by Mark Gilleo
“Good thing I didn’t eat the ham,” Mr. Stanley said. “You can always count on your mother and her desserts,” he added, drawing air in through his nose.
Clark picked up his glass of eggnog and took a sip. There was a faint hint of booze that wasn’t there a minute ago. “It has a little kick to it. Did you make the eggnog?”
“I’m appalled at the suggestion,” Mr. Stanley said, smiling.
Clark distracted Mr. Stanley with a pat on the back and a look over his shoulder. With his free hand he lifted the shiny container from his neighbor’s hanging jacket pocket.
“Look familiar?” Clark asked.
Mr. Stanley swiped the flask out of Clark’s hand and looked around suspiciously. “Of course it does. You don’t carry something in your pocket for three decades without knowing what it looks like.” He twisted off the top and took a slug.
Clark smelled his eggnog and took another sip. “Probably improved the taste.”
“That’s the Christmas spirit.”
Ariana’s husband arrived with a quiet knock and Clark moved to the door. A familiar face smiled under the porch light and Clark pushed open the storm door.
“Nazim. Good to see you.”
Nazim flashed a brief smile and gave Clark a disingenuous hug. His waiflike build was barely large enough to reach around Clark’s shoulders. “I thought you were coming back next week.”
“I was, but I decided to come home early to surprise my mother.”
“How was your trip? How was the competition?”
“Great. Really great. We didn’t win, but we made a good showing for Virginia Tech.”
“Good. Good. You know, there is no substitute for foreign travel to learn more about yourself and your own country.”
“You’re right. Please come in.”
“Only for a minute.”
Nazim quickly greeted Maria Hayden as Clark sat back down. Mr. Stanley gave Clark a nod in the direction of Nazim, covertly making a face of disdain.
Nazim moved towards his wife and whispered in her ear. “It’s time to leave.”
Ariana looked up at her husband. “Just a few more minutes. Let me finish the dessert. I don’t want to be rude.”
Nazim locked eyes with his wife for a second and then put his hand on his daughter’s head. “How is my favorite girl this evening?” Liana looked up at her father and reached for his dark beard. Nazim grabbed his daughter and put her on his forearm.
Maria Hayden came out of the bedroom with her digital camera flashing. She took one of Nazim and Liana, father holding his daughter like a prized possession. She snapped a picture of Clark and Mr. Stanley sitting shoulder-to-shoulder.
“Let’s have a group picture,” Maria said. “Everyone stand in front of the Christmas tree in the corner.”
The people in the room took little steps across the tiny living room, dancing around the coffee table, finding their place in front of the artificial tree with tacky reflective pink tinsel.
“Smile,” Maria said.
Maria took the picture. “Now I want to be in one,” she said.
Ariana stepped forward and changed places with her. She looked through the viewfinder and took a step back. With everyone in focus, Ariana pushed the button and heard the fake shutter sound of the digital camera impersonating its manual predecessor. Ariana shared the picture with Maria and put the digital camera on the table. “We have to get going. Thank you for inviting us.”
“Thank you Ariana. Thank you for everything.”
“You’re welcome.”
Maria Hayden pulled her neighbor toward the corner of the room. “Can I ask a question?”
“Sure.”
“Can you see my hair?”
“Sure I can,” Ariana answered. “It looks wonderful this evening.”
“No, I mean, I feel it growing out of my scalp,” she answered in a rising voice. As eyes turned towards her, she scratched at her head and repeated herself several times, her voice reaching a crescendo that overpowered the Christmas CD. And just as suddenly as her voice had risen, it dropped to a whisper before she added, “I hope no one notices.”
“No, Maria, you look fine,” Ariana answered, smiling to the room and taking Maria by the elbow. “Now, let’s see if we can get you your medicine before I leave.”
Clark watched as his mother performed her ever-frequent ritual of a mental meltdown. The Christmas party was officially over.
There is crazy, and then there is crazy.
