53. Martha
Martha
Bambi is turning the same blue color as the refrigerator’s inside light.
A cool, pale hue washes over her while her hands claw wildly at the floor.
Jason is above her, one knee bent ironically like a knight, the other aloft, the EpiPen jutting out of his thigh.
Four steps, five, six behind him, maybe, his back arched and muscular in the sallow kitchen light.
I stand watching, hidden from view, an incredible calm coming over me.
Counting now.
One.
Two.
Three.
Hold, steady, little bird.
Jason’s eyes bulge. There it is. The faint recognition forming. He releases Bambi and stumbles back, coughing, choking, clutching his chest.
With one hand, he yanks the EpiPen from his leg. Bambi stands, arms out wide, gasping for air. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“It’s … It’s not working.”
Jason runs from the room, staggers really, and heads to the office next. Bambi follows. I listen to the footsteps, the sounds of the drawer opening, the pen being uncapped, the groan from his lips as he drives another needle into his thigh.
A little smile creeps over my mouth.
Perfect. Beautiful.
Coughs and wheezes. It won’t be long now.
“Breathe, breathe!” Bambi cries out. I hear her run upstairs and down again, yet another couple of pens in her grasp from his travel bag and the upstairs bathroom. These are the last two.
“Just do it!” he shouts, his voice weaker. “It’s not working!”
There’s a slight crash, then the sound of the remaining two pens uncapping. He must have grabbed them from her because I hear his voice cry out, like an animal in distress. Four needles of epinephrine. Not one of them working. What a shame.
“I’ll call 911!” Bambi shouts.
She runs back to the kitchen, where I’m there, waiting with her phone in hand. “No, you won’t,” I say, pocketing it.
“I have to!” she shouts at me. “The pens aren’t working!”
I can’t help the smile. All those days searching, carefully. I had to be sure there wouldn’t be any I’d missed. It had taken so long, and I’d been so diligent. I cannot let her spoil it now.
“He’ll go into shock,” she says, her voice low. “He could die.”
Before I can answer her, Jason plummets into the room, his face bloated, red, his hands clutched and clawing at his throat and chest. Desperate. Pathetic. Limp.
He catches sight of me. “You! You fucking did this.”
Amazing the beast can still speak!
He runs toward us with surprising speed and plucks a kitchen knife from its holder.
“You fucking bitch,” he cries, throat of glass and dirt.
He lunges at us with the knife, as Bambi scoots her way toward me, nearer to the stove.
Instinctively, I back into it, then find something heavy with my hand—the Maglite flashlight.
I grab its handle, my arm braced. Bambi clutches my arm, one hand outstretched.
“Jason, stop! Put the knife down! We’ll call for help! ”
Jason leans forward onto the counter, knife in his hand. He points the tip at me, a jabbing accusation on his lips. “I always knew you’d be a problem,” he half-whispers, his throat nearly closing.
“Stop, Jason,” Bambi shouts. “We need to call 911!”
His lips part into a sneering, soul-crushing smile. “Yes, you will.”
He palms the knife handle and raises it aloft as he jets toward us, and guttural sounds rage from his lips.
He grabs Bambi and yanks her to him. The knife slices through her left arm, sudden and fast, and she lets out a sharp, tiny cry, glancing down with shock at her blood spilling to the floor.
The three of us struggle, Jason’s hand at Bambi’s throat again, his other stabbing the empty air toward me, blood droplets on the floor, our feet, slipping.
Jason squeezes, and Bambi falls to the floor, clutching her neck and gasping for air. He turns to me, his knife raised, eyes dark and menacing. I back into the fridge, the raised handle hitting my spine, and stagger away from him.
He sneers, just once, but that’s when I know.
He lunges toward me and swings, and I leap back just in time.
I raise the Magnum light and take careful aim.
One swing, hard, and the head of the Magnum collides with his temple.
His eyes roll back, his arms fall slack, and in moments, he’s lying at our feet, stunned and choking.
Bambi scrambles toward me.
“Oh my God,” she yells, eyes wide with horror. She runs to the kitchen wall and grabs the landline. “Oh my God, oh my God! We have to call for help.”
Instinctively, I slap the phone from her hands. It clatters noisily to the floor. “Don’t be ridiculous.” With one foot, I step on the phone and hear the plastic contort and snap.
“It’s self-defense,” she mumbles stupidly. “We won’t get in trouble.”
“Like hell we won’t.”
I stare into her large and defenseless eyes.
She really is beautiful, even looking as she does with her face so distorted with fear.
Part of me aches to have this all over with, the two of us someplace else, sand between our toes maybe, a sunset on the horizon, gossiping and laughing over cocktails, the way best friends would do …
It could be like that, just Bambi and me. I know it could.
Bambi kneels to Jason and strokes his hair from his eyes. Her face breaks into sobs, and her hand rises to her mouth, watching him, shaking as he chokes, the final toxins taking hold. “I can’t believe this. How could this happen?”
“It’s going to be okay,” I say sweetly to her.
She shakes her head. “No. No! It wasn’t supposed to be this way! The pens—not one of them worked. I don’t understand …” She stops and turns to me then, her eyes fierce. “You did this, didn’t you?”
My chest swells, a warm bubble of pride in my center.
She’ll never know, of course, how carefully I found his pens, how, one by one, I made sure they were just the right temperature.
And oh, how I’d studied the instructions to be sure: “EpiPens should be stored in dry conditions at 68° to 77°F to be effective.” And to be ineffective?
Just do the exact opposite of what it says on the little yellow box.
A nice pot of boiling water. Cooked for a few minutes each.
“Bambi, I did this for you, remember? So that you could be free?”
“Free? He’s dead now! I never wanted to hurt him, Martha! This is so fucked!” she screams. “How could you do this?”
“It’s going to be okay. You just have to trust me.”
“Trust you?”
“Yes!” I shout, louder than I intended. “Haven’t I been a good friend to you?”
“Friend?” Bambi stops. She glares at me. “You were never my friend, Martha. You’re no one—just someone I hired. And now you’ve ruined my life. Ruined it!”
I can hear Nicola now, her voice echoing in my skull. See? I told you.
“Liar!” My fist slams onto the ground, a tiny waft of anger emerging that I’d intended to save for later. But there it is, the pinprick of disaster on her flesh. She senses me now, and there’s no turning back.
There’s a clean rush of energy into my core, the thrill of something about to unfold, a river of vengeance swimming in my cells. Maybe he didn’t do it. Maybe he did. Maybe Bambi knew. Maybe she didn’t. What do I care? Either way, now they both deserve exactly what they are getting.
My vengeance is against a life unlived. All those moments waiting, hoping, asking, pleading …
I always wanted the light, even as Nicola wanted the dark. She longed for it to come forth, and I helped her. And isn’t that the way it always is with us humans—longing for our innermost demons to be exorcised, our pains and our wrongs to be avenged?
At last, vengeance is in my grasp. It comes easily and effortlessly as I stand watching Jason take his final rasping breath.