by Scott Smith
I stepped out from behind the counter.
"A single bottle of wine," she yelled through the glass.
I unlocked the door with the cashier's keys. I pulled it open, glancing at her car to make sure she was alone. It was empty.
"I'll be extremely brief," she said, sounding slightly out of breath. "I simply need a dinner wine, to bring as a gift."
She stepped inside, and I closed the door behind her, twisting the lock shut with a click. I put the keys back into my pocket.
She turned to look at me. "You do sell wine?"
"Of course," I said. "Wine, beer, champagne..."
She waited for me to go on, but I didn't. I stood there, smiling, my body between her and the door. Now that I'd made my decision, I was remarkably calm. It was the same way I'd felt with Sonny, like I was slipping into a groove, acting out a role.
"Well? Where is it?" She hadn't noticed the bloody boot tracks yet.
"We have to make a deal, first."
"A deal?" she asked, confused. She looked at me then, really looked, assessing me for the first time, taking in my face, the expression of my eyes. "I don't have time for jokes, young man," she said, her head assuming an imperious tilt, like a hawk's.
"I knocked over a rack of red wine." I pointed toward the rear of the store.
She peered down the center aisle at the puddle. "Dear me," she said.
"My mop's up on a shelf in the storeroom, and I have to climb a ladder to get it. I need someone to hold the ladder for me."
She stared at me again. "You're asking me to hold the ladder?"
"I'm doing you a favor, letting you in like this."
"A favor?" She snorted. "You were closing up early, trying to sneak home before you were supposed to. I don't imagine your boss would look upon this as any great favor."
"All you have to do is hold--"
The woman tapped at her watch. "It was two minutes before six. A favor! I never heard of such a thing."
"Look," I said. "I can't clean that up without a mop. And I can't get to the mop without your help."
"Whoever heard of storing a mop on a shelf?"
"I'm asking for a very small amount of your time."
"I'm dressed for dinner. Look at me! I can't be holding ladders for people when I'm dressed like this."
"What if I give you the wine for free?" I asked. "Any bottle you choose, on the house. All you have to do is come back to the storeroom and hold the ladder for me."
She hesitated, her face wrinkling with thought. Beyond the window, cars zipped by, one after the other, a steady stream of lights.
"You said you had champagne?"
I nodded.
"Dom Perignon?"
"Yes," I said. "Of course."
"Then that's what I want."
"All right," I said. "That's what you'll get." I stepped back over to the counter and picked up the newspaper, folding it over the machete. Then I returned to the woman and took her by her elbow.
"If we go down the far aisle, we can avoid the puddle."
She allowed herself to be guided forward. Her heels clicked loudly against the tiled floor. "I won't be mussed, will I? I won't do this if it involves touching anything dirty."
"It's all very clean," I soothed her. "It's simply a matter of steadying the ladder."
We were heading down the far aisle. My eyes moved along the shelves we passed, noting items at random -- bread, croutons, salad dressing, toilet paper, Kleenex, sponges, canned fruit, rice, crackers, pretzels, potato chips.
"I don't have much time," she said. She brushed at her fur coat, glanced quickly at her wrist. "I'm already late."
I was still holding her by the elbow. The machete was in my left hand. I could feel its blade through the paper.
"I'll be up and down the ladder, find your champagne, and like that" -- I took my hand away from her arm and snapped my fingers -- "you'll be out of here."
"This is the most extraordinary situation," she said. "I can't recall anything like it."
I returned my hand to her elbow, and she looked up at me.
"You know I won't be coming back here again," she said. "This is the last time I'll ever grace this establishment. That's what forcing customers into awkward situations does, young man. It alienates them. It puts them off."
I nodded, barely listening. Without sensing its approach, I'd suddenly become extremely nervous. I could feel my blood pulsing through my head, thickly, as if my veins were too small for it. We were nearing the end of the aisle. The puddle had spread all the way to the wall, blocking off the doorway. There were boot prints around its edge and drag marks from the cashier's body. The woman stopped short when she saw it, stomping her foot.
"I'm not walking through that."
I tightened my grip on her arm, moving my body to her rear. I pushed her forward toward the storeroom.
