Not Safe After Dark

by Peter Robinson

  * * *

  Even though it was dark, Frank managed to arrange the stuff on his lawn. He was thinking clearly now. His life had regained its sense of continuity. No more jump-frame reality. The memory he had tried so hard to deny had forced itself on him now the ring was gone, the talisman that had protected him for so long. It wasn’t such a bad thing. In a way, he was free. It was all over.

  It was a warm night. A raccoon snuffled around the neighbor’s garbage. It stopped and looked at Frank with its calm, black-ringed eyes. He moved forward and stamped his foot on the sidewalk to make it go away. It simply stared at him until it was ready to go, then it waddled arrogantly along the street. Far in the distance, a car engine revved. Other shapes detached themselves from the darkness and proved even more difficult to chase away than the raccoon, but Frank held his ground.

  Carefully, he arranged the objects around him on the dark lawn. By the time he had finished, the sun was coming up, promising a perfect day for a lawn sale. Now that everything was neatly laid out, the memory was complete; he could keep nothing at bay.

  What a death Joan’s had been. She had spent ten years doing it, in and out of the hospital, one useless operation after another, night after sleepless night of agony despite the pills. He remembered now the times she had begged him to finish her, saying she would do it herself if she had the strength, if she could move without making the knives twist and cut up her insides.

  And every time he let her down. He couldn’t do it, and he didn’t really know why. Surely if he really loved her, he told himself, he would have killed her to stop her suffering? But that argument didn’t work. He knew that he loved her, but he still couldn’t kill her.

  Once, he stood over her for ten minutes holding a pillow in his hands, and he felt her willing him to push it down over her face. Her tongue was swollen, her gums had receded, and her teeth were falling out. Every time he smoothed her head with his hand, tufts of dry hair stuck to his palm.

  But he had thrown the cushion aside and run out of the house. Why couldn’t he do it? Because he couldn’t imagine life without her, no matter how much pain and anguish she suffered to stay with him, no matter how little she now resembled the wife he had married? Perhaps. Selfishness? Certainly. Cowardice? Yes.

  At last she had gone. Not with a quiet whisper like a candle flame snuffed out, not gently, but with convulsions and loud screams as if fishhooks had ripped a bloody path through her insides.

  And he remembered her last look at him, the bulging eyes, the blood trickling from her nose and mouth. How could he forget that look? Through all the final agony, through the knowledge that the release of death was only seconds away, the hard glint of accusation in her eyes was unmistakable.

  Frank wiped the tears from his stubbly cheeks and held the gun on his lap as the sun grew warmer and the city came to life around him. Soon he would find the courage to do to himself what he hadn’t been able to do for the wife he loved, what he had only been able to do to some nameless German soldier who haunted his dreams. Soon.

  By the time the tourists got here all they would see was an old man asleep amid the detritus of his life: the torso of a tailor’s dummy; yards of moth-eaten fabrics and folded patterns made of tissue paper; baking dishes; cake tins; cookie cutters shaped like hearts and lions; a silver cigarette lighter; a Nazi armband; a tattered copy of Mein Kampf; medals; a bayonet; a German dagger with a mother-of-pearl swastika inlaid in its handle.

  Gone to the Dawgs

  It was the penultimate week of the NFL football pool and Charlie Firth was ahead by ten points. Nothing could stop the smug bastard from winning again now. Nothing short of murder.

  Such was the uncharitable thought that crossed the mind of Calvin Bly as he sat with the usual crowd in the local bar watching the Monday night game, St. Louis at Tampa Bay. Outside, in the east end of Toronto, the wind was howling, piling up snow in the side streets and swirling it in surreal patterns across the main roads, but inside it was warm, and the occasional single malt between pints of Guinness helped make it even warmer.

  There were six of them at the table, the usual crowd, all in the pool. Calvin was second, having come up with a complicated system of mathematical checks and balances that had earned him solid eights and nines all season, plus the occasional eleven. Behind him by six points was Marge, the only girl in the group. Well, woman really, he supposed, seeing as she was in her fifties. The other three, Chris, Jeff, and Brad, weren’t even in the running.

