True Love is a funny thing. It sounds good on paper, two becoming one and all that. Only one problem....
Dogs eat dogs in this world, and in the Gutter, them dogs can get mighty hungry.
Dogs eat dogs in this world, and in the Gutter, them dogs can get mighty hungry.
True Love by Nikki Palomino
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I sat in the Ford, time snipped in two, the windshield
wipers clicking rain drops into arcs. Bobby Lee told me to wait for him here on
the narrow road against the river. I did what he’d said, cut the headlights,
the heater, and formed minutes idling while he drove the guy’s car into the
woods, where exactly he wouldn’t say.
“Better that way.” He’d come back running. I had to be
ready.
This murder wasn’t his first.
I sucked the cold air down my drain-pipe throat. I glanced
down at the seat, my blue eyes adjusting to the lack of light, stared at the
.38, the guy’s wallet, the bag stuffed with the plant’s earnings. I wanted to
study the guy’s picture on his driver’s license, see the face before Bobby Lee
had shot him in the head.
Bobby Lee had said the guy drove the same way home each
night at six, winter-dark, as predictable as the plant owner. He carried the
wallet, the paper bag and coins jingling like bells. Ashamed, I wanted the
score between my fingers, our dreams, a bouquet of roses and marriage.
“True love is sharing in a murder.” Bobby Lee was right.
No more groping drunks in the bar I worked. I’d wear that
diamond ring as proud as a mother cat. Envy would streak red down the faces of
other barmaids, just like it had when Bobby Lee, strong and handsome, walked up
to me and placed a gardenia on my tray. Took three months before he’d kissed
me. Had told me he believed in freedom without strings that bogged other men
down. He was just the right combination to set off my heart’s fireworks. Until
Bobby Lee, I had not perfected make-up, read love poems or cared if I lived or
died. With Bobby Lee, I could smile. Only in his arms did I feel the warm, large
wind blowing beneath the scudding stars.
His voice muffled, he asked me to open the window. I
hesitated, shooting a quick glance at the wood bridge ahead in the hopes Bobby
Lee might be running through the darkened rain. With the next tap, I rolled the
window a couple inches down.
“Ma’am?”
I fumbled with my purse, my memory spiraling downward with
inner doubt. What if Bobby Lee’s promise to honeymoon where jagged green fronds
of palms line the streets was just a lie? What if true love was really the
draft of a bad poem?
A less gentle tap against the window.
In one quick move, I slipped out of park and floored the
pedal, gunning the Ford’s engine. The car jolted forward to leave a shocked
sheriff behind.
“Surprise, remember that one word, girl,” Bobby Lee once said.
Bobby Lee was right. I glanced behind me to see the
Sheriff trip and fall on his way back to his car. I could get away. I slid
across the wood bridge, the headlights guiding my path between the dark shapes
along the road.
I couldn’t stop. There was no time. Bobby Lee ran out from
the woods onto the road and I slammed into him. His body flipped up the
front of the hood, and my arms flew away from the steering wheel.
The last two things I remembered hit me at once. His words true love is sharing in a murder, and my long legs tangled and twined like two slippery worms.
The last two things I remembered hit me at once. His words true love is sharing in a murder, and my long legs tangled and twined like two slippery worms.
