Authors: Roger Smith
“Me too.”
“Then let’s do it again sometime, okay?”
“Yes. That’ll be nice.”
He ends the call, feeling slightly buoyed.
The low slung Brenda Passens appears with her screaming vacuum cleaner and drives him from the living room, the noise too much for his headache. Lane retreats upstairs and finds himself haunting Chris’s old bedroom. He clicks on the wall-mounted TV: a game of cricket coming live from
Chennai, India playing Australia in a test match.
He loathes the game—dragged to endless matches by his father as a child, Bernard Lane in the pub afterward
, joshing red faced men with boarding school nicknames—but the monotony soothes him and he falls asleep, waking when his wife’s car rumbles into the garage.
He walks downstairs to see Bev shrugging off her jacket in the kitchen. It’s nearly five, almost dark, the rain still lashing the house.
“Has she called?” Beverley says.
“No.”
“When she does, tell her you’ll meet her at the 7-Eleven in Kloofnek Road at seven. Don’t mention that I’ll be with you.”
“Why there?”
“I don’t want her anywhere near the bookstore. Let’s keep this as anonymous as we can.”
He nods and lifts the bottle of Scotch from the cupboard. “Want a drink?”
“No. And please don’t get drunk.”
“Christ, Beverley, it’s just one drink.”
As he finishes adding ice to the whiskey his phone rings. Private number.
“Yes?” he says.
It’s Jade. When he tells her to meet him at the convenience store she tries to question him, but he’s emphatic and she sounds hurried, spooked, and rings off after agreeing.
“Okay?” asks Bev.
“Yes.”
“I’m going to take a shower.”
“Where’s the money?”
“It’s in the car.”
Beverley leaves the room and he throws back his drink and pours another. A double.
Hard needles of rain slash down in the beams of Beverley’s Pajero. The defroster roars but Lane has to wipe the fogged side window with his hand to see the girl sheltering in the doorway of the 7-Eleven, hugging herself, smoking.
“Stop,” he says. “That’s her.”
Beverley pulls over, hazards flashing. Lane lowers his window and the wind flings rain in at him.
“Jade!”
The girl doesn’t hear him, only looking up when Beverley taps the horn. Lane waves and Jade flicks away her cigarette and runs over to the car, splashing through the flooded gutter.
“What’s going on?” she says, blinking at Beverley, wet hair plastered to her head. She looks about twelve.
“Get in,” Lane says, reaching back and opening the rear door.
The girl slides aboard, bringing with her the smell of damp clothes, sweat and something chemical
.
“Is this wifey?” she asks.
“Yes,” Lane says as Beverley accelerates into the traffic that flows up Kloofnek.
“Where the fuck are we going?”
“Somewhere private, where we can talk,” Beverley says, gloved hands on the wheel, eyes flicking to the rearview.
“Just stop the fucken car. Now.”
“Do you want your money?” Bev says.
“Ja.”
“Then shut your mouth.”
Lane waits for a tirade in reply but the girl is silent, and he has a sudden flash of what and whom this kid has run away from. There’s the scratch of a matchstick as Jade lights a cigarette.
Beverley’s gloved hands tighten on the wheel. “Put that out.”
“Fuck you.”
Bev prods at the button that lowers Jade’s window and the rain teems in.
“Fucken bitch,” the girl says, but she tosses the cigarette and Beverley raises the window.
Kloofnek snakes up toward Table Mountain, the black bulk lost in the rain and low cloud. Beverley breaks from the stream of traffic, turning left onto the narrow road slung like a belt along the lower slopes of the mountain, leading to the cable car. On a summer’s night this scenic drive, offering a sprawling vista of the city and the ocean, would be filled with the cars of lovers and tourists, but tonight it is sodden and empty.
Beverley continues for about a minute, until busy Kloof
nek is left behind, then she slows and stops at a view site, only a low stone wall separating them from a steep plunge down into the bush.
Beverley cuts the engine and there is a sudden quiet, the rain no longer hammering on the roof of the car, the wind dropping to a whisper, as if the storm is recharging itself.
“Now you can get out and have that cigarette,” Beverley says.
The girl climbs from the Pajero and fires up another smoke. Beverley cracks her door, slings her backpack over her shoulder and joins Jade, leaving Lane marooned in the high SUV.
He opens his door and steps down, his shoes sinking into the mud. The cold stings his face but there is no rain now, just moisture from the mist that clings to the lower reaches of the mountain, muffling the sound of the city far below.
Jade says, “Where’s my money?”
“Right here,” Bev says, unzipping the pack and dipping a hand inside.
But it’s not money she brings out, it is a can of mace, and she lets Jade have it in the eyes at close range.
“Fucken bitch,” Jade says, flailing.
Lane watches, frozen with shock, as Bev kicks the girl in the stomach, dropping her to the muddy ground. And he knows his wife has this all planned when she reaches into the pack, producing a plastic bag with a drawstring top. Beverley pulls the bag over the girl’s head and yanks the string tight.
Jade grabs at the bag, fighting to free herself, writhing and bucking.
“Help me Michael, for fuck's sake,” Bev says, grappling with the girl, suffocating her.
Jade sinks an elbow into Bev’s gut, throws the older woman off her and springs to her feet, ripping the bag from her head, sucking air. As she sprints for the road Lane sees car headlights piercing the mist, heading toward them.
Jade screams, waving her arms.
Lane takes off after the girl and grabs her. Jade fights like a demon, kicking, scratching, biting, but he manages to drag her behind the Pajero, falling on top of her just as the car hisses by and disappears into the mist.
Lane loosens his grip for a moment, looking toward Beverley for guidance, his wife still winded, lifting herself from the mud.
