Iniquity: Book One

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Tony eyes me skeptically as I neared the table. I had a nervous breakdown and called him up and begged him to meet me. I just couldn’t take it tonight. So, we met at Denny’s. I was praying that he could talk some sense into me.

“You know this wasn’t supposed to be a business excursion.” He stared at my laptop and shook his head.

While ignoring his look I sat across from him. We were sitting at our usual booth in the back. The air was thick with the smell of sausage, pancakes, and coffee. Normally I would get hungry smelling something like this, but right now my stomach was a painful knot. No good smelling food could penetrate the sick feeling that remained in my gut. So many people were seated around us, all with carefree and happy looks on their faces. Then there was me. If they only knew what I had on my laptop.

It didn’t even look human.

What was it then?

I took my laptop out of the bag and placed it on the table. “This is here for a reason.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I need you to look at something.” With shaking hands I opened the laptop and pulled up the photos. I needed to get this off my chest. “This proves it Tony.” He would see it.

I summed up all my courage and turned the laptop around to face him after I loaded the photo. I am wasn’t crazy. This was real.

I watched a confused look wash over him. “So, what am I looking for?” He stroked his chin with a concerned wrinkle of his brow. “I see the wedding from earlier today?”

This wasn’t right. He had to see it. “Give me that,” I said while snatching up the laptop. I turned it around, enlarged the photo to show what I wanted, no, needed him to see. Then I turned it back around. “See?”

His face was a blank slate and it only served to make my anxiety grow. “Don’t you see the..”

Tony cut me off. “The dog?”

I nodded frantically, suddenly very grateful that he saw it. “Yes! It’s right..”

He interrupted again. “I don’t see anything.”

He shook his head while I got up and looked over his shoulder. He was right. There was nothing there except sand. No large black, vicious looking, dog staring at my camera lens. No mouth full of teeth. Just sand. I felt like a fool.

“Son of a..” I grumbled. I snatched the laptop and started flipping through thumbnail after thumbnail. It wasn’t in any of them. Not a one.

My world was falling apart, yet again. In frustration I threw my hands up. I was so done.

“Tony it was there. I swear to God.”

“I believe you.” He got up and took my hands in his and urged me to calm down. “Take it easy. Maybe you deleted the photo on accident.”

This could be fate. Maybe the universe was getting me back for shoplifting at JCPenney when I was a teenager and never got caught. Maybe it was for screwing my friend’s boyfriend in high school. Another word for real life after high school is “karma”. It’s a place where all the nerds get rich, the awkward and shy girls become pretty as f**k, the homecoming queen gets fat, and I am tormented by nightmares gone real. Karma. She’s a definite b***h.

Tony smiled warmly. “It will be okay.” His voice did little to ease my frustration.

I wasn’t about to let this go. I wasn’t crazy. “Tony, when I got home I was editing like I usually do, right?”

“Okay..” He surprised me with his patience. “Go on.”

I gathered my courage and continued. “The dog I told you about, the one from my dreams, the big one, the nightmares, he was there. He was in the damn photos!” I got a bit louder than I intended to and had to force myself, really force myself, to quiet down. I didn’t want to embarrass Tony.

The feeling of defeat came quickly. So did the waitress. We ordered some drinks and waited in silence. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. After about a minute or two of this silence I saw Tony begin to get lost in his phone. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to be around my nutcase ass anyways.

Tony let go of my hands and picked up his phone. “I’m going to hook you up.” He started swiping and tapping furiously. “Right now.”

“The shrink?”

He mumbled in agreement. “I’m going to get her on the line right now.” He tapped out the number and held the phone to his head while I waited impatiently. “Ringing,” he said with a smirk.

“Waiting..” I sighed. I held my head in my hands. I needed to get on with my life.

Tony’s face lit up. “Sorry, I know it’s late,” he apologized to the psychiatrist, then added, “I have.. Yes, the one with the dreams. She’s right here.” There was a brief pause while he let her talk, I assumed, and then he said, “I have not. No, I have not spoken with her for a while now..”

Who were they talking about? Interesting.

He let out a heavy sigh and looked like he had aged a million years in the space of a matter of a few seconds. Whatever, whoever they were talking about definitely got to him. Then he looked up at me.

“Good,” he said with a satisfied grunt. “She will be there.”

An appointment! “Thanks Tony,” I said with relief.”

He grinned. “Sheryl, she will call if she needs to cancel.” He leveled his gaze directly at me for confirmation.

I nodded. “I will,” I whispered.

“Okay, goodbye Sheryl.”

He ended the call and gave me a thoughtful look. “You have an appointment on Thursday. I hope that works for you.”

I thought about it. “It does.” I really wasn’t doing much of anything for the next few days besides editing orders and picking up prints. There was also that headshot shoot with Steven, but that was on Friday. Thursday was wide open.

He looked pleased. “She will help you, Amber, I promise.”

