Deadweight

by Robert Devereaux

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “I’m married, Danny.”

  “Who is this asshole?”

  “His name’s Frank. Frank Tanner.”

  “You love him?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I guess I do.”

  “The fuck you do. You have to hesitate like that, it ain’t love. Now me, baby,” he took her hair in his hand, bunched it up tight at the back of her neck where she sat on the floor, first contact, her warm sweaty nape making the edge of his hand tingle, making weird thoughts start up inside, “I love you like nobody’s business and you can bet I’m going to prove it to you.”

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “What happened to my daggers? I didn’t expect you’d keep the kriss, the one you jammed into my heart, or maybe you’ve got it enshrined somewhere. But where are the rest of them?”

  “Frank sold them, gave them away, I don’t know.”

  “This Frank fuck has got a lot of nerve, taking over my house, stealing my wife, throwing my shit out, putting his shit in, repainting, recarpeting, new drapes, maybe a new front lawn, mine not good enough for him, letting you overrun the house with your fucking ferns. I want you to tell me all about this Frank.” He put a spin on the word. “Me, I’ll sit right here, you stay the fuck where you are, then you fill me in on you and him, understand?”

  ***

  Karin nodded as best she could. Her hair felt like a clutch of gray-green tufts being pulled from an artichoke heart. When he let her go, her scalp tingled like a knee scrape, unclean from his touch.

  And she told him about Frank, about the trial, how he helped her over the hurdles, legal and otherwise, how they married, their decision to keep the house and the property at Chiquita Lake, how things had disintegrated since then, but not about her graveyard visits becoming more frequent nor about her ability to bring plants—and now, it seemed, something worse—back to life. She skirted around Danny’s death, his burial, couldn’t bring herself to mention them or even allude to them. This was all a bad dream. Danny was not alive, naked and streaked with gore, sitting back like some slovenly house guest and staring at her through eyes that flickered like the fires of hell. Wolf—or some demonic clone with no hint of kindness in his nature—was not bunching his brow toward her, could not be baring his teeth through a ragged black hole and rolling a low growl at the back of his throat. And her next-door neighbor was not lying, mutilated, ripe-smelling as an infant, on her kitchen floor.

  So her voice rattled on, and Danny nodded and stared, and still she did not wake up. When she was done, he made her show him the house, his hands reaching out to what was left of his life here, touching a jade necklace he’d given her, running his fingers over the smooth green stones. In the study he went straight to the wall of swords, took one down from its mount, said, “Don’t move,” set its unblunted point at her left nipple so that the cotton of her blouse took on sharpness and dug in.

  Karin trembled and felt her year’s strength roll away before the husband she deserved. He pulled back suddenly, saying, “Later for that and only after lots more foreplay, right, baby? But now you’re going to get a blanket out of the hall closet, wrap these swords in it, and put them in the pickup. You and me, we’re going up to the cabin.”

  She did as he said, knowing she was awkwardly toting the instruments of her own death, but feeling none of the power she’d gathered in the past year, nothing of even the resistance she’d managed finally to put up against Jimmy. When the swords were bundled into the back of the pickup, he sat her down at the kitchen table. “Stay here while I take a shower and change into some fresh clothes. I don’t suppose you’ve saved any of mine.”

  Karin shook her head.

  “Fine, I’ll wear some of Frankie boy’s weekend duds, his relax-around-the-house, wipe-the-lawyer-shit-off-me clothes. Wolf, she moves out of this chair or says one damned thing, you tear her throat out.” Karin could tell the dog understood, not just the gist of it, but the exact command. Then Danny walked off and his leaving was like a great weight being lifted.

  She had to think. Gears were spinning wildly in her head but nothing was engaging. Had to leave Frank a note somehow, hope she’d still be alive by the time the police showed up. There was a pad of paper and a pencil by the phone but she’d have to get up to retrieve them. She spun her legs around that way. Too fast. Wolf’s growls revved up and Karin forced herself to look at him. Tensed muscle under blood-slicked fur. A face that begged for an excuse to attack. She’d never liked Wolf, but they’d learned to tolerate each other, avoiding one another while he’d been alive; but now, her dislike was echoing back out of those eyes in spades. Easy, Wolf, I’m just stretching, she said with a look, but he didn’t soften one bit.

