A/N: Day 3 of self-isolation. Have lost all ability to restrain the frequency of updates. Unfortunately, I'll be out of them after the next chapter, but until then, here's CH 3 for you on this, the Ides of March. Once again, I think it's... eerily fitting.
Chapter 3: Every Bond You Break
. . .
"Can I bum one of those?" I hang back a few steps and keep my voice low, trying not to startle them, but they both jump anyway and turn to squint past the cone of light they're standing in. Quickly, I move forward from the shadows, and they breathe sighs of relieved laughter. No one is afraid once they've seen the blonde ponytail and the blue eyes. I could probably get away with murder if I really wanted to.
"Um, sure," says the one in the beanie. It's Dragon Tattoo from the lecture—the girl who ripped Humbert, Nabokov, and Dan the Man a new one, in a single go—and she's fittingly wreathed in smoke, as if the bones of all the men she's rained fire down upon are still smoldering at her feet.
Actually, she's just smoking a cigarette, which bobs loosely from her lips while she scrounges through her messenger bag and pulls out a crumpled pack of Pall Malls. Not my brand, but it will have to do for this particular mission. I only anticipate taking a couple of drags at the most; rarely do I smoke a full cigarette, or any cigarettes at all, these days. I wanted to set a better example for my daughter—for both of my daughters and my son, now—than my parents did for me, sucking down four packs a day between them. Plus, Olivia can't stand the smell of cigarettes. (Reminds me, I'll have to stop for breath mints before I go home.)
Dragon Tattoo's friend, the shy girl with all the curls, is giving me the once-over as I stand there jiggling my legs and pretending I'm not trying to stave off hypothermia. I'm beginning to think she's made me as a cop, or at least as a big fat liar, but then there's a glimmer of recognition and she flashes a cute smile. "Your name's Jo, right?" she asks, nodding the cloud of dark curls at me. "I liked what you said in class. Especially the part about those guys' wives. I had no clue who he was even talking about, did you?"
She directs the last bit to Dragon Tattoo—whose name I now recall is Gretchen, but who shall remain the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in my mind forevermore—and they exchange a laugh, as if the antiquated references are hysterical. I smile along, though the names dropped by the professor were all familiar to me. (Who doesn't know Elvis? God, they're young.)
"No idea," says Dragon Tattoo. She's looking at me with more interest though, and damned if I don't feel a little rush of excitement, like I just got noticed by the most popular girl in high school. I used to make fun of that girl behind her back. "Anybody ever tell you that you sound like a cop? Don't get me wrong, I love it. I've just never heard anybody use 'perp' in an actual sentence before. Cool lighter."
She's gazing admiringly at my little six-shooter keychain, my gift from Olivia last Valentine's Day. This is the first time I've used it to light a cigarette since the night she gave it to me, but my nervous fiddling with the trigger has probably drained much of the juice from the inner mechanisms. Still I manage to get the cigarette lit, and the real struggle becomes not moaning like I'm having an orgasm when I take that first puff. Mmmmm.
"Thanks," I say, the epitome of casual and cool with the Pall Mall in my hand. Even the shivering has stopped, and I blow out a long, steady stream of smoke that looks extra impressive in the chilly night air with my breath augmenting it. I'd equate myself to a female James Dean, but these poor children wouldn't know who that was, either. "From my girlfriend. She's the cop. S'probably where I get it."
"Nice." This time, Dragon Tattoo is the one fawning over the queen bee (AKA me, or "Jo" anyway), and I don't hate it.
"So, all that stuff you said about the laws and everything is true?" asks Curls. She's not smoking with us, but she follows the smoldering tip of my cigarette each time I lift it and take a hit from the opposite end. I've already broken my three-puffs-or-less rule. "You weren't just giving Dan a hard time?"
