The Murderer Next Door

by Rafael Yglesias

  Tired of my vigil, I sat down in an armchair by the window. That placed me on the other side of the bathroom. Seated, I was back on the highway, feeling the subtle rhythmic thumping of the road.…

  I may have fallen asleep. In any event, I was startled by the distinct click of the bathroom lock untumbling. I sat up suddenly, heart pounding, vision concentrated.

  The bathroom door opened cautiously. I made no movement, I couldn’t breathe.

  She came out of the bathroom with her back to me, looking in the wrong direction. She wore a raven black wig, its tresses curling down her back. She was huge, of course, but not crude, wearing a simple black dress that softened her big hips. I could see from where I sat that the breasts were an appropriate size and they had a softened realistic appearance, not a plastic cone shape. The great surprise were the legs—long and quite beautiful, no bulging thighs, the calfs and ankles delicate, womanly.

  “Molly…?” he whispered, confused at my apparent absence.

  “I’m here, Ben.”

  I couldn’t see her face yet. She turned to me, swiveling easily on her high heels: I gasped at her face. There were no glasses, no sullen shadow of a beard, no bald skull. The cheeks were high and strong, the eyes deep-set and vulnerable, the small lips now full and red. I had never noticed before that Ben’s nose was aquiline and striking, ennobling her face. She was too thick to be considered pretty, but this Ben had grace and dignity.

  She lowered her head. “Thank you,” he mumbled softly, humble and gentle. “Thank you for not laughing.”

  I got to my feet and circled her. He had spoken in his voice, only mellowed, its tones as pink as the lamp’s light.

  “Why didn’t you tell Wendy?”

  She didn’t like her hands: they were too big and thick. She hid them behind her back, brought them forward, tried to diminish their size by holding them together in front, was dissatisfied and put them behind her again.

  “She would have been disgusted,” he said.

  I reached for her breast without thinking—and caught myself in midair. She noticed my hand. “You can touch,” he said.

  “I just want to know what the material is.”

  “Foam.” She took my hand and cupped it over her right breast. The spongy feel had some resilience. Still holding her, I cupped my own breast with my free hand.

  “It’s the same.”

  She nodded with a pleased smile. “They’re very good,” he said.

  I let go of her breast and stroked her cheek. “You’re pretty,” I told him.

  She shut her eyes and swallowed, moved. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “Did you want to make love like this with Wendy?”

  “No,” he said. She leaned her cheek on my hand, with the sad tender longing of a child. “I masturbate,” he whispered.

  “Standing here like this?”

  “In front of a mirror.”

  “You look at yourself as a woman?”

  She lifted her head from my palm to kiss it and then rested again. The eyes stayed closed, rapturously. “I’m beautiful like this,” he told me.

  “You want to be beautiful?”

  “I want people to want me,” he said. “Women are wanted. Even if it’s just for sex, every woman is wanted. Nobody’s ever wanted me.”

  “Do you have an erection now?”

  She squeezed her eyes together in pain and nodded against my hand. “Yes…, ” he whispered.

  I was excited, wet and loose, my limbs unstrung, my belly warm. His confession thrilled me; her ungainly look won my pity.

  I kissed her forehead. He opened his eyes, foggy with longing. I kissed them shut: there was a powdery taste of makeup and I noticed the perfume she wore. I expected Wendy’s scent—but it was mine.

  “You’re beautiful,” I told her. “I want to make love to you.”

  I SLEPT IN MY OWN BED THAT NIGHT, AFTER WE WERE done. Ben was very passionate and I’m ashamed to say I enjoyed myself as much as—even more than—I ever have. But that pleasure was sustained only so long as she was there. Once she disappeared into the bathroom and returned as Ben, I had to get away.

  I would like to report that I felt guilty; that I was racked with sorrow and shame at all the sins I committed that awful day. Instead I fell fast asleep, exhausted and satisfied.

