Peaceable Kingdom

by Jack Ketchum

  “Put that on the floor or something, will you?”

  She did that too, bent over and set it beside the garbage can and when she stood up again something hit her in the chest and she gasped, something freezing cold sliding down off her chest and over her belly.

  He was laughing. The frosted glass was empty.

  “Ooops. Little spill there. Gee, sorry.”

  “You. . . . !”

  He leaned in close over the bar.

  “You what, Claire? You what? What do you want to call me? You want to call me names? Pour me another beer you dumb little shit and keep your fucking mouth shut. And I want a new glass.”

  She looked down at herself, arms out to her sides. She didn’t know what to do. You could see almost everything through the thin material and the bra was thin too so you could even see her nipples puckered by the cold. He could see them, goddammit. If she brushed at it that would only make it worse, plastering the material to her body. She wanted to cry. She wouldn’t cry. She turned to the freezer to get the glass and that was when she brushed herself off because then he couldn’t see.

  She drew the beer and set it in front of him on the bar. And almost wasn’t surprised when he lifted it and threw it all over her again.

  But when he laughed the second time, then she did cry. She couldn’t help it. It just happened. Whether it was humiliation or frustration or fear or all of these together she just stood there, eyes closed and quietly sobbing.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  She wouldn’t. If she couldn’t see him then she could almost pretend he couldn’t see her.

  “I said, look at me, dammit!”

  She opened her eyes. What she saw was a man enjoying himself immensely. She couldn’t understand. Why was he putting her through this? Shouldn’t he be running away right now? Wasn’t he at all worried about the cops?

  How could anybody be like this?

  “You stink of beer, Claire. Clean yourself off. You smell like a slut. Use that hand towel there. Dip it in some water. That’s right. You have nice nipples, Claire. Say thank you, sir. I’m the customer. The customer’s always right.”

  “Thank you.”

  She plucked the material out in front of her and wiped at it with the wet rag. The blouse was going to be stretched and ruined.

  “Thank you, sir, Claire.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Better. Now hand me that spindle.”

  “The what?”

  “Jesus Christ, Claire, you’ve worked in bars for how long? The spindle. The goddamn spindle. The spike you stack your checks on, for chrissake!”

  “I . . .”

  She didn’t want to do this. Her heart was suddenly hammering. She hated those things. Always had. Even just to look at them. The spike was maybe eight inches long rising straight up out of a thick coil of wire at its base. This one was set at the service station below one of the wine racks and whenever she had to climb up onto the counter to get to one of the more pricey wines up top she had visions of losing her balance and falling right onto it, of being impaled. She could see it. Ridiculous, horrible way to die.

  The spike was as sharp and thick as an icepick.

  “Please . . . I don’t . . .”

  “Ah, begging. I like that.”

  “Those things scare me, okay?”

  “Why? You use it every day.”

  “They just do.”

  “Maybe I want to scare you.”

  “What? Please . . .”

  “Maybe I want to scare you. Maybe I don’t like you one goddamn bit, Claire, and maybe I want to scare you so much I could almost come in my pants just thinking about it? What if the money’s only a kind of perk? Maybe this is what it’s all about. You ever consider that, you dopey whore?”

  “Why . . . ?”

  “Why? Because I want to. Because this gun tells us both I can. You hear me, you ugly fuck? You get ugly when you cry, Claire, you know that? You want to know why? Because after me you’ll never feel safe again, Claire. Never. Not at work, not at home. Nowhere. Because that’s my wish for the whole fucking world and for you, Claire, in particular. Now hand me the goddamn spindle!”

  She could barely see him through the tears but she could feel the heat of his anger reach out to her across the bar. For a split second she imagined him bursting into flame. Where did all this come from? Why? What had she done?

  David thought, if she hates me for it, so be it. I have to see her.

  He crushed out the cigarette and stepped down off the brownstone.

  “I want to show you how we’re gonna do this, Claire. Stop blubbering, for chrissake. Take one of those cocktail napkins there. Wipe your goddamn nose. You’re gonna do it once first, just so you can see how hard it is, and then it’s my turn. See, I put my hand on the bar, palm down, just like this. Then you pick up the spindle. You raise it over the center of my hand to exactly the level of this beer mug, no lower and no higher. Lower’s cheating. Higher and it’ll never work. Then you try to spike me.”

  “I can’t . . .”

  “Sure you can. I’ll give you some incentive. You spike me and the game’s over right now and you get to keep whatever’s in your tip jar. I don’t think you will, though. Like I say, it’s hard. Assuming you don’t, then I get three tries. I miss all three, you keep whatever’s in your tip jar. I don’t miss . . . well, then you’re shit out of luck, Claire. Now pick up the spindle. And remember, the gun’s in the other hand so you don’t want to be thinking about doing anything else with it other than playing our little game.”

