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  Heather lead Ledesma back to the bathroom station. The lawyer stopped outside and looked the place over.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Heather wondered if he would recognize it too soon. She didn’t want him hesitating to go in.

  “My office,” she said. “You want to complain or you want to get this over with?”

  “Ladies first.”

  Heather smirked at him. “Gee, thanks.”

  When they were inside, Tito ran from his spot in the woods. He stepped in and blocked the doorway. Blood covered his right hand and was smeared in a long swipe on his hoodie.

  When Ledesma saw him, he said, “This must be your partner, ‘Ms. Y.’”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Tito said.

  “Never mind,” Heather said. “He’s got jokes.”

  “I have your money,” Ledesma said. “Where is this so-called evidence?”

  “I have the evidence against your client right here.” From her coat pocket, Heather pulled out a sealed manila envelope. The only thing in it were a couple of folded-up pages from yesterday’s New York Post. “Money first, my friend.”

  “You know what? No. I think you two are a couple of jokers, and I smell bullshit. What the fuck do you really want? I got three screaming spoiled brats waiting to open their goddamned presents. If you don’t tell me what the fuck this is really about, I’m getting out of here. And don’t think you can stop me.”

  “No, you’re not.” Heather pulled out a .38 and waved it at him.

  “You have got to be shitting me. Do you even know how to use that?”

  She waved him over to one of the doorless bathroom stalls and pointed to the seatless toilet.

  “Cop a squat,” she told him. The gun felt good in her hand. And light, since there were only three bullets in it. That was all the guy who sold it to her had.

  “Tie him up,” Heather told Tito, who took duct tape out of his bag.

  When she saw the tape, Heather said, “What the hell? Where the hell are the cobra cuffs I told you to get?”

  “I couldn’t find them. This’ll be fine.”

  “Aw, beautiful.”

  “Amateurs,” Ledesma said, spitting mad. “You’re getting blood on me. You idiot. You didn’t think I came here—”

  And then Tito covered his mouth with the tape.

  “Hold up. You think he was going to say something important? Should I take it off?” Tito asked Heather. “Might be fun to rip it off and put it back and rip it off again.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve had enough of his asshole voice.”

  The plan had taken time. Heather had always known who the guy was, had known friends of his friends from around the way. Edwin Ledesma. Now a big shot criminal lawyer. She googled the rest. Found the names of people who worked for him. Found the guy’s secretary, Jenna Raskin, on Facebook. Found out this Jenna liked to hang out at the Charlie’s Bar and Kitchen in Mott Haven. A lucky break. Went there, bought her a few drinks, used her best game.

  And of course she had to do all this on the sly. Giselly couldn’t find out. Heather was doing it all for her, knew that it would save her, save their relationship.

  Time came when Heather had to go a little farther than she planned. After a couple of dates, Jenna wanted to take things to her place, and Heather still hadn’t gotten what she needed. But finally, after three, four, maybe six times, Jenna told her about one of Ledesma’s biggest cases, gave her a name. That was all it took.

  Although she still had to keep screwing around with Jenna once every couple weeks, so she wouldn’t get suspicious.

  “And now we call my Queen,” Heather said. She gave the gun to Tito and went to the sink to make the call.

  “Good morning,” Heather said. “Feliz Navidades.”

  “Where the fuck are you?”

  Heather heard Giselly everywhere and realized their conversation was echoing off the walls. She quickly stepped out into the cold.

  “Babe, I have a surprise,” Heather said.

  “It better be those yams I told you to get me yesterday.”

  “Nah, nah, I got a special present for you. But you have to come see it.”

  “Oh my god. Where the fucking hell are you?”

  “Orchard Beach.”

  “Orchard Beach! What the fuck are you doing in Orchard Beach?”

  “It’s ten minutes away. There’s no traffic.”

  “What the fucking fuck, Heather?”

  “Trust me. This is important.”

  “I got a roast pork in the oven. And what about the kids?”

  “I know your moms is there, listening to us right now.”

