Devoted(15)
Shacket calls her from a motel parking lot on the outskirts of Truckee, California, north of Lake Tahoe, and he pours his heart out to her, confesses having made a mistake by not romancing her better back in the day, offers her the world, the world in Costa Rica, and at first she seems pleased that he’s called. Judging by her tone, he thinks she regrets not letting him bang her, because if he, instead of backstabbing Jason, had knocked her up, there would be no Woody, no mentally disabled mute dragging her down day in and day out. He and Megan would have had a beautiful son, a good-looking and smart-as-hell kid they would have been proud of. So, yes, at first he thinks she wants him, she needs him, he’s got her.
But then a superior tone comes into her voice, a snottiness he doesn’t like, doesn’t deserve, just can’t tolerate. I’m afraid you underestimate how a special-needs child changes your life. Does she think he’s stupid? How can he not know how some idiot mute would screw up her life? I’m afraid our time has passed, Lee. As if she has twenty guys worth a hundred million bucks beating on her door. As if she ever gave him the time, which she never did; their time never passed, because she never gave him the time, never gave him the chance to pin her down and show her what she was missing. What’s best for me is what’s best for Woody, and that’s not Costa Rica. Can she really think he doesn’t realize that she’s shoveling shit at him? Hell, he can smell it over the phone. What she’s really saying is that some pinhead kid who can’t even talk is more interesting than Lee Shacket, that a dead-end life in a backwater like Pinehaven is preferable to white beaches and the blue Caribbean and the good life if all of that comes with Lee Shacket.
The angrier he gets with Megan, the hungrier he becomes. He’s hungrier than he’s ever been, inhumanly hungry. Five hours earlier, he stopped to eat in Bishop at this dump that some shit-for-brains critic rated three stars, and they couldn’t even make a hamburger the way he wanted. He sends it back twice, trying to make them understand what rare means. The third time, it’s still wrong, and the manager comes to the table, says, Sir, what you seem to be asking for is steak tartar as a burger, but I’m sorry to say we aren’t a restaurant that’s prepared to pull that off. There are health considerations with ground beef. Shacket wants to take his knife and fork, slit open the bastard, show him exactly what rare means, but instead he orders two more burgers not one degree more well done than the medium-rare patty they’ve already served him. He eats all three burgers but only one bun, and none of the fries. He pays, but he doesn’t tip.
On the way out, the waitress smiles at him and tells him to have a nice day, and he is reminded of his unbalanced mother, who refused the drugs prescribed for her condition, who could slap him hard enough to split his lip and pull his hair until he cried and then, with apparent sincerity, claim to love him more than life. In this moment, the waitress is Mother, and Shacket has a score to settle with her.
“Has anyone ever told you that you look like that actress, Riley Keough?” he asks.
This woman is twentysomething and shy enough to blush. “Oh, she’s gorgeous. I’m not gonna rush to a mirror and be disappointed.”
“Good for you,” he says. “Because, fact is, that’s a lie. You have a face like a shithouse rat, and any guy who ever humps you will want to commit suicide afterward.”
Her pleased expression collapses into hurt, into bewildered anger.
“Have a nice day,” he says as he walks away.
He has long known that cruelty is a kind of power, but until recently he has not embraced it as a weapon in his arsenal.
Now, hours later, he needs to eat again. There’s a diner associated with the motor inn at which he’s parked, but he doesn’t want to go in there and get bad food, as he did at the other place. Besides, he’s too angry at Megan, the snarky bitch. She thinks she’s too good for him. Furious as he is, if he goes into the diner, he’ll take his anger out on a waitress or on someone else, and the food will stink, and there’ll be a scene. He’s got to remember that in spite of what his driver’s license says, he’s not really Nathan Palmer; he is Lee Shacket, the former CEO of Refine, and he’s on the run from what happened at the facility in Springville, Utah. He has changed his appearance, yes, all right, but it’s nonetheless a mistake to call attention to himself.
He can eat something when he gets to Megan’s place. She’ll cook it the way he wants it. She’ll do everything the way he wants it. He now sees what his mistake was all those years ago. He was too nice to her, too considerate of her feelings. Niceness and consideration get you nowhere with an ice-queen bitch like Megan Grassley Bookman. He’ll give her what she deserves, what she wants but doesn’t know she wants, and when she’s begging for more, he’ll walk the hell out on her, leave her in shitty Pinehaven and go to Costa Rica.
It’s maybe ninety miles to her place. He will be there before nightfall. They’ll have a reunion, talk about the old days, while he does to her what he didn’t have the nerve to do back in the day. I’m afraid our time has passed, Lee. She’ll learn different. He’ll turn back the clock. It’ll be their time again, all right. I’m afraid you underestimate how a special-needs child changes your life. He will show her what she really ought to be afraid of, the bitch. He’ll also show her that her changed life can be changed again, for the better, just by slitting the little mute bastard’s throat.