La Pire Matrone Jamais

Even as I'm standing here, looking across the Pacific Ocean, I keep thinking about the kids at home. You assure me, "They'll be fine on their own for one weekend." But, I keep worrying that some day, a million years from now when they're all grown up, they'll be talking about this weekend with some expensive therapist who'll suggest that maybe I just didn't love them enough or that I abandoned them during a formative stage. Whenever I tell you things like that, you tell me I'm being stupid and overbearing and, every time, I fight the urge to bring up your parents, but I know if I did you would go berserk and just say "That's different." Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.
I wish I could just have a good time like you do. I know that I'm wasting this vacation worrying but I just can't help it. I know that eventually someone's going to recognize you and there'll be a media frenzy and this vacation will be completely ruined. My mother warned me about it last night when I called her from that Gas Station pay phone, which I still can't believe you stopped at, by the way. We're just lucky that the guy at the counter seemed too stoned to care who you were. Sometimes I think you don't even care if we get busted.You come up behind me and wrap your arms around me, right under my chest. I'm so glad you shaved off that long black beard you'd grown, now I can see that cute little scar under your chin. It really is true that there's something sexy about battle scars, it's nice to know I have a man who knows how to handle himself in a fist fight. We walk back to the parking lot holding hands and I notice that you still haven't cleaned your nails. "Honey, I told you that it would dry under there if you didn't clean them." You pull your hand away and look at it then mutter, "It's just a little dried blood, it washes out pretty easy."
When we get back to the car there's already cameras and police cars gathered around it. Some fat, mustached man walks forward and starts to holler at you. You wait until he's right next to you then punch him in the face, that's when the guns start going off and the camera people start talking a mile a minute. CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN... We're national news. I feel blood splatter my face, it's warm and it stings when it gets in my eyes. I step away from your body towards the police cruiser, they tell me to get on my knees and put my hands on my head so I do. As all the cameras point at me and the news reporters rapidly give their viewers my brief history I think to myself, "I wonder if the kids are watching..." and wave to the camera's. But then I remember that there's no television in the orphanage.