Kate had to smile. “How’d you get so smart?”
Steve said, “I’m quoting my mother,” and laughed.
They chatted comfortably after that, filling the time with facts and feelings, offering snapshots of separate lives now intersecting. Their hands remained linked until they reached the outskirts of Sudbury, the sun just beginning to sink in a riot of furnace red.
* * *
Tarek Yaghi sat on the flower-print couch in the living room of his mistress’ apartment and stared at the winning ticket. Marilyn was in the kitchen, busting ice cubes out of metal trays. She was making a hell of a racket out there, chattering away, but Yaghi tuned her out. All he could think of was waving this ticket in his wife’s face. With any luck the shock would stop her bloated heart.
He glanced at his watch: 4:46 PM. She must have heard about the shooting by now, it was all over the news. Some of the local stations were even dubbing him a hero, ‘a welcome vigilante in a neighborhood rife with violent crime’. He liked the sound of that.
Getting out of the police station had taken longer than Detective Cullen predicted, though true to his word the man had done everything in his power to speed up the process. Some bullshit about the legality of using a sawed-off shotgun for personal protection. Cullen had told him there would be an investigation, possibly even some minor charges down the road, but Yaghi could care less. By this time tomorrow he and his sugar plum would be high over the Pacific Ocean in the first class section of a 747, sipping liqueurs and feeling each other up. Bound for Australia. He’d dreamed about going there ever since he saw the movie
Crocodile Dundee
. He loved Mick’s accent—and that jacket. He’d have to get himself a jacket like that, with boots to match. They would have been in the air tonight, but by the time he’d finished with Cullen, the detective dropping him back at the store, the lottery office had been closed.
He’d show Claudette the ticket tonight. Or even better, wait until
after
he cashed in the ticket, show the bitch the check instead, drawn in his name, with all those lovely zeros. That’d do her in for sure—
Marilyn banged through the saloon doors from the kitchen, an aluminum ice bucket in the crook of her arm, an open bottle of champagne leaning inside.
“Just think of it,” she was saying, Yaghi tuning her in now. “No more sneaking around. You don’t need her anymore, Tar. You don’t need her store, you don’t need her apartment, and you sure as heck don’t need anymore of her penny-pinching bullshit. You’re free.”
“That’s right, my sweet.”
Yaghi soaked her in with his eyes, a bleach-blond, buxom girl of twenty-three, heavily made-up and chubby, the way he liked his women. A strong whiff of perfume preceded her into the room. The sight of her filled his heart. She’d been a regular at the store for almost a year before coming right out and asking him if he was married, that sweet face turning such a deep shade of crimson Yaghi had thought she might faint. He’d been admiring her since the first time she came in, but could never muster the courage to make the first move. He sometimes wondered if Claudette had forked out for the expensive surveillance equipment just so she could keep an eye on him. She had a way of inducing that kind of paranoia.
Marilyn minced over to the antique Welsh dresser and got out a pair of her finest crystal goblets. She set them on the coffee table beside the ice bucket, sat next to Yaghi on the couch and clutched his arm while he poured. She started chattering again, dreaming out loud, saying what they’d do when they got to Australia, see a Koala bear maybe or go snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. But Yaghi was someplace else.
“I can’t wait to put this in her face,” he said, gazing at the ticket again.
“Why bother, baby? Just disappear.”
“No. I want to see the look in her eyes. So bad I can taste it. Then it’s over.” He looked at Marilyn, touched her round face. “Sugar Plum, when I’m free of her, I want us to be together.”
Marilyn smiled. “Tarek, are you proposing to me?”
“Yes,” Yaghi said, taking her hand, “I am.”
Marilyn bounced in her seat, giving him a big wet smack on the lips. “Oh, Tar, this is so exciting. You can file for divorce as soon as we get back.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Yaghi said. He gulped down his champagne, watching as Marilyn refilled his glass, then topped up her own. “If you accept my proposal we won’t be coming back.”
This seemed to please her. “You mean we’ll be staying in Australia?”
“No,” Yaghi said. He opened his wallet and took out a dog-eared photograph, the image faded with years and repeated handling. “My family,” he said, showing it to Marilyn. She leaned in close, pointing a delicate finger at the boy posed there with his parents and three baby sisters: a slim, shirtless lad with jet black hair and a dazzling smile, dark eyes full of mischief. “You,” she said and Yaghi nodded. “Your mother’s beautiful.” She touched the face of the plump, stern looking woman in the photograph.
