“Super smooth,” he said. “Like silk. Is it for you or for . . . ?”
She’d caught him looking down her sweater, and Richard thought she hadn’t decided yet how she felt about it. But she bit her lower lip and said, “It’s for a new friend in my life. He loves Scotch, and I don’t know anything about it.” Then she laughed, as though she’d said something funny.
“Does he like peaty Scotch?”
She grimaced, said, “I don’t even know what that means.”
Richard explained the difference between peated and unpeated Scotch, asked her if she could remember any particular brand he’d ordered at a restaurant. “Macallan, I think.”
“Right, Macallan,” Richard said, and grabbed a Scotch at random off the top shelf and handed it to her. “Get him this. He’ll love it. Just like Macallan but a little bit better.”
“You sure?” she said.
“Trust me,” Richard said, then thought, I could do this for a living. Easy peasy. The bottle he’d handed to the woman came inside a very tasteful box, and he could tell that she was impressed.
“All right,” she said. “Sold.”
“And if it doesn’t work out with your new friend, I’d be happy to take his place.”
The woman frowned. “You’re married,” she said, looking down at his hand.
“I wear a ring,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I’m married.”
“It usually does,” she said, and headed toward the front of the store.
Richard whispered, “Cunt,” and wondered if she heard him. He thought he saw a twitch in her upper back.
From the second shelf up from the bottom he grabbed a bottle of J&B for himself, then waited a couple of minutes to give the woman a chance to buy her overpriced swill and get away from the big bad wolf. When he got to the checkout himself, he almost told the teller—an old guy with a mustache stained yellow from cigarettes—that he should get a commission for talking the previous customer into a hundred-dollar bottle, but decided against it.
Back in his car, he stowed the Scotch in his glove compartment. It was nice just knowing it was there, even if he decided he didn’t need it.
From the liquor store, he drove through Middleham back toward Dartford, taking Sudbury Road over to Blackberry Lane. He almost didn’t turn down his own street for fear that the police were already there, but decided to take a chance. If there were any suspicious vehicles, he’d simply pull into another driveway, then turn around and leave. And if they weren’t there yet, then he’d have a chance to do what he should have done a long time ago. He took the turn down Blackberry, all the properties except for one—a monstrous new pillared house—built in the decade after World War II, charmless boxes designed to contain an average American family. The lane dead-ended at a cul-de-sac that was ringed by four properties, including Richard’s childhood home. It belonged to him now; well, technically it really belonged to Matthew, who paid the taxes on it. The house—half brick and half white siding—was set back behind a cluster of white pines. The front yard was covered with a layer of brown pine needles, and the driveway asphalt was cracked and choked with weeds. The house itself, at least from the outside, still looked decent, although the white vinyl siding had begun to turn a mossy green. A blank, dumb house, Richard thought, not for the first time. He swung the car around the circular dead end and parked it so that its nose was facing back toward Sudbury Road. Before getting out of his car, he took a little sip from his bottle of Scotch.
After entering through the front door, he called out, “Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad. I’m home,” like he always did. It cracked him up, although he always had a little bit of fear that one day his greeting would be returned. It never was, though, and this would be the last time he’d ever enter this house. He went up the stairs, the air changing as he got to the top. It was stagnant, smelling of mildew, but underneath that smell was the unmistakable tang of something dead, a sweet, cloying odor. Probably a dead squirrel in one of the walls, he told himself. He didn’t want to stay upstairs too long—it disgusted him, and not just because of the rot—but he did want to get one of his dad’s suitcases from his parents’ old bedroom. He pushed the bedroom door open with his foot. It was dim inside the room, the curtains pulled, and as Richard entered, he heard something scurry along the floorboards. Ignoring it, he took out his phone and, using its flashlight, walked to the closet, the door already open. He spotted the large plaid suitcase tucked toward the back. He grasped its leather handle and pulled it out, glad to discover that it was empty. He put the suitcase on the bed, the air in the room now swirling with disturbed dust. It tasted almost bitter at the back of Richard’s throat. There were two things in this room he wanted: his mother’s framed picture of her own parents—a short, dour man in a felt hat with a feather in its brim and a woman in a house dress, a sad smile on her lips—and his father’s old billfold. He knew right where it was, in the top drawer of the bureau. It contained a two-dollar bill, his father’s driver’s license, his AAA card, a few business cards, plus a folded-up clipping from a magazine of Bo Derek on the beach.
