EQMM, June 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  And what a poor choice he had made for handling this crisis. He should have traveled to Yalta at once, he would think later. He should have challenged the other man to a duel. He should have punished his wife for her indiscretion with the same firm justice with which he might forgive her for it afterwards. But instead he had written her a letter. There is something wrong with my eyes, he had explained. Please come home as quickly as possible. A weak lie to avoid a scandal. A coward's choice. He had signed it Your husband as if he needed to remind her of the fact—a thought whose shame he would also long bear.

  Even as he dripped the wax onto the envelope and reached for his seal, he knew that any choice he made was a mistake. If he didn't confront the situation now, he would be unable to do so later. How could he admit to her in years to come that he had known all along, that he had borne her adultery in silence? And yet what ramifications would ensue if he acted rashly? His public might acquit him of any action he took now in defense of his home, but could they avoid looking upon him differently once they'd discovered him a cuckold? How would they ever trust him as a leader if they suspected that some mismanagement of domestic affairs had sent his wife into the arms of another man?

  Such was simply not possible. He sealed the wax.

  WSHA had gone off the air at midnight, and hours of cold, dry static had whispered from the speakers as Philip drove restlessly through the night, haunted by images, miles of worry accumulating. The Land Rover at the curb, the light in the bedroom window, the cigarette in the street ... the stale aftertaste of tequila from Catherine's kiss, the feel of her lips light on his forehead several nights before ... the passions in her painting, the pizza in the microwave ... her admission that Buddy was there when he called, her admission that she had slept with him before. Another man's hand rested on her hip, caressed her breast. Her fingers wandered in the hair of his chest, their lips met, their bodies twined....

  Chekhov had been right, he thought, still crafting the short story in his head, trying in vain still to distract himself from the other story, from all that had happened in recent hours. Each of us does have two lives, one open and the other running its course in secret. But Chekhov had missed the despair of never truly being able to know the other's secret existence, always balancing trust against doubt. Gurov had found some prurient irony in the idea of secret lives, Anna Sergeyevna had been torn asunder by her two worlds, and Evgeniy von Diderits ... But it wasn't Evgeniy's story, after all, Philip recognized, the simplest truth. Anna's and Gurov's was the grand, conflicted passion. Von Diderits's life was static, negligible. Philip had simply chosen the wrong character. And while another man had been wooing and perhaps winning Catherine, Philip had stuck himself away in 1890s Russia, missing the chance to be of significance in his own story, precisely when he should have been strengthening his role.

  But now he'd secured a place in both stories, had taken special pains to assure that his presence would be felt.

  Dawn had broken by the time Philip drove the rented Buick back to his own house and parked it at the curb where the Land Rover had stood the night before. The neighborhood was now lit in soft tones. Sprinklers were rotating in a lawn down the street—set off by an automatic timer, as regular as clockwork, as if nothing had changed. In another yard, a cat stalked some animal unseen. As Philip walked toward his front porch, he heard the neighbor's door open and then saw her step out to pick up her paper. She stopped when she spotted him, and even from a distance he could sense her hesitancy, her apprehension. Did she not recognize him? He saw that she didn't have her glasses on. The Buick must have confused her too. Perhaps she suspected an early-morning burglar?

  "Good morning, Mrs. Rosen,” he called out, with a nervous wave. “Just me. Philip.” Yes, just like the sprinklers, he told himself. Act asif nothing has changed. And then he thought, But maybe she has seen me clearly, maybe it's not that she doesn't recognize me but that she's sensed something better than she should. He quickly turned his key in the front door and pushed it inward, not waiting for a reply.

  Once inside, however, he still felt himself an intruder, as if actually breaking into some strange house. He saw even the most familiar objects as if for the first time: a piece of pottery he and Catherine had picked up in Chatham County, a photograph of them on their honeymoon in London, Catherine's purse on the chair. The painting over the mantel seemed darker than usual. The fabric of the couch didn't quite match the floor. He noticed that a Mingus CD he had left in the player had been swapped out for Moby and that an empty bottle of Pinot Noir stood on the kitchen counter. Two glasses sat in the sink.

