Esther pushed her empty glass toward the kid, a relative of Howdy Doody perchance, tapping the table the way you’d tap the bar, let the bartender know you were ready for another, let him know to keep them coming.
“Another Manhattan?” the kid asked, picking up the empty glass. Definitely not Mensa material. Esther nodded. He said he’d be right back.
Yeah, Esther thought. It had taken seventeen minutes to get the first one, the kid everywhere but at her table. She had to remind him, too, then listen politely while he pretended he hadn’t forgotten, while he told her there was a backup at the bar, the place half empty. Maybe she’d insist on paying just so she could stiff him on the tip. No way was Esther going to be here again, no matter what she tipped the kid.
She looked over toward the door to see if Harry had come in. Maybe he was there already, looking around for her, not seeing her sitting in the far corner. But there was no Harry standing at the door, and anyway, the maître d’ would have brought him over. They wouldn’t leave him there on his own. Not Harry. Not at his favorite restaurant.
Esther checked her watch and then adjusted her scarf, the silk one he’d gotten her ten years ago when they were in England, the same kind the queen wore. That was when she was still running the office, still doing Harry’s books. That was before Cheryl.
Peering out into the dark, as dark as New York City ever gets, which is not very, Esther caught her own reflection in the pane, her droopy eyelids, the soft jaw line, her thinning hair, the crosshatching of wrinkles over her pale, thin lips, all the little tricks Mother Nature plays on you as you age, followed by the little tricks your husband plays on you when he notices.
Esther took the little pot of lip gloss out of her purse, dipping one finger in, absentmindedly refreshing the color of her mouth, feeling hungry as soon as she did, checking the door again. Where the fuck was Harry?
Dropping the lip gloss into the inside zippered pocket so that it wouldn’t get lost, Esther took out her pen, then snapped the purse closed. She put the pen on her napkin, where Harry would be sure to see it. She wanted him to know the arguing was over. She wanted him to feel at ease. Enough was enough, Esther thought, turning back once more to look at her reflection. He wanted her to sign the papers, she’d sign the papers. What difference did it make now anyway? Sign them or not, Harry didn’t want her anymore and nothing was going to change that. Anyway, she’d made her decision, and once Esther made up her mind, there was no going back.
When another fifteen minutes had passed and there was still no Harry and still no second Manhattan, Esther began to daydream. Ever since Harry left her, she had been concocting ways to bump him off. In the beginning, it was the only way she could fall asleep, and later on, Esther found it elevated her mood any time of day. Looking out into the night through the oversize windows, Esther thought that might be a pleasant way to spend the time while she waited for the pimply waiter and her bald, overweight, philandering, estranged husband to show up.
When Harry first told her about Cheryl, Cheryl who worked for Harry as she herself had done until recently, Cheryl his bimbo, his chippy, his fiancée and about to be his next wife as soon as Esther signed the papers Harry was bringing along, she would write a new story every night. Lying in bed in the apartment she once shared with Harry, the apartment where she now lived alone, staring at the ceiling unable to sleep, Esther began killing Harry. She stood behind him, unseen, and pushed him in front of the Ninth Avenue bus, off the balcony of their penthouse apartment after he’d come crawling back to her, begging her to forgive him, even off the High Line, the old tram tracks the city kept promising to turn into a public space one day. She watched him die slowly at the hospital of some terrible, painful, incurable, slow-acting disease, and she gained access to the penthouse he shared with Cheryl, that tramp—who names a kid Cheryl, anyway?—and killed him there, tossing Cheryl’s hair dryer into the bathtub, holding a pillow over his face, even shooting him the moment he came home from work, alone, for once, Cheryl doing some retail therapy or getting the liposuction she, Esther, had refused when Harry suggested it. She’d killed him in Washington Square Park, right near the famous arch that all the Japanese tourists came by the busload to see. She’d killed him on the refurbished Christopher Street pier, once a gay sunbathing and pickup site, now a park where you can walk with your aged mother or bring your kids; Esther finding a time when the place was deserted, a time when she could be there alone with Harry and end his life. That’s the thing about stories, Esther thought, unlike real life, you can make them turn out just the way you want them to. Fiction, she’d come to see, was preferable to fact, at least the facts of life as Esther knew them.
