“That’s right!” my wife said. “I got screwed! I got fucked! And by a younger man! He was twenty-five, I think, a construction worker, all tan and muscle and delicious! He flirted with me at the bar! Yes he did! Other men have too! But this was the first time I left with anyone. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this! I went to his apartment with him—”
“He raped you?”
“He didn’t
rape
me, you idiot! You stupid
ass
hole!
I
attacked
him!
Oh yeah I guess I look like I’ve been through a storm but I’ll tell you that it was rough sex and it was great! We broke his lamp! I think we broke his
bed!
I
like
it rough, Philip! I bet you never knew that about me! Before we met, I liked it rough!
Real rough!
Rougher than this! I thought rough sex had no place in a marriage but I was wrong!” She picked up a shoe and threw it at me. It missed. “Tell me,” she said, “does that Limey bitch like it rough?”
I saw my reflection in the mirror. I was ghost pale white.
“Don’t stand there all shocked and ‘who me?’ you jackasshole,” she went on. “You don’t think I know? You think I didn’t know all this time? I knew from the start! I knew the day of our little barbecue, when she walked in, the way you looked at her, the way you swooned, the way you fucked her with your eyes!
Optical intercourse!”
she yelled. “Eyeball fuckorama!” She threw her other shoe at me. I dodged that one, barely. I knew I was going to throw up any minute now. “I knew you were across the street the other night! I knew you were with that Limey bitch! That—that—
London whore!
How long has it been going on, Philip?
How long?
Tell me! Before or after her husband died?”
I felt like I was going to faint.
“What she sees in you, I don’t know. Lazy, beer-gut booze hound you do nothing all day but mope around about your sorry sad lost career! A good career you fucked up! A disgraced lawyer! A disbarred shyster! A cheating husband! So my husband is fucking my neighbor, well I’ll show him! I’ll go out and fuck someone too! And that’s what I did, Philip! And you know what, I don’t even know the kid’s name! And you know what? The whole time I was doing it, when he was fucking me and I was fucking him, the whole time, and after, and when I was driving home, I told myself, ‘I’m going to tell him what I did and let’s see how that makes him feel!’ And I’m telling. I’m telling you, Philip. Not half an hour ago I was fucking and sucking and licking and rolling and poking and squirting and everything else you can imagine with another man.”
“I never fucked her,” I blurted, and ran to the bathroom, and puked in the sink.
I slept on
the couch. It was easy to sleep, pretend that none of this ever happened. I felt like I wasn’t in my body. I was watching myself move about, pouring a bowl of cereal for Matthew, making coffee for Tina and myself. She’d covered the scratches on her face with makeup, and there was a scab on her lip now. We didn’t say anything to each other for a while. It didn’t take too long for her to break the silence.
“You have nothing to say?”
“No,” I replied.
Then she went at it again, yelling and screaming, throwing her coffee cup against the wall, cracking it in two, brown fluid seeping down the flower-print wallpaper. What Tina said was pretty much the same thing—in different order and more cussing—that she had said at four in the morning. My head was pounding. I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed her by the arms and pleaded for her to shut up. I shook her like a rag doll, her head bobbing back and forth. She started kicking at and me and calling me names.
A shrill scream stopped us. It was Matthew, sitting at the table. The high-pitched sound that came out of his gaping mouth went on for a minute. Tina and I just stared at him, my hands still wrapped around her arms, her hair all over her face. Then Matthew yelled,
“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”
and threw his glass of milk at us. Tina and I were covered in milk. Jessica started crying.
“Now look what you did,” Tina said.
“Me?”
“You,”
she said, freeing herself from my grip. “I’m going.”
Matthew was still screaming and Jessica was crying.
I followed Tina to the living room. “You’re going? Looking like that you’re going?”
“I’m not going to work. I can’t possibly go to work. I don’t know where I’m going but I’m going.”
“Back to the construction worker’s apartment? Back to screw him?”
She glared at me. “Maybe I am.”
“What about the kids? You’re leaving them, the way they are?”
