at First Sight (2008) (10 page)

Want to hear it? Get ready, because it really sucks. What I kept thinking was:

At least Paige Ellis is a widow.

CHICK & PAIGE

Chapter
11

OF COURSE PAIGE DIDN'T KNOW THAT RIGHT AWAY.

After Chandler left for the drugstore, she sat in the front room of the wood-sided house on Lipton Road and tried to work on a seascape she was painting, but the pain from an extruded disc in her back, which sometimes kicked up after long runs, was killing her. She was getting ready for the Boston Marathon, pushing her distances out, and was experiencing more pain than usual. She wondered how she could have let her medication run out in the midst of her marathon training. Luckily, she reached Dr. Baker before he went to bed. When her back flared up, he normally prescribed Percocet, but that drug was a federally controlled medication, and because she had let it lapse, he said he couldn't prescribe it again without an office visit. As a temporary substitute he prescribed Darvocet. Not as potent, he'd told her, but it should do the job until he could see her. Th
e d
octor phoned in the prescription to Walgreens, and Chandler had rushed out to get it. But that was almost two hours ago. Now she was worried. It wasn't like Chandler to leave and not come back without calling.

The room was getting cold, so she went into the bedroom to put on a sweater, her lower back throbbing painfully with each step. Her MRI showed a slight extrusion at the S-7 vertebra. Dr. Baker had advised her against long-distance running, but when pressed, he admitted that the damage was already done, and said that in due time the disk extrusion would be absorbed. If she could withstand the pain, it probably wouldn't get worse. She decided to keep training and treat it with painkillers. She loved the feeling she got when she was pushing it. Five or six miles out, her endorphins kicked in, her spirit soared, and her body never felt more precious to her. So she kept early-morning runs in her schedule and endured the discomfort.

She returned to her easel and worked for a few minutes longer on the painting, which depicted the sandy Maui beach where she and Chandler had walked each evening at sunset. Several photos she had taken were clipped to the side of her easel. The two distant cone-shaped mountains of Molokai rose majestically from the turquoise-and orange-tinted ocean. Chandler joked that her painting looked like Madonna's leather concert bra.

Hawaii had been a time of immeasurable love. Except for a few dinners with the Bests, she and Chan had been mostly alone. They had walked the beaches holding hands. They would talk until midnight, lying on the beach chairs on the balcony of their room, listening to the distant surf and the sound of palm fronds rattling in the breeze. Then they would strip out of their clothes and screw like bunnies, laughing and holding each other for hours until she would finally suggest they go to bed, knowing they wouldn't.

"Eat me," Chandler would tease.

"You first," she'd giggle, and then, likely as not, they would start all over again. Hawaii had been the happiest time of her life.

Paige loved having sex with Chandler. He was an emotional but tender lover, willing to take her to undreamed-of heights, then hold her up there letting her ride the edge of ecstasy just short of orgasm. She couldn't seem to get enough of him and saw no reason to stop trying.

It was after twelve when she decided to call the drugstore to see what had happened to Chandler. Maybe he'd had car trouble. His cell was in the charger on the desk. Nobody picked up the phone at the drugstore. The answering machine finally clicked on with a message about store hours. They had closed at midnight.

Now she was really worried. Where was he?

A few more restless tries at getting the burnt sienna right on the underneath tips of the billowing clouds at sunset. She was tense and was botching it, layering it on too heavily. She set her paints aside and closed the tops on her oils, then spent another forty minutes pacing.

When the phone finally rang, she jumped at it, snatching it up so' fast that she fumbled it out of its cradle.

"Hey, babe, where the hell are you?" she almost shouted.

A slow, drawling voice said, "This is Robert Butler. I'm parked outside your house calling on a cell phone. Is this Mrs. Ellis?"

"Yes . . . Robert who?"

"I'd like to see you if I might," the voice continued softly. "See me?"

"Yes ma'am. It's a police matter. If I might, I'll go on up to the front door and ring. See you in a second."

"Police? What police?" she said, but he had already hung up. Dread and fear now choked her.

She rushed to the door and fumbled for the latch chain with numb fingers, swinging it open to face a thin, middle-aged man with narrow shoulders. He was wearing khaki pants and a wrinkled blue blazer. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut into an old-fashioned, fifties-style flattop, which framed a sun-creased, friendly face. He was holding a badge in one hand and a Bible in the other.

"What is it?" she said, her voice shaking with anxiety.

"Could we step inside?" he inquired gently.

"What do you want?" she implored, taking a step backward as he followed her in and closed the door.

"I regret to inform you, ma'am, that your husband was run over by a car in the Walgreens drugstore parking lot. They didn't stick around to report the accident so it's a hit-and-run." He said it fast--gave her the bad news in two sentences, as if practice making these kind of calls had taught him not to draw it out.

The words staggered her. This narrow-shouldered, plain-looking man had just hit her with a sentence more powerful than a fist. Her knees went weak and she found herself reaching for a chair.

"That's absurd," she heard herself say.

"The paramedics who picked him up listed him as 'death imminent.' That's the classification they use until the docs at County Hospital can make it official."

"He's dead?" she said dumbly, feeling the blood draining out of her head. She suddenly felt sticky and wet, white with fear. Her voice was disembodied, and although vaguely familiar, seemed shrill.

"Yes ma'am, I'm terribly sorry. He was dead at the scene. But like I said, the doctors at the hospital have to be the ones to pronounce him."

She felt an agonizing sense of grief sweep over her. Suddenly, her legs buckled and she sank to her knees, falling forward, banging her head on the carpet.

