The Rest Will Come Read online

  “Sure,” Emma replied. “Let me use the bathroom first.”

  Mark looked different when Emma emerged from the restroom. His hands were shoved down deep into his pockets, his shoulders up closer to his ears. He stood rigid, almost on edge as he looked around. That sly smirk of his had dissolved.

  He did not say anything as he escorted Emma to her car. He swung his hand beside his body now, cradling his phone in his palm, dragging his feet across the ragged asphalt. Emma rounded behind her car and stopped beside her trunk. She could feel the change in his demeanor bristling along her spine.

  “Do you want to ride together, or should I follow you to this place?” she asked, cocking her head to examine him.

  Mark did not look up at her. He stood there, clinging to his phone.

  “You know, Emma, I don’t think this is going to work,” he said, low and quiet.

  “What do you mean, the restaurant?”

  “No, this. You know, my heart is just not in this.”

  ***

  Gradually, by degrees, Emma’s senses returned to her. First she actually heard the cars on the distant interstate and recognized how close other people could be to her assault. Then she saw the wash of the florescent bar signs on the parking lot and remembered the few staggering would-be witnesses inside the bar. She jerked her paralyzed hand only to realize her escape was hindered, her fingers trapped in the keys that were embedded in his flesh.

  As the shock absorbed into her brain, the panic blazed up around the edges.

  My keys are in his face. Holy shit, my keys are in his face! What did I do? What was I thinking? What am I going to do now? His eye is fucking gone. There is no way I won’t go to jail for this.

  Her torso collapsed on itself as her head dropped and her shoulders rounded in sympathy. Yet she remained tethered to him by those bloody keys.

  The jarring realization momentarily derailed Emma, even with Mark starting to wilt beside her. A sputter erupted from his lips, and the blood droplets spattering her face snatched her back to the present moment, to the real time of her crime.

  His one surviving eye was no longer crazed and engaged. The eyelid flirted on the surface as the eye adopted a distant reach. He wobbled on his feet, knees going weak and gummy. His instability dragged her along, tangling them in an awkward dance. Blood started to drip from his parted lips. The flowing red wave consumed her hand, and she began to panic as she lost sight of that part of her body.

  Oh God, he’s going down.

  She whipped her head around frantically, searching for an inspiration in the empty parking lot. There was only her car directly beside them. Her spacious trunk bumped up against her hip. She jolted at the idea and dragged him closer to her car.

  She hesitated at the thought but only for a split second. Before she had accepted her decision, she slapped clumsily at her pocket, hunting for her keys. Then she hung her head at the obvious realization that those keys were laced into her fingers and punched into his face. Another level of distress pressed her heart into her throat as she looked around wildly.

  She had no other choice. She allowed her free fingers to trace her other arm up toward his face, cringing and hesitating as she moved into his blood. She squeezed her eyes shut and fumbled around the mess interlacing them. Thankfully, her thumb found the trunk release button on her key fob from memory. The rubber button was slick with his blood, but when she depressed it, the latch released behind him.

  He did not even notice; he was too lost in his own decline.

  The trunk lid lifted slowly, as if inviting him in. Emma took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut. She pressed a breath out through her tense lips.

  Do it. You have to do it. Just do it.

  She forced herself to plant her free hand into his shoulder and shove him back toward the trunk. He did not resist. She did not know if he even noticed. He was delirious from his blood loss, awash with his injury. His nerves were far too occupied to worry about Emma clumsily trying to stuff him into her trunk with one hand. With little force, he toppled against the frame of her car, limbs splaying out like an overturned turtle. His head rocked from side to side, confused, and he ejaculated a sound somewhere between a moan and a scream.

  “Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit!” Emma hissed.

  She braced his collapsing body with her hip, jutting her pelvis toward him as she imagined she might have done to him under completely different circumstances. If he fell to the ground, she would never be able to heave him up.

