Poison

by Galt Niederhoffer

  A boat must cross a busy bay that spills from the body of water they have just traveled. The boat is a small and sturdy thing that looks like a storybook tug, weighed down by the luggage of its travelers and manned by a captain who appears to be more interested in the waves than his passengers.

  * * *

  They arrive at the Dunmore at dinnertime, sedated and exhausted. The hotel has earned its role as cherished family destination, not only because of the chocolate milkshakes for which Alice would travel any distance but because of its understated elegance, because it is both beautiful and unadorned, and because it has earned the hallowed role of family tradition.

  The hotel is owned and run by a stylish young couple—he cooks and she oversees the business. Every meal is served family-style on a chic bohemian terrace that overlooks a beach with rose-tinted sand, carved from the pink rubble of the coral reefs that surround them. The charming plantation-style house is a modest bric-a-brac mansion, filled with Moroccan tiles, fading Parisian sofas, and eclectic, colorful paintings that look like Gauguin could have painted them during his early training. The house is set in a band of beach with sand soft enough for building castles and long enough to run on, that casts an ever-changing kaleidoscope of rose and golden light depending on the sun’s angle. It is, in turns, stirring and tranquil.

  Cass stops to greet the hosts and exchange a cordial catch-up. She struggles to project her usual grace, but she has a more pressing problem.

  “Great news!” says Claude. She smiles with delight. “You’ll be happy to know that one of the cabanas opened up.”

  “No,” Cass says too quickly. “I reserved two rooms in the main house.”

  “I know,” says Claude. “But we had a cancellation this morning. And I remembered how much you loved the privacy of the cabanas.”

  “Claude, that’s very kind of you,” says Cass, “but we couldn’t. Really.”

  “We insist.” She smiles, enjoying her largesse, then adds, “Gratis. It’s wonderful to have you back.”

  “Really, we prefer the main house.” Cass is visibly unnerved by the change of venue. She had counted on the safeguard of public witness, the proximity of earshot.

  But Ryan quickly intervenes, apologizes for Cass’s brusqueness, explaining to their hosts in hushed tones that Cass has not been well of late and that the trip is designed to restore her nerves and temper. “The cabana will be perfect.”

  “You make me sound like some sort of convalescing Victorian lady,” she says as they wander toward the cabana. “The ones they stashed in attics and found crawling around, sickened by the wallpaper.”

  “If the shoe fits,” Ryan says.

  “Ryan,” says Cass.

  But he darts ahead before she can protest, hoisting the baby to his hip, throwing his shoes off playfully, and disappearing down the sandy stairs that lead to the ocean. Alice and Pete peel off as well, scouring the resort for familiar faces. Cass exhales as they and Ryan peel off in opposite directions.

  * * *

  Cass finds their cabana and collapses into the new surroundings. It is a small two-room house on the beach with one room for the grown-ups and one for the children. It is close enough to the main hotel to facilitate every convenience, but far enough to afford the privacy for a couple to reconnect, for a family to fortify their bond, or, as the case may be, for a husband to murder his wife without an eyewitness. A wrought iron four-poster bed anchors the master bedroom. The walls are painted a bold shade of cobalt blue, and the sheets are a sumptuous combination of tufted white cotton and fruit-colored rattan linens. The second room has been set up as a children’s nursery and playroom. Two twin beds draped with mosquito nets flank a crib in the middle. An extra cot stands at the ready for fort-building or last-minute sleepover guests. It is paradise for a family, except for the fact that all of them have vacated the premises.

  A text arrives on Cass’s phone. She knows the sender before she reads it. Subject heading is the usual fare, like a teenager playing the role of trusted confidante in a spy caper.

  It begins, “Re: Surveillance.”

  “They’re in,” writes Aaron.

  “Copy,” writes Cass. Just to indulge him.

  “I set your password for you,” he writes. “Just type in your email. The password is: Santos.”

  “Thanks,” she says.

  “Password hint: lab where it all started.”

