ELECTRIC FENCES

 

            Another flash of lightening lit up the sky. We were getting hammered drinking Tequila Sunrises at Murphy’s Plaza Bar and Grill. Up on the outside balcony overlooking the street, we watched the black clouds roll in. The rain had started in a mist, and then come down in sheets that slowly made their way down the avenue, like tourists gaping at the storefront windows. It was July, and the rain was a welcome interruption from the recent heat wave. The smell of the wet asphalt rose up the side of the building into our nostrils, reminding us of our youths, when things weren’t so complicated. The crack of thunder sounded like a train much too close, and rumbled the small wrought iron table, making the orangey-sunset liquid in our glasses form tiny ripples.

            “So tell me again why you left the Coast Guard, I never quite got all of it when you started to tell me last night. I never really understood why you left and moved clear up here from Louisiana”, I asked.

            “It’s complicated, maybe now is not the time to tell you about it. I’m in happy-land, why can’t we just enjoy this?” Adam got easily annoyed when he was drunk. I planned to get the truth one way or another.

            “Hey, I didn’t want to piss you off, I just wanted to know.” I retorted.

            “Look, it is a long story and it’s not a pretty one. I don’t think you really want to hear it.” Taking a drink with his eyebrows raised, he turned to me as if I would apologize for bringing it up. He knew me better than that. He knew I was going to dig until I found my treasure.

            “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know. What’s there to hide anyway? Why is it such a big fucking deal?” 

            “Why can’t you just drop it?” Now he was really getting irritated. “It is a big fucking deal. That is the part that you won’t just leave alone, Jasmine.”

            Another crack of thunder, a bright spark of fireworks, and the lights on the entire street went out with a giant electrical fizzle and pop.

 Blackout.

 Only the tiny candles on the bar and grill tables flickered, leaving red glowing circles on the ceiling. Screams and gasps in a chorus pierced our ears. The commotion of tables and chairs being scooted across the hardwood floors echoed on the high ceilings inside. High heels and steel-toed Doc Martins resonated in hollowed drunken footsteps down the wooden stairs to the street.

            I instinctively reached for the back of my chair checking for my purse. Reaching inside, I felt for my gun. It was still cool despite the heat of the day.

            “Come on, you can hang onto me so we don’t lose each other,” Adam said as he grabbed my arm in the darkness.

            “Here, take my coat and we’ll make a run for it,” Adam suggested as he draped his coat over my shoulder length hair.

I’ve known Adam for eight months. Posing as his girlfriend, I was getting closer to him than I originally anticipated. Working undercover was my specialty, not falling in love. Adam was different though. He was sexy, smart and utterly irresistible. Even though I was getting closer to the truth, there was something that made me not want to know. If he admitted to a crime, I knew it would be over between us. It would mean I would be the bad guy, and I would have to relinquish all the emotion that had built up over these last few months. It would mean falling in love with Adam would all be for not. I would trade in my heart for a paycheck and a job well done.   

Walking into the dark house we were hoping our lights would work. Nope. The blackout hit half the north side of the city. “Crap. Are there any candles?” I ask, groping around for the hallway wall to the kitchen.

            “Yeah, in my room and there’s some in the kitchen. Uh, bottom drawer to the right of the sink. Check there while I look upstairs.”

            I groped for my cell phone in my purse. The illuminated screen said I had two missed calls from the Chief. He knows I’m closing in. It’s now or never. I could hear Adam thumping down the stairs behind me. I shove the cell phone back in my purse before I could listen to the messages.

I loved this old house. The house was perfect for throwing parties. Complete with a rock garden, small creek, Jacuzzi bathtub in the upstairs bathroom, and an enormous front deck that wrapped around to the back yard jungle of plants. This is the kind of house I wanted someday. It was just perfect.

The parties we held here were always huge and pleasantly unexpected. Usually we would pack the house with about fifty people coming and going throughout the night until seven or eight in the morning. Someone always hung out the next day and helped us pick up, too.

For me, even though I had to keep up the façade, my ethical standards were being seriously compromised. I was getting sucked into a world where the edges of the horizon weren’t so rigid. There was a sense of calmness and community that I didn’t experience in the strict guidelines and rules of the Agency. I was hovering on the fence, and I liked what I saw on the other side. I liked being able to get away with not playing by the rules.

One of the bonuses to living in Southern Oregon was that the sixties mentality was still alive and well.  Everything was free and simplistic, and I never wanted those long, hot nights to end. We were all in our young sexual prime and were always considered available whether we were dating someone or not. Everyone eventually went barefoot, showing off toe rings, anklets, and black metallic toenail polish.  Tanned skin glistened in the evening heat. Under the blue light bulbs we put in outside lamps, all of us had a fairytale glow like nymphs from a dream.

After we peeled off our wet clothes and threw them into the dryer, we took a bottle of wine upstairs and lay on Adams futon. Between swigs from the bottle, Adam kissed me until I finally pulled away and asked him to reveal his secret once again.

