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Jade replied.
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Heather scowled at her sister, pulled the sweat pants off and threw them into a ball in the corner. As close as they were, the sisters still had certain modesties in front of each other and she made a hand gesture to signify the necessary eye closure before pulling on black lacy t-backs and tugging the jeans above her hips.
“Okay, open,” Heather commanded.
Jade opened her eyes and made a face when a tiny foot caught itself in one of her ribs. She clutched at her rib cage and forced herself to breathe steadily.
“Yeah, I don’t miss that part,” Heather said.
She walked over to the chair Jade had plopped herself into and gently placed a hand on her sister’s bulging belly.
“Be nice to your mommy,” she whispered to her unborn nephew.
Heather stood and started pacing Jade’s living room fl oor. She picked up the last conversation without any preamble. She planned to share her theories whether Jade was interested or not because she refused to suffer her weird thoughts alone.
“Maybe He made Adam and Eve, expecting all would go well,” Heather said.
Heather buttoned her jeans and remained quiet until she was nestled snugly into a cotton T-shirt. When she continued, her voice took on the tone of the wicked witch of the west.
“But an evil form came into existence and said ‘Here, my pretty. Eat the apple.’ ”
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“Please don’t jump from Heaven to Hell to Oz, Heather. You’re confusing enough,” she sighed.
“Sorry,” Heather laughed. “The point is, maybe the devil screwed up God’s plan when he lured His own creations away from Him. And maybe God got mad after He created man only to be betrayed for a snake. Men suck and they’re cheaters and I can totally relate to God’s disgust with them.”
“I think by man He means all of mankind, stupid.
Wasn’t it Eve who ate the damn apple?”
If anyone else had called her stupid, Heather would have been pissed off but when Jade said it, it made her laugh.
“Sure, she ate the apple but so did Adam,” Heather answered. “And who talked her into it?”
“She did it on her own, Heather. You just hate men and you’re bitter because you married two assholes.”
“I don’t hate men. I love men. And those two assholes are my friends. Whose side are you on, anyway?” Heather asked.
“Between who and who? I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore,” Jade giggled.
“Me either. I stopped listening a little while ago.”
Heather grinned. “I was kind of hoping you’d explain it to me.”
Jade dropped her head dramatically against the back of the couch and remained quiet. She just stared at her sister from her new position. She couldn’t believe her eyes as she watched Heather drop her good sheets to the 19
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fl oor. They fell into a heap atop the pile of clutter she had already collected in the corner of the hallway.
Jade tried not to laugh when Heather, noticing the look of displeasure on her sister’s face, picked the sheets up from the fl oor while innocently whistling. She started folding them as though that had been her plan all along.
“Anyway,” Heather continued. “Maybe God’s pissed at us.”
Just as quickly, she wished the thought had never occurred to her.
“Why would He be mad at us? We weren’t there,”
Jade snapped defensively. “If it were Adam and Eve who screwed up, why punish us?”
They had been raised in a home where Christianity was a demand instead of a choice. The Baptist religion had been given more attention than God and the memories alone caused instinctual cringing in both of them.
They had each grown up to become master manipulators and Heather knew a connection existed.
The confl ict and confusion religion had created for them caused subsequent problems and self-appointed preachers still made them want to break glass.
“Maybe Adam and Eve only represented what we were all going to become – liars, cheaters, manipulators,”
Heather said.
“Is that really how you see the world?” Jade asked frowning.
“Yes,” Heather answered without hesitation.
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“God doesn’t fail, Heather. Even if He did, He would have had the power to wipe it away and start all over again.”
“Maybe He didn’t see it as a failure,” Heather mused.
“Maybe He fi nally had a nemesis and He liked the challenge. It’s not as lonely.”
“What are you saying? He started a war between good and evil because He was bored?”
“Well, why not?” Heather smirked but she couldn’t have been more serious.
“Why would someone so good invite evil into the world?” Jade asked.
“Maybe He found out that good isn’t good until it’s compared to bad,” Heather said.
Jade didn’t try to hide her shocked expression.
“Are you insane?”
Heather feigned a hurt look.
“Yeah, so?”
“Just because you prefer chaos to peace and normalcy, it doesn’t mean everyone does. God’s a little more omnipotent than that, don’t you think?” Jade asked.
“Do you even know what omnipotent means?”
Heather inquired with a knowing smirk.
“Of course I do,” Jade blushed. “Anyway, I need to get a shower.”
“Defi ne omnipotent,” Heather pressed.
“What? No. If you don’t know what it means, I can’t help you.”
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Jade knew she was busted in her fi b but wouldn’t admit it out loud at any cost. She just smiled and bowed her head sheepishly as she picked up a half-eaten jar of Gerber pears from the table. After receiving a case of baby food at her shower the previous month, the pregnant sister had made a point to taste one per day. Heather guessed the food would be long gone before Jade’s infant made it past breast-feeding.