  “How’s your mother, Calvin?” Charlie’s loud voice boomed across the table. Calvin looked away from his conversation with Marge and saw the sneer on Charlie’s face, the baiting grin, the arrogant, disdaining eyes.

  “She’s fine, thank you,” he said.

  Charlie looked at his watch. “Only it’s getting late. I’m surprised she lets you stay out this long.”

  He laughed and some of the others joined in, but more because it was the thing to do than because they had any heart for it. Truth be told, nobody really found Charlie’s sense of humor funny. Vicious, yes. Cutting and hurtful, yes. But funny, no way.

  Perhaps it wasn’t worth murdering someone for two thousand dollars, Calvin thought, but it might be worth it just to clear the world of the loudmouthed fucker. People would probably thank him for it. Three years in a row Charlie Firth had won that NFL pool, and he hadn’t let a soul forget it. Twice Calvin had come in second, and Charlie wasn’t about to let him forget that either. The teasing would go on well into the baseball season.

  Yes, if he got rid of Charlie, he would be doing the world a favor.

  The Bucs threw a touchdown pass to take the lead in the dying seconds of the game, and Calvin shook himself free of his dark thoughts. Of course he wouldn’t murder Charlie. He’d never harmed a soul in his life, didn’t have the guts for it. It was nothing but a pleasant, harmless fantasy.

  Got that one, thought Calvin when the game was over, and Charlie had picked the Rams. He was still nine points ahead of the field, though, pretty much impossible to catch, and Marge was still six behind as they went into the final week. It had been a weekend of upsets—the Seahawks beat the Raiders, the Chiefs beat the Broncos, and the Lions beat the Jets—but Calvin had come away with nine points.

  “Say hi to your mom from me,” Charlie called out as Calvin bundled up and headed out to clear the snow off his car. He didn’t bother answering.

  * * *

  Calvin hadn’t been home five minutes, was watching the news quietly on TV, when the banging started. Mother had a walking stick which she didn’t use to walk with as she rarely bothered to walk, but to bang on the floor of her bedroom to summon her son, calling out his name. With a sigh, Calvin hauled himself out of the La-Z-Boy and climbed up the stairs.

  He hated Mother’s sickroom, the unpleasant smells—she never opened the window and didn’t bathe very often—the way she lay there looking frail, hands like talons clutching the sheet tight around her neck as if he were going to rape her or something, when the very idea of her nakedness disgusted him.

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “You were out late.”

  “It was a long game.”

  “Anything could have happened to me. I could have had a seizure. What would I have done, then?”

  “Mother, you’re not going to have a seizure. The doctor told you yesterday your health’s just fine.”

  “Doctor, schmoctor. What does that quack know?” Her tone became wheedling, flirtatious. “Calvin, baby, I can’t sleep. I’m having one of my bad nights. Make Mommy some hot milk and bring my pills, Little Calvin. Pullleeeease.”

  Calvin went back downstairs and poured some milk into a saucepan, enough for two, as he decided he might as well treat himself to some hot chocolate if he was heating up milk anyway. While he listened to the hiss of the gas flame and watched the milk’s surface change as it heated, he thought again how pleasant it would be if he had the guts to do something about Charlie Firth.

  The man w
as insufferable. For a start, he was well-off and always made a point of letting you know how much his possessions cost, from the Porsche to his leather Italian loafers. Women, of course, just wouldn’t leave him alone. He had a big house on Kingswood, prime Beach property—all to himself, as he had never married, probably because no woman in her right mind could stand his company for more than a night—and as well as winning the NFL pool, he had been his company’s real estate agent of the year more than once. A success. And Calvin, what had he got? Nothing. Unemployment benefits. A savings account that was thinning out as quickly as his hair, a potbelly that seemed to be getting bigger, a hypochondriac mother who would probably live to torment him forever, a small, gloomy, drafty row house on the wrong side of Victoria Park. Nothing. Sweet fuck all.

