Tracy Thorne

CHAPTER 1

Sunday-November 25th, 2018

The fog moves in closer and wraps her in its dark, wet arms. Heart hammering and breath sputtering in the misty air, she strains against it. She stumbles over something, the edge of the road, she thinks, as there are no sidewalks here. Grainy pebbles dig into her raw palms, and blood trickles through a rip in her stockings. Yes, the road. She gets to her feet, struggling to make out the landscape in front of her.

It’s not dark yet, can’t even be 4:30, but the swirling gray clouds have gobbled up the last of the daylight, and she can’t find her car. She parked blocks away so she wouldn’t be noticed. Now, she is being hunted like an animal.

She cuts through a vacant lot, running at a slow, deliberate pace. Bark yanks threads from her expensive jacket as her shoulder slams into a tree. She falls again. Her chest thumps on the unforgiving ground, and pine needles jab at her face. Back on her feet, she walks. Hands reaching for this tree and that, she picks her way across the lot.

The fog thins momentarily, revealing deep twilight, and she sees a flash of yellow. Four houses down from the yellow cabin and turn left. Hopeful, she’s running again, and her noisy breaths compete with her shoes as they pound the asphalt.

Someone breaks from the trees and starts up the road. She sprints around the corner, praying her ankles won’t twist. There it is; her car beckons like a lighthouse amidst a storm. Her hand goes into the pocket of her skirt and finds the key fob. Thank God. She gets in, locks the doors, starts the engine, and pulls into the street—mechanical, thoughtless actions.

Her headlamps cut slices of light in the cloudy darkness. She should know her way back to the highway, but the fog disguises the streets, so she turns here and there—she’s a rat in a haphazard maze. Finally. Highway 1. She swings a wide right, almost into an approaching car, and a horn screams a warning. Body shaking in the throes of an adrenaline surge, she continues south, skirting around the curves.

It appears suddenly in her headlights: brown, stately, beautiful, and as frightened as she is. She jerks the steering wheel to the left and slams on the brakes, and the deer makes contact with the front wheel well. The vehicle escapes her control and veers drunkenly before plunging down an embankment rich with pine trees.

Metal, grating and crushing, accompanies the sound of shattering glass. An airbag slaps her face, pushing its chemical smell and dust particles up her nose. Blood gushes over her ear and down her neck. Did I feed the dog, she asks herself right before she passes out.

Part I

August 2018

CHAPTER 2

Frankie’s mood undermines the bright, sunny weather. One side of her temple throbs intermittently, suggesting an impending migraine, her stomach protests the four cups of black coffee, and her shoulder aches—when will it heal?

Done, three more query letters. How many is that? She pulls up the Excel spreadsheet on her laptop. Sixty-eight queries sentsince January and not one request for my manuscript.

Okay, so she doesn’t have an MFA or a master’s in English literature from Yale, but what about the BA in journalism and the MA in communications from Roosevelt University? And writing was the essence of the jobs she held after college. First, two years of public relations for a major Chicago based cosmetic company, and then seven years as an assistant speechwriter. At the end of her speechwriting career, she made a respectable salary working for New York Senator May Jeffers, who is rumored to be planning a run for President in 2020.

Look at me now, and all it took was that early morning venture down to the subway platform. The bottom line, she can write and has the background knowledge to spin a political thriller. (The problem, a lot of agents don’t like political thrillers, or so they say.)

She stands and flips her laptop shut. Pull away, you can do this. Her computer pings, signaling a new email, and sucked back in, she flops down on the thick cushion she uses to augment the uncomfortable chair. This could change everything. Maybe it’s Meadow Owens. Never mind, it’s Mom.

From: Barbara Wells

Subject: Hello

Date: August 8, 2018

To: Frankie Moretti

Hi Frankie!

I haven’t heard from you for a while. I left voicemail messages. Are you okay? Have you heard anything about the novel? It’s fantastic so DON’T get discouraged. I hope you’ve been seeing your therapist and not smoking too much marijuana. Please call me when you get a chance.

Love, Mom

P.S. Since you don’t seem to be interested in dating, I’m thinking you should get a dog. Dogs are great companions. It would lift your spirits.

No, Mom, no on the therapist and no on the dog, and the dating, I don’t know where to start.

She writes back:

From: Frankie Moretti

Subject: Re: Hello

Date: August 8, 2018

To: Barbara Wells

I’m fine. I had a request for my manuscript! Very busy. Will call next week.

XOXOXO

Yes, it’s shitty she lied to her mother, but she doesn’t want her to worry or nag. The computer has lost its power, and Frankie stretches and heads to the bedroom.

The blackout drapes are pulled back and the white, hosiery sheer panels on the window add a warm, hazy filter to the sunlight. Romance. That’s what the bedroom whispers with the four-poster bed, soft pink chair, handmade quilt, the assortment of fuzzy pillows and comfortable throws, and the miniature old fashion dressing table. This is not her design sense. Frankie had clean lines and modern furniture in her old life, but she left everything when she moved out of the Brooklyn brownstone.

