Frank Reardon

DESTROYER

She poured her third glass of straight vodka. When younger it was Budweiser or wine, until it turned into white Russians, then vodka over the rocks, by her sixtieth birthday she’d been drinking vodka straight from the glass for several years. 

Her husband, Michael, died three years earlier from a drunk driving accident. They’d been married for twenty years, but she had had enough of the married life several years before he wrapped himself around a tree after a night of gambling on NFL games. 

She grew increasingly distant from her sisters and brother. She retired from her job as a computer analyst early, took her dead husband’s money and locked herself up inside her house. One time it had rose bushes, garden statues of fairies and leprechauns, and every blade of grass meticulously kept in uniform by Hollins Landscaping. Now, dead leaves collected on the driveway, walkway, and lawn. A pane of glass knocked out by a storm hadn’t been replaced in a year. Her only recourse to the life she lived was to drink every day until the pain she caused turned into justifications. 

The house was cold, matching her skin, lips, and pursed face. She put on, “Let Your Love Flow,” by the Bellamy Brothers and sat down in front of a mirror. Long red hair from youth turned into a short greying mess. The song traveled through the cold halls, and stacks of newspapers, bills, and dust collected on the once obsessively polished furniture. A once warm house turned into a tomb, a waiting room, a fortified compound. 

Arthritic fingers reached out to the Styrofoam head set to the left of the mirror and picked up the red wig with side swept bangs and fastened it to her skull. She looked into the mirror and with slow moving hands she painted on blue eye shadow, then glued on fake eye lashes. She didn’t need to convince herself to pour another vodka it had become ritual. Next, she applied foundation to hide her aging spots, followed by a powered red lipstick. The look wasn’t for anyone but her, a way to convince herself that if she were beautiful then all would be forgiven.

The grandfather clock in the living room worked, but time was no longer a concern to her. She only ate a meal a day to keep herself alive and thin. If she didn’t value her own neck she’d stop eating altogether, food had become an annoyance she had to deal with daily. A pest asking questions about the future when she was trying to travel backwards. 

“Always Dusty Springfield,” she said, “I Only Want to Be with You.” She played the song again, allowing her body to contort in joy and happiness across the scuffed marked wood floors. Along with walls, the man hater thrust her body like a 1960s pop star in a psychedelic dream. Skin like lily white boneyard markers placed the glass on the fireplace mantle. 

Her photographs in silver frames stood in the same spots for the last twenty years. One of her honeymoon in the Florida Keys, back when cocaine and speedboats were a part of her collective consciousness. One of her father standing next to a swimming pool not long after he returned home from fighting the Nazis. The last photo was of Jack in nursery school. His fine blonde hair parted to the side, eyes young and blue, full of hope. She’d dressed him in a black V neck sweater pulled over a white mock turtleneck. When he was little, she called him, “Jackie.” 

By the fourth play of Dusty Springfield, she poured another vodka, and spit on the photo of Jackie. She didn’t like that he decided to grow up. When he was a little boy, she dressed him up in girl’s clothing. One time, in the aisle at Zayre he cried when she bought him an Easter dress. Customers looked at her, wondering if she was going to do anything about it, she did. She made him stay home from school for three days and wear nothing but the dress. If he cried about it, she beat him with a belt. His tiny body black and blue, red heat marks across his butt and thighs. 

“Only babies cry,” she said, clenching her teeth at the photo. “Only babies cry!” 

Years later, when Jackie reached puberty and stopped wearing dresses, she started sneaking into his room at night. He could fight her off most nights, until he couldn’t. Of course, to her, none of those things happened, a figment of Jackie’s imagination. If no one saw it, then it wasn’t true. She told herself that every day until she believed it. She cut her son off. Took him out of her will and never picked up the phone. By the next drink, she convinced herself that there never was a child. In the throes of denial, the music sounded good enough to dance to. 

The fall wind outside slammed the phone booth on the corner. She looked through her window and saw a man with a long black coat inside. A running black Caddy parked next to it. She narrowed her blue eyes like a serpent, studying the man. She couldn’t make out his face but could see his thick head of silver hair slicked back. He moved around inside the booth, mouth moving, hands up and down. Then he hung up the phone and stood there.

“What’s he waiting for?” She thought. 

She walked to her makeup desk, snatched the bottle, and poured another glass. By the time she returned he was back on the phone, hands moving and he was pacing back and forth inside the booth like someone had told him shocking news. She wondered what bad news the man had received, it excited her. 

“Good for you honey,” she said, thinking a woman had left him.

When the grandfather clock chimed four, she nodded off. When she woke thirty-two minutes had passed. The man was no longer in the phone booth. She stumbled across the floor, and put on “Out of Time,” by the Stones and quickly poured another drink before the shakes had a chance to set in, then sat in front of the mirror to freshen up her make up and straighten out her wig. 

She staggered to the kitchen and opened the freezer, pulling out a package of frozen breakfast sausage links, and tossed them into the microwave above the marble countertop where she once had a bar, now littered with empty vodka bottles, and prescription Xanax bottles. The Xanax was to counteract the hangovers and shakes she had every morning. Once it settled in, she began drinking and repeating the same ritual every day. Day in and day out, blaming everyone but herself. It was her father’s fault he had PTSD. Not the year he spent leading a tank brigade across Europe fighting Nazis. It was Jackie’s fault that he didn’t want to wear dresses as a child. It was completely his own doing for crying into the night and hugging himself after she left his room naked. 