  She faced forward again, caressing the silver-patched leaves of a pilea before her. Houseplants covered three fourths of the table, reaching out and intermingling with one another, shades of green splayed out in waves. The remaining few feet, a tongue into the rest of the kitchen, was sufficient for one person to eat at comfortably. She looked out over the plants, reaching for an idea. Maybe remove a few leaves, tear them into strips, spell a word on the tabletop—but Danny would see it and that was the problem with anything she thought of.

  Then it came to her. She quickly took an inventory, hoping there’d be enough—yes, four out of five, but she prayed it would suffice. She began with the pilea, slow and steady so as not to excite Wolf, edging it around the other plants and positioning it on the tongue, far enough from them to be noticed by what she hoped would be a crack police team, but close enough not to seem planned. Moving the other three was a harder task. Two she had to lift to clear the surrounding plants, not easy while remaining in her seat, and she nearly dropped her nephrolepis exaltata, what with the stretch involved getting her fingers around the pot. But at last she maneuvered them into place.

  She had just enough time to fill in the holes she’d left, shifting plants about but being careful not to make the quartet stand out too obviously, when Danny returned. He’d put on Frank’s old pair of jeans, a khaki work shirt, some socks, and his running shoes. “Pretty close fit, me and Frank. When I’m done with you, I’ll have to come back and meet the son-of-a-bitch.” Renewed terror washed over her. Frank wouldn’t stand a chance against Danny, not as he’d been before, and certainly not now.

  She looked at Danny, hair still damp from his shower but otherwise normal. “Please, Danny, leave Frank out of this.” No, not normal. There’d been a kind side to Danny before, not often seen and never admitted to, but there nonetheless, a counterbalance to the ugliness. Now his eyes glinted as if they didn’t curve at all but came to two sharp aqueous points that would prick her fingers if she touched them.

  “Unless you want to die early,” he said, “that’s the last backtalk I’m going to hear out of you.” He came up to her, put his left hand behind her head and wrapped his right around her jaw so that his thumb was on one cheek and his fingers on the other. “Coming back to you—fuck the house, I don’t give a shit about the house—but me and you, we’re like hand and glove, we fit right together just like before. No, don’t move.” His fingers tensed around her jaw. She could feel the nails digging in. “Hand and glove, but my hand is filling up with hate for you right at this moment, it’s just pouring into my fingers, and I got me some claws in the grave, yes I did, so you, Little Miss Leather Glove, had better count on being stretched and tattered and torn before this day is out.” His nails dragged down her face, opening thin furrows. Karin could feel the skin part as his nails trailed down her cheekbone into the flesh beneath. “But before I kill you, and I’m holding back for just this reason—also because I want to torture screams out of you without any spoilsports trying to stop me—I need you to bring me back all the way.”

  She didn’t understand.

  “That’s right. You left something out. I could feel you there, above ground, I know you’re the one who brought me out of the grave; but there’s something
missing inside. So you’re going to lay hands on me up there and finish what you started. You’re going to give me back my soul so I can feel the whole fucking enchilada again, all of it, not just the shit of it, understand?”

  She did her best to nod.

  “Good.” He released her, reached for the paper and pencil, and dropped it on the tongue of the table. “Sit here. Write what I tell you.” Karin changed chairs, not looking at Jimmy, the butt-end of her Silver Torch cactus sticking out of his mouth in a way that made her want to gag. “My dearest darling Frank,” he said, and Karin wrote it. The rest was some nonsense about how she killed Jimmy because he attacked her, and then she killed Nona—she did not dare stop to ask him what that meant—because she’d found out Frank was sleeping with her, that she was going off to San Francisco for a few days, no make that Carmel, good old Clint Eastwood’s stomping grounds, to think about what she’d done and then come back and turn herself in to the cops, that she was afraid she had a screw loose, which explained why she’d killed her first husband and why she’d killed the neighbors, and, oh Frank, she was thinking real serious about killing him too.

