Look Closer

If I’m okay with it?

I am one hundred percent, absolutely, completely okay with it.

Why do you think I’m with you, Christian? Because I care about you? Because you’re got? Because I’m a “lonely wife” who cant get enough of your giant, throbbing manhood?

Please. I picked you for this very task. I’ve known about Lauren since before I met you. Today was just the day I decided to tell you. I’ve been planning this since the first time I walked into your office.

You’re not a successful investor You’re Nick Caracci, a two-bit swindler, a con man, a grifter, who thinks he’s got the jackpot with me.

You were never going to invest that money. I was never going to let you near that money.

I just need you to help me kill Lauren Betancourt.

I remember what Vicky said to me. That insane trust language that kept Simon’s wife away from the trust money until ten years of marriage.

Simon‘s father didn’t trust me, she said.

Ol’ Theodore thought you were a moneygrubbing whore, Vicky. And it seems like he was right. How’d that make you feel?

What were you doing, Mrs. Vicky Lanier Dobias, on the night Simon’s dad was murdered?

“But you’ll obsess about this the rest of your life, Simon. I know you. You’ll obsess about Dean Cumstain and Reid Southern like you obsess over that high school jock Mitchell Kitchens.”

Simon hired a lawyer and fought the case up to the city of appeals, which ruled in Simon’s favor. Nobody got to ask the shrink what Simon said to her that morning.

The police probably still think Simon killed his father, but realized, at some point, they couldn’t prove it.

“The year of 2010! I believe it involved a grand jury looking into the murder of a prominent-“

Twelve years ago. Fifteen years ago. He didn’t pick those numbers at random.

You’ve been busy, Dean.

It did make me feel better, actually, and here’s and example of why you will never read this journal, Lauren. I wouldn’t want you to know how much I wanted to hear those words. I know how that sounds, but it’s true. I was hoping you’d tell me you were unhappily married, too.

We spent the next hour going back and fourth on our marriages. Sometimes it’s easier with a stranger, not someone close to you. And maybe it’s even easier to do it with someone who’s been a recent stranger, but whom you once loved more than any with whom you once were intimate.

Or maybe it’s none of that, and we just connect.

You need to stay right where you’ve been, in my rearview mirror. I’m better now. I know I’m better. Vicky says I’m better. I cant go back there. Everything’s fine.

Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll put you behind me. I’ve put you behind me Lauren. You are officially yesterday’s news, or nineteen years ago’s news.

Okay, that’s that. I’m going to forget I ever saw you today.

Why do privileged old white men in black robes get to decide what it’s like to be an African American kid stopped on the street by a cop? Why do lawyers think that saying “inter alia” instead of “among other things” makes them sound smarter? Why does the word “queue” have not only four consecutive silent letters, which is bad enough, but also the same ones repeated? What, they weren’t silent enough the first time through?

He’s a politician, not an academic. A blue blood, not a scholar. He’s everything I hate about academia.

I don’t know why oddness and contradiction call me, but they always have, maybe because of their familiarity, because I see so much of those traits in myself.