  The keys made an awful squishing sound as they jostled the wound in his face; more of his blood poured over her knuckles. She pressed her hip harder into his drooping body and felt the tremor rippling through him. A strange, gasping wheeze pushed through his lips, escalating into an awkward moan. Frantically, Emma gripped his shoulder and swung her head around to survey the parking lot again. Her hair slapped against her face and into her still-wide mouth as she scanned the darkness.

  Nothing. They were still alone.

  She turned back to Mark, whose boring face was becoming more unrecognizable by the blood-drenched second. His body weight crushed down on her wobbling pelvis, heavier and heavier. He would soon be crumpled on the ground, perhaps on top of her, and then there would be no avoiding detection, no denying what she had done. What else could she tell a police officer with her hand still embedded in his face?

  Emma sucked the air back into her lungs, tasted the metallic smell of his blood, and shoved against his shoulder. Pushing him downward, she bucked her hips up to guide him over the bumper of her car. Mark’s limbs thrashed, maybe deliberately, maybe haphazardly. She could not tell if he was clawing against her, if he was cognizant at all.

  At last, he crested the hump of the bumper, and his body weight worked in collaboration with her, guiding him into the flat, empty bed of her trunk. His back hit first, and his head bounced after it, dragging her along with it. His one eye shut, his breathing became slow and weak against the side of her hand, and his body fell still.

  Emma had to disentangle herself. Her fingers snared in her key ring against his face felt like manacles around her wrists. They were weighing her down, trapping and confining her, exactly like the handcuffs the police would snap on her. They kept her locked in her attack and all the consequences that could follow.

  Mark was not moving. She jerked on her arm. His head followed with the wet sound of the wound, yet they remained connected. Even the blood flow had slowed. She pulled again, harder. His head came up from the trunk, still clinging to her keys, but she found more space between her knuckles and his eye socket.

  She paused again, spinning to suspiciously sweep the scene. She waited for one of the sad barflies to walk out and witness her trying to wrench her hand out of Mark’s pulverized face. Still nothing.

  Emma lifted her foot and placed a high heel on the bumper of the car. She planted her palm on Mark’s chest and shoved against him, tugging on her arm again. The traumatized flesh and cartilage groaned while she grunted. She simply could not get enough leverage.

  Wobbling on one heel, she moved her other foot inside the trunk and positioned it beside her palm on Mark’s chest, pressing the heel down into the fabric of his shirt. She breathed in and pulled as hard as she could, pushing and kicking against his chest. Her arm shook, then with a loud pop she was released.

  Emma toppled over backward and met the unforgiving asphalt below. Her liberated hand dropped to the dirt, keys still in her grip. She wiggled her fingers and peeled them from sticking together in his thick blood. She sat up quickly and pulled her heels beneath her, attempting to stand unassumingly, slammed the trunk lid shut, and darted toward the driver’s side of her car.

  With the door closed behind her, Emma felt more concealed. She hesitated briefly, allowing the shock to swell back over her. Without her realizing it, her eyes had welled up and tears spilled down her cheeks. Hot and frantic tears.

  She lifted her hand to extract the keys from her fingers. When her eyes
met her own gnarled paw, she did not recognize it. She did not want to touch it. Cringing, she stripped the keys from between her fingers. Chunks of flesh or eye or who knew what part of Mark encrusted each key, filled in each groove of the teeth. She could not bring herself to examine them closely.

  The thought crept up into her disoriented brain, softly, almost naturally: Clean off the keys. You can’t get his DNA in your ignition. Use something you can burn. The rationale comforted her, made her feel more genuine. She let her breathing deflate as she reached into the pocket of her door and brought out a napkin.

  She wiped each key meticulously, using her nail behind the paper to dig into each crevice. She had watched enough crime scene investigation shows and documentaries to know it was not enough to eradicate the evidence. Still, it was better than nothing. And having her keys look familiar brought some measure of calm over her chest.

