so that you guys can get married.”
I jumped out of his chair.
“The fuck!” I yelled.
“Mr. Gayle,” the instructor boomed. “Is there a problem?”
I looked up at him, my eyes wide and glossy.
“Well?” the prof said again.
I shook. I looked down at my friend who had turned back to his computer and was clicking away at his drawing of a rustic farmhouse being converted to a huge single family home. I looked back at the professor and then grabbed my backpack and stormed out of the classroom.
The ensuing fight had been long loud and very public. I screamed at her and called her awful names, something I regretted later. I didn’t like to be that guy, but I couldn’t believe what she had done. She cried and apologized, but ultimately stuck to her story. She said it was what was best for us. She said we were meant to be and that I just couldn’t see it yet.
I spent the rest of the semester avoiding her and dodging her phone calls. I talked to the administration, tried filing a sexual harassment case, but no one took an eighteen year old boy seriously when he said that the hot girl wouldn’t leave him alone, and unless I could show that I was concerned for my physical safety, there was nothing they could do.
I got creative at finding ways to stay away from her and avoiding interaction. My reputation had suffered a bit from the gossip about the fight, but I was able to set it strait with the people that mattered.
Now I was trapped shoulder to shoulder in a crowded hall, unable to make evasive maneuvers and closing in on her for the first time in months. I tried to start moving away, pretending I hadn’t seen her, but she was already calling my name.
“Fuck,” I muttered as I felt her hand grab me by his shirt.
I turned and looked her in the eyes.
“Gavin,” she said in a sweet sing song voice. “God, I’ve missed you. Glad you got my message.”
I frowned.
“Stacy,” I said as coldly as I could. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t read your messages.”
She raised her eyebrows quizzically.
“But you’re here,” she said. “You must have gotten my invitation.”
I had forgotten that Stacy lived in Snell. Her tiny twin bed on the third floor had been my introduction to the famous building. I winced and shook my head.
“No Stacy. Daren invited me. I’m here with my girlfriend. I did not come to see you. In fact, if I had known you were going to be here I probably wouldn’t have come.”
A big smile spread across her face.
“Oh you’re so cute,” she said. “Gavin, I live here, of course you knew I’d be here. I like the routine though. Playing hard to get? Very sexy. Girlfriend’s a nice touch too.”
She mocked looking around the crowd.
“I don’t see anyone, should we be naughty on the sly?”
She put her hand on my shoulder and I jerked away.
“Oh my fucking God, you’re a lunatic,” I shouted.
People turned and looked.
“Gavin, you’re making a scene,” she whispered.
I backed up and turned away. People watching the two of us spread apart giving me room to move. I walked back down the hall, almost running and the crowd seemed to give up on the show and went back to their previous revelries. Stacy disappeared into the mass of strangers.
Back in the Tea Room I maneuvered back to the corner where the group of girls had been, but now there was just a couple of guys sipping Miller Lite and talking about the Cub’s shitty season. I spun around, frantically looking for Weather. She was nowhere to be seen, but I did spy one of the girls that had been in the group and made my way over to where she was sitting.
It was the girl that had shook Weather’s hand. She was on a plush red sofa sipping a glass of some pink wine and laughing with a new group of girls, all dressed like they were going to be peeling their dresses off on stage later that night.
“Excuse me,” I blurted out half wheezing and interrupting the girl mid sentence.
She looked up annoyed then recognized me and smiled.
“Hey,” she said. “Engineering dude right?”
I frowned, rolled my eyes then nodded.
“Yeah, where’s-”
“Yeah,” she interupted. “Your girlfriend was looking for you.”
“What?”
“Yeah, Weather right? She was wondering what was taking you so long. She went off to find you, did she? Find you?”
I shook my head.
“No,” I said in an irritated voice. “No she didn’t. Do you know where she went?”
The girl shrugged.
“I dunno,” she said already turning back to her friends. “Some guy was taking her to find you.”
I straightened up. My antisocial personality was starting to fight back against my best efforts to be friendly. If Weather were here she would touch my neck or stroke my arm. She’d do what she does and I’d be able to turn the faucet of my frustration off, but she wasn’t here.
“Some guy? Who? Who was it?”
She looked back, now fully annoyed.
“If I knew who it was I wouldn’t have said some guy.”
I stared back at her, incredulous.
“Do you know which way they went?”
She looked back at him again, then just went on with her conversation.
I sighed. The last thing I wanted was to go back out into the hall and risk running into Stacy again, but I also wasn’t going to let my seventeen year old girlfriend wander around alone in a drunken college crowd, or worse yet, not alone with some drunken college guy. I pressed my way through the swelling crowd and made it out into the corridor.
I’m not an especially tall man. I come in at a totally respectable (in my opinion) five foot ten inches tall. Still, in a crowd, I’m looking at the backs of peoples’ heads. On my tip toes I could roughly see over the swarm of people packed wall to wall and to my best judgement I didn’t think Weather was one of them.
Around the corner from the Tea Room was the main stairway and I fought my way though the kids like a salmon until I made it there. The stairs were less congested and I was able to move up them without a hassle.
I continued his search up and down the hall of the second floor and then the third, growing more and more panicked with each room. The fourth floor was suites and the party hadn’t moved that far. There were a few people scattered about, but it was quiet and it was easy to see Weather wasn’t there. I retraced my steps back down the floors checking each room again and asking anyone I knew, which wasn’t that many, if they had seen Weather.
It was my fourth pass down the hallway of the second floor when he noticed a door was closed. Every other dorm room in the building had been open. Partiers moving in and out, bar service in some, movies or football games in others. Everything was open but this room.
I pushed through the people between myself and the door and pressed my ear against it. It was quiet. I listened hard, leaning into the door and holding my breath.
Nothing.
I started to move away and I heard… something. I couldn’t identify it exactly, but it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I leaned in again and listened and there it was again. Soft. Like a whimper.
I turned the door knob gently and cracked the door to peak in. Inside was a man, a kid really, shirtless, kneeling on the small bed facing away from me. He was big, athlete big, with defined muscles up and down his well tanned back. Between his legs were a girls legs, bare and squirming. It didn’t look right.
I swung the door open and nearly knocked over another boy. He was standing just inside the door pointing a DSLR with a red light blinking on the front at the two on the bed. He had on a greasy smile that sent a shiver down my spine. The door creaked as it met the end of it’s hinges and banged against the wall. Both men turned to look at me.
“Close the door asshole, the boy on the bed said, and as he moved I caught sight of whom he was kneeling over. It was Weather.
