I Love You More

by Jennifer Murphy

  “What if Diana really was the one who rented the car and bought the airline ticket?” Mack asked. We’d just left the scene of a domestic dispute. Wife hit her husband over the head with a cast-iron pan. Lucky for her (or maybe not so lucky, depending how you look at it), he would live.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “We know she couldn’t have.”

  “We know she couldn’t have been on that 10:15 a.m. flight, but what about the night before? Do we know for sure she was there the previous night?”

  “So you’re saying she somehow got to Philly, rented the car, and drove back down to Cooper’s Island all in one night. Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe to throw us off? Did you ask the kid where her mom was the night before?”

  “There wasn’t any reason to,” I said. “Besides, wouldn’t she have told me if her mother was gone all night?”

  Mack shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t know her mother was gone, or maybe she did and just isn’t telling us.”

  I thought about that look on Picasso’s face the morning of the murder. Picasso obviously loved her mother, and there was no question she was fiercely loyal to her, but I just couldn’t see her lying like that, because that’s what it would be. Omission was a lie no matter which way you cut it. But Diana aside, Mack was right. As much as I wanted Julie Lane for the murder, I had to admit to myself that maybe I wanted her for the wrong reasons. If Julie Lane had pulled the trigger, that would mean Diana hadn’t.

  “It just doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Why would she go to all that trouble when all she had to do was go for a swim?”

  Mack pulled up to the office. “She probably didn’t. It’s just that these wives have got us running in circles. You still heading out tonight?”

  The island had been overrun with spring breakers since the end of March, and the noisy keg parties, cars backing into neighboring mailboxes, disregard of water safety, and late-night road racing had finally come to an end—until next year. I’d decided to take Mack up on his offer to cover for me for a few days and head to Hollyville. By now I was pretty sure he’d figured out I was seeing someone, but luckily he wasn’t one to pry.

  Diana and Picasso seemed as excited to see me as I was to see them.

  The first night was all about Picasso. She’d cooked spaghetti, and then we had plans for a marathon Scrabble game. I commented during dinner on how good the Bolognese sauce was.

  “We can teach you how to make it,” Picasso said.

  “Maybe Detective Kennedy already knows how to make it,” Diana said. She still called me Detective Kennedy in front of Picasso. She said she wasn’t ready for Picasso to know about our relationship yet, but of course Picasso already knew. Picasso didn’t miss much.

  “I’d like that,” I said.

  “Okay,” Picasso said. “Tomorrow we’ll make pizza. Pizza uses the same red sauce, just without the meat.”

  The next night, the counters completely cleared for my cooking class, Picasso handed me an obviously well used chef’s apron, and we set to work. Diana was taking on the dough, Picasso was doing the chopping, and my job was the sauce.

  “The recipe is in Mama’s catchall book,” Picasso said.

  “Where’s that?” I asked.

  Diana pointed to something that looked more like an art project gone bad than a book. It was so stuffed with pages cut out from magazines and newspapers that the binding was split and frayed. There were recipes, pictures of flower arrangements and furnishings, paint chips and material samples, some glued down, some not.

  “It’s under R,” Diana said.

  “It’s alphabetized?” I asked.

  “Sort of,” Diana said.

  “Why R and not S?”

  “Red sauce,” she said, and laughed. “White sauce is under W.”

  I flipped to the pages that had R written on their top-right corner; it was one of the longer sections of the book so I started turning one page at a time, until I came to one that was dog-eared. A small note in the margin read “Noon, July 3rd, Rainy Cove Park, same spot.” It was written with blue ink. As if they’d been added later, the words “one year” were written in black ink at the end. I nearly dismissed it, but then the date hit me: July 3rd. It could be any July 3rd, I reasoned. Maybe the note had been there for years. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Since when do you believe in coincidences? I remembered Mack saying.

  Picasso was staring at me when I looked up from the book. She quickly looked away, but there’d been no mistaking the fear in her eyes. Had my face betrayed my discovery?