  I woke up late and fully attentive, no slow transition. I came to consciousness with a clear realization whose obviousness you will laugh at: There’s no going back now, Molly.

  Oddly, I was glad and full of energy. I called in sick to the office, exercised vigorously on the machines, phoned a law school friend who had become quite prominent as a divorce lawyer, especially for battered women. I no longer trusted Jake Prosser enough to give him the job, especially if Stefan stuck to his new line and was difficult.

  “You’re kidding!” was her response. “Molly, I can’t believe it! Why?”

  You’d think she had never heard of divorce, instead of making a living from it. Only after I was stern with her did she reluctantly accept that neither I nor Stefan was having an affair. (Yes, I hear your sarcasm; but, you see, I didn’t think of what happened as an affair.)

  The lieutenant called. I lied to him: pretended Naomi and I had really been lost; pretended that Ben had been behaving docilely. He knew I was lying. He tried to goad me into the truth: “Mr. Fliess doesn’t seem to feel any remorse. He thinks everyone should feel sorry for him. Cried like a baby about how miserable he is. And he’ll try anything. He even hinted maybe you knew something about what happened to Wendy.”

  “He’s fighting for his life, Lieutenant. Nothing he says or does would surprise me.”

  “You’re making excuses for him.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m being realistic.”

  “You’re not beginning to feel sympathy for him, are you?”

  “Of course not. The case is solid, right?”

  “You can never have enough,” he insisted, prodding me.

  When I called Ben, it was past eleven.

  “Hi, Molly.” His tone was relieved and happy. “I was scared you would never speak to me again.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Ben.”

  “I feel really good today,” he stammered.

  “I’m taking the day off. Let’s get you contact lenses,” I suggested.

  “Really?” he wondered nervously, like a kid scared to believe he had been offered the best present in the world.

  I watched a huge version of Ben’s face in the ophthalmologist’s mirror and realized it was also the makeup that had improved him, enlarging his brown eyes, stretching the distance between his harassed mouth and nose and worried brow. Nevertheless, getting rid of the glasses would be a big improvement; a beard would also help, especially if it came in reddish.

  After he had been examined and got his first lesson at inserting the lenses (he was a baby about it: timid and squeamish), we ducked into a luncheonette in midtown, jammed with people, and thick, not very delicious smells. I praised him for ordering the contacts and urged him to make other beautifying gestures, including exercises, although I had discovered last night that he had a leaner and stronger body than I suspected. I mentioned how terrific he would look with a reddish beard.

  “I can’t grow a beard,” he said.

  “Why?” I was a simpleton, indeed.

  “You know—,” and he glanced about at the nearby tables shyly.

  He meant, if he grew a beard the transformation into her would become impossible—or ridiculous.

  We discussed that choice, to his surprise.

  “I can’t believe we’re talking about it”—he glanced at the customers holding plastic menus, wolfing french fries—“in public, like it’s nothing…”

  “It is nothing, Ben. Is that what you felt when Wendy found out? Did you think it was so shameful?”

  But you thought him sick, remember Molly? You waved it under Wendy’s nose and discussed it smugly with Stefan.

  “No!” He banged the tab
le, water quivering in the glasses, attracting looks from our neighbors. Tears came into his eyes. “You don’t know what she was like.”

  “Yes, I do.” He was easy to confront—why had Wendy feared arguing with him? Talk right back and he accepts it.

  “I mean to me! She wanted a divorce, she was gonna use it against me anytime she wanted to. And I’d have to stop—” He looked off. “She convinced me I was sick, that I’d have—” He sucked in his lips to keep his emotions in check. “It was my only pleasure. She was a lousy lay.”

  “Ben!” I warned him.

  “She was.”

  “I don’t care—I can’t hear that.”

  “You asked me. I didn’t bring it up. I would never have brought it up. But you asked.”

  “I asked. You’re right. Forget it.”

  He looked away from me, petulant, sniffed slightly and sighed heavily—an overacted performance of hurt feelings.