Struggling for the peace of mind that would let her sleep, Esther had killed Harry at The Strand, the world’s biggest bookstore, at The White Horse Tavern, one of many places where Dylan Thomas supposedly drank himself to death, at Pastis, the popular restaurant in the meat market where young people talked on their cell phones instead of to each other, and even at one of the few remaining wholesale markets where Harry ended up hanging on one of those nasty-looking meat hooks alongside some hapless cow. There probably wasn’t a place left in the Village that Esther hadn’t used as a venue for killing Harry—not a seedy bar, an after-hours club, a back cottage, a pocket park; not a street, an avenue, a lane, an alley, a square, a mews.
In her desire for sleep, Esther had devised more ways to kill Harry than you could shake a scimitar at, a new one every night for the first three months. But then she saw that it was even more delicious to repeat a favorite story—there were so many of them, all so scrumptiously detailed and satisfying. That’s when she began to name them, then tweak the names, amusing herself with each title change. God knows, she needed a few laughs in her life. A while after that—she had been a bookkeeper, after all—Esther gave them each a number. That’s when “Am I Blue?”—formerly “Tampered”—in which Harry accidentally buys a bottle of Viagra that has been tampered with by a vindictive crazy person and falls down dead just as he’s about to join the voluptuous slut Cheryl under the sheets, that story became “One.” After that, on nights when Esther had done her yoga, taken a hot bath, and washed down an Ambien or two with some of that nice citron vodka she kept in the freezer, on those nights sometimes she could just slip under the comforter, close her eyes, and think “One,” and just like that she’d be off to dreamland. Esther, it seemed, had finally found something she was good at. In her stories she didn’t just murder Harry, she did it with grace, style, and wit, except perhaps for the one where she’d pulled up a loose cobblestone on Jane Street, one of the most charming of Greenwich Village’s many charming blocks, and bashed Harry’s stupid head in. That, of course, was the night he’d told her that he and Cheryl wanted to get married. That, Esther thought, had been the beginning of the end.
What used to work, worked no more. Even Esther’s favorite plots now left her wide awake. For the last month or so, long nights of sleeplessness had turned into longer days of exhaustion, the tiredness pulling on Esther like a double dose of gravity, her heavy legs feeling like tree trunks, her dry skin sallow now, her eyes dull, making Esther plod through her own life without energy and without hope. Friends told her things would get better, that time heals all wounds, or that time wounds all heels, but either way things only got worse, and in the end Esther could see only one way out, only one way to stop her pain.
That very afternoon, Esther had tossed the perishables and taken out the trash for the last time. And on the way to meet Harry, to do this one last thing, she’d packed Louie into his carrier and taken him over to that nice Mrs. Kwan at the deli a block from her apartment, a Korean deli a block or two from everyone’s apartment in Manhattan, and told her that if she kept Louie in the basement, she’d never have a problem with the Department of Health again. Mrs. Kwan had looked inside the bag, startled at first, then laughing, covering her mouth with one hand, nodding yes, thank you, a cat, good idea. Outside the deli, Esther
had dropped her keys down a sewer grating, something else she wouldn’t need after her last supper with Harry.
She straightened the pen on her napkin—Esther liked things neat. And when she looked up, as ready as she’d ever be, there was Harry heading toward her. And there was the waiter with her drink as well.
“I ordered you a Manhattan,” she told Harry, pointing to his place setting, letting the waiter know the drink was for him, not her, flapping her hand when he tried to put down the little wooden dish of nuts, motioning him to take it away as Harry pulled out the chair and slipped off his scarf, not the one Esther had given him two years ago, this one from Cheryl. “I think I’ll have one, too,” she told the kid. “A man shouldn’t have to drink alone, should he?”
“Still taking care of me, Esther?” Harry said.
“Old habits die hard.”
