EQMM, March-April 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

"Okay. I was just asking."

  Just asking is right. Cora knew that Fran would be happy to see her have a heart attack or a stroke just to get her out of the way.

  Frances returned to the living room a moment later with a glass of orange juice that she set on a napkin atop a doily. Before taking a sip, she stepped over to the television.

  "My God, Fran. What are you doing now?"

  Her sister-in-law was on her knees now, reaching behind the television with her backside pointed toward Cora. With the legs of Fran's polyester pantsuit hiked up, Cora could see the knee-high nylons that Fran had cut off at the ankle. That was something else that Cora couldn't understand; something else about Fran that drove her crazy. Her hand reached down and felt for the knife beside the cushion.

  "Your reception isn't good, Cora,” came her muffled voice. “I'm surprised you still use an antenna. I'm pretty sure I have a satellite dish and a descrambler in Harry's workshop. If we can get Elliot to put it up, I can get it hooked up. We can get you Lifetime, the Food Channel, the Shopping Network. There's even a Hallmark channel now."

  "I don't want a satellite on my rooftop. And I don't want your grandson climbing up there, either."

  She sat while her sister-in-law fiddled. It dumbfounded her. How could a woman be so cheap and idiotic, and still understand all the electronics work that Harry left behind?

  She turned her attention to Frances's purse. It was large and awkward. The wooden handles were ugly, with big copper buttons that looked more like rivets than decoration, and the clasp that held the bag closed was broken.

  Cora watched, clenching and unclenching her fists. She knew that Fran kept a big purse so she could take more of Cora's things. Cora knew that Fran wanted everything. Just because she had married her brother, worked side by side with him in their appliance shop—a shop financed by her father—Cora and Harry's father. And did her father ever once help Bill out with his business ventures? Frances had all the fortune of good children and good health. Yet Fran wanted to take whatever Cora had away from her.

  Cora pulled herself up from the chair and bent forward to catch a better look at what was in her sister-in-law's bag. It astounded her that a woman so fussy about neatness and cleanliness would carry around such a motley mess. She noted a ratty old collapsible umbrella, a billfold, several more plastic supermarket bags just like the one she wore on her head, and a wad of paper towels—not the kind that come in rolls, but the kind taken from dispensers in public restrooms, probably stolen. Then again, when had Cora ever known her sister-in-law to use a public restroom. Too dirty for her, of course.

  "What are you looking for?” asked Fran.

  "Don't scare me like that, Frances. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

  "Of course not."

  "Frances, why do you have a TV remote in your purse?"

  * * * *

  Brad Skinner was just about to pee when he heard the footsteps. He stifled the warm stream and shoved his johnson back in his pants. He remembered to clasp his belt but after struggling with the fly for a second or two, he decided not to bother. No matter.

  Skinner took in a silent breath. He blinked and patted his jacket pockets and nodded his head with each clip-clop of the footsteps. He tightened his fists and released them again, then edged to the corner to peer around a wall.

  As soon as he saw her, he smiled. It was an old lady with a plain raincoat the color of puke. She had a plastic bag on top of her head for a rain hat. He'd take her purse, grab the cash, the cards, the social-security check, and get off to Gerber's place to score.

  He stepped out of the doorway and asked her, “Do you have the time, lady?"

  He looked again at the makeshift rain bonnet and wondered if maybe she was a street person. She better have enough to make his score or he'd be doubly pissed. But her face didn't look like that of a street person.

  "It's a quarter of eight,” said the old woman, looking up at him. She was about four feet away from Skinner. Her washed-out yellow hair was curly beneath its plastic covering. She had a big round nose that together with the hair made him think of one of those Marx Brothers, the weird one that never talked.

  He felt himself grinning, and felt a rush of excitement in his groin. Or maybe it was just the piss he was still holding in. The old lady didn't look scared. That was good. Ladies who thought they were safe carried more money, he figured.

  "Lemme have your bag, lady.” He loved saying that. It made him feel strong. Bag lady, he thought. She's a real bag lady with that thing on her head. But then again, a real bag lady wouldn't have anything worth stealing so she couldn't be a real bag lady after all.

