Holly outlined her ample lips with the Chocolate Kisses pencil.
"You smell good." Ted Simmons stood behind his wife at the foyer mirror, observing the feminine ritual. "It's almost midnight."
"I can tell time, Ted." His chiseled reflection caught her eye as she ran the brush through her shoulder-length hair. An unexpected shiver ran through her.
"Isn't it a little late to be going to the office?"
Eyes averted, Holly dropped her lip pencil and brush into the zippered section of her leather shoulder bag. "I have work to do." She pulled the trench coat around her slim frame. "We have that Nissan presentation tomorrow, and we're not ready. The copy needs tweaking and--"
"Why can't you just go in a little earlier tomorrow?"
"That's cutting it too close." She looked in the mirror for a final assessment, feeling his presence behind her.
"Were you thinking of walking?"
Holly turned toward her husband and followed his eyes down to her red stiletto pumps. They killed her feet and were impossible to walk in, but high heels made her legs look sexy.
"Actually, these shoes are very comfortable."
"So, I take it that's a yes?"
"No." Holly rarely drove to work, since they lived only a block from the office; walking alone in Hollywood at midnight was a different story. "I'm not in the mood for a late-night mugging, even though I will have my trusty weapon with me."
She reached into her purse and pulled out her key ring; it had a tiny canister of pepper spray attached to it. "Take that! And, that!!" she said, pretending to spray an intruder.
"That stuff is three years old, at least. You sure it works?"
"Actually, it doesn't."
"Then why is it on your key ring?"
"So I look like I mean business."
"Oka-ay."
"You treat me like a little kid. Why do you do that?"
"I just want you to be safe."
Their eyes met for a moment, and then Holly busied herself finding the car key.
"I thought I'd take the Volvo--before the Repo Man nabs it."
Ted opened the front door. "I won't wait up."
"Why don't you come with me?"
"At this hour?"
"You can bond with the night watchman while we work." She prayed he would take a pass.
"We, as in John Sutherland?"
"Nissan is our account," she said, and then deliberately escalated the situation. "Remember how it felt to have deadlines--to be responsible for two car payments? To have a purpose?"
"What a bitch!" he said as he turned toward the stairs. "I'm going to bed."
"You know what I meant! Don't twist this whole thing into something else," she said to his back as he plodded up the carpeted steps, without saying another word.
In her heart, Holly knew she should slip out of her coat and shoes and follow her husband of fourteen years up to their bedroom, but she couldn't. Too much had come between them, for way too long. The downward spiral had started after Teddy's death four years earlier.
It was Ted's turn to drive his son to school. He had an early meeting, so Holly volunteered--even though she knew the gesture might make her late for an important production meeting. Two blocks from Bancroft Middle School, she ran a yellow light; a UPS truck t-boned the passenger side of the Chevy wagon; Ted and Holly Simmons' only child died on impact. The accident sat in the middle of the marriage like a five-ton elephant that neither of them would acknowledge.
Ted lost his job with Arnold Computer Technology shortly thereafter, and hadn't worked since. He spent most of his time lost in a fog of depression. With only one person bringing home a paycheck, the Simmons' saving account was almost depleted; this added pressure was pinching Holly's last nerve.
"Go on, crawl back into your cocoon!" Holly screamed up the staircase. "I never dreamed I'd end up being the only bread-winner!" And, as a final jab, she blurted, "Why don't you get off your dead ass and find a job?" before rushing out the front door and slamming it behind her.
She regretted the hateful words the minute they came out...
The night watchman, Eddie Orenthal, recorded the time: 0300 hours, and slid the log book toward Holly. "I need your John Hancock again, Mrs. Simmons."
"I signed in." The flustered woman checked the buttons on her blouse as she processed the crude emphasis on the last syllable of the patriot's surname. She pulled the London Fog around her and cinched the belt.
"You know the after-hours drill, ma'am. Sign in. Sign out."
Holly gave him a mental one-fingered salute, but maintained a congenial tone, humoring the odious man as she scribbled her signature. "Goodnight, Eddie. See you in the morning."
"It is morning, ma'am."
"No rest for the wicked." She absently smoothed her tousled hair: "You know how it is when work piles up."
"I sure do, ma'am." He turned the book around and checked the entries. "You told me all about it when you signed in at 0011 hours --right after Mr. Sutherland. Remember?" Underlining her first signature with his finger, he glanced up at the crimson-faced woman.
"Yes, well..." She had babbled non-stop while signing in, guilt running away with her tongue; now the bastard was spanking her with it. Holly wanted to reach over the counter and strangle the old man.
"Have a good night, ma'am. I mean--morning."
Counting to ten, she pushed through the double doors of Huston's Advertising, and out into the nippy night. A shadow tracked Holly as she click-clacked cross the gravel-peppered blacktop surface, car keys in hand. Hearing a 'crunch' behind her, she stopped and turned. A man in a long, hooded robe was standing at the edge of the lot. A monk? In Hollywood? At this hour?
