Meeting Evil: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  The back door opened directly into the kitchen. Richie came in last. He shut the door and threw the bolt. “How about that for negligence? Living way out here on the hill, no near neighbors, and you don’t even lock the door. Anybody can walk right in, at any hour of the day or night, take everything you own, and cut your throat while you’re asleep.” He stared at Sharon. “You think I’m kidding?”

  John asked, “You’ve done that?”

  Richie shook his lowered head. “I’d sure like to figure out, before we’re done, just what horrible thing I did to you to give you such a low opinion of me.…” He raised his face. “I know I’ve got your gun. I explained it’s for self-protection only. I don’t go around looking for trouble. I just want to be ready if it comes. You got nothing to worry about, John. I’ll get us out of this mess.”

  Sharon came to life, looking around with a certain enthusiasm. “A kitchen! I’ll make coffee.”

  Neither man responded, but Richie did not attempt to restrain her as she went bustling about, opening cabinets and drawers. John watched her inconspicuously, so that he might see where the carving knives were kept. In his own home kitchen they were conveniently mounted in a slotted chunk of butcher block kept on the countertop: this set of quality German steel had been one of the usable wedding gifts presented to Joanie and himself on the occasion of their wedding, a time of hope not so long before as to be forgotten.

  He could not imagine plunging an eight-inch chef’s blade into Richie’s person, but he might prove capable of presenting such a weapon as a threat. However, he was across the room from Sharon, and in her search she was soon blocking his line of vision.

  “They’re not going to break in unless they’ve got some reason to think we’re in here,” Richie said. “So we’ll try laying low.” He looked at John. “I want you to give me your word you won’t try to signal the cops if they show up.”

  “What I wish you would do instead of asking for my word is just once listen to what I’m saying.”

  Richie shrugged. “It seems to me that’s what I’ve been doing all day, John. You’ve got to admit, if you’re being honest, that we wouldn’t be where we are if you had let me do the driving back there. I don’t like to throw that in your face, believe me. And then not leaving well enough alone, once I took care of that fat bastard for you, instead of busting into that house and getting the cops on our neck. It would really help if you could just stop this negative way of thinking and see that we’re a team. If we can’t work together, then we don’t have a chance.”

  “I don’t have anything in common with you! If you didn’t have that gun, I’d—” But common sense put limits on John’s anger. It might be dangerous to speak so freely to an armed person who was probably demented. He was not obliged to prove anything. He continued so to assure himself when Sharon suddenly displayed some petulance, stamping her foot and saying “I can’t find the coffee!” and Richie, shifting the gun to his left hand, slapped her so hard with his right that she fell back against the sink. John did nothing. He did not even protest.

  She should not have provoked the man. She would get herself killed, and even then, what could he do? But self-exculpation is like none at all. He found the energy to go help her stand erect, taking her hand. As he did so, she slipped him an object: a knife. A little paring knife, so dull he did not cut himself while identifying it by touch. Surreptitiously, he placed it on the countertop.

  “Far be it from me to interrupt this romantic moment,” said Richie, behind him, “but remember you’re a married man, John. That’s what I like about you. Now let’s look around this place.”

  He herded them through the adjoining dining room and into the sitting room that looked onto the front yard, the driveway, and the road beyond through two standard-sash windows framed with inner gauze curtains and outer draperies. The couch and a flanking chair had matching slipcovers. A big oval rag rug lay before the fireplace. A staircase was at the far end, just beyond the front door. John could see no evidence of any recent renovation: e.g., cast-iron radiators were still in place.

  After peering through the windows, Richie said, “Just keep back. I noticed when we were outside, you can’t see much from the yard. If they come up on the porch, though, and look in, there’s no place in here to hide. We could go upstairs, but then we couldn’t see much ourselves, and I don’t know about you, but it drives me crazy to operate blind. I say at the first sign of anybody, we go in the dining room. The windows there are up a little too high to look in from a standing position, and they could get something to stand on, but why do it if there’s no other indication anyone’s home?”

  He addressed these remarks to John, as if they would be received sympathetically. John walked away. He wondered where the boy was hiding. He tried not to condemn himself too bitterly for putting the telephone out of order. Richie was right about one thing: a negative attitude did no good. Instead of incessantly deploring all the mistakes he had made, he should concentrate on not making any more, though of course if such a concern grew too obsessive, it could become still another negation.

  Sharon showed no ill effects from Richie’s blow. Though she had been silent since, her carriage was spirited, as was the look in her eye. When Richie went to check the lock on the front door, John looked at her. Her response was to pantomime what took him an instant to identify as stabbing. He winced and glanced away.

  Richie returned. “Do me a favor, John. Look around and see if you can find a bottle of something.”

  “Did you drink all that vodka?”

  “It was only a pint,” Richie said. “I guess it’s metabolism: I burn it up in a hurry, don’t even feel it.” He surveyed the room. “Nice here. Is this like your house, John?”

  “Not really. This is a lot neater. We’ve got two little kids.”