  “Cool,” she writes. She does not mean it. She wants to end the conversation.

  “Pretty soon you should be getting a live feed from your kitchen, bedroom, and basement whenever motion is detected. Let me know when it’s working.”

  “Thanks,” she says. She is relieved. She has been thorough, proactive. Perhaps she will catch something incriminating, a visit from a suspicious party—Marley rifling through her belongings, planting something in her bedroom.

  A theory is starting to gel about Marley and Ryan’s collaboration. Marley was a plant, her application scripted by Ryan, the details carefully crafted to match Cass and Ryan’s child-care needs and parental aspirations. Hence, Ryan’s vicious attack on the previous person, and his demand for her immediate replacement. Their goal in placing her in the house had two central intentions: one, to contaminate Cass’s food, and two, to make false witness testimony about Cass’s behavior had they succeeded in her murder. Marley would describe the fragile mental state of a “suicidal” woman, the mood swings, the tears, the deterioration. The dutiful nanny, questioned by the cops long before the autopsy. No need to question the husband when the death is deemed a suicide.

  The hotel room has the particular echo of a room with only one person in it, but with the continued reverberation of people recently speaking. The children’s shoes are peppered across the floor, along with their scattered plane clothes. Their bag has been hastily unzipped, stripped of its essentials—bathing suits, flip-flops, beach towels. Cass walks to the window, scans the beach in all directions. She can just make out a gangly leg, sprinting into her periphery, a shock of orange (Pete) and red (Alice) swimsuits moving toward the water en masse with a gaggle of other independent-minded children. But no sign of Ryan or the baby. They are out of view and earshot. Cass leaves the room and sets out for the beach, barefoot. The heat of clay tiles on the patio—and then the hot sand in her toes—helps to ground her to the earth, but instead of the usual relief, she feels increasingly alien.

  Moving quickly toward the water, she surveys her environs. She scans the pink sand and the blue surf, her eyes a roving searchlight. As her eyes adjust to the sun, she can just make out patches of color in a pixelated daydream. Pink sand, white noise, shocks of red on the bathing suits of women and children, and the hypnotic blue of the vast Atlantic Ocean. Families, people in repose, commune with nature. This is what sunshine does to the brain. This is why people need water. Now she locates Alice and Pete, skittering up to the edge of the surf, stopping before the white part. These are her beloved children. They observe her rules even at a distance. But still no sign of Sam or Ryan. She calls their names without luck. He said he was going down to the beach. Where could he have disappeared to so quickly?

  With new alarm, she leaves the beach and heads back to the main house. She traverses the grounds, the wind-worn stairs that rise from the sand, the freshly mowed grass that surrounds the main house, the dusty road that approaches. Her husband and her baby are in none of these places. Not in the lobby of the main house. Not on the green lawn that surrounds the hotel. Not on the hazy dirt road on which they arrived less than an hour ago. Cass grows increasingly perturbed as she scours the hotel grounds. After one more lap, she is frantic. She hurries back toward the beach to collect Pete and Alice, but as her feet meet the sand and she trudges toward her children, she faces, to her great surprise, the objects of her search, her baby and her husband. They sit on the beach in the very place she just recently circled, a bird’s hop from their cabana, not thirty feet from their window. Ryan and Sam are so busy that they barely noti
ce her arrival. They are hard at work on a sand castle, pouring, molding, constructing. The castle, however, is decidedly rough, more of a favela than a fort, as though it was constructed hastily with one or two dumps of a bucket to stand in for evidence, albeit shoddy, of the time they have been working.

  “Where were you?” she says. Her tone is tight with worry and accusation.

  “What do you mean?” Ryan smiles. His smile is bright and oblivious with a hint of outrage—indignation at her indignation.

  “I’ve been looking for you two,” Cass says. “Where were you?”

  “We were right here.”

  “No, you weren’t. I just walked by here.”

  “Look.” He points to the sand castle, as though it ends all further debate, as though the crumbling tower is irrefutable evidence of the time they have accrued there. “We’ve been sitting here, playing this whole time.” And then, the masterful shifting of blame. “We were waiting for you. You must have just missed us.”

