They Come and They Go

“You’re not what I expected,” she says glibly. She is wearing a black dress and looks tired. But in her exhaustion, there is purity and an ethereal beauty. Her eyes are dark and mesmeric and look like a freeway accident. Her hair is the color of night and spirals in parts and flows to her bare shoulders. The restaurant is posh, dimly lit, and sits high in the hills of Lake Tahoe. He chose it carefully. He had been here the night before and dined by himself and examined the room and its contents to ensure the conditions would be acceptable. They were.
 
He smiles at her and unbuttons his black suitcoat as he sits. 

“I am sorry I am late.”
 
“No need to be sorry,” she replies casually.
 
He called her the night before to arrange the meeting. He introduced himself as Andrew Butler, and told her the necessaries. He was an attorney representing her husband and he needed to meet with her to make an offer for the divorce settlement. He spoke to her in only a towel, looking at himself pensively in the mirror. Forty-five years were beaten across his broad body, suddenly showing signs of wear that had eluded him for so long. She was resistant about the meeting, but eventually accepted for lack of anything better to do than to have dinner with an attorney, she joked.
 
The restaurant is a five-star steakhouse. He orders a plate of potatoes and steak sauce. The rolls are complimentary, but not quite as hokey as those in the cheap suburban buffets, under a Texas flag, or some kind of country bumpkin motif where the waiters and waitresses all say Y'all this and Y'all that. Here the rolls are arranged in a copper basket on a red-satin cloth. She orders a salad.
 
“Have you no appetite for steak?” he inquires.
 
“I have no appetite for death,” she says looking him in the eye. Road flares burn in there somewhere. Several fatalities. He returns her look and is locked in the stare until she speaks and he is finally able to look away.
 
“What about you? Potatoes with steak sauce?”

He coughs, uncharacteristically nervous. “Vegetarian.”
 
“A man like you?”
 
“A man like me,” he smiles.
 
“I am a vegan, so we are in the same relative boat. The butter on the rolls however, preclude me from indulging. You should look into the horrors of the dairy and egg industry, if your choice is one of the conscience.”

He nods, smiles uncomfortably in gratitude. The story he will not share with her is that his daughter turned him on to an animal-free diet. He was on a plane from San Francisco to Tokyo and she sent him videos of cows and pigs being slaughtered by some dipshit ingrates on behalf of posh steakhouses and lowbrow buffets everywhere. Dirty, cuck-faced, toothless rubes knifing innocent animals. Their throats were slit and they bled out, with large confused and betrayed eyes. Those that waited, did so in panic. Tears streaming down their faces. They had to be prodded down a concrete alleyway where their murderer awaited with either a knife or a gun, all so some fuck, or someone wanting desperately to prove he is a man, can eat a fucking steak.

He made his daughter proud when he told her he was done with meat. He stood in the mirror of a forgotten hotel room in his towel and said, “And I am the bad guy?” Society is morally fucked, he posted later on Facebook when he shared those videos. Two people reacted to them. Everyone else scrolled quickly past. 


What am I, he asks himself at the table as she thanks the waiter who brings the salad and potatoes. A consultant, he answers. An attorney in a different court. A judge with no jury. A collector. He had been through all the self-reflective bullshit many times. And every time, he tells himself, he isn’t going to think of it again. He never usually has dinner with clients. Yet, this was an unusual circumstance. And here he is. Wishing she had ordered the steak. It would have been easier that way.

His daughter is half-Japanese. Her mom was from Okinawa. He met her there on a fishing trip. Her father was a short, polite fisherman and owned the boat that he and a friend had charted. The fisherman and his daughter came along, not trusting two young American men with their livelihood. He talked to the fisherman’s daughter more than he fished, and he came back a month later, and then a month after that until she got the hint and her father did as well. They were married in Okinawa, christened in rice and cherry blossoms. 

She died twenty years ago, two years after their daughter was born. Four years after they were married. His daughter lives in San Francisco. She is in her final year of law school. She has a boyfriend named Peter and a dog named Jerry, after Jerry Garcia. 


Truckin’. Got my chips cashed in. The song plays in his head, loudly. Over the clanging of silverware and the murmur of meaningless conversation at near and distant tables. Over the pulse of the room and the brainwash of the Muzak. Something has snapped in his head, he realizes, something is loose, broken and out of control. He tries not to think of his daughter and is confused as to why now he is. This isn’t the way it goes. The blocks he typically employs are not working and the carousel is spinning wildly, squealing as it does.
 
“Are you going to eat?” she asks. He nods. The waiter returns and pours two glasses of the wine she chose.
 
“Your husband has sent me to make you a generous offer.”
 
“An offer I can’t refuse?” she says in her best Marlon Brando, taking a drink of the wine. She laughs at herself, but looks let down that he doesn’t laugh with her. The red of her glass appears to him like blood. He gets lost in the stain on the side of the glass. He doesn’t get her reference, temporary absentmindedness, or a momentary lapse of thought.
 