“Shut up,” Jade fi nally answered and she fl icked a spoonful of baby food into her sister’s hair.
Heather didn’t move and she cursed her own grin, which continued to widen despite her commands not to. She was pissed off and amused at the same time and fl inched at the weird combination of feelings.
She was fi nished with the conversation anyway.
Other concerns were stealing her attention and she didn’t have any more time for religion. She knew right from wrong and she knew her own soul better than anyone.
There was no book or collective idea that would add to or detract from who she was. Looking back at her upbringing, she felt pity over how brainwashed some of her family members had been.
Heather rose from the couch and gently placed her coffee mug on the table. She hadn’t yet responded to her sister’s baby food assault and her lack of reaction was causing Jade more anxiety. Knowing how effective her silence was, Heather played it to the fullest and smiled sweetly at her cringing sister. When Billy jumped into 22
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her thoughts without warning, Heather experienced the familiar guilt and lust that always came.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jade as she watched the yellow slop drip from her sister’s bangs. The sudden change in Heather’s expression wasn’t lost on her.
“Nothing,” whispered Heather. She tried to force the glow back into her cheeks and the fun back into her voice but just wound up sounding insane.
“Can I have a towel please? I decided to take a shower here instead of at home.” She didn’t add she suddenly felt very dirty.
“Sure,” Jade answered. She tried to keep the frown from her eyebrows when she heard Heather’s shaky voice and noticed her change in posture.
Heather told herself that withholding and lying were
completely different animals and she pushed the creeping stress away. She had sibling revenge to tend to and needed to concentrate on the here and now. She could deal with the shame when it grew from a seed into an unavoidable pink elephant in the room.
Heather put a towel to her hair and smeared the remaining glob of baby food into it. Rather than folding it and rolling it into a ball for the laundry, she slapped the wettest part of it into Jade’s forehead.
Her sister giggled and threw the offending towel on the fl oor.
“Touché,” Jade said.
Heather walked down the hall toward the bathroom.
She couldn’t fi ght the urge to focus on thoughts of Billy 23
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and her heartbeat sped up at the realization she would see him soon.
All of her thoughts were knocked out completely when a sudden weight to the back of her head forced Heather to slam face fi rst into the wall. Her little sister had thrown the towel at her and Heather would have placed a bet that it had been seeped in more baby food before being fashioned into Jade’s weapon of choice.
“Oh! God, I’m sorry,” Jade said from behind. The obviously fake apology oozed from her lips.
Heather shot her a bird and smiled sweetly before kicking the bathroom door shut in Jade’s laughing face.
After showering and dressing in blue cotton pajama pants and a tank top, Heather decided she would grab a cup of coffee at the bookstore. She had no inhibitions about wearing her pajamas outside, always believing that if more people wore their jammies in public, the world would be a better place.
She stared into her eyes in the bathroom mirror.
Straining to see herself at the deepest level possible, she tried to send herself a telepathic message.
“Say no today,” she whispered.
Heather knew that planning didn’t matter when it came to Billy. No matter how she tried to prepare herself to do the right thing, something always thwarted plans made in good conscience. Usually, it was Billy himself who undid her efforts to end the affair.
The thought of him snapped her eyes open. She tried to block out his image but failed miserably.
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“Whore,” she hissed at her refl ection.
Billy’s early morning phone call had rattled her. She hadn’t meant to tell him to could come over but it somehow came out that way. He planned to be at her house in two hours and she couldn’t call him back to tell him she’d changed her mind.
It was one of the drawbacks of carrying on a secret relationship with a married man. Access to him was never free and never without some sort of danger attached.
Heather supposed that was part of the draw for both of them. Because of her restricted access to his life, Heather had never armed herself with his contact information.
Even in a life or death emergency, she wouldn’t be able to call her lover and let him know what had happened.
Contact always came from his side. Heather was simply in charge of the decision on whether to answer his private calls or not. It was the pattern of their entire relationship for the past eight years.
Before those eight years of marriage, they had spent six years partying. Their powerful union had fl ourished in the company of friends who played in a rock n’ roll band. Both Heather and Billy looked back on their time spent with the band as their most normal and their most happy. Once there were husbands and wives to concern themselves with, their gratifi cation came from a different place entirely.
Jade knew about Billy. She had, in fact, been the only one in Heather’s life who had actually met him. Their 25
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interactions had taken place during the old party days and had left a bad taste in her sister’s mouth.
After watching Billy comfortably walk the fl oors of the club she worked in, carelessly sniffi ng cocaine from a bag he held, Jade had gone off on him. He had laughingly apologized and Jade warned her he was bad news. Heather wondered how her life would have gone if she’d actually heeded her sister’s advice.
