Link to previous Chapter 7e
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Chapter 7f - 2,879 words
The hospital discharged Allison Friday afternoon, with a follow up appointment for her fingers arranged for the following Tuesday.
An orderly wheeled her to the entrance, and Shonda took over and helped her into the car.
After clicking the seat belt in Shonda pulled a pillow from the backseat and motioned for Allison to hold her arms up. ‘I thought it might be something comfortable to rest your hands on and what with traffic being like it is we could be a while getting back.’
‘Discharging me for the start of Friday rush hour was a mean thing to do,’ Allison said.
‘They probably want space cleared for when it starts getting busy tonight. When we get back to the apartment Corrina will come down and help you while I park the car.’
‘What if Earl’s there?’
‘Earl wont be there,’ Shonda said, a note of firmness, finality in her voice.
‘You sound so sure. Do you know where he is? Did he go back up to Cleveland to her?’ For all Allison had no desire to even see Earl again, she found herself hating the idea of the woman he’d cheated on her with. It was irrational she knew; there was every chance Lucy knew nothing about Allison, that she believed whatever lies Earl told her about his relationship status.
‘All I know is you don’t need to worry about him being there, and if he were to turn up, Corrina and I’d keep him out. Hey, how hungry are you? I thought we’d just get some take out for tonight.’
‘Take out sounds fine. I’m still not very hungry. But I should probably make sure I eat something.’
It took nearly an hour to drive the few miles back to the apartment, but when they turned into the street there was a space almost directly opposite the apartment entrance.
The first thing Allison noticed was a smell of bleach. ‘Did you have a cleaning spree?’ she asked. Then she saw the television. She remembered the argument when she found he’d ordered it on her account, maxing it out. She remembered the bruises she’d carried for a week. Yet, it still sat on the wall across from the Lazy-Boy that had been his, apart from that time Harry Albarn came for the baseball game party. Even after, when he’d hosted other matches, he’d sat in his chair, before his television, and held court like some medieval potentate who deserved to be revered.
Shonda ordered from a local Chinese restaurant that Allison hadn’t heard of. They ate with the tv on and in the news there was reports of more body parts being found, and how the police still had no leads on who the (location) cannibal was.
Shonda said, ‘When they catch this guy I am going to listen the hell out the podcast someone will do about it.’ She chewed a mouthful of chicken fried rice then said, ‘Heck, I might do a podcast myself. You want to become a podcaster with me?’
‘No. And extra no to one about some psychopath who eats people.’
There was a knock at the door. Shonda said, ‘That’ll be Corrina. Are you okay if she comes in?’
‘If she’s okay that we’re eating.’
Corrina refused the offer of food, but did accept a drink. She said, ‘Shonda said he’s left you. We’re so relieved. The three of us have been going over and over how we should have called the police on Wednesday. We’re so sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Allison said, ‘but thank you. And I’m relieved as well, even if I don’t know what happens now. The lease is up in the fall, but I can’t afford the rent myself. Hopefully your next neighbor will give you less concerns.’
‘It’ll be a shame to see you go. I doubt we’ll get a neighbor as nice as you. Have you any idea where you’ll be?’
‘Shonda’s said I can stay with her for a little while. I can work anywhere so it seems the sensible thing to do.’
‘When will you go?’
Shonda said, ‘I need to finish some stuff for work and arrange a couple of days off, so it’s likely Tuesday or Wednesday we’ll go.’
‘So soon! Allison, if you need help packing your stuff up we’ll help.’
‘Thanks, Corrina,’ Allison said, ‘and say thanks to (name) & (name). It wont be much work, there’s not much in here that’s mine, and I ‘m not really attached to anything that we’ve bought together which is probably just as well as Earl’s petty enough to claim he paid for it all and wants to keep it. Let him. He can deal with moving it if he’s letting the lease go.’ She waved her hand around the room but stopped as she looked at the sideboard against the wall. ‘But I will take the cocktail set, and the beer drinker philanderer can be damned if he wanted to keep it.’
‘We’ll take care to pack it carefully,’ Corrina said. ‘How are you transporting things?’
Shonda said, ‘I’m going to hire a minivan. We’ll pack it up and pretend we’re twenty again and on a road-trip.’
‘That’s a heck of a drive,’ Corrina said. Her phone pinged with an incoming message. She looked at it and said, ‘Right, I need to go. I’ll come in tomorrow to help pack. I think we still have some boxes from moving in next door if you think they’ll be useful.’
‘I won’t need many,’ Allison said. ‘I’ve got the boxes for the computer, and most of my clothes will go in cases but yes, please, if you have boxes, it’ll make things easier. And thanks for coming in.’
