The opposite of love, p.1
The Opposite of Love, page 1
The Opposite of Love
T.A. Pace
Copyright © 2015 by T.A. Pace
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.
ASIN: B011EN6JMO
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All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
For Space
Flesh is merely a lesson. We learn it and pass on.
—Erica Jong, Any Woman’s Blues
Chapter One
A young girl pushed a navy blue baby carriage—not a stroller, an actual pram, like a little bed on wheels. Melanie studied it as she drove, thinking how rarely one saw that type of thing. In the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson it was more common to see a three-wheeled jogging stroller than the standard four-wheel variety, let alone a pram. She speculated that these were what the well-to-do pushed their crumb-snatchers around in these days, but the girl pushing the carriage had the dewy skin and lanky body of a teenager. Perhaps the nanny, Melanie thought.
The girl waited at the crosswalk on the opposite side of the street. There was no stop sign or light, and a delivery truck coming up that side of the street was already slowing to allow her to cross. Melanie pulled her Volvo SUV to a stop on her side of the crosswalk.
Melanie tried to visualize herself behind the high handle of such a curious thing as a pram, and couldn’t. It wasn’t about the money; she had that. It was the baby she couldn’t imagine.
She sat up in the driver’s seat of her SUV trying to catch a glimpse of the infant, but the movement behind the delivery truck caught her eye instead. A white sedan was racing up behind the truck, and instead of stopping, it changed lanes to go around. The girl with the carriage was crossing in front of the truck and Melanie couldn’t tell if the driver of the sedan would be able to see her. Surely he would see the crosswalk and stop. He wasn’t stopping. The girl was looking down. The carriage would be in the second lane before the girl saw the car. Melanie grasped all of this in an impossibly small flash of a second, her eyes darting from the girl to the sedan and back again. Timing it. Looking for a gap in the trajectory of the carriage and the sedan that would make the car miss. It simply wasn’t there.
Melanie’s paralysis was both momentary and an eternity. Her right hand fumbled for the horn on the steering wheel while her left reached out toward the windshield, as if she might somehow extend her arm through the glass, through space and time. She couldn’t be sure whether she’d honked the horn, whether she’d screamed. Sound dissolved. Rods and cones clicked away at an unbearably efficient rate, creating snapshots of each excruciating movement. The girl’s chin rose until her eyes locked on Melanie and her outstretched hand.
Everything paused.
It hasn’t happened yet. Can you change this? Can you stop this? It hasn’t happened.
Like a giant cement wheel fighting its own weight in order to turn, the inertia of interrupted time lifted. The driver of the white sedan slammed on the brakes. Without turning her head, the girl yanked the carriage back a step. But there wasn’t enough room. The car clipped the end of the carriage, turning it and sending it up and forward. The baby, dressed in blue and with a full head of blond hair, lifted up and then caught slightly on the lip of the carriage’s hood, sending the child splayed and spinning into the air. The sedan’s tires stopped screeching while the baby spun—like a doll, Melanie thought. It really is just like a doll. It must be a doll.
Everything was silent. And even in the silence, the sound of the baby hitting the pavement just feet from Melanie’s car couldn’t be heard so much as it could be felt.
She knew it wasn’t a doll.
Melanie glanced at the baby once, which was a mistake; it wasn’t a sight she’d soon forget. As she opened her car door and got out, her legs were weak and shaking, her hands trembling, and she had to hold herself up by the frame of the car. Her stomach hollowed out with a familiar ache, like deep hunger.
The girl had been thrown to the ground when the carriage was clipped, and now she was crawling haltingly toward the baby lying in the road, crawling as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to get to him, to see him, but unable to stop herself. She screamed in an involuntary, high-pitched, primal way that was as terrifying as the scene itself. It was the sound of things being irreparably ripped away. She stopped screaming and choked on air and the world itself seemed to struggle for breath with her. The silence as she inhaled was a deafening century, and then she let loose another piercing wail. Melanie was glad for the screaming because it was necessary, but she didn’t have the inclination to do it herself.
The driver of the sedan was a middle-aged man in a tie and slacks, and Melanie watched as he emerged from his car slowly, went to the baby and kneeled down. He didn’t touch the body. The driver of the delivery truck said he was calling 911. Melanie went to the girl. She knew what seeing the little boy in such a grotesque state would do to her; there was no erasing it. She guided her away from the baby and to the curb where she helped her sit and then rubbed and patted her back while she cried. The sirens, when they came, blended in with the girl’s wails.
One paramedic went to the baby while another examined the girl. Melanie stepped away and found a bench nearby. She sat staring across the street at the well-manicured trees and bright orange Mexican birds of paradise planted in precise increments down the edge of the walkway. The sheet they put over the baby was too big; it looked like someone had thrown an empty trash bag in the road. Crime scene. Evidence. It was all so ugly. So dark. A cloud passed over and cast a cool shadow. Melanie shivered and the chill traveled up through her chest and into her throat lodging itself there and choking her like a sob, although she had no intention of crying.