She was almost naked. Her legs bare, her shirt torn open and one breast hanging out of her bra. Her face was swollen and red and there were tears streaming down her cheeks. She was gasping, trying to scream, trying to talk trying to get away.
The boy on top of her turned back to her and pressed his hand hard over her mouth.
“Shut up bitch!” he said, then added, “get the fuck out of here dickwad, we’re trying to make a movie.”
I didn’t even feel my rage take over. I didn’t notice the flush of heat as my face went red and I can’t pinpoint exactly when my vision got blurry. I did hear the blood rush over my ears silencing the sounds of the party behind me, but I didn’t feel anything, I just moved.
With one step I put my fist though the nose of the boy holding the camera. The cartilage crumbled under my knuckles like tissue paper and I felt the small top bone of my pinky finger snap. Blood sprayed across the wall and on my face and shirt. The camera crashed to the floor and the boy collapsed in a heap.
I stepped over him and wrapped both of my hands around the neck of the boy on the bed. I jerked hard and the kid tumbled off the mattress and onto the ground, his neck still between my fingers. Pain from my broken pinky was shooting up my hand and arm and causing brief flashes of clarity, but they were quickly extinguished by the fog of rage that had taken over my body.
I dragged the stunned student across the small room and slammed his head into the wall. He fell onto the tile floor and I dropped down over him in the same position he had just been over Weather.
Then the beating began.
I didn’t really see the boy’s face. To this day I couldn’t tell you what he looked like. I didn’t really see anything, I just started hitting him. Over and over I pushed my fists into that kid’s ever reddening face. I felt another finger break, then another, but I didn’t stop.
The boy didn’t move, he didn’t struggle, not once. He didn’t scream or cry for help. The truth is he was probably unconscious before he even knew what was going on. By the time I had him on the floor he just laid there as I made him into hamburger meat.
I don’t know how long I beat him. It could have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes, eventually I felt hands on my shoulders, then tugging and then pulling. Finally thick arms like tree trunks wrapped around my chest and pulled me off the boy. They dropped me on the floor on the other side of the room and I finally, uncontrollably, started to cry.
It was New Years Eve and we were on our way to a party at Snell-Hitchcock. It was the end of my first semester at college. Being away from home was a relief. Life after my parents split had been chaotic and emotionally exhausting. I was glad to be on my own, taking control of my life and leaving the baggage of my broken childhood behind.
It had been a smooth four and a half months. My grades were good. Not top of my class, but perfectly respectable. My professors, well mostly P.A.s really; at a big university you don’t get much real face time with the actual prof, seemed to like and respect me. I had friends. Not many, I wasn’t a very social person and more than one or two people in a room at a time made me anxious.
Weather was a year younger than me, but infinately smarter. She was the kind of person who could become an expert on any topic in about three hours. She was with me that night as my date, but also to celebrate her early admittance. She was top her her senior class. She’d actually had the credits to graduate at the end of her junior year, but she was a creative type and had stayed on to participate in her senior year musical. Now, having graduated Plainfield South high school a semester early was headed to U of C to start classes after the winter break.
It was a reunion of sorts. We had dated on and off, but mostly on, throughout high school, and if honesty is to be employed, we had actually been together since pre-school. Our Moms were friends so we had been forcibly attached at the hip since toddlerhood.
When I graduated the previous spring we knew that it was foolish to try and maintain a romantic relationship. Well, she knew it. I argued against the breakup. I felt that panic start to build up in my chest and the anger working it’s way through the back of my neck and into my shoulders. Weather was simply calm and rational. She pulled me back from the fulcrum of my emotional lever and made me see things her way. She always did.
We decided to break up amicably and, if we were both single in the winter when she finished up, we could get back together as adults. We could have a real relationship. I knew that wouldn’t be a problem for me, but even though I knew she wouldn’t come to school with a boyfriend for the same reasons that we were breaking up, it still made me nervous.
So there we were, two childhood sweethearts reconnecting in maturity and walking hand in hand to a party in a Gothic downtown building, unencumbered by curfews or parental supervision. We didn’t have to hide affection publicly or keep the door open when we were alone in a room. Finally, we were free to be ourselves and be together. It was the most romantic feeling I’d ever experienced.
The party was a huge affair, taking up the entire Snell Hall portion of the combined buildings and attracting attendees from all over campus even though it was officially a residents only event. We went in though a side door that had been propped open for the occasion by the some of the residents so that non house members could sneak in without going through the front door where IDs were checked.
The building was beautiful. It felt the way college is supposed to feel. The white limestone tiles that covered the outside peeked through dense vines of ivy. The window panes were green with oxidation and the windows fogged ever so slightly at the edges. Inside, the walls were paneled wood and intimidating stair cases that wound up the four floors of dorm rooms. The combined houses only held about a hundred and ten students, give or take, and of that Snell was somewhere in the area of fifty, but that night the place was packed. There had to be four hundred students shouting and dancing and drinking and playing. It was chaos riding the thin end of a wedge teetering toward bedlam.
Weather and I pushed our way slowly through the swarms of partiers, down the hall to the Tea Room where the heart of the party was located. I could feel my anxiety starting to build from the noise and the bodies pressing against me from every direction. Then I felt a squeeze. The gentle grip of Weather’s hand around mine, calming me and focusing my energy and attention on her.
In the Tea Room Weather let go of my hand and looked around.
“Introduce me,” she said eagerly. “I want to meet people.”
I darted my head around looking for anyone familiar. I didn’t go to parties much and the faces in the room may as well have been pictures on milk cartons. I knew nobody there.
“I don’t know any of these people,” I said leaning into her ear to be heard over the cacophony of the party.
Weather smiled and kissed me on the cheek.
“We should do something about that,” she said. “Come on, introduce me.”
She grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me over to a corner where a small group of girls was chatting with light, but serious faces. Weather walked right up to them and cleared her throat for their attention. It worked and they all looked at us with curious expectation. There was a moment of silence, then Weather jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow.
“Oh, um, ladies,” I said in an awkward attempt to be charming. “I’d like you to meet Ms. Weather Rose. She is my beautiful and brilliant girlfriend who will be joining us as an English major here at this prestigious institution of learning.”
The group of girls stared at me blankly with slack jaws and thousand yard stares. Weather grimaced.
“Sorry for my boyfriend,” she said meekly. “He’s an engineering student.”
There was a mild chuckle from the group and one of the girls put out her hand for Weather to shake.