With Corrina gone Allison and Shonda finished eating. The evening was still and warm, so they moved to sit on the balcony. Shonda had a glass of wine; Allison had sparkling water to prevent any issues with the painkillers she was on. A steady flow of planes flying into LAX added a periodic thrum which over-rode the constant noise of cars from the streets below. Birds darted in and out of the feeders, braving the presence of the two women. They’d been talking for a while when Shonda yawned. It triggered Allison to do the same.
Allison said, ‘I think I should get to bed. I can take my next lot of painkillers and that should help me get to sleep. Sorry I’ve tired you out with helping.’
‘Ally-bee, a friend who doesn’t help at a time like this is no friend at all. I’m just glad I was here. You go use the bathroom and get changed, I’ll tidy the glasses away.’
While sitting in the house the smell of bleach had faded as Allison became used to it. Being on the balcony for a spell allowed her nose to reset and when they went back inside the odor was more prevalent again. It got stronger in the bathroom. Allison looked round the room. She’d kept it clean, but the room had an almost sterile gleam.
She stepped out and called, ‘Shonda, did you change the shower curtain?’
Shonda came round the corner with a dish cloth in hand. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The other one had got stained and it left a mark I couldn’t shift. I figured you wouldn’t want to be reminded of things every time you took a shower.’
‘A blood stain?’ Allison asked. Shonda nodded. Allison said, ‘I don’t even remember going in the bathroom. I guess I must have.’ She closed her eyes, fighting a surge of emotion, not wanting to start crying again.
‘Are you okay?’ Shonda asked.
Allison nodded. She opened her eyes and said, ‘Just tiredness and the pain. I’ll get changed. Is my toothbrush still in the bag?’
‘No, I put it back in the cabinet.’
‘Thanks.’
The bindings on her fingers were water proof, so Allison wasn’t worried about getting them wet, but it was a struggle to get a decent lather to wash her face. As she gently worked the soap into her cheeks, around her eyes, and forehead, she couldn’t help but think that the selection of toiletries Earl had taken with him were strange. The tub of L’oreal for Men moisturiser she’d purchased him the Christmas before last was gone, as was the exfoliating soap he’d used twice before abandoning it because it made his skin feel ‘funny.’
She finished washing, brushed her teeth, and decided to see what he’d taken from the wardrobe. The first thing she saw was the nearly empty rail. There was a few shirts left on hangars, but they were at the end of the rail he rarely touched. The strange thing was the pants which had hung next to them were gone and she couldn’t figure a reason he’d have taken them. All his shoes were gone, but not the five parcels that had been delivered. She stood and looked at them, wondering why these remained but the strange assortment of toiletries and clothing was gone.
She bent down and awkwardly picked the top package up, almost dropping it when she got her position wrong and weight went entirely on a pair of broken fingers. She steadied herself, stood up, turned round, and dumped the package on the bed. It bounced on the mattress and fell still.
There was a challenge in the packages. Earl would want them and, when he found that she’d opened one, he’d be furious. But it’d be a fury he wouldn’t be able to vent on her. This was a way to move beyond him by doing something she knew he’d told her not to. It was breaking a hole in the wall of compliance he’d had her build, that had hemmed her in tighter and tighter without her realising.
She looked for a loose edge, a corner of raised paper to work at, but there wasn’t one. It needed a knife. She went through to the kitchen. And pulled the paring knife from the block.
Shonda was wiping a glass. ‘What you doing?’ she asked, concern in her voice.
‘Earl’s taken a strange lot of stuff with him, but there’s packages he left that he said were for work and I’m opening the damn things to see what they are.’
She headed back to the bedroom and Shonda followed her.
The packaging was so tight that even with the sharp edge of the knife Allison found it difficult to get into it, especially as holding was difficult with a couple of fingers held straight by their protective sleeves.
‘Do you want me to help?’ Shonda asked.
Allison shook her head. Focusing carefully on the edge of the package she was working on she said, ‘No, I have to do this, and I have to do it by myself.’ The tip of the knife slid through the tape. ‘Ha, success! Right, let’s see what’s in here.’ She carefully slid the knife the length of the short edge she’d worked into, then she followed the long edge, and the far short edge so that the whole section could lift like a flap. She laid the knife aside and looked up Shonda. ‘I’ve been wondering what these are since the arrived. There’s five of them, they all came via different couriers. He said they were for work, but had them delivered here, and he didn’t take them, so I’m really curious.’ She looked down at the package, then up at Shonda. ‘You wanna see?’
Shonda nodded.
Allison lifted the flap of well taped wrapping paper and underneath was thick protective binding of several turns of clear plastic wrap which made things indistinct but didn’t completely fail to conceal what looked like the edges of bundles with a paper sleeve around the middle.
‘Is that money?’ Shonda asked.
