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Aftermath by Stephen D. Rogers I never should have let her live. I allowed her to walk out the door and now here she was pointing a gun at me, her eyes cold, her lips set. The shoes were new but she'd always been vain about her feet. While she was standing closer than she should in the circumstances, the gun was held in a steady hand and I didn't step forward to twist the weapon from her grasp. "Been a while." "Don't make me shoot you." "Wasn't my intention. I thought it was yours. The gun and all." "You... you." Having no answer to that, I simply waited. There must have been a reason for her presence and I figured she'd get to it sooner or later. Then again, maybe she hadn't changed that way either. "Sit down." I sat, offered her a seat. "I'm the one with a gun. I don't need your permission to do a single, solitary thing." "Just trying to be polite." A hiss of air escaped through her teeth. "Polite. And if you were the one with the advantage, I suppose I'd be dead." "You would." She glanced around without altering her aim. "Nobody shacked up with you?" "I promised fidelity when we exchanged our vows." She barked out a laugh. "You'd kill me but you wouldn't cheat on me. How sweet." "That's different. I'm protecting our investment." "And I'm the weak link." "You are." She took the seat I had offered earlier. I suppose enough time had passed to make the idea hers. "I want my share." "I thought you might." "I want it now." "It's yours to have. I kept it separate in case you changed your mind about accepting blood money." She looked at those shoes I'd never seen before. "Don't rub it in." "You need cash to run. You are running, aren't you?" "What other choice do I have?" "Face up to the reality. The job went bad. Sometimes they do. No reason to punish us." "It's not that simple for me." "Running's not exactly an alternative to hard." "You always have an answer, don't you? You sit there and tell me how I should feel as if that changes anything. I'm sorry if the truth is inconvenient for you." "So how will running help?" "I won't have to see events reflected in your face. I can pretend the job never happened. That we never happened. That's the only way I can get out from under." "You can lie in my bed as easily as anywhere else." "Not once the lights go on. I tried." "You didn't give it twenty-four hours." "I gave it long enough to know." I let the silence stretch but she didn't try to fill the void. "Your share is in the other room." "Let's go. Slowly." "You could have come in when I wasn't home, unlocked the safe yourself." "I wouldn't have been comfortable keeping my back to the room long enough to dial the combination." "I'm beginning to think you don't trust me." "I loved you. That was enough." "And now?" "Now I want my share." She followed me into the bedroom. "You did this to me." "No." "Yes. You planned the job. Things went bad because you failed to cover all the angles." I crouched next to the end table and swung open the false front. "There's no such beast as the perfect plan." Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. The handle turned and I pulled the safe door towards me. Her share was in the back behind the gun, bundled and wrapped in brown paper, sealed with a kiss. When I heard the safety release behind me, I realized she'd changed more than I ever thought possible, her actions that day raising the bar for acceptable behavior. The aftermath continued. THE END Stephen D. Rogers © 2006 |
