A Death To Live For

CHAPTER 3

Vardi

“She’s . . . very beautiful,” Adira says as we reach the car.

My hands are moist with sweat and my heart is doing a jig that I'm sure is going to end in a stroke if I don't get it under control. Adira's eyes are on my face, searching. I smile.

“Yeah, she is.”

We get into the car and I start the engine, for the want of something to calm my nerves. She's still giving me a sideways glance, I can feel her eyes burning into the side of my jaw. She wants answers. The one I gave as we left the market were weak, even to me. But I had to tell her something.

“So was it someone you know?” she asks.

“What?”

“Vardi, don't act simple.”

The lie didn't stick, of course. I'd told her Odelia, my former wife, cheated on me so I left her. Now Adira wants to know who she cheated with. It is the nature of lies that once you tell one, you have to keep it going with more.

“Who did she cheat on you with?” she repeats.

“A friend.”

She sighs and looks out the window as we drive out of the market. “Its always with someone we trust.”

“Yeah.”

Adira can relate. She's had her heart broken a few times too. By the time we met, she'd been through her third major patch. I helped her heal. Couldn't tell if she believed she helped me with mine. Especially seeing as I've been living a lie with her. What would she think if she found out the truth?

Better not let her find out then. And how am I going to do that when I've given Odelia an address to meet me? What if Odelia doesn't accept what I'm prepared to tell her?

I exhale loudly, not aware I've been holding my breath.

“In all those two years, you never crossed paths?” Adira asks suddenly. “Two years?”

“Nope. Amazing, right. And she's still not married, even when she could.”

She is shaking her head, a rueful smile on her lips. She says, “Did you . . . love her?”

The question catches me off guard. I'm not prepared for this day, for this question. I was not prepared to see Odelia. Not a few days after me and Adira just got engaged. I glance at her, my mind at work, conjuring the most plausible answer or lie.

“I did.”

“Still?”

“Adira, come on.”

“Do you still love her?” she presses. “Its a simple question, Vardi.”

“No, it's not.”

She sighs and looks away. We don't talk again until ten minutes later when I park the car in front of the garage. As she walks up the step, she says, “I’m going up for a shower. Wanna come?”

“Yeah, just give me a minute.”

I park the car, let the garage door roll down slowly. I sit there in the driver's seat, staring out at the white wall of the garage with the tools hanging from the rack.

Odelia.

Diffused anger crawls up my throat. It becomes hot in the car but I can't move. She hasn't changed one but since that night I saw her last with my face between the bars of my cell, her hands around my waist, both of us stealing kisses through the metal. My tongue still remembers the taste of her still. Her scent. Her tears as they fall on my fingers. The way she clutched at me through the bars, promising to fight with me, for me.

And she did fight for me. Oh, Odelia fought like her life—our lives—depended on it. And it did, at least mine. I was locked up, reserved for execution after a crime that—

“Sir?”

I jump. A little boy's face appears at the window.

“Phil?” I open the door. “How's it going buddy?”

“You promised to take me to baseball practice.”

“And I'm still gonna do that. Just let me change into something more sporty, okay.”

The boy grins. “Okay.”

I watch him run through the connecting door into the foyer. Leaning against the hood of the car, I draw a long sigh. Adira's son is growing faster than I can catch up. I'm going to be his father, even if he doesn't yet see me as one. Maybe after the wedding, maybe then . . .

Odelia.

Her name is a caroming ball all over the walls of my head. It has been this way all the two years I've been away from her. And just when I thought I've achieved mastery over the pain, she runs into me. Fate does have a nasty sense of humor.

The shower is running when I get upstairs, and Adira is in the middle of the steaming bathroom, naked, her skin coloring healthily. For the first time since we started seeing each other, I don't want to jump in with her. A sense of betrayal, the one I've battled and won over is back as I take off my shirt.

“Play the game, Vardi,” a voice echoes in my head. “Its the only way.”

That smokey, scheming voice. The voice of the devil himself. I close my eyes and the man's face appears, scowling greedy teeth shine like snow in the darkness of my head. I open my eyes quickly, it's the only way I keep that voice and face out of the landscape.

“Hey—”

Adira's face and half her body appears between the glass door of the shower stall. Her black curly hair is dripping water, more trickle from the black nodule of her n*****s. The man between my legs springs to attention.

Ah, I'll make love to her in the hot shower. It's how I get by. It's how I will get by this day again. A soulless lovemaking devoid of real desire, laid on the foundation of anger, pain and guilt. A man isn't one thing but many things, good and evil, truth and lies. And he must do what he must to keep himself from going insane in a world held together by schemers.

Odelia.

“I'm sorry, Odelia,” I mumble to myself as I walk into the shower, like a sheep off to slaughter.

“Did you say something?”

“No.”