  “This better be a brand-new car or something like that. Motherfucking Orchard Beach!”

  “Better than that.”

  “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you,” Giselly said. “Fine! Fine! Half an hour.”

  Heather leaned against the metal of an old fence. She lit a cigarette and watched the cold brown water crawl onto the sand. Another jogger went by. A sailboat chugged along far out on the water, some rich bastard’s Christmas cruise.

  Under her breath, she sang, “‘Met my old lover in the grocery store / The snow was falling Christmas Eve.’…Fuck! Tito!”

  Heather took a few more drags of the cigarette, and suddenly Tito was there next to her, gesturing for her to give him one.

  “This is like being out in nature,” Tito said.

  “We are out in nature.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s nice. For Christmas. Though it would be nice if it snowed, like, really snowed.”

  Heather hummed “Rudolph the Fucking Red-Nosed Reindeer” to get Tito’s idiocy off her mind.

  “You know the only thing I ever wanted for Christmas was a bike,” Tito said. “And five minutes after I rode it for the first time I got hit by a car.”

  “I know. You told me that story fifty times.”

  “Can I ask you something? I mean, do you think we’re doing the right thing? I mean, maybe Giselly is just the way Giselly is and you won’t be able to make her, you know, really love you and marry you like you want.”

  Heather was about curse Tito out, tell him that she loved Giselly, that Giselly was so special and so beautiful and so loving that she deserved anything, absolutely anything that Heather could do to make her happy. But then she saw that he was smoking with one hand and gently tapping the gun on his thigh with his other hand.

  “Fuck!” she said.

  Inside, the lawyer was trying to crack open the painted-over window.

  “Tape him to the back of the toilet this time, Tito. For Christ’s sake, you gotta watch him. Can’t you do anything right?”

  An hour later, Giselly came up right behind Heather as she stood on the edge of the parking lot.

  “Wow, you snuck up on me,” Heather said.

  “I fucking parked way on the other end, like you told me.”

  They kissed, hugged tight. They had met while working at the Applebee’s in Bay Plaza, and one night, after the father of Giselly’s kids had taken off again and after a few mudslides, Heather asked her if she liked girls—she had learned her lesson after AnnaMaria Pannuzio—and Giselly said she was curious, and that was that, for six years. Heather wanted to take the next step, make things legal, but Giselly said she wasn’t ready, would never be ready, and that Heather should just stop asking.

  “Where’s my fucking surprise, H? It’s freezing.”

  Heather led Giselly into the park and down a path to the bathroom station. “Babe, your surprise is in here.”

  Heather went to hug her again, but Giselly put her hand up.

  “This place? Why did you bring me here? You know how I feel about this stupid place.”

  “That’s exactly why I brought you here,” Heather said.

  “What the fuck is this about, H? C’mon, I still gotta make the stuffing and the lasagna.” />
  “You’ll see, Babe. C’mon.”

  Tito stood inside, hugging himself to keep warm.

  “Oh no, Tito’s here,” Giselly said. “This has to be some stupid-ass shit if Tito’s here.”

  “Here, Babe.” Heather pointed inside the stall.

  Giselly turned on her boot heels. “What. The. Fuck,” she said. “What the fuck is this, H?”

  “Fourteen years ago, in this shitty bathroom,” Heather said to Ledesma, “you attacked and raped an innocent girl. Now here’s that girl, and she’s not innocent no more. You destroyed her, destroyed her trust, made it impossible for her to open up her heart and love someone, to give herself completely, because she’s got like this space in her heart, and—”

  Giselly shook her head. “Okay, okay, we get it.”

  “Yeah,” Heather said, “so now he’s gonna pay for what he did.”

  “H, you retard. This is not the guy!”

  “What? You told me. You told me! And I tracked him down. You said—”

  “What did I say? What did I say? I said I wanted to fucking forget about it. I didn’t want to keep playing it over and over in my head. I did that enough, for years. And now you bring it back, today of all days.”

