T D Cates

Juxtaposed T D Cates

Bendrix Marshal is a man of meticulous nature whose life is turned upside down when he meets Eve Townsend while working for a traveling theatre group out of Glasgow. Being standoffish and unaccustomed to personal interactions, Bendrix is at first taken off guard by what it means to want something and then rooted in the idea that Eve must love him back. As their relationship flourishes and then diminishes, Bendrix begins to lose sight of the man he once was, leaving the boundaries he begins to cross exceedingly more problematic. Eve, who fled her home on the West Coast to start a new life in Chicago, has never been held fully accountable for anything she's done, including the good things. Quick and frequently naïve in her decision-making, Eve struggles with addiction, a sense of belonging and a hidden history of trauma that frequently makes her appear uninvested in doing what is 'right'. As Eve both advertently and inadvertently causes destruction upon herself, it leaks out into the pristine world Bendrix attempts to surround himself in and slowly threatens to destroy his reality. But all of this is seen in retrospect. The story opens with Bendrix, bloody and holding the gun after Eve has been found shot in her London home. As the Metropolitan Police begin to piece together the last moments of her life, a web of lies and half-truths emerges so fully that none are left untouched, including Waylon and the Chief Inspector. Self-inflicted or not, of enormous consequences or mundane ones, as the lies are stripped away, one is forced to ask if the love of anything can exist amongst the truths that remain. Juxtaposed is written as a three-part narrative that shifts the reader from the investigation, to the mind of the suspect, to the sordid past and deepest fears of its victim.