  “No,” she says. “I walked by here at least three times in the last twenty minutes.”

  Ryan exhales slowly, a struggle to expel frustration. “Did you expect us to sit in the hotel room? Would you like us all to go crazy? Try to unwind, Cass. That brain of yours needs to think less.”

  Cass does not respond. She is beset by confusion—and the certainty that her husband is lying, actively trying to debunk valid observations, working to cause her to distrust her own senses. Is it possible she was so engrossed in her search that she walked right past him? No, it is not. He is simply continuing his campaign to cause her to disavow her trust in herself, to doubt her own perceptions. In a sense, this is a separate crime, the assault on her confidence, the batteries on her self-respect, the theft of her instincts. What is a person who has been robbed of the power of her own convictions? A fool, a freak, a madwoman? If she acts like a freak and sounds like a freak … is she any different from the thing he calls her? No, she needs to focus now, to double down on her convictions, to refine her blurry but emerging understanding of his method, weapon, and intention.

  “I need to lie down,” she says. “Can you watch Sam for an hour?”

  “Yes,” says Ryan. “That’s a great idea. Take as long as you need, babe. We’re here for you, Cass. For you to get your health back.”

  He is a Method actor now, continuing his performance even after the camera stops. This performance is not for their audience, but rather for Cass and himself.

  “Thanks,” she says. She kisses the baby on both cheeks, inhales the smell of sunscreen. He is busy with his castle and barely notices her departure.

  Cass hurries back to the room, struggles to regain composure. On her way, she stops again at the gaggle of older kids, issues reminders for more sunscreen and distance from the surf, to please be back by five to change, and more kisses to Pete and Alice. The sand is hot in between her toes, and her shoulders already feel burned. She notes these two reminders of her corporal presence as she opens the door to their room. The last thing she remembers is grasping the doorknob. Moments or minutes or hours later, she wakes up, facedown on the bed, her children traipsing back into the room, waking her to join them for dinner. He has expanded his target from her food, to her body, to surfaces.

  * * *

  They are sitting on the patio of the main house, waiting for dinner. Cass looks at the triangular tiles she admired upon arrival, only the patterns within each tile seem to be pulsating at the same rate as her heart. She is focused on the strangest things, but what is strange seems normal. Normal things seem peculiar, tinged with the indescribable silver tint of nightmares, cuing the subconscious brain that something bad could happen at any minute. She is doing her best to appear unchanged so as not to worry the children, watching Ryan’s hands for evidence of sudden movement, for interference with the waiter, for placement of his toxin. But just watching, knowing, is not enough. She must prove it beyond a shadow of doubt, must find another witness. It is testament to how weakened she is that all of this seems normal, that a mother could spend a meal in this way, surrounded by her children, guarding her plate from potential attack by a homicidal husband.

  They have nearly finished eating, a festive meal of sole, string beans, and mashed potatoes, when Cass witnesses the method. His right hand rests on the table or gestures in conversation. His left hand leaves the table and descends, first onto his lap and then into his left pocket. His left hand returns to the table just as dessert is passed. Dessert is a rich chocolate cake in a decadent crème anglaise sauce. As the plates are placed by the waiter, the kids commence their commotion. And Ryan, in the midst of this chaos, lifts his left hand over one plate—sprinkles powder as fine as salt—then hands Cass her slice of cake, the powder mixing easily into the viscous liquid.

  She has no choice, she decides, but accept the plate and test her theory. How else can she know for sure if what she has come to believe is a fact or fiction? Should she willingly ingest poison if only to corroborate her theory, to cloak herself in the shadow of doubt, to meet the burden of proof she will face when she brings charges to cops, to a court of law against her own husband? Moments later, she has her answer: doubled over in her seat, nausea rising from her gut, body crumpled over in pain, fingers twitching as though to the beat of some Satanic drummer.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?” says Alice.

  Pete studies his mother.

