Page 52 of The Business Trip

It was my turn to have a dream. I was so sick of other people getting all of the breaks, and she seemed to be one of those people. Probably a fancy high school followed by a fancy college fully paid for by her rich parents. A handsome husband who was captain of some team while she was a cheerleader. A perfect pregnancy and amazing child. A family who still held Thanksgiving around a cozy table with a log crackling in thefireplace, playing board games after dinner, laughing and sharing inside jokes as they ate homemade pumpkin pie with dollops of real whipped cream on top, not the kind that came in a can like I always had.

I bet she had a walk-in closet draped with clothes and jewelry too. I could see her house and her life in my mind. Banquets and art openings and who knew what else on weekends. As I thought about it, I got angrier and angrier. It was time for me to have a life of luxury and ease. I would be outthinking and outsmarting everyone, from Glenn to Stephanie. I just needed to take this one gentle step at a time.

It was dark outside when the plane landed. I couldn’t believe I was in San Diego instead of Denver, how different a day could be from how you envisioned it. Looking toward the front, I saw Stephanie and the rest of the passengers standing up and collecting their bags. Her robin’s-egg blue purse flashed at me as she put it over her shoulder.

“I’ll get your bag,” the man with the big smile said and pulled it down, plopping it on its wheels and even spinning it the right way and lifting the handle for me. “There you go.”

He seemed so fatherly it gave me a sharp pang for the man I never knew.

Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I turned it off airplane mode. It took a few seconds to catch up, but then the text button lit up with eight new messages and the phone icon showed six voicemails. I knew what they would say before I even opened or listened to them. All from Glenn, of course, in an escalating staircase of anger. Yet I couldn’t help myself from hitting play on the first voicemail.

“Jasmine, baby, where are you? I love you so much. Don’t do this. What are you thinking? Come home, sweetie. I’ll change, I promise…”

In the sixth and final voicemail, his tone had completely changed.

“Are you fucking serious with this shit? You’re going to tell me you’re making me a steak and then take off? I will find you, Jasmine. You can’t hide. I will hunt you down. And I do mean hunt. You won’t ever get away with this, bitch.”

A shiver hit me and I felt a renewed purpose. I had to hide from this psycho permanently. The thought of the hunting rifle he kept hanging on the living room wall made my whole body go numb.

This was the new me, though. Deleting all of the voicemails, I went to my contact list and scrolled to his name, hitting block. I was never going to hear from him again. Glenn’s anger sharpened my focus. I glanced ahead to where Stephanie was and thought,Sorry, but this has to be done. There is simply no other way. Time for a woman to help a woman out of a jam.

We all shuffled off the plane. I saw Stephanie walking far down from me, headed toward baggage claim. I followed the signs to rental cars. It took several agencies to find a wheelchair-lift van. After getting the keys, I sat in the parking lot calling up Hiltons in the area and mapping the distance to the beach until I found hers. Next came motels. One was just a mile from the Hilton. There was a Walmart down the block from it. Perfect. Steering the car that way, I kept repeating to myself, “I’m in California, I’m in California, I’m half a country away from Glenn and going to be further soon.”

The San Diego landscape already looked so different from Madison, even in the dark. The air was warmer, a sea breeze in it, palm trees dotting every street. People were out running in shorts and T-shirts; a bright red light-rail train went whizzing by; the houses had Spanish-tile roofs and were built lower to the ground, many a sort of a creamy peach color I wasn’t usedto. This was a different world, that was for sure, and I couldn’t wait to take a big bite out of it once I had money and nice clothes.

At Walmart, I studied the rows of hair dyes, carefully slipping Stephanie’s ID out of my bra and looking at her hair color. A medium brown, I would call it, and I found a shade labeled just that. Adding hair-cutting scissors, plastic gloves, the largest suitcase I could find, a decent-looking professional top on a sale rack, a new purse in a bland shade of beige, a Diet Coke to keep me up, and some beef jerky for protein, I took my haul to the motel and got to work.

Standing in front of the mirror, I said a little goodbye to my long blond hair and started chopping. Once I got it to the proper length and it looked reasonably even across the bottom, I turned to the dye. The color went on easily, but I had to wait thirty minutes for it to set, so I flipped channels and nervously drank my soda and nibbled at the beef jerky. My appetite was not very strong, and my stomach was tight and tense. Abandoning the jerky on the nightstand, I chewed my fingernails instead and thought about the next move in my chess game.