  Had Buddy touched this newspaper on the counter? Which chair had he sat in? The carpet runner in the hallway had been kicked up at the corner. The hand towel in the bathroom had a streak of grime. Was that another man's piss on the rim of the toilet? Under the fluorescent lights, he noticed that there were still traces of red on his hands—ink? No. Not ink. Not ink—not this time. He took a moment to wash them again and then waited to let them dry in the air, reluctant to share the hand towel that the other man had touched.

  In their bedroom, the rising sun crept around the edges of the window, leaving the room in morning twilight, and Philip detected the thick scent of black currants again, wildflowers. Beneath the sheets wrapped around her, Catherine's breasts rose and fell in easy rhythms. Her black hair strayed out across the pillow, and a mascara stain marked the case, almost in the shape of an eyelash itself. Someone had propped a condom against the edge of the alarm clock. Durex. Unopened.

  Sitting down in the chair in the corner of the room, Philip twirled the condom in his hand, examined the edges of the wrapper, the expiration date, phrases from the package: “super thin for more feeling,” “nonoxynol-9,” “if erection is lost before withdrawal...” It was from a box of twelve in the bathroom, he knew, and he also knew that if he hadn't come home before she awoke, if he'd really been in Virginia, then the condom would have been returned to its spot, the evidence vanished. But unopened? He started to go into the bathroom and count the ones that remained in the box, to see if others were missing, but he couldn't remember with any certainty how many had been in there before he left. It had been awhile since they'd made love, he realized with regret, with shame.

  Catherine shifted her weight, stretched an arm out to her side. Philip clasped the condom in his hand and moved up to the bed to sit beside her.

  "Catherine,” he said, “are you awake?” He laid his free hand on her arm, resisted an unexpected urge to shake it. “It's me. Philip."

  "Philip?” she mumbled, still half asleep, leaning into his touch. Her eyes parted just slightly. “It's too early, Philip, it's—” Her body tensed, her eyes opened wide, she looked up at him bewildered. “Philip?” she said again, sitting up sharply. The sheet fell away from her bare breasts, and it struck him that Buddy had seen her nakedness too, and probably not just long ago. He watched her glance toward the clock, saw her confusion deepen. “Where...? It's seven in the morning. I thought you were—"

  "You said you were sick,” he began, and despite himself he could hear the accusation seeping into his tone. “I came home because—” But even before he said them, he knew the words weren't right, that disguising the truth would make him no better than her. The very next moment would determine everything that came after. “I never left,” he began, sternly, pridefully, measuring his anger. “No, I've been in Raleigh the whole time. I've used up a whole tank of gas, Catherine. I've been driving, I've been thinking.... I saw him, and I don't know what to make of it all, don't know what to make of you.” He caught her glancing again at the clock, at the place where the condom no longer stood, and he felt his hand clenching tighter, the foil wrapper crinkling within. “Is this what you're looking for?” he asked with a sneer, and he flicked the condom onto the bedspread with his freshly washed hands. The evidence was there. She would have to admit the truth, confirm that he'd been right. Unopened or not, it was still proof. Intentions were—

>   But as he watched her face, her expression betrayed little. She stared down at the condom for a moment and then pushed her hair behind her ears, lifted her head to meet his gaze. As with everything else in the house, Philip had the vague sensation of seeing Catherine now for the first time: the cleft dividing her chin; those faint clusters of freckles across her cheeks, usually masked by powder; the uncommon color of her eyes. Her irises were a deep, impenetrable green, her pupils unfathomably opaque. He thought of the painting above the mantel, those swaths of color brushing against one another, connecting, parting. “Oh, Philip,” she whispered, gently shaking her head, “why did you go away? Why did we need to do this?” and in her wry, pained smile he glimpsed the ragged edges of her secret life, forced open, unable to be hid. My God, he thought, did I make this?—his anger fleeing him now and some other dull feeling taking its place. The next step was inevitable, he saw then, already written, and he wanted desperately now to go back and mend things—everything that he'd opened up, to hide his own secret life, to leave everything hid.

