Page 1 of The Business Trip

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1Jasmine

The Day of the Flight

I had to move carefully, quietly, grabbing only what I could in the dark without waking Glenn. He snorted and rolled to his side, and I froze, hand in midair above the suitcase, ready to abort the mission and slip back under the covers if needed. I could always lie and tell him that I had just gotten up to use the bathroom. If that happened, I was praying that he wouldn’t notice I was wearing jeans.

His mouth began to gape open in a comical way, and he lightly snored. He seemed to be solidly asleep, perhaps thanks in part to Ambien, his sleeping medication. He hadn’t exactly taken one by choice last night. I had crushed up a pill and put the powder into his beer can. He kept the Ambien in the bathroom cupboard. They came from a buddy on the black market and were extra strong, he told me, more than any doctor would prescribe. These would usually put him out like a light.

But even with him asleep, I couldn’t risk opening a dresser drawer. That old wooden dresser creaked with every tiny move. I also couldn’t take the chance of the clatter of hangers in the closet, so I would have to select from what was on the floor orin the laundry hamper to take with me. A pair of sweatpants and leggings, some underwear and a bra from the hamper, a couple of shirts of mine, and one warm red flannel button-up of Glenn’s I had always liked. It was January, after all, and I was headed from Wisconsin to Denver. Giving me his flannel shirt was the least he could do.

I couldn’t find any matching socks, so I took a few orphan ones and threw them in. I could buy new socks in my new city. Same with a toothbrush and other necessities. I wanted my patchouli perfume, though, and quietly I plucked the small sample bottle from the drugstore off the top of the dresser, dabbing my wrists gently with the familiar scent that so reminded me of my grandma before securing the lid tightly so it wouldn’t leak in my purse.

Slowly I slipped on my tennis shoes, keeping my gaze on Glenn the entire time. His eyelids were fluttering in REM sleep. My heart seemed to be going just as fast. He usually wasn’t up until around eleven a.m., six hours from now. I had tried to time it perfectly, to make my escape two hours after he fell asleep.

Glenn would never guess that I was at the airport. If he was suspicious, he would probably check the bus station in downtown Madison, maybe the train depot in nearby Columbus. More likely he would think I was at a friend’s or coworker’s and just pouting for a night, and he would go storming around looking for me, as he had in the past. No way he would believe that I had money for an airplane ticket, but I did. I had been squirreling away my tips at the bar for more than a year, and grabbing the occasional ten or twenty from Glenn’s wallet when I thought he wouldn’t notice. Paydays and lucky nights at the casino were usually prime times.

As I stood up, my eye caught the outline of my face in themirror above the dresser, moonlight illuminating half of it. Long blond hair, a pair of fake circular glasses from Goodwill that always reminded me of John Lennon. They didn’t have real lenses, just clear plastic ones, but I liked the way I looked in them and would put them on occasionally. I was proud that at my age of forty-four I still didn’t need real glasses.

Easing one of my shirtsleeves up, I winced looking at the deep bruise with the finger marks that Glenn had created a few nights ago. Our last fight. The one that broke me. He accused me of flirting with guys at the bar, called me a “fucking whore,” and pushed me onto the bed, forcing sex. I turned my head away and shut my eyes. When it was over, he grabbed my arm, the one now bruised, and squeezed it until it became numb.

“What’s wrong? Are you thinking about one of the guys at the bar instead of me? Huh? Don’t fucking lie to me… bitch.”

He kept the pressure on until I begged him to stop. Finally, he tossed the arm back down to the bed hard and went to shower. He liked to tell me I was dirty. I would always curl up into a ball while he was in the shower, crying softly, biting my fingernails, and plotting my escape.

I had tried twice before to leave him, but he found me, dragging me by the hair, throwing me into his pickup truck, and bringing me back to his trailer. He didn’t allow me to have my own car. He would pick me up and drop me off for work, and often he spent most of his night in the bar too, ostensibly playing pool or darts, but I could feel his eyes on me, especially as I waited on other men.

