almost okay

By the time the tape had rewound half-way, the reels started moving slower until they eventually whispered to a halt. Damn. The batteries were dead.

After rushing to the kitchen and finding no fresh ones in the junk drawer, I grabbed the remote for the stereo, snapped off the cover on the back and tapped the two AAs inside it onto the coffee table. Fumbling with thick and trembling fingers, I eventually managed to transfer them to the tape recorder and fast-forwarded to the point where I could hear Jackie knocking at the door.

As I listened to the sounds of what had happened, it felt as though my heart would burst, systole and diastole audibly pumping heat and pain and sorrow throughout every inch of my body. Flashes of memory caused me to close my eyes tight as blurred snapshots from the previous evening began to flood my alcohol-addled brain. It was all there...the argument, the fight, her screams and finally, the sounds of my heavy breathing as I shuffled out of the living room, my footsteps echoing on the hardwood floor as I made my way to bed. Then silence.

It had been only a matter of ten minutes or so, but they were ten minutes of absolute horror that had changed my life forever. I remembered...

She had knocked on the door while I was working - both on that first million-dollar idea and on my second pitcher of martinis. It was obvious when listening to the playback that I was more than a little drunk. Our divorce wasn’t yet final and Jackie was after more money, even though she had bled me dry before I moved here from L.A. She took the beach house and the majority of our savings, while I was left with just enough in my bank account to rent a broken down bungalow in one of the seedier neighborhoods on Detroit’s east side. I remember her attorney at the time calling it ‘fair’.

During my relocation to Motown the previous winter I had been very careful to cover my tracks. No land line telephone. No forwarding address. I was hoping for a fresh start and, most importantly, to never see Jackie again. She shouldn’t have been able to find me so quickly.

As the tape continued to play, amid her shouts and my slurred exclamations I heard Jackie mention the name 'Andy' more than once. The same Andy I had run into in lockup that weekend I spent in Oakland County for DUI. The very same Andy who was Jackie's cousin. And even though I couldn't remember telling him where I lived, it must have been Andy who ratted me out.

At some point during the argument Jackie had turned up the heat, like she was so good at doing. She always knew just which buttons to push to send me over the edge and she had pushed like there was no tomorrow that night...calling me names, spitting at me and eventually brandishing the aluminum softball bat that I kept in the umbrella stand near the door.

She was feisty, I had to hand it to her. It was one of the things I used to like about her, but with a bat in her hand and Jackie pissed at me, her feisty nature was a definite negative. She had a swing like Barry Bonds going for Aaron's record and the first one had hit me high on my left arm. When I pulled the injured arm away Jackie had swung again, lower this time, the bat striking me hard in the ribs. I winced as I remembered the pain shooting through me from that blow, the resulting uncontrollable rage that followed as I saw red and the real violence commenced.

That was the last I remembered, really. Even on the tape, what happened after that was kind of hard to decipher. There was the sound of glass breaking, some grunts and groans, a scream or two and that was pretty much it.

I turned off the recorder and looked out the window. It was just starting to get light outside and the clock on the living room wall said it was a quarter to seven. Birds were chirping, a new day was dawning and Jackie was still dead.

My head throbbed. I began to formulate a plan.


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