Dan. Not "the instructor" or "Professor McNab." Just Dan. I remember that no matter how young these girls seem, Olivia was at least four or five years younger than them when Just Dan started taking advantage of her. "Nope, all true," I say, and give the cigarette a practiced flick that scatters ashes into the wind. They disappear into the darkness beyond the security light we're congregating beneath, and something about how easily they slip away sends a chill down my spine. Then again, maybe it's just from standing outside in winter without proper attire. One of these days, I'll finally listen to Olivia and wear a hat and gloves.
"Speaking of Dan the— Professor Dan." I ruminate on the cigarette for a moment, watching the girls closely for any signs of discomfort or reluctance to dish about their teacher. Other than an eye roll from Dragon Tattoo, which I suspect is her reaction to most people, they don't react much. "What's his deal? He as big a perv as he sounded, swinging around his giant hard-on for Nabokov?"
They snicker at that, and Dragon Tattoo wipes her nose on the heel of her palm, then sprinkles some ashes in the mulch at her feet. "McNab? Nah, he's pretty harmless. Just . . . old school."
"Yeah." Curls lifts her chin to speak over the high, zipped collar of her parka, which she's been huddling farther and farther into, until just her eyes and the top of her kinky head are visible. "He's like, fifty something. Plus, he's married. He's got kids older than us. I heard his son is almost thirty-five."
"Holy shit," I say aloud, and they nod in agreement, utterly clueless that I'm responding not to the horrors of old age, but the calculation I've just completed in my head. If Curls is right and there's a thirty-five-year-old biological son, Daniel didn't wait very long to knock up some other girl after he failed with Olivia. I wonder if he raped that girl too.
It also occurs to me that Olivia could have had a kid who was only four or five years my junior. Talk about a giant mindfuck.
"He's never been . . . inappropriate with y'all, then?" I ask, momentarily slipping out of character as Jo in my surprise at the revelation. Inhaling with too much haste, I practically choke on a lungful of smoke and blow it back out with a cough and a strangled: "Or anyone else you know of?"
Smooth, Rollins. Very James Dean.
Luckily, the girls are too repulsed by the question to even notice my newfound croak. "Ew, no," says Curls, the fog from her breath pouring from inside the collar she's retreated into once again. She shakes her curls adamantly. "Not Professor Dan. Well, not with me, anyway."
"Yeah, same here." Dragon Tattoo stubs out her dwindling cigarette on the bottom of one combat boot and flicks the butt into the bushes. "I've never heard anything like that about him. Schultz is the one you gotta watch out for. Don't get caught alone with him in his office after hours, new girl."
Minutes later, when Curls wanders off to her dorm, leaving Dragon Tattoo and me to walk awkwardly in the same direction as we try to part ways, I decide I can't just let it go. "Here," I say, digging a spare business card out of my coat pocket. "If Schultz ever tries anything, don't settle it here on campus. You call that number, ask for— ask for Benson. She'll make sure he never has any more after-hour meet ups in his office."
"Benson." Dragon Tattoo holds the card up to the light filtering over from the parking lot and scans my information at the bottom. "What about Rollins? Isn't she any good?"
"Oh, she's great. But Benson's the best."
"How long you two been together?" she asks slyly, weaving my card in and out of her fingers a few times and snapping it back to her palm with a magician's flourish. It's a neat little trick, and I can't help smiling when she makes the card disappear up the cuff of her fingerless glove. My cover might be blown, but I think the secret is safe with Lisbeth Salander here.
"'Bout a year, officially," I reply, unable to mask the pride in my voice entirely. My new friend seems to have that effect on me. It doesn't hurt that she reminds me of myself as a tough young undergrad, too clever for my own good. "We've known each other a lot longer, though. I can barely remember life without her."
Dragon Tattoo makes a doe-eyed face, pouting her lower lip at the cuteness, but I don't get the sense she's mocking me. She points over to something in the parking lot, cutting our path short with a sharp turn in that direction. I take a moment to crush my cigarette out on the sidewalk—dammit, smoked it all the way down to the logo—then follow after her, hands shoved deep into my pockets.
