In Love by Design (The Adventures of Anabel Axelrod) (48 page)

“
Oh, HELL no!” yelled a male voice from way back.

“Get that man
in the back a beer because he knows women!” Luke threw his head back and laughed, and it was the laugh I loved and could listen to for hours. Apparently, others liked the sound, as well, as the room laughed delightedly along with him.

Not looking up
, I was smirking because this was the cute part, but the story wasn’t over. I still had the ball of dread sitting in my gut like a rock.

“
I don’t know if anybody here knows Anabel Axelrod other than Carter, Pam, and me, but if anybody’s stressing from my story that she’s fallen victim to my evil designs, let me tell you
nothing
ever goes according to my design where she’s concerned.” Amidst the catcalls and laughter, Luke’s voice boomed out, “Not one damn thing!”

I hear
d a, “Go, Anabel!” and for once it was not a voice in my head.

Shaking my head and smiling
despite the rock gut, I looked up at the podium when Luke’s tone of voice changed.

“Anabel.” It
was Luke’s low, caressing voice reaching out to envelope me in that silken bond of the inexplicable connection we shared. I hurriedly looked back down at my hands. “I love you with everything in me that is good, bad, and,” his voice dropped lower, “especially ugly. You are the light in my world, my dream of a future, and my only hope at the end. I’m sorry I couldn’t share everything with you before now, but I will never hold back again.”

As
public apologies go, this one takes the cake, but I covered my face in preparation for what was coming next and to hide my laughter. Women were actually sobbing around me at Luke’s romantic words and I even heard a man sniffling loudly into a handkerchief.

As soft
, smooth, and loving as Luke’s words were when talking to me, they were startling harsh and abrasive when he pointed an arm in accusation at our table.

“Carter Vogelbachen II,
this is why you’ve inspired me since I was a boy. Twenty long years ago, I swore a vow of revenge against you and your family over the grave of my dead friend, Thomas Sorensen.” Luke’s voice rose. “Carter Vogelbachen II, you were directly or indirectly responsible for the suicide death of my best friend, Tommy Sorensen!” Luke spit off the side of the podium. “Then you inspired my hatred and my disgust for being the fucking miserable, homosexual coward that you are.”

Above the
gasps and cries of shock erupting everywhere; Luke went on concisely damning Carter and his family with every deliberately foul and crude word spoken. “Does anybody here remember the death of Tommy Sorensen that lived around Faribault back in the summer of 1992? I bet our gay friend Carter here does. He was fucking Tommy up the ass for the six months prior to the poor kid killing himself. I believe Tommy died while performing autoeroticism sex with our buddy Carter.”

When a few people started rising and protesting, Luke thundered, “You all gave your word. Carter told you to listen to every word I
speak as the guaranteed truth, so sit the fuck down and listen to the truth about this man and his family!”

I
stared up in awe at the man on the podium. I saw the powerful, condemning man Luke was right now, as he was finally executing his vow to revenge the friend who died so young. I could also see flashes of the hurt, raging boy who inconsolably cried while he promised this pay back twenty years ago at his friend’s funeral.

People
were looking at each other in confusion. They were wondering if Luke spoke the truth and if Carter knew Luke would be accusing him of this horrible thing.

Carter had no clue
. He was sitting frozen in flabbergasted denial that his new buddy that he’d so glowingly endorsed five minutes before could turn into this fire-breathing dragon intent on his public annihilation. Luke had played him to perfection.

In the loud turmoil
going on amongst the people at the tables around us, the stunned silence at our table was deafening. I couldn’t believe that nobody had stood up in Carter’s family shouting protests or to escape the room.

In a ringing voice,
Luke scoffed bitterly, “I’ve known about you being gay and too big of a fucking, yellow-bellied worm to come out like a man, Carter, since I was fourteen. I know there are other people around here that know it, or suspect it, as well. I know you married poor Pam because your daddy made you. When he found out about Tommy Sorensen’s death, your daddy sat you down and said no son of his was going to be gay, didn’t he, Carter? It was just a phase you were going through, this desire to fuck other boys and not girls.” Luke stared at Carter and shook his head in contempt. His voice dropped low and was vicious. “So you got yourself a girlfriend, didn’t you, Carter? A little girl young enough that she wouldn’t question why you didn’t want to have sex with her or why you were gone so much with other men. Another family your father could intimidate with his money and his power.” He laughed and it was a cruel sound. “Hell, she was even boyish enough that you could probably close your eyes and force yourself to have sex with her. After all, you had to get her pregnant to keep the old man off your back and to keep him happy. Or so you thought, didn’t you, asshole? But it didn’t work, did it? You couldn’t even get it up, could you?”

Pam’s
distressed cry of betrayal at hearing her personal life laid publically bare was heartbreaking, but she appeared mesmerized by Luke’s story and didn’t look at me.

“No!”
I reached out and squeezed her hand tightly. She looked at me unseeingly while I whispered harshly, “Never me! I never said one word of what you told me, I swear to God!”

I h
eld her tearful gaze, as my words penetrated her brain, and then I nodded. She nodded frantically back, gratefully believing I didn’t betray her confidences. I was the one who should be grateful for her innate belief in me because that’s my boyfriend up there ruining her world and reputation. Luke started in again and my hand was being gripped so tight, I would have wounds from Pam’s nails in my palm.

Luke
’s voice was coldly lethal. He’d performed his magic on these people and he’d built up trust with them in an incredibly short time. Now his voice was that of a vengeful God raining down judgment and they all believed him.