Detective Butler rushed to catch her, but he was a split second late and she went down anyway. He helped her to her feet, then led her to the sofa in the living room.

"Where's the kitchen, ma'am?" he asked.

She didn't answer. She had her head in her hands and could hear herself moaning--long, wailing, groaning sounds that she didn't even recognize as her own until she realized they stopped each time she took a breath.

Robert Butler turned away and went toward the back of the house. She heard water running, but all she kept thinking was, death imminent? A two-word phrase so immense she was still unable to comprehend it.

Seconds later, Bob Butler was back at her side, handing her a glass of water. She took it and looked at it, not sure what he wanted her to do.

"Drink," he said softly, and she obediently sipped the water, her hands trembling before her eyes.

"Mrs. Ellis . . . I'm sorry to have to do this now, but if we want to catch this perpetrator, time is of the essence." She didn't answer, so he continued. "I'm going to have to ask you a few questions. Is that going to be okay?"

She nodded her head but still couldn't speak.

"Could you tell me why your husband went to the drugstore so late at night?"

"Pills for my back," she finally managed to say. "He was picking up a prescription for me:'

"You've been here the whole time? You didn't leave the house?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Can anybody confirm that?" She shook her head. Then he leaned back and studied her carefully. He seemed to make a decision, then continued on. "What I want you to know, Mrs. Ellis, is I'm not going to let this hit-and-run go unsolved." He waited, then added, "That's a promise. Me to you."

Somebody hit Chandler and drove away, leaving him to die alone? The idea was preposterous. Chandler was . . . He always seemed so . . . Charmed.

"My own wife was the victim of a hit-and-run, three years ago," Robert Butler was saying. "So while most people won't understand what you're going through right now, I want you t'know I understand exactly how you feel:'

She looked at him, not really processing much of this. They were just words that buzzed in her anguish. The detective was looking at her with sad understanding, as if they shared a secret.

Then this soft-spoken, plain man picked up his Bible, opened it to a dog-eared page, and began to read, first from Philippians 4: "Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice." His voice was soft, soothing. "And the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

He continued reading the Bible to her, how long, she didn't know. At first it just annoyed her, but then she began to listen to his carefully selected passages.

"Hebrews 9:27: 'And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many."' Then: "Acts 9:41: 'And he gave her his hand, and lifted her up; and when he had called the saints and widows, he presented her alive. And it was known throughout all Joppa; and many believed in the Lord."

His words began to finally soothe her. They cut into her grief with gentle wisdom. She listened, locking onto each sentence, holding tight to the ideas he was reading to her, as if they were slender ropes spun by God that somehow led to Chandler.

Afterward, when she thought back on it, it seemed odd that a police detective working a violent crime detail would sit in her living room and read from the Bible after destroying her life with a few declarative sentences.

Only later did she find out that after Bob Butler's wife was run down and killed, he became a born-again Christian. He carried his Bible with him everywhere, right along with the North Carolina state penal code. Later still, she found out that his fellow detectives at the Charlotte P
. D
. called him "Bible Bob" behind his back. He had become something of a department joke, reading scripture to grieving relatives as well as unrepentant criminals.

But during those first minutes after the horrible realization of Chandler's death fell on her, crushing her, he tried to shield her from the pain by reading to her from the Bible in his soft, comforting drawl.

And finally, "Revelations 14:13: 'Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them:"

Chapter
12

I MAY HAVE HAD TOO MUCH TO DRINK ON THE PLANE. AT least my flight attendant, a smartly turned-out fruit cup named Denny with minty breath and plucked eyebrows, thought so. He cut me off somewhere over Denver. Back in the pre-9/11, dot-com wizard days, I would have given this prissy asshole some primo grief, but since the World Trade Center went down, flying has become a contact sport with bomb-sniffing dogs and cavity searches. These days, if you even get out of your seat too fast, your fellow passengers will knock you into a bulkhead, and the crew will take you off the plane in handcuffs.

So I cut Denny some slack and sat there nursing the last one, trying hard not to think about Chandler and the rented Taurus and what a gross, horrible thing I'd done.

Of course, it was a little like being in the desert and saying you weren't going to think about water. Once you say it, that's all you ca
n t
hink about. So I played tag with my thoughts, a terrible game of mental "gotcha," where my conscience, or memory, or whatever it was, kept catching up to me, and each time it did, I had to readdress a new menu of negative terms that described me. Check, please.

But of course I couldn't leave . . . couldn't get off the plane until it landed. Worse still, I couldn't bear my own company. I wanted to get away from myself. If it could have helped, I would have asked Denny to move me to a new seat.

L
. A
. was hot, smoggy, and ugly. I say this as one who loves this fast, transient, slightly glitzy city. Normally L
. A
. is my kind of place. An hour from skiing or the beach, enough fun and glitter to keep you endlessly diverted. Booty, in short-shorts, whizzing by on Rollerblades almost everywhere you looked. A town designed for insincerity and bullshit. My town. But today it all looked different. As I deplaned, everything felt different, darker and less interesting.

Then I did something I swear you wouldn't believe. I stopped at an airport book stand and bought a copy of Hustler, a skin magazine with pictures of naked hookers in high heels doing squats and editorials so simplistic it's like they were written in crayon. I took it to my car, which was parked in the big lot across from American Airlines, and drove until I found a liquor store on Century Boulevard. There are plenty on that boulevard of broken windows. I stopped at the first one I saw and bought a bottle of blended scotch, took it to the car, and had a few stiff ones right out of the bottle. Then I opened my April edition of Hustler and had a handkerchief date with myself right there in the front seat.