Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

Godfather II
.
Every time.’ He coughed after a swallow. Seemed like a
moment to loosen him up.
‘Fredo?’ I asked.
‘Fredo, man, yeah. Poor Fredo.’
‘Stepped over.’
Most men have sports as the lingua-franca of dudes.
This was the film-geek equivalent to discussing some great
play in a famous football game. We both knew the line, and
the fact that we both knew it eliminated a good day’s worth
of 
are we copacetic
small talk.

---

He took another drink. ‘It was so fucking absurd.’
‘Tell me.’
‘You’re not taping this or anything, right? No one’s
listening in? Because I don’t want that.’
‘Just us. I’m on your side.’
‘So I meet Amy at a party – this is, like, seven years
ago now – and she’s so damn cool. Just hilarious and
weird and … cool. We just clicked, you know, and I don’t
click with a lot of girls, at least not girls who look like Amy.
So I’m thinking … well, first I’m thinking I’m being punked.
Where’s the catch, you know? But we start dating, and we
date a few months, two, three months, and then I find out the
catch: She’s not the girl I thought I was dating. She can
quote
funny things, but she doesn’t actually like funny things.
She’d rather not laugh, anyway. In fact, she’d rather that I
not laugh either, or be funny, which is awkward since it’s my
job, but to her, it’s all a waste of time. I mean, I can’t even
figure out why she started dating me in the first place,
because it seems pretty clear that she doesn’t even like
me. Does that make sense?’
I nodded, swallowed a gulp of Scotch. ‘Yeah. It does.’
‘So, I start making excuses not to hang out so much. I
don’t call it off, because I’m an idiot, and she’s gorgeous.
I’m hoping it might turn around. But you know, I’m making
excuses fairly regularly: I’m stuck at work, I’m on deadline, I
have a friend in town, my monkey is sick, whatever. And I
start seeing this other girl, kinda sorta seeing her, very
casual, no big deal. Or so I 
think
. But Amy finds out – how, I
still don’t know, for all I know, she was staking out my
apartment. But … 
shit
…’
‘Take a drink.’

---

We both took a swallow.
‘Amy comes over to my place one night – I’d been
seeing this other girl like a month – and Amy comes over,
and she’s all back like she used to be. She’s got some
bootleg DVD of a comic I like, an underground
performance in Durham, and she’s got a sack of burgers,
and we watch the DVD, and she’s got her leg flopped over
mine, and then she’s nestling into me, and … sorry. She’s
your wife. My main point is: The girl knew how to work me.
And we end up …’
‘You had sex.’
‘
Consensual
sex, yes. And she leaves and everything
is fine. Kiss goodbye at the door, the whole shebang.’
‘Then what?’
‘The next thing I know, two cops are at my door, and
they’ve done a rape kit on Amy, and she has “wounds
consistent with forcible rape.” And she has ligature marks
on her wrists, and when they search my apartment, there on
the headboard of my bed are two ties – like, neckties –
tucked down near the mattress, and the ties are, quote,
“consistent with the ligature marks.”’
‘Had you tied her up?’
‘No, the sex wasn’t even that … 
that
, you know? I was
totally caught off guard. She must have tied them there
when I got up to take a piss or whatever. I mean, I was in
some serious shit. It was looking very bad. And then
suddenly she dropped the charges. Couple of weeks later, I
got a note, anonymous, typed, says: 
Maybe next time you’ll
think twice
.’
‘And you never heard from her again?’
‘Never heard from her again.’

---

‘And you didn’t try to press charges against her or
anything?’
‘Uh, no. Fuck no. I was just glad she went away. Then
last week, I’m eating my Thai food, sitting in my bed,
watching the news report. On Amy. On you. Perfect wife,
anniversary, no body, a real shitstorm. I swear, I broke out
in a sweat. I thought: 
That’s Amy, she’s graduated to
murder. Holy shit
. I’m serious, man, I bet whatever she’s
got cooked up for you, it’s drum-fucking-tight. You should
be fucking scared.’

---