The Best American Mystery Stories 2017

by John Sandford

  Pretty damn good for a little Polack secretary from Hackensack, New Jersey.

  Tempted to stop for a drink. That bar on Eighth Avenue.

  Except it’s not yet eleven a.m. Too early to drink!

  Noon is the earliest. You have to have preserve standards.

  Noon could mean lunch. Customary to have drinks at a business lunch. A cocktail to start. A cocktail to continue. A cocktail to conclude. But he draws the line at drinking during the midday when he will take a cab to his office, far downtown on Chambers Street.

  His excuse is a dental appointment in midtown. Unavoidable!

  Of course five p.m. is a respectful hour for a drink. Almost, a drink at five p.m. might be considered the “first drink of the day,” since it has been a long time since lunch.

  Five p.m. drinks are “drinks before dinner.” Dinner at eight p.m., if not later.

  Wondering if he should make a little detour before going to her place. Liquor store, bottle of Scotch whisky. The bottle he’d brought to her place last week is probably almost empty.

  (Sure, the woman drinks in secret. Sitting in the window, drink in hand. Doesn’t want him to know. How in hell could he not know? Deceitful little bitch.)

  There’s a place on Ninth. Shamrock Inn. He can stop there.

  Looks forward to drinking with her. One thing you can say about the little Polack, she’s a good drinking companion, and drinking deflects most needs to talk.

  Unless she drinks too much. Last thing he wants to hear from her is complaints, accusations.

  Last thing he wants to see is her face pouty and sulky and not so good-looking. Sharp creases in her forehead like a forecast of how she’ll look in another ten years, or less.

  It isn’t fair! You don’t call when you promise! You don’t show up when you promise! Tell me you love me but—

  Many times he has heard these words that are beginning to bore him.

  Many times he has appeared to be listening but is scarcely aware which of them is berating him: the girl in the window or the wife.

  To the woman in the window he has learned to say, Sure I love you. That’s enough, now.

  To the wife he has learned to say, You know I have work to do. I work damn hard. Who the hell pays for all this?

  His life is complicated. That is actually true. He is not deceiving the woman. He is not deceiving the wife.

  (Well—maybe he is deceiving the wife.)

  (Maybe he is deceiving the woman.)

  (But women expect to be deceived, don’t they? Deception is the terms of the sex contract.)

  In fact he’d told the little Polack secretary (warned her) at the outset, almost two years ago now (Jesus! That long, no wonder he’s getting to feel trapped, claustrophobic), I love my family. My obligations to my family come first.

  (Fact is, he’s getting tired of this one. Bored. She talks too much even when she isn’t talking, he can hear her thinking. Her breasts are heavy, beginning to droop. Flaccid skin at her belly. Thinking sometimes when they’re in bed together he’d like to settle his hands around her throat and just start squeezing.)

  (How much of a struggle would she put up? She’s not a small woman but he’s strong.)

  (The French girl he’d had a “tussle” with—that was the word he’d given the transaction—had put up quite a struggle, like a fox or a mink or a weasel, but that was wartime, in Paris, people were desperate then, even a girl that young and starved-looking like a rat. Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi! But there’d been no one.)

  (Hard to take any of them seriously when they’re chattering away in some damn language like a parrot or a hyena. Worse when they screamed.)

  Set out late from his apartment that morning. Goddamn, he resents his goddamn wife, suspicious of him for no reason.

  Hadn’t he stayed home the night before? Hadn’t he disappointed the girl? All because of the wife.

  Stiff and cold-silent the wife. God, how she bores him!

  Her suspicions bore him. Her hurt feelings bore him. Her dull repressed anger bores him. Worst of all, her boredom bores him.

  He has imagined his wife dead many times, of course. How long have they been married, twenty years, twenty-three years, he’d believed he was lucky marrying the daughter of a well-to-do stockbroker, except the stockbroker wasn’t that well-to-do and within a few years he wasn’t a stockbroker any longer but a bankrupt. Asking to borrow money from him.

