A little bit like domestic bliss

Falco pushed the off button on his phone, leaned against the cool granite counter top and stared out the window over the sink into the backyard where his wife was watering rose bushes. She did this every day, and it always annoyed him. He knew all about appearances and he knew that the appearance of domestic bliss wins elections. Together, he and Evelyn had won plenty of elections. But they had an army of gardeners for God’s sake and yet there she was, every day, watering the rose bushes.

Falco silently cursed Bonner for ever bringing him to Jumbo’s in the first place. Sure, Falco thought, he’d had his fair share of indiscretions, but the moment they’d pulled off of Hollywood Boulevard into that strip mall he knew that he was being led to a smorgasbord of sin.

The place was perfect. Dark and small and the dancers had just enough tattoos, piercings and missing body parts to keep it interesting. Best of all, he was nowhere near his district, and that meant no one would notice him; and even if they did, they certainly weren’t the type to care.

That’s where he’d met Carmen. Sweet, beautiful Carmen. After Falco started to see beyond all the bending and spreading and spinning, he began to notice her intense, burning eyes. Something very different from the vacant, vapid, glassy-eyed stares he got from the other dancers. After a while, Falco came to know that Carmen had a soul, Carmen had something to say. And Falco wanted desperately to talk to her.

So they started to meet at a motel on Sunset near Western, a place where Falco could talk to someone who would listen, someone he felt comfortable with. That’s where he began to tell her about what he’d done. And he told her that he was finished with all that. He wasn’t going to do it anymore, no matter what.

When he told her that, she smiled.

The small wall-mounted phone rang, jarring Falco from his thoughts. It was someone at the speaker box at the driveway gate. Falco watched the phone, his heart sinking with each ring. He knew he had to answer it. After all, this was his doing.

“Hello?”

“It’s me, Falco. Let me in.”

Falco stared at the phone in his hand for a minute before pressing the “9” button. The beep coming through the receiver let him know that the gates were opening and Bonner was on his way up.

Michael Gray works in marketing.