“It’s really complicated, you have to promise that this will stay in this room,” his serious tone causing me to set the bottle down and cover myself with the comforter.

“I’m listening, go on.”

“In the Coast Guard, there are things that happen, bad things. There is a code of honor, or I guess I should say a code of silence among friends. What happens in the Guard stays in the Guard. You are the only person who will know this besides John and me.”

“I feel lucky you trust me so much. I promise it will stay here. I won’t say anything.” I felt my stomach tighten. After eight months of investigation, of pretending, I knew that this was it.

“Look, Jasmine, I’m not kidding around. Not a word to your mom or to any of our friends; I mean nobody. Got it?”

“Absolutely, yeah I got it, I won’t tell a soul.” Was I lying? Was I going to tell the Agency? Was I going to make a call to the Chief later that morning before Adam woke up like I always did? Would I rat out the man I was in love with for the job?

“Ok. When John and I had shore leave, we met up with a guy that we scored our dope from.” He took a long slow breath, held it and exhaled. He took a long draw of wine from the bottle and set it back on the windowsill.

 “It was cheap and he was happy to sell it to us Coasties. He figured he was in like Flynn, he was like the Godfather, and he was untouchable if he sold to us, you know? We’d get it for the guys on the boat, too. John and I would meet him at the bar at first, and then he invited us to do the deal at his house. One night it got out of hand. We were about twenty dollars short. John tried to tell him we were good for it; that we’d get the rest to him the next day. It shouldn’t have been a big deal but the guy wouldn’t hear it.”

“Oh my God! What’d you do?”

“He had the gun up to John’s head with his arm around his neck. I didn’t have any choice.” Adam looked down and fingered the button in the futon under the sheet.

“What are you saying, Adam?” I was on that fence, and suddenly, I was falling and trying to catch my balance. His words pulled me down onto the side I tried to avoid, yet wanted to be standing on so badly.

“I shot him in the leg. When he let go of John and he fell to the floor, John reached in his jacket and grabbed his piece.”

“John shot him?”

“Yeah, he shot him.”

 He was saying it so matter of fact that I wondered why he waited so long to tell me. It was like he was bragging, like he was hoping I would think it was really cool he was involved in a murder. Either I was a good girlfriend or a good detective. Right then, I couldn’t tell which.

“We ditched our clothes and got back to the boat. We didn’t say a word and it was swept under the rug Louisiana style”.

I stared at Adam. I couldn’t blink, I couldn’t say anything. I saw him standing there in my mind, with blood splattered on his shirt. I saw John holding the gun in a rage and walking up to the guy in slow motion, pulling back the hammer real slow like in a western movie. I shut my eyes and turned away gritting my teeth. Why was I in this so deep? Where did I cross the line from a job to a relationship? At what point did I start to care too much? All I knew was it was too late now. I was definitely on the other side of the fence. But I wasn’t so sure the grass was really greener.

“Jasmine, don’t. I never should have told you. I knew you would never look at me the same way again.” He reached for my shoulder and I yanked it back and stood up with the comforter around me. I had to keep up with the game, the façade; I couldn’t just throw it all away yet.

I looked down at him on the bed. My boyfriend is a murderer. His eyes beckoned me and asked me to stay. He reached out his hand and I could see in the flicker of the candlelight that his face was wet with tears. He trusted me, and I had already landed in the grass far from the fence that divided my heart from the rules.

“Please Jasmine, you have to understand. I would have gone to jail. John was my friend. He was going to kill him and I just couldn’t stand there and do nothing. I wasn’t going to let some Louisiana drug lord kill my best friend. You should have seen his eyes! He was like a trapped animal. You would have done the same thing. It was a fight or flight reaction.”

I knew all about that reaction. I knew how it felt to shoot someone. I knew what it was like to never be able to say anything, not even to your mother. I knew what it was like to see my partner in a choke hold. I understood Adam better than he knew, and more than I ever cared to admit.

“So, you trust me with this? How do you know I won’t go to the police?”

“Because I love you. Because I knew you would understand. Because you’re my Jazz.”

                                                *   *   *   *

The drizzle of rain that morning fell softly on the window above our bed. I rolled off the futon, careful not to disturb Adam snoring softly beside me. Slipping on his bathrobe, I went down the stairs and got my purse. Opening the door, I stepped barefoot onto the cold rain-slicked deck and down the driveway to the street. I turned and looked up at the gorgeous summer house with scaffoldings outside the kitchen windows where new shingles for the roof were being replaced. I let the strap of my purse slide off my shoulder and went it clunked onto the wet pavement I kicked it into the opening. Life is like being on one side or the other of a fence and the grass is never greener on the other side. My life with Adam was like walking on an electric fence and I just hoped I had finally chosen the right side to be on. The rain ran in a little stream down into the storm drain. I’d tell him I forgot my purse at Murphy’s during the blackout.