  "Are you going to rob me?” she asked.

  "Hunh-y-yeah,” he chuckled, although it came out like a nervous shiver. He reached for her now and stood in her path so she'd have to turn around to get away from him. When she tried, he'd trip her.

  "Hand it over or I'll have to hurt you, lady."

  She grasped her oversized purse in both hands. For a second, Brad Skinner thought she was going to throw it at him. It was big and looked heavy. But she didn't throw it. She held it toward him, still gripping it at the sides with both hands. The top of the purse wasn't closed all the way. Kind of like his zipper. Jeez, the bitch has got nerve, he thought.

  He stretched his right hand out and reached for the purse.

  He looked in the lady's eyes. Damn, she didn't look scared or anything. She did have nerve. Then, suddenly, the woman dropped the purse.

  Skinner looked down at it, his arm still suspended midair. Some of the purse's contents—a wallet, a hairbrush, and several plastic bags—fell onto the sidewalk.

  Before he could look back up at the old lady, something bit at his wrist.

  It felt like something was grabbing his hand. He was surprised at how much effort it took to shift his glance from the sidewalk to his arm.

  The old lady was holding something in her hand. It looked like an old TV remote, with just a couple of buttons. He started to reach for the thing. But he wasn't moving fast enough. The lady held it toward him and pressed it into his shoulder. He felt the bite again, but this time it was duller. He felt like he was shaking. He thought of some bad speed he took once, but this was faster, more violent. It was like a gorilla had him by the shoulder and was shaking him faster than light.

  What the hell! he wanted to scream. But his jaw wasn't working. He was numb all over, from his arm down to his feet. He dropped down to his knees. His thighs became suddenly warm and damp. I'm bleeding, he thought. But it was his bladder let loose.

  "You want my bag, young man? Shame on you."

  He had the urge to scream, but his lungs wouldn't work.

  The old lady bent down with surprising agility and scooped the wallet and hairbrush back into her purse, along with the thing she'd zapped him with. He couldn't remember what it was called. It wasn't a TV remote. He couldn't remember. He had to concentrate on his breathing.

  His efforts to stay upright were useless. Already down on his haunches, he tipped over, falling like an empty beer bottle, like a tree—a drunken tree.

  "This is a good city,” the old lady said, “and these are good streets. There's a place for everything, and everything in its place. This is no place for dope and gangs, or for hurting good people. You should be ashamed of yourself."

  He thought he was screaming, but no sound came out. He wanted to punch the lady, but he couldn't move. His jaw was stiff. His eyes closed for a moment and when he opened them again, he saw the woman holding her closed hand toward him. She was pushing something into his mouth. A bag. A plastic bag like the one on her head. Like what Skinner had seen a thousand times at the market. She was pushing it into his mouth.

  He felt his throat constrict in a gag. He tried to inhale. He groaned and retched and solid chunks of vomit lodged in his sinuses and dripped from his nose. His eyes were burning from tears.

  "I hope you've learned something today, young man. This is not a place for any
thing ugly or unpleasant. Everything has a place, but not that."

  She looked down at the stream of urine glistening on the sidewalk. “Oh, look at that."

  Skinner stared, unbelieving. From the way the old lady was looking at the puddle at his feet, he thought she was actually thinking about scrubbing it with disinfectant. Why would he think of that? He thought of his own mother as blackness rose from his chest. His eyes bulged, barely seeing. But he saw the woman take the bag from atop her head. Consciousness faded, but not fast enough. In his last, gurgling silent scream he watched the translucent plastic being pulled over his face.

  For a moment he watched in shock as the bag quivered and filled with steam from his own nostrils. The bag's green lettering covered one eye. It was a large letter C from a supermarket logo. The printed symbol and the cloudiness of the faded bag gave a twisted, disorienting view of the figure that stood above him.

  The last thing he saw was that large letter C. With his last breath, he made the sound “Ccccc,” almost, Frances thought, as though he was trying to utter the other half, “clean."