Chapter 3
Ariana turned on the nightlight and closed the door to her daughter’s room. She walked down the carpeted hall towards the light stretching out from the plastic chandelier over the dining room table. Her husband’s chair was empty and she quietly called out his name. No response. As Ariana turned the corner to the kitchen and reached for the knob on the cabinet over the counter, eight hundred pages of advertising crashed into her rib cage, sucking the wind from her lungs. As his wife doubled over, Nazim raised the thick Yellow Book with both hands and hit her on her back, driving her body to the floor.
“Don’t you ever disobey me in front of others again.”
Ariana coughed. There was no blood. This time. She tried to speak but her lips only quivered. Her thick-framed glasses rested on the floor, out of reach. Her brain fought to make sense of what happened, what had set her husband off. It could have been anything. But every curse had its blessing, and for Ariana the blessing was the fact that Nazim didn’t hit her in front of Liana. A blessing that the child didn’t see her mother being punched. The reason was simple. Nazim was afraid of his daughter. Afraid of what she could say now that she could speak.
The curse was that Ariana never knew when she had crossed the line. She never knew when the next blow was coming. She merely had to wait until they were alone to learn her fate for past indiscretions.
Ariana gasped slowly for air. She didn’t cry. The pain she felt in her side wasn’t bad enough to give her husband the satisfaction.
“When I say it is time to leave, it is time to leave. There is no room for negotiation in this marriage.”
Ariana panted as her mind flashed back to the Christmas party. She immediately realized her faux pas. “I didn’t want to be rude to Maria. She spent days making dessert. She is old. Do we not respect our elders anymore?”
Nazim pushed his wife onto the floor with his knee, a reaction Ariana fully expected. “You are my wife. This is about you and me. Our neighbor has nothing to do with it.” Nazim looked down at Ariana sprawled on the linoleum and spit on her with more mock than saliva.
“Maria is my friend.”
“Well, her son is coming home and she doesn’t need you.”
Nazim dropped the Yellow Book on the counter with a thud and went to the basement. Ariana gathered herself, pushing her body onto all fours and then pulling herself up by the front of the oven. She looked at the Yellow Book and her blood boiled. It was like getting hit by a cinderblock with soft edges. When it hit flush, it left very little bruising. As her husband intended. For a man of slight build, Nazim could generate power when a beating was needed.
Ariana took inventory of herself, one hand propping herself up on the counter. She had been beaten worse. Far worse. By other men before she met her husband. Her eyes moved beyond the Yellow Pages and settled on the knife set on the counter, the shiny German steel resting in its wooden block holder. She grabbed the fillet knife, caressed the blade with her eyes, and then pushed the thought from her mind.
Her husband called her from the basement and she snapped out of her momentary daze. “Coming,” she answered, putting the knife back in its designated slot in the wood. She knew what was coming next. It was always the same. A physical assault followed by a sexual one. She reached up her skirt and removed her panties. There was no sense in having another pair ripped, even if robbing Nazim of the joy would cost her a punch or two.
Christmas, the season of giving, she thought as she made her way down the stairs into th
e chilly basement.
Maria Hayden took a shower in the main bathroom on the first floor. The aqua-green porcelain of the tub and toilet were leftovers from the fifties that easily gave the bathroom the title of ugliest room in the house. Maybe the ugliest room on the block. The bathroom was wedged between the front door and a small room that had once been Clark’s bedroom. His room was now a sewing vestibule. A piece of furniture his mother referred to as a hobby table combined with a chair and a bookcase to occupy most of the floor space. Oil paintings of flowers and mountain scenery now hung on the wall where Redskins posters and a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Calendar once held prime real estate.
Clark was sitting at the dining table near the entrance to the kitchen when he realized his mother was taking a shower in the old bathroom. He cocked his head to the side and closed his eyes for a moment. He got up from the table and walked into his mother’s bedroom, past the large post bed, and clicked the light on the master bathroom switch. It was exactly as he thought. Exactly as he had feared.