She’d lost count of how many drinks she’d had and fell to the couch. The record player scratched. The ceiling lowered down on her and the walls closed in. She’d become a photograph of flesh. Her silver sequence party dress glowed underneath the chandelier glass bulbs in the shape of candles. Her wig and makeup both immaculate. She spread open her pale dagger like legs and set the glass in front of cotton blue panties hanging out from the short party dress. She tried to kick off her shoes, but she wasn’t wearing any, the ankles fought for supremacy with heels and toes across the museum floors.

The grandfather clock chimed seven when she woke up. The tremors set into her soul and rattled her bones like a locomotive hell bent on early arrival. She picked up her glass and downed the last of it, then picked herself up and touched up her makeup in the mirror. Her eyes fixated on the expensive bottle of unopened vodka. She couldn’t recall if she had delivered it but was too drunk to remember. She tried to recount her steps, wondered if she fucked the delivery man. It wouldn’t be an insane thing to have happened. She fucked the landscaper the year before and jerked off the mail carrier when he dropped off a box with new socks inside. 

“That’s the kind you used to drink,” a calm and even voice said. “If I remember correct.” 

She slowly turned around and, in the chair, next to the door the man in the long black wool coat sat with his legs crossed. She studied him for a moment, his silver hair slicked back, cut barbershop fresh. He had a matching silver goatee neatly trimmed under his nose and chin. The rest of his face, shaven razor smooth. Bright blue eyes leered at her like he wanted to tell a punchline to a joke. He held up his hand, inviting her to a drink. 

Her reaction was to say something, anything, but sickness aligned with her veins, gut, brain, and skin. She took a swill from the expensive blue bottle of vodka, then poured some in her glass. She took notice of his black shoes, shined up like mirrors. Pressed black pants, and white shirt tucked into them. She figured his waist must’ve been a thirty-four. 

“Couldn’t wear a tie?” she said, shoving more of the liquid down her throat. 

“Feel better?” He asked. 

“How did you get into my house?”

He pointed back at the busted windowpane and smiled. 

“Need to get those fixed on occasion,” he replied. 

She huffed and downed another mouthful, her brain let up on the nerves and skin.

“I’m…I’m…going to,” she slurred, “call the cops if you don’t get out…”

“Destroyer,” he interrupted. 

“Excuse me?” she replied. 

“You’ve been a destroyer of lives for as long as I can remember.”

“Who the fuck are you!” she screamed.

He got up out of the chair with a gentleman’s ease and walked over to her. Their eyes met as he placed his wide hand across her mouth. 

“Don’t scream.” 

She studied his eyes. They appeared lost, but also eyes covered in years of humor and well-built armor. When her throat settled down, he removed his hand and stood in front of her.

“Still playing the same records I, see?” He said, walking over to the stack of albums. “I like this one.” He put on “River Deep Mountain High,” by Ike and Tina Turner. 

She poured herself another drink and poured it down her throat fast, then poured another. She had no idea where she was anymore, the faint smell of burnt breakfast sausage rotting in the microwave hit her nose. She recognized the eyes standing in front of her. 

“I’ve always loved this song,” she said.

“It’s a good fucking song,” he told her, his hair unable to move from the hair tonic the barber had put it in earlier. 

“Where have you been all these years?”

“Around. Man, I tell ya, Los Angeles, Paris, New York City. You know, just last month I was in Frankfurt Germany. “

“You leave Boston?”

“I come here all the time. Work for people over in Southie on occasion. You wearing a wig now I see.”

“People don’t like a woman without looks.” 

“No, people don’t like you.” He told her with a warm smile. “You got exactly what you wanted after all, didn’t you?”

She shifted her body on the couch and snapped into attention. He walked back and forth across the deadweights of the floorboards. 

“And what’s that?”

“You are finally alone. After ruining everyone you met you got to build yourself a little temple of the damned to rot away in. No more husband. No family, just you and the denial you love to suck off whenever you get the chance.” 

“How dare you speak to me like that. I’m your…”

The blast from the sawed-off shotgun inside his long coat lifted her up off the couch and threw her back onto the floor. The music from the song played in the background as he walked around the couch and looked at her. The silver sequence of the dress soaked up the blood red carnage, staining the stomach with the hand of death. Her eyes, wide open, fixated the glossy whites awaiting the nothingness inside the return of his gaze. 

  “You don’t ever get to say that word to me,” he said.

On the way out he grabbed the picture of young Jackie from the mantle and made his way down the long driveway. He started up the Cadillac and took a handful of quarters from the console. The phone booth provided relief from the dark streetlight wind, he dropped in several quarters and dialed a number. 

“Who’s this?” A voice said.

“It’s me,” he replied. 

“Did you find her?” 

“I did. Send over Archie and Lenny. There’s a mess to clean up.”

“What do you want em to do with her?”

“On Colony there’s that abandon strip mall. At the end where the Zayre used to be?”

“Yeah, I know it.”

“Bury her there in the ugliest Easter dress you can find.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, did you find the location of the priest?”

“Costigan?”

“Yeah, that cocksucker.”

“I did.”

“Give me the address.”