  He read it over. “That’ll do her,” he said, sticking an edge of it under the cineraria, the leftmost member of her quartet of saviors. They made the barest arc around the paper, and as Danny hustled her out to the pickup and into the front seat, she prayed for someone with sharp eyes to notice what Danny hadn’t.

  “Buckle up, sugar pie,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to see you hurt before your time.”

  She did and they were on their way, nine-thirty by the clock on the dash, not one neighbor obliging enough to be out, noticing who was driving the truck and what canine long dead was glowering from the side window.

  NINE

  CABIN FEVER

  It was a running joke with them, the whole creaky notion of secretaries and coffee. Peyton Thancher didn’t drink the stuff, bad for his health. Henry Scithers was of the old school and, when he was in the office, he had his coffee promptly at nine and one or there’d be hell to pay. Wilde got his own, a dime at the table by the door, like everybody else, Frank included. But Frank had bumped into Jeannine at Java City one day after work, discovered they shared a love of cappuccino. Ever since, she picked up a steaming cup for him as well as herself, ten sharp.

  Jeannine had just dropped it off, her smile lingering in the air, when the phone rang, his direct line.

  “Frank, it’s Joe Caldone.” His blustery voice always brought Broderick Crawford to mind, though Joe was as trim and baby-faced as Crawford had been overweight and jowly.

  “Joe, what’s up?”

  “Bad news, Frank. I just drew the short straw for a stakeout tonight. Looks like dinner’s a no-go. Sorry for the short notice.”

  “They giving you time off this afternoon?”

  “Some.”

  “Well, look, suppose I knock off early today, I’m in research mode these days, shouldn’t be a problem, you and Laura come over say four or so, we’re done at seven, you and me shoot the shit for however long and you’re on your way? It’s not ideal, but . . .”

  “Okay with Karin, you think?”

  “Hold a sec. I’ll ring her up.” He put Joe on hold, hoping Karin would agree to it, not use it as an excuse to cancel out. The Joe-and-Laura show always brightened up the house for a few days, her with her non-stop brilliance in the face of everything that engaged her attention, him laconic and loving, astounded that this amazing woman, who painted and painted beautifully, who was indeed on her way to major fame, had latched onto him.

  Phone rang. He gave it six rings, then two more for good measure. Strange. Probably out back, but it usually took her four rings tops to reach the kitchen phone.

  “No answer, Joe. She must be in the garden.”

  “You ought to buy her a cellular phone,” he joked.

  “Right, and hook it to the bluebells. Hey, I’m sure it’s okay with her, I’ll call you if it’s not. Why don’t you guys swing by around four?”

  Joe said that would do him fine and hung up. Good man. Happily married, far as anyone could tell. Frank took a coffee break from the State of California v. Joe Malloy, sipped cappuccino, stared out the window at the Capitol Dome, thought of Jeannine’s warm smile, eyes that tempted. The choices were never easy. Let his love for Karin die, break it off clean, and start over. Or sneak behind her back like Ethan Bell, who right at this moment was at the cabin with Marcie and was probably committing first-degree adultery with her, having a hell of a time, and setting the stage for a divorce or, what was perhaps worse, a lifetime of deception. Or take firm hold of his life with Karin, seize every opportunity to demonstrate in no uncertain terms his love for her, to tell her what joy she gave him, not hold back and let her guess. She’d had a lifetime of abuse. She needed him to be a trellis, not wavery, not vague and ill-defined, but rooted and there for her when her own gathering strength needed to retreat and regroup. It was so easy to make such a promise here, the larger trellis of the law around and within him. But it was much harder to deliver on it when he reached home, what with the inertia of their lives, alone and together, working against his efforts.

  He took another sip. Sweet and bitter, milky, a tie to childhood, simpler days. The liquid warmed him and it chilled him too.