“I haven’t told you about my past,” Yaghi said, “because I try not to think about these things. But now, with this ticket…” He looked into her bright eyes that always seemed a bit startled. “We’ll leave for Australia tomorrow, stay as long as we want. Then we go to Beirut, to my family. We buy a big house there and live like royalty, with you as my wife.” He kissed her softly, whispering, “How does that sound?”
“Like a dream,” Marilyn said, breathing the words into his mouth. “Of course I’ll marry you, Tarek. You know I will. And I can’t wait to meet your family.”
“Good. Good…”
Leaning into him, Marilyn said, “Let’s make love,” her knowing fingers slipping under his shirt. “Right here, right now…”
“No,” Yaghi said, pulling gently away from her. “I want to be free of her first.” He drained his champagne glass and stood, the decision made. “Keep the rest on ice for me. I’ll be back in an hour.”
* * *
Though unhappy about it, Marilyn let him go. When he got like this, an idea in his head, there was no point standing in his way. She busied herself after he left, corking the champagne bottle and putting it back in the fridge, fixing her face, watching TV; but she couldn’t shake the dreadful feeling that had come over her as she locked the door behind her sweet Tarek. She’d seen his wife, and she was afraid he would be no match for her.
* * *
Kate and Steve pulled up in front of the Whipple residence at a quarter to five that afternoon. During the final leg of the trip a low cloud cover had crept in and now a light snow was falling, downy flakes drifting to earth on the still air. Steve followed Kate up the snow-choked path to the front door, admiring the snug fit of her jeans as she climbed the steps. After a brief struggle with the lock—that bulky cast on her arm was going to take some getting used to—she pushed her way into the foyer the two levels shared and kicked off her boots. Steve closed the door and slipped past her, their hips brushing. He sat on the steps to the upper level and unlaced his boots while Kate unlocked the door to her father’s place.
“I’m just gonna get some things for my dad,” she said. “He’s a bear about staying clean shaven and he’ll go crazy without something to read.”
Steve placed his boots side by side on the slush mat and stood.
“Come ahead in,” Kate said, opening the door. “Have a look around.”
Steve followed her in, watching as she tossed her coat over the arm of a chair, took off through an archway and disappeared. Leaving his own coat on, he strolled into the room, admiring the impressive home entertainment center, the comfy looking furniture and the framed movie posters on the walls:
Psycho
,
Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman
,
The Pink Panther
,
The Body Snatchers
, five or six others.
Loud enough to be heard, he said, “Is this stuff stolen?” referring to the stack of stereo components and the huge DVD library alphabetically arranged along a series of recessed shelves.
“That
stuff
,” Kate said, shouting back at him, “represents years’ worth of scrimping and pooled resources—and it’s still not paid for. It’s the eighth wonder of the world. My dad’s in front of it nearly all the time.” She chuckled. “I’m almost as bad.”
Steve ranged further into the room, peeking through an archway into the kitchen and the bedrooms beyond. He could hear Kate rummaging around back there somewhere. He poked his head into a room off the living area that was obviously Keith’s study, a small office set up in there with a computer station and a vast photo gallery covering nearly every inch of wall space.
He took a few steps into the room, examining the photographs, many of which were black and white. He found one of Kate as a baby of perhaps eleven months, cradled in the arms of a woman who was obviously her mother. Steve saw right away where Kate had gotten her smile and that forthright gaze. She’d been a chubby baby and, as he saw in an adjacent picture, a scrawny, tomboyish girl. The photo showed a kid of about nine in a Yankees jersey two sizes too big for her, drilling a baseball at someone off-camera. From the mischief in the child’s eyes Steve was pretty sure the unseen target was her dad.
He’d just found a color shot of Kate and her senior prom date when Kate slipped up beside him, a small leather suitcase in her good hand.
“Found the rogues’ gallery, huh.”
“These are great,” Steve said, looking now at a shot of Kate at about three, pedaling a tricycle, smiling over her shoulder at the camera. “Who’s the cameraman?”
“The early ones my mom did. She was a professional photographer. Had a shop downtown for years. Family portraits mostly, but she did work for the mines, shooting underground, and some catalogue work for the old Beamish stores. She did forensic stuff too for a couple of years. Murder scenes, accidents, grisly stuff like that. The rest were taken either by my father or my aunt Lee.”
