Misunderstanding Writing Prompt, Fiction

Imagine for a Moment that I’m your Wife

I was bored and single and there was nowhere to go but the internet. One night I got a little carried away. I did things for the camera…

Floriza hesitated at the sight of her reflection in the glass door.

“Lomas Potok & Son: Investigation Services” was printed in gold leaf above a faded sticker reading ‘push to open’. She pushed and walked in. This was all new and a little frightening. Her heels clacked on the floorboards.

“Mrs Scott?” Potok came smoothly around his desk, one hand out for shaking. “Twelve o’clock sharp as agreed,” he smiled. “I appreciate that.”

Short and stocky in casual clothes and boots, Potok looked more like a burgler than a detective. Floriza accepted his offer of coffee and glanced around. Polished oak floor, chrome and glass furniture, the inevitable computer. A square of sunshine from the single window and a rumble of conversation from next door suggested thin walls and low rent.

“So, Mrs Scott-”

“Floriza, please, I insist.”

Potok nodded. She was nervous but confident. Not many customers turned up in designer suits and heels.

“What can we do to help, Floriza?”

“I imagine you do a lot of divorce work-”

“We get our share.”

“-but I’m not looking for a divorce.”

“Great. We’ll cross divorce off the list.”

Potok drew a line in the air with an imaginary pen. Floriza’s chin came up.

“My husband is Thady Scott.”

She watched for a reaction. Potok transferred his gaze from her cleavage to the window.

“I see.”

Thadeus Scott had bought half the real estate in the area and thrown a couple of million into local charities. But a convicted murderer would always be friendless in these parts. Haverley was that kind of small town.

“Thady says you’re honest.”

Floriza knew vaguely that Potok had worked for the Scott family before. She wished he would hurry up and speak. Potok shrugged.

“I haven’t heard from -your husband- in years. Didn’t know he was married.”

“It was a quiet affair -just close family. January 12th.” Floriza crossed her long legs and watched him do the math.

“Just six weeks ago?”

She nodded, her lips suddenly tight, expressionless. Potok frowned.

“Pardon me saying, but you don’t look too thrilled about it.”

He is honest, thought Floriza. Says what he thinks.

“I made a silly mistake, Mr Potok. Before Thady I…made a few mistakes. And one of them…” A tear crept onto her cheek.

“One of them has come back to bite you?”

“You have no idea. I’m so ashamed of myself.” She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief from nowhere, drawing deep breaths. It was quite an act, thought Potok, if a touch overdone.

“Tell me.”

Floriza straightened in her chair; story-time for grown-ups.

“It all happened during covid. I was bored and single and there was nowhere to go but the internet. I had maybe 400 friends on Facebook. I was popular. Then I moved onto Instagram and next thing I had 2000 followers.”

I bet you did thought Potok. She looked him straight in the eye. “For the pictures, you know?”

“I understand.”

“No you don’t. It’s different for girls. I was sick of being alone, stuck in the apartment, night after night.” Her cheeks tightened and she glared at the floor.

“And then?” His voice was soft, sympathetic.

“I started an Only Fans account.”

“Webcam stuff?”

“Of course. That’s what…they liked.”

“They?”

“Men, Mister Potok, that is what you want me to say, isn’t it?”

“How exactly can Potok & Son help?”

“There was one man — Alex, my biggest fan. He adored me.”

“How much did his adoration cost?”

Floriza bristled, see-sawing between pride and guilt. “Plenty. A few thousand a month.”

“And?”

“One night I got a little…carried away. I did things for the camera…I should have known better but I was tipsy. Alex was like all the rest, downloading everything, of course. I didn’t mind. You expect that. Then — quite suddenly — lockdown was over. Like a miracle.

That weekend I met Thady at the Riverside Grill. We were all over each other, day and night, like in a movie. I dumped Instagram and Only Fans — the whole lot. Life was starting over again, brand new, a clean slate. Thady said it felt just like getting out of jail — and he would know. And I understood — I really did.”

“It was like that for lots of us.” For a moment Potok felt a thread of real sympathy between himself and this curiously frank woman. She let out a low groan before continuing.

“But this Alex has found me right here in Haverley — god knows how. He’s here, now, somewhere — out there.” Floriza waved at the window. “He wants us to meet up. Can you imagine? Don’t you see? It’s bound to be blackmail.”

“I see.”

“I imagine you know what Thady’s like.”

“Everyone in town thinks they know.”

“And they’re right. Thady would skin Alex alive if he found out. I wouldn’t blame him.”

Potok hoisted his red-flag expression but Floriza ploughed on regardless, voice rising in pitch and volume. “Imagine if I was your wife!”

“That’s something I try to avoid with clients, Mrs Scott.”

Floriza leaned towards the detective and spoke the words she had rehearsed during the taxi-ride across town.

“I would be sooo grateful…if you could just make-this-go-away.”

Potok nodded. “I’ll need more details. I’ll need your signature on a contract and-”

“Five hundred dollars in advance? Yes, your website is quite clear about that.”

Potok blinked back at her. He was honest. Thady said so. Floriza flipped the contract to the last page and signed. Didn’t read a single word.

