She remembers grabbing fistfuls of the shirred fabric bodice of the old woman’s nightgown and lifting her upper body off the floor so she could look closely into her black eyes.
They were open; filled, Alex thought, with hatred and accusation.
“My husband. My son,” Alex had hissed. “Mine. Not yours!”
Then she slammed the woman backward with all her might, so that the back of her skull hit the hardwood floor and cracked open.
She left her there. The next afternoon, she called Carmen to say she was worried because she hadn’t heard from his mother all day, which was usual, and that she’d tried to call to make sure everything was all right.
“Did you go over there, Alex?” he asked.
“No. I wanted to, but it’s storming and I don’t want to take the baby out in this weather. I’m worried about her.”
“Don’t leave the house. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you! Shhh, you’re going to scare the baby.”
“I’m going to call the police to go check on my mother.” Carmen hung up abruptly.
Alex saw a patrol car go down Cherry Street about ten minutes later, heading toward her mother-in-law’s.
A few minutes later, as she was changing the baby, she heard sirens.
She was nursing her son a little while after that when a pair of officers came to the door. There had been a terrible accident, they told her. She stood in the doorway feigning shock and sorrow, cradling her swaddled son against her breast—her breast.
Now, she pushes the memory aside as she ascends the dark stairway in Mr. Griffith’s house.
She can hear a faint, steady snoring sound.
There are three open doors off the hall; the fourth, nearest to the head of the stairs, is closed. The snoring is coming from behind it.
She reaches for the knob, clasps it, turns it. It makes a clicking sound.
The snoring is disrupted.
Frozen in place, she stands with her hand on the knob, listening for creaking bedsprings or footsteps on the other side of the door.
After an agonizing, endless moment, the snoring resumes.
She waits, making sure it’s steady, before turning the doorknob again—only a fraction of an inch this time.
She waits.
Listens.
Steady snoring.
She turns the knob another fraction of an inch . . .
And so it goes, until she can open the door with a slight push, still holding the knob as it arcs inward over the carpeted threshold without so much as a creak.
The snoring, uninterrupted, is louder now.
Alex slips into the room and stands just inside the door, waiting for her eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. Moonlight spills through the sheer curtains at the window. Between that and the reflected glow from the tiny bulb in the hall, she can just make out the bed, and a lump beneath the covers.
There’s a small table on either side of the bed.
Both have drawers.
In one, she knows, is a loaded gun.
But which one?
If she makes it all the way across the room to one side of the bed and opens a drawer without waking him, and the gun is in the table on the opposite side . . .
Can she close that drawer and make it around the bed to the other table before he stirs?
And what if he wasn’t even telling the truth about the gun in the first place? What if he only says it’s there to throw people off, like the Beware of Dog sign?
But why would he lie to her?
He told her there’s really no dog. Why would he tell her there’s a gun if there isn’t?
He wouldn’t.
There’s a gun. She just has to pick a side of the bed and hope it’s the correct one.
She tiptoes stealthily to the left, reasoning that it’s on the right to someone lying in the bed. She can’t remember whether the man is right-handed, but most people are, and would want the gun to be on that side.
Always shoot with the dominant hand. It’s what her foster brother said years ago.
She can’t remember what his name was. Eddie? Teddy? Something like that.
They crossed paths for a few months in a crummy farmhouse overrun by kids and pets. They were the only two teenagers. Eddie or Teddy used to sneak the old man’s revolvers out of the shed where he kept them, and taught her how to shoot in the woods behind the house. They’d take turns aiming at empty beer bottles on tree stumps.
“You’re pretty good for a girl,” he told her.
One day he tried to kiss her. She resisted, but he forced himself on her, shoving his disgusting wet tongue down her throat. She went along with it because he was bigger and stronger, and decided then to do some strength training and maybe take martial arts, too.
The next time he handed her the revolver for target practice, she aimed it squarely at him.
“Don’t ever touch me again,” she told him. “Because I’m pretty good for a girl. Got it?”
Yeah. He got it.
Not long afterward, when the farmhouse burned to the ground, she and Eddie—it was Eddie, she remembers now—were moved to new homes. She never saw him again, and good riddance. But if not for him, she wouldn’t know how to handle a gun, so . . .
The old man in the bed snores steadily as she reaches the table. She nearly trips over a second walker, positioned beside the bed. He must keep it at the top of the stairs for use here on the second floor.
After stepping around it, she reaches out and tugs the drawer open slowly, slowly . . .
It’s too dark to see what’s inside. She feels around gingerly, the layer of latex on her fingers making it hard to tell what’s what. She finds what she thinks is the curved metal barrel of a pistol, but it’s just a flashlight. Then, as her hand closes on the unmistakable handle of a handgun, she realizes the snoring has come to an abrupt halt. Her blood runs cold.
Swiftly, she pulls the gun from the drawer. It’s a revolver. Familiar. Good.
He starts to sit up. “What the—”
She gets a firm grip on the handle, holds her arms out straight, locks her elbows, and aims at the shadowy person in the bed. Applying slow, steady pressure to the trigger, just the way Eddie taught her, she shoots.