“Certainly, you can refuse,” he replies.

She smiles. “I never wanted his money. He will never offer me the one thing I want.”
 
“Which is?”
 
“My freedom. He has all the money in the world. He has our daughter. She loves him and doesn’t want to see me. I am 36 and have given him 22 years of my life, and yes, the math is correct. He bought me from my parents, you know. All I want now is to be left alone. To be free. That’s all. Not much to ask, is it? If I agree to take his money, the clause states, that I have to live in Maricopa County. I am not going back to Maricopa County.”
 
“His offer is substantial.”
 
She grins. Laughs in a short, dismissive exhalation. Her eyes in flames. She doesn’t say anything, though clearly she wants to speak. She holds her tongue. He cannot stop thinking about how beautiful she is. Maybe it is only the light, though, he thinks. The way the sun sets on the ocean in a certain way. The way it is breathtaking at sunset and sunrise, but not really at noon. She is visual heroin, and the first woman he thought that was truly beautiful since his wife. 
 
“What is your view of women,” she asks.
 
“They come and they go.”
 
“That is romantic.”
 
“It is the reality of my circumstances.”
 
“So you see many women?”
 
“They come and they go.”
 
“Do any stay longer?”
 
“Not past checkout,” he says. “I travel a lot.”
 
“Oh, I see. Throwaway bar trash-types. High-class whores. Hotel romances that leave before the maids knock. Do not disturbs.”
 
He smiles. “You got it.”
 
“Hookers, too?” she asks.
 
“Oh, no. Not anymore.”
 
“What do you get out of those women?”
 
“Memories of what it was like.”
 
“With your wife?”
 
He nods.
 
“Divorced?”
 
“Dead.”
 
“I am sorry. There is something deeper inside you, Mr. Butler. It is as plain as the nose on your face.”
 
“Are you trying to seduce me?”
 
“No,” she giggles. “I am talking to you. The way people used to before they had phones and social media and other insufficient forums to do it for them. Emojis and all that garbage. When it was just two people at a table and a bottle of wine. I am sorry. I am starved of face-to-face conversation. I don’t get out much.”
 
He nods.
 
“I make a lot of phone calls.”
 
He nods.
 
“Do you know what I do for money?”
 
“No.”
 
“I call people to collect debts for a mortgage company. There is some title for the job, something that sounds better than what it is, as I am sure there is a title for what you do that sounds better than what it is. Customer care specialist, or something. I don't know. But all I do is call debtors from my apartment and we talk about the strangest things sometimes. I once talked to this elderly lady in Oklahoma about her cat who would escape from her house once a month like clockwork.
 
“She said when she opened the door that cat wouldn’t usually go nowhere. But one time a month, it would dart out and come back two or three days later. What that cat did, she didn’t know. She never came back pregnant. Never any different than when she left. So she told me that she thought keeping the door closed would fix it. But it didn’t matter if she did. Eventually, you got to open the door, and the cat knew it, and the cat ran out when she got her opportunity. She was worried it would be killed by coyotes or dogs, she said. She had a nervous breakdown worrying about when that cat would get out and what might happen to it when it did. That’s why, she said, she missed three mortgage payments.
 
“So, eventually, after much thought and prayer, the old lady decided to put one of those pet-door-things on her door so it could go out whenever it wanted to. And after that, it never went anywhere at all.”
 
He smiles. He drinks his glass of wine in one long drink. The kind of drink just to get rid of it. She smiles back at him. He eats his potatoes, never once looking up from his plate at her, though she looks intensely at him. He can feel her eyes burning on his head and face. She leaves her salad untouched, as though she ordered it just to order something, to fill a void on the table, or for companionship sake. It was a beautiful salad. Colorful and inviting. Shades of greens and purple with a pleasingly fragrant vinaigrette.
 
“I assume you have an envelope with a number on it?” she says.

He wipes his face and hands with a cloth napkin and reaches into his inner-breast pocket and withdraws the envelope. “It sounds as though you have danced this dance before?”
 
“I am prepared,” she says.
 
He gives her the envelope and douses what’s left of his two potatoes in butter and steak sauce, then he meticulously cuts them with his fork and eats. She opens the envelope and smiles.
 
“It is a substantial offer. How did you get into this line of work?”
 
“Are you prepared to accept his offer?”
 
“How did you get into this line of work.”
 
“I went to college. I studied hard.”

She laughs, taking another drink. “You are not fooling me, Mr. Butler, if that is what you prefer me to call you.”
 
“I do.”
 
“Have you seen the movie, Meet Joe Black? Joe Black is death, as I recall, but he falls in love with the girl whose father he is sent to take. That is his job. To take lives.”
 
“I don’t recall it.”
 
“You should watch that movie sometime. It suits you. You look like Joe Black, but with darker hair. I don’t know why they didn’t have death come for the daughter. Then maybe hesitate, perhaps, because he fell in love with her. I don’t understand writers sometime. They often make things too complex.”
 