  “I’m fine,” she says and smiles. “Just ate too much chocolate.”

  Suspicion crystallizes now into revelation. He has made himself a living weapon, a kamikaze soldier. He is knowingly exposing himself to the substance, personally delivering it like a snake delivering venom, but he will stop just before his own intoxication reaches dangerous levels. His goal is to transfer poison gram by gram, ounce by ounce, until she reaches fatal levels, delivering the weapon in food, in drinks, in clothes, on surfaces, and, when necessary, by hand, on his own person. She thinks back to her research on one particular substance. Arsenic heals before it harms. Was used for wellness before it was used as a weapon. Arsenic, she remembers, is especially adept at dermal absorption and functions on a bell curve, treating the body to a speedy hit before it reaches diminishing returns and becomes a deadly cocktail. But Ryan is not one to spare drama in his adventures. His plan is to hold Cass’s hands and run with her to the edge of a cliff and then, just then, as balance fails, to shove her over the rocky crag and let gravity do the work for him.

  * * *

  Somehow, in her dawning vision, Cass feels something like admiration. Leave it to Ryan to invent a new recipe for murder. A poisoner’s handbook for killing your wife. Leave no trace whatsoever. Destroy her credibility meanwhile, immunize the poisoner to the reports of his victim so that her cries for help fall on deaf ears and, better yet, compound to damn her further. The recipe calls for one woman and a long, slow preparation. Place her in a cooling relationship for at least three years. Marinate with sweetness that tenderizes—sugar and salt in equal parts, equal parts kisses and tears. Then add salt to the sting of your wounds. Soak your woman in promises, dangle these above her head and hold just out of reach. Spice with generous helpings of rage—extra spicy for those who can bear it. Season with splashes of terror. Et voilà. A masterful recipe with the simplest of ingredients.

  * * *

  It is dark now, and Cass is disoriented. She is amped by the impact of his latest attack, her latest ingestion, her “voluntary” consumption. She will not feel coherent again until she is lying in bed later that night with Ryan mounting her from behind, opening her for his pleasure. Cass tries to shove him off as he lifts her from her stomach to her knees and begins rubbing circles into the skin behind her ears and on her temples.

  “Stop!” she says. She pushes him off, but he doubles down on her.

  “Cass, please be quiet.”

  “Ryan, please. Stop doing that!”

  “Oh, baby, you’re so hot right now. Please don’t ruin this also.”

  Every ti
me is the same. Every time is different. She tries to focus on the facts so as to report the details. She must be a journalist now, accurate and objective. She imagines while he is fucking her how she will describe it. The feeling that something foreign has entered her body, that her body must reject it. The nausea curling up her throat. The body’s reflexive effort to expel, the electric nature of the convulsion. The amped, jittery quality in her brain, the vaguely silver hue around her. Every time is the same. Every time is different. Every time it is worse. Is it because she is getting sicker, or because experience is worsened by anticipation? Or because the poison in her body is approaching fatal levels?

  Cass wakes later that night, breathless and sweating. She stands from the bed and clutches her phone, fumbles for information.

  She finds several unopened emails, each one demanding her attention:

  “Movement has been detected in your bedroom,” it announces. The alarming headline is followed by an equally unnerving display. The fuzzy black-and-white image thickens from pixels to a solid. And now, an image of her bedroom, exactly as she left it, but for one fluffy orange cat, striding across the bed with all the pride of a Bengal tiger.

  Another text interrupts Cass’s surveillance. A new message from Aaron, as though he has somehow rigged her phone to alert him whenever she is opening her email. Is he getting these alerts also? His typically annoying subject heading has advanced from “Hey” to “Hey, you” to “Hey, I’m worried about you.” She wishes there were a special chute for friendships you no longer want, for relationships you have come to find more troublesome than rewarding.

  “See anything yet?”

  “Nope, just the cat. She seems to be enjoying the run of the place.”

  “Cool,” he writes. “Glad it’s working.”

  “Thanks again for setting it up.”