  * * * *

  It was time to draw a bath. Frances Hart set her purse on the glass end table, pulled off her cotton gloves, and kicked off her shoes. She stepped into a pair of white slip-on house slippers with a nylon rose on top.

  She took a roll of grocery produce bags from under the kitchen sink and tore off five or six. She separated them and folded them neatly, and placed them in a pocket inside her purse. The stunner was still disconnected from the electrodes on the purse handles, so she took it out—it was a simple one that Harry had designed—and put it back on its charger. One must always be ready for the unexpected.

  She walked into the bathroom and, after giving the tub a quick rinse, set the plug and began to draw her bath.

  It had been a long day. A good day, but a long one. She was tired, and feeling a little dirty. Now it was time to clean up.

  The following morning, Cora Lewis made her way from one end of the kitchen to the other. She was furious. A slice of toast was getting cold on the kitchen table. A grapefruit sat on the cutting board beside the sink.

  On her ever-present television, a local newscaster said, “Last night, a twenty-four-year-old man was found dead on the corner of High Street and Sweeney, another apparent victim of the Bell Town Strangler. Police are not disclosing the name of the victim and the details of his death. But sources tell us that the victim died of asphyxiation in a manner similar to that of five other men in the same vicinity over the past three months..."

  "Damn her,” said Cora, not listening to the television, her mind on the grapefruit waiting to be sliced, as she frantically searched the countertops. “If Fran took my knife, we'll see if I let her in my house again. I know she took it. That was part of a set we got for our anniversary. Frances and her damn purse."

  A place for everything, she thought angrily. And everything in its place.

  She didn't think to look at the side of her easy-chair cushion, where it had lain since Fran's visit, its blade still sticky with the juice of yesterday's orange.

  Copyright © 2010 Steven Steinbock

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: REARVIEW MIRROR by Art Taylor

  An assistant professor of English at George Mason University, Art Taylor also has his fingers in a number of related literary pies. He's a fiction writer, an editor for Metro Magazine, a reviewer for Washington Post Book World, and a contributor to nonfiction fan magazines such as Mystery Scene. He's a native of North Carolina and often sets his stories in the South; this tale was inspired by a trip he took to New Mexico and is in a somewhat lighter vein than most of his work.

  I hadn't been thinking about killing Delwood. Not really. But you know how people sometimes have just had enough. That's what I'd meant when I said it to him: “I could just kill you,” the two of us sitting in his old Nova in front of a cheap motel on Route 66—meaning it just figurative, even if that might seem at odds with me sliding his pistol into my purse right after I said it.

  And even though I was indeedthinking hard about taking my half of the money and maybe a little more—literal now, literally taking it—I would not call it a double-cross. Just kind of a divorce and a divorce settlement, I guess. Even though we weren't married. But that's not the point.

  Sometimes people are just too far apart in their wants—that's what my mama told me. Sometimes things just don't work out.

  That was the point.

  * * * *

  "Why don't we take the day off,” I'd asked him earlier that morning up in Taos, a Saturday, the sun creeping up but everything still mostly quiet in the trailer park where we'd been renting on the biweekly. “We could go buy you a suit, and I could get a new dress. And then maybe we'd go out to dinner. To Joseph's Table, maybe. Celebrate a little."

  He snorted. “Louise,” he said, the way he does. “What's it gonna look like, the two of us, staying out here, paycheck to paycheck, economical to say the least"—he put a little emphasis on economical, always liking the sound of anything above three syllables—"and then suddenly going out all spiffed up to the nicest restaurant in town?” He looked at me for a while, and then shook his head.

  "We don't have to go to the nicest restaurant,” I said, trying to compromise, which is the mark of a good relationship. “We could just go down to the bar at the Taos Inn and splurge on some high-dollar bourbon and a couple of nice steaks.” I knew he liked steaks, and I could picture him smiling over it, chewing, both of us fat and happy. So to speak, I mean, the fat part being figurative again, of course.

  "We told Hal we'd vacate the premises by this morning. We agreed."