“Welcome Weather,” she said, “to our prestigious institution.”
Weather smiled.
“We were just talking about our favorite instances of the Chekhov’s Gun principal.” Another of the girls said. “Any thoughts?”
“Oh, we’re not really gun people,” I said.
The group of girls burst out laughing. Weather was laughing too. I had no idea what the joke was, but I felt foolish and that magma of anger started churning in my stomach again.
Weather put her hand on my back and rubbed it in small slow circles. She stretched up on her tip toes and kissed me on the side of my forehead.
“Why don’t you go find us some drinks sweetheart,” she whispered.
I looked at her for a moment, unsure of what I should do.
“It’s okay Gavin, I’ll be fine and you look like you could use a beer.”
I shrugged.
“I guess. I guess I’ll be right back then.”
She smiled at me so sweetly then. She smiled at me and took my hands in hers and said, “Thanks hun, love you.”
It was the first time. The first time she said that. It was the first time anyone other than my parents had said that they loved me, and she said it so casually. Not a big thing. She just said it. She didn’t even wait for me to return it, she just turned back to the girls she’d just met and was giggling and talking and having a great time. She was at a party and she was at ease and fitting in. I had known it before, but at that moment it really hit me how much I loved her.
The bar wasn’t in the Tea Room. The party, while overflowing with uninvited guests that were being intentionally overlooked, was still a sanctioned University event for minors, and as such, did not have alcohol available officially. There were however, numerous collections of beer and liquor arranged in bar-like setups in the various dorm rooms throughout the building. I made my way out of the Tea Room and started strolling down the hall to find an open door with just such a setup, but without a long line.
I was approaching the end of the hall when I saw Stacy. Stacy DeBruin was my ex, sort of. She was a girl I had met the first week of school, during orientation. She was of average height, slim, fit, and well designed. She was a looker, but not overly impressive when compared to the copious number of other slim, fit, and well designed undergrads that roamed the campus. The one thing she did have that made her stand out from the crowd was a head of long glorious red hair. When you added that to the picture she became a vixen.
I had been smitten with her from the moment I’d met her, and much to my surprise, she had been smitten too. We had known each other exactly four hours when we fell into bed together. In retrospect, that should have been a warning sign, but I didn’t notice because, well, the sex. It was wild and unbridled sex. For the first time ever I didn’t have to be quiet or subtle. We had sex like I’d seen on the internet. It was hot and loud and rambunctious and long. When it was over I felt like overcooked pasta and fell sound asleep in her arms.
We did that a lot, had sex. It had to have been a dozen times or more, each one better than the last. We didn’t talk much, didn’t go into the stories of our lives or dreams for the future. We met up after classes, ate crappy delivery pizza, drank cheap beer and fucked like rabbits until we passed out. It was everything I had ever hoped for in a college girlfriend.
I did feel guilty though. I felt like I was cheating on Weather even though we had agreed it was okay to see other people. Still, this didn’t feel like seeing someone else. This was more. There was a craving that I had never experienced before. A need for her, for her body. It wasn’t the same as Weather, it wasn’t love. It was desire on a primal level.
She, however, saw it differently.
Two weeks into classes, when the workload had built up to the point that we hadn’t had time to hook up for several days, I took a friendly ribbing from a friend in my CAD class.
“So you’re giving up already,” he said.
I remember being confused.
“Giving up on what?”
“School. I hear you’re dropping out.”
I let out a burst of laughter.
“What? No way, it hasn’t even gotten hard yet.”
“Mmm hmm,” he mocked. “That’s not what she said.”
I stopped clicking at the computer and turned to face him.
“What are you talking about?” I asked feeling that uneasy lump starting to form in my throat.
My classmate glanced at me with a smirk, then, when he saw my expression let his own draw serious.
“Dude, Stacy is telling everyone that you’re dropping out.”
My throat closed up and there was ringing in my ears.
“What?” I nearly shouted, then caught myself. “What?” whispering now. “What the hell are you talking about?”
My friend, I can’t remember his name now to save my life, he straightened up in his chair and turned to face me directly.
“Dude, your girlfriend is under the impression that you are leaving school to go work for her dad.”
It felt like someone pumped a pitcher of ice water into my blood and the familiar sensation of a panic attack started to swell in me.
“Wha- Her what? Her dad? Why would- Dude, I don’t even know what her dad does. Why would I do that? Why would she say that?”
He shrugged.
“How the fuck would I know,” he said. “I’m just saying that she says you two are in love and that you are going to go sell cars or some shit so that you guys can get married.”
I jumped out of his chair.
“The fuck!” I yelled.
“Mr. Gayle,” the instructor boomed. “Is there a problem?”
I looked up at him, my eyes wide and glossy.
“Well?” the prof said again.
I shook. I looked down at my friend who had turned back to his computer and was clicking away at his drawing of a rustic farmhouse being converted to a huge single family home. I looked back at the professor and then grabbed my backpack and stormed out of the classroom.
The ensuing fight had been long loud and very public. I screamed at her and called her awful names, something I regretted later. I didn’t like to be that guy, but I couldn’t believe what she had done. She cried and apologized, but ultimately stuck to her story. She said it was what was best for us. She said we were meant to be and that I just couldn’t see it yet.
I spent the rest of the semester avoiding her and dodging her phone calls. I talked to the administration, tried filing a sexual harassment case, but no one took an eighteen year old boy seriously when he said that the hot girl wouldn’t leave him alone, and unless I could show that I was concerned for my physical safety, there was nothing they could do.
I got creative at finding ways to stay away from her and avoiding interaction. My reputation had suffered a bit from the gossip about the fight, but I was able to set it strait with the people that mattered.
Now I was trapped shoulder to shoulder in a crowded hall, unable to make evasive maneuvers and closing in on her for the first time in months. I tried to start moving away, pretending I hadn’t seen her, but she was already calling my name.
“Fuck,” I muttered as I felt her hand grab me by his shirt.
I turned and looked her in the eyes.
“Gavin,” she said in a sweet sing song voice. “God, I’ve missed you. Glad you got my message.”
I frowned.
“Stacy,” I said as coldly as I could. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t read your messages.”
She raised her eyebrows quizzically.
“But you’re here,” she said. “You must have gotten my invitation.”
I had forgotten that Stacy lived in Snell. Her tiny twin bed on the third floor had been my introduction to the famous building. I winced and shook my head.
“No Stacy. Daren invited me. I’m here with my girlfriend. I did not come to see you. In fact, if I had known you were going to be here I probably wouldn’t have come.”