The driver of the sedan sat on the curb near the sheet with his head down, talking on the phone. His shoulders were shaking. What he had done was so astonishingly foolish, but by no means malicious, and Melanie felt a pang of pity for him. She wondered if he had children. Maybe he could replace the baby. Or help them adopt one. Her mind was coming up with odd thoughts—ridiculous really—trying to land on something that would fix this tragedy and make it right.
It was just too awful to be permanent. Too horrific to be true. Her mind flashed to a girl of nine years, to bicycles and the bright red of freshly shed blood—great quantities of blood made vibrant with the sudden exposure to oxygen, so that it looked too bright, fake, and loaned itself to the surreal nature of the event.
She blinked the memory away and thought about her morning, how mundane it had been. Looking down she saw with interest that she was still wearing her workout clothes and she tried to remember how her run had felt. Was there any pain? Was it a good run? She couldn’t remember, and the endorphins were long gone. She glanced toward the man on the curb and wondered what his day had been like up until now. Had he been absently going through the motions? Had he been daydreaming when he drove down this street and into a baby carriage? What had he been thinking of?
The plain-clothes officer was standing right in front of her, but Melanie was still watching the driver of the sedan.
“Ma’am, are you a witness?”
“Sorry, what was that?” She looked up into dark sunglasses on a tanned face.
“Did you witness the accident?”
Accident. Mistake. Error. Ball overthrown, runner advances to second. Not the end of the world.
“Yes.”
“I’m Detective Perolo with Metro P.D. I’ll need to get a statement from you, if that’s ok.”
She looked around at the street signs. “Aren’t we in Henderson?”
“Yes, but Metro has concurrent jurisdiction. We go anywhere in the county.”
“Oh. Didn’t know that.”
“Most people don’t. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about what happened here?”
She gave her account with as little emotion as possible. Just the facts. It was all pretty straightforward. The officer sat on the bench next to her and took notes as she talked. He waited expectantly when she was done, as though she’d left something out. She looked at him and he propped his sunglasses on his head, revealing muted green eyes.
“And how are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“I know it’s hard to see something like this happen.”
Melanie didn’t know how to respond. “What’s going to happen to him?” She nodded toward the man sitting on the curb, who was now being interviewed by another officer.
“Well, from what you and the driver of the truck have told me, it looks like it could be vehicular manslaughter, but that’s up to the DA’s office.”
Melanie shook her head, wishing there was something she could do, weighted by her impotence.
A car pulled up and a woman and man Melanie guessed to be in their forties got out and ran to the girl who started wailing anew. The couple glanced at the sheet in the road as they embra
“Whose baby was it?” Melanie asked.
“That couple over there.” He pointed. “The girl is his sister.”
Melanie felt such a deep sorrow for the girl. The death of a loved one carries with it a profound and unexpected knowledge, one that is complicated and difficult to express to others; this Melanie knew from personal experience. When that death is also a tragedy, often this knowledge will feed on blame and what ifs and questions without answers until it becomes its own being, walking beside the mourner and touching everything. It was painful to know how this random event would likely affect the young girl, and to be able to do nothing about it.
The officer watched the scene for a moment, then turned back to Melanie. He stood and handed her his card, said to call if there was anything she needed. Melanie figured this was just something police officers said in situations like this. That mother and father needed their baby boy back. That girl needed a time machine. The sedan driver needed a brilliant attorney. Melanie couldn’t imagine what she might need.
James Perolo watched the tanned brunette walk back to her silver SUV where it sat in the middle of the road. He watched the woman’s calves flex and her backside move with a gentle switch. Her tank top showed off her lean frame, her toned arms and defined shoulders. He looked back down at his notepad. Melanie Leon. She didn’t look like a Melanie to him. Women whose names ended in ‘ie’ or ‘y’ usually sounded young, immature. Brittany, Ashley, Jenny—the kind of girl you could ply with drinks ’til she giggled herself into your bed. But women with an ‘a’ sound at the end sounded more womanly, intelligent, capable. Like Sophia, Mona, Laura. This woman looked like a Laura.
He preferred these kinds of calls—the ones where he got to meet real people, people he considered to be of a similar social status to himself. As a patrol cop, his entire world had been comprised of addicts, thieves and gangbangers. Now, as a detective, he dealt with much the same people, but more often they were dead.