  He watched her eyes. The eyes always flickered when they made their move. The eyes were a dead giveaway. But he didn’t even need the eyes this time. Instead of bringing it straight on down she raised it a half inch first so it was an easy thing to pull his hand away. Gave it a lot of force, though. She was game, he gave her that much. He freed the spindle from the bar.

  “Okay. My turn.”

  “No. Please. Just take the money. Just leave me alone, please? Enough, all right? All right??”

  The husky voice had turned into a whine. The eyes were red with tears.

  He smiled.

  “Not enough, Claire. Not all right. But what are you worried about? You saw how tough it is. I’ll probably lose anyway, right? Of course maybe I won’t.”

  “I can’t, please . . .”

  “You can, Claire. You have to. See the gun? See this tubing at the end? It’s called a silencer. I made it myself. That means I can shoot you three or four times if I want to without even killing you, you dumb piece of shit and nobody’s going to hear it, the neighbors upstairs will never be the wiser. And that, Claire, is a world of pain, I promise you. You want it to go down that way? Fine by me. Different game is all. Nastier.”

  “Oh, Jesus! Why . . . ?”

  “You know the little pffttt sound silencers always make in the movies? Doesn’t happen. More like car door closing. So what’ll it be?”

  She thought of her widowed mother in Queens and how in another month it would be Christmas and then of her sister married three months almost to the day and pregnant out in Oregon and that she’d never visited, thought of the paintings just finished and half-finished and of David still not free of her nor her of him and she thought about the kitten who curled between her feet each night and who would feed her and take care of her and apprehended something of what the world would be like without her in it, an almost impossible concept just an hour ago but glimpsed now for a moment and thought I’m so afraid, I’m so afraid of what I won’t get to see and she put her hand down on the bar.

  . . .and now his control is complete. He can see it in her eyes. He can see she knows a truth he’s known all along, that there is no help in this world, that what will happen will happen and no amount of pleading to God or Jesus or to the milk of human kindness will get you any goddamn where at all, that in the face of loathing as deep and strong as his is she is just another worker ant in an anthill he can bring down in a
second, crush beneath his feet at any time he wishes—her hand on the bar says all of this to him, and the temptation is there to do it to her on the very first plunge of the spike, to bring it instantly into even more stark perspective for her, the perspective of flesh, of spilled blood, of pain.

  Yet he resists that. He lets her pull away and listens to her gasp and the dull thud of the spindle against the bar and raises it again and watches her hand slide across the bar to submit a second time and wonders, is she hopeful? does she see an end to this? because he seems to have missed? That this might be true is delightful to him too because he can wipe it all away so quickly, he has lied again and he is very good at this, he has had practice and if hope is not yet there he can place it in her heart on this second try, bait his trap for the hungry animal which is all she is after all—hungry for the truth of what he knows to be.

  And this time he can practically hear her heart beating, racing as she pulls away because yes! he can feel the hope there coiled in her like a snake—he has missed by a mile it seems to her and he can smell the stink of hope, its sudden sweet reek as he positions the spike above her hand a third and final time and then, prescient and sly and born of months and years watching his back, trusting his senses, he glances out the plate glass window to the street . . .

  “Who the hell is that?” he says.

  And at first she can only think it’s part of this game he’s playing, this insane evil fucked-up game and she doesn’t look up at all but only at her hand on the bar waiting for the courage to pull it away if she can a third time but then the words and the tone of the words seem to spill through to her and what she hears is unexpected, wrong in these circumstances, a flat even tone as if he’d said well that’s interesting, it’s raining out and she looks first at him and then at where he’s looking and sees David on the corner by the closed dark flower shop across the street. Their eyes meet and he’s scowling, puzzled and she thinks, oh no, oh God no, I was so close, I might have finished this here and now. She remembers seeing him down on the street across from her apartment building many nights ago and drawing away from the curtain before he glimpsed her at the window and remembers thinking how terribly sad it was for both of them and how wasteful that she could never, ever have come out to meet him and thinks David, why in hell are you here again? what in hell have you done now?

  She holds his gaze and slowly shakes her head. Don’t even think it. The scowl disappears. Instead the eyes plead with her, confused and uncertain. Eyes so well known and loved. She needs to deny these eyes. For both of them.

  “Who is he, Claire?”

  “My . . . boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend.”

  “Ex?”

  “We’ve broken up.”

  “So what’s he doing here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The man seems to think a moment.

  She watches David take a step closer to the curb. She shakes her head again. No, goddammit! Don’t do this! Please, you fucking lovely idiot, stay the hell away!

  “I think you’d better invite him in, Claire.”

  “No.”