  “Lucky you,” said Richie.

  John’s basic difficulty was that after being at close quarters with Richie for hours now, he had acquired no sure sense of the man, how far he could be pushed, what were the weaknesses that might be used against him. He tried to speak normally. “I do consider myself fortunate. I love my family. Of course, I could always use a bit more income, but the downturn’s sure to phase out, and business will pick up.”

  “Did you tell me what you do?”

  “Real estate.” John was trying to avoid exchanging glances with Sharon. Richie’s back was to her.

  Richie gestured with his index finger. “Listen, I might throw some action your way. I’ve been thinking of settling down one of these days. Why not now? In a locality where I’ve got a friend.”

  John realized uncomfortably that the reference was to himself, but he pretended otherwise. “Friends are nice, and I’ve got quite a few in my town. I grew up there. But my wife’s ready to move away to maybe someplace like this, in the real country.”

  Richie frowned. “No good. Too isolated.” He went into a smile. “Somebody like us might show up. Weren’t you going to look for a bottle?”

  “Look for yourself. I don’t work for you.”

  Richie threw back his head, exposing the cords in his scrawny neck, and groaned. “You’re right about that, and I beg your pardon. Here’s a matter I’ve thought about sometimes, John: the things we hate the most when other people do them are faults that resemble our own. Do you agree? Me, I hate bad manners, people who don’t show basic courtesy. And there I go, doing just that myself. Will you please look around for something to drink?”

  John’s bluff had effectively been called. He could not properly protest again in view of the apology, though the same objection remained: he was still being asked to serve. Of course, Richie held the gun.

  “I’ll help,” Sharon said brightly and jumped up from the couch.

  Richie whirled around as if in danger from an attack, though he had been presenting his back to her for some moments. John, just embarking on the quest for the bottle, was taken unaware and lost an opportunity to jump him, which Sharon had probably intentionally
provided. She had so much more energy than he.

  She now ignored Richie’s menacing posture and went to open the little cabinet used as an end table at the extremity of the couch farther from the fireplace. There was nothing inside but a yellowed newspaper and an empty ceramic vase.

  John opened the closet near the front door. On a high shelf stood a box of mothballs. Coats of several lengths hung from the rod, and on the floor below was a pair of green boots in rubber or plastic, in either a woman’s or a boy’s size. He closed the door.

  Richie had taken a seat on the arm of an overstuffed chair from which he could keep an eye out the window. The butt of the gun was on the floor, the barrel between his knees.

  Sharon headed for the adjacent dining room.

  “Where are you going?” Richie shouted angrily.

  “I’m looking for your liquor. I’ll try that sideboard.”

  “Just don’t get out of my sight.” He asked John, “Do you think maybe when we get out of this you might invite me over sometime? You don’t have to go to any trouble.”

  It now occurred to John that the most effective way of dealing with the man would be to pretend to be his friend and abandon the sporadic antagonism that had, after all, been unsuccessful all day. He had waited so long before coming to this conclusion because he was basically averse to hypocrisy in social relations. In real estate it was another matter. Naturally you presented a property in its best light and tried to divert a customer from asking about apparent flaws and, if questions were asked, gave answers that avoided candor.

  He took in more air than he would normally have needed and said, “Well, why not?”

  “You mean it?”

  John could see that Richie was prepared to be gleeful, and though his intention had been to string him along with a simulation of friendship, he balked at affording him genuine satisfaction. “We’re not out of this yet.”

  Richie’s mouth went slack. “You don’t mean it.”

  “Of course I do, but frankly I can’t think of much of anything at the moment but—”

  “All right,” Richie cried warningly into the dining room. “Get back in here.”

  “Wait a minute,” Sharon called back. “I think I found some.”

  She was squatting, in her short tight skirt, at one of the lower compartments of the big old sideboard, a period piece that covered most of its wall.

  “Excuse me,” Richie said to John. “You were talking about having me over to your house for a meal or something. I tell you, I want to meet your wife. I think I know you fairly well by now, and we’ve been through some rough times together—which is the only way to know anybody—and I’m just curious about what kind of woman you’d want to connect yourself to on a permanent basis.”

  For an instant of panic, John saw no means of sustaining his new strategy. Richie’s view of their association was unacceptable; he could not permit it to stand. But in the next moment he was able to remember that his previous vocal rejections of alliance had had no effect whatever. Richie’s reality was wholly self-created.

  John almost bit his tongue, but he actually managed to say, with justice, “She’s very sensible. She’s better with money than me, for example. She’ll look for the best price. I’m too impatient. She has good ideas. She’s smart.”

  Richie was seemingly studying the rag rug. He nodded slowly. “Still, I imagine there are times when you’d like to kill her, right?”

  John had not forgotten he was speaking to a special kind of man. “No,” he said levelly. “No, I don’t, ever. But I would kill anybody who tried to hurt her. But if you mean do we argue from time to time and sometimes get mad enough not to speak to one another for hours, then sure, that happens.”