  "Philip,” she said again, reaching out to take his hand in hers, “I have something to tell you.” It was too late to stop it now, and he knew that whatever she said next he would try to believe, but he would never believe. And it was clear to him that no matter what happened, the most difficult and complicated part of it was likely just beginning.

  ©2007 by Art Taylor

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  LOST AND FOUND by P. J. Parrish

  Kelly Nichols, aka P.J. Parrish, is the author of the critically acclaimed Louis Kincaid mys-tery series, coauthored with her sister, Kristy Montee. The books have made the bestseller lists of the New York Times and USA Today, and been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Shamus awards. Their latest novel, A Thousand Bones (Pocket Books, July) is the debut of their spin-off series featuring Miami homicide detective Joette Frye.

  He sat alone in the dark cruiser, staring out the windshield into the shimmering darkness. It was just starting to rain, more of a mist really, tiny glittery drops that seemed to fall from nowhere and disappear before they hit the ground.

  He turned off the wipers and after a few moments the glass began to blur, the rain working like a slow silver paintbrush to erase his view of the bridge and the man on it.

  A.J. sighed softly, tiredly. The car was a comforting coc-oon of drifting shadows, blinking red radio lights, and the familiar hug of the old leather seat on his back.

  There weren't many moments like this, so he held on to it for a while, maybe another full minute, before he hit the wipers again. In the wet glow of the cruiser's headlights, the bridge and the rookie standing on it came back into focus.

  The rookie was young, with an awkward, bent-stick way of walking. His face, with his crooked Alabama smile, was eager, anxious, and hopeful. Not a whole lot different from the last rookie A.J. had. Or the one before him or the one before that one.

  The bridge was old and plain, too big, really, for the trickle of brown water that flowed beneath it. The bridge's face, a stretch of plain, bleached concrete, was chipped and scarred by too many drunks, and smeared in more recent years with red and yellow slashes of gang graffiti.

  The bridge seemed to be the only thing standing still in the drifting night. Maybe it was just the distant city lights as they played off the underbelly of the low-hanging clouds. Or maybe it was the fog slithering around the rookie's feet. Whatever it was, it was the kind of night that held something A.J. had felt before. It was the kind of night he always thought could crawl inside you and suck something out, something you couldn't see leaving but you could feel.

  A.J. glanced out the side window, his mind drifting with the trickle of raindrops down the glass.

  Lorraine liked these kinds of nights, but she never saw them like he did. He recalled her saying more than once, usually on one of their anniversaries, that it had been raining like this—this weird glittery kind of mist—when he proposed to her.

  He smiled slowly. It was like they were being sprinkled with love dust, she said.

  She had a special word for this kind of night, but right now he couldn't remember that, either. What had she called it?

  Londonesque. Yeah. That was it. Must be what London is like, don't you think, A.J.? Do you think we could go there on our honeymoon, A.J.?

  He never understood the word Londonesque, but he didn't tell her that. Never told her he didn't understand most of her fancy words. Didn't tell her he suspected she even made some up. They didn't go to London on their honeymoon. In fact, they hadn't gone anywhere on their wedding night. But Lorraine kept planning other “honeymoons” to other places. Places, like her made-up words, that she thought could make her someone or something else. Something smarter or prettier or better than what she was. A cop's wife.

  A.J. had never been much farther than St. Louis, but for the moment, in this weather, and maybe because he was feeling a bit lonely lately, and a bit kindly toward Lorraine right now, he could imagine, if things had gone differently, that he and Lorraine might be in England. Strolling around the outside of one of those grand old castles, taking pictures of the stiff-lipped, fuzzy-hatted guys standing guard outside.