Heather hadn’t spoken of him for awhile. She refused to tarnish her sister’s view of her anymore than she already had. For all Jade knew, she had fi nally found a way to end the sick relationship. Heather could still hear her mother’s voice clearly.
“You’re the big sister; show a good example! ”
Heather squeezed Jade tightly and kissed the top of her head. Her shampoo had a fruity scent and Heather inhaled it throughout the entire hug. She gently patted the bump that was to become her nephew and smiled at the thought of Jade becoming a mom. Her sister would fi nally understand the love one couldn’t experience until looking into the eyes of her own child.
“I love you,” she told her sister
“I love you too,” Jade answered.
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Chapter 2
Witchy Woman
Smart and independent somehow didn’t equate to common sense in Heather’s life. She realized too often that she was hopeless when it came to paying attention to details. She was always so busy assessing the depth of everything around her that she usually missed what was in front of her. Shaking her head at the keyboard, she asked herself why.
“Why would I touch the keys with greasy hands?”
she mumbled.
It was a question she asked herself at least three times a day.
Her greatest trigger for an internal argument was when she lost her keys or spilled something on herself.
Each day, she pitched at least one fi t after losing something important or making an unnecessary mess.
Heather tried to look away from the keyboard but her conscience forced her eyes back. The keys were wet and shiny and the mouse pad had a grease stain in the shape of a fi nger.
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She looked at the remnants sitting on the table beside her and made a face at them. The sandwich was the source of the grease and she immediately shifted blame to the clerk who sold it to her. He had suggested the hot Italian sub and she had ordered the largest one they made. He should have told her it would be so greasy. Heather went to the counter for napkins and returned with an apple pie instead.
She dropped the pie onto her table and started collecting the trash she had accumulated when she noticed a man staring at her. He sat in the corner, easily noticeable by his blond scraggly hair. She could tell he was incredibly tall from his sitting position and she sensed he felt out of place in the bookstore. Heather offered a small smile in response to his stare. He returned the grin and waved with one hand.
Deciding her horizons had been broadened enough, she decided to go home and take a nap. Heading home had nothing to do with Billy, she told herself. If he came over, she wouldn’t let him in anyway. She reminded herself that if she felt her resolve weaken, she could just envision his wife.
Heather had never seen her but had long ago created an image of her. In her mind, Billy’s wife had long dark hair and deep brown eyes. Her complexion was perfect and her body was both fi t and curvy. In Heather’s reluctant thoughts, the wife is always crying because she’s just discovered her husband is a cheating bastard.
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Heather closed her eyes to block out the thought of the woman whose life she had ruined. The fact the poor woman didn’t even know about the destruction was the worst part. Billy’s wife thought she was married to the greatest man alive and lived in complete ignorance of his secret life.
Heather justifi ed the relationship for a long time but found she could no longer ignore the feeling the affair was somehow damaging her soul. She had begun to lose interest in the things that had always given her pleasure and she knew from experience that was a sign of trouble.
Boredom had always been Heather’s most dangerous enemy. It was when she lost interest in everything else that she began to seek out the chaos. Boredom led to com
pulsions and compulsions led to passionate reunions with old lovers or dangerous new meetings with strangers.
Other times, she hid snugly inside a bottle of pain pills.
Either way, whenever she got to the point of desperation, she stopped following the laws and rules that usually governed her.
The phone rang and Heather couldn’t grab it fast enough.
The caller had marked the call private. That meant it was either the Attorney General’s offi ce or it was Billy. She hoped shamelessly it was the latter.
“Hello?” she asked slowly.
Her eyes landed on the clock and it read 11:11. The coincidence amused her, as usual. The number came up so often she had included it in her license plate.
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“Hey, baby.”
Heather always had the same reaction hearing his voice. She was consumed with excitement, frustration and shame but the drama always provided a great diversion from her internal anxieties so she had allowed it in her life. At least, she had until recently.
“Hey,” she responded.
She felt like a goofy school girl and cursed herself for allowing him to have such an effect on her. Her relationship with Billy existed on a different level altogether, one she couldn’t explain to even herself.
“Are you ready for me?” he teased.
She could hear the sex dripping from his voice and her libido hit the speed it needed to turn itself on. Heather told herself to be fi rm and clear with him. She would tell him not to come.
“Always,” she answered instead. A soft whimper of shame escaped her throat.
“I’m on my way,” he said.
“Okay, but I have court at 1:00,” she rushed.
“That’s okay,” he said and it sounded like he was already doing things to himself. “We still have an hour.”
Heather could feel his smile, it was so loud. She could also sense the satisfaction and smugness coming from the other end of the receiver.
“All right, well,” she fl ubbed.
She couldn’t understand why Billy found her to be such a seductive force in his life when she was still so clumsy and speechless around him.
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“I’m on Bloomer Street right now,” he said.