A big smile spread across her face.
“Oh you’re so cute,” she said. “Gavin, I live here, of course you knew I’d be here. I like the routine though. Playing hard to get? Very sexy. Girlfriend’s a nice touch too.”
She mocked looking around the crowd.
“I don’t see anyone, should we be naughty on the sly?”
She put her hand on my shoulder and I jerked away.
“Oh my fucking God, you’re a lunatic,” I shouted.
People turned and looked.
“Gavin, you’re making a scene,” she whispered.
I backed up and turned away. People watching the two of us spread apart giving me room to move. I walked back down the hall, almost running and the crowd seemed to give up on the show and went back to their previous revelries. Stacy disappeared into the mass of strangers.
Back in the Tea Room I maneuvered back to the corner where the group of girls had been, but now there was just a couple of guys sipping Miller Lite and talking about the Cub’s shitty season. I spun around, frantically looking for Weather. She was nowhere to be seen, but I did spy one of the girls that had been in the group and made my way over to where she was sitting.
It was the girl that had shook Weather’s hand. She was on a plush red sofa sipping a glass of some pink wine and laughing with a new group of girls, all dressed like they were going to be peeling their dresses off on stage later that night.
“Excuse me,” I blurted out half wheezing and interrupting the girl mid sentence.
She looked up annoyed then recognized me and smiled.
“Hey,” she said. “Engineering dude right?”
I frowned, rolled my eyes then nodded.
“Yeah, where’s-”
“Yeah,” she interupted. “Your girlfriend was looking for you.”
“What?”
“Yeah, Weather right? She was wondering what was taking you so long. She went off to find you, did she? Find you?”
I shook my head.
“No,” I said in an irritated voice. “No she didn’t. Do you know where she went?”
The girl shrugged.
“I dunno,” she said already turning back to her friends. “Some guy was taking her to find you.”
I straightened up. My antisocial personality was starting to fight back against my best efforts to be friendly. If Weather were here she would touch my neck or stroke my arm. She’d do what she does and I’d be able to turn the faucet of my frustration off, but she wasn’t here.
“Some guy? Who? Who was it?”
She looked back, now fully annoyed.
“If I knew who it was I wouldn’t have said some guy.”
I stared back at her, incredulous.
“Do you know which way they went?”
She looked back at him again, then just went on with her conversation.
I sighed. The last thing I wanted was to go back out into the hall and risk running into Stacy again, but I also wasn’t going to let my seventeen year old girlfriend wander around alone in a drunken college crowd, or worse yet, not alone with some drunken college guy. I pressed my way through the swelling crowd and made it out into the corridor.
I’m not an especially tall man. I come in at a totally respectable (in my opinion) five foot ten inches tall. Still, in a crowd, I’m looking at the backs of peoples’ heads. On my tip toes I could roughly see over the swarm of people packed wall to wall and to my best judgement I didn’t think Weather was one of them.
Around the corner from the Tea Room was the main stairway and I fought my way though the kids like a salmon until I made it there. The stairs were less congested and I was able to move up them without a hassle.
I continued his search up and down the hall of the second floor and then the third, growing more and more panicked with each room. The fourth floor was suites and the party hadn’t moved that far. There were a few people scattered about, but it was quiet and it was easy to see Weather wasn’t there. I retraced my steps back down the floors checking each room again and asking anyone I knew, which wasn’t that many, if they had seen Weather.
It was my fourth pass down the hallway of the second floor when he noticed a door was closed. Every other dorm room in the building had been open. Partiers moving in and out, bar service in some, movies or football games in others. Everything was open but this room.
I pushed through the people between myself and the door and pressed my ear against it. It was quiet. I listened hard, leaning into the door and holding my breath.
Nothing.
I started to move away and I heard… something. I couldn’t identify it exactly, but it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I leaned in again and listened and there it was again. Soft. Like a whimper.
I turned the door knob gently and cracked the door to peak in. Inside was a man, a kid really, shirtless, kneeling on the small bed facing away from me. He was big, athlete big, with defined muscles up and down his well tanned back. Between his legs were a girls legs, bare and squirming. It didn’t look right.
I swung the door open and nearly knocked over another boy. He was standing just inside the door pointing a DSLR with a red light blinking on the front at the two on the bed. He had on a greasy smile that sent a shiver down my spine. The door creaked as it met the end of it’s hinges and banged against the wall. Both men turned to look at me.
“Close the door asshole, the boy on the bed said, and as he moved I caught sight of whom he was kneeling over. It was Weather.
She was almost naked. Her legs bare, her shirt torn open and one breast hanging out of her bra. Her face was swollen and red and there were tears streaming down her cheeks. She was gasping, trying to scream, trying to talk trying to get away.
The boy on top of her turned back to her and pressed his hand hard over her mouth.
“Shut up bitch!” he said, then added, “get the fuck out of here dickwad, we’re trying to make a movie.”
I didn’t even feel my rage take over. I didn’t notice the flush of heat as my face went red and I can’t pinpoint exactly when my vision got blurry. I did hear the blood rush over my ears silencing the sounds of the party behind me, but I didn’t feel anything, I just moved.
With one step I put my fist though the nose of the boy holding the camera. The cartilage crumbled under my knuckles like tissue paper and I felt the small top bone of my pinky finger snap. Blood sprayed across the wall and on my face and shirt. The camera crashed to the floor and the boy collapsed in a heap.
I stepped over him and wrapped both of my hands around the neck of the boy on the bed. I jerked hard and the kid tumbled off the mattress and onto the ground, his neck still between my fingers. Pain from my broken pinky was shooting up my hand and arm and causing brief flashes of clarity, but they were quickly extinguished by the fog of rage that had taken over my body.
I dragged the stunned student across the small room and slammed his head into the wall. He fell onto the tile floor and I dropped down over him in the same position he had just been over Weather.
Then the beating began.
I didn’t really see the boy’s face. To this day I couldn’t tell you what he looked like. I didn’t really see anything, I just started hitting him. Over and over I pushed my fists into that kid’s ever reddening face. I felt another finger break, then another, but I didn’t stop.
The boy didn’t move, he didn’t struggle, not once. He didn’t scream or cry for help. The truth is he was probably unconscious before he even knew what was going on. By the time I had him on the floor he just laid there as I made him into hamburger meat.
I don’t know how long I beat him. It could have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes, eventually I felt hands on my shoulders, then tugging and then pulling. Finally thick arms like tree trunks wrapped around my chest and pulled me off the boy. They dropped me on the floor on the other side of the room and I finally, uncontrollably, started to cry.