"What on earth are you doing? Young man?"
I stuck the newspaper-wrapped machete beneath my arm and then, gripping her with both hands, half-carried, half-pushed her into the dark red puddle. She made light, high-kneed steps, trying to dance her way through, her feet going tap, tap, tap on the tiles.
"This is outrageous," she said, her voice rising to a low shriek.
There was a pause while I fumbled with the doorknob. Looking down, I saw her shoes, stained from the puddle. They were very tiny, like a child's.
"I...will...not...stand...being...," she sputtered, trying to free herself from my grip. I had a solid hold on her jacket, though, a fistful of fur, and I refused to let her go.
"...manhandled...by...a...common..."
I got the door open, slid my hand to her back, and pushed her inside. With my other hand, I shook the machete free from its disguise. The newspaper fluttered down into the puddle.
She was surprisingly stable on her feet. She seemed to sense the body in front of her before she actually realized what it was and regained her balance with two quick steps, one landing beside the cashier's head, the other beside his chest.
She started to turn toward me, her mouth opening in protestation, but then her eyes were pulled downward by the horribly familiar form of the obstruction at her feet.
"Dear God," she said.
I'd planned on doing it quickly, as quickly and cleanly as possible, just hitting her from the rear, hard, and leaving, but the sound of her voice stopped me. I realized with a shock who it reminded me of. It was Sarah -- the exact same tone and pitch, only raised a bit by age; the same firmness riding beneath the words, the same self-confidence and resolution. I thought to myself, This is how Sarah will sound when she's old.
The woman took advantage of my hesitation to turn on me, and the expression on her face -- a mixture of fear, disgust, confusion -- jarred me into an even longer pause.
"I don't...," she began, but then fell silent, shaking her head. The room was dark; the only light came from the open doorway, where I was standing. My shadow covered the woman to her waist. I held the machete out in front of me, as if to ward her off.
"What is this?" she asked, her voice shaking a little but still sounding remarkably calm. I watched her as she carefully repositioned her feet, turning so that she could face me directly. She straddled the cashier's corpse, putting one foot on either side of his stomach. The hem of her fur coat bunched up a little, resting against his body.
I knew that I ought to kill her, that the longer I spent there, the more danger I'd be in, but a lifetime's training in the proper social behavior of responding when one is addressed overrode that knowledge. Automatically, without thinking, I answered her question.
"I killed him," I said.
She glanced down at the cashier's face, then back up at me.
"With that?" she asked, gesturing toward the machete.
I nodded. "Yes. With this."
We stared at each other then, for perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, though it seemed like much longer. We were each waiting for the other to initiate something.
I tight
ened my grip on the machete. My mind sent out an order to my arm -- clear, precise, direct. Hit her, it said. But my arm remained in front of me, motionless.
"What kind of a man are you?" the woman asked finally.
The question took me by surprise. I stared at her, thinking. It seemed important that I answer her sincerely. "I'm just normal," I said. "I'm like anyone else."
"Normal? Only a monster would be capable of..."
"I've got a job. A wife, a baby girl."
She averted her eyes when I said this, as if it were something she didn't want to hear. She noticed that her coat was resting on the cashier's body, and she tried to reposition it, but it was too long. She glanced back up at me.
"But how could you do this?"
"I had to."
"Had to?" she asked, as if the idea were absurd. She eyed the machete with disgust. "You had to kill him with that thing?"
"I stole some money."
"Surely you could've taken it without killing him. You could've..."
I shook my head. "Not from him. I found it in a plane."
"A plane?"
I nodded. "Four million dollars."
She was confused now. I'd lost her. "Four million dollars?"
"It was ransom. From a kidnapping."
She frowned at that, as if she thought I was lying. "What does that have to do with him?" she asked angrily, pointing down at the cashier. "Or me?"
I tried to explain. "My brother and I killed someone to keep him from finding out about the money. And then my brother shot his friend to protect me, and I shot his friend's girlfriend and their landlord to protect my brother, but then he started to break down, so I had to shoot him to protect myself, and then the kidnapper..."
She stared at me, and the fear in her face made me stop, made me realize how I must sound, like I was insane, a psychopath.