It was getting close to eleven p.m., and I needed to wait until I was sure Stephanie would be asleep. Any sort of conference was bound to kick off by nine a.m. at the latest, so I was sure Stephanie would try to be asleep by two. I also guessed she had checked in with the evening team at the Hilton. I wanted to arrive when the overnight team was there so that no one would possibly remember her checking in earlier, just in case. After working in hotels myself, I knew there would be a shift change when the 2:30-to-10:30 p.m. crew left.

Sliding Stephanie’s ID out of my bra again, I studied her picture for a long time, then looked at myself in the mirror. It was uncanny how much I now looked like her if you had nevermet me or her. If you had, you might notice that I was a little thinner with a slightly longer chin and eyes set farther apart, but our noses were close enough, and the rest could definitely be missed by anyone who didn’t know either of us. And she had told me in our conversation that she had never met any of these news directors.

Stepping into the shower to rinse off the hair dye, I turned the hot water up almost as high as it would go, washing off Glenn and my past. Taking the soap and scrubbing every inch of my body, I got all of the blush, dark eyeshadow, and orange lipstick off with a washcloth, then watched as the brown hair dye circled the drain and slithered away.

I thought of Stephanie, totally oblivious to my plan, in her hotel room a mile away, thinking she was getting ready for a conference. I was sorry for what I might do, I truly was, but I couldn’t see another path. And I had asked my grandma to guide me, then been seated by this woman. Wasn’t that a sign from the universe? Clearly, I was supposed to meet Stephanie and use her for whatever I needed.

Blow-drying my hair with the tiny hair dryer that was stuck to the wall of the motel bathroom, I changed back into the nicest clothes I had with me, including the shirt I had just purchased at Walmart. It was made of thin material but had a floral print and a simple neckline. It looked better than the mostly dirty and crumpled clothes in my own suitcase. I was passable as a conference attendee arriving late at night. I wasn’t planning to use my fringed purse at the front desk. Not only did it not look like it belonged to a professional woman, but I was cognizant that there would likely be security cameras in the hotel lobby, and if anything were to go awry, I didn’t want to be recognized by Stephanie in any way, shape, or form.

I swapped out my own driver’s license for Stephanie’s,slipping her ID into the plastic holder of my wallet and putting my own license into my bra; then I tucked the wallet into the new beige purse and returned to the bathroom to apply makeup. This time I tried to emulate what Stephanie had on in her ID photo and what I had seen on the plane. Neutrals and pinks. Nothing gaudy, nothing that screamed,Look at me.Just boring, professional makeup. When I was done, I stepped back and admired my work, turning my head from side to side. It really was uncanny. Grinning at my image, I clicked off the bathroom light and returned to bed.

It was still not yet midnight, so I lay down carefully on my back, so as not to mess up the makeup, and shut my eyes, willing myself into a meditative state. Visions of my recent life began to dance: the bar on rocking nights when everyone and everything seemed fun, the early days with Glenn when he would make me pancakes in the morning and deliver them to me in bed. How he insisted on opening that passenger door.Stay with the good thoughts, Jasmine, I told myself.Don’t think about the bad.

I drifted off.

But suddenly, Allison’s face came to mind, red lips, head thrown back, laughing at the party, tail in her hand; that was followed by the thought of Glenn’s face laughing after he smothered me with that pillow. I shuddered, jerking out of the half-sleep.

I sat up and slugged the rest of the Diet Coke, pulled the tags off the big suitcase, put a few more items of my own clothing in there, plus my baseball cap and makeup in case I needed them, and went to the minivan outside.

CHAPTER 36Jasmine

Going to the Hotel

It was only a few minutes to the Hilton, and I pulled into a spot where I could see through large picture windows into the lobby. The clerk at the desk was a heavyset older woman who sat looking at her phone.

There was almost no one coming and going. To be sure, though, I waited. Fifteen minutes later, a few partiers got out of an Uber and staggered into one another, laughing loudly as they walked through the sliding glass doors. The clerk looked up and nodded at them. A guy came down and asked for something. I saw the clerk reach into a drawer. Her hand emerged with a toothbrush, and she passed it across the counter. I studied the direction the guests walked in so that I would look like I knew where the elevators were and wouldn’t have to ask. I needed to look as if I had been there before.

By one a.m., there had been no guests in the lobby for at least thirty minutes. It was time. My heart started pounding, but I reminded myself again why I was here and how this would help me.One step at a time, Jasmine. Just do this one step. If someonegets suspicious, you run, get back to Walmart, buy black dye, cut your hair to a pixie cut, and get the heck out of Dodge.

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