There’s a resounding blast and flash of light in the dark room, a slight bit of recoil, and her target slumps over.
The shot was louder than she’d expected. Her ears ache and she worries for a moment that she might have burst her eardrums or that one of the neighbors might have heard and will come to investigate . . .
But the ringing subsides pretty quickly, thank goodness. And she reminds herself that this isn’t the kind of neighborhood where anyone’s going to be particularly startled by a loud blast, much less call the cops. Anyone in earshot will probably just assume it’s illegal fireworks.
The man lies silent and motionless on the bed.
She steps closer, pulls back the hammer, puts the gun to his head, braces herself for the noise, and fires again, just to be sure he’s dead.
There. That oughta do it.
Her ears are ringing and she can’t hear her own voice, but she speaks anyway: “Racist bastard.”
About to toss the weapon onto the bed beside him, she thinks better of it. No street thug breaking into the house would use a gun and then leave it behind.
Besides, you never know when a gun might come in handy.
She decides to hang onto it. Yeah, it’s registered to the old man, but she’ll be careful with it. It’s not as if she’s going to use it.
She reaches into the open drawer for the flashlight, turns it on and aims the beam at the body on the bed, surveying the blood. It’s everywhere—including all over her.
Quickly, she strips off the sweatshirt and baggy jeans. Beneath them she’s wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. To complete the disguise, she turns the baseball hat around so the brim faces backward, hipster style. Checking her shadowy reflection in the mirror above the bureau, she nods with
satisfaction. She still blends into the streets around here, and she doesn’t look at all like her real-life self.
She grabs a pillow from the opposite side of the bed, strips off the case, and shoves her wadded up clothing inside. The gun follows. Then, after shining the flashlight at the cluster of orange prescription bottles on the nightstand, she grabs the one that contains the sleeping pills and puts that into the pillowcase, too. No thief would ever leave that behind.
Anyway, she might need it, if she’s desperate for sleep later.
Desperate enough to risk harming the baby, yours and Ben’s?
No. No, I would never risk that. Never. Never. That’s why . . .
But that was so long ago. And now isn’t the time to think about it. Now is the time to stage the scene, just as she did at her mother-in-law’s years ago, and then get the hell out of here.
Alex hurriedly but methodically goes through the room, opening drawers, grabbing cash, jewelry, and some mint coins, anything that looks as though it might be of value. Not because she particularly wants or needs any of this crap, but because the police need to think this is a random burglary gone bad.
In the bathroom, she takes a bottle of prescription painkillers from the medicine cabinet. Again, not something your typical thief would leave behind.
The other bedrooms yield nothing of value, but she ransacks them for good measure, and the first floor, too, opening drawers, cabinets, and closets. She finds a white plastic supermarket bag beneath the sink and puts the pillowcase full of loot inside.
As she opens the kitchen door to make her escape, she can hear barking somewhere in the distance.
Beware of Dog?
Hmm. I don’t think so.
Slipping out into the night, she pauses to nudge the doormat—with the key still underneath—so that it’s noticeably out of alignment on the back step. The cops will find the key there and probably decide the old geezer got what he deserved.
She peels off the bloodied latex gloves and stuffs them into the bag, then makes her way through the backyard to the neighboring block. Heading down the sidewalk toward her car, she casually clutches the shopping bag as if she’s just come from the store.
She doesn’t meet a single soul all the way to the car.
She turns on the radio, tuned, as always, to the classic rock station.
Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” blasts into the car.
Ben likes classic rock.
She sings along at the top of her lungs, thinking about Ben. He’s out there somewhere in the night, listening to the same song. She knows it.
And he, too, is singing the lyrics, right along with her. A long-distance duet, she thinks wistfully. But soon enough she’ll be in his arms.
Ten minutes later she pulls off in the familiar strip mall parking lot where she fills Mr. Griffith’s prescriptions. The parking lot is largely deserted at this hour on a Saturday night; only the pizzeria is still open.
There’s a huge Dumpster behind the building. She’s used it before. She drives around back and deposits the bloodied clothing inside. Then she opens the prescription bottles, turns them upside down, and a hailstorm of pills patters into the Dumpster. She doesn’t want to take any chances that she’ll be tempted, later, to poison her body with medication when she’s supposed to be keeping it pure for conception.
She keeps the bottles, though, along with the jewelry, coins, money, and a couple of outdated electronics she stole from the house. And of course, the gun.
For now, anyway.
Then, careful not to go more than five miles over the speed limit, she drives the rest of the way home, still singing, eager to check her private messages again.
By the time Ben emerges from the bar onto the street, Gabriela is nowhere in sight. Exasperated, he reaches into his pocket for his phone. He’ll call her and—
His phone isn’t there.
He checks his other pocket. Nothing.
Did it fall out onto the floor?
He goes back inside to the table they just vacated. Their half-full glasses have already been cleared away; another couple has swooped in to claim their seats.
“Excuse me . . . did you by any chance find a cell phone here when you sat down?”
They didn’t. And they don’t seem to appreciate it when he crouches to look beneath the table, brushing against their cozily intertwined legs as he feels around on the floor.