  She needed to get out of there. Flee the scene. Then perhaps she could figure out what she would do next.

  Emma’s eyes were fixed and distant as she drove. She saw the road in front her, only she was not present behind that sight. Her consciousness was locked in that moment, infinitely looping the instant in the parking lot. Over and over, she relished the vindicating and disgusting feeling of his face collapsing against her blow; the uncomfortable warmth of his leaking blood; heard the weak rasp of his breathing as he tumbled into her trunk.

  You know, my heart is just not in this.

  Hearing the words in her brain reignited her rage.

  My heart is just not in this.

  Every time she replayed that sentence, each time his voice said it again, her regret and panic receded, disappearing under the swell of her righteous anger.

  He had dragged her out on another first date she did not even want to attend. He had invited her to this horrible bar so inconveniently far from her house, where she could have sat resigned to her single fate in yoga pants with an inappropriately large glass of wine. He had baited her with the chance that, though he may not be enticing online, he might be The One.

  All of that, to leave her after one horrendous beer.

  What had happened while she was in the bathroom? What had he seen in her that was so revolting that she was not even worth dinner? What possibly could he have had better to do?

  The more she thought, the faster her heart pounded hot and heavy against her ribs. The more she wallowed in his offense, the more she relished the memory of her keys jabbed straight into his stupid eye. She wound her hands around the steering wheel tighter, gripping until the blood was forced from her knuckles.

  He deserved this. Just another asshole. Another dick! How can they all be like this? Is there not one decent, marginally attractive guy out there? How can this be so hard? I’m done. I’m so done.

  A familiar pain opened up in her chest, that same gaping hole that grew deeper and heavier with each failure in this dating endeavor. It felt like a weight on her ribs, crushing the life out of her. The pressure replaced her breath with thin, acidic-tasting anxiety. It felt like a cavern below her heart, expanding in emptiness and isolation, growing gradually until it would be large enough to swallow her. That uncomfortable, anxious sensation rippled out. Desperation reached its tentacles into her limbs, making them unsettled, and wafted up into her eyes until they were filled with its reflection. She felt sadness at the growing reality of her hopelessness.

  The same familiar thought danced through her darkness. I just want a family.

  With that poignant and too-familiar concept, her anger withered into despair. Her body retreated and she dropped her grip from the steering wheel, lowered her shoulders away from her ears, and folded in around the safety of her pain.

  They keep getting worse. How can they all be like this? What is wrong with me that I can’t find anyone? I’m hot enough. I have a job. I’m not bat shit crazy. I’m a good person. Why is it so hard? It shouldn’t be this hard. It isn’t this hard for anyone else. It’s me; it has to be me.

  You know, my heart is just not in this.

  Emma closed her eyes and let a scream shake the windshield.

  Then she heard something shift against the sound of her tires on the road, something moving in her trunk. He was still alive. She pulled herself from wallowing in her very familiar lament and returned to the situation at hand.

  What in the hell do I do with this douchebag?

  It was easier to refer to him as a douchebag. She could scarcely remember his name before or during the date, though now the name Mark might be permanently branded into the soft tissue of her brain. She did not want to think about him as Mark, the Nebraska boy who loved hiking; she needed to focus on him as the loser whose heart was not in it.

  That justified what she had done.

  Either way, she still needed to get rid of him, preferably without ending up in prison in the process. What she knew of criminal justice she had gleaned from a healthy enjoyment of crime shows, documentaries, and criminalistic dramas. She did not know if that would be enough to save her now.

  Emma abandoned her depression of her single status and released the rage over Mark’s emotional assault, fixating on the logistics of getting out of this mess. A plan would be comforting. A task would focus her mind away from the turmoil rising up around her on all sides.

  Most importantly, she needed to get rid of the evidence which, in this case, was mostly the body. The body that now seemed still somewhat alive in her trunk. She was not sure what, if any, evidence she had left splattered in the parking lot. It would be far too risky to return to find out. After disposing of the body, she would need to remove all traces of it from her car and her person.