How had it gone so wrong? When I first met Glenn, he was one of those bar guys. I’d had a series of jobs I never enjoyed over my life but had landed at a large, rollicking Midwestern tavern thanks to my old high school friend Anna, who worked there. It was the kind where the beer and laughs flowed freelylate into every night. I was feeling like I could begin to stand on my own two feet coming off a long, tumultuous relationship. It was just three months after the breakup, in fact, and I wanted to spend time alone to heal andthentry to meet someone decent. But my alone time didn’t last nearly long enough.

Glenn was a burly guy who made an entrance wherever he went. He had broad shoulders and long hair in a ponytail, and he caught my eye right away. Before I knew it, we started flirting as I brought him his bottles of Miller High Life.

He seemed so kind at first, offering to walk me to my car after closing time so that I would be safe, politely asking me if I would share my phone number with him. On our first date, he insisted that I not get out of the pickup truck until he could walk around and open my door. It was so old-fashioned it made me giggle.

At first, I didn’t know if he’d actually be into me. He wasn’t even forty yet, and I felt like a much older woman next to him. But we both liked live music, so we had gone to concerts and shows, and in the dancing and sweat and heat, we had our first kiss, and I spent the night at his trailer.

For months, things were great. I thought I had found my Prince Charming. We would stay up late, sleep in, make love before breakfast and sometimes after, and take rides out to the country on weekends on his Harley. I moved out of my place and into his in short order, my original plan to be alone for a while fading at the prospect of new love.

But the first sign of things going awry was when my car broke down. Glenn insisted that we just sell it for scrap and that he would drive me wherever I needed to go. I didn’t like the idea of losing my car. She had been with me for almost ten years. I nicknamed her Motoring Maeve, and I didn’t relish the idea of Maeve being gone, forcing me to depend on Glenn.But he insisted that it made the most sense since he had a flexible construction job and could come and go as he pleased. The scrapyard gave us $600 for dear Maeve. Glenn declared it would go to “household expenses” and pocketed it.

Then his jealousy started. If I talked to a salesclerk at a store, Glenn would press me for whether I found the stranger attractive. He also started telling me what not to wear at work: “That top shows too much of your tits” or “That color makes you look even older than you are.”

He didn’t like me to be alone, not even for a Sunday stroll. “Why would you need to go without me?” he would ask. “Aren’t we in love?” He always kept his arm tightly around me the entire time. At first, it felt loving, but as time went on, it morphed into possessiveness.

The rough sex was next. He wanted to try tying me to the bed and I balked. He said I needed to please him and we would try whatever he wanted, and then he pushed me down and just did it, my arms pinned to the bedpost. After that, it was sex whenever he wanted in whatever way he wanted, no matter how exhausted I was when I got home from work.

But the worst of it happened unexpectedly in the middle of the night. I was sleeping when suddenly I felt a deep pressure around my head and an inability to breathe. Realizing with horrifying clarity that there was a pillow on my face, I heard Glenn laughing as I began to flail. Just as I tried to belt out a scream, he lifted the pillow and fell over on his side, cackling uncontrollably.

Tears came to my eyes as I coughed and sputtered, finally gaining enough breath to blurt, “What thefuck?”

“Oh my God, Jasmine. Your face, your face when I took the pillow off. Your eyes, holy shit, I’ve never seen your eyes look like that…”

He continued to belly laugh, clutching his side and falling over, as I reached over and pounded his arm with my fists, crying and coughing.

“That. Is. Not. Funny. Jesus Christ, Glenn.”

“Come here, baby, I’m just joking around.” He pulled me into his arms and started kissing my head and face.

That’s when I decided to take part of my tip money each night and hide it in a tampon holder in my fringed purse. He always wanted some of my tips to go to those elusive “household expenses,” but I could manage to slide a bit away without him noticing. I would then transfer the cash into a photo album I kept in a cardboard box in the storage area of his trailer. He would never look there. He didn’t care about my childhood pictures or the cards and mementos I had in the box. I figured he would just trash the whole thing or throw it into a firepit once I was gone.

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