  “Oh yes. You have to.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Yes you will. Or it’s you first and then him. Twenty seconds is all I need. He’ll never know what hit him.”

  He closes the briefcase beside him and snaps it shut and slides the spindle down the bar well beyond her reach. He’s ready to go now. The game is over. All of it over now unless she brings David into this and if she does, won’t it just begin again? to what end? Why does he want this? What can he hope to gain? He can walk out the door right now. Free and clear. Just walk away.

  Her eyes go back to David. To hold him there. Don’t move.

  “Do it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You will.”

  She thinks—hard and fast as best she can. She will not do this to him. And there seems only one way to do that. To convince him that she’s furious at him for being there. He ought to be able to believe that. He ought to have anticipated that reaction from her. She has every right to be furious—though she’s not. Though seeing him again even under these terrible circumstances feels so tender that what she’d like to do is embrace him, hug him, sob into his shoulder not just for what this man has put her through tonight but for all they’ve lost and all they had. To do that one more time again. What she’d sworn she’d never do.

  She moves out past the service station and turns and heads past the man to the door.

  Outside on the corner David sees her long purposeful familiar stride but the look on her face is unfamiliar. It’s a look he can’t quite read. When he’d thought he knew them all. He’s only just arrived here but already something feels wrong about her and he thinks, who’s this guy in there? New boyfriend? Boss? But boyfriend doesn’t feel right. Of course it’s possible he doesn’t want to admit that she might already have one. Might already have replaced him.

  But boyfriend doesn’t feel right. Nor does boss. Something about her face, the look in her eyes.

  A car passes and then another. Claire is at the lock now.

  He steps out into the street.

  Claire looks up from the lock and he’s crossing, coming toward her and she feels the blood rush to her face, pulse pounding and she flings open the door because she will not expose him to this goddammit, she will not permit that and summons the most dismissive angry tone of which she is capable and shouts out into the still night air.

  “DAVID! GO! GET . . .”

  . . . OUT OF HERE! is what she means to say. . . .

  . . . but the sheer sudden size of her voice startles the man inside and he thinks . . . HELP! THE POLICE! she’s calling for help the stupid bitch so he turns and fires and the flower blooms wet in her back and he hears the silencer like a door closing exactly as he’s told her it would be and she falls spilled to one side, the glass door wedged open by her hips and he pulls the briefcase off the bar thinking the fucking cop was right, he’s finally had to shoot somebody and the boyfriend is almost across the street closing the gap between them and as he steps over her body he sees her eyes flutter stunned and wide and the man is yelling Claire! Claire! loud enough to wake the dead, the man not exactly understanding yet he thinks but there’s no way to know what he’ll do once he does so as he turns a sharp right headed toward the subway at 72nd he fires again and watches, for just a moment, a second flower bloom across the man’s chest, watches him sink to his knees and fall and reach for her, the man’s hand settling in her flung tangled hair along the sidewalk, his hand opening and closing in strands of hair, unable to reach further.

  He doesn’t know if he feels fear. He might. Maybe he should.

  But he knows he feels good.

  David lies sprawled along the sidewalk. The sidewalk feels oddly warm to him. It ought to feel cold this time of year. He tries to move but can’t. He tries to breathe and barely can. Is this shock? Death? What? He sees her lying near him in the doorway. If he focuses on her, on Claire, he might live, someone might come by.

  That he might even want to live disgusts him.

  She stares up, blinks into empty sky.

  Tears again.

  So many tears in this city. So much heartbreak.

  Then none.

  Thanks to Amy, Mila, and Adonis

  The Rose

  for Beth and Richard

  She was his earth, his ground. He had cast his seed to her again and again.

  He awoke feeling that he knew what was necessary, that what she needed was a kind of light both real and metaphoric, that she needed to get out into the world far more than he had allowed himself to trust her to do.

  He decided he would take her.

  When they stepped off the bus into early afternoon sunlight he saw how the city had changed, none of it for the better. It was only a town, really, that had tried to bloom into a city during the Fifties and arguably had succeeded for a while, but now the war babies who had driven its boom years, who had c
aused its schools to rise out of the vacant lots and farmland and crammed its movie palaces and soda shops, had fled and left its potholed, littered streets to time and waste.

  Still he felt at home here.

  He took her to Mabel’s Coffee Shop, where as a boy he had sat over Coke and crumb bun waiting for Miss Lanier, his accordion teacher, to finish with the pigtailed little redhead who had the lesson just before his on the third floor across the street. They had lunch there at the counter—she a hamburger from the grill and he a tuna sandwich with a thin slice of pickle.

  Miss Lanier was gone. Cancer. Miss Lanier had gone to earth. And he had not seen his accordion in thirty-five years.