  Richie considered the statement briefly, his head at a quizzical-dog angle, but when he spoke it was to call abusively to Sharon, “Get back in here, pig!”

  “I thought you hated rudeness.”

  Richie smiled and said, “But the truth is the truth.” Sharon had come back with a bottle in her hand. He gestured at it.

  “Sherry,” said she.

  Richie took the bottle and twisted the cap off. He tilted his head back and drank. Then he leaned forward and spat the mouthful on the rug. He hurled the bottle at the fireplace. It got only as far as the hearth and broke, releasing a flow of wine that spread to the wood floor.

  Again John found it impossible not to protest. “Was that necessary? To damage this house? Nobody here did anything against us.”

  Richie squinted. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘Will he do something like that when he comes to my house, if my wife serves him something he doesn’t like?’ I know regardless of what I said about manners, you suspect I don’t have any. Well, that’s just something I’ll have to prove.” He had looked solemn, but now he resumed his smile. “But listen: I just came up with the idea we need to get out of here in one piece. It won’t matter how much this place is messed up, spilled drinks or whatever. We’re going to torch the dump!” He stared gleefully at John and spun the gun on its butt-end. “Simple as that, create a diversion. By the time the local volunteers get up here, it’ll have taken real hold. They’ll be occupied for hours, and the cops will have their hands full with traffic, firemen coming in their own cars, rubberneckers, and so on. We can slip out through the woods and down the hill and get out of the area before they’re back to thinking about us.”

  A blackened poker leaned against the outer wall of the fireplace. John was wondering to what point they had to go before he could actually seize the poker and swing it at Richie’s head—and this fantasy did not allow for any self-defense on Richie’s part, by gun or any other means, being constructed purely for the purposes of judging what damage John was capable of doing to another human being—but he stuck to his resolve to keep calm.

  He now even managed to produce a false laugh. “That’ll only call attention to us. And bring in more people than ever to clog the roads. We’d hardly be inconspicuous, out here where you can bet everybody knows everyone else.”

  Richie winked at him. “One minute you’re a regular guy, husband and father, and next you’re thinking like a bandit, John. This stuff agrees with you!”

  Uncomfortable with such praise, John added, “And they’ll find the car soon enough.”

  “So?”

  “It’s registered in Sharon’s name, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not in either of ours. We don’t have any connection with her.”

  It was true that discovering Sharon’s identity could lead to nothing: they were three strangers who had been brought together by chance. John was momentarily in the grip of an awful conviction that, in Richie’s context, he had no effective argument against burning down a house—any more than he had been able to make clear his objection to running a man down with a car. The best thing he could come up with now was, “Look, my business is selling houses, not burning them down!”

  “All right, John, if you feel that way. All you ever have to do with me is state your wishes. You don’t want to set a fire, you don’t have to.” Richie yawned, throwing his arms wide. The gun could have been snatched from between his knees at this point had John been close enough, but of course he wasn’t, being instead near the poker, which he had already rejected as a weapon, for it could deliver too fearsome a wound. He would do anything he could to get the problem solved without any further hurt to anyone, including Richie. Nothing was more important than avoiding violence.

  Richie stood erect, the gunbarrel over his left forearm, the butt in his armpit. “I’m willing to do all the dirty work and take responsibility for it, but it would just be nice if I got a word of commendation once in a while. Let’s face it, I could have run off hours ago, leaving you in the lurch. What’s keeping me around? Am I making any money?”

  John could not help saying, “I really do appreciate what you’re doing for me.”

  He had not gone too far. Richie seemed sheepish. “Well, okay. That’s all right.” He strolled
to the couchside cabinet, bent, and removed the yellowed newspaper. He found a little box of matches on the mantelpiece. John could have kicked himself for overlooking them, for they might have been useful. Richie went to the staircase, where he set fire to the balled sheet of newsprint and threw it onto a step.

  During most of this sequence, taking advantage of the distraction, John was looking at Sharon and trying to get across to her, through facial expression alone, that patience and caution were needed.

  But looking past him, she now cried out.

  He turned and saw the flames, which were only blackening the riser of the step that held the loose ball of blazing paper. The latter was already almost consumed. He felt a sudden triumph over Richie, who was too ignorant of the basic rules of reality to know that you could try all day in vain to burn a house down in that fashion: arsonists always use an inflammable liquid.

  Richie suddenly peered up the staircase and raised his gun to the ready. “Come on down here!”

  It was the boy. He descended the steps, displaying no fear even though the gun was pointed at him. When he came to the blackened ash, still glowing at points and in more or less the same balled shape in which it had been formed, he stamped it into fragments and asked straightforwardly, “Why are you trying to burn this house down?”

  “Don’t get fresh with me,” Richie said. “If I was trying to burn a house down, it would look like that paper.”

  “Then what are you doing?” the boy asked. He had reached the living room, and he saw the smashed bottle and flood of wine.

  He had addressed the question to John, who shrugged guiltily and said, “We’re just resting here temporarily, if you don’t mind, and—”