The Sadist's Bible (3 page)

The house was like a pressure cooker. Jesse’s presence exerted pressure on her, to be

sure – the pressure of guilt for the affair she was about to undertake. Guilt for the

impending sin of making love with another woman. But guilt for the impending suicide,

too.

In five days he’d know her soft words and embraces were lies.

It wasn’t just Jesse’s presence, though, that made her feel ill-at-ease. The
house
, itself, was claustrophobic in its rural upper middle classness. The porcelain cherubs on the coffee table. The wedding pictures. The crisp neatness. The rose-colored loveseat.

The paintings of the Falls of the Ohio. The paintings of Jesus. The photographs of

mothers and fathers and siblings and grandparents and cousins on the walls. The way

they were like an assembly of generations hovering over her with grim expectations.

“Yes,” they seemed to say, “we’re so glad you had the decency to get married. But what

about children? Where are the baby pictures to hang on these walls alongside us? Breed.

Continue the chain.”

Expectations unmet. Pressure. Enough to make Ellie feel clammy. She cleared her

throat. “Time for me to go, love.”

“I suppose,” Jesse said, “I can’t keep you here forever. The trade show beckons.

Give me a call when you stop for the night.”

“I was, well...I was thinking of driving straight through.”

“Aren’t you leaving a bit late in the day for that?”

“I’m sorry...”

“Sorry?”

“I mean...I always try to leave for trips early. But I never get my act together to leave early.”

“You ask me, they should’ve paid for a train ticket. By the time you add up the gas

and the expense of the hotel, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to drive all that way.”

Think fast. Think fast. Think fa
– “Makes all the sense in the world, if you want to squeeze two trips into one. They want me to give a presentation to a company in

Cincinnati that’s in the market for a new barge. Their office is along the way.”

“And they can’t just meet you at the trade show?”

“Well, you know how these companies are.”

Jesse shook his head. “They don’t treat you good, Ellie. You know that, right? I

don’t see why you can’t do a lot of these pitches over the Internet. Isn’t that what Skype’s for?”

“I-I’m sorry, Jesse. I’ll put my foot down after this. No more traveling. At least not

for a while.”

“Promise me you’ll stop and get a room tonight. You don’t need to be on the road all

that time.”

He was correct, of course. It was already five-thirty. It would take about six hours to

travel to the Hillbriar (not counting bathroom and meal breaks). She’d been up, doing

laundry and last minute packing, at five a.m. (It was the best time to smuggle the noose out of the basement and into her bag.) She’d be ready to go to bed after just a few hours on the road.

Things never came together as planned.

She’d had too many loose ends to tie up before leaving. On top of all the packing and

laundry, she’d indulged in having lunch with Alice, the co-worker she was fond of. The

one Ellie suspected might also…

* * *

They’d both ordered grilled chicken sandwiches at Big Boy. Their hands grazed

against each other when they both reached for the check. (They’d forgotten to ask for

separate ones.) Alice insisted on treating. Ellie felt herself blush. She giggled.

“
Blushing
, Ellie-May?” Alice said. (Alice was always calling her that.) “You’ve

been goofy this whole time. I think the waiter slipped some rum into your sweet tea.”

Ellie had started to imagine that they were dating, that Alice was trying to be

chivalrous by paying. That’s why she’d blushed. But she couldn’t just come out and say

that. Her hunch that Alice was...not attracted to men...was just that – a hunch. She

wasn’t...well...
certain
of where Alice stood on matters like that. Matters like that weren’t intended to be spoken of, out loud. One could only type messages about them...at

midnight...on the social network.

“I’m just anxious about my trip,” she said.

As she’d finished saying that, Pastor Carswell walked in the door (with all the

arthritic, white-haired church ladies in tow like a sexless harem). She tried to avoid eye contact.

