Havoc

by Christopher Bollen

I asked the son of an army general to murder a little boy. The gigolo was not a poolside hustler but a pampered prince living out his days of leisure.

Rafik’s father must be an extremely important man for Richesse Resorts to allow such an intrusion into the privacy of paying guests. If I weren’t so consumed with my own paranoia, I would worry how this latest imbroglio is going to impact Ahmed’s career. Liesbeth de Clerq can’t be pleased. But right now it’s my future, not Ahmed’s, that terrifies me.

My smile turns agonized, and I stare at Ben with pleading eyes. He is still young and ambulatory, he could help me move the body. Together, in the dead of night, we could take the gigolo into the desert, where no one would ever find him.

Otto has reached into my past, prying out as much information about my dead daughter as he can, opening her coffin and touching her bones.

Her end is a tragic story, too horrible for a child’s ears.

Now my past knows where to find me.

“Maggie! I’m sorry,” he says, as if he should apologize for being frightened of me. Sometimes I’m frightened of me too. Maybe we can reboot our friendship on that shared sentiment.

“You told them she died as a little girl. But, Maggie, you told me she passed away only a few years ago. You said that to me when you first arrived.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know why you’d lie, either to me or to my family. It is your business, what happened to your daughter. But I feel . . . well, it makes it hard to trust you.”

Something is very wrong here of late.” It takes all my effort not to reply, That’s my doing, Ahmed. This is my home. I moved in, and I redecorated.

I could jam the blade into her neck before she has time to scream and drag her body to the car to load on top of Rafik. I would love to do it, just to be rid of her. For both me and Ahmed to be left in peace. But there would be too much blood, and I don’t have the strength to carry her all the way down the dirt drive.

Otto has accomplished what I couldn’t conceive—he’s managed to wreck the unwreckable couple. I wait until the boy glances over at me to give him a smile. “Oh, Otto, did you take it?” I ask. “It’s okay to admit that you did. But it was very valuable.” He glares at me, the fright in his eyes morphing into hatred. We could have been such good friends.

He tries to pull away, and she slaps him in the face.

Don’t look. If you don’t see, you don’t know, and if you don’t know, the worst hasn’t happened yet.

Honestly, I think that fight with Ben in the lobby was less about a misplaced artifact and more about how much he and I have drifted apart these past few years. Like I can’t want kids because ten years ago I made a vow to Ben that we’d be childless assholes for eternity. Like I’m not allowed to change.”

But Egypt is just like our United States, Mags. It doesn’t matter whether they’ve caught the right person. It only matters that they have someone in custody to blame.”

The three of us, waylaid with too many injuries, are stuck in our own distinct states of dread: me on the arrest of Ahmed, Ben on his professional future, and Zachary on his disintegrating marriage. If only we could band together and agree that these three problems all stem from the same foul source. A little boy named Otto, agent of havoc, destroyer of peace.

the primary symptom is guilt, an agonizing culpability for the charge of murder lodged against my dearest friend, whom I did nothing to protect.

Spilling the magic pills onto the counter, I compare them to the amino-acid supplements from Zachary’s stockpile. A perfect match. Right down to the minuscule trademark script running along their slender blue bellies.

I’ve been swallowing vitamin supplements for the past three days to fight the monsters in my head.

The condition is back in full force, almost reaching a stage unseen since Klode Park. Otto has nearly succeeded in erasing me. Soon I won’t be able to leave my room.

That’s another thing the boy has taken from me, the very worst of all his thefts. He’s stolen the past as I remember it. The exquisite, jewel-bright moments of the day when Peter comes alive again, if only for a few seconds, vivid and tender-eyed, unobstructed by memory blanks. For that theft alone, Otto deserves his death.

“You know, Maggie,” Ben says more caustically than I’ve ever heard him pronounce my name, “you have an unhealthy obsession with the hotel staff. I doubt they’ve ever once bothered to wring their hands over you.”

He's not wrong

and she stares into my face. “You,” she stutters. “You were the woman in Sils . . .” The bell comes alive, its tongue lolling around in its mouth as I swing it back and send it crashing into Liesbeth’s temple.

Tess said I was acting crazy. How can a person live for eighty-one years on this deranged planet and not be crazy? Why must I feign total sanity for the comfort of those who’ve been here such a short time?

The phone rings, and I answer it. “Mom, it’s Julia. It’s your daughter. Mom. Why won’t you open the door?” I

Okay something isn't right. I'm starting think this is really her and she's not dead

Then, inexplicably, in the chair next to me, both our feet warmed by the same sun, my daughter, in her last act of her life, began to fill the air with lies about Peter, about what he’d done to her when she was a girl.

“Mom, did you hear me?” Julia rasped. She was already dying; most of her was invisible by that point. “I want you to know what happened. What he did to me. Did you have any idea? If you did, please just admit it.”

“I wouldn’t be here without Otto. He tracked me down and brought me back to you. I don’t know how we can ever repay him. We owe him so much gratitude.”

Then the knife slips from my grip and the body falls and it becomes impossible to ignore a set of eyes in the doorway. Staring. Mismatched.

Wow, so she just murdered her own dauther in her delusional state.Did Otto plan that part? Cuz I doubt he'd reunite her out of pure benevolence. Something tells me he wanted Julia to be the target instead because he had been pretending to be her on the phone the first couple of times, since it was a child's voice. He knew she'd be so mixed up in the head she'd think he was Julia even in person.