Allison picked up the knife again and sliced into the plastic. She lifted one of the bundles out and turned it round to see $10,000 printed on the binding, and $100 on the bottom left of the note. The distinctive features of Benjamin Franklin were mostly concealed by the binding.
‘Is that real?’ Shonda asked.
Allison tilted the bundle this way and that, looking at the bundle intently. She said, ‘I’m not an expert in counterfeits, but when I change the angle the color shifts from the coppery-green to kind of black and I’m sure I read that fakes don’t do that. Though I guess fakes get better all the time.’ She started counting the bundles along the edge. It was ten deep by two wide. She turned the package on it’s side and slid the knife under to free up the wrapping and saw their were five bundles. ‘Five by ten by two is one hundred. One hundred by ten thousand is…’ She stopped, double checking the math in her head before daring to say it aloud. She looked up at Shonda. ‘It’s a million, isn’t it. This is a million dollars.’
‘I always thought it’d look like more,’ Shonda said.
‘It probably would if it was singles. It’d be a hundred times bigger. But a hundred packages like this would have been difficult to store.’
‘Would it not be five hundred of them? Did you not say there are five of those parcels?’
Allison looked over at the open closet, at the other four packages. ‘You reckon they’re all the same?’
‘We could look.’
‘Can you bring them over the bed?’
They opened up the short edge of each package and peeled back enough to see the top edge. Thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills. After opening each one they tumbled it off the edge of the bed. With them all done they both sat with the first one next to them, the bundle Allison had removed sitting atop it like a beacon. Despite the dull green and blackness of the notes, it drew their attention as if it flashed orange.
‘Why do you think Earl is sending millions of dollars in tightly wrapped bundles to his own apartment?’ Shonda asked.
‘And knowing it’s here, why did he just leave it? Why not take it with him?’
‘Because he wouldn’t expect you to touch it. Did you even think of opening any of them when they arrived?’
‘Hell no. I was super careful to not even catch a corner. Earl was very specific about me not opening them.’
Shonda nodded. She said, ‘That’s why he felt okay leaving it. He just grabbed stuff he knew he’d want, and figured this could sit here until you left. And I figure that means it’s maybe not really for work, but from work.’
Allison looked at her friend quizzically.
‘Look,’ Shonda said, ‘didn’t you say the man he’s working for was some sort of gangster trying to go legitimate? Well, laundering money is a very gangster thing to do. What if Earl has stolen five million dollars from a bunch of gangsters.’
‘He can’t have? Can he?’
‘He beat the hell out of you. He’s had at least one affair. What else can’t he do that he’s done?’
‘But stealing five million dollars. That’s a hell of a lot of money.’
‘So, he either got real stupid, or he thought he could get away with it. Maybe both. Maybe his beating you to hell was more about the money than you finding out about him screwing around. Without any direct knowledge I don’t expect gangsters get to be successful enough to try and become legitimate by having shoddy accounting practices and, while I expect there’s always some skimming and grifting by underlings, I reckon the loss of five million is difficult to cover up no matter how good you are.’
Allison sat back and rested against the headboard. She stared that the small brick of money that by itself wasn’t enough to clear her outstanding debt but would go a good stretch of the way towards it. Five of the bricks in the package would clear it and the student loans which she’d been just about holding at the same level for the past few years.
What would five million allow her to do?
‘Oh’, Allison said aloud.
‘What?’ Shonda asked.
‘Well, what would you do with a share of five million dollars?’
They stared at each other silently for a few moments.
‘Oh,’ Shonda said.
‘Yes,’ Allison said. ‘I mean, what’s he going to say, ‘Where’s the money you stole from me?’ He can’t go to the police. He can’t say to his boss, ‘Hey, I stole five million bucks from you, but my girlfriend ran off with it.’ She sat forward and said, ‘Fuck the painkillers. I want a cocktail. C’mon, let’s go drink.
Shonda was looking at the money, like she was weighing it up. She nodded and said, ‘Hell, yes. What we having?’
‘Gin, vermouth, grapefruit juice, and bitters.’
‘You drink that?’
‘Are you saying you wont?’
‘When was the last time I turned down a drink I hadn’t tried before?’
‘Exactly. So, we’ll have a couple of those each and fantasy shop with all that money. Then we’ll hydrate, hit the sack, and wake up tomorrow to figure out what next. You with me?’
‘That, Ally-bee, sounds like an excellent plan.’
Chapter End
I wrote this post about a story where I had a first chapter written. I'm trying to push on and finish a first draft in 2024.
If you'd like to be tagged in for future chapters, let me know.
Thanks
Stuart
Link to collated chapters HERE
Link to the short story which is the seed for this is HERE
Any LA based or knowledgable folks who want to pitch in on local things I get wrong, please do. I've never been and there's only so much I can learn on the internet.
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