"What's this?" I ask, when she stops beside a dusky orange Miata parked in one of the spaces reserved for faculty. It's a sleek ride, what some car enthusiasts might call "sexy," but not the kind of vehicle I'd picture Dragon Tattoo having any interest in. She's patting the hood as if it's a well-behaved dog and smiling that sly smile again.
"McNab's pride and joy. Guess what he named her?"
I don't even need to check the vanity plates. "Lolita," I say in a low, purring tone that rattles in my chest, and step up for a stroke along her pristine exterior. She gleams like a little orange flame beneath the street lamp.
"Light of my life, fire of my loins," quotes the dragon lady. I may not have done the assigned reading for Professor Dan's class, but I recognize the first line of Lolita from skimming pages before the lecture. It's a hard introduction to forget. "He likes to have her home and in bed before eight. Should be coming in, say, another ten or fifteen minutes . . . "
As she trudges away, lighting another cigarette inside her cupped palm, my new friend bids me farewell over her shoulder: "Don't do anything I wouldn't do, Rollins."
When all I can see is the tip of her cigarette in the darkness, and even that winks out of sight too, I pull out my cell phone and hurry to the back of the vehicle. I needn't have bothered, as it turns out—the license plate is indeed one word, a name, and a memorable name at that: Lola. For a split second, I misread it as "Liv" and almost abandon my hastily concocted plan for the artless but instant gratification of keying RAPIST into the driver's side door.
Nah, that would be letting him off too easily. He could just call it a fluke, paint over it like it never happened, the same way he'd deceived Olivia at sixteen and treated her like she didn't exist afterwards. He deserved something a bit more long-lasting, something that would stick with him and make him question himself, the way Olivia had questioned herself the night she told me about their relationship. (She still won't call it rape. I finally got her to admit the first time was an assault, but now she doesn't want to talk about it anymore. "What good will it do, Amanda? It's so far in the past, let's leave it there.")
Sorry, baby, I think as I pull my car around to idle in an empty spot near the Miata, headlights off, slouched down in the seat with my hood covering my telltale blonde hair. It may be your past, but you're my present, my future. And unlike every other member of the Rollins family, I take care of my own.
Ten minutes later, just as Dragon Tattoo predicted, Daniel McNab strolls up to his unblemished orange beauty, buffs his sleeve over an imaginary smudge on the tail light, and stands back to admire pretty little Lo. I consider flooring it straight for him and swerving by at the very last second—I've got the reflexes, the timing, to leave him shitting in his pants—but I don't want him to get a look at my plates. Instead, I wait till he's behind the wheel and cruising towards the exit before I creep after him with my headlights off.
Lagging behind as far as I can without losing him or endangering other drivers, I follow him through the streets of Queens. He's lived here for quite a while, according to his bio on the QC website (his Facebook is set to private, displaying only a profile picture of a Great Dane—his, I assume—and a cover photo of an Underwood typewriter). All this time, he's been less than fifteen miles away from her. She's made some big headlines over the years, especially during the Lewis trial and the Mangler case. It galls me to think of him reading about her or watching her on the evening news, probably with his wife, children, and the Marmaduke lookalike gathered round, safe as houses; meanwhile, Olivia, my Liv, was suffering once again for his entertainment. And he just got to walk away.
Not this time. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel, envisioning myself plowing into the rear bumper of his shiny toy, taking him for a ride he'll never forget. It would be fun while it lasted, but I'd prefer the evening didn't end with Olivia bailing my crazy ass out of jail. Or the morgue. With any luck, she'll never find out about this excursion of mine at all. I suppose that means my motivations are purely selfish—that I'm doing this for me, and not for her—
Before I can finish that thought, Daniel's blinker flashes at me, and he slows to a crawl, turning in to the driveway of a large Tudor-style home with half-timbering in cream and navy, a combination that reminds me of blueberry cheesecake. The masonry is constructed better than that of most churches in Loganville, with various styles of multicolored brick, and the hedges are neat and full, despite the cold. And that's just what I can see from the front as I continue by, spotting a privacy fence that undoubtedly encompasses a spacious backyard. He would have an impressive house, the rat bastard.