  Bubbles started to surface on the milk. Time to turn down the heat. Mother hated it when he burnt the milk. Before he had even got the mugs out of the cupboard he heard the banging on the ceiling again. As if the silly old cow thought banging with that stick of hers would make milk boil any faster. He burned himself as he slopped the hot milk into the cup, forgot about his hot chocolate, and hurried upstairs.

  * * *

  In the light of the next day, killing Charlie didn’t seem like such a good idea. Given Calvin’s luck, he was bound to get caught for a start. And, technically, Charlie would still be the winner. If you didn’t phone your picks in on time, the administrator assigned you the underdogs, and even with the DAWGS, as they were called, Charlie would still beat the field. He would be too dead to collect his winnings, of course, and Calvin supposed they would go to whoever came second.

  The way the pool worked was every Wednesday before five o’clock you phoned in your picks, based on that day’s point spread, to the administrator, who ran the whole thing from his desk at one of the major newspapers downtown. You always got his answering machine with its curt message: “I’m away from my desk right now. Please leave your message after the beep.” There were over a hundred people in the pool, at a hundred bucks each for the season, and in addition to the grand prize of $2,000, there were also smaller weekly prizes. Calvin had actually covered this year’s entry fee on one weekly win. Usually by Friday evening a photocopy of everyone’s picks, along with the weekly and accumulated scores, was faxed to Jeff, who made copies and distributed them in the bar.

  Calvin liked to see which teams everyone else had chosen—especially Charlie—but this week he would miss it. On Thursday he had to accompany Mother down to Fort Myers, where they would spend Christmas with their only living relatives, his Aunt Vicky and Uncle Frank, who had retired there seven years ago and were generous enough to help out with the airfare.

  The Florida trip used to be the highlight of Calvin’s year. Not because he liked the place. Three or four days was about all he could stand. It was too hot and too full of old people, or people who didn’t speak English, as if Toronto wasn’t bad enough that way. No, what Florida used to mean to him was freedom, glorious freedom! Mother used to stay down there for at least six weeks, and as soon as she was “settled” Calvin was allowed to go home alone. God only knew how Vicky and Frank put up with the old bat, Calvin thought, but they did. Now she was too worried about getting sick and not being able to afford US medical bills, so they were both returning on the following Wednesday.

  That Tuesday morning at breakfast Calvin checked the sports section to see if the spreads had changed since Monday. He liked to do that, factor it into his calculations. Sometimes you could guess a lot just by the ways the spreads were changing. After that, his day followed its usual dull routine. He cleared the driveway of snow, did household chores, did some food shopping, and took care of Mother. But on Tuesday evening Calvin had a date.

  This was one thing nobody knew about him—at least, so he believed. Calvin had a secret girlfriend. Heidi. Probably no one would believe it if he told them that a pudgy, balding, boring fifty-one-year-old man like him could have an attractive blond forty-year-old woman as a girlfriend. Sometimes he could hardly believe it himself. They had met six months ago in HMV downtown, both looking at the selection of show tunes. A common interest in film musicals led them to venture to a local coffee shop together, where they found they enjoyed one another’s company immensely. A loner by nature—apart from the easy and informal gregariousness of the bar—Calvin found it hard to talk to her at first, but Heidi had a way of drawing him out of his shell. There was, of course, a big problem.

  Heidi was married.

  Slowly, piece by piece, it emerged over furtive meetings in the city center, first just for coffees, then regular lunches at Red Lobster, that Heidi was not exactly happy with her marriage. Her children had both left home, one for Winnipeg, poor sod, and the other for Southern California, so it was only a matter of time, she told Calvin, before the separation occurred. Until then, they had to be very careful and keep their relationship a secret. Her husband worked shifts for a security company, and this week he was working evenings. Calvin would go over to the west end, where Heidi lived, not far from High Park, and they would talk and make love until midnight, at which time he would dress and sneak out of the back door to where he had parked his car several blocks away.

  That Tuesday Heidi did not seem to be in her usual good spirits.

  “What’s wrong?” Calvin asked, after he had suspected her of counting cracks in the ceiling while they made love.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Come on. I can tell there’s something bothering you.”