  Also, the wife’s looks are gone. Melted look of a female of a certain age. Face sags, body sags. He has fantasized his wife dying (in an accident: not his fault) and the insurance policy paying off: $40,000 free and clear. So he’d be free to marry the other one.

  Except: does he want to marry her?

  God! Feeling the need for a drink.

  It is eleven a.m. Goddamn bastard will be late again.

  After the insult and injury of the previous night!

  If he is late, it will happen. She will stab, stab, stab until he has bled out. She feels a wave of relief; finally it has been decided for her.

  Checks the sewing shears, hidden beneath the cushion. Something surprising, unnerving—the blades of the shears seem to be a faint, faded red. From cutting red cloth? But she doesn’t remember using the shears to cut red cloth.

  Must be the light from the window passing through the gauze curtains.

  Something consoling in the touch of the shears.

  She wouldn’t want a knife from the kitchen—no. Nothing like a butcher knife. Such a weapon would be premeditated, while a pair of sewing shears is something a woman might pick up by chance, frightened for her life.

  He threatened me. He began to beat me. Strangle me. He’d warned me many times in one of his moods he would murder me.

  It was in defense of my life. God help me! I had no choice.

  Hears herself laugh aloud. Rehearsing her lines like an actress about to step out onto the bright-lit stage.

  Might’ve been an actress, if her damn mother hadn’t sent her right to secretarial school. She’s as good-looking as most of the actresses on Broadway.

  He’d told her so. Brought her a dozen blood-red roses first time he came to take her out.

  Except they hadn’t gone out. Spent the night in her fifth-floor walkup, East Eighth Street.

  (She misses that sometimes. Lower East Side, where she’d had friends and people who knew her, on the street.)

  Strange to be naked, that is nude, yet wearing shoes.

  Time for her to squeeze her (bare) feet into high heels.

  Like a dancer. Girlie-dancer they are called. Stag parties exclusively for men. She’d heard of girls who danced at these parties. Danced nude. Made more in a single night’s work than she made in two weeks as a secretary.

  “Nude” is a fancy word. Hoity-toity like an artist-word.

  What she has not wanted to see: her body isn’t a girl’s body any longer. At a distance (maybe) on the street she can fool the casual eye, but not up close.

  Dreads to see in the mirror a fleshy aging body like her mother’s.

  And her posture in the damned chair, when she’s alone—leaning forward, arms on knees, staring out the window into a narrow shaft of sunshine between buildings—makes her belly bulge, soft belly-fat.

  A shock, first time she’d noticed. Just by accident glancing in a mirror.

  Not a sign of getting older. Just putting on weight.

  For your birthday, sweetheart. Is it—thirty-two?

  She’d blushed; yes, it is thirty-two.

  Not meeting his eye. Pretending she was eager to unwrap the present. (By the size of the box, weight of what’s inside, she guesses it’s another pair of goddamn high-heeled shoes.) Heart beating rapidly in a delirium of dread.

  If he knew. Thirty-nine.

  That was last year. The next birthday is rushing at her.

  Hates him, wishes he were dead.

  Except she would never see him again. Except the wife would collect the insurance.

  She does not
want to kill him, however. She is not the type to hurt anyone.

  In fact she wants to kill him. She has no choice, he will be leaving her soon. She will never see him again and she will have nothing.

  When she is alone she understands this. Which is why she has hidden the sewing shears beneath the cushion for the final time.

  She will claim that he began to abuse her, he threatened to kill her, closing his fingers around her throat so she had no choice but to grope for the shears and stab him in desperation, repeatedly, unable to breathe and unable to call for help until his heavy body slipped from her, twitching and spurting blood, onto the green rectangle of light in the carpet.

  His age is beyond forty-nine, she’s sure.

  Glanced at his ID once. Riffling through his wallet while he slept open-mouthed, wetly snoring. Sound like a rhinoceros snorting. She’d been stunned to see his young photograph—taken when he’d been younger than she is right now—dark-haired, thick dark-haired, and eyes boring into the camera, so intense. In his U.S. Army uniform, so handsome!

