by J. P. Smith
His first wife: something Ben had never once mentioned to her; something she never suspected. Not even a hint had been dropped. What else was he hiding, how many other bodies were buried in the murky woodland dells of his past?
“So your husband was married before,” Amelie mused aloud. “How long did that last?”
“Just a few years. They married young, when he was just out of college. She divorced him because, well,” and Janet reddened, “he’d begun to see me. I was the other woman, you see.” She sat back and smiled in that utterly earned complacent manner Amelie knew well.
“After only a few years of marriage,” Amelie mused aloud.
Janet leaned in. “Sometimes I still wonder about that. Especially now that I’m so sure he’s doing it all over again. Except we’ve been together for almost twenty years.”
At that moment Amelie felt both sympathetic and embarrassed. She hoped Janet would not go into details, for fear of unleashing evidence of her own secret life and its pleasurable byways with some inappropriate response. And yet she also wanted to hear everything, the whole damned backstory to this man she called her lover. This man she intended to marry.
Because in a novel, blackmail, like murder, is always acceptable.
41
Amelie realized that she’d finished her second drink in record time. She held up the three olives on a spear like a prop in a Shakespearean tragedy featuring cocktails. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Make sure it doesn’t continue happening. I’d sooner die than put my kids through a divorce,” she said. “It’s why I asked to meet you. To see if you had any, I don’t know, ideas on how I could handle this.”
“Because I’m a writer, is that what you’re saying?”
Janet nodded. “And because you’d been through this yourself. And it’s your job, isn’t it. To write stories, to invent characters, to see how they grow, how they end…? I mean,” and she lowered her voice, “how would you deal with the woman who’s out to steal your husband and ruin your family?”
Amelie sat back and wished she were anywhere but there. “Well, to be honest, I don’t really think that way, Janet.”
“But if it were in a book…?”
This is the Game of—fuck it, she’d already played that one once before.
“Well. I suppose if this were in a book, I might consider…eliminating her in some way.” She laughed. “Of course, for me it’s a matter of hitting the delete key.” A lot less blood that way, to be sure.
“Ah, if only,” Janet said, also laughing.
Now the waitress returned to shatter the moment and share the specials.
Janet sat back and, looking into Amelie’s eyes, smiled. “I think we’re ready,” she said.
42
The man showed Amelie a model in pink, and said it also came in yellow and blue. “The ladies like the pretty ones,” he said, but she was looking over his shoulder at the wall display. She pointed to one in black, always her go-to color.
He reached for the wrong one, and she said, “No, the big one next to it.”
“This baby? She’s a lot more expensive, you know. Packs a kick, too.”
“Price isn’t a consideration.” Neither is the kick, she thought.
When she held it straight out she could barely keep her hand steady under the weight of the gun. The man seemed amused. “It’s why I recommended one of the colorful ones. That lighter weight makes it easier for a lady like yourself to handle.”
“I’m not a lady.”
He shrugged. “Okay, whatever.”
She set down the SIG Sauer, and he handed her the pink one again. She didn’t like pink; in fact she hadn’t liked pink since she was eight years old and into horses and Barbies and plastic tiaras.
“I’ll take the blue one,” she said. A fitting color for the thing’s primary function.
“Tiffany blue? It’s a good weapon. Glock makes some of the best.”
It felt like nothing in her hand. She turned and aimed it at the door just as a fat man with tattoos walked in. He threw his hands up in the air and laughed.
“Hope it’s not loaded.”
“Wes.”
“Hey, Al.”
Probably a loyal customer. The guy named Wes checked her out with not even a modicum of discretion, breaking her down into three distinct zones, legs, waist, chest, stopping just short of face, because apart from her mouth there was nothing much there that he could make use of, had he the opportunity to do so. She turned back to Al, who owned the store. Apart from firearms he also sold fireworks, hunting bows, various items of clothing, all in camouflage patterns, and magazines aimed at survivalists and mercenaries.
Wes came up beside her. “You got my stuff, Al?”
“Yeah, I got your stuff.” His eyes shifted from Wes to Amelie, then back to Wes.
“Where’s it at?”
“Hold your horses, will you? Let me finish up here with this customer, and I’ll give you my undivided attention until I close up for lunch hour.”
Amelie noticed that one of Wes’s many tattoos included one of a naked blond riding a tongue protruding from a wide red mouth. He saw her looking at it. He said, “You like that one, right?”
“Not really, no.”
“Gutsy lady,” Wes said.
“That’s right.”
Al said to her, “Have you ever fired off a—?”
“No.”
“I recommend you take a couple of lessons. There’s a pretty decent firing range less than a mile from here.” He looked at Wes. “Bert Henson’s place.”
“Yeah, I know Bert. Went to grade school with him. Still remember how he got his pinkie blown off.” He grinned at Amelie. “Guy loved playing with explosives when he was kid.”
