BLOSSOM STREET

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You say you fell while holding diamonds in your hands
"It's your fault for running, holding diamonds," I said
And I offer no sympathy for that
I hear that it was you who died alone
And I offer no sympathy for that
Better off I sparkle on my own

In the Rough, Anna Nalick

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On an otherwise perfectly normal August evening, when all the locusts were out and the air smelled like honeysuckle, an unnatural stillness had overtaken Blossom Street.

Blossom Street was in one of the warmest, most humid parts of town, true enough, but this stillness – the type that only lingers when a storm is about to hit or a person dies – was irregular even here.

In the fourth house on the right, in a small, comfortable sitting room, Audrey Campbell was sitting on her favorite green chair in the corner, and she was waiting.

As still as the heavy air just outside her tiny brick home, she was waiting.

She was a pretty woman, in her late twenties and dancing quite close to her early thirties, but she never acted like it. She had the remarkable ability to think like an adult, but act with the blind passion of a child – her eyes were far too serious for the laughing lines already etched into her smooth face.

Audrey Campbell was known to be reckless, with her fiery red hair and even more fiery sapphire eyes the color of the thin ice-blue layer of the wildest inferno. Her husband of three years and her lover for five, Sean Campbell, should have known that.

He was a generally sensible man in many aspects of life, but in the ways of Audrey Campbell, he seemed to know absolutely nothing.

Didn’t he know that Audrey liked to have the house at a temperature of seventy-four, not seventy-five? Didn’t he know that her red hair clashed with pink clothing when he bought her a present? Didn’t he know she hated it when he called her honey-buns because she was by no means a delicacy for him to sit quietly and enjoy?

Didn’t he know that the knowledge of Serena Monahan would not go unnoticed?

Serena Monahan was twenty two years old, unbearably blonde, and wore far too much Prada for Audrey’s simple tastes. She had big sunglasses, a big purse, and an even bigger beach-girl appeal around a town starved of such women.

She lived alone at the end of Blossom Street, leaving her house early and returning very late, and was a favorite among single men. In Audrey’s opinion, she was the very definition of addiction itself – sweet and stimulating when nearby, but wondrously bitter when faraway.

Audrey had known about Serena for as long as she’d needed to. Unlike Sean, who knew nothing at all about the woman he had married, Audrey knew her husband very well. Her sharp blue eyes never missed a single detail – for many months, she made no mentions, never acted any differently, but Sean hadn’t fooled her.

Not even for a minute.

So tonight, when Sean Campbell told Audrey Campbell that he was going out for a late-night drive with a few friends, Audrey let him leave with a kiss, but went right up to the room they shared, and picked up a suitcase she bought a few weeks ago – a suitcase she had been itching to use but never had.

When the suitcase was full, she went downstairs to the living room, passing by the many pictures of Sean and Audrey on various occasions without even a second thought.

The pictures were from a different time, featuring a woman Audrey no longer knew and a man who had disappointed her in a way she never imagined he would. She did not take any of them; they sickened her.

Everything else was set. The suitcase was in her hand. Georgina Clark, the best friend Audrey had ever known, had been alerted. The lights were off. The bed was made. Even the weather had cooperated – it soothed her haste and reminded her of the cunning she possessed in such vast quantities.

Sean would be back any minute, and Audrey was more than ready for him.

Roughly six minutes after Audrey sat on her couch, wearing a frame-hugging red shirt to make her brave, there was a rattling at the door. The sound of a lock being opened by a naïve key that knew nothing of what it was about to do filled her ears, and she smiled to herself.

Might as well enjoy an otherwise fairly grim task.

The door then opened ever so carefully, and Sean Campbell tip-toed in with the air of a very guilty man seeking a sanctuary. He flipped the lights on, his hand rumpling his thick brown hair, and he was about to go upstairs when he caught sight of Audrey, sitting with her legs crossed, a stony expression on her face. He appeared shocked.

“Hey baby, what are you doing up?” he asked, only the slightest quiver in his voice.

“Nothing, baby,” Audrey said, her tone coolly polite. “How was the drive?”

“Great,” he said, nervousness becoming much more prevalent in his demeanor. “Just great.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, that wasn’t the right way to word the question, was it,” Audrey said, moistening her lips as a jaguar might before catching particularly juicy prey. “How was Serena, Sean?”