  “What about the beard?”

  “No,” he mumbled.

  “I think it’ll make a big difference for the jury.”

  “They’re not gonna find me innocent cause of how I look.”

  “It’ll help.”

  “But then we won’t be able to…” He finished his complaint with a shy glance, a demure smile.

  “You’ll look great without glasses, with the beard, and we’ll make sure you’re tan, get you running and on the machines. Show off your height. You should stand up straight like you do when you’re dressing up. Gives you elegance.”

  “What are you saying? That I can give it up if I look great as a man?”

  “No…” Was I? I didn’t know if there was a deeper meaning, a hidden wish.

  “I thought you liked it. You—”

  “I did. What do you think that means?” I asked him. I had been moved by his fantasy, his vision of himself as beautiful. I discovered his penis under all that fabric and had a wild, almost painful orgasm not long after he was in me. Was I gay? Or did I want men to be women with cocks? Or did I need to heal people when I made love to them? Or was I just nuts?

  “I think there’s a lot of forgiveness in you,” he said. “You’re not like Wendy—you’re not sentimental and you’re not self-righteous. You accept people as they are.”

  “What happened, Ben? Why did you kill her?” I asked this in a new tone, as if it had never been asked before: naïvely, without judgment or guile, merely wanting to know.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes,” I told him, earnest and gentle. “Tell me.”

  “If I tell you, it means I trust you with my life.”

  “I know, Ben.” I touched his hand. “I won’t betray you.”

  He sighed, his brow rippling with pain. “I try not to think about it.” He swallowed and shut his eyes. “She kept at me, nagging and crying all night, all day, for the whole weekend. Either she attacked me or she sat there with that look, you know that look.”

  “What look?” I thought of Wendy as playful and sympathetic, never recriminating.

  “Like a lizard. Those narrow eyes, turning green. And when I called her on it, she burst into tears and pretended I was attacking her. She looked at me as if I was shit, a piece of shit on the street, shit she stepped in—but I was the one attacking her. She was going to have that look on her face for the rest of my life. I couldn’t take it. Anytime she wanted something, she’d bring it up. And one day”—Ben was full of energy now, eyes boldly talking to me, his face flushed with outrage—“one day she’d tell Naomi about—”

  “No,” I argued involuntarily.

  “Oh yes, she would. She was very jealous that Naomi loved me more than her—”

  I felt myself rebel: Naomi didn’t love Ben more than Wendy. I wanted to argue, but I stopped myself.

  “—and someday she would have told her. Just to humiliate me in her eyes.”

  Naomi’s still going to know, I thought, as if this were a rational matter.

  “She would never forgive me. Can’t you understand? I begged her to forgive me. To accept me, like you have.” Tears had formed in his eyes and now trailed down his face as his voice broke and he whispered: “She started up one more time about what she would do if I didn’t get rid of the clothes, if I didn’t go to a shrink, if I didn’t do every fucking thing exactly the way she wanted it done. I hit her to shut her up. She hated me and she was going to hate me forever and I couldn’t stand it, I couldn’t listen to it. I didn’t mean to kill her, I just wanted to shut her up.” He checked on the effect of this: a nervous glance and then modestly lowered his eyes.

  I was straight, but not challenging. “Ben, you didn’t just hit her, you bludgeoned her.”

  “I hit her and I hit her and she smashed her head into the table and she was bleeding and I knew she was dying…and I…” He shut his eyes again and lowered his head even more, prayerfully. He whispered something I couldn’t hear.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I didn’t want her to live,” he whispered. “I got one of the logs and I looked away and hit her one more time.”

  “You knew you were killing her. You chose to kill her.” I glanced around us to see if anyone was eavesdropping: New Yorkers on a lunch break, discussing vacation plans, tax planning, office politics; out-of-towners on a pause from Christmas shopping, bags under their feet, panting from the breakneck pace of their spending.

