Benton Fraser

I had chased her as far as the train station before Ray showed up.
He was a good guy- Ray, a good cop. He was rather short, balding and had an awful temperament with everyone except his mother, who he still lived with, but he was a good man. His sister had an infatuation with me that I could never understand, in fact most of the women I’ve met since coming to this city I do not understand, perhaps she still does. I don’t know. It’s a strange thing about women, they are very complicated creatures and I’ve failed in all my undertakings with them. Well except for Veronica that is.
I had told Ray to come to the station from his house just before I left. I wasn’t sure it would be how she would try to escape, just a hunch. His green Buick, with the little flashing light on top, pulled up in the fire-lane parking just as I ran breathless up to the main entrance.
“She’s already inside!” I gasped.
Without a word we both dashed into the station. Our footsteps rang loud in the cavernous building as we desperately scrambled to the only place where she could have hidden it: money. Stolen almost eleven years ago; it’s strange to think now that my life could have been so changed by 520,000 dollars. I didn’t steal it. She did – Veronica. But I was the one to catch her.
We rounded a corner and there she was – tall, slightly shorter then myself, dark, curly hair, wonderful figure and dark brown eyes that could plead like a doe and snap like a cobra. She was arguing with another man, shying away from a small suitcase that he held out to her. But that same moment she heard us and whirled, a small semi-automatic hand gun in her hand. She squeezed off two shots but Ray and I fell to the floor and were missed. She turned and ran down to the train terminal, dropping the suitcase that flew open and spilled it’s continents of twenty dollar bill wads onto the floor.
I sprang to my feet and headed after her. “Get it!” I shouted to Ray as I passed the fallen money and took the stairs multiples at a time. Overhead I heard the announcer declare the departure of a train to New York. She was heading for that train. Oh why was she doing this to me? Ah- but didn’t I know? It was revenge, revenge for what I did to her eleven years ago.
She had walked into my life so calmly, so unexpectedly that I had trouble believing it. I saw her on the street, getting out of a yellow cab; she looked just like I had remembered her only better. I lost her in the crowd, but only a few days later we walked straight into each other: I was going out, she was coming in. She spoke first, a simple ‘hi’ and I replied in the same. I followed her back inside and she ate and we made small talk.
I hardly remember what we said, I can only remember her…her everything. The way she smelled, like spring flowers after the rain; the way her smile was slightly awry on her left side; the way she held her coffee with pinkie extended; even the way she ate; with ferver but not glutton. These were new things to me. I hadn’t seen them in the time we had been together.
We spent the evening together. There was a dinner made from the various fragments of my refrigerator, and a movie played on a borrowed television without sound. She was Eva Longe and I was Cary Grant. And then she left, and I leaned against the closed door and sighed. What had just happened? I had put her in prison and here I was, falling desperately in love.
It was late when she banged on my door, and the moment I opened it she flew at me, hitting me with her angry little fists.
“Did you think we could pretend like it hadn’t happened, Fraser?! Why?! Why did you do that to me? How could you have done that to me?!”
It hadn’t really been her fault – the robbery. She had been under the grip of a very egotistic boyfriend who had masterminded the entire thing. I had known this and I could have let her go, but I didn’t and now I was paying for it.
As I looked into her angry, beautiful – oh so beautiful- face, I could find no true answer. “It was my duty.” The only think I could think of to say. “I’m sorry.”
She hit me again then collapsed against me, sobbing. Awkwardly, I put an arm around her and kissed her temple. Her face turned up to me and the next thing I knew was the taste of her lips, like honeysuckum, and the love that flowed over me like a stream.
But that was then, this was now. And now she was a fugitive from the law; the law I was sworn to uphold. She had played me like a piano, played me without a single missed note. But I couldn’t believe that our love was falsified; it was too real, at least for me…and so strange. Oh how had it come to this?
There she was, almost at the train step; I sped up and with one great, final, effort I reached out and caught hold of her, pulling her back to the platform. She whirled at me and pressed the gun she still carried into my chest. “You shouldn’t have come, Ben.”
“You can’t do this, Veronica.”
“Yes I can, I’m the one with the gun, remember?”
“You don’t want to do this,” I reached up with my hand and slowly encompassed the gun. “You can’t want to.”