“Serena? Serena Monahan?” In his overwhelmingly enormous apprehension, faking innocence was working out very poorly for Sean. He was cornered and he knew it; but he was still willing to try.

At the beginning, Audrey had admired this about him. Now, she only chuckled, the musical sound somewhat marred by soft undertones of pity and cruel amusement.

“Yes, Serena Monahan,” she said. “How was she?”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t with her,” Sean stammered.

“You were,” Audrey said, her blue eyes glittering with satisfaction. “You didn’t answer my question though – tell me, I’m curious. How beautiful did she look under the moonlight?”

“I-I don’t know w-what you’re talking about–”

“How special did you feel when she whispered your name in the dark?” Audrey pressed, her tone low but more wicked than he’d ever heard it. “How nice were her breasts when you were fondling them in your filthy hands? How horny do you get when she’s tangling her legs up with yours and telling you how much she loves you? How happy were you when you panted her name so blissfully in her willing ear?”

“Audrey, y-you’re crazy–”

“Am I, Sean?” Audrey repositioned herself delicately on the sofa and then smiled maliciously. “Share it with me – how much do you love fucking that little California whore in my own bed every other night?”

“Audrey, that’s…that’s insanity!” Sean tried desperately, his ears going so red they appeared infected. “Audrey, you’re my wife, you’re the only one I love–”

“Bullshit,” Audrey interrupted viciously, her voice sharper and colder than steel. “You know that’s all it is – bullshit. You think you love Serena, don’t you? You think she’s gorgeous, funny, sexy. You also think yourself so clever, too, that you can hide such a steamy affair from the woman who’s been involved with you for five damned years.”

Now, Audrey rose, feeling her famous temper brewing, starting as a boiling hot deposit of blood in her feet that began its perilous journey up her legs, torso, chest cavity. Her expression had not changed, but the emotion in her eyes was frightening, as was the hostility emanating from her person.

She took a few well-measured steps towards Sean, almost sashaying her deadly dance, and when she was standing right in front of him, as close as Serena had been only a few minutes ago when saying good-bye, her wrath had unfurled in her burning blue irises.

“You’re not clever at all, Sean Campbell,” Audrey whispered threateningly, her hands gripping tight to his collar. “Not in the least.”

“H-how long did you know?” Sean inquired nearly inaudibly, fear playing across his laid-back features as he inwardly cowered against his wife.

“Since the day it began, husband.” Audrey stroked the side of his face, her touch somehow both very loving and very vindictive at the same time. “I could smell her on you.”

Her jaw set, Audrey smirked and released Sean’s collar. Then she slapped him neatly across the face, the sound of her movement as severe as a gunshot.

“You are a pathetic fool,” she shot at him, striding back to her suitcase and picking it up. “I’m sick of pretending. I’m sick of smiling. I’m sick of that bitch getting her unworthy blood all over my sheets. And I’m sick of spineless men.”

She stormed past Sean, bumping forcefully into his shoulder, and put her hand to the doorknob, not facing the man she had once loved. “I’m leaving you tonight, because I’ve had enough. You’ve toyed with me far too long. I’m never going to see you again, nor do I want to. The next and last time you’ll hear from me is when I mail you the divorce papers you’ll need to sign.”

Only now did Audrey glance back at the stunned face of Sean Campbell, her mouth curling into a most unpleasant smile.

“Give Serena Monahan my regards, and maybe a casual roll in bed if my repute turns her on.”

With this, Audrey opened the door, her suitcase with her, and she slammed it with certain contentment, perverse as it might have been. Her high-heels clacking away as she took her brisk steps into the side garage Sean had paid someone to build when they moved in, her heart still pounding but much lighter than it had been for a year and a half, she stuffed her keys in the ignition and turned the car on.

Turning out of the driveway Sean had made himself one Saturday afternoon, Audrey Campbell drove quietly, stealthily, down the road, away from Blossom Street and all the horrible things she had long associated with it, towards the haven of Georgina Clark’s home.

Georgina had made the wise choice of remaining single all her life, and when Audrey had called tonight, had offered all her sympathy as well as a steaming glass of cocoa when she arrived.

The weather still unnaturally still, but somehow slightly more comfortable to the skin now, a black Buick sped down the lane, through town at a speed a few notches above the limit, and disappeared from sight into a cloudless sky, never to return to this place, or to Sean Campbell, ever again.