The Deviant Underground (Time Bandit) (2 page)

The busy neighborhood was buzzing with activity. Men and women in business attire glided past women pushing strollers, and the occasional jogger had to make course adjustments to avoid stumbling on the crowded sidewalk. Construction workers taking advantage of the weather were cutting down a tree half a block in front of her. The trunk was knotted and grey, and the large, twisted branches jutted perilously over an electrical wire. The occasional hum of the chainsaw mingled with car horns and the chatter of people talking on their cell phones, and every once in a while small branches cracked and tumbled to the ground.

The streets were often packed with cars, but this morning was particularly busy, which had forced Kathryn to park two blocks away. As she navigated her way down the street, she noticed that amongst the flurry of human activity, the earth was showing signs of life as well. Spring was slowly beginning to make an appearance, and Kathryn was always surprised at how quickly it arrived in St. Louis. Growing up in Chicago, she was more used to winter until about May when it suddenly burst into summer, leaving spring to wonder why it got passed over yet again. But in St. Louis, spring actually came in March. The temperature had slowly begun to creep up, and the new flowers were poking through the formerly dead earth. The brown and grey landscape was just beginning to be splashed with green, and in a few weeks, the green would be joined by the orange, yellow, and blue of daffodils and lilacs.

Kathryn took a sip of her coffee. It was strong and delicious, and she was surprised to find it still hot, which was great because the microwave in the English department had been broken for—

“Watch out!” A voice to the left of her screamed. Kathryn glanced up just in time to see a huge tree branch crashing down on her.

She gasped, and the coffee cup flew out of her hands and landed on the sidewalk, spilling its contents all over the concrete. A few inches from her head, the tree branch hung motionless, suspended in mid air.

For a second, all Kathryn could hear was the pounding of her heart and the blood rushing in her ears. She was vaguely aware that everyone around her was silent—eyes blinking, mouths ajar. Confusion. Disbelief. And then, she caught the eye of the man from the coffee shop—standing by his car, his hand gripped around his latte—and saw something else. Fear. Her heart stopped. Her breath caught. And her legs felt as frozen to the sidewalk as the branch was in the air. As though in slow motion, she saw people beginning to reach for their cell phones.

“What the fuck?” From high above in the tree, the worker's curse rained down on her, electrifying her body. She ran, unfreezing the branch as she fled. It fell to the ground behind her with a loud crash. Everyone stared at her as she raced toward her car. She finally got to her car but struggled to open the door with her sweaty, fumbling hands. Once inside, she slammed the door shut, started it up, and peeled off into traffic, narrowly missing a passing car that cussed at her with its horn. Kathryn raced toward home, her knuckles white on the steering wheel, blinking away the tears that threatened to form. She had made mistakes before, had slip-ups, but nothing of this magnitude. The image from the newspaper flashed through her head—handcuffs, defeat, glory—and her stomach churned and rolled over.

She kept glancing in her rear view mirror, expecting to see the police descending on her, but the streets remained quiet. By the time she pulled into her parking garage, her heart had slowed a bit, and when she put the car in park, she was able to unpeel her clammy hands from the steering wheel. She stumbled into the lobby and paced back and forth in the elevator, still trying to control her breathing. Grateful for the empty hallway, Kathryn managed to open her front door in one try. Once in the apartment, she locked the door behind her and staggered to her bed, slipping between the sheets while still fully clothed. She curled up into a ball and huddled there, listening for the sound of cops knocking on door coming to take her away.

Chapter Two

Fortunately, they never came. Kathryn finally gathered enough energy to pull herself out of bed, call in sick, and pour herself a double scotch on the rocks. By the time she stumbled to the bed again that evening, the bottle was almost empty.

The next morning, she cautiously went to work. Nothing. She taught her classes. Nothing. She went home. Nothing. Several days passed like this, then a week. Slowly, Kathryn began to exhale. That is, until Derrick's phone wouldn't stop buzzing.

