Authors: Colin Harrison
Peter wondered where the Mayor and Johnetta had gone for their rendezvous. Certain accommodations can always be made; it was really only a matter of checking into a room in a motel—near the airport would be easy, at night. Perhaps a few bills changed hands, perhaps Geller himself had driven the couple and even gone in and rented the room, then sat outside in the car listening to the radio. Peter could certainly understand the Mayor’s appetite—if, to Peter, Johnetta Henry had been sexy
dead,
then it must have been quite another thing when she was alive. Women like that had a way of gravitating toward light and power. And the Mayor, yet to be elected, was in the flush of ascendancy from City Council member to mayoral candidate. The attentions of an attractive woman might only be expected. And so it happened between them, maybe only once, maybe dozens of times. What was certain was that for a brief moment the Mayor had gazed into Johnetta Henry’s lovely black face in passion, certainly—like all men—knowing in his heart the precise degree of his affection for her. But for all his wisdom—and there should by now be plenty of it, for the Mayor was well into his fifties—the man could not have known that in this moment—a brief cry, a grimace of pleasure—a son would be brought to life, nor that this woman whom he held close, if not quite dear, would pursue him beyond the grave.
Looking down, Peter noticed a man standing huddled against the wind in a doorway. The cold did not cut the man’s stench.
“Hey—what’s it going to be?”
“You again?” Peter smiled.
The man thumbed a nickel high into the air. It caught the last of the sun. Spinning, a piece of light.
“Heads,” Peter said. “Heads will definitely be up.”
The man snatched the nickel, slapped it on the arm of his coat, and glanced at it.
“Well, what the hell is it?” Peter barked.
The man burst out laughing. His teeth were rotten, every one. Loose-limbed, he shuffled away, flipping the coin.
RUNNING A SWEAT,
walking the blocks toward her house, the sky winter-dark already. He would not push at Janice, just sit down like a reasonable man at the kitchen table and talk. The women’s safe house would be finished soon—he remembered a March date in Janice’s papers—and she’d be moving again. He needed to talk to her. Berger was gone and she was the only one he trusted now.
It took a while, but finally he turned the corner of Sixth and Christian. The house looked appreciably better, with fresh paint and a new door. The door harmonized with the rest of the exterior, but had no windows, appeared to be heavy oak, and was studded with several new brass locks—a door meant to keep out angry husbands and boyfriends. Janice and the others had been careful not to make the house more noticeable than those around it. He knocked on the front door. No answer.
Just as he stepped back to the sidewalk, a man turned the corner and saw Peter standing in front of the house under a streetlamp. The man was four or five years younger, an inch shorter, and was in a vague way similar in appearance to Peter—yet working class, no doubt, as was apparent from his clothes and boots and curly, unbarbered hair. His face was large and readable, and he examined Peter’s suit and long wool coat.
“Help you?”
“Ah, no,” Peter replied. “Don’t think so. Thanks.”
Peter saw keys in the man’s hands, which were thick with callus. He knew, then, who this was.
“Live around here?” The man squinted, thinking.
“Not far.”
Had John Apple seen pictures of him? Maybe on television. Apple unlocked the three new locks and looked back at Peter.
“Sure you don’t need something, bud?” Meaning,
Move along if you don’t have any business here.
“Positive,” Peter replied.
“You
look
like you’re looking for something,” Apple argued. “Or somebody.”
Apple must know; how could he not? Peter didn’t say anything, only glared, thoughts and violent possibilities arising in his mind. Apple shrugged and disappeared behind the door, although not without giving Peter one last, obviously scrutinizing look. He didn’t care if Apple was there or not, he had to see Janice. Apple could simply leave while they talked. He wanted to talk. Just that.
And, a few minutes later, right on schedule, came Janice in the Subaru, expertly backing it into an open spot. He heard her yank the hand brake back, he heard the buzz of the door as it opened, and as soon as he saw her heel appear on the sidewalk, he knew he had done the right thing in coming here this evening. She wore the Icelandic wool sweater he’d given her. She was a very pretty woman, his wife—this woman whom he had set his course by, who with a momentary smile could drain him of all malice, hatred, and small-mindedness.