Chapter Four
When I got to Townhall, which was what the neighborhood locals called the nineteenth precinct headquarters, I was in a bad place. I’d spent the drive going over every moment, every choice, every action I’d made since the night at the party thirteen years earlier. I’d been remembering and reliving all the pain, the fear, and the atrocities that had been forced upon me to the point that when I pulled the Firebird up to the curb at 851 W. Addison I was in a full on panic attack.
It’s a frightening feeling, losing control of control. I had a thin, almost electrostatic layer of sweat hovering above my skin across my whole body. My heart was pounding and my vision was blurry. I was breathing in short, shallow gasps and my body was shaking. I needed Weather. I needed her to bring me down from this, to calm me and reassure me and make me feel like myself again. Unfortunately Weather couldn’t help me, not now. Now, Weather needed my help and that’s why I was there.
My relationship with the police was… complicated. I stayed out of their way, and they, mostly, stayed out of mine. My car had special plates that let any officers that might want to top off their quota know that I was the wrong target. I could park anywhere I wanted and I didn’t really have to worry about speed limits. For the most part Chicago police were instructed, indirectly, to leave me alone; under any circumstances.
That said, I had a few restrictions of my own that prevented me from ending up in a situation where the police would have to implement that kind of self restraint. I generally wasn’t allowed out of the club. I mean, there wasn’t anyone stopping me, it was just, well; it wasn’t worth the risk. Besides, I didn’t have anything to do outside anyway. I didn’t have any money, no credit cards, no identification. I couldn’t go outside city limits, I couldn’t get a job or join an organization. Hell, I couldn’t get so much as a library card inside the city.
It was a delicate balance that we had managed to maintain, for the most part, for the past eight years. Still, there I was, parked outside of a police station about to violate, in every way, the spirit of our unofficial understanding. Detective Hinde had told me to leave it. She had told me to stay away, but she had to know that was beyond my abilities as a man; as a person.
I killed the engine and popped the glove box. I removed the gun from my coat pocket, a beat up Ruger .357 Magnum that I had come by the hard way. I tossed it in the glove box and slammed the compartment shut. If I was going to try walking unannounced and escorted into a police station I certainly wasn’t going to do it armed.
I tossed my black overcoat and hat into the backseat and grabbed a tie, something with a little color but not ostentatious. I needed to blend. I kept a stash of various lanyards and conference ID cards in the trunk and I slipped one over my neck. Then I grabbed a metal clipboard, and some random papers. I mussed up my hair a bit and with eyes up and shoulders back I walked through the front doors of the 19th district of the Chicago PD.
A clipboard and a confident wave will get you into any room in the world. Maybe. I don’t know, maybe not. I imagine the White House is a little stricter than that, but back then in Chicago it always seemed to work. The Desk Sergeant glanced up at me, but didn’t even flinch when I waved at him and let myself through the double doors to the left of the main entrance.
It was a spur of the moment choice. The object is to look like you know where you’re going. There’s no time to look over your options and try and make the best decision. The two doors standing to my left when I walked in were the first I noticed. They also were the closest to me which meant less time under the scrutiny of the Gatekeeper.
Once inside I leaned back against the closed doors and nearly threw up. I gulped air and tried to regain my calm. I took a white linen handkerchief from my back pocket and patted my forehead and the corners of my mouth. I had gotten past the first hurdle, but the problem was, I had no idea what to do next.
I was in a short, brightly lit corridor. Plain cinder block walls painted an unsettling off white made more eerie by the pulsing florescent lights hanging from the low ceiling overhead. A dozen steel doors, half on one side, half on the other; painted the same seizure inducing cream color as the rest of the space, dotted the length of the hall way. The floor was a speckled tile like you might find in a middle school cafeteria. At the end of the passage was another set of double doors. The same puke white with the same spherical stainless steel doorknobs.
I took a deep breath, straightened myself up and began to move forward. Each door had a small twelve inch window set just above eye level. I peered in each as I moved my way down the aisle. They were all the same, fitted with a small table and two chairs. Hanging above each table was a small black microphone. Interrogation rooms, or Trick Rooms as the boys in blue used to call them. They were all empty, but it let me know I was headed in the right direction.
At the end of the hall I grabbed the knob of the right hand door and tried to turn it, it was locked. I tried the left hand door as well, but it was the same. I stood silently looking at the sturdy barricade. I gave a quick glance behind myself at the doors I had come through. I reached again for the door on the right, and as I grabbed the handle it pulled out of my hand and the door swung away from me.
Instinctively I dropped my eyes to the floor and stepped aside. A pair of women’s legs in stockings and black heels passed me and quickly I caught the door. I pivoted and started to step through it, but the sharp click of the footsteps stopped. I tried hard to fight the urge to turn, but my curiosity got the best of me and I turned and looked up. My eyes met the stare of Detective Megan Hinde.
I looked down at the door in my hand. The nausea was back and the sweats. I tried to slam the door between us, but the heavy slab slammed against her hand.
I let go of the door and stepped back. A quick spin on the balls of my feet and I was walking down the hall at a speed that bordered on running. I got about ten steps in, when I heard the detective shout in a raspy whisper.
"Gavin!"
I froze,
"Gavin!"
The voice was familiar.
"Oh my God, what the fuck are you doing here? Are you fucking crazy?"
Slowly I turned turned to face her.
"Look, when I came to see you I specifically told you to stay the fuck away. I mean, holy shit, how did you even get past the front desk? You can't be here. I mean, you know you can’t be here. They have Weather in interrogation. Fuck, Maureen is here and the feds are on their way! Seriously Gavin, you fucked up, you need to leave.”
My heart was pounding and there were boyant, perky beads of sweat hanging off my forehead and the end of my nose. My heart was beating like a late seventies drum solo, but I stared at her blankly, trying to decided between the dual urges of fight or flight. Hinde was panicking, breathing hard and glancing around her like a paranoid.
“Gavin, she killed Grayson. When they found her she was damn near naked, covered in his blood, and the gun was right next to her. I'm supposed to be on my way to the prints lab now to see if they got a match, but you know they will.”
I gave a shallow shake of my head.
“No,” I said.
Hinde rolled her eyes.
“Fuck,” she said. “I don't know if she killed him or not, but it looks that way and with it looking like it does, well, I don't have to tell you. This is Chicago Gavin, and with it looking like it does, they just aren't going to look much fucking further."
"I have to see her."