Picturesque Cayucos, California, is her new start, her writing haven—only things aren’t falling into place like she thought they would when she rented the furnished cottage on Saint Martin Avenue fifteen months ago. Her landlady, an artist living oceanfront in nearby Morro Bay, had grown sick of the hassle with short-term vacation rentals, so she agreed to lease to Frankie. Generous and how quaint, she figured at first. But as her bank account gets slimmer, almost three grand a month seems steep for seven hundred and fifty square feet, and the list of non-cute, non-charming things continues to grow. (Her landlord, Jane, keeps asking Frankie to watch her cat, the front door is hard to open after it rains, most of the kitchen cupboards creak, and the bathroom is tinier than the small master closet.)

The gauzy curtains catch on the cheap rod as she pushes them back. The house is on the corner, and she has a peek of the blue Pacific a block away. Gorgeous day and I’m still in my pajamas at 2:30 p.m., pathetic.

Lately, she has been panicking over the fact she is single, alone, and thirty-five years old. Shabby chic, both the mirror and me. She leans in closer: dark brown, straight hair cut in a short, choppy bob, green eyes a bit too wide, a petite freckled nose, and pale skin, which is mostly line free, except for the slight furrow between her brows. Twenty-five, I could pass for that in the right light, hmm, twenty-seven or eight. Mom’s right, I should start dating before it’s too late. People used to tell me I was pretty—when I talked to people, of course, before I became a reclusive weirdo.

Frankie runs her hands over her naked body: full B cup breasts, flat stomach, a long torso for her 5’1 frame, slight, almost boyish hips. Too bad my legs aren’t thinner and six inches longer. I bet Meadow has long, thin legs.

Meadow is the agent she is obsessing about. Meadow is a hippy name, so she could be a cool chick like Frankie’s mom. And her bio on the Owens Ward Literary website isn’t pretentious. She is not one of those agents that write in their bio about sitting in front of their gigantic windows and peering down at the joggers in Central Park—who look like ants—while eating imported chocolate and knitting cozy sweaters for their small dogs. Those agents seek authors that can write like Cormac McCarthy and sell books like Stephen King. They want your manuscript to make them laugh, and cry, and tug at their heartstrings, and scare them, and keep them up all night—yes, everything, all at once. Exhausting. But Meadow has intelligent eyes, a beautiful face, and there’s not an underlying smirk to her smile, and she has a vacation home in Cambria, just fifteen minutes away. If I bump into her, perhaps we could become friends.

She puts on her workout clothes and running shoes and pushes her hair back with an elastic headband. The door closes with a bang, and she sets off in pursuit of the beach, hoping for low tide so she can run all the way to Morro Rock and back—six miles total, enough to kill the marijuana hangover.

CHAPTER 3

“The best fish tacos on the Embarcadero,” the review in yesterday’s paper claimed. No, I don’t think so. This place won’t last. Frankie wolfed down two tacos that were alleged to be halibut, but were likely cod, while watching the sun dress the bay and fishing boats with smudges of color.

The point of being here amongst the locals and tourists is to think about the new novel she is trying to write about a woman who flees an abusive boyfriend and gets a job captaining a charter fishing boat. She thought the swaying boats and the basking and barking sea lions on the stretch of sand across the bay would inspire her and break the nasty streak of writer’s block. Inspiration doesn’t come, only the realization she isn’t suited to author chick-lit or romance novels. Maybe a touch of romance mixed in with dark and twisted, but trying for chick-lit, so desperate. And she’s nauseous, like the fish was rotten under the thick layer of tartar sauce and cabbage.

She gets the car in the silly little detached garage and is struggling with the stubborn front door when the food poisoning sets in. Vomit—gross—into the planter of lavender and daylilies. She’s sweating, and the cool washrag on her forehead isn’t helping. After three trips to the toilet to throw-up, Frankie takes two long drags on her marijuana vape pen and crawls into bed.

Lying beneath the covers, she starts to drift off but is startled awake by the cell phone on the bed next to her. Rebecca Fletcher—seriously, I haven’t seen her since THAT NIGHT. She doesn’t answer and looking at the missed call notification it’s as if the name Rebecca brought back the nausea instead of the bad fish. She tears off the bedcovers and dashes to the bathroom.

Cold and clammy, Frankie gets back in bed, and her mind wanders back to that December night almost two years past now.

…………………………

At quarter till two in the morning she gives Rebecca a peck on the cheek and watches her disappear into the bathroom. She stands in the foyer of the Soho dive bar fumbling in her purse for her cell phone and discovers it died as she sat blabbing and gossiping with Rebecca. She lives just across the Brooklyn Bridge; a ten-minute Uber drive at this hour, but a dead cell phone means no Uber.

She tries to hail a taxi, but the streets are weirdly empty considering it’s New York and the holidays are approaching. Must be the wind, which drives the three degrees Fahrenheit air through layers of clothing and into the bones. One taxi in five minutes; the driver slows and turns his body toward her. She steps off the curb and away he goes. Now that’s rude!