  The body was the more pressing matter.

  There would be no escape if she brought him in for medical attention. If he survived, which was increasingly unlikely, it would be prison for her. There would be no family, definitely not one she wanted, behind cold steel bars.

  She could not allow Mark to completely deny her of that.

  Where would one dispose of a body? Did people even manage to get away with murder anymore? Perhaps the right defense attorney could weave a brilliant insanity plea for her. Online dating undoubtedly could make anyone certifiably insane. Just one juror would need a bad online dating experience to be amiable to reasonable doubt.

  The resolution to her problem ended up dancing elegantly over her mind, poetic in its perfection. As she flipped on her blinker and moved to exit the interstate, Emma realized that her path to this unfortunate moment had started with her first ill-fated step down the aisle on her wedding day.

  Chapter 2

  Rain fell from the sky on Emma’s beautiful outdoor wedding venue. It should have been a sign. The weather itself warned her against her vows, yet so infatuated was Emma that she experienced only blind elation. She saw only Justin, and when she looked at him, an entire life laid out behind him, complete with the house in the suburbs and the two or three children he would give her.

  He was the answer. She felt that in her core, so she could only feel blissful about sealing it officially, rain or not, recalling that her mother said rain on a wedding was good luck.

  Emma sat in front of the large mirror in her hotel room, adjusting and readjusting the neckline of her wedding dress. She wanted her breasts revealed tastefully; no one wanted stripper cleavage on their wedding day. The dress kept shifting down slightly whenever she moved. She had succeeded a little too well at her fast and detox leading up to her wedding day.

  Ronnie stood behind her, her arms folded across her body and a mimosa dangling from her hand. Emma was relieved that Ronnie had cleaned up so well for the occasion. Ronnie did not have the same constant and stringent considerations about her appearance that Emma did, and did not, as she so often put it, give a shit what others thought. She was on her third mimosa of the morning in front of both Emma’s mother and grandmother.

  Still, Ronnie was there, not belligerently intoxicated, or fighting with Emma’s more refined brid
esmaids yet, and that was all Emma could ask for.

  Emma straightened the top of her dress once more and turned to Ronnie expectantly. “How do I look?”

  “Beautiful, of course,” Ronnie responded. “Your tits going to stay in that thing?”

  “Yes!” Emma pouted and tugged at the dress again. “They have to.”

  “I told you to get off that diet shit.”

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, until you’re showing your nipples to the priest before you even say I do.”

  “Shut up!” Emma could not help but snicker. How her mother would die right there in the chair. “I’m getting married,” she said, almost to herself.

  Ronnie smiled back at Emma. The expression spread over her lips, but her eyes did not participate, instead remaining flat and distant. It was no secret that Ronnie and Justin did not get along in any sense. Ronnie’s disdain for Justin had been forever sealed by a pizza. When she and Emma were college roommates, Justin decided to eat the entire pizza Ronnie could not afford and had left in the fridge overnight. He could never recover from that in her eyes. To Ronnie, that encapsulated the kind of man he was.

  Beyond that, Emma simply could not see why Ronnie did not think Justin was as wonderful as she did. She knew Ronnie did not understand him, did not know him the way she did. Or perhaps she was jealous that Emma was committing to a real relationship while Ronnie rotated through noncommittal casual encounters.

  One day Ronnie would figure it out and catch up to Emma. Then perhaps she would appreciate Justin.

  “I’m going to smoke,” Ronnie said, moving to the balcony.

  Emma wrinkled her nose and moved back to the mirror again. “Where is your date?” she called out the open door.

  “He’s not my date,” Ronnie replied with smoke curling out from her mouth.

  “You brought him to a wedding, he’s your date.”

  “No, he is the guy I am going to sleep with after your wedding. So much easier than hooking up with one of Justin’s sleazy groomsmen.”