“You explain it to them,” she said as she went out the door, “it’s your fault all this happened.”
She burned rubber as she left.
Matthew and Jessica settled down. Matthew looked at me, expressionless, arms folded, while Jessica gave me a quizzical glance with her large wet eyes.
I started to clean up the milk on the floor. The glass hadn’t broken and I found myself grateful for that. “Everything’s okay now,” I said, and it was probably the biggest lie I’d ever uttered, and I wasn’t even a lawyer anymore.
Matthew kept his
arms folded as I drove him to school. He slammed the car door shut as he left. I drove slowly back home, trying to piece the last twenty-four hours together. I thought I’d be sick again.
“Don’t fight anymore, Daddy,” Jessica said.
“That’s good advice,” I said.
Cassandra Payne’s car was gone. I’d had every intention to have it out with her, to have some final and parting words, to tell her what she’d done to my life, and now I was going to have to wait. Bryan came over, knocked on the door, but I didn’t answer. He phoned—it was his number on the Caller ID—but I didn’t pick up. His voice on the answering machine said: “Philip, what’s going on? We need to talk.”
I picked Matthew up from school later in the afternoon. Neither Cassandra nor my wife had returned yet. Matthew still wouldn’t talk, he only glared, like I was the lowest piece of shit that ever existed in San Diego. Maybe I was. I was expecting Bryan to confront me, either as I left or returned, but he didn’t. There was no sign of him.
An hour later, and a few beers in me, Cassandra drove up in her car.
She was wearing a black mini and a cut-off top, high heels, looking like a hooker. I rushed across the street before she went inside.
“Mr. Lansdale!” she said, acting surprised.
“Don’t play coy,” I had her by the arm, “let’s go inside, right now.”
“Rather pushy,” she said.
“You bet I am.”
She didn’t fight me. She got out her keys and we went inside.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“You look like you need a drink.”
“That’s the last thing I need.”
“I know I need a drink.” She went to the bar in the living room. It was well stocked. I didn’t know she had a bar. I’d never seen the place in daylight. The furniture was clean and looked new, looked unlived in. Everything about the house was spotless. Did she keep it up like this herself? I’d never seen any maids come and go. She poured herself two shots of Wild Turkey. I asked for some. She handed me a glass.
I said to her, “Do you know what you’ve done to my life?”
“I’ve done nothing to your life. You do what you do of your own free will, and none of it has a damn thing to do with me, love.”
She sounded like she knew. Maybe she heard Tina and me fighting. Maybe she
did
have bugs planted in my home.
“Forget that,” I said, and added, “you slut.”
“Slut, is it now?”
“Fucking the cops now?”
She smiled. “Naughty person. Peeping Philip.”
“That’s right,” I said. “That cop was here pretty long the other night. I saw …”
“You came and took a gander into my yonder window break?” she laughed.
“Yes …”
“And what did your dirty little peepers see?”
“I saw you fucking him.”
“He was a good hard fuck,” she said. “A strong, handsome man with a strong manly man smell. How could a silly little horny girl like me resist such a temptation?”
“Why?
Why?
”
“Why?” she said, frowning.
“Why did you give it to him,” I said, “and not me? After all the times I begged you for it?”
She seemed very amused. “You mean my cunt?”
“Yes!”
And with that, she threw her head back and laughed. I watched the muscles of her neck ripple.
“You’re quite silly, you know,” she said.
“Goddamn you,” I said, feeling myself near a breakdown, “goddamn you—”
“And what if I
am
a slut? You have nothing on me, Mr. Lansdale, you’re a married cheating man and I’m a grieving widow. I’ll sleep with whom I please, thank you.”
“Why him, and not me?”
She poured herself another shot. “If you see something you want, why don’t you be a man and just take it?”
I did. I threw my glass aside, bourbon staining her carpet, and rushed her. I grabbed her arms. I didn’t shake her like I’d done to Tina this morning. I kissed her. I kissed her hard. I bit her lip, drawing blood, and she liked this, and I realized this is what must’ve happened between Tina and the man she was with last night. I threw Cassandra Payne to the floor—yes, threw, or pushed hard, I wasn’t gentle, I was going to take what I wanted once and for all, and be done with her. She laughed as she went down. I lifted her mini and tore away her matching black panties.