“Who is she?” Kathryn held up the phone so that Derrick could see the screen. “WHAT TIME R U COMING BY?” glowed in blue letters.

Derrick snatched the phone out of her hand, placing it out of her reach on the dresser. “What the hell are you doing with my phone?” He took the towel from around his waist and wiped away the remaining drops of water on his chest.

Kathryn ignored his question and picked up her robe from the floor. “Who is she, Derrick?” The phone hadn't stopped buzzing the entire time Derrick was in the shower. Kathryn thought he had seemed distracted while they were having sex, but then again, he had been distracted a lot lately. In all honesty, so had she.

Derrick began to get dressed; his eyes avoided meeting hers. “Why are you snooping in my personal shit? So damn nosey.” He threw his shirt over his head.

“Who the hell is she?!”

“She's someone from work, damn!” The lie was apparent on his face. “I told her that I'd help her move some shit out of her apartment.”

“Bullshit, Derrick.” Kathryn knew that she was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them. Derrick opened his mouth to speak, but Kathryn held up a hand and kept going. “You know what? Don't give me some lame-ass story about how she's your friend or your cousin or some other bullshit, and just go on and tell her that you'll be right over because we're done here. This is over.”

Now fully dressed, Derrick took a step towards her. “Now baby, wait a minute—”

Kathryn stepped back. “Don't 'now baby' me. Gather up all your shit and get the hell out.” The phone, now in Derrick's pocket, buzzed again. “See? Go on over because she's clearly waiting for you to go fuck her.” Seething, she crossed her arms. “I just hope you have enough energy after that mediocre 5-minute performance with me.”

Derrick's face first flashed disbelief then anger. “You are a crazy, nosey bitch. You know that?!” He pushed past her and headed towards the living room. Kathryn followed, listening to him mutter “this is some bullshit” and “don’t know who you think you are” to himself. He reached the living room and grabbed his wallet and his keys off the table by the front door, stuffing them into his pocket as he yanked on the doorknob. Before walking out the door, he turned around and gritted through his teeth, “Well, if I am seeing someone else, you can be sure that when it comes to the bedroom,
she
knows how to handle business better than you do.”

Kathryn’s face grew hot. She snatched the closest book off the bookcase. “Fuck you, Derrick!” She flung the hardcover across the room, narrowly missing Derrick's head. “And while you're fucking her, ask her to teach you how to go down on a woman because you don’t know how to do it for shit!” Derrick ran out of the door, and she slammed it so hard behind him that the pictures on the wall rattled. Her neighbors probably heard everything as the argument echoed up and down the tiny hallway. And she didn’t care.

Kathryn stormed into the kitchen, searching for her pack of Marlboros. She grabbed them off the table, plopped down, and lit one. The warm, sharp nicotine filled her lungs and traveled up to her head, making it tingle. She sat back and closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling. Breaking up with Derrick was the right thing to do. She knew that. She was still on edge from the incident on the street. She couldn't stop looking over her shoulder, waiting for the police to show up and take her away. So far, there had been no repercussions, but she hadn't been back to the coffee shop since. And never would again. She opened her eyes and took another long drag. She watched the smoke drift up to the ceiling, swirling and dancing as it made its upwards journey.

She walked over to the window and pulled it open. The warm, damp air flowed into her apartment. It smelled like mud and life. She still felt terrible, but the cigarette had helped. She knew that the only other thing she could do to take her mind off of Derrick would be to get out into the beautiful Saturday and go for a run.

Kathryn lived near Forest Park, the biggest park in St. Louis. Someone had once told her that it was bigger than Central Park in New York, but she didn’t know if this were true. She again ruminated on that fact as she pounded down the running path, matching her running cadence to the Kanye West beat on her Ipod. She had enough on her plate without being stuck in a relationship with no future, and she didn't need to torture herself by reading alarmist articles or watching damning news reports. The semester was coming to an end in a few weeks, and she had a lot of research to do in order to ensure a yes vote on her bid for tenure in a few years. She liked her job at the university. The students were generally smart and polite and at least seemed to be somewhat interested in representations of women in 18
th
century British comedy. It was a job that she would like to keep, and Derrick could be . . . distracting at times. Besides, she was getting tired of being extra careful around him. She had begun to let her guard down in his presence, and a few times, things had happened. Nothing as drastic as the tree accident, but she had accidentally frozen him once. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice. There was also one time when she had really let go during sex and almost disappeared. That was scary and was enough reason to break up with him.