Urine, decay, moldy fried food wrappers, and dampness from leaking water, the air is thick with smells, and the light down by the subway platform is hazy yellow like aged smoke. She drank too much. Frankie’s a lightweight and no match for her co-worker. Despite being intoxicated, she is reluctant to touch the railing and the spikey heels of her boots, tap, tap, tap against the steel stairs.

The man in the brown overcoat who was in front of her vanishes while she battles with the turnstile. Waiting for the R train in the stale, freezing pre-dawn she is alone, then she’s not.

She doesn’t hear them approach; perhaps the echo of the train rumbling through a tunnel somewhere west of her disguises their footsteps like it does her scream. They drag her into the men’s bathroom. She kicks, claws, yells, and punches air. Her attackers are males in their early twenties, both white, one with a smooth face, and one with a small dark goatee—that’s all she can recall later, possibly because of the concussion. They take her Prada bag, camel-hair coat, and the Rolex off her wrist before knocking her to the floor.

As the man with the goatee climbs on top of her, she smashes her fist into his nose. He responds by punching her in the eye and yanking her left arm up over her head, which results in her shoulder ripping out of its socket and a bone breaking in her wrist as it slams against the grimy floor. The fluorescent lights streak, distorting the face above her. Damp and gritty, tile scratches at her thighs as he forces her pants down, and the stench from the urinals forces its way into her head, mixing with the pain.

A voice booms, interrupting the raspy breathing, the rustle of fabric, the ruthless thoughts. “HEY. HEY.” And with a blur of motion, the pressure on her body subsides. It takes a while for her to quit screaming and realize the thugs have scuttled off like cockroaches and the enormous man, kneeling beside her, is here to help.

A half an hour after the attack, the assailants use her Discover Card to buy food and liquor and get a three-hundred-dollar cash advance at a twenty-four-hour grocery store. Meanwhile, she has emergency surgery for a detached retina and a day later an operation to insert a pin in her wrist.

They never caught her attackers despite DNA evidence from the blood on her hand and the fact sketchy, razor thin men, one in a woman’s coat and one holding a Prada handbag, were seen sprinting down the streets of New York.

CHAPTER 4

Frankie looks at her phone again. Rebecca has left a voicemail. Why after all this time? Rebecca didn’t visit her in the hospital, or send a Get-Well card, or pop into the brownstone to see her during her recuperation. And when she was cleared to go back to work and didn’t, Rebecca took her job, and that was bullshit.

She tried to get better, and people were patient at first. But they grew tired of her: moping, excessive sleeping, chronic pot smoking, refusal to leave the house, and irritability—which was an attempt to mask anxiety and depression. A gas bubble was inserted into her eye to hold her retina in place and as it dissolved, it threw monstrous shapes across her blurry visual field, causing her to startle constantly. She attempted to explain, but nobody understood. And she started to hate New York, the subway, the cold, strangers, old friends, and crowds, and she vowed never to use a public restroom again.

Since she’s back in the past right now, thanks to Rebecca, Frankie revisits her old boyfriend.

…………………………

Before the attack Dylan was, at most, a twice a week commitment. Now suddenly he’s coming over every night and not leaving until morning. He schedules her appointments for massages and to get her hair and nails done, but she refuses to go. And she’s so sick of the hovering. Go back to the Financial District, to your cramped apartment and your CPA job.

She opens the door for him. Although it’s mid-March, winter refuses to subside and a bitter draft follows him into the foyer. Dressed in an impeccable three-piece suit, his wire-framed glasses high on his long nose, he brought two-dozen red roses, expensive takeout, and aggressively priced wine. Frankie is wearing her oldest t-shirt and drawstring sweats that long ago lost their elastic waist, and she can’t remember if she brushed her teeth today.

Over wine Dylan states he wants his old girlfriend back—his cute, ambitious girl, who washes her face and puts on makeup and wears something other than baggy sweatpants.

She gives him a look and remarks, “She’s gone.”

“Well, maybe when you go back to work, she’ll come back. You start Monday, right?”

“No, I’m not going back. I think I’ll write a novel. I always wanted to write fiction.”

She’s relieved at his shocked expression—yay we’re done. But then he recovers. “Okay, I get that. And I’m here for you, I.”

Frankie interrupts. “I’m moving to California.” They are sitting in front of the gas fireplace, and his glasses reflect the flames and the stubborn line of her chapped lips.

Silence fills every corner of the large room as she sits drinking the overpriced wine and wishing she could enjoy it as she waits for him to gather his thoughts and his things. He’s getting up to leave. No, he’s down on one knee—oh fuck. She stares at the little blue box in his hand and takes a sip of wine, then another and another, and blinks and blinks, but he’s still there. Dylan opens the box. The diamond is substantial—three or four carats, she figures later. And seeing it glittering in the firelight makes her want to scream. Another person with stupid expectations!