In Puerto Rico she spent time in the bars and in the casinos. She played blackjack one night, lost more than a hundred dollars, then won it back the following night at the roulette wheel. Then she went up by several hundred dollars by playing the thirty-three, the “double trinity,” as she thought of it. She drank way too much. The booze seemed to help even though deep down she knew it wasn’t an answer. The double trinity hit on the thirty-third spin after she sat down to play.
She took three ten-dollar chips from her pile of winnings, placed it on the double zero, gave the dealer a smile and a shrug.
“One more spin and I get up and leave,” she said.
“Good luck,” the dealer said.
Alex smiled back.
The ball clicked around the rim of the wheel, clattered noisily and came to rest.
Double zero. Two hits in a row. The table buzzed.
“That’s it. I’m done,” she said.
She tipped the dealer lavishly and got up and left. She was ahead by six hundred dollars. She put four hundred aside and vowed to not put it back on the tables.
On the next night, she played roulette again, then some keno, then blackjack and broke even. At least it wasn’t a loss. She must have looked much better than she felt because she was asked to dance by an attractive Canadian man. She obliged but declined to have dinner with him in his room, much to his disappointment.
“Something wrong with me?” he asked, teasing gently.
“No. Nothing wrong with you. My fiancé was killed in an accident recently.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said.
“I understand,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“I’m not much good company for anyone, much less myself,” she said.
“I understand that too,” he answered. “Hey, if things ever change…”
He handed her a business card. He was in film production in Toronto. She threw the card away.
Then she went upstairs and soon, inexplicably, found herself in tears again.
She came home a day early. Her home answering machine was loaded with twenty-six messages. She cleared it without listening to them. She felt as if she were about to hit bottom and fall through. She wasn’t that far wrong.
Two nights later, toward ten in the evening, she took out her Glock 9 and placed it on the coffee table in front of her in her living room. She took out a pen and pad and loosely constructed a suicide note. She put a fresh clip of bullets in the magazine and slapped it into the butt of the weapon. She pulled back the slide. It snapped back on its spring, pulling a round from the magazine, leaving the round in the firing chamber and leaving the hammer cocked. She clicked the safety catch to “off.” All that was needed now was a slight pull on the trigger.
Doggerel tiptoed across the fringes of her consciousness.
The time has come, the walrus said,
to speak of many things,
Of loaded guns and obscene puns
and whether pigs have wings.
Well, the time had come.
She walked her way through a suicide scenario. She set her suicide note aside on the table. She wondered if she was dressed appropriately to kill herself. She considered the mindless small details of who might find her. Or should she call the police first and then do it?
Alexandra’s gaze fell upon a small mirror on the table. It was chipped from a time several weeks earlier when Robert, who had come over for an early dinner had knocked it off the table.
She saw the chip and emotions and associations took over. How long could anyone be expected to live with such grief? She looked away, purposefully avoiding her own reflection. The awful truth was in that mirror and she didn’t need any reminders. Her skin was blotched with tension and fatigue. Her hair, which she hadn’t washed in three days-or was it four?-was dirty and stuck to her cheek and neck.
God, I’m a mess. God, I can’t deal with this. God, take me away from this.
She wished-she genuinely wished-she had died with Robert. Then they could have entered God’s heaven together.
Then she thought of the other people who had been killed in Ukraine and another wave of despondency washed over her. She was wishing she were dead and those poor shattered families were wishing that their lost loved ones were alive. She felt further guilt for just being alive.
Okay… she knew what she should do. This would be easier for everyone…
She fingered the Glock. She hefted it. The gun felt heavy in her hand. Heavier than it normally did with a full magazine, even though that made no sense.
She’d just run through the scenario. Who would find her? Who would bury her?
Who would even miss her?
The answer was obvious.
No one.
She fingered the gun. Yup. Round in the chamber, hammer cocked, safety on “off.”
Ready for business, as Robert used to say.
She had no family left. No parents, no children. She supported no one. She loved no one. No one depended on her.
She used to think she had come so far, done so well. It wasn’t so long ago that all systems were go and the future looked beautiful.
Yeah, well that was a previous lifetime, wasn’t it?
Previous lifetime. Her thoughts were skewed and out of kilter.
She reached for the little cross that she had for years worn around her neck and then, when it was gone, she was reminded why it was gone and what had happened. Ukraine had really ruined her, everything that had happened there, everything that she had lost. Her fiancé. Her religion. Her belief.
Her life? Just an afterthought. She had lost that in Ukraine too. This one single shot would merely be the final formality, the punctuation point that would complete the sentence.
She picked up the gun.
Her hand trembled. She turned it toward her temple.
Come on, Alex. Have the courage.
Do it. Do it!
She moved the nose of the pistol upward. She felt the cold black steel touch her temple.
She began a little countdown and the blessed eternal darkness became visible.
Five, four…
Time spiraled. So did thoughts. So did words.
She was a little girl again in Southern California, her mom and her dad nearby in the warm sunlight of Redondo Beach. Then she was a teenager in the south of France, riding a horse one summer.
Three, two…
Then she was in Russia, laughing with friends at the Café Pushkin. Then, finally, she was in Robert’s arms for a final time. And he was holding her so tightly that for a split second it didn’t seem like a fantasy anymore and she could actually hear his voice and he was telling her that he loved her and always would.
One…!
She could feel the touch of her finger against the trigger. Just a little more pressure and-
And then Robert was in front of her. And from somewhere he was talking to her, a voice as alive or real as anything in this room, telling her deep down what she knew he would tell her, what he would scream at her, if he could have seen her right now.
If anything should happen to me, if something bad, should happen, I never want you to be alone. Or unhappy.
You should go on… you should go on…
You must be brave and go on…
I will send a guardian angel to protect you…
Zero.
Her hand trembled horribly. Tears overtook her.
Her hand moved the Glock’s deadly muzzle away from her head. She cried uncontrollably. She flicked the safety to “on.” She pushed the eject button that popped the magazine partly out of the butt and took it the rest of the way by hand and tossed it across the room. She pulled back the slide and popped the round that had been chambered-the one that, if it hadn’t been for Robert, would now be in her head-out of the ejection port. The gun empty like that, the slide stayed back. Just reinserting the magazine and pressing the release button would cause it to travel forward and put another round into the firing chamber, and the hammer was still in the firing position. With her thumb she pressed the release button and the slide came forward with a sharp snap. She pressed the trigger and the cocked hammer fell with another snap. The gun was now harmless.