  Hal was the man who ran the trailer park. A week or so before, Del had told him he'd finally gotten his degree and then this whole other story about how we'd be moving out to California, where Del's sister lived, and how we were gonna buy a house over there.

  "Sister?” I had wanted to say when I overheard it. “House?” But then I realized he was just laying the groundwork, planning ahead so our leaving wouldn't look sudden or suspicious. Concocting a story—I imagine that's the way he would have explained it, except he didn't explain it to me, he just did it.

  That's the way he was sometimes: a planner, not a communicator. Taciturn, he called it. Somewhere in there, in his not explaining and my not asking, he had us agreeing. And now he had us leaving.

  "Okay,” I told Del. “We'll just go then. But how ‘bout we rent a fancy car? A convertible, maybe. A nice blue one.” And I could see it—us cruising through the Sangre de Cristos on a sunny afternoon, the top slid back and me sliding across the seat too, leaning over toward him, maybe kicking my heels up and out the window. My head would be laid on his shoulder and the wind would slip through my toes. Now that would be nice.

  "No need to blow this windfall on some extravagance,” he said. “No need to call attention to ourselves unnecessarily. Our car works fine."

  He headed for it then—an old Nova. Little spots of rust ran underneath the doors and up inside the wheel well. A bad spring in the seat always bit into my behind. Lately, the rearview mirror had started to hang just a little loose—not so that Delwood couldn't see in it, but enough that it rattled against the windshield whenever the road got rough.

  I stood on the steps with my hip cocked and my arms crossed, so that when he turned and looked at me in that rearview mirror, he'd know I was serious. But he just climbed in the car, and sat there staring ahead. Nothing to look back at, I guess. He'd already packed the car while I slept. The trailer behind us was empty of the few things we owned.

  "A new day for us,” he'd whispered an hour before when he woke me up, but already it seemed like same old, same old to me.

  When I climbed in beside him, I slammed the passenger-side door extra hard and heard a bolt come loose somewhere inside it.

  "It figures,” I said, listening to it rattle down. The spring had immediately dug extra hard into my left rump.

/>   Del didn't answer. Just put the car in gear and drove ahead.

  * * * *

  When I first met Del, he was robbing the 7-Eleven over in Eagle Nest, where I worked at that time. This was about a year ago. I'd just been sitting behind the counter, reading one of the Cosmos off the shelf, when in comes this fellow in jeans and a white T-shirt and a ski mask, pointing a pistol.

  "I'm not gonna hurt you,” he said. “I'm not a bad man. I just need a little boost in my income."

  I laid the Cosmo facedown on the counter so that I wouldn't lose my place. “You're robbing me?” I said.

  "Yes, ma'am."

  I bit my lip and shook my head—no no no—just slightly.

  "I'm only twenty-four,” I said.

  He looked over toward the Doritos display—not looking at it, but just pointing his head in that direction the way some people look into space whenever they're thinking. He had a moustache and a beard. I could see the stray hairs poking out around the bottom of the ski mask and near the hole where his mouth was.

  "Excuse me?” he said finally, turning back to face me. His eyes were green.

  "I'm not a ma'am."

  He held up his free hand, the one without the pistol, and made to run it through his hair—another sign of thinking—but with the ski mask, it just slid across the wool. “Either way, could you hurry it up a little. I'm on a schedule."

  Many reasons for him to be frustrated, I knew. Not the least of which was having to wear wool in New Mexico in the summer.

  He glanced outside. The gas pumps were empty. Nothing but darkness on the other side of the road. This time of night, we didn't get much traffic. I shrugged, opened the cash register.

  "You know,” I said, as I bent down for a bag to put his money in. “You have picked the one solitary hour that I'm alone in the store, between the time that Pete has to head home for his mom's curfew and the time that our night manager strolls in for his midnight to six."

  "I know. I've been watching you.” Then there was a little nervous catch in his voice. “Not in a bad way, I mean. Not voyeuristically," he said, enunciating the word, and then the next one too. “Just surveillance, you know. I'm not a pervert."