Kathryn came upon what she called her “stretch-out” point. It was a wooded enclave with two benches that faced a small pond. A family of ducks tottered by the water’s edge, the father quacking with encouragement as he coaxed the three ducklings into the water after the mother. Kathryn smiled as she put her leg over the top of the bench and leaned forward. The day's horizontal activities had left her rather limber, so stretching out was quite easy. Kathryn closed her eyes and let the music and the breeze wash over her. She made a Herculean effort to try to let go of the argument and not rehash it over and over again in her mind. It was hard because analyzing things was her profession. She was paid to overanalyze the minutiae; every word—hell, every
letter
—had meaning and value and subtext, and she wanted to deconstruct all of Derrick’s insults and all of her reactions and—

Something tapped on her shoulder. She jerked upright, her heart racing. Standing beside her was Susan. Dressed in running shorts and a tee shirt, Susan was frozen in place, her blonde ponytail now impossibly immoveable in the gusty breeze that swirled around them.

“Shit. Not again.” Kathryn frantically looked around her to see if anyone else could see the blonde statue-woman and the panicked black woman standing beside her. A quick sweep revealed that this time, there was no one else around, and a wave of calm washed over Kathryn, which she immediately directed at Susan. Susan suddenly began moving again, her hand suspended in mid air where she was previously tapping Kathryn’s bent shoulder.

A confused look crossed Susan’s face, and Kathryn jumped in quickly with some of her typical diversionary tactics. “Hey, Susan! God, you scared me. I didn’t even hear you come up. I was jamming to Common and here you come sneaking up on me. Don’t do that unless you want to give me a heart attack.” She playfully pushed Susan’s shoulder and watched carefully as the shocked expression melted away.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was running by and thought that looked like you over here. What’s up? How are you doing?”

“Well,” she exhaled sharply, “Derrick and I broke up.”

Susan’s blue eyes grew large. “No. What happened?”

Kathryn shrugged. “He’s an asshole. He was cheating on me.”

Susan sat down on the bench, gesturing to Kathryn to do to the same. “What happened? How did you find out? He’s an asshole. Tell me everything.”

Kathryn smiled at Susan’s warm, supporting nature. “He was in the shower. His phone was blowing up, so I picked it up and there were a bunch of texts talking about 'When are you coming over?' and some other shit.” Susan’s mouth was ajar as Kathryn proceeded. “So I confronted him about it. He first tried to deny it, then he blew up, insulted me, and left.” Kathryn sighed as she watched the duck family glide over the surface of the pond. “So, it’s over.”

Susan sat back for a moment. She then grabbed Kathryn’s hand and squeezed hard. “Good for you. You know I never liked that guy anyway. You were too good for him. I always knew he was an asshole. I don't know why you even went out with him in the first place.” She paused. “Wait, on second thought, I do know. It was the sex, wasn't it? Must've been good for you to stay with that loser as long as you did.”

Kathryn leaned back on the bench, feeling the hard wood up against her skin. “Oh, the sex was just all right. I think I was just in a new-dick haze for a while.”

Susan laughed. “‘New-dick haze?’ Now that’s a new one on me.”

“That’s because I just made it up. But you know what I mean. You get all caught up in new dick, and it takes a while to see that the guy the dick is attached to is an asshole.” Kathryn tilted her head up and enjoyed the warm sun on her face.

“Well, this is perfect!”

“What do you mean?”

“This is perfect because now you can go out with Sam.” Susan grinned broadly.