  The pizza was a success and so was I. I’d spent the entire evening trying to act as if I hadn’t seen what I did. It was still dark when I got in my car the next morning. I flipped on the interior light and typed Rainy Cove Park into my smartphone browser. The place was the perfect setting for a reunion. “Quiet and remote with small clearings for picnicking, hiking trails, and a small lake perfect for kayaking,” the description read. Remote was an understatement. From the road, all anyone could see was a long dirt driveway, which appeared to open up to a parking lot, a parking lot totally obscured by tall evergreens.

  I sat in the car and processed for a while. Usually I think pretty good when I drive, but that time it wasn’t about thinking, it was about feeling. I knew that unless you were some kind of psychopath, without conscience, killing another human being wasn’t something you walked away from clean. I’d taken more than one life in Detroit, and they’d all fucked with my head in one way or another. The act itself is a sick sort of intimate; the look in that person’s eyes when he realizes you are his grim reaper turns your stomach and pumps your adrenaline simultaneously. And then there’s the aftermath. You see his face in your mirror and dreams, hear his final wheeze or choking cough in an elevator, mistake the smell of your own blood or shit for his. And yeah, there comes a day when you just learn to live with it, but that day doesn’t come for a long while. In the meantime, you find yourself searching the eyes of random people in crowds, behind checkout counters, at urinals, searching for a kindred spirit, someone who understands, can relate, someone you might be able to unload on. So you can breathe fresh, clean air again. So you can feel that sense of lightness that you know you once felt but now can barely even describe.

  The wives hadn’t needed to go searching, they had one another, and yet they hadn’t talked or met since the murder. Hell, they hadn’t even e-mailed or texted. Why not? What was I missing? I slowly repeated the words I’d seen in the catchall book: “Noon, July 3rd, Rainy Cove Park, same spot, one year.”

  One year.

  I’d underestimated the three of them. Not their brains; I’d always been impressed by their intelligence. I’d underestimated their bravery, their determination, their patience. They’d been biding their time, waiting until it was safer, until it was far enough in the future for the police to have lost interest in their crime. And damn, it would’ve worked. The police, shit even I, would’ve lost interest in the three of them, no matter how attractive they were or how compelling the case was. The irony was that my interest in Diana had kept me interested in the case. Working to prove her innocence had in fact sealed her guilt.

  Like I said, gravity’s a bitch. Nothing and no one can stay stuck forever.

  A new word floated down from the sky of my mind. It tumbled across each of the other words on its way to the end of the line, and as if it had been the key they needed to wind them back up, they all began dancing.

  Beautiful, lucky, sorry, gun, motive, liar, dumb ass, wives, guilty as sin, rendezvous.

  I turned on the ignition, backed out of Diana Lane’s driveway and onto the road. As I drove away, I stole a brief look at the front porch, and there, watching me through the window, was Picasso.

  The Wives

  At exactly midnight on the final pink day before our rendezvous, we lit candles and submerged ourselves in our baths of floating petals. The water was warm, the cloak of secrecy we’d carried since we’d m
urdered Oliver still so heavy, but we had faith that our chests would soon empty, our hearts lighten.

  We imagined the morning of our reunion. We would feel anticipation when we rose. The expectancy would build to hopefulness as we made our drives to Rainy Cove Park, Diana in her silver Toyota crossover, Jewels in her bright blue Porsche Carrera, and Bert in her rusty and dented Chevy Blazer. We’d wait inside our cars until each of us had parked, and then we’d come together, hold hands, and walk. The familiar sounds of crunching twigs and singing birds would accompany us through the dense wood. Together we’d veer off the trail. Up ahead, we’d get a peek of the lake. Our footsteps would quicken then, so excited we would be to reunite with our little bit of earth, the place where we had come together and grown together. The place where the wind had heard our collective thoughts and swirled them through the air and the trees and the wildflowers, through the crest of the water’s ripples and the dew that dripped from the leaves, until finally returning them to us, larger and more defined. Once there, we’d perform our ritual. We’d lay our blanket on the ground, take off our clothes, and cleanse ourselves in the warm water. When we returned to our sacred circle, we’d hold hands. We would take a few moments to absorb the sights and the scents and the sounds of the magical place that had been our home away from home, and once at peace with our surroundings, we’d uncork a bottle of wine and toast.