Harry nodded without looking at her, snapping his fingers for the waiter to come back, handing him his coat and scarf instead of hanging it on the rack himself the way everyone else did.
“You’re looking good, Esther.” Still not looking at her. “New hairdo?”
Esther smiled. “You noticed,” she said, smoothing the same hair style she’d worn for the last seven years.
“So, my girl said I should bring the papers, Esther. I was quite surprised. Have you changed your mind? Have you decided … ?”
The kid brought Esther’s Manhattan and gave them each a menu. Esther lifted her glass. “To your future, Harry,” she said, waiting for him to lift his glass, listening to the sound of the glasses as they touched, remembering the champagne she always shared with Harry on their anniversaries, the little robin’s-egg-blue box with the white satin bow he’d slip out of his pocket, at least until the last few anniversaries, the one when he was away, the one he just forgot, and the last one, the one he spent with Cheryl.
Harry picked up his menu, and the moment he put it down, the damn kid appeared, that shit-eating grin on his face.
“I’ll start with the risotto,” Harry told him, more interested in what he was going to eat for dinner than he was in Esther. “And then the steak, medium rare.”
He didn’t even ask Esther what she was going to have. But the kid was looking at her, waiting. That was as good as it was going to get around here, Esther thought, waving her hand back and forth. “Nothing for me.”
“Esther,” Harry said. “Come on. Have a bite.”
“I’m on that diet you kept talking about, Harry.”
“The liquid diet?”
Esther picked up her drink. “Yes, Harry, that one.”
Why was it always Esther who was supposed to go on a diet? Didn’t Harry ever look at himself in the mirror? But Cheryl didn’t mind. She loved Harry just the way he was, old enough to be her father, fat enough to play Santa without padding, and with an income in the neighborhood of two million a year, give or take. Esther figured Harry was doing the giving, Cheryl the taking, as much of it as she could.
If Esther thought Harry would have trouble eating in front of her, she would have been sorely mistaken. But then again, she’d been mistaken about so many things, hadn’t she? And what did it matter now anyway?
After a third Manhattan, the second that Harry knew about, she decided to let Harry pay the bill. The kid didn’t seem so bad anymore. Let Harry leave him a big tip. Esther no longer cared. She excused herself to go to the ladies’ room while Harry looked at the dessert menu. When she got back, no sooner had she sat down when Harry took the agreement out of his pocket and handed it across the table.
“Cheryl and I …” he began, then changed his mind. “I really appreciate this, Esther. And I’m sure you’ll agree I’ve been generous. There’s more than enough—”
He stopped again when she held up a hand. “Water under the bridge, Harry.” She picked up the pen, signed and initialed wherever it was indicated to do so, then folded the document and handed it back to her husband.
“Ready?” he asked, anxious to go now, anxious to get home to Cheryl and show her the signed papers, open a bottle of champagne, toast to their future. Esther nodded. She’d given him what he wanted. That was what this dinner had been about and she’d done it. Esther dabbed on some lip gloss and stood, picking up her coat from the back of her chair, slipping it on without Harry’s assistance, as the kid helped Harry into his coat, a new one, Esther noted, perhaps another gift from Cheryl, a gift paid for with Harry’s money.
Still, she took his arm as they left the restaurant, the way she always used to. It felt good. It felt right, and besides, the streets were slippery and she didn’t want to fall. She’d left her boots back at the apartment. She’d wanted to look nice tonight, her last night with Harry. They walked a block north, to Jane Street, and Esther looked down at the cobblestones showing in patches where the traffic had melted the snow. Twenty-two, she thought as they crossed the street, the one where she’d killed Harry with a loose cobblestone. Why had she been so foolish, living on fantasies of revenge instead of moving on with her life?
“I’d like to go on alone,” she said when they arrived at the next corner.
Harry patted his coat where the signed papers would be in the inside pocket of his jacket. “Thank you, Esther. You always were a good sport.”
“Kiss me goodbye, Harry. Kiss me as if it were the last time.”