"Abso-fucking-lutely not. She isn't alone. No, no you have to leave. Seriously, fucking go!"
"I will, right after I see her."
"Fuck man! Fuck, aren't you listening to me? You can't walk around a police station. You can't do that ever, but seriously, no way you can be here while fucking Weather Rose is being questioned for the murder of member of the FBI!"
I turned and started walking down the hall.
"Okay, okay, okay! Fuck, just fucking stop for a second."
I stopped.
"Okay." she sighed. "Okay, come on, come with me. You can see her, but you can't talk to her. She's in the big interrogation room being questioned. If there’s no on in the witness room I'll let you see her through the glass."
"Thank you."
"Yeah, thank me. Fuck, if anyone sees us together, I don't fucking know you. You get sixty seconds and then I want you out of here. You got yourself in, so you can find your way out. I'll drop you off, then I'm heading to prints to get the report on the gun. When I get back you better be gone."
"I'll be gone."
"Yeah, you fucking better be."
It’s a frightening feeling, losing control of control. I had a thin, almost electrostatic layer of sweat hovering above my skin across my whole body. My heart was pounding and my vision was blurry. I was breathing in short, shallow gasps and my body was shaking. I needed Weather. I needed her to bring me down from this, to calm me and reassure me and make me feel like myself again. Unfortunately Weather couldn’t help me, not now. Now, Weather needed my help and that’s why I was there.
My relationship with the police was… complicated. I stayed out of their way, and they, mostly, stayed out of mine. My car had special plates that let any officers that might want to top off their quota know that I was the wrong target. I could park anywhere I wanted and I didn’t really have to worry about speed limits. For the most part Chicago police were instructed, indirectly, to leave me alone; under any circumstances.
That said, I had a few restrictions of my own that prevented me from ending up in a situation where the police would have to implement that kind of self restraint. I generally wasn’t allowed out of the club. I mean, there wasn’t anyone stopping me, it was just, well; it wasn’t worth the risk. Besides, I didn’t have anything to do outside anyway. I didn’t have any money, no credit cards, no identification. I couldn’t go outside city limits, I couldn’t get a job or join an organization. Hell, I couldn’t get so much as a library card inside the city.
It was a delicate balance that we had managed to maintain, for the most part, for the past eight years. Still, there I was, parked outside of a police station about to violate, in every way, the spirit of our unofficial understanding. Detective Hinde had told me to leave it. She had told me to stay away, but she had to know that was beyond my abilities as a man; as a person.
I killed the engine and popped the glove box. I removed the gun from my coat pocket, a beat up Ruger .357 Magnum that I had come by the hard way. I tossed it in the glove box and slammed the compartment shut. If I was going to try walking unannounced and escorted into a police station I certainly wasn’t going to do it armed.
I tossed my black overcoat and hat into the backseat and grabbed a tie, something with a little color but not ostentatious. I needed to blend. I kept a stash of various lanyards and conference ID cards in the trunk and I slipped one over my neck. Then I grabbed a metal clipboard, and some random papers. I mussed up my hair a bit and with eyes up and shoulders back I walked through the front doors of the 19th district of the Chicago PD.
A clipboard and a confident wave will get you into any room in the world. Maybe. I don’t know, maybe not. I imagine the White House is a little stricter than that, but back then in Chicago it always seemed to work. The Desk Sergeant glanced up at me, but didn’t even flinch when I waved at him and let myself through the double doors to the left of the main entrance.
It was a spur of the moment choice. The object is to look like you know where you’re going. There’s no time to look over your options and try and make the best decision. The two doors standing to my left when I walked in were the first I noticed. They also were the closest to me which meant less time under the scrutiny of the Gatekeeper.
Once inside I leaned back against the closed doors and nearly threw up. I gulped air and tried to regain my calm. I took a white linen handkerchief from my back pocket and patted my forehead and the corners of my mouth. I had gotten past the first hurdle, but the problem was, I had no idea what to do next.
I was in a short, brightly lit corridor. Plain cinder block walls painted an unsettling off white made more eerie by the pulsing florescent lights hanging from the low ceiling overhead. A dozen steel doors, half on one side, half on the other; painted the same seizure inducing cream color as the rest of the space, dotted the length of the hall way. The floor was a speckled tile like you might find in a middle school cafeteria. At the end of the passage was another set of double doors. The same puke white with the same spherical stainless steel doorknobs.
I took a deep breath, straightened myself up and began to move forward. Each door had a small twelve inch window set just above eye level. I peered in each as I moved my way down the aisle. They were all the same, fitted with a small table and two chairs. Hanging above each table was a small black microphone. Interrogation rooms, or Trick Rooms as the boys in blue used to call them. They were all empty, but it let me know I was headed in the right direction.
At the end of the hall I grabbed the knob of the right hand door and tried to turn it, it was locked. I tried the left hand door as well, but it was the same. I stood silently looking at the sturdy barricade. I gave a quick glance behind myself at the doors I had come through. I reached again for the door on the right, and as I grabbed the handle it pulled out of my hand and the door swung away from me.
Instinctively I dropped my eyes to the floor and stepped aside. A pair of women’s legs in stockings and black heels passed me and quickly I caught the door. I pivoted and started to step through it, but the sharp click of the footsteps stopped. I tried hard to fight the urge to turn, but my curiosity got the best of me and I turned and looked up. My eyes met the stare of Detective Megan Hinde.
I looked down at the door in my hand. The nausea was back and the sweats. I tried to slam the door between us, but the heavy slab slammed against her hand.
I let go of the door and stepped back. A quick spin on the balls of my feet and I was walking down the hall at a speed that bordered on running. I got about ten steps in, when I heard the detective shout in a raspy whisper.
"Gavin!"
I froze,
"Gavin!"
The voice was familiar.
"Oh my God, what the fuck are you doing here? Are you fucking crazy?"
Slowly I turned turned to face her.
"Look, when I came to see you I specifically told you to stay the fuck away. I mean, holy shit, how did you even get past the front desk? You can't be here. I mean, you know you can’t be here. They have Weather in interrogation. Fuck, Maureen is here and the feds are on their way! Seriously Gavin, you fucked up, you need to leave.”
My heart was pounding and there were boyant, perky beads of sweat hanging off my forehead and the end of my nose. My heart was beating like a late seventies drum solo, but I stared at her blankly, trying to decided between the dual urges of fight or flight. Hinde was panicking, breathing hard and glancing around her like a paranoid.
