Flash Fiction by Simon Nadel
She told me the plan was simple and straightforward, but with Phyllis Walters, or Phil as she likes to be called, nothing is ever simple or straightforward. It’s on me that I still went along with it.
We’d met Eric at a club downtown. He was taking it easy after college. Taking it easy on the work end, as in not working at all, as in he could afford it because his ’rents were filthy rich, the kind of people who get politicians elected so they won’t have to pony up for public schools and road repairs. Eric, on the other hand, wasn’t taking it easy on the party end. On that end he was going pretty hard, night after night, pill after pill, STD after STD. The old man was getting sick of footing the boundless bar bills so Phil came up with a scheme. Eric pretends to drop out of sight and we arrange it so the old man hires me to retrieve him. Oh yeah, I should mention I’m a private eye. It’s not a lucrative calling and I don’t have wealthy parents so I agreed to Phil’s simple and straightforward plan. Live but don’t necessarily learn.
But so far so good. I visited the old man at his City Center office and sealed the deal. Phil and I met up that night so I could update her. I was already having second and third thoughts.
“His father’s office is super fancy,” I say. “It even has a bar.”
Phil takes a sip of her margarita. It’s the swirly kind—mango and strawberry. I look at the chardonnay in front of me. She’s always been so much better at ordering. “Did he offer you a drink?” she asks.
“No, something much better.” I hold up my phone and show her the Venmo account we created. When she gets to the end of the zeroes she licks her cherry-red lips and smiles. “Oh yeah,” she says, “much better.”
“He doesn’t seem too worried, more like just curious as to where Eric might be,” I say.
“He was a little creepy. He said with the way I look, it wouldn’t be hard to lure Eric out of wherever he’s hiding.
“You should be flattered,” Phil says. “I know you can be a little insecure about your looks.”
I ignore the barb. I’ve been parrying Phil’s jabs for years. “It’s not flattering,” I say. “It’s wildly inappropriate. I’m a professional PI, not some honeytrap.” I consider taking a sip of my chardonnay and decide against it. “But it did make me feel better about what we’re doing. Definitely less guilty.”
Phil raises the drink I’m now actively coveting. “Whatever gets you through the night,” she says, laughs and takes a big sip.
Suddenly I’m aware of two guys hovering way too close behind our barstools. They look like Capitol Hill staffers, former frat boys like our guy Eric. “We were hoping you ladies would come join us,” one says, motioning toward a table with four guys with that same date-rapey look.
Phil stands up from her stool and when they get a look at her full rockin’ body they can barely keep their tongues in their mouths.
”Thanks for the offer, guys,” she says, super breathy and flirty, “but we’re not really in the mood to be gangbanged by a bunch of needledicks.” The guys are stunned for a second, then they head back to their table. We hear one of them say, “What a couple of stuck-up cunts.”
“I’ll be right back,” Phil says. I use the opportunity to order a swirl margarita. I see her standing in front of the guys, holding her purse open. I know she’s showing them the blade. They’re probably a distasteful combination of terrified and turned on. I know she’s telling them how she’s going to cut them with it. “Scrotum to scalp” is her usual line. She’s been using it as long as I’ve known her, which goes back to freshman year of college. So I have a pretty good idea of what she’s going to do and what she’s going to say because I know that Phil is a straight-up sociopath. I know the real reason she’s carrying the blade tonight, which is why I chose a public place to meet. I know she’s planning on killing me.
***
“So where were we?” she says, sliding sexily back onto her barstool.
I take a drink of the margarita. It’s even better than it looked. “He said he thinks Brad’s holed up with some cheap gold-digging slut, and that he’ll keep paying me as long as I keep looking.”
She puts on a look of mock indignation. “Cheap gold-digging slut? I hope you corrected him.”
I exaggeratedly look her up and down. “Well, you do dress kinda slutty and you definitely have a thing for money.”
She clicks her glass against mine. “To gold-digging sluts,” she says, and finishes the rest of her drink. “My car’s out back in the alley,” she says. “I’ll give you a lift.”
I point to my nearly full drink. “I think I’m gonna stay.”
“Come on,” she says, “there’s a few things we need to talk about.”
Fuck, I think, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh well, I had a good run. I probably could have gotten a little more out of college and it would have been nice to make it to thirty, but that’s the way it goes when you get involved with someone like Phil. I get up from my stool and my elbow bumps my margarita, sending it falling to the floor. “Oh shit,” I say, kneeling down to clean up the broken glass. Phil hoists me up off the ground. “I think they can take care of it,” she says. I dutifully follow behind her out the back door and into the deserted alley.
When we reach her car she says, “So about Eric…”
“You killed him, didn’t you? Jesus, Phil, we were just supposed to hold him for a while and get a few bucks from his father.”
“He was starting to annoy me,” she says, as if ending someone’s life is just like breaking up with a boyfriend. “And he wasn’t really adding much to the arrangement anyway.”
“But murder was never part of the plan,” I say.
She comes around from the driver’s side and stands in front of me and her hand goes into her purse. “Plans change,” she says.
I ease a glass shard from the margarita glass from my palm to between my thumb and forefinger. “I suppose they do.”
Bio: Former journalist Simon Nadel’s recent short fiction has been published in Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, Every Day Fiction, Spillwords, and Flash Fiction Magazine. His debut novel, NO TIME FOR BULLSHIT, is now available. He lives with his family in Washington, D.C.
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