  “I told you, it’s nothing. Leave it.”

  “Maybe I can help.”

  Heidi turned, propped herself on her elbow, and looked at him. “I don’t think I can go on,” she said after a pause.

  Calvin felt his chest tighten, his heart race. “What do you mean?”

  “This. You and me. I don’t think I can go on.”

  “But why?”

  “It’s not that I don’t like you, Calvin.” She stroked his cheek. “It’s just . . . oh, everything, the lies, the guilt. Joe and I had a really long talk the other night.”

  “For God’s sake, Heidi, you didn’t tell him . . . ?”

  “No. No, of course not. What sort of a fool do you think I am? No, we just . . . well, he realized he’d been neglecting me, and I realized I missed him more than I thought. We decided . . . you know . . . to try to make a go of things.”

  “Make a go of things?”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “We’re going to start with a trip to Mexico. A sort of second honeymoon. We’re going for New Year.”

  “B-but . . .”

  “Oh, Calvin. Don’t be upset. Please don’t be upset. You had fun while it lasted, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but . . . but I thought . . .”

  “You thought what?”

  “I mean, just now, even when you knew this, you . . . we . . .” He shook his head.

  “Was that so unfair of me, Calvin? Just to have you one last time? Was that too selfish of me?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what?”

  “It just seems so sudden, so abrupt, that’s all.” Calvin sat on the edge of the bed and reached for his clothes.

  “But you knew it had to end one day.”

  “I sort of hoped that when you and Joe split up, we might . . . you know . . .”

  “Oh, Calvin, that’s sweet. That’s too sweet.”

  “I gather you didn’t?”

  Heidi lay back on the pillow. “I never thought, really, not beyond the next time. I’ve hurt you, haven’t I?”

  “It’s all right. I’ll mend.”

  “I’m sorry, Calvin.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll go now.”

  “You’ll be careful? Make sure no one sees you?”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  Calvin bent over to give her a good night kiss, as he always did. She turned her head and offered him her cheek. He kissed it lightly and found it surprisingly cool, then he went downstai
rs and sneaked out of the back door. He thought of making a lot of noise, but Calvin wasn’t the type to draw too much attention to himself.

  * * *

  He was OK to drive, he told himself as he headed out of the nearest bar—to which he had gone as soon as he’d left Heidi’s—he’d only had two pints and a shot of whisky, and he felt in control. Sad, hurt, but in control.

  The city crews had been through the neighborhood and the roads were pretty clear. He headed down Roncesvalles toward Lakeshore and the Gardiner, noting how quiet the roads were. Hardly surprising, as it was going on for half past one on a cold, miserable Tuesday evening.

  It was all over with Heidi. He couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe the callous way she had treated him. How could she? He had even fantasized a real life for them: restaurants, theaters, musicals, weekends together. Now this.

  Almost home. He stopped at a red light. Nobody around. Lights from TV sets in a couple of windows. Christmas trees. Lights.

  As he neared the next set of traffic lights, he saw someone come out of a bar alone and start to cross just as the lights were changing. It was Charlie. There was no mistaking that expensive leather jacket, the hand-tooled cowboy boots. He was clearly a bit pissed, not falling-down drunk, but definitely unsteady. And unobservant. Calvin was driving slowly enough to stop, but something, he couldn’t say what, some demon, some inner compulsion, seemed to take control of him. A quick glance to make sure there were no other cars visible ahead or behind, nobody on the street in seeing distance, and almost unbidden his foot pressed down on the gas pedal as if it was made of lead.

  Charlie knew something was wrong, saw it coming at the last moment, but was too late to do anything about it. Calvin saw the horrified expression on his face, even fancied he saw recognition there, too, then the car hit him with a satisfying, meaty smack and threw him away from the car. Calvin felt the shuddering bump and crunch as he ran over the body. No stopping now. He sped off and turned the first corner, heading into the maze of residential streets that would eventually take him home, heart in his mouth, blood pulsing hard through his veins, but alive, alive at last.