“Best Served Cold” by Bill Cameron-Part 3

The following is part three in a series of five posts containing the original story “Best Served Cold” by Bill Cameron.  You can read part one here, and part two here.

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I saw little enough of Black over the years, but he stayed in touch. And not just to collect payments. Little notes would arrive, unsigned on plain white paper, with some piece of news about Ernest. Occasionally a newspaper clipping. The first one I remember clearly—the newspaper announcement of Ernest and Catherine’s wedding. A big, rollicking affair, three hundred guests, live band at the reception. Once upon a time, I’d have been the sure bet for best man, but in light of things Ernest’s younger brother stood up with him instead.

I already knew about the wedding. Months before, Joyce had received a note. One sentence: “I don’t know what to do except say I’m sorry.” Signed, Catherine. They hadn’t been as close as Ernest and I, having met in the dorm freshman year. Still, Joyce admitted that there’d been a time when she expected to be in Catherine’s wedding party herself.

“We’d have made an enchanting foursome,” she sighed.

“At least you got a note. Ernest has said exactly crap nothing to me.” Which wasn’t completely true. He’d left a message on my answering machine: “Get over yourself. It’s not like she was ever anything more than the girl sitting next to you in the front seat of that damned car.” Shortly after that I encountered Mr. Black for the first time, a fortuitous meeting if there ever was one.

At first, I assumed the newspaper clipping came from Ernest, a last little stab to make sure I knew he’d won our final competition. I stewed about it for a week until another clipping arrived. This time it was a report of a massive outbreak of salmonella poisoning at an area wedding. Tainted shrimp had sent over two hundred people to the hospital, some for extended stays. Included among the afflicted were the mother and father of the bride, most of the bridal party (though not the bride—Catherine was allergic to shellfish), the entire band, and the groom, among others. Everyone recovered, but harsh words were exchanged and lawsuits threatened, and an otherwise lovely affair washed out by a flood of vomit. The news story ended with something about how unfortunate it was that the groom spent his wedding night in the hospital, his new wife by his side. Their honeymoon diving at Isla Tortuga would be indefinitely delayed.

Written neatly in the margin of the clipping were the words: “The opening salvo. I’ll be in touch.”

I’d shared the first clipping with Joyce. This one I kept to myself. I read it many times, surprised I felt no pleasure, though certainly it was something I’d bought and paid for. I tried to remind myself of Key West, to remember Ernest and Catherine on the hood of the Mustang, but for all that the memory still rankled, it was hard for me to connect it to salmonella. I wondered if my taste for revenge was wearing off so quickly. Not that I felt I had any choice in the matter. No backing out, after all, and if Black was willing to drop salmonella on Ernest, I hated to think what he’d unleash on me were I to try to end things before he was ready to let them end.

Besides, I was more than up to the task of wrecking my life without Black’s aid.

Joyce and I ended up together by default. We drove back from Key West, leaving Ernest and Catherine to find their own way home. Both of us were too angry to think in terms of romance, then or ever. Back at school, I moved out of the two-bedroom apartment Ernest and I shared before he had a chance to return, found a studio near campus. Some time later, Joyce started showing up. She’d sit around, drink a beer, pretend to study. She wasn’t a talker, and neither was I, so in that way we were compatible. The first time we slept together, I think we were both imagining someone else.

Somehow we got to the end of term and graduated, and that left us with … what? Our plans for the future had been derailed in Key West. Neither of us knew where to go next. Our only thought, barely voiced, was to go there together. Joyce got a job as a teacher in Cincinnati, and I went to work as an assistant project coordinator for an engineering firm. My early payments to Black came out of some money my father gave me when he sold off his plumbing supply business and retired to Arizona with his fifth wife. If he’d been less generous, Black might have been out of reach.

Our own wedding, such as it was, took place at the Hamilton County courthouse. No three hundred guests for me and Joyce, which I guess at least meant no chance of three hundred trips to the emergency room. We scared up witnesses from among the court staff. Joyce spent our wedding night on the phone with her sister. Later, we attempted a honeymoon at a little bed-and-breakfast in Chillicothe, but our marriage was strained before it ever got off the ground and we spent the trip either bickering about money or shrouded in chilly silence.

Despite the effort required to keep up with Black’s fee, and hide the arrangement from Joyce, I still found time to get involved with a young admin at work. An expensive novelty, she turned out to be. After a year of lavish dinners, overpriced hotel rooms, and shopping sprees, she decided to end our relationship by informing the H.R. director, somehow forgetting to mention her own ardent participation in the affair. The firm gave me a choice. Resign quietly with a month’s severance or take my chances when the girl brought a sexual harassment case against me. I took the deal, but Joyce found out about the girl anyway. Her parting shot was to the point. “I should have stayed in Key West.”

For his part, Black continued to deliver. He wasn’t cheap, but it was hard to argue with the collapse of Ernest and Catherine’s architectural consulting firm when their biggest client abruptly cancelled their contract and went elsewhere. Part of me didn’t like the idea that Catherine’s dreams took a hit along with Ernest’s, but Black had made things clear enough. All in or not at all. Besides, it’s not like Catherine hadn’t been on the hood of that car too.

When Ernest got stopped for a DUI and the cops found a couple joints in the car, he insisted they weren’t his and I was inclined to believe him. He pled to misdemeanor possession to avoid jail time. I suspect it was Black who phoned while Ernest was away on a business trip and informed Catherine of the good news: Ernest’s STD screen had come up negative. At the same time, I didn’t like to think Black might be responsible for Catherine’s miscarriage—not that he ever tried to take credit for that one.

I never learned how Catherine felt about Ernest’s setbacks. All I knew was what came in the mail in those notes and clippings, news that often left me with feelings of ambivalence. At first I thought it was because I was waiting for the big one, the ultimate act of vengeance that would give me the satisfaction I thought I craved. But as time passed and my own troubles consumed me, I found myself simply wanting it to end, especially when my father’s money ran out and it became harder and harder for me to meet Black’s demands. I had to sell the Mustang to keep up.

Make sure and check in tomorrow for Part Four.

Bill Cameron is the author of the dark, gritty Portland-based mysteries LOST DOG and CHASING SMOKE. His stories have appeared in Spinetingler, Killer Year, and Portland Noir. Bill is currently putting the finishing touches on his new Skin Kadash novel, tentatively titled DAY ONE.