George Frey had passed away and would never be back. Never.
In the past month, she had begun getting used to George’s absence. She had forced herself to do it because she couldn’t allow this depression to go on forever. George was dead and nothing could change this fact; that was the harsh reality, that was the new normal.
“You have so much to do, Jane. People only start living after sixty,” her friends told her.
And she wanted to believe them because it gave her strength to go on and keep her sanity. The day after George's death she had realized she had had to pull herself together, but she was not sure twenty years would be enough for the pain to go away.
She hadn’t seen George’s face after he had died. Kelly hadn’t allowed her to look at his body, knowing that this sight—the sight of a man that had burned to death in his truck after crashing into the ditch—could have killed her then and there. They had been right. Jane’s heart would have exploded had she seen his mutilated corpse. Her lovely daughter had prevented her from being haunted by a dead George’s charred face in her dreams for the rest of her life. Jane was impressionable enough to let the monstrous face imprint itself into her memory as the master image of her husband that would have come up first every time she thought about him.
Yes, Kelly had been very wise not to allow her to see George dead.
Jane had twenty years ahead. She had already endured one month without George, and there were hundreds of months more to live through. Was she up to this challenge? Did life only begin at sixty? Or was it merely a white lie intended to make old folks feel better about themselves? How many people had the fortitude and imagination to start anew at sixty? Or was she weaker than most older women?
Well, she had already started something—the scarf. She ought to finish it and then begin to look for another fun activity.
Jane readjusted her glasses and resumed knitting. By her estimates, the scarf would be finished in two days. She hoped Kathy would love it.
2.
He was sitting in a Ford Focus, which he had rented last night, gazing at his watch with an air of deep thought. It was 7:08 pm. The car engine was off. In November, daylight was short and kept shrinking all the way to the winter solstice in late December. This time of day in November, you had to strain your eyes to discern the license plate number on a car just thirty feet away.
He had decided to go to the old woman's place when it was dark enough so that a casual witness would not be able to describe in detail the person who had visited Jane Frey around eight o’clock in the evening. He hoped the prospective witnesses would even be unsure if it had been a man or a woman. To add more confusion, he had put on a false moustache. By the way, he loved his moustached look: the resemblance to a younger Tom Selleck was striking.
He was waiting for 7:30 pm. He chose this particular point in time because 7:30 was a round number, and he had a certain fondness for round numbers. It was a newly acquired compulsion—a quirk if you will—and he liked it. Of course, 8:00 pm would have been even better, but he didn’t feel like waiting that long.
He heaved a weary sigh, moved his tongue, pushing the stuck food particles from between his teeth. He spat out a tiny piece of beef—a remnant of the cheeseburger he’d devoured two hours before.
It was 7:11 pm.
3.
Jane glanced at the wall clock. A quarter past seven. The clock was either a few minutes fast or a few minutes slow, she had forgotten which it was. One thing she knew for sure: you couldn’t trust its accuracy. She thought, with a hopeless sadness: the closer you got to seventy, the less the exact time mattered.
Was it bad? Was it bad that she didn’t have to hurry anywhere? Was it pathetic not to care what time it was?
When had she entered this carefree zone?
It was not pathetic or sad; it was marvelous, and young people would be happy to have such a luxury.
Jane rose and headed to the kitchen. She felt thirsty and was going to pour herself a glass of orange juice.
How about getting married again? Men in their sixties do it all the time. It was just a wild thought a friend of hers had thrown out a few days ago. This idea seemed unacceptable to her at the moment, but who could predict how she would feel about it two, three, or five years from now? Never say never, right?
In the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator and quickly found the bottle with juice.
How old was Elizabeth Taylor when she married her last husband? Around sixty, wasn’t she? And what about those eighty-year-old women marrying ninety-year-old men Jane read about in newspapers almost on a monthly basis? It wasn’t an exotic thing anymore, you know, for an older woman to tie the knot again.
4.
His watch showed 7:25 pm. He braced himself and ordered his brain to focus on the old woman. He had already prepared a neat list of things he would do to her. Five minutes. He was planning to get out of the car in exactly five minutes. It would take him two minutes to walk to Jane’s house. He had the key to her front door, so he didn’t have to waste time picking the lock. If there were no surprises, he should be inside the house by 7:33 pm. Only God knew how long he would stay there, alone with Jane. It could be fifteen minutes, it could be half an hour; he would play it by ear.
He giggled at the thought that it would be amusing to fuck the old woman. He could first start with her vagina, then move to her mouth, and finally pound her ass. Hopefully, she wouldn't bite off his dick. He bet it would look hot on video. What did they call this type of movies? Mature porn, right?
He covered his face with his hands and burst out laughing so hard that the tears came to his eyes. How long had it been since Jane had last had a dick in her pussy? Late nineties? Actually, it made for a cool life milestone: ‘Oh, it happened two years after George had fucked me last.’ George was the woman’s husband, by the way; he had died recently.
Who said her husband was the last man to play with her pussy?