I caught the house number, gleaming gold beneath the column-mounted mailbox at the end of the driveway: 1616. I'd think he planned this whole thing in advance, if it weren't for the street name—Patrick—which I can't connect to Olivia in any conceivable way. 1616 Patrick Lane. Third house on the left, a million dollar slice of blueberry cheesecake. Got it.
It only takes me twenty minutes to hit the gas station I saw a few blocks back, make my purchases (I even remember breath mints!), and return to the McNab estate—or the opposite side of the street and several car-lengths down from it, anyway. If Dan the Man is anything like my daddy Mean Dean the Wife-Beating Machine, who kicked off his shoes, loosened his belt, and from the depths of his La-Z-Boy recliner demanded a beer the minute he got home from work, when he did work, sufficient time should have passed for me to proceed.
Sure enough, a peek through the curtainless bay window beside the front stoop reveals a living room with vaulted ceilings, a fireplace, and comfy, overstuffed furniture, the loveseat of which Daniel is sacked out on, watching the news and eating something red from a pie tin. Prick.
My knock summons someone quickly, and I know it's not the professor because I hear him call out, "Can you get that, hon?" Good, that's what I was hoping for. But my smile falters a little when the door opens on an angel-faced teenage girl with fawn brown hair in a pretty side braid. A smattering of freckles adorn the bridge of her nose and the apples of her cheeks, which plump up cutely when she returns my smile. Daniel's sweet little sixteen.
This is not how I wanted it to go down, and I hide the brown paper sack behind me quickly, as if she might guess what's inside. Even if her father is a louse, the kid didn't have anything to do with it. She is not who I am here for.
"Can I help you?" she asks, probably wondering who the strange blonde lady is, standing on the stoop and staring at her like an imbecile.
"Uh, yeah. Hey, sweetie. Is your mama home?" I pour on the charm, adding a head tilt and a hint of the dimple. That always gets 'em. I'm about to make up an excuse for why I'm here, but then I notice her necklace and my heart stops. It's one of those personalized gold chains that are all the rage again—they were popular when I was her age too, but now I wear mine permanently—and it showcases her name in a swirly cursive font.
Olivia.
As she turns to call, "Mom, door," over her shoulder, I reread the necklace several times to be sure I'm not seeing things like I did earlier with the license plate. No amount of blinking or squinting changes the lettering. The asshole had actually named his daughter after the girl he sexually abused in college.
"Your name's Olivia?" I ask while we wait for her mother to appear. I have to be absolutely certain, although I'm not sure what good it will do me now—one way or the other, my mind is already made up. The girl gives me a questioning look, and I point to her glinting pendant. My favorite name.
"Oh." She laughs and pinches the pendant between her fingers, glancing down as if she too needs to verify her own identity. "Yeah, that's me. Everybody calls me Liv, though. Well, except for my dad. He insists on calling me Oh-livia."
I chuckle along with the snooty British tone she affects while rolling her big brown eyes, but my skin is crawling. Keep it together, Rollins, I warn myself. You're almost finished. And thank the sweet Lord, the wife/mother arrives a second later, just as I'm imagining storming into the big, fancy house, marching up to Dan the Man, with his stupid gray beard full of pie crumbs, and slapping him silly.
It's mean, but I get a little thrill of satisfaction from seeing his wife. She's not very pretty. Perhaps in the past she'd turned a few heads, but childbirth and menopause thickened her out considerably, and her short stature makes her darn near roly-poly. Her hair is too dark for someone her age and the short, spiky cut, probably meant to be fun and daring, is unflattering to the shape of her face. She looks like the kind of woman who brags about her kids' academic achievements via bumper sticker.