  She’d thought, Where is this man? I could have loved this man.

  Now when they make love she detaches herself from the situation to imagine him as he’d been, young. Him, she could have felt something for.

  Having to pretend too much. That’s tiring.

  Like the pretense she is happy in her body.

  Like the pretense she is happy when he shows up.

  No other secretary in her office could afford an apartment in this building. True.

  Damn apartment she’d thought was so special at first now she hates. He helps with expenses. Counting out bills like he’s cautious not to be overpaying.

  This should tide you over, sweetheart. Give yourself a treat.

  She thanks him. She is the good girl thanking him.

  Give yourself a treat! With the money he gives her, a few tens, a rare twenty! God, she hates him.

  Her fingers tremble, gripping the shears. Just the feel of the shears.

  Never dared tell him how she has come to hate this apartment. Meeting in the elevators old women, some of them with walkers, eyeing her. Older couples, eyeing her. Unfriendly. Suspicious. How’s a secretary from New Jersey afford The Maguire?

  Dim-lit on the third floor like a low-level region of the soul into which light doesn’t penetrate. Soft-shabby furniture and mattress already beginning to sag like those bodies in dreams we feel but don’t see. But she keeps the damn bed made every day whether anyone except her sees.

  He doesn’t like disorder. He’d told her how he’d learned to make a proper bed in the U.S. Army in 1917.

  The trick is, he says, you make the bed as soon as you get up.

  Pull the sheets tight. Tuck in corners—tight. No wrinkles! Smooth with the edge of your hand! Again.

  First lieutenant, he’d been. Rank when discharged. Holds himself like a soldier, stiff backbone like maybe he is feeling pain—arthritis? Shrapnel?

  She has wondered—Has he killed? Shot, bayoneted? With his bare hands?

  What she can’t forgive: the way he detaches himself from her as soon as it’s over.

  Sticky skin, hairy legs, patches of scratchy hair on his shoulders, chest, belly. She’d like him to hold her and they could drift into sleep together, but rarely this happens. Hates feeling the nerves twitching in his legs. Hates sensing how he is smelling her. How he’d like to leap from her as soon as he comes, the bastard.

  A man is crazy wanting to make love, then abruptly it’s over—he’s inside his head, and she’s inside hers.

  The night before waiting for him to call to explain when he didn’t show up. From eight p.m. until midnight she’d waited, rationing whisky-and-water to calm her nerves. Considering the sharp-tipped shears she might use against herself one day.

  In those hours sick with hating him and hating herself, and yet—the leap of hope when the phone finally rang.

  Unavoidable, crisis at home. Sorry.

  Now it is eleven a.m. Waiting for him to rap on the door.

  She knows he will be late. He is always late.

  She is becoming very agitated. But: too early to drink.

  Even to calm her nerves too early to drink.

  Imagines she hears footsteps. Sound of the elevator door opening, closing. Light rap of his knuckles on the door just before he unlocks it.

  Eagerly he will step inside, come to the door of the bedroom—see her in the chair awaiting him . . .

  The (nude) woman in the window. Awaiting him.

  That look in his face. Though she hates him, she craves that look in his face.

  A man’s desire is sincere enough. Can’t be faked. (She wants to think this.) She does not want to think that the man’s desire for her might be as fraudulent as her desire for him, but if this is so, why’d he see her at all?

  He does love her. He loves something he sees in her.

  Thirty-one years old, he thinks she is. No—thirty-two.

  And his wife is ten, twelve years older at least. Like Mr. Broderick’s wife, this one is something of an invalid.

  Pretty damned suspicious. Every wife you hear of is an invalid.

  How they avoid sex, she supposes. Once they are married, once they have children, that’s enough. Sex is something the man has to do elsewhere.

  What time is it? Eleven a.m.

  He is late. Of course he is late.

  After the humiliation of last night, when she had not eaten all day anticipating a nice dinner at Delmonico’s. And he never showed up, and his call was a feeble excuse.