The master bathroom had been a labor of love. His father, with the help of two fellow blue-collared acquaintances, had worked on the addition for nearly a year. The bathroom and the new walk-in closet protruding from the back of the house were two exceptions to the original rectangular shape of the house. And Charles Hayden had died a month after laying the last tile.
Clark looked around at the new fixtures and the unused tub with whirlpool jets. A tear welled up in his eye, but didn’t fall, the salty fluid refusing to break the edge of his eyelid.
A tube of toothpaste was on the sink and Clark picked it up. The tube was hard, almost petrified. There were remnants of stubble in his father’s razor on the sink top under the mirror. His father’s eyeglasses were on the small towel shelf, his deodorant lying on its side in the medicine cabinet. Clark wanted to cry, to enjoy a full-fledged wheezing tear-feast, but didn’t. It was a promise he had made to his father to be strong. It was a battle he had fought daily for over a year before conquering his emotions.
He thought about putting the glasses, the deodorant, and the razor back under the sink where he had put them a dozen times before. What the hell? he thought, it’s Christmas. He turned out the lights and returned to the living room.
The cordless phone on the nightstand rang twice before the sleeping hand reached over and knocked it from its perch. Nazim mumbled. Ariana answered with equal gibberish. The phone continued to ring. Beneath the edge of the dust skirt on the queen mattress, the black phone with the digital display rang one last time before the searching hand found its mark.
“Hello,” the still sleeping voice said.
“Assalamu alaikum,” rang an unforgettable voice from the past.
“Wa alaikum assalam,” the now waking voice said on automatic pilot. Arabic was neither participant’s mother tongue, but it was the language of Islam, and that was enough.
“It is time.”
The mattress shook as the dark form of a body shot into the upright position on the bed.
“How many?”
“Four.”
“When?”
“Be ready. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.”
The phone went dead.
A minute of silence passed in the darkness. The mattress shook again and Nazim stood and walked to the bathroom to relieve himself.
“Do you need anything?” Ariana asked dutifully. It was the last offer she would ever make to her husband.
“No,” he answered as the bathroom door shut. Five minutes later Nazim was asleep.
Ariana went to the kitchen and quietly opened the pantry door. She stood on the small stepping stool and rummaged through the top shelf, gently pushing aside jars of flour, sugar, and wheat germ. Her husband hadn’t cooked or cleaned in his life, certainly not in their lives together. She knew the only place to hide something was right under his nose, in a place he would never scratch.
The small glass jar with the airtight seal read “cleaner” on the side, written with magic marker on a strip of masking tape.
Ariana returned to the bedroom and sat on the bed with her back to her husband. She slipped on a pair of green rubber gloves from the kitchen and listened to her husband fall into his rhythmic snore. She watched him sleep and waited for his mouth to droop open, waiting for the snoring that had kept her awake year after year. Then, in minute doses, she sprinkled in her magic potion. She waited, repeated the task, and waited again. It wouldn’t be long.
Nazim woke gasping. He reached for his wife and grasped at the empty comforter. He turned the switch on the light next to the bed, but the cord was unplugged. His throat burned. His eyes watered. He strained for oxygen.
“Help,” he said, sucking in air as he staggered out of bed.
Ariana turned on a small light on the dresser. She was sitting in a plain wooden chair in a t-shirt and pink cotton panties. Smiling. “There is no help.”
Nazim grabbed at his throat.
“What have you done?”
“It was done long ago. Long before we met. You were merely a pawn,” she said without emotion.
Ariana watched as Nazim fought for air, for the strength to summon rage. “You bitch!” he gurgled. He grabbed the clock radio and threw it at Ariana. His wife ducked as the black plastic box smashed into the wall.
