Crime Plus Music

by Jim Fusilli

  Jeff and I spent most of our spare time knocking that trailer into shape. Billy Jean helped as much as she could, and by the time Jess was born, we’d turned it into a proper little home for the two of them. They moved in when Jess was six weeks old, and Billy Jean looked relaxed for the first time since Kenny had raped her. “I can never thank the two of you enough,” she said so many times I told her she should just make a tape of it and give us each a copy.

  “It was Ruthie’s idea,” Jeff said, acting like it was nothing to do with him.

  “I know,” Billy Jean said. “But I also know you did more than your fair share to make it happen.”

  We settled into a pretty easy routine. I worked mornings on the farm, helping Jeff’s mother with the specialty yogurt business she was building up. Afternoons, I’d hang out with Billy Jean and Jess. Then I’d cook dinner for Jeff, and we’d either watch some TV or walk down to have a beer and a few hands of cards with Billy Jean. Most people might have thought our lives pretty dull, but it seemed fine enough to us.

  There was one thing, I thought, that stopped it being perfect. A year had gone by since Jeff and I had married, but still I wasn’t pregnant. It wasn’t for want of trying, but I began to wonder whether my lack of enthusiasm for sex was somehow preventing it. I knew this was crazy, but it nagged away at me.

  Finally, I managed to talk to Billy Jean about it. It was a hot summer afternoon and Jess was over at her grandma’s house. Billy Jean and I were lying on her bed with the only AC in the trailer cranked up high. “I love him,” I said. “But when we make love, it’s not like it says in the books and magazines. It doesn’t feel like it looks in the movies. I just don’t feel that whole swept away thing.”

  Billy Jean rolled over onto her back and yawned. “I’m not the best person to ask, Ruth. I only ever had sex the once and that sure wasn’t what you would call a good experience. I don’t guess it’s the kind of thing you can talk to Jeff about either.”

  I made a face. “He’d be mortified. He thinks I think he’s the greatest lover on the planet.” Billy Jean giggled. “Well, you have to make them feel like that.” Billy Jean yawned again. “I’m sorry, Ruth. I don’t mean you to feel like I’m dismissing you, but I am so damn tired. I was up three times with Jess last night. She’s teething.”

  “Why don’t you just have a nap?” I said. But she was already drifting away. I made myself more comfortable and before I knew it, I’d nodded off too.

  I woke because someone was kissing me. An arm was heavy across my chest and shoulder, a leg was thrown between mine and soft lips were pressing on mine, a tongue flicking between my lips. I opened my eyes and the mouth pulled back from mine. A face that was familiar and yet completely strange hovered above mine. Jeff with long hair, I thought stupidly for a moment before the truth dawned.

  Billy Jean put a finger to my lips. “Ssh,” she said. “Let’s see if we can figure out what Jeff’s doing wrong.”

  By the end of the afternoon, I understood that it wasn’t what Jeff did that was wrong. It was who he was.

  KENNY CAME BACK A COUPLE of weeks before Jess’s fourth birthday. It turned out his mother hadn’t been lying to the church group. He had landed a job working for a radio station in Los Angeles. He was doing pretty well. Had his own show and everything. He rolled back into town in a muscle car with a beautiful blonde on his arm. His fiancée, apparently.

  All of that would have been just fine if he had left the past alone. But no. He wanted to impress the fiancée with his credentials as a family man. The first thing we knew about it was when Billy Jean got a letter from Kenny’s lawyer saying he planned to file suit for shared custody. Kenny wanted Jess for one week a month until she started school, then he wanted her for half the school vacations. If he’d been the standard absent father as opposed to one who had never even seen his kid, it might have sounded reasonable. And we had a sneaking feeling that the court might see things Kenny’s way.

  Justice in Marriott comes courtesy of His Honor Judge Wellesley Benton. Who is an old buddy of Kenny Sheldon’s daddy and a man who’s put a fair few of Billy Jean’s relatives behind bars. We were, to say the least, apprehensive.