  Toast to murder. Toast to life. Toast to victory.

  We would talk, well into the afternoon, of course, about our current lives and loves. As before, we wouldn’t discuss our children, not because they were sacred territory as we’d convinced ourselves in the past, but because murder had touched something deep inside us, a knowledge, a chord of honesty, and so we’d admit what we always knew, that we’d selfishly wanted the time for ourselves. After all, weren’t we the real victims? A quiet would come over us. Perhaps a cloud would float past the sun or a bird would whistle a single note. In that moment, without so much as uttering a word, all the questions we’d pondered regarding the events of that fateful yet glorious day would be answered. Light would enter our hearts and minds. Love would ooze from our pores. Satisfaction would rise from deep inside us and, like a snake, would curl itself through our bodies and out of our mouths. We would speak. We would gloat. We would rejoice.

  We’d say goodbye to the man we’d shared, the man we’d loved, the man whose memories we’d feared, whose dreams we’d denied. For we knew our reunion was our crescendo. Oliver’s death had been a prelude, the year in between an interlude. And so we’d light a candle, close our eyes, imagine every inch of him, and feel him, all of him, his breath on our necks, hands on our breasts, his maleness inside us. We’d taste the morning, or the day, or the night on his lips. We’d smell soap, or aftershave, or sweat on his neck. We’d hear him say our names, softly, lovingly, just before he climaxed. Physically and spiritually we’d orgasm. Inside this petite mort, every second, every minute, every hour of our lives with Oliver would pass before us. We’d experience every emotion each had brought forth. Finally, exhausted, as if he were an unsightly speck of dust, we’d flick the memory of the man who had scorned us into the air. We’d blow him a kiss as the mouths of darkness consumed him. And we’d pray, not for Oliver but for ourselves, because though the worst had passed, we weren’t certain we’d recognize the good that was yet to come.

  As we rose from our baths, fully cleansed, petals sticking to our wet flesh, fingers and toes wrinkled and rubbery, we imagined how we would feel after our reunion. We imagined the heaviness lifting. For one split second we believed we felt a supreme lightness, an omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence. For one split second we felt angelic. After the sensation passed, we blew out our candles, dried our bodies, wrapped ourselves in fluffy pink robes, glided to our bedrooms, crawled beneath our blankets, and for the first time in many months, welcomed our dreams.

  FOUR

  Truth

  (The Murder)

  Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

  —PABLO PICASSO

  Oliver

  You see things when you’re dead, and you know all there is to know. Everything—your memories, your senses, especially your vision—is sharpened. For some, the hereafter is nirvana, a state of transcendence where there is no suffering or sense of self, where beauty and happiness abide. For others, like me, death is an acid trip. Faces, furnishings, objects, trees are clear one moment and then stretching from their bones and frames the next, elongating, melting like Salvador Dalí’s clocks. I prefer my death to that other one. I prefer surprise to status quo, sordid to vanilla, bizarre to boring. I prefer to have my cunning and acumen tested. When I refer to faces and such, obviously I don’t mean me. I no longer have a face or a body. I am a shape-shifting mass of shimmering molecules, white and silver and gray and black. My home is the air. Though some hover near their grave sites, there is no designated place for the dead, no good place or bad place. We are merely energy fields, wafting, watching, reading minds and emotions. Me? I do more than simply watch and read, I fuck with the living. They may feel a breeze, a change of temperature—some say it gets cold when we are near—but they can’t see me.