Ariana stood and stepped towards him. Nazim staggered forward and reached out with both hands, his death rage focused on his wife’s neck. He never got close. Ariana hit her husband in the nose with the palm of her hand and felt the bone crush. Nazim’s head snapped back and Ariana hit him in the solar plexus with a reverse punch polished by years of training. Nazim’s lungs emptied and he began making a deflating noise. He stooped over and Ariana slapped both of her husband’s ears with cupped hands, bursting one of his eardrums. Now in total control, control she had fought to exercise for far too long, Ariana snapped her hips and drove a back kick into Nazim’s neck. As her husband wheezed, she finished him off with a front kick to the crotch.
By the time Nazim’s hands reached his groin, he was dead.
Chapter 4
The chill from the top of the closed toilet lid gave Ariana goosebumps as she looked down on her husband’s slim body in the bathtub. Her ex-husband, she thought to herself with satisfaction. Nazim had been dead ten hours and rigor mortis had already set in around the jaws and in the torso. His eyes were closed and his body seemed to take on the color of the off-white bathroom tiles like a chameleon blending into its surroundings. Gravity played its law-of-physics card and blood pooled on Nazim’s backside, the lowest part of his body. His arms were folded over his chest. A faint purple bruise surrounded his Adam’s apple. His nose was obviously broken, the bone jagging left, the nostrils laced with traces of dried blood.
But it was a clean death. As clean as she could make it and still keep it up close and personal. She had wiped her husband’s face with wet tissues dipped in bleach and removed most of the blood while it was still fresh. The tissues went down the toilet. She wiped two additional drops of blood from the warped hardwood floors in the bedroom and flushed the incriminating evidence. She knew that there would be traces of blood on the micro-level, but she didn’t care. A few drops of blood in any home could be explained by a bloody nose, a cut on the finger, shaving with shaky hands. Besides, by the time the authorities started looking for her, it would be too late.
The only real crime scene was the body. As clean as the bedroom was, if the police arrived for reasons she could not imagine, she would have some explaining to do. She checked her watch. The body would be gone soon enough. Long before the temperature in the corpse began to rise again from decomposition. Long before the smell from rotting flesh alerted the neighbors.
She wished she had more time. If she had, she would take care of the body where it was. The flesh, bones, and hair were no match for a bath of hydrochloric acid. But getting her hands on a few gallons of lethal acid on Christmas Day was going to take more imagination than
just believing in Santa Claus. Time was a gruesome luxury she didn’t have.
She thought about the phone call she had received. She began to wonder long ago if contact with her would ever be made. The first few years of her assignment had passed slowly. Then came 9/11, concealed excitement, and more years of silence. She began to think she had been forgotten forever. But, as she found, it is hard to rest quietly when you are trained to kill and have an I.Q. of 170.
In the hours since her husband’s death, Ariana’s natural state of heightened awareness had switched into overdrive. There were going to be lies to tell. Lies bigger than the one she had been living. After all, she was a housewife and a mother. These were truths. She was also a killer. Her personal tale up until now had only required her to omit one part of the story. From this moment on, each lie would have the potential power to bring her down, to end her service to a higher power. She reminded herself to keep it all straight. One discovered lie and one suspicious person could start a bloodbath.
“Mom,” Liana called out from the other side of the door.
“Just a minute.”
“I need to go potty.”
“Use the one in the hall. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Ariana pulled the shower curtain closed. Her daughter’s voice reminded her that she had a bigger decision to make than what to do with her husband’s body.
Clark stomped his heel into his boot, tied the laces, and stepped outside onto the porch. A thin layer of ice covered the cracked concrete slab and Clark grabbed the iced-over railing as he found his balance. “Christ,” he said, settling himself and checking the content of his jacket pocket.
The branches on a pair of dogwoods in the front yard drooped from the weight of their shimmering coat. Clark maneuvered down the small flight of stairs with his Vibram-soled Timberlands and shuffled his feet on the uneven walk that led to the small driveway. He stopped at his mother’s car and listened to the silence of the middle-class neighborhood on Christmas morning.