Al said, “Can I ask how you intend to use it?”
Without hesitation Amelie said, “Self-defense.”
“Well, then, this is definitely the weapon for your needs. Once you’ve properly learned how to take aim, pull the trigger, and fire, no one will get within ten yards of you, guaranteed, without relinquishing his life.”
She wasn’t sure if he was making fun of her, but he was happy enough to take her money. “And a box of bullets, please.”
He slid a cardboard container of ammunition off the shelf. “I’m running a two-for-one special just for this week.”
“Good. I’ll take two.”
“If price is no consideration, I’d suggest you go for these.” He took a cartridge from the box and held it between his fingers for a better view, shiny and brassy and reeking of death. “Always best in a self-defense situation to ensure a clean kill.”
“Oh yeah,” Wes said. “What’s good about these is that it goes in, does the job, goes out, and there’s very little that ends up on the walls. Very clean, right Al?”
“That it is, that it is.”
“Crime-scene cleanup’s a snap.”
Amelie handed the man her credit card and her license, so he could run a background check. She wondered if he would find anything that could be held against her, some act apart from adultery that would leave a stain on her life. While she waited she walked around the store. There were a few framed photos of Al squatting over dead wildlife in his hunting gear, their eyes blank, their tongues distended. Suddenly Wes was beside her again.
“You got husband issues?”
“Not anymore,” she said.
“So you shot him, too?” And he laughed. She thought it was also quite funny, but kept it to herself. “Well, I can figure out your story. You got yourself a sugar daddy, he’s married, got kids, the whole nine yards, and the guy decides to dump you and go back to his fat, old, dependable wife instead of running off with a pretty lady such as yourself.”
She stared at him, wondering how he knew so much about her. Had Janet hir
ed a private detective, and was this the world-weary Philip Marlowe she’d ended up with?
“Okay,” Al said, returning to the counter. “You’re all set. Before I charge your card, I’m wondering if there any other accessories you might need or want. A holster, maybe?” He pointed out a display of bra holsters in various colors and designs. She had no idea how something like that might work. Would it nestle in her cleavage? Would it show through a T-shirt?
“You can try it on here. We don’t mind, do we, Al?”
“Let the lady make up her mind. Then I’ll do my business with you.”
“I think we’re done here,” she said, and by the time she got home she was in a miasma of self-loathing. Though in her imagination Ben had died a million times over in the past twenty-four hours, ranging anywhere from shooting to strangling to stabbing, to one long fantasy about tying him to a chair and torturing him with a curling iron, she knew that in the end she was utterly incapable of killing the man.
As for Janet, well, that was just another twist in the plot.
43
Amelie had been standing at her office window, waiting for over twenty minutes, when Ben’s car pulled up late the next morning. She wondered where Janet thought he was going. She wondered if Janet had followed him. She wondered when Janet was going to come after her.
He let himself in and slipped his key into his pocket. He looked up to find her standing on the stairs, looking down at him, not smiling, saying nothing. Like a character in an old movie with an anklet, scarlet lipstick, and a smart Brooklyn mouth. And her new friend, Blue Death, hiding in her nightstand drawer, right beside her other intimate accessory.
“Hi,” he said, looking up and notching his thumbs in his pockets.
“Safe flight?”
He opened his arms and smiled. “I’m here, aren’t I?” Three steps below her, he buried his face in the crotch of her jeans. She held her hands in the air, waiting for him to finish. He reminded her of a dog who greets you in a friend’s home, never offering a paw or a smile, simply coming in for a long, wet, indiscreet sniff.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”
“Whoa, wait, something’s different here.”
She walked past him down the stairs and he followed her into the kitchen. Ever the cowboy, he cocked a leg and leaned back against the counter.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?” she asked.
“About what’s bothering you.”
She shook her head and fell into neutral. “No.”
“Have you been writing?”
“Actually, yes.”
“How’s it going?”
“One way or another I think I’m getting to the heart of things.”
“So it’s a breakthrough.”
She said nothing. He took a mug from the cabinet and poured himself some coffee. “Thanks for taking Andrew to piano.”
“He’s very sweet.” She heard her voice, made note of her words, and wondered for a small moment who was actually speaking.
“He said you were nice.”
“He hates piano, you know.”
“Janet thinks he needs to study some musical instrument. As if he didn’t have anything else to keep him busy.”
“My mother taught piano.”
He looked at her. “I didn’t know that.”
“I also played. Not as well she did, but I played for many years.”
She could read it on his face: she had become a mystery to him, someone with unrevealed secrets and facts, just as he had become for her. At least until Janet spilled the beans.
“But you don’t have a piano.”
“I also took voice lessons from a teacher in Manhattan. And studied ballet when I was a teenager. Now I write books. It’s enough for me.”
He sipped his coffee. “What did your father do? Is he still alive?”