“I wouldn’t know.”
 
“Have you ever been in love, Mr. Butler, other than with your wife, of course?” She takes another drink, keeping steady eye contact, even as she swallows.
 
He doesn’t reply.
 
He is in his car and drives again to the scene of the accident. His daughter is in her car seat. One mile from the Golden Gate Bridge. A drunk driver, they said. That’s all they said. It was dark and the road flares burned halos in puddles of rain on the street. Horns honked from down the line. He ran to her car, leaving his daughter in the backseat. His daughter was asleep because car rides always put her to sleep. She was sucking on her blanket.
 
“I am in love with a different woman once a week or so, and it lasts all the way until morning.”
 
“Ahhh! Your hotel romances. You like your women like you like your towels.”
 
He smiles an insincere smile. “I enjoy the room service.”
 
She smiles back, sadly. Flecks of disappointment present in her eyes. 

“I saw something in you that wasn’t there, I suppose.”
 
“If you saw anything at all, you are right. It isn't there.”

She pauses. “I am going to refuse the offer, Mr. Butler. I simply cannot accept it.”
 
He exhales and closes his eyes. On the backs of his eyelids is his wife’s funeral.
 
She continues, calmly. “But I would prefer not to do this here. The indignity of dying in front of other people, to be gawked at, is not a fate I prefer. Though, I am sure you are prepared to do it here, if need be.”
 
He looks at her coldly.
 
“We can take a walk. Can’t we, Mr. Butler?” she bargains.
 
He nods.
 
She takes a breath. “I knew you would come for me. I didn’t know it would be in this way, but I knew you would come.”
 
“You could just accept the offer.”
 
“No. I can’t. I have died that death already.”
 
Andrew pays the check with cash and they walk out. It is warm and the night air smells clean and is cool upon her face. He doesn’t feel anything. She walks ahead of him, several feet ahead. She leads him to a park and there is a private area where she can see no one and nothing but trees. The wind shakes the leaves as though speaking. She stops and puts her hands behind her back and waits. She is looking at an old tree they say is 200-years-old. A chestnut, she believes.  
 
“He jumped into an attractive man’s body,” she says calmly, staring at the old tree.
 
“What?” he asks the back of her head.
 
“In Meet Joe Black. Death. He jumps into an attractive man’s body. Brad Pitt. Perhaps, death jumped into you at some point in time. Have you ever considered that, Mr. Butler?”

He opens his suit coat and pulls out the gun and the silencer. He carefully screws it into place. He holds it to the back of her head, softly, almost affectionately. Her hair is even darker black and he stares into it as though it is the depths of God, or the Lord’s face. There is no hate, nor love to this. Nothing exists, he tells himself. It is just another target. He hesitates, even though he never hesitates. The gun rattles around in his hand. It doesn’t help to consider the money, or his reputation. But he knows if he doesn’t shoot her, someone will shoot him, or they will shoot his daughter. That is the insurance policy in this line of work.  

He pulls the trigger twice and she falls to her knees. She then slumps forward into the grass. He takes her purse and her silver watch and rings to make it look like a robbery. He takes the cash out of the purse and stuffs it and the watch into his pockets. He throws the purse away into a nearby dumpster. He exhales, puts the gun back inside his coat, and calmly walks away. 

He goes back to the hotel and showers, thinking of the cat and the old lady in Oklahoma. He changes his clothes. He opens a window and burns his suit in the Jacuzzi bathtub. He goes down to the hotel bar and meets a beautiful blonde woman who is in Lake Tahoe on business. She is married, but her marriage is on the rocks, she says desperately. She wants something more. Everything she says, she says in an alluring tone of voice. He thinks about her husband and what drives someone to pay someone to kill someone they once loved. But she is doing it no less to him. Someone, he supposes, has to die a certain death to pay someone to kill someone they loved. It was a large chunk of his work. Unhappy husbands, or discontented wives.  

He buys her a drink and they talk for a while, but looking down at the cash he laid on the bar, he abruptly says goodnight. She watches him leave, confused for a moment about what she said wrong, looking at herself in the bar mirror to make sure she looks alright. Last of the moral men, I suppose, she balks before looking around the bar for someone else. There are plenty of fish waiting. Bars are glorified breeding farms for common carp. Shallow water and a lack of natural predators. 

He goes back to his room and calls his daughter and asks her if she has ever watched Meet Joe Black. She says it is a very sad movie and this and that. He streams it on his tablet and lies in bed and watches it. There is something very distressing inside of him suddenly, and he knows the woman was right. Death came in like that cat went out when the door was open. He killed more than just another wife when he pulled the trigger this time. He killed redemption and he can't have it back. 

After the movie, he cries and buries himself under the covers. The next morning all traces of Andrew Butler and his conscience vanish like a ghost and he goes home to collect his money. The paper says a woman's body was found, robbed and murdered. Police have no suspects.