Exploring the underbelly of Vegas on a daily basis often felt like traveling to a parallel universe, one where it should be physically impossible to cross paths with a criminal when he was off-duty, and similarly, he should never encounter a civilian—especially an attractive one like Melanie—when he was working. He did enjoy the occasional unexpected “normal” encounter while at work, but it unsettled him that the reverse was also possible; a perp could cross into his off time as well.
He understood why many cops didn’t live and work in the same city—to avoid running into people you’ve busted—but in Las Vegas, he didn’t have much choice. Sure, he could’ve worked in Henderson, but for someone with ambition, that suburb didn’t have a large enough department to provide the advancement and prestige he was after. Same for North Las Vegas. Aside from that, there was nothing but desert for miles. As it was, he’d put in twenty years with Las Vegas Metro P.D. and was finally about to make sergeant—as soon as he took the exam and called in a few favors. But that was all standard operating procedure as far as he was concerned; he knew he’d earned it.
A guy doesn’t often come from parents like his and manage to make something of himself; he’d seen that firsthand. He’d seen the runaways, the druggies, the hoods, the whores all looking for some kind of family in each other, a solidarity that they should have received from their parents. They all longed for loyalty, which was a rare find in their world. They all wanted to survive, but other than that, they had nothing to lose, and therefore no loyalty to anyone except themselves. And as for physical survival, some were so perilously exposed to the elements that James figured he was doing them a favor by locking them up.
He wished someone had done his parents a favor and locked them up before it was too late.
“Perolo, you got everything?” James’ partner called to him from the passenger seat of their unmarked SUV.
“Yeah, we’re good,” he called back.
The EMTs loaded the baby into the ambulance and would deliver the body to the morgue. The patrol cops were packing up the cones and tape and allowing traffic to resume. James took his seat behind the wheel of the SUV and pulled slowly into traffic.
Having a Hispanic partner was new for James. Lopez had been riding shotgun with him for a little over three months, and the racial chip on his shoulder was starting to show. James had had several black partners when he was a patrol cop, but hadn’t encountered much in the way of attitude, not toward him anyway. But this guy, Lopez, seemed to have reservations about anyone who wasn’t Latino.
Every call or interview that involved a white person was a powder keg of issues. If they rolled up on someone Latino, Lopez would take the lead under the assumption that he could get whatever info they were after from one of his own better than James could, and sometimes that was true. But when they interrogated a white guy, Lopez would fume with indignation if James offered to take the lead. If James let his partner go ahead, the chip on Lopez’ shoulder would lead the way and he’d goad the white guy, challenge him to disrespect him in the slightest way. If he did, Lopez would detain him, arrest him—didn’t matter what—it would be a win and Lopez would be satisfied. If the white guy showed respect, he’d often get away without damage but with a persistent dislike of either minorities or cops or both. It made James crazy to watch a partner confirm suspicions that he was a power-hungry, ignorant asshole by being just that. A badge in and of itself was no reason to respect someone, only a reason to comply.
“That was rough, man,” said Lopez.
“What’s that?” asked James.
“That kid,” he said, looking down at his lap. “Makes me think of my own little ones. If something like that happened…” He shook his head and trailed off, looking out the window as they drove up Green Valley Parkway. Lopez had three kids of his own and one on the way. It was pretty much all he ever talked about. James himself had experienced a close call in his thirties—broken condom, pregnancy, miscarriage—and that had been enough to have him running to the doctor to have his swimmers put on lockdown.
“Yeah,” said James. He turned into the parking lot at the corner of Flamingo and Green Valley and parked in front of a restaurant that served Chinese, Japanese and Thai food. “Lunch?” he said.
When they got back to the station and sat down at their desks positioned face to face (rather incestuously, in James’ opinion), James picked up the phone to retrieve his office voicemail. Urgent calls went to his cell, calls that could wait went to his office number. Cathy, the receptionist, was adept at discerning which was which.
“Perolo, Lieutenant Lennox. I have a message here from someone claiming to be your mother. She wants your cell number and Cathy says she won’t leave a message with her or your voicemail. And now she wants to talk to me. I won’t return the call. Just letting you know.”
James deleted the message and hung up. He stared at his computer screen, watching the METRO screen saver icon dance across the display.
A few weeks before someone calling herself his mother had phoned the station twice asking for him, asking for his cell number. James wasn’t sure if it was her or not; it could’ve been some stalker ex trying to harass him. He’d had to change his cell number twice in three years for that very reason. Even if it was his mother, he couldn’t begin to imagine what she wanted. Money? A place to stay? A relationship? He wanted to give her none of the above. She’d had her chance; she hadn’t done any of that for him.
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
—Erica Jong
Chapter Two
After the accident, Melanie trudged through the rest of the day in a fog, almost getting into a fender-bender while running errands. At four in the afternoon she just gave up and went home. Curled up on the couch with a glass of Merlot and a chenille blanket, she stared at the blank TV screen.
