No Longer the Clown novel · Chapter 6 of 16

Chapter 6: Four Hundred Thousand Views

I went back inside.

The hostess tried to say something and I walked past her.

The private room door was still open.

Dexter was helping Phoebe into her coat.

"Where is it?" I said.

He froze with the coat halfway up her arm.

I held my phone out so the screen faced him.

"Forty-six thousand dollars. Where is it?"

"Addie, not here."

"Here is fine. You like here. You threw a party here."

Dexter's buddy sat back down, slowly.

Dexter let go of the coat.

"It's in Phoebe's fund," he said. "Her treatment in London cost everything she had. She's still paying for the follow-up."

"That was our house."

"We weren't buying a house this year anyway."

"Thirty-one thousand of that was mine."

"And you'd have agreed if I asked you." He said it gently, like I was being slow. "You're the most generous person I know. That's why I love you."

"Then why didn't you ask?"

He opened his mouth.

Phoebe touched his arm.

"Dex. My chest."

He turned to her.

That was my answer.

I left for the second time.

Nobody clapped.

I slept in my car that night in the Harrow Hotel garage, still in the green dress.

At six in the morning I went to the condo in Fremont.

Dexter was asleep on the couch in his dress shirt.

I didn't wake him.

I took my knives first. Then my grandmother's steamer. Then my clothes, all of them, in black trash bags.

He woke up when I was taking the photos off the fridge.

Keep reading free with an account. Start No Longer the Clown from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.