Over bagels and smoked salmon next morning, Brian S’pense and Wanda Ases traded playful grabs at each other’s erogenous zones. They even managed to drag a pitcher of grapefruit juice down on top of them. Brian helped a giggling Wanda to her feet and began to blot the spillage with the remnant of the morning Daily News. His eye caught something, and he uttered a poignant squeak.
Wanda, who had never heard a sound quite so anguished, jumped onto the bed and clutched her knees tightly ‘neath her chin. “Brian, honey,” she ventured, “What is it?”
He crossed the room and threw the sodden paper onto the bedspread before her. There, occupying a black-bordered box in the lower left corner of an inside page, was an article with the headline:
STUDENT “EXECUTED?”
Next to two paragraphs of copy was an embarrassing yearbook photo of Reggie Prong.
“What?” Wanda gasped. She felt a sudden pang like loneliness that she quickly denied and turned into confused innocence. “Reggie dead?”
S’pense was already putting on his shoes. “How do we find Shlemmer?” he asked, a new tone of authority creeping into his voice.
“I don’t know,” Wanda insisted.
“What’s the Goddamned phone number?” he shouted, rising.
“I’m not supposed to tell you!” She was behaving as a child does, stubbornly, almost reflexively. He grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to look him straight in the eyes. “Wanda, he was shot in the kneecaps. He was shot in the kneecaps and through the head and locked in the trunk of his car. The keys were in his mouth. Reggie’s dead.”
“I’ll dial it. I’ll talk to him,” she insisted. She got up and went to the phone in the kitchen. S’pense sat down on the bed with the paper folded on his knees and tried to construct a plausible reality.
It was Carlo Shlemmer’s voice that entered her ear but there was a tone of clinical mockery that she’d never heard before. “Well, how was he?” he asked. “Did he touch your heart?”
An itchy heat crept over the insides of her thighs, and Wanda Ases felt suddenly very cold in her underwear beneath the kitchen’s fluorescent light; very like a subject under observation.
“Carl,” she began tentatively, “Reggie Prong is dead. He—He’s been murdered,” she proposed.
“I know. I read the paper too this morning.” he smirked.
“Brian—Brian thinks that you—”
“That I had something to do with it?” he supplied for her.
“Uh-huh.” she affirmed, awaiting the denial she was sure would come.
“This number won’t work for you anymore,” he told her mechanically. “you’ll keep receiving letters. Stick close to S’pense, he’s the only one in SPIES who stands a chance of winning the game.” There was evident finality in his voice and she grasped to keep him on the line; to preserve the only contact that ensured her the definite edge she needed to feel safe.
“Carl,” she said, “He tickled me.”
There was a bemused pause, then Carlo Shlemmer said the last words she’d ever hear from him. “Who knows with S’pense? He just might be able to save you.”
Main Photo by Christine Siracusa on Unsplash.
Accent photo public domain by Robert Toren, 1991, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.