Page 46 of Vipers & Roses

“Oh no,” I breathe, “an elderly lady lives there.”

He reaches the window edge, grabs the trough, and throws it over the side, aiming for the officers below. A woman screams from inside the apartment, and my hand goes to my chest.

Z has fallen silent, perhaps regretting her initial reaction to the wayward crim, while I feel utterly useless standing here watching as he moves deeper inside the small living room. We see a glimpse of a tiny, hunched-back old woman before the lights are switched off, and the room is steeped in darkness.

Even though I detect movement inside the apartment, it’s too dark, and the gap through the drapes is too narrow to pick up on what they’re doing. Meanwhile, the uniformed officers have been ordered to go back inside the apartment building, just as the old woman in the apartment opposite lets out a gut-wrenching scream.

“Oh my gosh,” I cry out. “Please don’t hurt her.”

There’s a loud bang that I assume is another door being kicked open, followed by shouting. A gun is fired, and excitement stirs down the street below, but we still can’t see what is going on. There’s more shouting and the sounds of furniture being thrown about, then the assailant appears at the window, desperate to climb out, but something…or someone has a hold on him.

My heart pummels in my chest as I catch the sight of a white shirt. I hope it’s Gabe, but his face is hidden behind the drape. Besides, there were a couple of other plain-clothed officers there, too, so it could be one of them. I’m expecting the white-shirt man to pull the assailant back inside, but there seems to be a conversation between them.

It isn’t until the perp is shoved further out the window that I realize what’s going on. The white-shirt man has a hold on him and threatens to drop him off the side while the perp struggles against his grip.

There is no use. There is nowhere to go and nowhere to hide because the sea of uniformed officers and their guns will get him one way or another. The way I see it, he’s got two options: escape White Shirt’s grasp and head down the ladder to be arrested by cops, or go up the ladder to the roof of the apartment building, and I don’t know where he’d go from there.

A sharp buzzing noise from the street below forces Z to lean over the balcony railing to see what it is while I keep my eyes on the man dangling from the window by the White Shirt.

Before my eyes, the White Shirt releases the assailant from his grasp, and he falls from the window and slams onto the roof of a parked car. It happens so fast, yet he falls in slow motion in my reflective mind, and the crashing sound of the assailant landing on the car’s roof shudders through my body.

When I check back at the window, I catch sight of the whites of someone's eyes, not looking down at the dead man but gazing up at me. It’s only for half a second before he disappears back into the shadows while I wonder what I just witnessed.

22

Without a doubt, it was him. I may have imagined some aspects of what took place before my eyes, such as how quickly he fell and whether or not he was pushed or let go, but I definitely did not imagine who was there in the white shirt. None other than Detective just call me Gabe.

I’m at home in the pool, where the world is a muffled symphony of splashing water and distant whistles. Yet, the thoughts persist, circling like a vulture over a carcass, fixated on one question, refusing to let go.

Why?

I didn’t sleep at all last night, partly due to the alcohol and green that kept me wired while my heart palpitated, where, at one point, I thought I was dying. Until I told myself that it was Z’s lethal shit and if I breathe calmly and drink lots of water, I should be okay. But mostly, it was thoughts of the man crashing onto the car roof and falling still, lifeless, yet definite.

That was the first time I’d seen a human die before me, although I’ve imagined death many times in my head, and the gun in my hand was the cause of their deaths. But I had a visceral reaction to the cracking sound of the car roof and the gasps from the crowds who watched on helplessly. There is nothing you can do to save a man while he’s falling, but there’s plenty you can do to stop it from happening in the first place, which brings me back to the original question.

Why?

Why did Gabe release his grip and let the perpetrator fall to his death? It was a deliberate move, a deliberate releasing of his hold on the man. What did the man do or say to provoke it?

The pool's edge is near as I unconsciously freestyle, my favorite stroke, taking a breath when my body tells me to; otherwise, keeping my head underwater in this quiet serenity. I’m in a zone, yet death is never far from my mind. Not my death, but the death of others. Yet my growing fascination with death is increasing my propensity to want to live and thrive so I can take the life of another. They didn’t deserve breath and beating heart in the first place.

As I reach the end of the lane, I dip down under the water, turn and push hard against the side of the pool, and glide through the turquoise water, thinking of death and life and murder. I’m both disappointed and pleased that seeing that man didn’t affect me as it once would. This is both good and bad. Good, because it means I’m hardening to my task where I will face death head-on. But it’s also bad that I’m becoming indifferent and numb, lacking empathy. I think one of the most significant failures of human nature is to either feel too much or nothing at all. A well-adjusted human being would be somewhere in the middle, whereas me…I don’t know where I am.

Did Gabe see me? Did Gabe see me watching him? He gazed directly at me, or at least it seemed he was looking up at me. Maybe I imagined that, too. Perhaps he was looking at me to see if I was looking at him or just happened to lift his eyes in my direction by coincidence.

Be still, brain. You are overthinking.

I come to the end of the pool and decide to stop. I have the energy in my reserves to swim another couple of laps, but I’m running out of time because I have an early class in the horticulture glasshouse and am required to work in the University Gardens for two hours.

As I rest my feet on the bottom of the pool and take my goggles off, I sense someone standing over me and glance up to find narrowed eyes that run over my wet face and land on my squished breasts in this lapis bathing suit.

“Your stroke is still good,” he speaks first because I’m tongue-tied and unprepared to deal with my greatest enemy. I become self-conscious of my body and sink into the water to hide my bare skin, but the water is so clear that he’s likely to still be able to see.

After a few seconds of me not responding, he adds, “Ever thought about rejoining the team?”

It crosses my mind that The Pig may have contacted him, if they’re still buddies, and updated him with my volatile reaction to him being in my family home. This was a dreadful mistake on my behalf because I needed to stay under the radar, but at that moment, I was bamboozled and needed to think quickly.

“I don’t have the enthusiasm for long hours in the pool anymore,” I answer, biting my tongue when I have the urge to blurt, ‘because you raped me. You ruined my life.’ I’m glad I stopped myself because I need him to relax and rest assured in the false belief that he’s invincible and has power and control over me and, I suspect, other women.

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