  But Heather noticed, as she was talking, that Giselly was looking and looking again at Ledesma. His cheek was smeared with Tito’s dried blood.

  “Take off the tape,” Giselly said. “Take it off. Let me see his face.”

  Heather stepped into the stall. “Don’t yell, you sack of shit. Remember, I have a gun.” She ripped off the tape. Tito giggled.

  Ledesma said nothing. But he looked like he wanted to cut all their heads off.

  Giselly took a long look at him. “Holy shit,” she said, crossing herself. “It is him. It’s him.”

  And she fell to the floor of the dirty bathroom onto her knees and started crying. Then she started praying.

  “Take this, Babe,” Heather said and held the gun toward her. “Get past the past. We can move on with our lives. We can get married, live together.”

  Giselly looked at her with tears flowing down her face. “That’s why you fucking brought me here? I’m supposed to use this?”

  She stared at the gun. She shook her head forcefully. And then she grabbed the .38. “Is it loaded?”

  “Yes.”

  Ledesma looked at them both, his face red from blood, ripped-off duct tape, anger, desperation. “You have to listen to me. I didn’t come here—”

  “Shut up!” Heather, Giselly, and Tito said in chorus.

  Giselly stood up, gun in hand. “It was you, wasn’t it?” she said. “You grabbed me and dragged me away from my family. My family didn’t know where I was. You took me away from them. You took me away.”

  He put his head down and looked at the floor.

  And then there was just the barest nod.

  Giselly pulled up the gun, took a step closer. Heather watched her there, but she did nothing for a long time. Giselly just breathed, looking not at the man on the floor, but the space above his head. Heather wanted to go to her, to put her arms around her and reassure her, but it didn’t feel like the right thing to do. Giselly needed her space, and Heather knew enough to give it to her.

  And then there was a chime.

  And then the chime came again.

  From Heather’s jacket.

  And then the chime came again and, although they had rarely heard it before, Tito and Giselly knew whose ringtone it was.

  “Are you going to get that?” Ledesma said.

  “Shut up,” Heather said.

  Again the chime.

  “Get it already,” Tito said.

  “It’s your mother, for fuck’s sake,” Giselly said.

  “Gimme a minute,” Heather said, “I’ll be…I’ll be right back.”

  In the cold, Heather nervously tapped to answer her phone.

  “Hey, Ma. Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” her mother said, her voice gentle as concrete from years of booze and cigarettes. “You doing okay?”

  “I’m fine, Ma. How are you and Dad?”

  “Your Dad’s fine. He’s had a cold for about a week now, but he’s getting better. You know him, he’s a tough son of a bitch. Although he was coughing his lungs out putting the tree up this year.”

  “I bet the tree looks great.”

  “Well, dear, that’s why I’m calling. Your father would love to see you at dinner this year.”

  “Holy shit! Oh sorry, sorry, Ma. I mean, that’s great. About what time?”

  “We sit down to eat at two o’clock on the dot. You know your father.”

  She heard her father’s phlegmy voice in the background: “Tell her to do something right. For once.”

  “Ma, I gotta ask: Can I…can I bring Giselly?”

  “Oh, Lord. Frankly, sweetheart, I wouldn’t push it with your father. I think it’s nice enough he’s invited you. We’ll see you at two o’clock then?”

  “I’ll be there, Ma. I may not stay for long, but—”

  “That would probably be a good idea. See you later, sweetheart. God bless!”

  Heather hung up. She turned and, for a moment, she thought she saw something move in the trees, about fifty feet out. She stared in that direction for a while. Nothing moved. Nothing. She felt cold and went back inside.

  In the bathroom, everyone was still in the same position.

  “Everything all right, H?”

  “Yeah…. No. We better get this done.”

  Giselly stood in the same spot, gun pointed down. “I can’t do this.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “This isn’t right, not on Christ’s birthday. I’m a Christian. I am supposed to turn the other cheek. I’m supposed to forgive, so I forgive this man.” She pointed—with the gun—at Ledesma’s face to emphasize her meaning.