He hears a familiar ratcheting sound and yelps as a blade slices his face. Lane lashes out with a fist and gets lucky, taking the girl on her chin, stunning her. Grabbing Jade’s wrist, easily enfolding it in his hand, he twists and the utility knife slips from her fingers.
A light rain starts to fall, splashing into the puddles around the prone girl. Tapping on the knife that lies in the mud, the blade a muted pearl.
His breath coming in torn rasps as he straddles Jade, Lane knows that what his wife has done has doomed them, that if this girl gets free she will be the engine of his destruction.
He stretches for the knife, feels the shape of molded plastic on his
fingertips, feels the serrations of the locking mechanism under his thumb, hears that ratcheting sound as he extends the blade to its maximum.
Lane grabs Jade’s sodden thatch of hair, lifting her jaw, exposing her throat. A knee catches him in the balls and the girl, slick as a mud wrestler, slides out from under him, ripping the knife from his grasp.
Beverley rushes Jade and kicks out at her and the blade disappears into a rain-patterned puddle. The girl folds, gasping, her fingers scrabbling at the mud.
Bev is on top of her again, gloved fingers wrapped around Jade’s throat, and as Lane battles to his knees he sees his wife—a hunched, sodden shadow—strangle the life from the girl.
“Strip,” Beverley says.
Lane, numbed by more than cold, obeys her, peeling off his wet sweater and shirt, unbuckling his muddy jeans.
“Those too,” she says, pointing at his boxer shorts, and he steps out of them, his penis a shrunken twist of flesh.
Lane sinks his naked backside down onto a wooden chair in his kitchen and watches blankly as Beverley sheds her sweats and her underwear, feeding them into the gaping mouth of the washing machine along with his clothes. She adds detergent, slams the door and the machine clicks and twitches, and then there is a long hiss as the washer fills with water.
Lane fingers the Band-Aid on his cheek, staring at the washing machine but back on the mountain as Beverley frisked the dead girl, removing a plastic wallet and a cell phone, dumping them into her pack. Rescu
ed the utility knife from the puddle, throwing it far into the night.
“Come, Michael,” she said, grabbing Jade’s ankles as the rain started to belt down with a primeval savagery, as if the universe was mourning their actions.
“Come!” she said again, and Lane shook himself free of his stupor and took the girl under her shoulders—Jade as light as a child—averting his gaze from the lolling head. They carried the girl to the low wall and pitched her over, hearing her body roll into the bush below.
Beverley took Lane’s hand and led him to the car.
As they drove down toward the city Bev dumped her pack in his lap. “Take the sim card out of her cell phone,” she said.
His fingers, shaking now with cold and shock, battled to open the phone, and he
couldn’t free the little yellow plastic card.
Stopped at a traffic light, wipers mewling, Beverley took the phone from him, fingers steady and nimble beneath her gloves, removed the card and tossed it out into the rain. When they were on brightly lit
De Waal Drive, speeding toward the suburbs, she waited until there were no cars behind her, lowered her window and threw the phone out.
“Look in her purse,” she said.
Lane took the Miss Kitty wallet from Bev’s bag and unzipped it. The orange sodium lights showed him a few notes and coins, two foil-wrapped condoms and a wrinkled photograph of Jade as a child, hugging a Labrador.
“Anything?” Beverley said.
“No.”
“Then toss it.”
As they passed Ou De Molen, the blades of the old mill rattling in the gale, he wound down his window and hurled the wallet into the shrubs that fringed the road.
They drove home in silence.
“Michael,” his naked wife says as she hands him a Scotch, her trimmed pubes level with his eyes.
Lane slugs it and stands, staring out the kitchen window, trying to breathe away a band of anxiety that grips his chest like a vise.
Beverley presses herself up against his back and reaches around, taking his penis in her hand. He feels her warm breath on his neck, feels his cock swelling, feels lust thick in his veins.
He turns, Bev’s nipples hard against his chest, and he goes as far as lifting her onto the counter, forcing her legs apart—his penis rampant now—when he pulls back and says, “No. Not again.”
“Mike?”
But he’s gone. Running up the stairs to his bedroom, pulling on clothes.
When he returns to the kitchen, heading toward the garage, his car keys in his hand, Beverley is wrapped in a towel
“Where are you going, Michael?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he says, stepping down onto the concrete, slamming the kitchen door behind him.
But he’s lying. He knows exactly where he’s going, already thumbing a number on his cellphone.
When Tracy Whitely opens the door to her apartment they don’t speak.
She steps into his arms and they kiss as if the kiss of last night never ended. He walks her backward—too voluptuous to lift, this girl—and they tumble onto a
couch in her cramped sitting room.
They fight themselves free of their clothes and
, as she sits astride him, he marvels at the heft her breasts: heavy and white, tributaries of veins pattering them, the nipples large and wine colored. Her belly is a soft curve leading into a thicket of dark hair.
She takes his penis and rams it home, riding Lane to a climax that empties him off all his guilt and dread.
Part 3
Spring
Lane lies with his hand on his unborn child, feeling Tracy’s belly expand as she breathes. That night three months ago, after he and Beverley killed Jade, his sperm hunted down and fertilized one of Tracy’s eggs, and the result—they have named her Emma—floats in amniotic fluid beneath his fingers.
A shaft of sunlight pierces a gap in the curtains and trickles over the bed, over the rumpled sheets—still fragrant from last night’s love making—over Tracy’s hair strewn like kelp across the pillow, and up the wall to the cork board cluttered with photographs, newspaper cuttings and Mrs. Coombs’s postcards of Venice and Florence; the last finger of warm light finding the monochrome ultrasound image of Lane’s daughter.