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  Life Unbothered

  Charlie Elliott

  Published by Waldorf Publishing

  2140 Hall Johnson Road

  #102-345

  Grapevine, Texas 76051

  www.WaldorfPublishing.com

  Life Unbothered

  ISBN: 978-1-945175-28-2

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957022

  Copyright © 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please refer all pertinent questions to the publisher. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Dedication

  For those with resolve.

  1. A Fine Arizona Morning

  What should have been a desolate drive had turned out to be a postcard-perfect April morning. The sun peered over the McDowell Mountains to the east, not yet ready to lift the cool blue shadows shrouding the inert desert paradise. Immersed in the landscape of shifting pastels and crisp, sage-scented air, I was periodically forced to remind myself of what I was looking for. I was looking for a place to kill myself.

  My BMW glided along a straight undulating road at eighty miles per hour, creating a roller-coaster effect as I headed north of Scottsdale, away from the greater Phoenix urban area. The intermittent sound of pebbles pelting the wheel wells began when I slowed the car and made a random turn down an unnamed, unpaved road.

  “Wade, where are we going?” Pamela Wains, my fiancée, asked in an annoying high-pitched tone.

  “I’m going to hell,” I muttered.

  “Wade, that’s not funny. Don’t be an asshole. We’re getting married in two weeks.”

  I started hyperventilating and pursed my lips to absorb the apprehension. I looked up nervously at the clear sky through my windshield and pondered events that brought me to this state. The insistent gravity of my thoughts seemed to press me deeper into the car seat.

  “So where are we going?” Pamela asked again.

  “I’m not quite sure. I’m looking for a place.”

  “We’re out in the middle of nowhere,” Pamela noted. “Are you taking me shopping or something?”

  “No shopping. Just looking for a place to rest.”

  “Are we going to a restaurant?”

  I exhaled and closed my eyes for a couple of seconds. “Pamela, do you see anything remotely resembling a restaurant out here? You’re the one who insisted on going with me. I didn’t even want you to come along.”

  “I just want to know where the hell we’re going,” Pamela screeched.

  In an attempt to end the conversation immediately, I grasped both hands on the steering wheel and yanked it hard to the right. The car skidded sideways on the dry dirt until it left the road entirely and proceeded to execute a one-hundred-eighty-degree slide. The tail end whipped around and clipped a large saguaro cactus. Still almost thirty miles outside of Scottsdale, the prickly giant was safe for at least a decade from the ever-encroaching metropolitan area. Unfortunately, the cactus still had to contend with crazed drivers and their personal problems.

  Dust engulfed me when I swung the door open and exited the car. As I perused the landscape through the floating haze, a mini-forest of mesquite trees rose above the outcroppings of brittlebush. A dotting of saguaro cacti stood proudly with upturned arms as if giving a greeting wave, welcoming me to my death place. I went to the back of the car to discover an eight-inch-deep gash in the cactus I hit during the uncontrolled turn. The bushwhacked green giant remained standing proud and still, seemingly content despite the fact my bumper had almost obliterated sixty years of undisturbed growth. My car appeared undamaged, but I didn’t care to check it thoroughly.

  I crossed my arms and bowed my head after I scanned the scenery. I suddenly felt insecure, out in the open, self-conscious. Pamela bounded out of the car as I stared at a cluster of round pebbles dotting the sandy desert soil.

  “Wade, you almost killed me, you idiot,” she said. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Without responding, I opened the trunk to retrieve my loaded Beretta nine-millimeter pistol. Placing the gun in there the night before was the only prior planning I had done for the morning drive. I was too lazy to write a suicide note or even pay the current bills. My incomplete last will would take care of all the pesky details.

  The gun sat against the side of the trunk wedged behind the hose that delivered fuel to the gas tank. After freeing the weapon, I inspected the magazine. All ten rounds were intact, but I knew I only needed one, or possibly two if my aim was askew. I cast a stern look in Pamela’s direction, absently noting the ample makeup applied around her eyes gave her the look of a raccoon wearing false lashes.

  “You’re shittin’ me,” she said. “You took me out here to shoot your gun? I hate guns. If you’re not taking me somewhere I can enjoy, you’re just wasting my time, Wade.”

  I started walking away from my car, not sure which way to go. I was scouting for a place… an appropriate locale to do it. I walked through the low-lying desert scrub, leaving behind the narrow dirt road that had delivered us to this empty place. Out of the brush, a desert rat scurried across my path to safety. I had invaded its space, but planned to be a neighbor soon.

  I was astounded that Pamela actually followed me in silence while I walked with a gun in my hand. With every step, the friction created by her painted-on jeans made a faint whistling sound as her thighs rubbed together. The black plastic tassels strewn across her burnt orange shirt jostled from side to side casting irritating little tink tink noises that progressed with her strides. Her designer boots scraped patches of hardpan as she trailed a couple of steps behind.