“Time is the issue, mister Potok. Thady’s leaving Haverley for good. In three weeks he’s moving the entire business to Ottowa, Canada. The house will be ready in late March. No more schmucks from Only Fans hunting me down. Alex doesn’t know my real name and has no idea I’m married -to Thady or anyone else. In three weeks I’ll be sorted for life.”

“I understand. I have more questions, though.”

“Ask me anything.” Floriza sat back and produced a credit card from an amber handbag that exactly matched her nail-varnish.

Much later, Mrs Scott, freshly showered, gently scented in a peach satin slip, lay full-length on a leather sofa, burning up the phone. Girlfriend lunches, personal training and day trips, anything to keep herself busy while the marvellous Potok worked his magic spell. A kind breeze from the bay windows shifted her dark, machine-dried curls.

Potok & Son sat by the fire comparing notes and laptop pictures.

“Are we working for Floriza or Thady?” Rex asked his father.

“Not sure. She signed the contract but my guess is it’s Thady himself, being super discreet. She wasn’t very specific -all nods and winks but Thady only knows one way to solve problems. She said make-this-go-away.”

“Clear enough, dad. So what do we know for sure?”

“Superfan Alex Mossman is somewhere here in Haverley. We know because yesterday he snapped a pic of “Gloria” — that’s our Floriza - in Boston Street and messaged it to the Gloria Gold Instagram account she was too dumb to delete. With an invitation to meet him in town for coffee. That’s when Floriza panicked and came to us. She’s never seen Alex in person, but we have this here photo from his Instagram page.”

Rex, a thinner version of his father, glanced at the image — a blonde man aged about thirty -tanned, handsome, smiling into his phone camera.

“Kids stuff, dad. I’ll hack his cellphone and rip his address in Haverley from the GPS signal.”

“You can do that?”

“Watch me.”

By sunrise, Potok junior had tracked Alex Mossman’s phone to the first floor of the White Hart Hotel. At nine a.m. Potok senior rang Floriza Scott and got through to her answering service. “Your biggest fan Alex Mossman is in the White Hart, first floor. He’ll be leaving town shortly. Call you later.”

Across town, Thady Scott listened to the message twice and put his wife’s phone back in his pocket.

Around noon, Lomas Potok charmed the hotel receptionist into admitting there was only one male guest in the White Hart, an Alex up in room 11. But when the door opened to his knock, instead of a handsome blonde hunk, Potok was looking at a bald, 300-pound teenage butterball in a t-shirt and jumbo shorts.

After some verbal fencing, they sat down to talk and Potok brought Alex up to speed concerning the cruel facts of life after “Gloria Gold”. The boy cried a little, embarassing them both.

“I was totally in love with her,” confessed the fat blob, his jowels drooping. “But if she’s married then that’s that. I didn’t really think she’d fall for me anyhow. The diets never seem to work. I’ve lost eleven and a half pounds already…but Gloria wouldn’t look twice at a guy like me. Would she?”

“No chance,” agreed Potok. “By the way, how did you find her? You’re not from round here.”

Mossman sighed. “One night Gloria left the webcam running by accident. A pizza delivery guy came and parked his box on a table right by the camera. The address was Boston Road, Haverley. Took me a while to find the right county -there’s eleven Haverleys. I figured if I hung out on the main drag long enough she was gonna turn up sooner or later.”

“You were right. If you want to pack your stuff…”

“Yeah, no problem, boss.”

“I’ll run you to the station — it’s a long walk with a suitcase.”

“Thanks. Gimme five minutes.”

Mossman wobbled into the bedroom to dress, closing the door for privacy. Potok breathed a sigh of relief. Once in the car, Rex would knock the kid out cold. They could finish him off by the reservoir and the river would carry the body twenty, thirty miles away. The poor slob wasn’t a bad sort but Thady played for keeps and Potok always delivered. He was honest.

To his surprise, Lomas Potok noticed the lobby door-handle turning, very slowly. The door swung into the room followed by two large, dark men wearing motorcycle helmets. One visor came up, and two handguns with silencers.

“Alex Mossman?”

Potok took a backward step. “I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.”

“Not at all, Alex. Thady Scott says goodbye.”

Thadeus Scott met his two gunnies in a derelict grain store on the outskirts of Haverley. They reported no problems from the White Hart Hotel. Two head shots, two heart. No witnesses. Funny thing was, they agreed, Alex Mossman was definitely not a thirty year-old blonde.

“I’m not surprised,” Thady shrugged. “Like I told you, everybody’s faking it on the internet. My old lady could teach you a thing or two.”

The teenage boy had tiptoed into the bloodsoaked room and stared in horror at the remains of Lomas Potok. He understood only that it was time to run. Screw the luggage, get going. He exited the White Hart empty-handed via the fire escape. Parked across the street, Rex Potok watched an anonymous fat boy waddle past and yawned. Six minutes later, gasping and puffing, the fat boy caught an out-of-state train with seconds to spare. He would change trains all the way to California -L.A. most likely. With luck the police wouldn’t trace him. It wasn’t as if his real name was Alex Mossman.

Under a mild interrogation, the hotel receptionist finally admitted to having heard a faint popping sound. “Pop-pop-pop-pop, like that,” she told the officers. “I didn’t pay it any mind.”

Another story by Solomon Sinn Seer

Written for this prompt