  ***

  Ethan Bell had never been happier in his life. Not soft-lipped, slightly neurotic Kim Vega, whose closet he’d had to hide in and whose window at two in the morning he’d had to sneak out of when her parents came home early; not Michele Crevecoeur, the Montreal lovely who’d latched onto him at a party and raped him with her eyes while they rode the interminable Metro to her apartment, her lips steaming French sibilants into his ear, her hands doing things that came close to having them arrested; and certainly not good old reliable Susan, who’d once been interested in sex but, since the twins’ arrival, had lapsed into little more than tolerance of it and him—none of them gave Ethan anywhere near the rush he felt in Marcie’s company.

  “More wine?” he asked. A bottle of chablis, Gallo’s best, glistened like liquid topaz on the hearth.

  Her glass upended. Long neck beautiful in firelight, the smooth curve of skin swooping down to her lovely body, her breasts the most amazing miracle of softness and sweet perfection, on down the planes and dimplings of flesh and hair, the promised places, the claimed, the tasted. Time had ceased here. Eternity filled him. The stress of his work, much as he loved its high energy, was as the dream of some earlier life. Glass came down, one last swallow and a sigh, the shift of her body—a slip of stream over smooth rock—on the blankets they’d laid down in front of the couch not six feet from the fire. Marcie’s right arm elbowed into the cushion. She rested her head, her mussed lovely billows of auburn, in her hand. “Yes, Ethan,” she said. “More. But not wine.”

  He took the empty glass she offered and set it on the hearth, then relaxed back into his mirrored pose, his left arm propping up his head, his naked body turned to reflect the welcoming hip-lyre of hers. Gentling a hand down upon her toasty thigh, he smiled into her eyes: flames twisted there, orange and sharp in the glistening black. Her back was a symphony of touch, with all the delicacy and detail of a sculpted figurine but with the heat of life and youth and a love that held nothing back. He stroked the nape of her neck and, as if in response, she slid closer and into him, all Marcie, a god-gift, kissing him, the sweet almond aroma making him ache inside with the trembling joy of it, wanting to weep for the splendor of her body touching his, cushioning and comforting him, loving him and inviting him to love her in return. He kissed her, deep and long, then loved her face with his lips, gentle butterfly kisses that alternated with words of love, words he’d never used with Susan, not even in the beginning. But Marcie loved them, loved to hear him tell her how beautiful she was and how much he loved her; his voice, she’d said, was like a new organ whose sole purpose was to turn her on—and that it did, so swiftly and completely that it drove her out of her mind with desire
for him.

  He couldn’t believe how many times they’d made love since they’d pulled in just before dawn. Didn’t think he had that much starch in him. But he did, sure as hell he did, when the setting was as peaceful as these woods, the cabin so cozy and inviting and well-equipped, the woman so much enamored of him, and he of her. Later, when it got a little warmer out, they’d have to carry a blanket into the woods, make love with all of nature concurring, sun-dapple on skin, soaring treetops replete with birdsong, moss and branch and bramble. But that was to come. This was now, and now it was a pleasure to occupy his mind with Marcie. Any moment now—he was getting more in tune with her—she would have done with the preliminaries. She would guide him onto his back and ease herself down on him, ride him, make him once again happy to be alive.

  But no. She stiffened almost imperceptibly. Pulled back. “I hear a car,” she said.

  “But that’s—”

  She shushed him, then he heard it too. Not on them yet, but clearly making its way down the access road that ended at Frank Tanner’s cabin.

  Lost hunter, he thought. Fucking bumbling numskull, had no business not knowing where he was going, spoiling a lovely mood by just showing up. Marcie rose. He took her hand, stopped her. “Don’t go.”

  She kissed his fingers, held his palm to her cheek. “We’ve got company.”

  “Some guy who’s lost his way. He’ll see the cabin, realize he’s in the wrong place, and turn around without bothering us.”

  “Just in case,” she said. She brought his hand to her groin, the silken hair weaving around his fingers, a hint of moist lip beneath his pinkie. “You can give him directions. And then, if you’re very good, I’ll let you take off my robe with your mouth.” Then she turned and walked into the bedroom, a perfect pendulum.