  Yet in the past he has behaved unpredictably. She’d thought that he was through with her, she’d seen disgust in his face, nothing so sincere as disgust in a man’s face; and yet—he’d called her, after a week, ten days.

  Or he’d showed up at the apartment. Knocking on the door before inserting the key.

  And almost in his face a look of anger, resentment.

  Couldn’t keep away.

  God, I’m crazy for you.

  In the mirror she likes to examine herself if the light isn’t too bright. Mirror to avoid is the bathroom mirror unprotected and raw lit by daylight, but the bureau mirror is softer, more forgiving. Bureau mirror is the woman she is.

  Actually she looks (she thinks) younger than thirty-two.

  Much younger than thirty-nine!

  A girl’s pouty face, full lips, red-lipstick lips. Sulky brunette still damned good-looking and he knows it, he has seen men on the street and in restaurants following her with their eyes, undressing her with their eyes, this is exciting to him (she knows), though if she seems to react, if she glances around, he will become angry—at her.

  What a man wants, she thinks, is a woman whom other men want, but the woman must not seem to seek out this attention or even be aware of it.

  She would never bleach her hair blond, she exults in her brunette beauty, knowing it is more real, earthier. Nothing phony, synthetic, showy about her.

  Next birthday, forty. Maybe she will kill herself.

  Though it’s eleven a.m. he has stopped for a drink at the Shamrock. Vodka on the rocks. Just one.

  Excited thinking about the sulky-faced woman waiting for him: in the blue plush chair, at the window, nude except for high-heeled shoes.

  Full lips, lipstick-red. Heavy-lidded eyes. A head of thick hair, just slightly coarse. And hairs elsewhere on her body that arouse him.

  Slight disgust, yet arousal.

  Yet he’s late, why is that? Something seems to be pulling at him, holding him back. Another vodka?

  Staring at his watch thinking, If I am not with her by eleven-fifteen it will mean it’s over.

  A flood of relief, never having to see her again!

  Never the risk of losing his control with her, hurting her.

  Never the risk she will provoke him into a tussle.

  She’s thinking she will give the bastard ten more minutes.

  If he arrives after eleven-fifteen it is over between them. />
  Her fingers grope for the shears beneath the cushion. There!

  She has no intention of stabbing him—of course. Not here in her room, not where he’d bleed onto the blue plush chair and the green carpet and she would never be able to remove the stains even if she could argue (she could argue) that he’d tried to kill her, more than once in his strenuous lovemaking he’d closed his fingers around her throat, she’d begun to protest Please don’t, hey you are hurting me but he’d seemed scarcely to hear, in a delirium of sexual rapacity, pounding his heavy body into her like a jackhammer.

  You have no right to treat me like that. I am not a whore, I am not your pathetic wife. If you insult me I will kill you—I will kill you to save my own life.

  Last spring for instance when he’d come to take her out to Delmonico’s but seeing her he’d gotten excited, clumsy bastard knocking over the bedside lamp and in the dim-lit room they’d made love in her bed and never got out until too late for supper and she’d overheard him afterward on the phone explaining—in the bathroom stepping out of the shower she’d listened at the door fascinated, furious—the sound of a man’s voice when he is explaining to a wife is so callow, so craven, she’s sick with contempt recalling.

  Yet he says he has left his family, he loves her.

  Runs his hands over her body like a blind man trying to see. And the radiance in his face that’s pitted and scarred, he needs her in the way a starving man needs food. Die without you. Don’t leave me.

  Well, she loves him! She guesses.

  Eleven a.m. He is crossing the street at Ninth and Twenty-Fourth. Gusts of wind blow grit into his eyes. The vodka is coursing along his veins.

  Feels determined: if she stares at him with that reproachful pouty expression he will slap her face and if she begins to cry he will close his fingers around her throat and squeeze, squeeze.

  She has not threatened to speak to his wife. As her predecessor had done, to her regret. Yet he imagines that she is rehearsing such a confrontation.

  Mrs. ——? You don’t know me but I know you. I am the woman your husband loves.