She slowly relinquished the weapon and took a step back; a tear fell down her cheek. That tear, like the ones I had found frozen on her cheeks the night I found her on the mountain side, cold, freezing, barely alive. I had cuddled her frame next to mine, trying to keep her warm. She had smelled like spring flowers even then- so close to death. We had huddled there, against the mountainside, while the blizzard raged for a day, a long weary night, and another day. And as we lay there, I felt myself dieing, and just as I was about to slip into peaceful oblivion, I heard her voice. So soft, so sweet and so beautiful reciting something…a poem, over and over again; and as I listened to the sound of her voice I found my strength coming back to me.
She looked at me wistfully. “I should have shot you.”
“And I should have let you go.” I knew that now. But I had loved my duty too much.
She shook her head and the train beside us, with a groan and a clunk, began pulling away from the platform.
“And this time will be different.” She said softly. The train began moving faster, car by car slid past us.
“I’m going.”
I shook my head, “I can’t let you do that.”
She looked at me, I looked back.
“Then shoot me, cause I’m getting on this train.”
I looked at her, unmoving, still holding the gun.
“No?” She cocked her head slightly at me. “Okay.” She turned to the train, reached out with one arm, caught the railing at the platform and ran a few steps before pulling herself entirely onto the train. I could only stand there, watching her. Then she turned and looked back at me. Her gaze once again held the love for me that I knew could not have been forged. “Come with me!” She called.
Could I? Could I leave what I had sworn to do? Could I just go, go and be with her? I knew it was all I had wanted for a long time, even though I had not recognized it. I had loved her for far longer than I had allowed myself to believe; and here she was, asking me to go with her.
“Come with me Ben!”
I hear shouts behind me: Ray with the newly arrived backup. Should I? The train was pulling ever farther away from me.
“Come with me! You’re gonna regret it if you don’t!”
She was right. I knew that, so I made my decision. I ran after the train, after her. She smiled and leaned towards me, her arm fully extended. I glanced over and saw Ray coming closer, he wouldn’t let me go, he would understand, but he wouldn’t let me go. I ran faster.
He was closer now, close enough to see Veronica’s extended arm and through some devilish play of light, it appeared that she still held a weapon in her hand.
“She’s got a gun!” Ray shouted and pulled up his run, extending his own towards her.
I ran faster and caught hold of her hand, she pulled me onto the train, but just as she did so, a shot rang out.
Boom! Ray had fired his gun, thinking to protect me from her. But what was intended for her struck me instead.
It was like the sharp twinge of pain that comes when you pinch a nerve. It was there, overwhelming, searing, devastating, and then it was gone; paralysis spreading up my spine in its place. I looked up at Veronica; shock, horror and profound grieve etched themselves in her face. She clutched at me, but I could feel myself slipping from her grasp.
Music filled my ear. Like the sweet and glorious sound of a full piano playing out a melody so divine, so beyond comprehension that only at death are we allowed to hear it. It was so passionate, so powerful and loving that for a moment, the music was all I could comprehend, all I could fill my senses with.
I didn’t feel it when I fell back onto the concrete station platform. I could only feel the curiously warm sensation creeping all over me, and could only think that I had lost her forever. I saw faces above me; Ray, devastated, was by me first.
“I should have gone with her.” I said, though my voice came out no louder than a whisper.
“What’d he say?” The cop behind Ray asked.
“He said ‘get me to a hospital.’” Ray answered.
There was scurrying, voices, shouting, but it was fading away, but the music still played, gently, lovingly. The memory of that day, night and day on the mountain came back to me. I felt the cold sting of the snow and the warm comfort of Veronica’s presence. And the poem…I heard her say it, over and over again. Perfect in every syllable, every word priceless because it came from her mouth and just as I remembered it, I repeated it and it flowed graciously with the silent music.
Just as the morning fairs blue
So shall the night sing its praise;
As the lily’s snow-drop dew
Lies strewn on far-capped days
So shall we turn to our love forlorn
So shall we be in spring adorn’d.
There was more, but I could not say it and what I had said was incoherent, for Ray advocated that he did not understand. Light was creeping around the corners of my mind. I could see nothing of anything anymore. I felt no more pain, felt no more grief or fear as the white light increased and penetrated the darkness of my mind.
Then, repeating the poem over and over in my head, I saw my father. My dead father. He had been a good father the only way he had known how during his short life. He then smiled at me and reached out for me and said: “Come, my son.”