My guess is, she hasn't worn a low-cut dress or a see-through teddy in decades, if ever. And she sure as hell doesn't do to her husband what Olivia does to me in the bedroom on a weekly basis. The one thing about her that eats at me is her age—I thought she'd be younger. Trophy wife number three or four, half the guy's age, a total floozy. This lady is at least mid to late fifties, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out that she is Daniel's first and only wife, the mother of all his children. Somehow that makes this whole thing worse.
And better.
"Yes?" she asks, peering around the door frame with uncertainty. Liv hovers behind, looking curiously over her mother's shoulder at me, and I have no choice but to play the grownup card. Sorry, little Liv.
"Hi, Mrs. McNab. I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute? Concerning . . . " I shoot a meaningful glance at the daughter, then back to mom, lowering my voice and feigning reluctance to continue. "Your husband."
She takes the hint right away (okay, so maybe she is a good mom—or maybe she just knows what a dog her husband is) and motions for her daughter to leave us alone. I tip a parting nod to Liv, an apologetic smile, but as soon as she's gone, I set my sights on the McNab woman and all sympathy vanishes. She joins me on the stoop, pulling the door partially shut with her. Oh, she knows. Or at least suspects.
"What's this about?" she asks guardedly, arms folded across her cumbersome tits. Her bra is ill-fitting, giving her a doughy, misshapen look under the embroidered sweatshirt with the little birdy on it. My grandmama wore sweatshirts like that, right up until the day she died at eighty-five years old. "How do you know my husband?"
"Dan and I go way back," I say, and it's not entirely a lie. He goes way back with Olivia, and I'm here on her behalf. (That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.) The wife is eyeing me up now, her focus mainly on my long, blonde ponytail. I can almost see the wheels turning in her head as she tries to figure out how someone my age could have any type of long-standing relationship with the good professor. Keep tryin', lady, I encourage her silently. It'll come to you.
Bringing the paper bag out from behind my back, I shake the contents at her a few times. "Just wanted to make sure he's playing it safe these days. I know he's not a fan of gloving up, but it's only fair when the girl asks, wouldn't you say?" She accepts the bag warily when it's offered and slowly withdraws the Trojan condoms from inside, holding the black box as if it might explode in her hand. I took a chance and bought the Magnum XL large size lubricated. It seemed like the Daniel thing to do.
"What the hell is this?" Lady McNab displays the box like a spokeswoman in a Trojan commercial—now with our triple tested quality seal of approval!—but gazes at it as if she's never seen one before. With the husband she's got, she probably hasn't. "Are you telling me he's sleeping around?"
"I'm telling you that there's a reason he thinks Humbert Humbert is such an iconic character. And it ain't because of his cute wordplay." As much as I dislike her, I get the sense that she's not a total dimwit. She'll figure it out. And in case not, I provide her with a bit of extra guidance: "Ask him about his real life Lolita. The girl, not the car. And if he won't answer that, ask him why he picked the name Olivia for your kid. It's a story you'll wanna hear, trust me."
With that, I leave her on the doorstep and amble down the sidewalk, fully aware that she's watching me go. The moment she slips back inside the house, I jog ahead a few yards and dart across the street to my car, ease into the driver's seat, and wait. I know how this next part plays out from years of watching my parents enacting similar scenes: strange woman comes to the door, accusations are made, furniture is thrown, screams are audible for a full block, Daddy tromps out onto the front porch—usually in his BVD's—and denies ever before laying eyes on said woman, let alone doing the nasty with her and knocking her up. Tromps back inside for more screaming and throwing.
Tale as old as time.
I doubt very much that Daniel is the violent type, otherwise I wouldn't have gone through with this scheme. According to Olivia's account, he didn't get his way by using force; he was much more underhanded than that. And if there's one thing I know about men—the violent ones or the underhanded—it's that they don't change. But I haven't met a man yet who could compete with a woman out for revenge. That's why I went after the wife. It wouldn't do any good to just make him squirm, and then disappear into the night like a masked superhero. Batmanda. Even if my gift didn't result in the collapse of his marriage, his career, his cushy little existence, Mrs. McNab would never forget the blonde who knocked on her door one night with a bag of condoms for her husband. Therefore neither would he.