“It’s hard when they get in that condition,” Alice said. “Harder, too, when it’s your

uncle, instead of your mom or dad. I mean, if it was your mom or dad, you’d probably

have been down there months ago, right? You’d have been in the loop about all this. But

when it’s your uncle and he’s elderly and his kids are dropping the ball like this, well, it’s hard to not go down there on edge. You’ll be in my prayers, and so will your uncle.”

Of course, Alice would be praying for a man who didn’t exist; a character created by

Ellie to explain her impending absence to a coworker who knew damn well there wasn’t

a trade show in West Virginia. Two lies told; each custom made for its recipient.

Ellie caught a furtive glance of Pastor Carswell. His ears had perked up when Alice

mentioned prayers and he’d turned his chubby neck in their direction, as far as the rolls of flab would allow. (Like he had some sort of super-hearing that could sense the dropping

of church lingo even in the din of a crowded restaurant.) If he’d overheard the story about the uncle, complications would ensue. He might talk to Jesse about it, and Jesse would

ask for an explanation, and then she’d be caught in her lie. Fortunately, the hostess

greeted the pastor at just that moment and led him to a roomy table of eight, off in a

corner, a safe distance from her small booth. The delicate web of lies wouldn’t be broken.

The crisis had been averted.

* * *

“
Ellie
?”

Jesse had been saying something to her, but she hadn’t replied. When she realized

this, she mumbled a half-hearted apology.

“You feelin’ okay?”

“I guess I’m just, well, I guess I’m just preoccupied, is all. You know, with the trade

show.”

Jesse grimaced. “Maybe you shouldn’t go. It seems like this job has you wound up

lately. You work your ass off for these folks – preparing presentations for them until one or two a.m. Maybe this should be where you draw the line. Maybe there are some things

more important than selling river barges. You know that we could get by on my salary

alone, if we needed to. You’ve always talked about how you wanted to get more involved

in activities at church. You could do that, it wouldn’t be like you’d be sitting on your ass doing nothing. You could keep yourself busy with volunteer work.”

Panic.
He’s trying to stop me. Does he know? Does he know? Does he
–

“No!” It came out louder than she’d planned it. With more bitterness.

Jesse took half a step back. He looked at her with confusion. With disgust?

“I, I’m sorry,” Ellie said. “It’s...I mean...we can talk about this. About my leaving the company, I mean. When I get back. But I have to do this. You have to

understand...there’s no way I’m backing out now.” And she didn’t back out. She gave

him one last, perfunctory hug and slipped out the door with a quick but clumsy shuffle.

She marched to their Scion and groaned as she loaded it with her one, big suitcase. It was the car they’d gotten years ago because it could accommodate a family. The car that only ended up accommodating Jesse’s camping gear and her luggage. The car that squealed its

wheels as it left the driveway.

She felt self-conscious about the noise. Across the street, the Evensons were

returning from work. Mrs. Evenson stared at her and frowned. Then her wheels squealed

yet again, this time as she braked. In her haste she’d nearly run over the Hamiltons’ four year old son.

The boy looked up at her, wide-eyed, from his tricycle. Mrs. Hamilton rushed out her

front door to survey the situation. Ellie had no choice but to wait while the boy’s

sausagey legs worked the pedals of his trike to get out of the street. The mother gave Ellie the hairy eyeball. When the boy had gotten back on to the sidewalk, she started to march out of her yard, toward the Scion. “Hey...” she bellowed. ”Hey...”

Ellie cringed and pretended not to hear Mrs. Hamilton. The Scion coasted onward at

fifteen miles per hour.

“Hey!” the voice demanded, from behind her. “Hey! You come back here! Hey!

Hey!”

Ellie kept going.

“You watch where you’re goin’ from now on!”