  I stopped walking as a warm, gentle breeze flowed around me and adrenaline clogged my ear canals. A couple of roadrunners bustled in the sagebrush a few feet off, but the beauty of the arid natural surroundings escaped me. What troubled me most was the uncertainty of not knowing whether my cerebral havoc would ever cease, and how I had come to be an embarrassment to myself and felt others around me shared the same viewpoint. Now that the decision was made to end it all, my family would no longer need to explain what I’m doing, where I’m working, or what woman I’m shacking up with. Pamela Wains could justify her canceled wedding.

  With my back turned to her, I said, “Pamela, I’m going to kill myself.”

  “You’re going to kill yourself now? Two weeks before our wedding?”

  I turned to her and dropped my arm, letting the gun rest by my hip. “Pamela, is that your biggest concern at the moment? I don’t want to get married, I want to die. Can you comprehend that?”

  “You don’t want to get married?” Pamela’s voice hit an uncharted octave. “Seriously!” She kicked the dirt with her fancy boot and spun an angry circle before facing me again. Sudden tears cut black gutters through her thickly applied mascara. “Fuck you. We could’ve gotten married first and then you could kill yourself if you weren’t happy.” She puffed out a forced breath. “I can’t believe you.”

  “Pamela, you want to be married to a guy who’s standing with a gun out in the middle of the desert about to off himself?”

  She kicked some more desert dirt around and creased her dark brown eyebrows. “That’s i
t! This is the last time I get involved with some spoiled psycho idiot. You’ve taken some of the best months of my life, Wade. I’m no longer going to be nice—so go ahead and do it. I’ll keep your car after you’re done here,” she paused and scanned the empty land that rolled out for miles, “wherever the shitstink we are.”

  Fighting a sudden urge to aim at Pamela and pull the trigger, I decided to spare her and get to the original business at hand. As I lifted the matte-black gun to the side of my head, I felt the hard mouth of the barrel press against my hair.

  A crackling crossfire of troubles wracked my mind as I tried to validate my decision. I started to think not of whom my suicide might affect and the pernicious repercussions, but about how I would look, all stupid and everything, dead in the middle of the desert. It would be embarrassing, all those strangers gawking at my debrided neck and head. And my clothes—wrinkled and soiled. I would come off as an idiot.

  I heard a faint shriek come from Pamela as she tried to reinforce her new tough self. “Go ahead Wade, just get your pathetic life over with.” She kicked the ground again. “‘Don’t want to get married.’ Shit.”

  Although I was able to ignore the hard-wired trepidation that comes along with contemplating the most unnatural act a sentient being can commit, I felt a little offended by Pamela’s half-hearted objections. The plan had played out so much easier in my mental skit the night before, but I hadn’t expected her to come along for the ride. Suicide was supposed to be a solo sport.

  I pulled the gun away from my scalp and felt a breeze soothe the now-sweaty circle where the end of the barrel had been. The cartoonish image of methodically working my way up my body before blowing my head off came to mind. Inch into the cold pool, don’t dive. I pointed the gun at my left knee and winced.

  Pamela belted out a nervous laugh. “Oh, that’s great, you’re going to shoot your knee now. That’s smart, Wade.”

  I looked up at Pamela from my awkward stance in sudden embarrassment. I couldn’t even kill myself the right way.

  “Just forget it,” I said. I pulled the gun away from my knee and straightened my posture. I cocked my right arm and heaved the gun. It twisted round and round through the air for about fifty feet until there was a brief muffled sound of crunching twigs—BANG! The gun discharged as it hit the ground, sending a bullet somewhere into the sky. Startled, I jumped about a foot into the air. Pamela’s fake blonde bangs jabbed her widened eyeballs as she looked skyward, her head turned as if she’d traced the bullet’s path.

  “You’re nuts,” Pamela shouted in disbelief.

  Having no interest in retrieving the gun, I started walking in the direction of my car, blindly backtracking the same pathless route. Pamela just stood in place, refusing to join me.

  I looked back at her while still walking. “Are you coming?”

  “You’re fucking nuts. I wouldn’t go anywhere with you.”

  I stopped for a moment. “You mean... you want me to leave you out here?”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you, you sick bastard.” Her shrill voice echoed to the hills.

  I shrugged my shoulders and continued back to the road.

  When I got to my car, I hesitated before opening the door and saw Pamela standing a couple hundred feet away and not moving any closer to the car. She was standing her ground and feverishly fingering her cell phone, probably letting the texts fly. I am a sick bastard, I mumbled as I got in the car to begin the drive home. Alone.

  2. The Morning After

  “Wake up, Jerk,” I heard from above.

  My left eyelid parted slightly, letting a crack of brightness flare into my eye. By the position of the sunlight in the room and the stiffness in my outstretched legs, I was suddenly aware that I had been asleep on the living room couch from the time I got home after the botched suicide attempt and had slept through the entire night. I opened my right eye and blinked once to adjust my focus and wash away the filmy cover impeding my sight. My refreshed vision revealed Pamela Wains hovering over me, her head silhouetted by the morning sun. Her ten-shades-lighter-than-natural blonde hair flopped over her eyes, partially concealing the indignation they held. I noticed the thick purple terrycloth robe she wore added some weight to her wiry body.

  “How’d you get home?”

