The Ex

2

Moonlight softened the already hazy light of the Terrace Top Restaurant in downtown Saint Louis. Though it had rained almost every day since the violent weather of last week, the forecast for tonight was for only a fifty percent chance of light showers, so several diners were eating outside the framed glass wall of the rooftop restaurant, enjoying one of summer’s uncharacteristically delightful cool nights.

Christine Mathews sat at one of the outdoor white-clothed tables with half a dozen friends from work. They’d finished dinner and were idly chatting and looking out at the lighted skyline of the city. Twenty stories below and to the east, the Mississippi River lay black and glistening in the moonlight. The running lights of tugboats glowed upstream, and on the far side of the river the Casino Queen gambling boat, glittering like gaudy jewelry, was gradually pulling away from its dock in East Saint Louis.

“A beautiful city from up here,” Chad Brent, a technical support expert, said from across the table. They had come to the expensive restaurant to celebrate his birthday. Christine knew he had a crush on her. She also knew it was hopeless. Chad was nice enough, and handsome enough, but his timing was off.

Christine, a pretty blond woman in her early twenties, with a somewhat oversized nose she minimized with thick bangs, and with a lush rather than fashionable figure beneath her navy blue dress, looked around the table at Bill and Yolanda and Terry. At Burt and Jennifer. The people at the table weren’t exactly intimate friends, but among them was the easy familiarity that grew from working long hours together. And Davison Tire and Rubber often demanded long hours.

The tuxedoed waiter, a young man with sleek black hair, took their orders for coffee and dessert. Christine was dieting as usual and resisted his sales pitch for the chocolate-raspberry special. She ordered only a cappuccino. Terry began talking about the new low-profile radial tire the company was developing. Christine, who was in Accounting, wasn’t much interested. She excused herself and stood up.

“Time to feed my habit,” she said. She was the only one at the table who hadn’t quit smoking to conform to the new company policy.

“It’d be healthier for you to stay here with us,” Yolanda told her. She sounded serious. “Those things aren’t called cancer sticks for nothing. They’re sure to shorten your life.”

Chad started to stand. “Want some company?”

Yolanda, who rather liked Chad, smiled and gently pushed him back down. “You’d only live a little while longer than her after sucking in that second-hand smoke, honey.”

“She’s right,” Christine said quickly, discouraging Chad from accompanying her. “Anyway, I’ll be back before the coffee comes.”

She walked away from the table, toward a garden area that helped to segment the restaurant from the rest of the roof. Maybe it would have been legal to smoke at the table, but she’d seen no ashtrays anywhere, and she knew how smoke bothered everyone since they’d given up cigarettes. She glanced back once to make sure Chad hadn’t changed his mind and followed her.

Relieved that she was alone, she stepped between two potted ornamental trees, then through an arched wooden trellis that supported vines growing from large ceramic pots. The tar and gravel surface of the roof crunched beneath her soles as she moved back beyond the line of decorative plants and was invisible from the restaurant, a sinner seeking solitude.

Looking out at the city and breathing in the damp but fresh night air, she felt contentment. A cigarette, then a cappuccino, would end her day perfectly. Nicotine and caffeine. Maybe Yolanda was right about a shortened life span. She fished in her purse for her pack of Winstons and her lighter, found the crumpled package, and almost panicked when it felt empty. But when she drew the pack from her purse and tore it all the way open, she discovered one last cigarette.

She located the lighter in her purse, then moved over to stand at the low iron guard rail to take in the view while she lit the cigarette. The Casino Queen had moved well upriver.

A slight sound made her turn, unlit cigarette in one hand, lighter in the other.

From the shadows beneath the trellis, a tall woman emerged. When she moved into the light, Christine saw that she was quite pretty, wearing dark slacks and a light sweater with a bright scarf at her throat. Her shoulder-length red hair hung over one side of her face, reminding Christine, who was a movie buff, of an old-time film star whose name she couldn’t recall.

The tall woman smiled at her.

“The places we smokers have to go just to have a cigarette these days!” Christine said. She flicked the lighter and raised it to her cigarette, sensing that the woman was studying her on the other side of the flame.

As she inhaled, exhaled, and dropped the lighter back into her purse, she noticed that the woman wasn’t holding a cigarette. She seemed friendly enough, smiling as she moved toward Christine.

“You’re Christine Mathews, aren’t you?” she asked. “Chrissy?”

Christine was surprised. And curious. She tried to place the woman in memory but couldn’t.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “Though not many people call me Chrissy.”

“So young,” the woman said. “I just knew you’d be young.” She was still smiling.

“Do we know each other?” Christine asked, beginning to feel an edge of fear.

“I know you,” the woman said. “I’m Deirdre.”

And suddenly Christine understood. But the tornado, the mental institution, were over a hundred miles out of town…It wasn’t possible!

But of course it was possible. Merely unlikely.

“You can’t-” she said, trying hard not to believe what was happening.

She was cut off as Deirdre leaped toward her with the agility and power of a feral cat and drove an elbow into her stomach, then shoved her backward.

Christine felt the horizontal iron guard rail hard against her thighs, just beneath her buttocks. Deirdre grinned and pushed her again, driving her fist between her breasts, and Christine toppled backward over the railing, trailing a hand just in time to catch the bottom of the rail. Her heart and her horror tried to climb the tunnel of her throat as she lost her hold on the rail but managed to twist her body and grip the tile ledge with one hand, then the other, and hang suspended twenty stories above Sixth Street. She tried to scream but found only enough breath to make a soft whining sound. Her fingers began to slip on the smooth tile.

Then Deirdre was bending over her, smiling down from within the soft frame of her long red hair. Veronica Lake, Christine thought inanely. That was who Deirdre reminded her of, though except for the hair, she didn’t look like Veronica Lake at all.

“Please!” Christine managed to plead hoarsely. She tried to find a foothold, frantically scraping her toes against the building, but found only rough stone. One of her shoes fell off, and her heart fell with it.

Deirdre reached down with both hands, and for a second Christine thought she was going to grip her wrists and pull her to safety. This was all a joke! A horrible joke!

Instead Deirdre pressed the palms of her hands against Christine’s knuckles, pinning her fingers to the unyielding ledge, leaning her weight down hard, pushing, swiveling the heels of her hands to grind Christine’s fingers into the tile. Christine couldn’t be sure if she was still gripping the ledge or if she remained clinging there only because of the pressure of Deirdre’s hands.

Then Deirdre suddenly released the pressure and stood up straight, grinning down at Christine and holding her own hands out as if she were about to soar like Superman.

The abrupt release of Christine’s numbed fingers caused them to slip immediately. Christine tried desperately to regain her grip but no longer had any feeling in her fingertips.

It was when she knew for sure she couldn’t possibly maintain her hold that she found her voice and screamed.

She screamed all the way to the street.

After a few seconds of paralyzing shock, everyone from the outdoor restaurant came running to see what had happened. Led by the tuxedoed waiter, they burst dramatically through the potted foliage.

By then Deirdre was gone.