Mask of Flies by Eric Leitten

Author:Eric Leitten [Leitten, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wall Walker
Published: 2015-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7: Allie

She had kept telling herself that Rick would return to his normal self—in due time—but during the week following the bizarre reunion, he had distanced himself further away. The morning after getting home from Niagara Falls, he had taken a shower and then insisted on looking for a new job, right away, leaving the house without saying another word about it. It was night when he returned and attempted to go to bed unnoticed, but Allie waited up, wondering the whole time if his behavior was some sort of nervous breakdown. She remembered what Marco had said at Glen Falls: he thought Rick felt undeserving of her. But as Rick stood there in the living room, the only recognizable emotion she got from him was coldness.

“I got a job at the youth detention center downtown, as a janitor. I’ll be working the nightshift,” Rick said in a foreign vocalization, expressionless. Something was wrong, seriously off.

Allie thought she had to do something, or was she overacting? Smothering him in inquisition could make it worse. “But we will be on opposite shifts—we will never see each other.”

“Something we will learn to deal with.”

Awkward silence filled the weekend. When she and Rick had been in the same room—he sat silent and retreated to the basement after only a short time. Stirring questions never broke the surface: what of the other woman, the pregnancy test? It’s as if Rick anticipated these questions and willfully evaded them.

At dinner, he ate scarcely, perhaps understandable, considering he had been recently stuffed into a trunk and faced with the expectation of being butchered. Broken again after trying so hard at a normal life, she knew he needed her help. But that underlying sentiment of betrayal blossomed, the other woman, and she wondered what else was omitted from his story and what were lies.

On Saturday night the home phone rang; the caller ID stated the number as restricted. Allie screened it through her home answering machine. The recording clicked on: Rick and Allie’s voices took turns delivering their little away message. Now it sounded so fake to her. She went into the kitchen.

A familiar voice talked from the machine: “Allie, it’s Marco. Listen, I need to talk to you about Rick. Call me as soon as possible—and be careful.” His voice wavered at the end.

Be careful? What did he know? She did not want to be baited into another awkward conversation with inquisitive “friends”, but there was a certain dread in his voice.

The heater rumbled steadily downstairs, and Allie didn’t think Rick could hear the message over the noise, but she peeked from the top of the stairway and saw him rising from the couch. She hurried towards the answering machine; Marco’s message could worsen her boyfriend’s funk. As far as she could remember, Rick was a man of privacy when it came to two things: his past and his love-life. Friend or no friend, if he found out that Marco was butting into private matters, digging

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