  “I called a friend. I had to walk about three miles for her to find me. Luckily there was cell service. You owe me some dry cleaning and a new pair of boots.”

  “Where did you spend the night?” I asked, not out of curiosity, the question just came out of my mouth as I was still coming to a fully awakened state.

  “What the fuck do you care? I’m moving out. I found an apartment.”

  “Where?”

  “In Tempe.”

  I rolled my eyes while sitting up on the couch. “Pamela, are you really moving this time?”

  “I’m not shitting you, I’m moving. You don’t want to get married, and… you’re crazy. Geez, you almost killed yourself yesterday. I can forget that and we can go on, but you said you don’t want to get married.”

  “Remember the last time you said you were leaving?” I asked.

  “You bought me that necklace when I came back.” She tightened her face. “It’ll take a lot more this time.”

  “Pamela, there is no gift this time.”

  “Nothing for me?”

  “No, sorry.”

  “Well then, I’m really going,” she said with a manufactured smile.

  “Who’s going to move you?”

  “The movers at the apartment complex. They’re coming around noon.”

  I looked at my watch. “Noon?”

  “I can cancel it,” she said, then shifted her mouth to one side and bit her lower lip. “But you’ll have to pay the lost deposit and tell me you still want to get married.”

  “Pamela, I don’t have any gifts for you this time. And no, I can’t go on like this.”

  Pamela and I locked into a staredown. Her beaming eyes packed such fury that it felt like rays were shooting through my eyes and into my brain, making the back of my already aching head puddle with warmth. She finally broke her gaze and strutted a few stompy steps to the landline phone perched upon the lone end table in the room.

  She plucked the wireless receiver off its base while I remained seated motionless on the couch. With her lips pursed and face scrunched tight, she turned back to face me and lifted her right foot as if taking an abnormally high step. Focusing on her leg movement, I failed to see her right arm winding back with the receiver. Pamela’s body lunged forward, releasing the receiver from her hand. My reflexes didn’t allow me to flinch fast enough as the unit smacked my left cheek squarely before making a bouncy landing on the couch cushion. I wrenched my hand to my cheek as the cracking sound of plastic striking bone radiated down my neck. The front of my head instantaneously acquired the same balmy pain as the back. Pamela glared at me and crossed her arms. Her robe’s tattered sleeves dangled little purple hairs that grabbed her forearms. She huffed once and strutted into the master bedroom. The sound of flying objects started rippling through the house.

  “Pamela, come on,” I said.

  Her face was bright red when she re-entered the living room. “I’m moving! Leave me alone while I pack some stuff.”

  I had become quite good at dodging items Pamela threw at me occasionally, but with the phone, her proximity was too close for me to avoid. I rose hesitantly from the couch and fetched an ice cube from the refrigerator to soothe the throbbing left side of my phone-struck face. As Pamela stormed the house with a pinched look on her face, I tended to a stack of newly washed underwear and placed them on the ironing board situated in the small dining room between the kitchen and living room. I meticulously pressed a pair of my boxer shorts with the iron in my right hand while the ice cube in my left hand worked my cheek. I remained at the ironing board taking wrinkle
s out of all my underwear. Then I went to work on a clump of socks.

  With every new drip of ice water down my cheek, anxiety sprang from my stomach, taking its familiar passage to my extremities. It was two weeks before the wedding was supposed to occur, but I couldn’t believe that I let the whole relationship get to any point remotely resembling marriage.

  To me, Pamela’s presence was merely Spackle to fill the cracks of my vacant soul. I wish I could tell her it was just the tangible presence of women I loved, that crutch keeping me from locking myself into a room, that sexual babysitter who comforts me with a blanket of contact and release. It would be nice if I had the guts to tell her that I had fooled around with other women since our first date. I wish I told her earlier in the relationship to go and marry one of the managers at her bank job and have a nice uncomplicated life. I could never divulge to her the fact that my own brain had failed her because a disease with no physical symptoms influenced my decisions, and the engagement ring I presented to her six months before was an emotional mistake that for a fleeting moment trumped my personal reservations. Pamela showed up at my house a few days after the engagement with all her possessions and thirty thousand dollars worth of high-interest credit card debt. Blindsided and weakened by mental fatigue, I let her stay.

  Once moved in, she would spend her evenings watching some TV drama coupled with an endless array of manicures, pedicures, mud masks, hair treatments, cellophane fat wraps, hair removal gadgets and eyebrow plucks while simultaneously chatting with her friends on the phone. Bedtime progressed into a period of affectionless sleep. Pamela viewed the act of sex as a necessary evil—merely a dirty little component that goes along with a relationship. I knew my mind wouldn’t let it succeed. From the beginning, wedded failure was a given.

  As Pamela scurried around the house sorting clothes and tagging furniture to take, I learned she was moving to Palm Courtyard, a new two-story apartment complex at the south end of Tempe, close to the neighboring city of Mesa. The brochure from the complex presented a typical white stucco development that seemed to be popping up weekly in the greater Phoenix area. Palm Courtyard was about twenty miles away from my house in Scottsdale, and close to where Pamela used to live when we met. The new complex offered to move people locally free of charge.