No phone. He finds the waitress standing at the far end of the bar loading drinks onto a tray. She looks none too pleased to see him again.
Belatedly, he realizes he probably hadn’t left a great tip. In his haste to catch up with Gaby, rather than wait to run the check through on a credit card, he’d paid for their drinks with cash, tossing down a couple of bills that, in retrospect, probably just covered the drinks and tax.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” he tells her. “I was trying to catch up with my . . . wife.”
“What, did she run away from you?” she asks, wearing a look that suggests she wouldn’t blame her.
“More or less. Anyway, I must have left my phone behind. Did you find it?”
She didn’t—and she isn’t all that thrilled about the prospect of helping him look for it. She’s a little more cooperative after he hands her a ten-dollar bill to make up for shortchanging her tip, but the phone is nowhere to be found.
“Here,” she says, handing him a pen and a cocktail napkin. “Give me your home number in case it turns up.”
He scribbles it down and heads back outside.
The street is empty. No Gaby. No taxi.
He backtracks to the restaurant where they’d eaten dinner. That was the last time he’d seen it, when he checked the time. Maybe he left it there.
A couple of sections are still open and busy with late-night diners, but the corner where they’d eaten is darkened, the tables unoccupied and already set with napkins and silverware for tomorrow. The hostess informs him that no one turned in a lost cell phone, and that the waiter who served their section has already left for the night. She allows him to retrace his steps and search around the table but his phone is not found.
Dejected, Ben again leaves his name and number on a cocktail napkin and heads back out into the night.
This is crazy. It’s not like him to just lose things . . .
Dammit. It’s because of her. He was so caught up in reconnecting with her that he wasn’t thinking clearly.
Yeah, that’s right—it’s all her fault. Sure it is. Makes perfect sense.
Irrational? Maybe. But it makes him feel better to blame Gabriela for . . . something. Even the wrong thing.
Damn her.
He shoves his hands deep into his pockets, wondering what he’s supposed to do now.
He can check every inch of sidewalk between here and the cocktail lounge for the phone, but if he dropped it, chances are that someone already picked it up and either kept it, sold it, or—depending on character—is making like a Good Samaritan and trying to find him.
In any case, by now Gaby must be wondering why he hasn’t called or texted her to make sure she’s all right.
Good. Let her wonder.
He stands on Eighth Avenue facing oncoming traffic, arm outstretched to hail a cab. Somehow, this night that seemed so promising just a few hours ago has gone right down the toilet, just as he feared it would when he was standing outside the restaurant waiting for Gaby to come out of the ladies’ room.
A full five minutes passes before a taxi finally comes along that isn’t off-duty or already occupied.
“Where to?” the driver asks as he climbs in.
Good question.
Ben hesitates, thinking through the options.
New York City cabbies aren’t exactly known for their patient listening skills.
“C’mon, where to? Do you speak English?”
Irked, Ben snaps, “Yes, I speak English. I’m just trying to—”
“Where are you going?”
Ben s
pits out an address.
It isn’t his own. For some reason, he just gave the driver the cross streets for Gaby’s apartment building. The car jerks into drive and they’re off.
What are you doing, Ben? Why are you going to her place?
Maybe he wants to resolve things with her. Or maybe he just needs to have the last word. Or is he hoping for a last hurrah, as Peter would say?
Ordinarily it’s a stop and go crawl uptown, but tonight the cab careens along, sailing through one green light after another as if the traffic gods have granted special clearance for a man on a mission.
But what, exactly, is that mission?
Damned if he knows.
He beats a fingertip staccato on the door armrest, helpless and cut off without his phone. By now she might have texted or tried to call him with an apology. She’ll read his lack of response as antagonism.
A part of him thinks, Good. Let her. So what if she decides you’re angry?
He is angry.
But that doesn’t mean he’s stopped loving her. Even after all these years, after everything that’s happened, everything that’s been said and done . . .
I do. I love her. I can’t help it.
Ben stares glumly at the passing blur of buildings and people and cars. The city is alive with action tonight beneath a fat full moon and glittering stars.
He should be walking hand in hand with Gaby right now. He should have her in his arms, he should be kissing her . . .
Dammit. This isn’t how the evening was supposed to end.
As bewildered as he is frustrated, he replays the conversation they’d had at the cocktail lounge, trying to make sense of what happened.
Gaby blames him for their son’s death?
How could she have said something so cruel?
The accusation materialized out of thin air: a razor-sharp spear mercilessly hurtled toward its unwitting human bull’s-eye. Even now, merely echoing in his head, the words stab his heart. Gradually, as he replays them, forcing himself to hear what she said, the anger that was his initial reaction is back full force, mingling with the pain and confusion.
The cab stops short for a red light at 28th Street and Ben gazes out the window, watching pedestrians in the crosswalk. There are plenty of couples, gay and straight, hand in hand; a group of rowdy frat-boy types, a pair of tattooed kids who can’t be more than teenagers pushing a stroller and laughing like they haven’t a care in the world.
The Black Widow Page 20