She felt the weight of the near miss on her brow. She forced herself to examine the

road and the sidewalks – intensely study them – to make certain no other children were in her path.
What
, she wondered,
would it sound like to run a little boy over
? Her brain started to stitch together an alternate version of events.
Had I hit him, it would have
probably sounded like I’d just hit a dog, except for the added noise of the crushed

tricycle. There would’ve been lots of crunching and scraping and clanging and

scratching noises. Would the boy have cried? I’m so glad I didn’t have to hear that. What
must it be like for people who accidentally run over kids? They must spend the rest of
their lives hated and despised. Do they move someplace else? Start over? No, silly – they
went to jail. No, not jail – prison. Went there for a few decades and then, only then,
started over someplace else (crawling through each day meekly and praying to never

have their past discovered and – ).

A horn blared behind her. She’d reached the stop light at the main exit from the

subdivision. She’d been there long enough for it to turn green, and the car behind her was impatient to get moving.
And I
, she thought,
am just as impatient, right? I don’t want to
stay in this town any longer than needed. I want to go to the Hillbriar.

Why had they chosen a luxury resort in Leonard’s Reach, West Virginia?

That had been Lori’s idea. The Hillbriar was roughly halfway between their two

homes (though about an hour closer for Lori). It was sufficiently far away to seem like it was another world, but close enough so that it didn’t require airfare. Lori had told her that the words “luxury” and “West Virginia” were so rarely used in the same sentence that she
had
to check it out. It “suggests the ideal combination of romance and degeneracy”, she’d said. This had led Ellie to the dictionary to look up “degeneracy”. When she read the

definition, she felt it had been the right word. Degenerate meant having lost qualities that were desirable – whether they were physical qualities, mental qualities, or moral

qualities. The dictionary said the word meant “showing evidence of decline”; or, it meant

“having reverted to a simpler form as a result of losing a complex or adaptive structure present in an ancestral form”. Going from good to bad, Ellie reasoned. That was the gist of it. Going from moral to immoral. From being godly to being like an animal. Yes, the

word made sense.

But Ellie was more occupied with practical concerns. She wanted to do it someplace

away from southern Indiana...far away from the nearest city, Louisville, too. She didn’t want anyone she knew or anyone
related
to anyone she knew or anyone
who worked with
someone she was related to finding her body
. The only way to ensure that was to leave the region.

The GPS told her that she had to cross the Ohio River bridge into Kentucky. She

already knew that, but it didn’t mean she could let herself daydream. The bridge

frightened her. Little speedy cars with out of state tags vied for lane position with tractor trailers and pickup trucks. She tried in vain to merge into the right lane to get onto I-64

East. No one would let her in. She pounded her palm on the steering wheel. Honked her

horn in protest. Jerks honked back, long and loud and hostile. She would have started

sobbing, if a minivan hadn’t let her over at the last moment.

Once safely on I-64, she opened up the social network app on her phone. It chimed.

A new message from Lori: “Have u left yeet.”

Chastened by her close call with the kid on the trike, she decided to not message

back while driving. She’d need to stop for gas at some point. She’d reply to the message then. (She only had half a tank. Filling up was on her list of things to do, but of course she hadn’t done it.)

She considered what might be on Lori’s mind. What sort of message would follow

“Have u left yeet ? (sic)” She tilted her neck to either side, and heard it crack. Was Lori having second thoughts? Would she follow up the message with an explanation that she

hadn’t left Virginia yet, and wouldn’t be? A message saying that if Ellie wanted to hang, she could hang alone? Was she going to postpone? Make a last minute retreat?
Please
, Ellie thought,
don’t let it be that
.

* * *

Lori had left two hours ago. She’d meant to leave four hours ago, but there were

important preparations to complete beforehand.

The baby.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon,” her mother had said. “You visited him

two weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m getting ready to go away for a while.”

“Away?”

Lori nodded. Smiled.
Go there, bitch
.
Just go there.

“
Would be nice
for your father and I to go
away
, one of these days.”

She went there.

Lori lit a cigarette. Exhaled a puffy cloud. “Seems a little hypocritical to complain

about him. You wanted him.”