FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #3

I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work.  Normally I sat with my head tilted down, hands lightly placed on top of my briefcase with a wary and distant look in my eyes.  It had taken me years to perfect that look, but now I was sure I could pass for a true New Yorker – as long as I didn’t open my mouth.  I still had a bit of the Texan drawl which I had never lost.  The boys at the office call me Cowboy Bill or Billy the Kid because of it.  My name is Lucas.  Lucas Alan.  Lucas Alan McGregor.  But I know it’s all in fun.  They know my actual name.

I said normally I rode the subway like your typical lifer of the New York public transit system – wary enough to keep the pickpockets at bay and distant enough to avoid unwanted conversation.  But today was different. Today I was reading the paper.  I knew it had to be there, I’d known it as soon as I had seen the body.

Now don’t misunderstand me.  I had nothing to do with her death.  I’d hardly even known Evelyn.  Sure we had gone out once or twice – but only as old friends from high school both living alone in the maze of this city.

Alright, that was a lie.  Of course I knew her.  She grew up on my street, three houses down.  She’d been the first girl I ever kissed, or maybe she was the first who ever kissed me. I don’t really remember that part. Maybe it was mutual.  Yes, I think it was mutual.  Either way, it was years after we had both proven immune to the cooties the other carried and had decided it was time to find out what that kissing thing was all about.  I can still feel the dryness of her chapped lips and the sting when she said, “That’s it? Let’s go play tag.”   I can still smell the summer scent of her long blonde hair and if I close my eyes I see the way the strands shone under the desert sun, like light itself. I can still see the way she closed those green eyes and grew paler and paler…

But as I said, I didn’t know anything about the death.  I had found her body, it’s true.  And I didn’t tell anyone. I was scared.  I’d never seen a body before.

Oh sure, I’d seen them in movies and on TV.  But to see one in real life, all the blood and the white, white skin so limp and unmoving… Stage makeup doesn’t do justice to the shade of gray in the complexion of the dead.  There’s still a look of life in the corpse on the screen.  And seeing someone dead in a casket isn’t the same at all – pumped full of embalming fluids and made up like a Hollywood star.

No, that wasn’t at all how she had looked.  I knew it would be in the papers though, especially now that her dad was running for office again.  The sudden death of a young woman, cut off in her youth and beauty.  She could have been a model with those legs and her face, but she said she hated the thought of it, selling her body to the highest bidder.

Well, now her poor face and mangled body were all over the papers.  She should have been a model.  At least then she would have made some money for the use of her face.  Not that she needed the money.  She was daddy’s girl, an only child spoiled sweet by an oil man turned media mogul and a mother she saw barely twice a year.

You should have seen her face last night.  Her mouth was parted a little as if it would still breathe to say the name of her murderer in the shock of recognition.  Her eyes had been closed though.  She had never looked more like an angel, carved out of alabaster and unmoving, ready to be set in the cathedral.  Only stone doesn’t bleed, and there had been all the blood and the red of the lipstick that still couldn’t match the crimson pool I’d found her in.

I found her like that.  Really I did.  Of course, I don’t remember how I got there, let alone how she got there.  That’s why I didn’t call, I had no alibi.  I know back home, I’d have called for anyone, especially Evie. I’d have called and hoped against hope life could be revived.  But New York is different.  I tried to imagine what your average New Yorker would have done, and so I did nothing.  I called no one.  I left her there.  As I said earlier, looking at me you couldn’t tell I was anything but a lifer of this city.  I don’t think her hand really moved. That was my imagination.  Or maybe those last twitches before rigor mortis you hear about, when the muscles convulse one last time.  I think it was just a trick of the light that I thought I saw her chest rise a little.  Maybe there was a wind.  Yes, I think there might have been a wind.  There was definitely a wind last night.  It blew in off the harbor, leaving my cheek wet and gritty.

But I don’t know how I got there.  I was pretty drunk.  But not too drunk.  Only six or seven: scotch, neat.  Maybe somebody put roofies in my drink.  Yes that’s it, somebody put roofies in my drink.  I didn’t have too many, I certainly remember only having six or seven.  And that smile, that pretty smile with those perfect white teeth.  I remember how bright her smile was behind those red, red lips.

She should have been a model.

Like I said, I didn’t do it.  I hadn’t seen her in weeks. But I didn’t call.  And I don’t know how I got there.  I did know it would be in the paper.  I’m hoping the paper can tell me what happened.  I worry about her.  I wonder if the murder was politically motivated.  It’s possible.  Maybe it was drugs.  This city does that to people. It must have been drugs.  Not that she ever took any, she was always a good girl,  But if not drugs, who would want to kill Evie?

I don’t think Evie ever had any enemies.  As far back as I can remember, everybody loved her.  Why even last night that obnoxious boy she’d been seeing texted three times to apologize…

Only I didn’t see her last night.  Of course I didn’t.  I went out for drinks with a few friends.  Never even saw her.  But the way she had been laying, when I did see her last night, hid the bruise under her eye that I knew her boyfriend had given her.  Better than the makeup she had tried earlier that night.

What am I saying?  At least no one can see into my thoughts to hear me breaking apart, destroying any alibi I hoped to have.  Why is that woman over there looking at me?  Why does she keep staring? Does she know? I think she knows. She has the paper open before her with Evie’s poor mutilated body…  She knows that I was there.  She must know, must know that I know more than I admit.  Let me look at her again…yes she is still looking at me.

So what if I met Evie for a drink last night?  So what?  She called me, said that she needed to talk, someone to turn to and I’d always been there for her.  Of course I had gone. We’d been to that bar we used to always go to, when she first moved here, before she started seeing that boy.  I remember the sight of her black eye, bruises on that perfect face of hers…That’s really the last thing I remember; her saying she still loved him and the anger washing over me until I couldn’t see the face of the bartender, Paul, or the scotch in front of me.  Like I said before, I think it was only my sixth.  I know I can handle more.

But that’s the last thing I remember… the anger that anyone could stain such perfection and that she loved him. Yes she had been telling me that despite it all she still loved him.  And me? I had always been there, always putting her back together, her best friend who would never hurt a hair on her head. But for me there was no love.  She saved it all for the men who hurt her again and again and again.  I got lost, blinded in the anger. And then after that, all I remember is the way those perfect eyes closed as the light disappeared forever and the way she looked lying in the pool of her own blood, as the wind moved her chest once more. Twice more. And never again.  Except for the blood, you couldn’t even see the violence of it.  The passion.

Well, he’d never hurt her again.  Someone had made sure of that.  Someone had moved her beyond the pain he had caused and would have kept on causing. She was an angel, protected in the hands of God.  There was something almost heroic in her murderer’s actions.  He had given her back to God before she could ever be hurt again.  Not that I would ever tell the police that, or her poor father when I fly back for the funeral.  There are some things you just don’t say outside your own head.

They’ll assume that it was him, that boy who had hit her.  Why would they suspect me?  I’m sure they’ll track her call to my phone, they might even be able to find out why she called.  But they won’t know I went and saw her.  They won’t know.  How could they? Who would tell them?  I’ll say I didn’t know, I hadn’t seen her in weeks.  It’s a tragedy. The tears are real. I can feel them pricking behind my eyes, even now.  I’ll tell them I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work.

back to Contest #3