  The day after the letter came, Billy Jean happened to be walking down Main Street when Kenny strolled out of the Coffee Bean Scene with the future Mrs. Sheldon. I heard all about it from Mom, who saw it all from the vantage point of the quilting store porch.

  Billy Jean just lit into him. Called him all the names under the sun from rapist to deadbeat dad. Kenny looked shocked at first, then when he saw his fiancée wasn’t turning a hair, he started to laugh. That just drove Billy Jean even crazier. She was practically hysterical. Mom came over from the quilt shop and grabbed her by the shoulders, trying to get her away. Then Kenny said, “I’ll see you in court,” and walked his fiancée to the car. Billy Jean was fit to be tied.

  Well, everybody thinks they know what happened next. That night, Kenny was due at a dinner in the Town Hall. As he approached, a figure stepped out of the shadows. Long blond hair, jeans, and a Western shirt, just like Billy Jean always liked to wear. And a couple of witnesses who were a ways off but who knew Billy Jean well enough to recognise her when she raised the shotgun and blew Kenny Sheldon into the next world.

  That was the end of her as much as it was the end of him.

  I KNEW BILLY JEAN WAS innocent. Not out of some crazy misplaced belief, but because at the very moment Kenny Sheldon was meeting his maker, I was in her bed, moaning at her touch. That first afternoon had not been a one-off. It had been an awakening that had led us both into a deeper happiness than we’d ever known before.

  If I’d been married to anyone other than Jeff, I’d have left in a New York minute. But I cared about him. More importantly, so did Billy Jean. “You’re both my best friend,” she said as we lay in a tangle of sheets. “Until this afternoon, I couldn’t have put one of you above the other. You gotta stay with him, Ruth. You gotta go on being his wife because I couldn’t live with myself if you didn’t.”

  And so I did. It might seem strange to most folks, but in a funny kind of way, it worked out just fine for us. Except of course that I still couldn’t get pregnant. I began to think of that as the price I had to pay for my other contentments—Jeff, Billy Jean, Jess.

  Then Kenny came back.

  They came for Billy Jean soon after midnight. A deputy we’d all been at school with knocked on our door at one in the morning, carrying Jess in a swaddle of bedclothes. He looked mortified as he explained what had happened and asked us to take care of the child till morning when things could be sorted out more formally.

  Jess had often stayed with us, so she settled pretty easy. That morning, I drove into town, leaving Jess with her grandma, and demanded to see Billy Jean. She was white and drawn, her eyes heavy and haunted. “They can’t prove it,” she said. “You have to promise me you will never tell. Don’t sacrifice yourself trying to save me. They won’t believe you anyway and you’ll have shamed yourself in their eyes for nothing. Just have faith. We both know I’m innocent. Judge Benton isn’t a fool. He won’t let them get away with it.”

  And so I kept my mouth shut. Partly for Billy Jean and partly for Jess. We’d already made arrangements with Billy Jean and her parents for me and Jeff to take care of Jess till after the court case, and I wasn’t about to do anything that would jeopardize that child’s future. I sat through that terrible trial day after day. I listened to witnesses swearing they had seen Billy Jean kill Kenny Sheldon and I said not a word.

  Nor did Billy Jean. She said she was somewhere else, but refused to say where or with whom. Judge Benton offered her the way out. “Woman, what is your alibi?” he thundered. “If you were somewhere else that night, then you won’t have to die. If you’re telling the truth, give up your alibi.” But she wouldn’t budge. And so I couldn’t. It nearly killed me.

  But I never truly thought he would have her hanged.

  I NEVER TRULY THOUGHT HE would have her hanged.
I thought they’d argue she was temporarily insane because of the threat to her child and that she’d do a few years in jail, nothing more. And I was selfish enough to think of how much my Ruthie would love bringing up Jess for as long as Billy Jean was behind bars.

  Sure, I wanted to make her suffer. But I didn’t want her to die. She was my best friend, after all. A friend like no other. I swear, I always believed we would lay down our lives for each other if it came to it. And I guess I was right, in a way. She laid down her life rather than destroy my marriage.

  When the sentence came down, it hit me like a physical blow. I swear I doubled over in pain as I realized the full horror of what I’d done. But it was too late. The sacrifices were made, the chips down once and for all.