  He sighed softly.

  She'd been gone a long time now. Left him, married her dentist, and moved to Knoxville, where he knew they had no castles, but he guessed they had a few pink-bricked houses with big backyards. A few years later, he heard that the dentist had bought her a bigger house with a bigger yard. He didn't know where she lived now. Didn't know if she had ever gotten to England.

  A.J. looked back at the rookie on the bridge.

  His name was Andy. The leather jacket squared off his shoulders, making him look tougher and beefier than A.J. knew he was underneath the stiff leather. Andy's blue trousers were knife-creased, and speckled with rain and mud from the climb down the hill. They were a might short, too, and every time Andy leaned on the bridge, A.J. could see a flash of his bright white tube socks.

  Andy's eyes, A.J. had noticed earlier, were a pale brown, the color of beach sand. Kind, trusting eyes, but eyes that held no sense of command. A.J. knew that people—bad people—noticed things like that. A nervous gesture, a tremor in the voice, a wrong step in the wrong direction, all those small things that told the bad guy who was in charge and who would win if it ever came down to it.

  Andy would have to lose that look if he was going to survive.

  * * * *

  A.J. shifted in his seat to ease the stiffness in his lower back and glanced at the clock, wondering where the detectives were. It was almost midnight, shift's end. Usually he could gauge the time pretty well without looking, and he was surprised it was this late. He raised his hand to the flickering computer screen to check his watch. The crystal was a little fogged and he blew on it to clear it. Sometimes that worked.

  The watch was probably in its final days, but it had been a good watch, the kind a cop needed. Something that could get smacked against a wall, dropped in a lake, and even stepped on, and still just keep on ticking, like the old commercial said. When it died, he wouldn't throw it away. He would lay it to rest in his jewelry box along with all his old service pins and outdated badges.

  It had been his daughter Sheila's last gift to him, given to him in June of 1998. He had thought it was a Father's Day gift until he realized it was wrapped in Christmas paper, left over from six months earlier when he hadn't shown up in Knoxville at the dentist's house like he promised he would.

  Sheila didn't understand too many things back then, like how long it took to remove crumpled cars, wet Christmas presents, and dead bodies from a freeway interchange. She didn't understand that he had called the next morning to apologize and wish her a good Christmas. And she didn't understand that ex-wives had their own reasons for not giving daughters messages from their fathers.

  He supposed most sixteen-year-old girls didn't understand stuff like that. They saw the world only through their own narrow, selfish prisms, and somet
imes one tiny mistake could be that one thing they thought ruined their life forever. His not being there that Christmas was that one thing for Sheila.

  He hadn't made it to Knoxville the following Christmas, either, but he had called and asked Sheila to come see him. The day before, she canceled, leaving a message on his answering machine telling him she had places to go and cool people she wanted to see over the holidays. A.J. wasn't one of them.

  He tapped on the watch. The crystal was still clouded.

  He wondered if the Seikos clouded up. Probably not. Those beauties were sterling silver, emblazoned with the police department logo, and inscribed with the officer's name on the back. They were given to officers after twenty-five years of service, presented in a satin-lined case by the chief at a ten-minute ceremony that the wives and children could attend.

  A.J. reached down and picked up a half-eaten Hershey's bar off the console and broke off a square of chocolate.

  The department had stopped giving out the watches last November. Said they couldn't afford it anymore, what with all the recent pay increases, EEOC-mandated promotions, lawsuits on excessive force, worker's-comp injuries, and the high cost of computers, radar guns, patrol cars, tin badges, and gasoline.

  A.J.'s twenty-fifth anniversary was next month. He had mentioned that to Andy a few days ago, and Andy had asked why he didn't just buy a watch and have it inscribed to himself.

  Don't ya think it loses just a little meaning that way, kid?

  He looked back at Andy, hitting the wipers again to clear his view.