“Gavin, she killed Grayson. When they found her she was damn near naked, covered in his blood, and the gun was right next to her. I'm supposed to be on my way to the prints lab now to see if they got a match, but you know they will.”
I gave a shallow shake of my head.
“No,” I said.
Hinde rolled her eyes.
“Fuck,” she said. “I don't know if she killed him or not, but it looks that way and with it looking like it does, well, I don't have to tell you. This is Chicago Gavin, and with it looking like it does, they just aren't going to look much fucking further."
"I have to see her."
"Abso-fucking-lutely not. She isn't alone. No, no you have to leave. Seriously, fucking go!"
"I will, right after I see her."
"Fuck man! Fuck, aren't you listening to me? You can't walk around a police station. You can't do that ever, but seriously, no way you can be here while fucking Weather Rose is being questioned for the murder of member of the FBI!"
I turned and started walking down the hall.
"Okay, okay, okay! Fuck, just fucking stop for a second."
I stopped.
"Okay." she sighed. "Okay, come on, come with me. You can see her, but you can't talk to her. She's in the big interrogation room being questioned. If there’s no on in the witness room I'll let you see her through the glass."
"Thank you."
"Yeah, thank me. Fuck, if anyone sees us together, I don't fucking know you. You get sixty seconds and then I want you out of here. You got yourself in, so you can find your way out. I'll drop you off, then I'm heading to prints to get the report on the gun. When I get back you better be gone."
"I'll be gone."
"Yeah, you fucking better be."
It wasn’t that different from what you’ve seen on TV. The room was narrow and dark. It had one solid pane of dark glass along one wall and nowhere to sit. On the other side of the glass was Weather. She looked bad. Across from her was State’s Attorney Maureen Reprobi, another woman I hadn’t seen in almost as long. I wasn’t sure which of these women made me more uneasy.
They sat across from one another at a small metal table in the center of another off putting gray room. They knew each other from the trial. SA Reprobi had been the prosecutor that drew my case after the incident at the party. She wasn’t the State’s Attorney at that time, but she was certainly an up-and-commer. It was my conviction that had made her career and given her the name recognition to run for the top chair.
She was quiet, mindful, watching Weather’s face, her eyes, the small lines just forming at the corners of her mouth. She was patient, precise and methodical. It’s what made her so good at her job. She didn’t rush into things. She always made sure that she was in control.
For her part Weather was unflinching. She sat peacefully in her orange jumpsuit, staring cockeyed at the mirror that covered the whole wall to her right. It was eerie having her stare at me. Seeing her eyes, pointing like daggers at me. Of course she couldn’t see me, but it felt like she could. It made my skin crawl. She, however, seemed a million miles away and Maureen looked as though she actually felt bad for her.
“How have you been Weather?” she said.
Weather turned her head and looked coldly at Maureen. She tried to lean back in her chair, but the chain between her wrists caught on the loop in the table and tugged on her shoulders, so she leaned forward and rested on her elbows. She gave a long questioning look at the State’s Attorney, then a brief judgmental glance at the detectives, let out an exasperated sigh and began picking at her fingernails silently.
Maureen grimaced. She was trying to be nice, one of her patented tactics. I remember her speaking to me so kindly when I sat in a room much like that one. Offering me small favors, asking if I needed anything. Taking her time, making me feel comfortable. Making me trust her. She didn’t have that kind of time now. There was no time to play games. The FBI would be there any minute and Maureen clearly needed answers before they took control of the situation.
"Okay then, down to business. Miss Rose, how did you know Mr. Grayson?"
Weather dug a small piece of dirt out from under one of her french manicured nails and wiped it on the table in front of her.
"Miss Rose, were you having a sexual relationship with Mr. Grayson?"
This seemed like an interesting question to Weather. She gave a slight head cock and then, after a moment of consideration she began working on the next nail.
"Weather, have you spoken to Gavin recently?"
This seemed to wake her up. Of course she hadn’t spoken to me lately, and Maureen knew that. Maureen made sure no one spoke to me. She kept me bottled up like a fish in an aquarium, but the mention of my name seemed to unnerve Weather. She stopped her nail cleaning and looked up at the State’s Attorney. She gave a startled frown. She sipped the air, paused and gave a long exhale before returning to grooming her nails. The detective with the notebook scribbled something in shorthand then put the pencil back in his mouth.
"Miss Rose," the other detective said, "did you kill Special Council Brandon Grayson?"
Weather wiped another piece of debris on the table.
Maureen sighed. She was getting agitated because every second that passed brought her control of the situation closer to its end. She rubbed her temples with her finger tips for a moment then folded her hands on the table.
"Maybe it would be easier if we start with what we already know. Ya know, get the ball rolling."
Weather stopped picking and looked up again. She shrugged and tried again to lean back in her chair but ultimately found herself mimicking Maureen’s position.
"It’s been almost thirteen years since I saw you last, right? It was during the trial, or I guess just before. You never testified. You never even showed up in court.”
Maureen opened a file folder and flipped through some pages that I have to assume were mostly blank. It was a prop. A tool to make Weather nervous.
“You’ve been pretty quiet since then,” she said. “You don't have an arrest record. No parking tickets. No speeding tickets. Your driver's license says you don't live in the city, and you don't appear to be married."
Weather gave a 'maybe, maybe not' shrug and tilted her head in a way that said 'anything else'. Maureen stared at her silently for a moment, clearly trying to assert some sort of authority. Weather gave her due attention, then shrugged again and went back to picking her nails. She was starting to get a small pile of nail gunk building up on the table in front of her. That was good news for her because the CPD should have had her nails cleaned out into a small plastic evidence bag during her fingerprinting. The fact that she had so much material still under there meant that either they had forgotten that part, or they did a piss poor job at it.
"The rest of what we know at the moment doesn't look good for you. You were found in the victim's apartment, half naked, covered in his blood. A gun, that we're pretty sure is going to end up being the murder weapon was laying right next to you with bloody fingerprints all over it. I have an officer heading over to the prints lab right now to confirm that those prints are yours, but that's pretty much a formality isn't it? They are your prints, aren't they Miss Rose?"
Weather must have been doing her best to hide any emotion, but when Maureen asked that, I could see the flush in her cheeks. I felt my face flush too. I knew two things for sure at that point. The first was that Weather didn’t kill that lawyer and the second was that it would indeed be her prints on the gun.
They would find her skin under the victims fingernails, and there would be gunpowder residue on her hands. Not because she was guilty, but because that was the only thing that could happen. Aristotle said that hubris must be punished. I had hubris. My life for the previous eight years had been the very definition of the word, but I couldn’t be punished. There was nothing left to take away from me. The only way for God to hurt me was to hurt her. This is what I deserved.