  “Why are you saying that? Why are—”

  “I just want the truth, I don’t want any lies. Like last night. We stopped lying last night, we stopped hiding.”

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  “I don’t want any more of all that”—I nodded at the restaurant of people—“all that routine posing.” I mocked them: “‘We’re not all good or all bad, we’re just people.’” I touched his chin. “Don’t lie anymore.”

  He nodded. “I could have saved her. Maybe she would have been damaged or something, but sure, if I got her to a hospital right away she would have lived, she might have been totally fine. But it would have been the end of me. No one would hire me. I would never see Nommy again—”

  I took hold of his chin and urged him to look me in the eye: “But that’s not why, Ben. That’s not why you picked up the log.”

  “Why?” His mouth drooped, stupid and beaten. “Tell me why I did it?”

  “Because you wanted her dead. If she was dead then you got everything: Nommy and the dressing up and her money—”

  “But it’s ruined me! My life is over. How could I want that?”

  “Tell me the truth, Ben.”

  Tears welled at his lower lids again. His chin trembled. “I’m sorry. I really am bad, that’s what you’re saying.”

  Gentle, but insistent, I reached for his chin again: “Tell me the truth, Ben.”

  “I did.” He leaned back, away from the touch of my hand. He refused, shaking his head.

  “No. Those were facts. I want the truth.”

  “I don’t want to grow the beard,” he bargained.

  “It may cost you your freedom.”

  “I don’t care.”

  I nodded my agreement and waited for him to speak.

  “I wanted her dead.” Once that was out, he breathed in deeply, through his nose. “I was sick and tired of her, of her disappointment in me, her disapproval, her competitiveness. For Wendy to be happy, everyone in the world, even my little girl, had to think she was better than me. I was the schmuck and she was wonderful for marrying me. I was the asshole she put up with—she was a fucking saint. I wanted her dead.”

  That was the truth. As I heard it, I felt relief—not horror or grief. Even though I had known it all along, I was relaxed—saved really—by hearing its simplicity and its coherence. He had told the truth, both about her and about him, and about the rest of us too. And I was pardoned by this truth. It took away the silly worries of my guilt: if only I hadn’t told Wendy about the secret apartment; if only I had insisted they spend the weekend in New York; if only I had driven up and sur
prised them with a visit. There were thousands of them and they had buzzed me like gnats; they were stupid and maddening and now I knew for sure they were nonsense. Sooner or later Ben would have killed her. To do otherwise would have meant he had accepted her judgment of him.

  “But she won anyway,” he said. “Now I’m the monster she wanted me to be. And she’s a martyr.”

  “You won. She’s dead, Ben. And you’re alive. Don’t start lying again.”

  He winced, picked up the check, and reached for his wallet. “You hate me now.” He was paying me off, ending us.

  “I used to hate you.”

  He paused. “You did?” He was actually surprised.

  “Just as you said: she was wonderful, you were beneath her. I don’t hate you now.”

  “But I’m bad.” He spoke clearheadedly, no self-pity or inverted righteousness. “Turns out I’m bad. I’m a bad man.”

  “I know.”

  “What are you saying? You don’t care?” He counted out money and paid. He was ready to rise and go; he had hardened his tone, he was prepared to hear the worst. We must have looked casual to the others, shoppers and workers, as if we were discussing what to do next, a movie or more shopping?

  “I care. Of course I care. I’m just saying I don’t kid myself about it.”

  “You don’t?” He sneered, turned his head in disgust, then whipped it back at me, an interrogator catching me in a lie: “How about your money? You care about your money, don’t you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Ben stuck his face at me and growled: “Your money! You care about that, don’t you?”

  “What about my money?”

  “I lost everything you gave me.” He waited. When I didn’t explode, he continued: “I had a genius idea—go short the Japanese stock market. I bought thirty thousand dollars’ worth of options. Guess what? Instead, the Japs made a new record high last week. The options expired worthless last Friday.” That said, he got up and walked out of the restaurant.