“I have no idea if he’s alive or dead.” She shrugged. “What did he do? He lied his way through my childhood and cheated my mother out of having a decent life.” She said nothing more about it. Ben knew nothing about her because he’d never taken the trouble to ask, just as she’d never inquired about his early life, which now, it appeared, involved another wife.
For him she was just a head full of blond hair, a body he desired, a mouth he loved, someone other than his wife; a novelty that would eventually become passé. The rest of her, she now saw, was superfluous to him. Like buying a car for its color and shape, and to hell with the engine.
For a few minutes she lost all interest in making love to this man. The shiny object of desire had begun to lose its luster. While Janet yearned for his touch, Amelie wondered if she were slowly losing her passion for it. And yet, like an addict who’d gone cold turkey for a week, as quickly as it dissipated she could feel it bubbling back up inside her. Just looking at him reminded her of what was to come. She might not be able to please him that day, but she could damn well walk away from it with a couple of well-earned climaxes under her belt.
“I missed you,” she said, as though it were nothing more exciting than It’s raining, or Don’t forget your keys.
“I missed you, too,” he said. His words also sounded a little flat. She’d always felt she had a good sense of dialogue, that she understood how a subtext could be hinted at in a line of speech, something her mother had taught her when they listened to music, to detect how a certain touch of a piano key was different from another. She also had perfect pitch, her mother told her. “It’s a gift. One day it may save your life.”
The line had always puzzled her. Now, without completely understanding exactly how, she was beginning to think her mother was right.
Matter-of-factly she said, “So how was the trip?”
He shrugged a little. “We’re on the short list with one other firm. So we have a decent shot at it.”
He toyed with a button on her blouse, and she abruptly turned to get more coffee. She said, “When you called me, you said your flight had landed and that you had to go to the office.”
He set down his mug. “Yeah. I had to file the paperwork before Monday morning. Email some additional information to the university. It took longer than I thought.”
“But at least you’d landed.”
He tilted his head a little. “What are you getting at?”
“Well, when you called Janet around the same time, you’d told her that your flight had been delayed two hours. That you were still on the ground out there.”
Now he stared at her, as if at a stranger. “How do you know that?”
She smiled. “Because she told me.”
Back home that evening after dinner with Janet, she’d looked it up online. His flight had landed fifteen minutes early. Two or three hours lost to both his nearest and dearest.
He turned away and ducked a little. “Janet told you.”
She nodded.
“When was this?”
“Around the same time you spoke to her. We had dinner out. She wanted to discuss something with me.”
His laugh was brief and full of breath and amounted to nothing.
Dinner with Janet had been a perfectly nice meal, but it was never about the food or the drink: it was about them. Nothing more was said about Janet’s suspicions. They talked about their daughters, their upbringing—neutral things, the slick lubricants of social intercourse.
But it was always there, hovering between them, a puff of ectoplasm that would, in time, and with the right medium to give it life at the séance table, resemble a human being.
“So which one of us did you lie to, your wife or your lover? And—bonus question—is there a third party that neither of us knows about?”
He topped up his coffee, took a sip, then spilled it out into the sink. He ignored the ques
tion, as she knew he would. “What did she have to say?”
“Actually, Janet and I have seen each other a few times. I did promise I wouldn’t say anything about it to you.”
“She knows we talk?”
“She may even know more than that, Ben.” And she took his hand and led him slowly up the stairs, turning to look down at him when she was three steps from the top.
44
Amelie slipped back into her shorts and blouse and brushed her wet hair while Ben finished up with his shower. She prepared a salad with leftover cold chicken. She brought out a pitcher of iced tea and, because they would be seen by neighbors if they ate on the deck, they sat in the kitchen and let the warm air of the day wash over them.
“I have a fantasy,” Amelie said, and Ben smiled. “That one day we’ll be able to live together.” She waited to hear his reaction.
“Haven’t we talked about this before?” he said.
“I know. But things are different now.” She now knew he was an old hand at infidelity. He’d dumped his first wife for Janet, and in a flash could do likewise for Amelie. “Don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
She set down her fork. “What if you knew that Janet was having an affair?”
He laughed once. “That’s a joke.”
“That’s not nice. She’s your wife, and she’s an attractive, independent, successful woman. Would you let her divorce you? That would be handy for us, wouldn’t it?”
She decided not to mention his previous marriage. She would save that for another moment of crisis, another twist in the plot.
He reached for her hand. “Look. First of all, Janet’s not going to have an affair, and—”
“Because why? She’s married to you? I thought the same thing about Richard. I thought, who would want him? Well, guess what, someone did.”
She took a few bites of her salad, tasting nothing. She felt something rising inside her, something that fell midway between simmering anger and savage rage. “I bet she thinks the same about you, that you’d never, ever have an affair, and now here we are, reeking of fuck and eating a nice lunch.”