Richard took the wallet and the picture and put both of them inside of the suitcase, then zipped it back up and left the room after taking one final look around. It was, after all, the room where he’d found the body of his mother. He’d known she was dead as soon as he saw her outline under the chenille bedspread. She was curled into a tight ball, like an animal that knows it’s dying and goes to ground. Still, he’d lifted the bedspread off her and taken a long look. Her yellowed nightgown was bunched up around her waist, and there was dried vomit around her head. In one hand was a vodka bottle—Smirnoff, if he remembered correctly—and there was an empty pill bottle on the bedside table. Her other hand was up against her face. When Richard had taken a closer look he realized that she’d been sucking her thumb when she died.
Back downstairs, he filled the suitcase with the few other things he wanted. It wasn’t much, just framed photos mostly, a family Bible that had been passed down to his father, the set of Ginsu knives his mother had bought from the television, and the mason jar that was hidden under the loose floorboard in the pantry. Richard had found it there only a few years ago. There was about a thousand dollars in cash in the jar.
With the suitcase full, Richard went down into the basement, again using his cell phone flashlight, and got the two gallon cans of gasoline that had been down there for as long as he could remember. He used the first can on the curtains and along the runner carpet that went up the middle of the stairs to the second floor. It was empty much sooner than he expected, and he was more careful with the second can, splashing a little bit here and there around the first floor of the house, saving most of it for his father’s recliner, first pushing it over toward the wall so that it touched the heavy velvet curtains that draped across the front windows. The fabric had split from the recliner’s seat, revealing crumbling yellow Styrofoam, which he soaked with the remaining gasoline. The smell of the gas bit at his nostrils and his throat and made his eyes water.
He had a set of matches from the Owl’s Head Tavern in his pocket and he lit one, dropped it onto the soaked cushion. It just sat there for a moment, the flame flickering weakly, then there was a loud whump, and the cushion was fully ablaze. He grabbed the suitcase and exited out the front door, walking at a normal pace back to his car, catching movement in one of the windows of the closest house, probably Mrs. MacDonald watching his every move. Maybe he’d be lucky and the fire would spread to her house as well.
He’d been driving for ten minutes when he realized how hard he was gripping the steering wheel. He told himself to relax. Things were in motion and he just needed to let them play out.
He cruised down Sycamore Street, curious to see if Henrietta Mazur’s car was parked in front of her house. It wasn’t, so he kept going, his window cracked, expecting to hear the distant sound of sirens, but maybe he was too far from the other side of Dartford. Maybe the house hadn’t burned, the flames just sputterin
g out before they ever got going, but he didn’t think that was the case. He did a loop that took him up near Scituate River and did hear the distant sound of some kind of siren. It could be anything, of course, but it could also be his childhood home burning to the ground. He rolled the window all the way down. There was smoke in the air, but it had the fruity, pleasant aroma of chimney smoke, a common smell on a brisk fall afternoon.
He drove a short distance to Black Brick Studios. He knew where Henrietta usually parked, near the entrance to the basement. He left his car a block away on a side street, then walked down the hill to the lot. The gray Golf was there, along with one other car, a light blue Prius. The back parking lot was bordered on one side by a high embankment and on the other by a sloping embankment that led down to the river. A huge willow tree, beginning to turn yellow, rustled in the cold breeze. Richard stood about halfway between the willow tree and the locked back door of the studios, trying to look casual. One of two things would most likely happen next. Either Henrietta would come out from those doors and he’d be waiting for her, or whoever owned the Prius would emerge and, if that was the case—he was hoping it would be—he’d make sure he was walking toward the door with purpose, and hopefully whoever it was would let him in.