  I saw the way she looked at me in court. A mixture of pity and blame. As soon as she heard those witnesses, recognized the conviction in their voices, I think she knew the truth. With a long blonde wig and the right clothes, I could easily be mistaken for her.

  There was an excuse for the witnesses. They were a ways off from Kenny and his killer. But there’s no excuse for Ruthie. She was no distance at all from Billy Jean that afternoon I saw them by the lakeshore. She could not have been mistaken.

  Why didn’t I confront her? Why didn’t I walk away? I guess because I loved them both so much. I didn’t want to lose the life we had. I just wanted Billy Jean to suffer for a while, that was all. I never truly thought he would have her hanged.

  JESS TURNED FOURTEEN TODAY. SHE’S not old enough for the truth. Maybe she’ll never be that old. But there’s one thing she is old enough for.

  Tonight, there will be two of us standing over Billy Jean’s grave, our long black veils drifting in the wind, our tears sparkling like diamonds in the moonlight.

  ME UNTAMED

  BY DAVID LISS

  SHE COVERED THE BLACK EYE with makeup, but I could still see it was there, something alien and unaccountable. Like a vandal’s scrawl across a museum painting, the dull outline of her bruise was an outrage. Carla smiled and greeted everyone good morning, defying us to say a word, to let our eyes linger too long. It was, I supposed, how she protected herself.

  Jim Baron, the senior partner in the practice, met my gaze and flicked his head toward Carla as she walked past with a stack of case folders under her arm. Carla was getting ready, as we did every Tuesday and Thursday, for surgeries—no office visits on those days, just procedures. The practice felt a bit like a gastrointestinal assembly line, and sometimes I hated how we moved patients in and out, hardly taking the time to look at them, but Jim cracked the whip. It was volume, volume, volume as far as he was concerned. We were there to heal, not to socialize, and the more healing, the better.

  Maybe we didn’t linger with any patient long enough to know one’s face from another’s, but they looked at ours, and I knew what Jim was thinking—that it was a good thing this one was of the practice’s surgery days. People would be too occupied with their own fears to notice that one of the masked doctors, not even the lead doctor, had a bruise around her eye. Jim was thinking we’d caught a break. No one wanted a victim, someone who would let herself get smacked around, noodling around inside some of the most intimate parts of their body. One quick gesture toward me, a nod of his head, was like a lecture: get her to straighten out her personal shit.

  I went into the break room and had the gigantic machine, clanging and hissing like some steampunk contraption, make me a black coffee. It was scalding, which was how I liked it, and I took painful little sips while I had it make Carla a skim-milk latte. I then brought it over to her office, where she sat with her desk lamp on and overhead off, reviewing the day’s procedures.

  “You looked like you could use some caffeine,” I said, closing the door behind me.

  She smiled. “I can get my own coffee, Mike.”

  I knew she was glad I’d gotten it for her, though. A little kindness doesn’t erase someone else’s cruelty, but maybe it soothes it a little. “Just being friendly.”

  We sat in silence for a long pause. Carla had just started at the practice where I’d been working for four years. I’d helped her land the spot. We’d met in medical school, though she’d started several years behind me, and I’d taken her under my wing. I’d always been something of a mentor to her—a big brother, she liked to say. Now here she was, with an office just down the hall from mine. We were both doctors and that made us equals. I was three years divorced and Carla was married to a guy who, apparently, liked to hit her in the face. That made us something else.

  Full disclosure: I’d never thought of Carla as a little sister. If anything, my kindness toward her, back in the early days, had been kind of parental, maybe avuncular. She had been this clueless, desperate thing, and it had made me feel a little more wise and doctorly to help her out. I was newly married, and she hadn’t interested me sexually, not at all, but over time, Carla had gotten under my skin with a slow creep.