He reached for the plastic bag that sat on the front passenger seat. The bag contained a well sharpened knife, which had a lot of work to do tonight. A lot of intensive work: he intended to stab so many holes in the old bitch it would take every finger and toe you have to count them.
He glanced at his watch again. 7:27 pm. He was glad that Jane was old and feeble and it would only take one good punch to the skull to knock her out. Besides, she must still be depressed about George’s death. Yes, this little adventure promised to be the easiest kill he had ever made.
5.
After drinking half a glass of juice, Jane resumed knitting. She kept thinking about George and the twenty years ahead of her.
How about moving to Florida? True, it was another cliché, but who said that she must avoid clichés? They were familiar and safe.
She slowed down her knitting to consider this idea more thoroughly. She had discussed moving to Florida with George last year, and George was fine with it. What had been stopping them? Perhaps inertia as well as the desire to live closer to their only granddaughter.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind never seeing snow again,” said George. “And I can do a whole lot of fishing down there, too.”
When she told him that she’d prefer to stay within driving distance from Kathy, George shrugged his shoulders and said that he was okay with any choice she would make.
“However, it never hurts to change the scenery once in a while,” he remarked.
Now she was getting more open to the idea of moving down south. Why not? She wasn’t that attached to having all four seasons and Rochester had gotten quite boring as most places would after twenty years. She was only sixty, it was not too late. They had no winter in Florida, and she would never catch cold again, which was a big plus. Selling her house for a good price in the down market would be a challenge, but Kelly’s friend Josephine could give her a hand in this matter: she and her husband Ron were involved in real estate and had done very well for themselves.
Jane returned to her regular knitting speed. Sh
e had decided to call Kelly tomorrow and discuss this idea with her. Her daughter might actually convince to make the move. Or talk her out of it. After all, Jane could eventually need Kelly’s help finding a nice place in Florida and packing up her stuff.
6.
He slammed the car door and headed to the old woman's house. Eight seconds ago the big hand hit six, and he had gone into action. He had a neat ten-inch-long knife wrapped in a cloth in his jacket pocket.
He was walking fast, stirring up the dry, writhing leaves on the ground under his feet. He was picturing his future a few minutes from now. Here he is throwing his powerful fist at Jane’s face; she cries ‘ahhhhhh’ and collapses on the floor, her mouth open, her crushed cheek turning red. Here he is ripping off her shirt, yanking off her sweatpants and panties (he wondered what kind of panties sixty-year-old women typically wore), and thrusting his dick into her pussy. Here he is poking Jane’s eyes with his thumbs; here he is plunging the knife into her flabby breasts (which hardly deserve to be called breasts), blood splashing into the air and streaming down Jane’s chest and stomach. Here he is sticking the knife into her vagina; the old bitch is twitching like a caterpillar eaten by a bunch of ants. Here he is ripping up her stomach, blood gushing out on the floor; Jane is wheezing and moaning. Minutes later the old woman is dead.
Damn, he ought to be careful with blood: it might stain his jacket, which he’d like to avoid.
Where was he going to have his fun with the old woman? Probably in the living room; there was more space there. Yeah, he would drag Jane to the living room after striking her in the face (or on the back of the head).
Maybe he should break her spine once he was done raping and stabbing her? Jane’s bones were old and frail; he would snap her like a twig.
7.
She heard a noise coming from the front door. It seemed as if something had fallen on the porch. Or somebody had stomped on it. A neighbor? Or was it just kids playing in her yard? Did she even care?
Jane interrupted her knitting, muted the TV, and strained her ears. Could it be Kelly and Kathy making a surprise visit? Maybe Kelly wanted her to babysit Kathy while she and her husband were on some trip out of town?
There was no more noise. Jane settled back in the chair, keeping her ears keen for any sounds. Her house was still silent. It might have been a onetime thing after all. She looked at the clock. 7:36. Jane had just remembered that this wall clock was five minutes fast.
Someday she ought to take the time to adjust all the clocks and watches she owned. Maybe tomorrow.
8.
At 8:11 pm he turned on the cold water faucet and began to wash his hands. Blood is dumb and random; you can't order it not to splash on your body parts. Fortunately, the sleeves of his jacket were virginally clean. As he watched the water flowing into the drain hole turn from dark pink to clear, it occurred to him that he would have sweated less if he had taken off the jacket.
He turned off the faucet. Wiping his hands on his jeans, he looked at the knife. Dammit, he had forgotten to clean his trusted weapon. He returned to the sink, carefully washed the knife under a strong stream of water, and then wrapped it in a cloth. He put the knife in his jacket pocket, glanced at the old woman’s corpse lying in the center of the kitchen, and stepped to the stove.