  And then chaos happened.

  There was a noise at the door. A park security guy stood there, an old man in a white beard, in a shooting stance. His hands shaking, he shot Giselly right in the head. Then he yelled, “Halt!”

  Heather ducked low, and Tito, eyes wide and with a grunt, tackled the security guard, pushed him into a corner.

  Another man rushed in where the guard had been. A guy in a suit—a detective? a bodyguard? Ledesma hadn’t come alone, hadn’t followed her instructions.

  In the narrow space, Tito was stabbing the security guard in the neck with one of his shivs. And then the suit guy fired shots into Tito.

  Heather looked down at Giselly.

  Her head was open and her lovely hair was bloody on the dirty tile floor. The gun was still in her pretty hand.

  Heather took the gun, aimed at the suit at the door. She wasn’t a good shot, had only held a gun a few times in her life, and she was very aware that there were only three bullets.

  Her first shot missed, but it made him turn.

  They shot at the same time, Heather’s bullet tearing into the suit’s mouth (she had aimed at his heart), while the suit’s bullet cut into Heather’s belly.

  She stumbled back like she had been pushed, tripped against something on the floor. She fell under the sink and in between paint cans.

  Blood pulsed out of her. She looked over at Giselly’s dead eyes.

  Everything Heather loved was gone. Everything she had ever loved. And it was her fault. She had even gotten Tito dead. That shithead. But he had been her best friend. Still a shithead though.

  She felt Ledesma crawling past her and toward the door. He grabbed onto the security guard and then Tito’s facedown body to haul himself up.

  “Oh no,” Heather said. “Oh no, you don’t.”

  She was surprised at how weak her voice sounded. She hauled herself up on one elbow, aimed carefully and—the gun misfired. She tossed it at the back of Ledesma’s head.

  He said, “Fuck,” but kept moving.

  It couldn�
��t end this way. He couldn’t get away. This all had to be worth something. Do one thing right, she told herself. One thing.

  She tried to move and saw what she had tripped over.

  Paint thinner.

  She took one of the small cans, screwed off the screwtop, then whipped the can at Ledesma just as he passed the entrance. A long streak of paint thinner splashed onto his back.

  Heather fished out her lighter, clicked it on, tossed it. It hit some of the streak that was on the floor and lit, spread right up to that sweet Canada goose jacket.

  When he realized what was happening, Ledesma screamed. Then he got up and ran.

  Heather found enough energy to get herself up on her knees and crawl out. She didn’t look back at Giselly. She refused to look back.

  Outside, it had started raining. A lazy, cold spittle rain. So much for a white Christmas. Heather stood and felt both light and heavy at the same time. She swayed and fell again and knew she would not be getting back up.

  She fished for a cigarette but then realized.

  Where was that scumbag? Where had he gone?

  There ahead, she saw Ledesma’s body, collapsed on the beach, halfway to the water of Long Island Sound, a fierce bonfire under the slate gray sky.

  She would even say he glowed.

  Back to TOC

  WITHHOLD THE DAWN

  Gladys Gonzálvez hated the IRS. In her mind, the IRS had destroyed her parents, crossing them out of her existence like disallowed itemized deductions. It didn’t matter to her that Mami and Papi had neglected to pay taxes for a dozen years apiece, Gladys still wanted revenge. From dawn to dusk and even in her dreams.

  To that end, she purchased—on sale!—a thirty-two-inch Summerfield Tru-Cut™ axe, drop-forged of carbon steel with an American hickory handle. “Summerfield,” the slogan went. “When you want something chop chop!”

  She never dated, never married, never held an honest job. Revenge was her only companion. Each year she moved to a new town, created a new identity, sent in new tax returns. She bungled the numbers on purpose, giving herself exceedingly generous refunds. Most times, she got the money. This disappointed her. While she enjoyed the cash, the reward she craved was that neat letter in a neat envelope from the IRS. This meant that there would be an audit. An agent would be coming by.