  She wasn’t beautiful, maybe not even pretty with her long nose and weak chin and almost imperceptibly uneven teeth, and straw-colored hair pulled into ponytail, but there was a thing about her—a kind of liveliness and humor that transcended traditional notions of beauty. Also, she had a trim, athletic body that she rarely showed off, but I knew was always lurking under her skirt suits or scrubs. In the last, uneasy days of my marriage, my then-wife had accused me of being in love with Carla, but that wasn’t true. Maybe it was even completely false, but there was a thing there, maybe more for her than for me, and I liked the charge that hung in the air when we met in the hall or went out for lunch or sat in my office with the door closed.

  I could no longer say that I didn’t think about Carla, but now she was married, and I wasn’t going to be like my ex-wife and play fast and loose with the rules. That had always been my position, anyhow, but now I began to think of my morals as a bit more plastic. It was better to live within a range of options rather than sticking to one point inflexibly. I’d met Carla’s husband a bunch of times—a big guy who owned a sizeable portion of a local roofing company. He did pretty well, but he he’d always seemed sort of a brute, maybe a little beneath her. Maybe a lot.

  “Carla, if there’s something you want to—”

  She smiled—tight lipped and broken hearted, shyly concealing her teeth. Her eyes sparkled with sadness and maybe gratitude. I don’t know. She looked about perfect to me in that moment. “There isn’t. I just need—I need to get some work done.”

  “If Steve is—”

  She cut me off. “Steven,” she reminded me, her face as devoid of expression as a human face can be. Less readable than a mask. Steven, I was reminded, did not like nicknames. He didn’t like people who refused to own guns or eat pizza without pepperoni. He did not think highly of electric cars. He didn’t like doctors, who thought they were smarter than everyone else. This little lady’s the exception! he would bark. You, Mike, are not, was implied. Every time I was forced to have a conversation with the guy at a party or barbecue, all he could talk about was how much money he was making—more than a doctor!—how he could only do one thing at a time. He wasn’t like some con man who could schedule eight patients for the same time slot. What he did, he explained to me, was honest work. He didn’t spend his days with his thumb up his ass, or, he would say with a grin, up someone else’s.

  “Whatever his name is,” I said, “you can’t put up with him hitting you.”

  She looked away. “I never said that.”

  “Carla, come on. You don’t have to.”

  She sighed and pushed some hair from her pale hazel eyes. She forced another false smile, and she was as close to objectively beautiful as she was ever going to get. It broke my heart a little. “You’d think, taking all those martial arts classes, I’d be able to look after myself.”

  “You don’t have to do everything by yourself,” I told her, keeping things vague, because I had no idea what I was supposed to do here. “Your friends can help you.”

  S
he shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I know that for sure, but I don’t have to understand in order to help you be safe.”

  She shook her head. “Life is funny, you know. We spend all these years learning about how the human body works. We have this authority, and we advise people on decisions that affect lives. Sometimes we make calls that affect whether or not people live or die. You’d think with all that, we could have more power in our own lives.”

  “Carla, you do have power,” I said. “Whatever you want to do, you can do. I can help you.”

  “You can’t,” she said.

  After I left her office, I thought about that. I’d taken her words to mean that she didn’t think that anyone could help her, but maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe she’d meant “You can’t.” Maybe she didn’t think I was up to it, and maybe I wasn’t, but I wanted to be the sort of person who was. And I knew she was right. I was a doctor and that meant something. I was not going to let her suffer.

  I’M A LITTLE ON THE short side and I’ve been losing my hair since high school. I shave my scalp pretty close these days and make up for the absence with a neat little goatee. I wear glasses because contact lenses make my eyes tired. I could change some things around, knock a few years off my appearance, but my patients think I look like a doctor, like someone they can trust to advise them. They are almost all older than I am, so conforming with their idea of the platonic doctor saves us all time. Maybe it even saves lives. If people are more inclined to listen to me, to do what I advise, they just might live longer. That’s the kind of position I’m in.

  I run regularly and hit the gym three times a week, and I’m in pretty good shape for thirty-nine, but I know that once I hang up the white coat, I give off a harmless vibe. Strangers on airplanes always guess that I’m a university professor because I strike them as bookish and introverted. One guy once called me dweeby, right to my face. I wanted to bloody his nose for that, but I just laughed agreeably, which maybe proved his point.