Maureen sat quietly for a moment. Her time was up and she knew it. At that point even if she did get Weather talking it would have be too late. I don’t think she was even sure whether or not she was guilty, but it didn’t matter. The FBI would be there, they would take her into custody.
Maureen had reason to be worried too. Weather didn’t know anything about me. She’d been told the same story as everyone else. As far as she was concerned I was dead, but there’s always the what if. Weather was important to me and Maureen knew that better than anyone else. What if I’d found a way. What if I had reached her over the past eight years. If Weather knew anything at all she would certainly tell the Feds. She was on the hook for murdering a DOJ lawyer and that was a death penalty case straight up. She’d go to the chair unless she made a deal and there was no deal juicer than to give them me.
They sat across from one another at a small metal table in the center of another off putting gray room. They knew each other from the trial. SA Reprobi had been the prosecutor that drew my case after the incident at the party. She wasn’t the State’s Attorney at that time, but she was certainly an up-and-commer. It was my conviction that had made her career and given her the name recognition to run for the top chair.
She was quiet, mindful, watching Weather’s face, her eyes, the small lines just forming at the corners of her mouth. She was patient, precise and methodical. It’s what made her so good at her job. She didn’t rush into things. She always made sure that she was in control.
For her part Weather was unflinching. She sat peacefully in her orange jumpsuit, staring cockeyed at the mirror that covered the whole wall to her right. It was eerie having her stare at me. Seeing her eyes, pointing like daggers at me. Of course she couldn’t see me, but it felt like she could. It made my skin crawl. She, however, seemed a million miles away and Maureen looked as though she actually felt bad for her.
“How have you been Weather?” she said.
Weather turned her head and looked coldly at Maureen. She tried to lean back in her chair, but the chain between her wrists caught on the loop in the table and tugged on her shoulders, so she leaned forward and rested on her elbows. She gave a long questioning look at the State’s Attorney, then a brief judgmental glance at the detectives, let out an exasperated sigh and began picking at her fingernails silently.
Maureen grimaced. She was trying to be nice, one of her patented tactics. I remember her speaking to me so kindly when I sat in a room much like that one. Offering me small favors, asking if I needed anything. Taking her time, making me feel comfortable. Making me trust her. She didn’t have that kind of time now. There was no time to play games. The FBI would be there any minute and Maureen clearly needed answers before they took control of the situation.
"Okay then, down to business. Miss Rose, how did you know Mr. Grayson?"
Weather dug a small piece of dirt out from under one of her french manicured nails and wiped it on the table in front of her.
"Miss Rose, were you having a sexual relationship with Mr. Grayson?"
This seemed like an interesting question to Weather. She gave a slight head cock and then, after a moment of consideration she began working on the next nail.
"Weather, have you spoken to Gavin recently?"
This seemed to wake her up. Of course she hadn’t spoken to me lately, and Maureen knew that. Maureen made sure no one spoke to me. She kept me bottled up like a fish in an aquarium, but the mention of my name seemed to unnerve Weather. She stopped her nail cleaning and looked up at the State’s Attorney. She gave a startled frown. She sipped the air, paused and gave a long exhale before returning to grooming her nails. The detective with the notebook scribbled something in shorthand then put the pencil back in his mouth.
"Miss Rose," the other detective said, "did you kill Special Council Brandon Grayson?"
Weather wiped another piece of debris on the table.
Maureen sighed. She was getting agitated because every second that passed brought her control of the situation closer to its end. She rubbed her temples with her finger tips for a moment then folded her hands on the table.
"Maybe it would be easier if we start with what we already know. Ya know, get the ball rolling."
Weather stopped picking and looked up again. She shrugged and tried again to lean back in her chair but ultimately found herself mimicking Maureen’s position.
"It’s been almost thirteen years since I saw you last, right? It was during the trial, or I guess just before. You never testified. You never even showed up in court.”
Maureen opened a file folder and flipped through some pages that I have to assume were mostly blank. It was a prop. A tool to make Weather nervous.
“You’ve been pretty quiet since then,” she said. “You don't have an arrest record. No parking tickets. No speeding tickets. Your driver's license says you don't live in the city, and you don't appear to be married."
Weather gave a 'maybe, maybe not' shrug and tilted her head in a way that said 'anything else'. Maureen stared at her silently for a moment, clearly trying to assert some sort of authority. Weather gave her due attention, then shrugged again and went back to picking her nails. She was starting to get a small pile of nail gunk building up on the table in front of her. That was good news for her because the CPD should have had her nails cleaned out into a small plastic evidence bag during her fingerprinting. The fact that she had so much material still under there meant that either they had forgotten that part, or they did a piss poor job at it.
"The rest of what we know at the moment doesn't look good for you. You were found in the victim's apartment, half naked, covered in his blood. A gun, that we're pretty sure is going to end up being the murder weapon was laying right next to you with bloody fingerprints all over it. I have an officer heading over to the prints lab right now to confirm that those prints are yours, but that's pretty much a formality isn't it? They are your prints, aren't they Miss Rose?"
Weather must have been doing her best to hide any emotion, but when Maureen asked that, I could see the flush in her cheeks. I felt my face flush too. I knew two things for sure at that point. The first was that Weather didn’t kill that lawyer and the second was that it would indeed be her prints on the gun.
They would find her skin under the victims fingernails, and there would be gunpowder residue on her hands. Not because she was guilty, but because that was the only thing that could happen. Aristotle said that hubris must be punished. I had hubris. My life for the previous eight years had been the very definition of the word, but I couldn’t be punished. There was nothing left to take away from me. The only way for God to hurt me was to hurt her. This is what I deserved.
Maureen sat quietly for a moment. Her time was up and she knew it. At that point even if she did get Weather talking it would have be too late. I don’t think she was even sure whether or not she was guilty, but it didn’t matter. The FBI would be there, they would take her into custody.
Maureen had reason to be worried too. Weather didn’t know anything about me. She’d been told the same story as everyone else. As far as she was concerned I was dead, but there’s always the what if. Weather was important to me and Maureen knew that better than anyone else. What if I’d found a way. What if I had reached her over the past eight years. If Weather knew anything at all she would certainly tell the Feds. She was on the hook for murdering a DOJ lawyer and that was a death penalty case straight up. She’d go to the chair unless she made a deal and there was no deal juicer than to give them me.