Instinctively clutching the canister of pepper spray, she turned, and on unexpectedly wobbly legs, hurried toward the metallic-gray Volvo.
Suddenly, the holy man was standing between Holly and her car. "Passion is the evil in adultery." A tenor voice rose and fell in a melodic cadence.
Saint Augustine?
Holly was frantically trying to remember the passage Father Shanahan recited during mass one Sunday when she was a teenage. He is no less guilty than if he was caught in the act...or something like that...when the man spoke again.
"How was your evening?" the hypnotic cadence continued. "Was it satisfying?"
His voice was vaguely familiar, a bit like the late Father Shanahan's. She couldn't see his face, but she caught a glint of metal from inside the hood. A monk with a nose ring?
Holly glanced toward the safe haven of the building. Eddie Orenthal was hanging up the phone in the lobby.
"I'm not going to harm you--not anymore than you have already harmed yourself, " the man said, as if reading her mind. "Where is Mr. Sutherland when you need him? Home with his wife?"
He took another step toward her.
Holly cut to the left, circumventing him, and ran the final distance to her car. She could hear him right behind her, and turned to face him when she reached the driver's side door, pepper spray at the ready.
A wind gust blew the hood from his head, revealing a shock of raven hair and a golden loop in his nose; he was a boy, barely into his teens--about the same age her son would be.
"You're not a monk. You're just a kid!" the surprised woman said as she lowered her weapon.
"Do you need me to be a monk? Or Father Shanahan, perhaps?"
Once again feeling threatened, she pointed the nozzle at his face.
"Something to confess?"
"I'm not afraid to use this!"
"Do you really think he will leave his wife, if he won't even walk you to your car?"
How could this kid know? She glanced over at the building again; Eddie was standing in the window, looking out toward the lot. Had he been running off at the mouth? Some kind of payback?
"See you in the morning, sweet cheeks," the stranger said, in John Sutherland's voice.
Totally spooked, Holly backed up as far as she could, her spine pressed against the car door, the cold metal burning through the microfiber of her trench coat.
"The union, then, of male and female for the purpose of procreation is the natural good of marriage," he said in his own voice, as he placed his hand firmly on the door behind her. "But, he makes a bad use of this good who uses it bestially, so that his intention is on the gratification of lust..."
Eddie Orenthal paced in the lobby, eyes locked on the parking lot, as he felt for his non-existent revolver. He had worked for Huston's for ten years and was good at his job. But, the former cop was not allowed to carry a weapon since his forced retirement from the police force. The ex-Marine lived alone, his wife having died ten years earlier. He had recently celebrated his sixtieth birthday, and not a soul at Huston's had remembered it, including Holly Simmons.
He glanced toward the telephone. "I have to do something!" the frustrated man blurted--his voice echoing in the empty lobby. He checked the directory, picked up the receiver, and dialed the number listed under Holly Simmons, Advertising Executive.
On the third ring, someone answered. "Mr. Simmons?...It's me, Eddie...the night watchman...at Huston's...We met at the Christmas party...Last year...I know it's late...I hate to wake you, but it looks like your wife is in some kind of trouble out in the parking lot...I didn't think I should get the cops involved--since you're right around the corner...I know it's after three, but I figured...Yeah, I know she's a big girl, but I think you'd better get over here...I don't carry a firearm, sir...Okay...Just thought I should give you a heads-up. I know if it were my wife...Well, have a good night, then."
Eddie hung up and started to dial again, then thought better of it, and continued his vigil at the window.
Holly was pinned against the car door, unable to flee. She could feel the boy's breath on her face. He smelled like vanilla, and ivory soap; the nostalgic fragrance lulled her, momentarily. Her arms fell to her sides; the key ring tumbled to the pavement.
A slash of biting, winter wind slapped her back to reality. "What do you want from me?"
"What do you want, Holly Simmons?" His sweet breath warmed her face.
Not another soul seemed to exist in the bizarre world she inhabited with this unsettling stranger, except the night watchman. She glanced toward Huston's, again. Why hadn't Eddie come out to help her? Where were the police?
She recognized the car as it screeched to a stop in front of the building. Eddie hurried through the double doors. Reenergized, Holly kicked off her shoes, and gave the monk a shove. She heard him hit the pavement with a 'thud' as she sprinted toward her husband, the rough gravel shredding the soles of her bare feet.
"So, Mr. Simmons, I didn't know what to do. I started to call the cops three times. But I thought they might--you know--so I didn't," Eddie said as he watched the shoeless, wild-eyed woman run across the lot.
"She's been under a lot of stress lately--actually for quite a while." Ted Simmons locked eyes with Eddie Orenthal. "All those extra hours she's been putting in, for one thing. Well, you know..."
"I know she doesn't like me, and I didn't think she would want me interfering."
"You did a fine job Eddie," Ted's eyes welled-up. "Just fine..."
"It was like she was struggling with someone, Mr. Simmons, but there wasn't anyone there."
Holly jumped over the curb, her shoulder-length hair wild in the wind, her bare feet bleeding.
Ted Simmons held open his arms as his wife ran toward him.
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