I couldn’t do it.
I’d finally reached my Nirvana, my Timbuktu, my salvation, and I began to weep. I don’t know why I was crying—it all came out in a rush. Maybe because I knew this wasn’t what I really, truly wanted. I didn’t know
what
the hell I wanted, and that was what scared me. I was uncertain of the life I was leading, but I didn’t want to lose that life. Being here with Cassandra, I was putting that life at risk. Tina had cheated on me, she’d been with another man, and it seemed right that I finally do the same and just fuck “the Limey bitch.”
But I couldn’t do it.
I cried like a baby, knowing it was all over now. She hushed and cooed me and kissed my ears.
“Let’s run away,” I said. It just came out of my mouth.
“Don’t be a goose.”
“Let’s just run away,” I mumbled, “and be together forever. I love you.”
“You don’t love me,” she said, “you don’t know what you’re saying.”
She knew the truth better than I, but still I was telling her how we should split from San Diego. I wanted out of my life. I wanted a
new
life.
She said, “Mr. Lansdale, you know nothing about me. Nothing at all.”
“I know enough.”
“You can’t even see the tip of the iceberg,” she said, “all you see is the illusion.”
“I see you, and what I see is what I want.”
“You don’t know me,” she said softly.
“I think I do,” I said.
She laughed, and then sniffed. “Do you smell something burning?”
I did.
And I heard sirens in the distance.
“What is that smell?” she said.
“Oh Jesus God,” I said.
I quickly pulled up my pants. I almost fell to the floor. Cassandra, half-naked, chased after me, wanting to know what was wrong. I knew, before I opened the door and went outside
I knew.
My house was on fire. Somewhere from the back, it was going up in smoke. The sirens were closer. Bryan stood on the sidewalk, looking at my house. Jessica was next to him. Matthew wasn’t. Jessica turned and saw me. She yelled,
“Daddy!”
She started running toward me. Bryan reached to grab her, saying, “No!” He wasn’t quick enough. Everything started to move very, very slowly at that moment. It was like a scene out of a de Palma film. The fire truck was coming around the corner, fast. Bryan was mouthing the word “no.” Jessica was running toward me, arms out in fear, crying, wanting my protection. Cassandra Payne stood at her door, not bothering to cover herself, trying to piece the situation together. I looked at Jessica, then my house, then Bryan, then Cassandra, then Jessica, and then the fire truck. I started running for Jessica. She was in the middle of the street. The fire truck slammed on its brakes, the driver leaned on the booming horn, but it was too late. The truck hit her, and her little body flew into the air.
T
here was nothing the paramedics could do. Jessica was dead. The firemen found Matthew in the back, staring, mesmerized, at the destruction he’d started. He had a book of matches in his hand. He’d started burning some newspapers on the patio, and the old wood of the patio ignited, and the fire spread to the house. The patio was destroyed, as well as part of the kitchen. Tina came home as the fire was being extinguished and Jessica’s body loaded in the ambulance. My wife started screaming. She was confused, she didn’t understand. I knew how she felt. I noticed Cassandra watching from her window—a pale face, two eyes, dark hair. Then Bryan was restraining me—no, he and a fireman, holding my arms, holding me back. I don’t know what I was screaming, who I wanted to attack. Tina was all over me, hitting me, spitting on me, and a police officer pulled her away. It was true, hellish pandemonium. Tina was crying, she was wailing, “My baby is dead! My little girl is dead!” and I saw Cassandra Payne’s eyes again, across the street, another witness to the atrocity exhibition, and it dawned on me that, finally, yes, this was all my fault, I wasn’t in the house watching over my children—my responsibility and duty; no I was in an act of sin, and for my sins, I had lost my child, and probably my wife, and most certainly my life as I knew it.
