Gut feelings

The day after my cocktail evening, I called my friend Denise who lived in a restored colonial down the street and told her about The Boys, as we would affectionately come to call them.  

"There's something that's not quite right about them," I said.  "Fishy."   

I told Denise everything back then, before the boys put an end to that friendship with some clever stirring of the pot.  Their modus operandi was to divide and conquer, isolate their prey, make a gal devoted and dependent solely on them.  

I was musing outloud.  "Someone who arrives like this, out of nowhere....will leave the same way."  Then, "I wouldn't be surprised if one day...they disappear just as quickly as they arrived."    

  

My gringo radar was spot on but it is only now I see how so many things didn't add up. Of course I metaphorically slap my head.  They were sending me signals all the time, but each time the curious sentence, act or omission happened, I just brushed it off.

Why?

Because that's the power of the sociopath. Bob and Tommy were so charming, so intimate, so warm, so generous, that I got seduced, just as they knew I would. This was not their first time, after all.  They knew I was lonely.  They believed I had means. ("She's rich," Tommy said to Eva.  "She has a black credit card.")  I knew everything there was to know about expat life in Merida.  How incredibly lucky they were to have met me at the salon.  I was perfect and they cultivated me.  I couldn't believe my luck at having met two such devoted friends.

When Eva called me early one morning to say, "They're gone" I said, "No way."

"Oh yes, my dear.  The scum left in the middle of the night. I know they did.  Ask around.  You'll see."

An instant later, my heart thud shrieked.  Of course.  They slipped away as I had predicted. Quickly.  Effortlessly.  From nowhere to nowhere.