Gas stoves, ladies and gentlemen, had a wonderful feature: if you needed your own little Hiroshima, all you had to do was turn on the gas without igniting fire, walk to a safe distance, and wait until the damn thing blew up. The only question was: how do you detonate the gas? Where would you get the spark that would set off the explosion? He had already thought about it and found an effective solution. He would use the remarkable Kenmore microwave oven, in front of which he was standing at the moment. He was going to place a Glade air freshener spray can into the microwave and set the cooking start time at one hour from now. Once the oven went to work, it would take the can less than a minute to burst and create the desired spark. He knew exactly how to operate this particular microwave model because he had read its manual and practiced two days earlier.
He pulled the spray can out of his pocket, put it into the microwave oven, set the timer, and scanned the kitchen windows, checking if there were any gaps through which gas could escape. He was satisfied by the results of the examination: no gaps. He quickly turned on all the knobs on the stove, except for the oven knob since he had no idea how to find and kill the oven pilot light. He nodded with a pleased expression on his face and walked out of the kitchen.
Jane would turn into a charred piece of flesh, and the traces of his prank would be concealed from other people's eyes. Everyone would think that the old woman had either had a senile moment and forgotten how to use a gas range, or decided to kill herself after realizing that life was not worth living without her beloved husband. The latter, by the way, was a plausible possibility: he had chatted with Jane at George’s funeral and knew how devastated she had been by her husband’s death.
“George, my love! I'm coming to you!” Jane shouted and struck the match.
He shut the kitchen door behind him and headed to the front hall.
9.
He parked six hundred feet away from Jane’s house in order to see with his own eyes that the microwave did the job he’d assigned to it. Fifty six minutes after the gas had begun to come out of the burners, a deafening explosion shattered the silence of the night. A second later, giant, bright orange paws of fire broke out of the kitchen windows, spraying pieces of glass in every direction.
Chapter 5.
GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS
1.
She said her name was Marilyn Hancock, and judging by the familiarity this woman was treating him with, he was supposed to have known for quite a while. Unfortunately, her name was buried under the boulders of amnesia along with the dozens of others.
Marilyn Hancock.
For a moment, Frank was tempted to ask if she was related to John Hancock, the founding father, but elected not to do it for fear of sounding lame.
“Who are you?” he asked. He couldn’t help noting that she was quite attractive. Her perfume was exquisite.
Who was Marilyn Hancock?
Another relative?
The woman took his right hand and squeezed it lightly. Josephine had squeezed his hand, too, when she had first visited him, by the way.
It’s the wrong time to waste your mental energy on Josephine, buddy.
“Frank, you... you don’t remember me?” asked the woman. Frank nodded. She appeared genuinely surprised. For some reason, she was convinced that she was too important to be forgotten. Frank couldn’t wait to find out why.
“Are you my sister?” he asked. The woman shook her head. There was no astonishment in her beautiful eyes anymore. She looked content now.
Could she be another relative of Kelly’s? His wife turned out to have quite a large family, most of whom, it seemed, couldn’t wait to visit him in the hospital: Kelly’s brother Albert and cousin Graham had come to say hello earlier today. Frank was somewhat amused that Graham had showed up in his cop uniform: who was he trying to impress? Honestly, this attention had begun to make him feel like an exotic animal at the zoo.
By the way, none of these guys was missing a leg, which, for some reason, had been one of the first things Frank’s mind had registered when they had entered the room.
Marilyn Hancock... No, the name still did not ring a bell.
The woman smiled. She was definitely happy about something.
“I thought that...” She paused. “I thought that it was much more worse. I’m so glad you are okay.”
“Yes, I’m okay. Now tell me who you are, Marilyn Hancock. I’m going to guess that you are my friend, a very close friend.”
The woman nodded, leaned forward, and kissed him on the cheek. As her lips touched his skin, Frank inhaled deeply through his nose to relish the sweetness of her perfume.
“You really don’t remember me, Frank? We’ve known each other for more than
a year.”
More than a year. It is a long time. No wonder she’s surprised you can’t remember her, pal.
“Are you my best friend? My neighbor?”
“Frank, we are more than friends. We’re lovers.”
Marilyn gently touched his right leg, as if making sure that it had not been amputated after the car crash.
“What do you mean, Marilyn?” Frank cracked a weak smile. “Did we sleep together?”
“Do you have any trouble moving your legs?” the woman asked, ignoring his question.
“My legs are fine.” He got off the bed and marched to the wall and back.
Hot damn, what an interesting twist! They were lovers. Unless Marilyn was making it up, which sounded ridiculous: what would her motive be to pretend to be his lover? A fortune that he didn’t have?
“What happened to your memory, Frank? I want to know everything.”
2.
Soon after Marilyn Hancock had left, Frank recovered from the astonishment caused by the fact that he had a mistress—he had honestly not expected this from himself—and did a quick review of his situation. According to his estimates, amnesia had swallowed the last six years of his life. He still remembered making a senior manager at Shapiro Bender Winkler, the public accounting firm he had joined about ten years ago. Frank was curious how close he had gotten to making a partner. And he would also have to relearn the intricacies of the office politics at the firm, by the way. And refresh his memory on the latest developments in corporate tax.
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