Jessica was officially
pronounced dead at the hospital. Dazed, I signed various pieces of paperwork. Tina had to be sedated. I wanted to be sedated. I wanted to be put to sleep. My son was questioned by some sort of police psychologist. Bryan and Ellen were there. Tina’s sister, Janet, showed up, and took the drugged Tina and stoic Matthew home with her.
“You can stay with us,” Ellen told me.
“No,” I said. “That’s okay. I can go home.”
“You sure, son?” Bryan said.
“It’s my home,” I said.
They drove me back. They still tried to convince me to sleep in one of their guest rooms. I thanked them. I said I needed to be home, and I needed to be alone.
I wanted the darkness and quiet of my shattered house. I wanted the anguish, because I deserved it. So this was the price. I noticed that Cassandra’s car was gone. What was she feeling? Did she experience any guilt over this? Why the fuck was I even thinking of her?
I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. It was like I had no eyes.
I wanted to scream but I couldn’t. It was like I had no mouth.
I sat in the darkness, in the living room. On the floor were Jessica’s plastic dinosaurs; they were waiting for her to return home and play with them.
I wasn’t aware of time.
The sun rose, the birds sang.
People drove off to work.
The phone rang several times. I didn’t move. I was numb. I was so damn numb.
When I did move, I turned on the TV. Cartoons. I stared at the TV. Jessica liked cartoons, all children do. Would she really never watch cartoons again?
I told myself I had to eat. I went into the kitchen, which was was pretty much burnt wood, but the fridge and phone and Caller ID machine were still there.
The phone rang.
“Yes?”
“Philip,” Bryan said, “we’ll talk now.”
“Okay.”
I went out the front, to meet him. I didn’t want him in the house, I didn’t want him to see the cause and effect of my fuck-ups.
I decided I would tell him the truth about what I had done.
He walked over, as a black 1971 Ford Mustang pulled into the Paynes’ driveway. Cassandra’s Taurus still wasn’t there. I had no idea if she’d come home and left or not. A bald black man with shades and a trench stepped out of the car. He was big. His bald head was shiny. Bryan and I both watched him as he went to the Paynes’ door and kicked it in. He didn’t knock, he
kicked,
and went inside.
“What the hell,” Bryan said.
A minute later the man came out. Bryan walked across the street to confront him.
“No,” I whispered.
“You!” Bryan yelled.
“You!”
“Bryan,” I said, “don’t—”
The man stopped, cocked his head, and regarded Bryan.
“Yes you,” Bryan said. “Just what in all
hell
do you think you’re doing, mister?”
“Collecting,” the man said.
“You can’t just bust into people’s houses in broad daylight like that!” Bryan was face to face with the man—well, Bryan’s head reached the man’s chest.
“I can’t?” said the man. “Should I have waited until nightfall? “He laughed.
“What’s the meaning of this? What are you doing here?”
“Doesn’t concern you, pops.” The man was trying to get to his car and Bryan was blocking his path.
“Oh yes it does,” Bryan was saying. “This is
my
neighborhood and I’m not about to allow this sort of thing to happen!”
“Whatcha gonna do about it, pops?”
“
Who
are you, and
what
are you doing here?”
“You sure are full of questions,” said the man.
“Who are you?” Bryan said again, his voice shaking.
“Who are you?” the man asked flatly.
“I used to be a police officer,” Bryan said with pride.
“I’m so impressed, pops.”
“Since I’m a citizen now, I am hereby making a citizen’s arrest.”
“Citizen’s arrest this, pops.” The man reached into his trench coat, pulled out a gun as black as the trench and the Mustang, and fired. There was a silencer on the gun, it went puff puff puff—the first bullet into Bryan’s knee. Bryan fell back on his ass. The second bullet was in Bryan’s shoulder, the third in his chest. The man looked over at me. I thought he was going to shoot me, too. He got into his Mustang and calmly drove away.
Bryan was squirming and bleeding on the Paynes’ driveway.
I was unruffled, and surprised how well I took this new sequence of events. Still quite numb, I turned around, walked into my house, and called 911.