“I thought you were going to be out until later.”
“No. I said I’m going out later.”
“Oh.” She doesn’t seem interested and there’s silence for a few minutes. I wait for her to make a phone call or mention something about what she’d just experienced at the junkyard, but it never happens.
A few minutes later, the male voice comes back, asking her if she cleaned the bathroom, “because it looks like shit.”
I don’t know who he is, but I don’t like him.
“If I cleaned it, it wouldn’t look like shit, now would it?” she asks sensibly.
“I thought you were gonna clean it.”
“Tomorrow.”
“What’d you do today?” he asks.
“Survived,” she shoots back.
“You don’t have to be an asshole, I was just asking a question,” he tells her.
I already want to punch this guy in the goddamn face.
“It’s the anniversary of my dad dying,” she states. “I did what I always do.”
“Oh.” He pauses, and I hope he feels like a douchebag. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
Her voice is so…unlike what I’d heard in the few minutes I’d been with her. Robotic.
Guy clears his throat. “You never did tell me what that was, you know.”
“I know.”
He waits. “So, you wanna tell me what it is you do? I always wondered.”
“I’m going to take a shower,” she says, as if he hadn’t spoken.
And then there’s silence. I hear what I assume is the bathroom door closing, then him mutter, “Fucking cunt,” and I’m tempted to turn the amplifier off.
A few minutes later the side door slams shut and a skinny dude with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a limp brown ponytail steps into the driveway. He drops an empty milk jug into a bin by the door and gets in his truck. I watch as it backs out and debate abandoning my post so I can follow the little weasel.
But I stay put.
I wait—and swat off fantasies—while she showers and remain where I’m at for the rest of the evening. Even after it seems like she’s gone to bed, I still wait.
I’m not sure what I’m waiting for until the male returns, nearing 2:30 am. I was sort of napping in my seat with a hell of a sore neck when he came weaving up the road. He took the corner of his driveway too fast and knocked over the empty garbage can by the edge of the road.
He’s muttering as he climbs out of the car, but he hauls his drunk ass to the end of the driveway to retrieve the garbage can. By the time he makes it back in the house, I have a bad feeling. Nothing too ominous, nothing relating to my job, but a hunch about the nature of their relationship that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I turn the amplifier back up and listen to his drunken fumbling for a few minutes. I eye up the windows. I already pinpointed her bedroom when she went into it. Against the interest of stealth, I drop the amplifier and creep up the driveway, alongside the house and around to the back where the bedroom is. Like the living room, it has more windows than it should. I find a good one and peer inside.
The drunk asshole is climbing into bed with her. I feel like I should leave, but I stay. This is not what I was assigned to do. This has nothing to do with the mission. What’s more, I don’t want to see it.
Her back is to him when he climbs in, her eyes closed. She doesn’t look peaceful, exactly, more like… determined?
He rolls over and starts pawing at her. His hand closes over her breast and her eyes open, not a trace of surprise, like she’d just woken up, but her lip curls up faintly in disgust. When he doesn’t stop pawing, she finally lets him know she’s awake and pushes his hand off her, pointedly giving him her shoulder.