Chapter 23
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
“I told you it wouldn’t work,” said Carla. Her dark eyes were full of something like sorrow. Maybe pity. Jack ate his sandwich in silence. The sunlight streaming through the window made the shadows all the more overwhelming.
“Hey,” said Carla, five days after their failed escape. “You wanna borrow some clothes? That suit must be driving you crazy. I mean, unless you like it.”
Jack stared at her, surprised. “It’s… fine,” he said, even though he’d taken to removing the jacket and balling it up once inside the house.
Sometimes, he left it on the couch or the kitchen chair, but once he’d chucked it out an open window.
Carla had laughed at that, something real and genuine that reminded him of that night in the motel, when her laughter shook the bed and lulled him to sleep.
The last few days were dark and dismal. Exhaustion plagued him—no amount of sleep could cure the bruises under his eyes, the drowsy veneer that coated every passing hour.
Once, inexplicably, he’d fallen asleep on the couch while Carla watched a movie on television.
When he woke, he discovered he’d drifted sideways and come to a rest with his face smashed against her shoulder.
She claimed she didn’t mind, but Jack was mortified. He’d definitely drooled on her—there was a wet spot on her sleeve that she brushed off as the result of a leak in the ceiling, but he knew better.
“Are you sure it’s fine?” Carla asked, twisting a strand of hair around her finger.
“Yeah,” said Jack, without confidence.
“Because we have a lot of clothes just hanging around,” said Carla. “I promise, no one’s gonna bite you.”
And that was how Jack found himself pawing through the wardrobe in one of the guest rooms. Most of the clothes were far nicer than his own—suits, dress shirts, vests, ties—but there were a few polos, t-shirts, even a muscle shirt with arm holes that stretched nearly to the hem.
“You should wear that one,” said Carla. Mischief gleamed in her eyes.
Against his better judgment, Jack said, “Yeah, I think you’re supposed to have muscles to wear those.”
“You’ve got muscles,” Carla said. She leaned against the door jamb and smirked. “Even babies have muscles.”
“Not enough for this, I don’t,” said Jack, selecting a polo shirt.
“That one?” Carla raised an eyebrow.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Just… It’s navy.”
Jack sighed. “What’s wrong with navy, then?”
“Kinda boring, don’t you think?”
Jack glanced at her red and white polka dot shirt and shook his head. “I think it’s fine.”
“I think the green would look better on you.”
With a frown, Jack said, “I can’t dress myself?”
“I never said that,” Carla protested. “You do whatever you want.”
Black, white, grey, and sometimes navy were the only colors Jack ever purchased, which meant that his clothes usually matched, no matter what he wore. Nice and simple.
He eyed the green polo skeptically. He’d always been told he looked good in blue. That it brought out his eyes.
Fuck it. When was the next time he’d have an opportunity to wear green? So what if he looked like a fir tree for a day?
“Fine,” he said. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I always am,” said Carla, waggling her eyebrows.
“I very much doubt that,” said Jack. After selecting a pair of jeans that looked like they might fit, he ducked into the bathroom.
A chandelier glittered over a bathtub wide enough to fit two people, complete with jets and multiple faucets, meticulously sculpted. Spotless marble countertops and floors glittered. The toilet was so white as to be blinding; he wondered if anyone had ever used it before.
Jack sprayed cologne on his wrist and immediately regretted it. The scent was overpowering, with chemical notes that reminded him of a hospital. Even after washing his hands up the elbows, it still clung to him.
Whatever.
He left the bathroom feeling a little more normal, a little more relaxed. After nearly a month trapped in the pinstriped suit, he never wanted to see it again.
“Feel better?” Carla asked. “You look like you feel better.”
“Maybe a little bit,” Jack admitted.
“Good,” said Carla, admiring her handiwork. “Now, let’s get back to that list.”
Under Things that Didn’t Work, Carla scribbled,
1) Death
2) Leaving (up to 300 miles distance)
3) Staying up all night
4) Prayer
5) Dumping Ronnie
Jack stared at the last option in shock. “You dumped your boyfriend?”
Carla gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I thought it was worth a shot. Didn’t matter. It was a complete shitshow and I still woke up next to him the next morning.”
Jack opted not to ask about that and just nodded sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Now I know how not to break up with him if this stupid loop ever ends.”
“You still want to break up with him?”
“Yes, idiot!” Carla cried, dropping the pen onto the desk with a clatter. She glared at him. “I’ve told you like seven times! I don’t want to be here. I didn’t want to come here in the first place. I tagged along because I didn’t know how to dump him.”
“I take it you can’t just break up with a mob boss.” Jack shuddered, imagining a life spent hiding from mobsters. Constant name changing, a new disguise every week, a new city every day…
If he wasn’t careful, that might soon become his life.
“It’s not because he’s the boss,” Carla groaned.
She shoved a lock of hair behind her ear.
“And no, I can’t just dump him. Are you kidding?
But it’s not because he’s a mobster. It’s because he’s an asshole.
” She slammed her hands on the desk and Jack, still half-expecting to find a gun pointed at his head, jumped.
“Not to be judgmental,” he said, heart pounding as Carla crossed her arms and fumed. “But don’t those things kind of go hand-in-hand?”
“Not necessarily,” said Carla. She sighed and put her head in her hands. “You know what? Never mind. You’re right. Most of them are assholes.” Another sigh. “That’s just men in general, though.”
Unsure what to say to that, Jack folded his hands in his lap and looked away.
“Nobody’s going to kill you,” Carla exclaimed. “Except maybe Ronnie, but only if I break up with him again. And I’m not gonna do that.”
There was something about the expression on her face that ate at him. Some sort of helpless misery beneath a shroud of resentment. “Did he hurt you?”