He stood for about thirty minutes, the clouds building up in the sky, till he saw the doorknob of the metal door turn. He began to walk swiftly toward the door, his phone in his hand, and watched as a woman with short gray hair emerged.
“Oh, hey,” Richard said, approaching. “Can you hold that?”
He saw the doubt in the woman’s eyes, but she held the door because he’d asked her to do it. “Visiting Hen,” he said, and held up his phone. “Does your phone work down there?”
“No, not really,” the woman said.
Richard slid past her, saying thanks, and the door closed behind him. He stood for a moment in the dim hallway and breathed deeply through his nostrils; he could smell paint and turpentine and the lingering scent of patchouli from the woman who’d just let him in. He wondered how long she’d be haunted by what she had just done. Probably for the rest of her life, he thought.
He began to walk toward Henrietta’s studio, not attempting to walk quietly. It didn’t matter if she knew he was down here. They were alone, and there was nothing she could do about it. He turned a corner, saw the light coming from underneath the door of her studio, then heard her door open. She poked her pretty head out and saw him. He kept coming.
“Hi, Matthew,” she said, a little bit of uncertainty in her voice.
“I’m not Matthew,” Richard said.
Chapter 38
Hen almost ran, but something stopped her. You run, you die, a voice was telling her, so instead she stepped out into the hallway and faced the man who just told her he wasn’t Matthew.
But it was Matthew, even though there was something different about him, in his eyes maybe, even in the way he was walking, the set of his head.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Richard,” he said. “We haven’t officially met yet.”
“No, we haven’t.” Hen’s entire body had turned icy cold, yet her brain was clicking along calmly, trying to assess the situation. “Where’s Matthew?”
“Matthew? Who knows? Who cares?”
He was taking a step forward, his face completely illuminated by one of the hallway’s hanging lamps. Maybe Richard is his twin, she thought, but then she saw the scar below his mouth, the one that made him look a little like Harrison Ford, and she realized that there was no brother named Richard. There was just Matthew, and he was far more insane than she had realized. Again, she thought of running, but she also realized almost for the first time how strong Matthew was, with his broad shoulders, his large hands. She could bolt toward the other side of the studio, toward the metal steps that led up to the first floor, but now Matthew was only about two feet away from her.
“I’d like to see your studio,” he said. “See where you make all your dirty pictures.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, and it stayed standing up, as though he hadn’t washed it for a few days. He was now close enough that she could smell alcohol on his breath.
“I actually have to go,” she said, wondering if maybe he’d let her just walk past him. Maybe if she did it quickly, nonchalantly, but as soon as she began his hand flashed forward and he grabbed her by the neck, pinching hard with his thumb and forefinger. She kicked out at him, hoping to hit him in the groin, but caught his shin instead. His face flinched, his lips parting but his teeth clenched, and, still gripping her neck, he pushed her into her studio, then shoved her hard so that she went flying backward, landing on her back and sliding a little along the concrete floor. A jolt of pain radiated up her spine.
Hen pushed herself back along the floor until she was leaning up against her chair. Matthew was looking around the studio, eyes flicking over everything.
“Go ahead and take a look around,” Hen said.
“Don’t you want to fuck me first?” Matthew said, a wide grin on his face, his eyes darting.
“We’ve only just met, Richard. Why did you think I’d fuck you?” Hen said, not really thinking about it. Matthew’s eyes dropped down to her, and he looked amused and interested, and she realized she’d said the right thing. If she pretended he was Richard, if she engaged with him, maybe she’d stall him. And if she could stall him, maybe she could get away from him.
“Well, you want to fuck Matthew, don’t you?” he said.