He crouched behind a car, peering intently at Janice, thinking forward and backward, his mood shot through with anger and yet a nervousness as well, almost giddiness. He could not resist the idea that all this despair and difficulty was the very dear price that he had finally paid in order to get Janice back. They would start again. He’d cut back on his hours and they would spend more time together. Just find a job in some cushy law firm a couple of blocks from City Hall, maybe work with Berger, the future ex-addict; the hours would be better and he’d start out at about one hundred grand a year and the work would be cleaner, not so much blood on his hands. Finish the Carothers case, end with a bang, and get out and have a houseful of kids. He honestly believed that he had paid the price of understanding and that now he could rededicate himself to her and to all they had. After all these years, still he was obsessed with her; he knew this and knowing it intensified the obsession. That he didn’t have her made him want her all the more. He loved her and would do anything for her—she looked ever so beautiful
now! this moment!
in her blue skirt with its crisp pleats and the pearls around her neck. Her hair, the beautiful dark hair he used to run his hands through, was piled up above her neck, and this was the way he had always liked it best. She stood before him finding her house keys,
unconscious of him. She didn’t know about Vinnie and the Mayor’s threats and what the bread man had told him. He would tell her and then call the newspaper reporter tonight. He knew that everything in his life would fall into place if he just stepped close to her and their eyes met. He would be set free.
Janice stopped at the house, dipped her head as she unlocked the door, then disappeared inside.
Peter Scattergood, estranged husband, mutinous Assistant District Attorney, former mediocre high-school basketball player, lousy son to a mother recuperating from surgery, turned the corner and walked up the alley behind the house. The kitchen window was lit, and he remembered standing in his own small backyard back when he and Janice were happy, staring contentedly at the golden-lighted windows of his own house. He slipped inside the gate at the back of the plot and through the tangled brush by the rotting picnic table where the painters had eaten lunch last week. Janice was probably waiting until the weather became warmer before tackling the backyard. Maybe he could help her—yes, he would like that. He crunched his way through the icy snow, keeping an eye on the windows. If anyone from the house on the other side of the alley were to look out their second-or third-floor windows, he might be seen. But it was still winter, after all, and in a few minutes he would be invisible in the dark.
Wrapped in the thick folds of his coat, he cut along the back of the house like a thief looking for a way to break in. The double-paned kitchen window opened outward and was set over the sink. One of the crank windows was open an inch and he eased himself next to it, close enough to spy a strip of gauzy curtain and a bit of kitchen wall. He heard water splashing in the sink.
“… these in the market,” his wife was saying. The water was turned off and the pipes creaked inside the wall next to him. “But I assume they’re covered with insecticide,” she continued.
Is this what new lovers talked about, chatted over happily, the small, easy things? He rubbed his ears with his gloved hands.
“Where do tomatoes grow in February, do you think?”
“California?” came Apple’s voice—more throaty than when Peter had heard him speak before.
“You know, the ones you get in the supermarket are barely tomatoes anymore. They’re bred for their shelf life and lack of bruisability, if that’s a word.”
“Doesn’t surprise me, Janie,” Apple answered her.
Janie?
“Sure,” Janice went on, “they’re picked green and exposed to some gas to make them ripe.”
A knife hit a cutting board.
“Will you get the wine?” his wife asked.
Peter heard a refrigerator open and shut, the squeak of a cork being pulled. Then something garbled from Apple, then nothing. Thirty seconds passed.
“All right,” his wife said happily, “enough of that for now, Mr. Apple.”
“Enough of what?” Peter heard Apple say.
Janice used to stand at the sink, bent over a bit, which made her thrust her rump at him in an unconsciously saucy way, and he’d come up and put his arms around her, weighing a breast in each hand, giving her a lewd thrust from behind, maybe then drop a hand and get a handful of her crotch. She’d loved it, once. But the thought of that, or perhaps having stood for so long, tired him. He squatted beneath the window with a chill in his feet that reached his knees. His nuts were cold, too. The dark had come fully now; no one would see him. The water pipes rattled again as Janice rinsed her hands.
“Ready,” she called.
Apparently John Apple had prepared the meal, for they moved into another room to eat dinner. He pressed his ear against the edge of the window but could hear only the indistinct sound of conversation. Janice’s voice lifted from time to time in relaxed delight. Time passed, his feet getting colder in the snow. He studied the window hinge and concluded that he might be able to force the window farther open. He grasped it and pulled. It moved half an inch—the amount of play in the crank mechanism. But half an inch made a huge difference, afforded him a wide angle of view. Now he could see the kitchen counter, on which stood an open bottle of wine and half a head of lettuce. The kitchen, recently painted, was full of new appliances, bought with funds from grants Janice had obtained.