Just as I anticipated, the front door to 1616 Patrick Ln swings open a few moments later and Daniel bounds onto the stoop, glancing from one end of the street to the other like the guy in movies who chases down the intruder with a baseball bat. He's clothed at least, but that's the only noticeable difference between him and my father. Well, that and the yelling.
I parked far enough away and outside the hazy beam from the streetlamp that I'm not too worried about him picking my vehicle out from the others lining this side of the street. His wife is behind him, gesticulating with the box of Trojans, so he's a little distracted anyway. "Dudn't look like your cup's gonna be brimmin' with squat-shit for quite a while, pal," I murmur, chuckling to myself as the pair go on squabbling like a couple of wet hens. It looks especially hilarious with no sound, but I am curious to hear what they're saying to each other. I'm about to turn the ignition just enough to sneak my window down an inch or two when the ZZ Top song "Legs" starts blaring from my coat pocket, scaring the bejeezus out of me.
"She's got legs, she knows how to use them
She never begs, she knows how to choose them"
It's Olivia's ringtone, chosen solely for my own amusement and accompanied by a photo I took of her that night we went line dancing, back in September. She'd looked pretty as a sunflower in the short yellow dress I picked out for her—and dear Lord, those legs. All of a sudden, I can't wait to get home and feel them wrapped around me.
(Apparently, serving up a nice cold dish of revenge whets some other appetites.)
"Hey, darlin'," I say warmly, and take a wide, bearlike stretch, the way I do in the mornings when I wake up to find her smiling at me from across the pillow. I have a feeling I'm going to sleep like a baby tonight. "How's the sweetest, prettiest captain in New York City?"
Okay, that's laying it on a little thick, but I can't help myself. She brings it out in me, and I'm still on a major high from the success of Operation Just Deserts.
It all comes crashing down the moment I hear her voice, small and quavering despite her obvious attempts to keep it steady. "'Manda? Don't freak out," she says, ensuring that I immediately freak out. She sounds like she's in a cave, and someone in the background is prattling on in complete gibberish. I think it might be medical jargon.
"What is it? What's wrong?" I've all but forgotten about Professor and Mrs. McNab, who are standing at the edge of the stoop, gesturing as dramatically as silent film actors. (I guess that makes me the mustache-twirling villain.) "Are you okay?"
She takes too long responding, and I can't tell if it's because she's listening to someone else, or if she's unable to speak. Frantically, I glance at my surroundings and, for the life of me, I can't remember where I am. Then I see those assholes bickering outside number 1616, and I'm back in Queens, sitting in my parked car in the dark, like some fucking serial killer. Cranking on the ignition, I throw the Jeep into gear and peel out of my hiding spot, pull a U-ie in the middle of the street, and gun it towards Manhattan. The McNabs can fend for themselves.
"Baby, talk to me."
Something rustles against the phone—her hair or her jacket, and I catch myself trying to picture both, in case I have to describe—
"I was in an accident. I'm okay." Her mouth is dry. She always talks a little more slowly, more measuredly, when she's thirsty. I doubt she even notices doing it, but it haunts me; I've heard her crying out in her sleep for water. "I didn't get hurt, but they're taking me to Mount Sinai, just to be safe. Can you come? My car's totaled."
Son of a bitch.
"Yes, I'm on my way," I say, and switch on the light bar above my dash. It's for emergencies only, but this is one hell of an emergency to me. "Are you sure you're okay? Are the kids with you?"
"No. I mean, no, the kids aren't with me. They're still at home with Lucy." Olivia holds the phone away from her mouth and coughs harshly several times. (I think she whispers, "Ow," before returning the microphone.) "I'm just . . . a little shaken up. You're coming?"
"Yes, baby, I'll be there. Gimme about twenty minutes."
It's a thirty minute drive from Daniel's street to the hospital. I make it there in fifteen.
. . .