* * *
Bernadette accompanied me to the hardware store for new combination locks, to the Northwood department store for new linens, and finally to Hartford Appliances for new mattresses, carpet swatches, and a used air-conditioning unit if they had one. It was going to take some cajoling to get anyone to move into Jill and Eileen’s room, potentially for years to come. I had the next generation of The House to think about, my successors, their chapters. I was under enormous pressure to set them up for success, and rooms with their own personal air-conditioning unit were currency back then, especially in the Panhandle, where October may as well have been July.
“Here’s one for only sixty-five dollars,” Bernadette said, turning over a price ticket with a red slash-through line.
I crossed the warehouse floor to examine the unit. It was a GE Slumberline with wood paneling. It should have cost a lot more. “Does it worry you that it’s on sale at that price?” I ran a finger through a grate, inspecting it for grime. “Something’s got to be wrong with it.”
“The next cheapest one is ninety-five dollars,” Bernadette said.
I grimaced. We’d nearly drained the semester budget that morning, though I had assurances that it would be replenished imminently. Brian’s dad had received the compensation claim form and was fast-tracking it through the approval process. Still, I felt an acute sense of anxiety every time I handed over the Panhellenic credit card, like I was a corrupt politician misappropriating community funds.
“Let’s go with the Slumberline,” I said after the salesman told us about the ten-day return policy. It came out to nearly eighty dollars, with tax and tip. The thing was compact but brick-dense, and it took two salesguys to maneuver it outside and into my lap in the passenger seat, where I held on to it in a bear hug.
“Whoops,” Bernadette said, unbuckling her seat belt. “I left the carpet swatches.”
She ran back inside, head bowed to the rain. It was a dreary Monday, everyone bundled in scarves and hats, toes wet in their boots. Braid weather, Denise called it. She would have sat at my feet that morning, underlining passages in her physics and art textbooks, while I laced her bushy hair tight. She had been dead eight days.
The driver’s-side door opened. That was fast, I turned to say, until I saw it wasn’t Bernadette climbing behind the wheel but a man in a green-and-yellow baseball cap pulled down low. Bernadette had left the engine running, the keys in the ignition. The man put the car in drive, and I watched Hartford Appliances slip away in a stupefied, wordless freeze.
“You’re gonna talk to me now,” he slurred, and we started to drift into a lane of oncoming traffic.
His voice, the silhouette of his chin and lips beneath the brim of the Oakland A’s cap. It was Roger. Drunk Roger. The very worst kind.
“Yeah, fuck you too,” Roger heckled when a car in the fast lane laid on the horn. He overcorrected, and we dipped off the edge of the pavement. We are going to flip, I was thinking when Roger jerked us back onto the road and my temple cracked against the window. I moaned in pain.
“Oh, shut up,” Roger said in a whiny way, like he’d had about enough of me. We were approaching a yellow light from too far away at too high a speed.
“Roger!” I cried, stabbing my finger frantically at the road.
Roger stomped the brakes, and there was a movie sound effect skidding in my ears, but we weren’t stopping, we were sliding for the light on a jagged lightning-bolt course, the rear end of the car lashing like the tail of a stinging scorpion. I held on to the Slumberline for dear life and screwed my eyes shut, bracing for impact as we blew through a compass of caterwauling.
“I told you!” Roger was yelling at me, sour-breathed and belligerent. “Just shut the fuck up, Pamela. I can’t focus with your annoying fucking voice in my ear.” He cowered, doing a vicious impersonation of my terrified face, my clenched body language. “Roger! Roger!” He mimicked a nagging female cry.
I was shaking violently, more afraid than I was the night I found Denise, when shock blitzed my system, blunting the severity of the situation. In that moment I was acutely aware of how much more danger I was in with someone who knew me, who had constructed a world in his head where I was his antagonist. Roger was sparking with righteous hatred for me. If he didn’t kill us on the road, he would take me somewhere and relish in making me suffer. I had very little time to get out of this alive. I directed all my energy into coming up with something I could give him, some crucial piece of information that would support the choice to spare me. “I have a meeting with the sheriff this afternoon,” I lied. “I know the name of the person who did it, and it’s right here in my purse…” I strained to reach my handbag at my feet, but I couldn’t, not with the bulk in my lap. “Come with me and we’ll tell him together.”