“I sure hope so.” So now I had my first official appointment with a shrink. This was going to be interesting. “You probably think I am going nuts, Tony. Hearing voices.” I assure you I am not hearing voices.” I managed to catch the attention of a couple next to us. The girl started whispering to her man about what could only have been my crazy ass.

“You’re not going nuts, Amber. You’re just stressed. I can see it in your eyes.”

A very big part of me wanted to shout at the top of my lungs and another wanted to just crawl into the corner. Nothing was getting better. I watched silently as Tony rummaged in his pocket. His face was full of pity.

“Here,” he said at last. He held out his hand and I saw a few more of those blue pills. “You need these more than I do.”

I took them gratefully. They did help. “Thanks.”

“Make sure you show up to the appointment. She will be able to help, I promise,” he said, then adding with a conspiratorial wink, “Maybe you are secretly a lesbian, a lesbian whose repressed sexuality is causing you to hate men, and the Fido is a representation of men, in your dreams.” He smiled from ear to ear.

“Dick.” He at least cheered me up a little. “Thanks for the pills, but you’re still a dick.”

He snorted. “You are what you eat.”

I did manage a laugh. “Touche. I don’t know what I would do without you. I really needed you tonight. It has been such a long day.”

“How was the wedding?”

I thought about it. “Aside from the creepy s**t afterwards, it was great.”

“How many pics did you get? How many do you usually get from weddings?”

“Usually about two hundred if I am lucky. I just shoot and shoot.”

His eyes widened. “That’s a lot!”

I shook my head and sighed. “Not after editing, cropping, and quality control. I’m lucky to leave with less than half that.”

Tony suddenly looked startled. “One sec,” he said while fishing his phone from his pocket and holding a finger up. It must have buzzed.

“Important text?” I asked while I watched him swiping out a message.

He shrugged. “Just Steven, my friend you met at my last party.”

“Your friend.. Steven?” Something probably flashed in my eyes because Tony leveled his gaze my way.

“Yes, Steven.” Tony’s face melted into amusement. “Wait.. Don’t tell me. HE TEXTED YOU!”

I started giggling like a schoolgirl. “What if he did?”

“I need the scoop,” he said in a gruff voice. “Now.”

“Well we do have a lunch coming up..”

He interrupted me. “A lunch? He asked you out?!” He seemed incredulous. “No f*****g way. He’s shy as s**t! And you.. You..”

“Me what?” Where was he going with this?

“You are an emotionally unstable cat lady!”

He had me. I couldn’t help but bust out in a fit of laughter at that one. He did have a point though.

“I am not going to disagree with you.”

“Damn right you’re not,” he began in a shrewd voice, then adding, “I didn’t think he would grow the balls to ask you out.”

I shook my head. “It really isn’t a date Tony.”

“More disbelief. “Then what the hell is it?”

“Well, he wants head shots.”

“Headshots?”

I nodded. “And coffee.” It did sound sort of like a date. He did have a point.

Tony smiled. “That’s a date.”

“How so?”

“The “and coffee” part. That’s what makes it a date. He lies you. I know this because after the last party at my loft he couldn’t stop talking about you. He’s been crushing on you for-ever.”

I decided to mock him for a change. “For-ever?”

He grinned even wider before saying, “Sounds like he wants some head-shots.” Then added under his breath, “Or some head.”

“Tony!!” He was making me red now. “He’s just wanting the pics for his acting.”

Tony let out a sigh. “Make sure you do the shirtless windswept look.”

“Fucker. I am not shooting a Harlequinn book cover.”

I knew he was going to be sarcastic about this. It was his way. However, on a different level I did know he was happy for me. I could see it in his eyes. My mind did think about those shirtless pics though. Steven did have a body. Despite the sarcasm, Tony did have a point. Hopefully Steven would wear a button down shirt. Then I could casually suggest him to unbutton a button or two, or three, or five.

“Well, technically you could.”

“Technically this is just a shoot for some headshots.”

“Andd..”

“There is no “and” Tony.” Although I hoped there would be. So did my long neglected femine parts. “Is everything that spews out of your mouth s*x related?”

He seemed aghast. “Pretty much.”

After a few more minutes of lewd humor and complete nonsense, I was calm enough to go home. He really helped, yet again, to take my mind off things and set things right. I didn’t know what I would do without him. I thanked him profusely for the pills and his patience, and I walked him outside. It was getting late and the stars were high in the sky.

“Go home and get some sleep, will ya?” He stood at the door of his yellow Jeep with his hands thrust in his pockets and what I could only describe as a motherly look on his face. He really was worried about me.

I rolled my eyes and waved him away. “After I do some quick shopping.”

“And take the pills,” he added in a sagelike voice.

“Yes mother.”

*

With the promise of some kind of help from Sharon, and some pills from Tony, I left and went home. Tony didn’t see anything on the laptop and I found that most troubling. Whatever was happening to be definitely wasn’t manifesting itself to anyone else. Maybe I was going crazy. I couldn’t shake that harrowing feeling that I would never leave my dreams. I remember sitting there with him and staring into his blue eyes and hoping upon hope that he would understand.