table.
“You be seeing that girl–sorry, woman, again soon? Oh, her name’s on the tip of my tongue.”
Mitch pulled his focus back to his friend, tensing with the mere thought of Viola. “Then bite it off.”
“I’ll take that as a no then.” Luke paused, sipping his Bud Light. “Viola! Yes, Viola.”
“Yeah, a real peach.”
“Well, she definitely seemed like a handful.” Luke winked.
Mitch nodded. “Viola was too much, too soon after the last mission.”
“More suited to what you’d been working on?”
Holding up his hand to signal Sally for another round, Mitch contemplated his answer. “Yeah, I guess I never thought of it that way. For sure, more suited to biker gangs and rough living,” he said, taking another swig from his mug. “A little too rough at times.”
Luke declined the second beer but continued the banter while Mitch made appropriate responses. The last thing he wanted right now was a trip to the psychologist.
Parting company with Luke, Mitch decided to hoof it home. Viola and Lorna. I couldn’t find two more polar opposite women if I tried . Viola wore her passion on her sleeve. Violence ran close to the surface. She could just as easily throw a glass at me as wrap her legs around my waist and tug me down for a fuck. That’s all it had ever been with Viola—fucking.
The few memories of Viola drifted off like a fog over water and his mind’s eye filled with memories of Lorna. He grimaced, internally picturing the fool he had been panting after the brainiac. Wouldn’t take no for an answer . He shook his head, watching his feet chew up the sidewalk as he slowly made his way along the busy street. The breeze cooled his heated skin and the traffic distracted his racing thoughts.
I should have walked away the night of the grad celebrations. Convinced myself she’d walk on the other side of the tracks with me. No, I was just a fling. Got her fill and walked away.
“I’m not even good enough to have my calls returned.”
Mitch had the overpowering urge to strike something. Inflict pain. Find a release for the embarrassment that threatened to strangle him every time he thought her name.
Unlocking the door to his apartment, he glanced towards the mountain of mail on the side table, the heap of laundry beyond in the bedroom. “Lorna Tymchuk,” he mumbled, toeing off his cowboy boots, leaving them where they landed by the front door. “Every time you’re around, nothing but trouble follows.”
Receiving clearance to ‘get back to normal,’ Mitch lifted the scissors from the top drawer in the bathroom en suite. With a sigh, he tugged on the ends of his beard and pulled a face at himself in the mirror. How’d she identify me? “I can barely recognize me,” he mumbled to his dour reflection.
He laid the scissors on the counter and shrugged his jacket off and pulled his shirt over his head. With little regard, he tossed his clothing on the floor and started with his beard. Every movement reminded him of Lorna. Flushing the remains of his beard down the toilet, he recalled how she ran her chin along his freshly shaved cheeks, ending with her nose next to his. “You smell good.”
He eyed his hair, pondering where to start. “Definitely not regulation.” Mitch grimaced at its length. Holding up a hank, he cut about four inches from his scalp. He needed to get his hair to a reasonable length before going to a barber so he didn’t have to give any great explanation. Secrecy is part of the job description.
Secrecy and a big question mark were always part of his memories of Lorna. What did he know of her? Not much . Mitch’s mind drifted back to their first meeting, at a library, of course.
Disaster.
“You do know where that is, don’t you?” sneered the female voice on the other end of the phone and all he could imagine were horned-rimmed glasses.
She proved to be something very different from his expectation. He needed a tutor to bring his marks up to retain his
Learning to Kill: Stories