“I mean, define hurt. Nothing the police might’ve helped with.
Not that they would’ve come here in the first place.
” She scrunched her nose. “He just shoved me up against a wall and yelled a lot. Didn’t have any fucking idea in the morning.
” She shrugged, too nonchalant. One of her eyelids twitched.
“Shoved you up against a wall?” Jack repeated, tamping down a flare of anger. It was hard to imagine fiery Carla in that kind of situation, but when he looked at her now, he saw a petite woman comprised mostly of hair and lipstick. Anyone could push her around if they wanted to.
“Yeah, listen, I don’t want to talk about it, OK? It was a bad idea. I fucked up.”
“Does he always do that to you?”
“Ronnie?” She scoffed. “No. Normally he’s a nice guy. By which, I mean, he’s nice to me. I wouldn’t wanna be his enemy.”
Jack tried not to think about that too much. “So, you’re gonna break up with him when this is over?”
Her laugh echoed off the walls and down the hallway. “Hell, no. I’m gonna leave his ass, is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna leave a note and he can chase me down if he really wants to.”
“Would that work?”
“No,” she snapped. “But I’m done here. I’ve been done a long time.”
“Do you, uh, want to take a break?” Jack asked, because he had no idea how to proceed after a confession like that. They should work on the list, but he hated to force Carla to focus when it looked like she probably needed a drink instead. “We could grab a snack—”
“No,” Carla groaned, slouching forward. “We gotta work on the list. Tell me more about what you’ve tried so far.”
“Um,” said Jack slowly, trying to think of literally anything else. After a long silence in which his brain refused to cooperate with him, he admitted, “I tried to dig up a body?”
“You what?!”
“OK,” said Carla, head in her hands again. “Let me get this straight. You convinced the hotel manager to help you dig up a body because you thought it was the right thing to do. And you think doing the right thing is gonna get you out of this time loop?”
Jack blushed. “It was a theory. Obviously not a good one.”
“I just can’t understand why you thought digging up a body was the correct and moral thing to do here, Jack.”
“Well, I thought there might be a missing persons’ report somewhere, and I could, I don’t know, identify the person if I saw their face? And then the police would take me seriously and solve the murder.”
“Yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “There’s a lot of missing people around here, dipshit. The police don’t meddle. Ronnie pays ‘em to keep their noses outta his business.”
He nodded. “I realize that now. Look, it was just a theory. I’m desperate.”
“Yeah,” she said. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Long lashes fluttered as she closed her eyes. “Jesus, I’m getting a headache.”
“We can take a break.”
“That’s not gonna help,” she snapped. “This whole situation is giving me a headache. A break won’t change that.”
“I mean, it might.”
“No. We’re finishing this list if it kills us, alright? We take a break when we’re dead. You can rest in your coffin.”
Jack snorted. “Yeah, alright, fine. Are you done judging me?”
“Honey, I’m never gonna stop judging you for that.
You’re way too cute and unassuming for this kind of shit,” she said.
Lacquered nails tapped against the surface of the desk.
Jack waited for her to nudge his shin with her foot, but she just glared at him.
“You’re like… some kind of adorable, deranged woodland creature. ”
“Um, thanks?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I kinda dig it.”
With a sigh, he said, “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
She groaned into her hands and exhaled slowly. “Yeah. Neither am I. OK. So digging up corpses aside, what else did you try?”
“I did some exploring. I asked some people why they thought I’d be stuck in a time loop.”
“You did?” Carla clucked in astonished delight. “Tell me more.”
“Well, the bookstore owner told me it’s probably aliens.”
“Aliens?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” Carla tilted her head, eyed him skeptically. “Like space aliens?”
“I think so. Have you ever been there? She’s got conspiracy books all over the place.”
“To space, or the bookstore?” Her cheeks lifted into the ghost of a grin.
He couldn’t help but grin back. “Either.”
She shook her head, smirked. “Yeah, I’ve been to the bookstore once or twice. I buy most of my books at the grocery store, though.”
Jack imagined the romance novels and cheap thrillers at the supermarket and almost smiled at the thought of Carla thumbing through them.
It was charming, domestic. Not the kind of thing he expected from someone who looked too rich to run her own errands.
Everything she wore was designer. Even the rings on her fingers were inlaid with real diamonds. “You like to read?”
“Sometimes,” Carla said. “Why? Do you?”
“Once in a while.” Jack thought of the dog-eared books in his living room, most of them unfinished, victims of his short attention span.
Magazines and newspapers added to the clutter, but they allowed him to shift easily between stories and articles.
Coupled with the inclusion of pictures, they were so much more bearable. “I’m not what you’d call an academic.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing."
“Isn’t it?”
“Who the fuck told you that? Who do I need to slap?” Her brows arched, eyes narrowed, nostrils flared.
He stared at her. “I—Look, it’s just that I tried to be an academic, alright? I wasn’t very good at it.”
“Who says?”
“Um, like every teacher and professor I’ve ever had. I’m really, really bad at focusing sometimes.”
“Yeah, you’re always fiddling with that bag. I’ve noticed.”
Jack decided not to comment and let the strap of his satchel fall from his fingers.
“It doesn’t exactly translate into good grades.
I can find a subject really interesting and write a paper on it, but I can’t stop fidgeting and I can’t stop losing things, conversations are hard to keep up with, and I just—my professors really hated me.
” He stared down at the bag in his lap and adjusted the strap so that it was evenly spread across his legs.
“I tried really hard, but I just wasn’t good at it. ”
Carla capped the pen. “Come on. I need a ginger ale.”
“I thought we were working until we died?”
“I changed my mind. I’m thirsty. Let’s go.”