He squatted down again, legs and ears aching from the cold. The gun bumped against his thigh; did the cold affect the firing mechanism? He waited.
FINALLY, JANICE SET THE DINNER
dishes in the sink. He stood up soundlessly.
“… he’s a good man, John. I wish you hadn’t said that.”
His wife stood at the sink, gazing over the backyard. He could see her profile, the length of her eyelashes. She lowered her head, the pipes sounded a trickling hiss. “This warm water feels good.” She shook her head aimlessly. Two arms appeared around her and she shut her eyes and let her cheek fall against one of the big hands.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, grasping one of the hands and giving the thick hairy wrist a slow kiss. “You’ve been very patient with me. This whole thing will take time.”
They stood there rocking. Peter repeated Janice’s words. She was talking about him. Didn’t this mean that she remained ambivalent? Now, then, was the time to talk to her. Yes! He darted quickly out of the yard up the alley, around the corner to Christian Street, and as he set his bare knuckles hard against the door, his heart hurt, as if his blood had reversed direction, the ventricles in there confused, flapping open and shut excitedly. He gave it a good rap. This was the confrontation he craved, wasn’t it? Hadn’t he known all along that he must do this?
He knocked again, this time harder, with unmistakable urgency. But there was no answer. He looked down the block, where under the cone of streetlights boys tossed snowballs at each other.
Hey, yuh mother-fuckuh! Can’t hit shit!
He and Bobby had always wound up like big-leaguers—this was back when Steve Carlton had just won twenty-seven games in one season—and shelled the side of their house until it was pock-marked with powdery white explosions; once his father had lifted a window to tell them to stop and an ice ball flung by Peter had passed through the open space and across the room, knocking a hairbrush from his mother’s hand.
He rapped one last time. No answer.
Back around the side of the house again, he peered in and saw nothing. And no sounds. Were they upstairs? He clawed at the cold, dead grass in the backyard, remembering the trash he’d seen before. His hands passed over nails, screws, cans, and other unidentifiable junk until finally he found some sort of old file. The idea was to not make any noise. He
knew
they were upstairs. He took the steel shank and ran it along one of the four windowpanes in the back door, cracking the dried putty from the pane that kept the glass in. He meant to get the metal under the edge of the glass and quietly wedge the pane out of the frame. It wouldn’t go—too much old hard putty remained and he couldn’t see well enough. Fuck it. He tossed the metal aside and, positioning himself with his back toward the door, gave a quick, sharp elbow to the glass, the kind of sudden jab he once learned as a basketball player to discourage a defender—a secret foul. The glass popped into several pieces and fell inside the door.
He froze, waiting for alarms and discovery, his limbs stiff, ears alert, breath muted. Should he run? But nothing happened to dissuade him from the next step, which was to reach carefully through the broken pane and unlock the door.
He slipped in the door, knowing as he passed over the threshold that this was as wrong a thing as he had ever done, but that he must do it and that nothing in his nature could stop him. He was exquisitely alive in his torment, and after the weeks of inactivity and confusion he felt clearheaded and aware of every sound and of every muscle and bone and vein inside his body. He was inside the house where upstairs his wife lay with another man. This was movement, a vector, this was an intersection of desire, the moment when a man executed a vengeful will upon the world.
Now the kitchen. It looked different, painted, lived in, full of cooking utensils. The house would be a wonderful place to live, a haven, thanks to Janice. He surveyed the remains of what looked like an excellent meal. And stopped: On the counter
was Janice’s German chocolate cake. Her specialty,
his
favorite! He found a heavy butcher knife on the counter and messily cut a piece of cake and wolfed at it from his hand. How hungry he was! The icing, the chocolate. He stuffed another piece in his mouth. The taste was entirely familiar: exquisite. So perfect was Janice’s German chocolate cake, and she knew it. They had eaten it at dinner parties they’d given, she had made it for his parents, she had given it to their friends, she had made it each year for him on his birthday. He had made love to her with the taste of that cake still in his mouth, the chocolate mixing with the taste of her. He slipped the big knife into his other pocket.