Harry bent. Esther got up on her toes. Harry was surprised at the force of her kiss, how tightly she held him, and then at the sight of the tears in her eyes when she finally stepped back.
He headed east, toward the bus stop on Greenwich Street. Esther shook her head. She knew him so well. There probably wasn’t a thing about Harry she didn’t know, including where he’d be generous and exactly where he’d scrimp. As if you could take it with you, she thought, lifting her arm to hail a cab.
Actually, it would be Esther taking it with her, all the money she’d embezzled from him all those years as his bookkeeper, a thousand here, a thousand there. It had added up to quite a sum in the twenty-eight years she’d run her husband’s office and done his books.
Esther checked her watch. Feeling a bit lightheaded, she regretted for the moment that she hadn’t eaten, the food on the plane would be so bad. But then she remembered that her ticket was first class. The food might not be so bad after all, and they’d be pouring champagne even before takeoff. She saw a cab a few blocks away and reached into her purse for the little pot of lip gloss and dropped it, along with the syringe of epinephrine she’d taken from Harry’s pocket when she’d hugged him, between the grates of the sewer, two more things she wouldn’t need again.
The cab pulled up and Esther settled herself in the backseat, telling the driver to take her to JFK. Everything was right on schedule. She had plenty of time to catch her flight, the bus wouldn’t be at the corner of Greenwich and Horatio Streets for another five or six minutes, and by that time Harry would be dead.
Nine, Esther said to herself, eyes closed, smiling, the one first called “Nut Allergy” and then “Nuts to You,” the one in which Esther adds peanut oil to her lip gloss and kills Harry with a kiss. It had always been her very favorite.
IF YOU CAN’T STAND THE HEAT
BY LAWRENCE BLOCK
Clinton
She felt his eyes on her just about the time the bartender placed a Beck’s coaster on the bar and set her dry Rob Roy on top of it. She wanted to turn and see who was eyeing her, but remained as she was, trying to analyze just what it was she felt. She couldn’t pin it down physically, couldn’t detect a specific prickling of the nerves in the back of her neck. She simply knew she was being watched, and that the watcher was a male.
It was, to be sure, a familiar sensation. Men had always looked at her. Since adolescence, since her body had begun the transformation from girl to woman? No, longer than that. Even in childhood, some men had looked at her, gazing with admiration and, often, with something beyond admiration.
In Hawley, Minnesota, thirty miles east of the North Dakota line, t
hey’d looked at her like that. The glances followed her to Red Cloud and Minneapolis, and now she was in New York, and, no surprise, men still looked at her.
She lifted her glass, sipped, and a male voice said, “Excuse me, but is that a Rob Roy?”
He was standing to her left, a tall man, slender, well turned out in a navy blazer and gray trousers. His shirt was a button-down, his tie diagonally striped. His face, attractive but not handsome, was youthful at first glance, but she could see he’d lived some lines into it. And his dark hair was lightly infiltrated with gray.
“A dry Rob Roy,” she said. “Why?”
“In a world where everyone orders Cosmopolitans,” he said, “there’s something very pleasingly old-fashioned about a girl who drinks a Rob Roy. A woman, I should say.”
She lowered her eyes to see what he was drinking.
“I haven’t ordered yet,” he said. “Just got here. I’d have one of those, but old habits die hard.” And when the barman moved in front of him, he ordered Jameson on the rocks. “Irish whiskey,” he told her. “Of course, this neighborhood used to be mostly Irish. And tough. It was a pretty dangerous place a few years ago. A young woman like yourself wouldn’t feel comfortable walking into a bar unaccompanied, not in this part of town. Even accompanied, it was no place for a lady.”
“I guess it’s changed a lot,” she said.
“It’s even changed its name,” he said. His drink arrived, and he picked up his glass and held it to the light, admiring the amber color. “They call it Clinton now. That’s for DeWitt Clinton, not Bill. DeWitt was the governor awhile back, he dug the Erie Canal. Not personally, but he got it done. And there was George Clinton, he was the governor, too, for seven terms starting before the adoption of the Constitution. And then he had a term as vice president. But all that was before your time.”
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