  I can’t help but wonder if everyone’s transition is similar. In those last moments before I died, knowing it was inevitable, I felt many emotions, surprise, confusion, anger, but none of those accompanied me to death. Here I feel placid. It’s not that I’m apathetic, quite the opposite in fact, but I am distracted. How could I not be? I’m forever drifting through the vast feast of the living, forever surrounded by lust and evil and crime, forever devouring and gorging and delighting in all I see. There will come a time when I leave this air, when my molecules will find their way into the womb of another woman, but the details of that journey are not yet known to me. So for now, I wander and wait.

  At this moment, I float near Diana. I see the detective, the one who is investigating my murder, touching my wife’s skin, traveling inside her. In my death, they become clay on a wheel. I feel nothing as they spin into one, as their skin moistens, compresses, rises, and falls, nothing but curiosity. As everything did, and everything always will, it all began with me. Diana’s story is my story. It’s hard for me to remember what life felt like, but even now I remember that sensation of having my breath stolen the first time I saw her. I remember wishing I could crush my entire being into hers. Wishing I could own her, that I could dig my fingernails into her flesh until it bled, hear her screams, watch her face contort in pain. That was how much I admired her beauty. I remember holding back every time we made love, being proud of my ability to command her body, cause it to quiver beneath mine, without destroying her. In that, I always knew I was different. I always knew that my lack of empathy, my unquenchable desire to control, to hurt was unique, and thus so was I. That I could manage these overwhelming urges, that I could bend them to fit my needs, that I could so skillfully hide them from the world was testament to the fact that I was special.

  After I died and before the detective shared her bed, I’d watch Diana masturbate, her fingers touching those magical places, her body stiffening and releasing. Sometimes I’d wind myself around her neck, whisper into her ear, tell her I’d known what the three of them were planning all along, praise her for outwitting me.

  I hadn’t considered the beach house. I hadn’t seen you. But I see you now.

  I know she is thinking of me, not this detective. He is no match for me, no match for her. He is soft, gentle with her body and emotions, honest with his own.

  Can you hear me? He is weak.

  “Touch me,” she says to my air. Haunt me.

  It is obvious to me now why so many murderers go free. The detective allows his heart to rule his head. Why did it take him so long to believe what he knew? And why is he searching for a key? Yes, he was right about me hiding money, money I’d rather see go to waste than fall into the hands of my ungrateful wives, and, yes, he was even right about me having a safe-deposit box, but my box doesn�
�t require a key. It can only be accessed by a six-digit code. Mine is the numeric equivalent of Ares, god of war and my given surname. If this detective had any wits about him, wouldn’t he have discovered that by now? Wouldn’t he have discovered the box itself, the bank that contains it? Wouldn’t he have discovered my real name? Sometimes I surprise even myself. Clearly I was a skilled illusionist. Getting away with stealing someone’s identity while alive is one thing, but how many have maintained the ploy after death?

  Oliver Lane was born in the same hospital and on the same day as I. He died eight minutes after he entered the world. We shared the same space for three of those. Though we never met, when I decided to change my identity he was my choice. His mother was fifteen years old. Her well-to-do socialite parents felt blessed when he passed because they could continue telling their lie: that their daughter had merely been staying with her grandmother for a few months. Even someone who lives eight minutes needs a birth certificate, but no one filed for a social security number or death certificate, and he was never buried. Along with used bedpans, bloody gauze, and wasted syringes, the hospital disposed of him in the same way his mother disposed of his memory. I felt an affinity with Oliver Lane. My mother was older than fifteen, but like his, she didn’t care two shits about me. I never knew who my father was. My mother created some story about him going off to war and dying a hero; she never said which war. I had a slew of uncles. The one that lasted the longest, Ray, beat me when he got drunk. He had a penchant for the belt. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying my childhood was fucked up. The trouble started when I was nine years old. I was small for my age, got bullied. One day I fought back, beat a kid, got expelled. That kind of behavior continued until I found my calling: women.