“
That’s because you are a homosexual, Carter Ogelbachen II. You prefer to fuck men and that’s your choice, but you killed my friend rather than let him confess his love to the world back then. How do I know this was the truth? I was his best friend, you son of a bitch. He told me how he loved you. He told me how he begged you over and over to come out and face your family and his. He was fucking fifteen at the time and you were nineteen! You bastard, you sat and let him die, didn’t you? You helped him put that belt tight around his neck and then hang his body off that door to please you! You watched him and you let him die! You didn’t stop him or save him because you were a coward, you fucking prick. How do I know this? If you would have come to Tommy’s funeral you would have seen me and you would have known I was the one who found him! Yes, you would have known I was the one that his parents convinced to keep silent when they removed the belts from the room. Not one belt, Carter, you dumb fucker, but two belts.”

Luke took several deep breaths
, and then said so softly that everyone in the room literally swayed forward to hear, “His poor parents were Catholic and believed devoutly in God. The Sorensen’s would rather have their beloved son, Tommy, be considered a suicide and not be granted his God given right to be buried in consecrated ground like he deserved, rather than have the world find out Carter Vogelbachen’s son and Tommy were gay lovers. They were scared of your father and his men. They couldn’t bear anyone knowing Tommy died as a result of you fucking him every which way a man can fuck another person over, you filthy piece of shit!”

As Luke’s
horrible, condemning words reverberated throughout the reception room, the restaurant, and in everyone’s heads over and over, he still wasn’t finished. “Yeah, Carter, so I wanted to come here tonight specifically to see you and your family. I was only sorry your prick of an old man left, but I’ve heard he’s not doing too good these days.”

I moan
ed in my seat, and looked at Pam. Transfixed, her face was pale and her hands were up on her cheeks in the classic pose of horror.

I start
ed rocking slightly and chanting repeatedly in a whisper that I was not at first conscious of doing, “Oh no, Luke! Please don’t do this, please don’t do this.”

“Your brothers aren’t doing so well, either, are they? Or their wives’ businesses they’ve
mismanaged into insolvency? Or your farms with all the sudden problems with access and property line disputes? Or the secured loans being called, even as I speak? Or the problems with the IRS? Or the investigation being conducted by the authorities regarding the abuse of your employees?”

P
eople were murmuring and talking angrily. It was only the sheer strength of Luke’s personality that had kept them silent this long.

But the
room immediately went still again in morbid expectancy when Luke’s voice asked quietly, and in a tone so menacingly dangerous that I started to rise before I knew what I was doing, “Tell us, Carter, how’s your marriage? Does your wife know you have always wanted to fuck men with black hair like mine, like Tommy’s? Does she know you have a male prostitute that’s your favorite fuck buddy in St. Paul that could be Tommy’s double, and was almost as young? Does your father wonder why Pam can’t have children when he wants nothing more than his first born son to have sons? Does your father know what your wife’s been doing? Who I’ve arranged t…”

Describing Pam innocently falling victim to the Ogelbachen’s treachery
was bad enough, but Luke has gone too far.

“Enough!” I yell
ed at Luke, on my feet and slicing my hand through the air. He was taken by surprise and my voice echoed in the silence, as our eyes engaged across the few feet separating us. Softly, I added, “Enough. Not this. Please.”

He watche
d me coldly, and although he was perfectly poised and in control on the surface, I saw the muscle jumping in his cheek, the alien wildness in his eyes, and the cruelty twisting his lips.

Under the spotlight, green eyes glint
ed dangerously when Luke said softly, “Sit down, I am not done and you are wrong to try to stop me.”

“I don’t care about wrong or right
! If you do this…” The final words lingered on my tongue, ready to fall. Everything in me was struggling not to let them, but they fell. “You will live with your choice.”

I turn
ed away and pulled Pam up. I had to almost forcibly move her down the aisle for the first few steps until she got her wobbly legs working under her. We hadn’t gone more than a yard or two when she stopped cold and fell back against me, her hand outstretched and her voice confused, “Joe?”

We’ve stopped next to John Smith
and he didn’t even have the balls to look Pam in the eye.

“Why are you here?
Where’s all your hair?” She asked, and her voice was lost like a little girl’s that was awakening from one nightmare, only to find the real monster staring her smack in the face.

John remain
ed silent and Pam’s hand slowly dropped, as her lips started to tremble. I stepped in front of her and bent close to John’s averted face. This was so cold, even for him, and my voice was shaking.

“I know why, John. I even know why you’re still here.” I whisper
ed, so that only he can hear, “And I pity you from the bottom of my heart.”

The crowd around us has been watching this byplay, but their heads swivel
ed en masse to the podium when Luke’s voice drawled, “Now where was I? Oh yes, Carter, what will your father say when his number one son’s first child looks a little…browner than a good, German Vogelbachen should?”

Beside me, poor Pam
let out a shattered sob and started running. I ran after her to escape this room from Hell, the sound of Luke’s taunting voice, and all the gawking, whispering, pointing people.

Sometimes, it
was not so fun to be small females in short, tight dresses.

“Gonna Get Over You” by Sara Bareilles

Saturday 12/09/12

10:
30 PM

I
eventually took Pam back to my apartment. Perhaps I was being a bad friend by not apprising her of the death cloud hanging over my head and giving her a choice, but I practiced situational awareness the whole time we drove. I parked in front and didn’t stop practicing until I finished checking out every room, closet, and crack in the wall of my apartment.

I
locked us up tight in the apartment with the new dead bolt locks and security bars that fit across the entrance doors, front and back. I turned on the alarm system, as well, and remembering my promise to Anna and because I was not looking to die young, kept Rita nearby.

I
made us each a stiff, ice cold shot of vodka and we tossed it back. I made us another and we tossed that back, too.