“Actually, I don’t. Matthew and I don’t have that kind of relationship, and besides, we’re both married.”
“You can sit in the chair, if you’d like. You look pretty pathetic there on the floor.”
Hen slid up into the chair, settling onto its cushion. How many times had she sat in that chair, relaxed, thinking about art, drinking tea? And now she was sitting here and it could be the last thing she ever did.
“To Lloyd and Mira,” Matthew said suddenly, and Hen was confused, until she realized he was responding to her saying that Matthew and she were both married.
“Right, to Lloyd and Mira.”
Matthew held his hands out, palms up, and smirked at her. “I mean . . .” he said.
“What?”
“I’m not too impressed with Lloyd.”
“But Richard’s never met him,” Hen said, and knew almost immediately this was the wrong thing to say. Matthew frowned, his eyes going from amusement to controlled rage with one flutter of his eyelids. Don’t question him, she told herself. Don’t question his logic. Just go with it. Go with whatever he wants to talk about, and maybe if he wanders far enough away from me . . .
“Matthew told me all about him. He still tells me things, you know, even though he doesn’t quite trust me with the information.”
“What did Matthew tell you about Lloyd?”
“Nothing you don’t already know about at this point. He’s been putting his pee-pee where he shouldn’t. It’s pretty easy these days, you know. Back in the day you had to go to a brothel to get some pussy. Now you can find it anywhere.” Matthew was staring intently at her, maybe trying to see if she was shocked by what he said.
“Where do you go?”
“Where do I go for what?”
“Where do you go for pussy, Richard?” she asked, holding his eye contact. He flinched, just a little. “Do you go to brothels?”
“My dad went to brothels. He told me all about them. But it’s like I told you, every girl walking down the street now is up for it.”
He looks nervous, Hen thought, and tried to decide whether to push him down this conversational road. She could tell that it unnerved him when she challenged him, but she wasn’t sure if it was good to unnerve him. She didn’t want to go too far, but she did want to keep him talking about topics that interested him. What she really wanted to do—and she knew it would be dangerous—was to reach the real Matthew, get him to come out, and then she’d be safe, at least temporaril
y. Was he pretending to be Richard, his brother? Was it a true split personality? If she could get him to revert to Matthew, she thought she could talk her way out of whatever he had planned. If he stayed in his current personality, then she thought there was a chance she could run to the door, slam it shut, and lock Matthew inside. It was a peculiarity of all the studio doors on the basement level: the dead bolt lock needed a key on both sides of the door, and Hen’s key—the only copy she had—was in her jacket pocket.
“How come you’re so different from Matthew,” Hen said. “I’ve gotten to know him pretty well, and I think he’s a gentleman.”
A huge smile crossed Matthew’s face. She could see his gums. “He kills people, you know.”
“I know he does. He told me. But he also told me that he would never hurt a woman, and that he would only hurt a man who would hurt a woman. That’s why I said he’s a gentleman.”
“He was a mama’s boy,” Matthew said, and turned his eyes up to the ceiling of the studio, as though he were remembering.
Hen almost thought about bolting for the door, but he quickly turned his gaze back toward her. Was he carrying a weapon? she wondered. It didn’t really matter if he was or wasn’t. She remembered the strength of his hand around her neck, the way he could have crushed her throat with a simple squeeze.
“And you weren’t?”
“Mom was a whore all over town. I even heard once that she was fucking the minister at the church, the same minister that married her and Dad.”
“If that was true, then why was Matthew a mama’s boy? He must have known all about that as well.”
Matthew shook his head, glanced toward the larger of Hen’s two printing presses, and took a step toward it, leaning against its metal edge. It gave Hen a slightly better chance of getting to the door if she decided to make a run for it. “He knew all about it, but he says that Dad made her that way. He says that Mom figured if she was going to be called a whore, and treated like a whore, then maybe she should act like one, too.”
Before She Knew Him Page 25