The Fifth Floor by Michael Harvey

Author:Michael Harvey
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

Dinner was roasted chicken and some salad. Afterward, we sat at the kitchen table with a bottle of wine and cigarettes. That’s when my client decided to tell me how it started.

“He took a dozen eggs out of the fridge.” Janet nodded her head as if I didn’t believe her. I hadn’t said a word.

“We were married less than a month. It was a Saturday morning and I had to take Taylor to a soccer game. Told him I didn’t have time to pick up his dry cleaning.”

She topped off her glass and offered the bottle to me. I shook my head.

“He comes downstairs. Hungover like a dog. Asks me what I said. So I told him again that I couldn’t pick up the dry cleaning. He goes to the fridge and gets the eggs. Grabs me by the back of the neck and sits me down at the table.”

“You try and stop him?”

“Honestly, I didn’t know what was going on. Besides, he was stronger than I knew. At least he was then. So I sat right here. And he cracked an egg. Over my head. Right down my face.”

Janet turned at an angle and took a hit off her cigarette, a single eye fixed on me as she blew a stack of smoke into the space between us.

“He didn’t say anything. Just held my shoulders and head and cracked the egg. First one, then another. Probably about a half dozen in all. Then he left. Went back upstairs to bed. His way of telling me who was boss.”

“What did you do?”

She laughed and I caught a flash of her eyeteeth. “Hard-ass Janet, right? Should have left, run for the door? Well, I didn’t. Mostly because of this.”

Janet waved her glass around the house in Sauganash.

“I didn’t want to lose all this. For Taylor, I told myself. So I cleaned up and I stayed. Course it got worse. The eggs were just the message. After that came the pushing. Yelling. Slaps turned into fists. Rough sex, whenever and however he wanted. You know how it goes. You’ve seen it.”

I took a sip of wine and the two of us sat with things. However they were.

“I knew someday he’d be done with me,” she said. “Then he’d go after Taylor.”

“So it is like that.”

My client nodded to herself and something moved behind her eyes. “Not yet, but it could be. Anyway, I couldn’t take the chance. Couldn’t just wait around.”

“So you came to see me. Almost a year ago.”

“You were a friend. Okay, once we were more than friends.” She took a cautious look up from under her bruises. “You thought any more about that?”

“About what?”

“About us. About what I told you.”

“I try not to.”

“It never would have worked, Michael. You know that.”

“There might have been other options.”

She began to speak, then settled for a hard grimace.

“Let’s not get into this again,” I said. “What’s done is done. In your next life, just tell the guy.”

She shook her head. “It was my body.

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