“Who’s this guy?” Steve said, tapping the prom scene with a fingernail.
“Tucker Ward. Jock douche bag, to quote my father. He was right, too. Son of a bitch tried to feel me up before we even got to the dance.”
“What’d you do?”
Kate showed him her right hand, fingers curled into a fist around the molded end of the cast. “Socked him in the nose and went to the dance with one of my girlfriends.” She tapped him on the chin with the fist. “So be advised.”
“Duly noted.”
“Come on,” Kate said, smiling. “Let’s go upstairs.”
* * *
Yaghi’s wife, Claudette, was on him as soon as he came in through the apartment door. “Where the hell have you been all day?” Thudding toward him down the hallway in her white cotton nightgown, big as a parachute. “I must’ve called the store a hundred times.”
Yaghi unzipped his coat, savoring the moment. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what.” Not a question, a demand. But it stopped her.
“You didn’t have the TV on? The radio?”
“I was on my back all day with a migraine,” Claudette said, squinting at him, suspicious. “What didn’t I hear?”
“We had another robbery—”
“Those mother
fuckers
.” Flapping those big arms now, fanning b.o. at him. Oh, this was rich. “Did you have the camera on? Did you call the cops? How much did they get?”
“There was only one guy,” Yaghi said, still standing by the door. “He pulled a knife so I shot him.”
“You
shot
him? You mean…?”
“He’s dead. You didn’t lose a penny. I spent all day at the police station.”
Claudette clutched his arm, massive breasts shifting under the thin fabric of her nightgown, broad face brightening as the news sunk in.
“Tarek, this is fantastic. My God, why didn’t you call me?” She gave him that look, narrow-eyed and pouty, the one she put on when she wanted sex. Well, he was going to fuck her, all right. She said, “You know, honey, what you did, it’s going to be so good for the store. Once word gets around, those hoods’ll think twice before—”
“Store, store,
store
.” Yaghi said. He jerked his arm away from her, fed up with the charade. “That’s all you ever talk about. Twelve years I got to listen to you go on about that store.” Shouting at her now, letting it come. “You want to know some things about your store? There’s rats in the basement, big bastards like beavers. And that sink in the back? I piss in it. Kids shoplift? I don’t give a shit, let them. You don’t want to do your share, that’s how it is. I let my friends play poker in the store room. And once a week on Wednesdays Pedro from the laundry brings a whore in there for a piece of tail. How do you like these apples?” Claudette’s eyebrows went up, but she said nothing. “You want to know what I think about your store?
Piss
on your store—” He pulled the ticket out of his shirt pocket and finally, gloriously, wagged it in her face “—and piss on you, too.”
“What’s that?”
“A ticket,” Yaghi said, triumphant. “To freedom.”
Claudette cocked her head, squinting at him with one eye, a sniper sighting down a rifle barrel. “We won the lottery?”
“Not we,” Yaghi said, the whole scene playing out exactly as he’d imagined it in the car, that piece-of-shit Vega she made him drive. “Me.
I
won the lottery. So you can stuff your store up your shit locker, because I am gone.”
He slipped the ticket back into his pocket and turned to leave. As he reached for the doorknob Claudette’s hand closed around his wrist like a manacle. With surprising dexterity she plucked the ticket out of his shirt pocket and held it over her head, out of Yaghi’s reach.
“Nope. Uh-uh.”
Yaghi made a grab for it, bouncing off her prodigious flank. “Give that back.”
“Forget about it, Yaghi. You think I don’t know about your little love nest? Your scrawny
girl
friend? You asshole.” She snapped the ticket between her fingers like castanets. “If you’re a millionaire, then I’m a millionaire, too.”
Real low, Yaghi said, “Okay. You want to play rough? I’ve been waiting a long time to do this.” Then he punched his wife in the face with everything he had, the blow coming all the way up from his balls. Claudette barely flinched. Frustrated, Yaghi hit her again, a straight-ahead pile driver this time, shredding his knuckles on her teeth. He saw blood spurt from her bottom lip and began to pinwheel his arms in a frenzied attack, slamming his fists into her moon face in vicious salvos, Claudette making only the most half-hearted attempts to avoid the blows, something in her eyes almost inviting it.