"I'm not crazy," I said, trying to make my voice come out rational, calm. "It all makes sense. It all happened one thing after the other."
There was a long moment of silence. It was broken finally by the roar of another plane flying over. The whole building echoed with the sound of its engines.
"I tried to make you leave," I said, "but you kept knocking on the door. You wouldn't listen."
The woman clicked open her purse. She reached up, pulled off her earrings, and dropped them inside, one at a time.
"Here," she said, holding it toward me.
I stared down at it. I didn't understand what she wanted me to do.
"Take it," she said.
I reached out with my left hand and took the bag.
"I didn't do it for the money," I said. "I did it to keep from getting caught."
She didn't say anything. She didn't know what I was talking about.
"It's like those old stories about people selling their souls. I did one bad thing, and it led to a worse thing, and on and on and on, until finally I ended up here. This is the bottom." I waved the machete toward the cashier. "This is the worst thing. It can't go any farther."
"No," the woman said, seizing on this last statement as if she thought it might save her life. She straightened herself up. "It won't go any farther."
She started to reach her hand toward me, and I stepped backward, shifting my weight.
"We'll stop it here," she said. "Won't we?"
She tried to catch my eye, but I looked away, down at the cashier's corpse. It was staring up at the ceiling.
"Let's stop it here," she said. She stepped forward, hesitantly, sliding her foot along the tiles, as if she were on a frozen pond, testing the slickness of the ice.
I could still hear Sarah in her voice, riding just below the surface. I tried to block it out but couldn't. The purse was in my left hand and the machete in my right, held motionless before me.
"I'm going to help you do it," she said.
She was right beside me now, edging around my body toward the open doorway behind me, moving slowly, carefully, as if I were some small wild animal that she was afraid to startle into flight.
"It's going to be okay," she said.
She took another shuffling step and was in the doorway. I turned to watch her.
For a moment, I actually thought I was going to let her go. I was going to let her finish it for me, was going to place myself in her hands.
But then her back was to me. She was tiptoeing into the puddle, the store opening itself up before her, and whatever it was that had been holding me back was gone. I stepped out after her, raised the machete above my head, and swung for her neck. Like the cashier, she sensed it coming just before it hit. She started to turn and lift her hand, made a short squeaking sound in her throat, as if, absurdly, she were trying to suppress a laugh, and then the blade hit her, knocking her to the left. She bounced off the shelves there, dragging down some cans of soup behind her as she fell.
There were none of the cashier's melodramatic death throes. She simply collapsed into the puddle, bleeding, and was dead. The soup cans rolled across the tiles with a tiny metallic sound, which, when they finally stopped, deepened the silence of the store.
Everything was very still.
IT WAS close to seven o'clock before I reached home. I parked out in the driveway, and -- with a caution rising from the proximity of my neighbors' windows -- left the machete and the woman's fur coat in the car.
As I came up the front walk, I smelled the sharp, comforting odor of burning wood. Sarah had a fire going in the fireplace.
I took off my boots on the porch and carried them inside.
The entranceway was dark, the door to the living room shut tight. Down the hall I could hear Sarah moving about in the kitchen. There was the soft suction sound of the refrigerator being opened, then the clinking of glasses. She flashed by the open doorway, dressed in her robe, her hair down. She smiled toward me as she passed.
"Wait," she yelled. "Don't come in till I tell you."
The kitchen light flicked out, and I heard her move into the living room. I stood very still in the darkened entranceway, listening, my boots in one hand, the paper bag full of money in the other. I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was excited, happy. She thought that we were free now, free and rich, and she'd planned a celebration. I couldn't imagine how I was going to tell her otherwise.
"All right," she yelled. "Come in."
I stepped forward, nearly silent in my stocking feet, tucked the paper bag beneath my left arm, and slid open the door.
"Voila!" Sarah said triumphantly.
She was lying on the floor, propped up on her elbows. She'd taken off her bathrobe and picked up the bearskin rug from the hearth. It was wrapped around her body, like a blanket, and she was naked beneath it. Her hair, draped seductively over her face, hid her expression, but I could tell just from the way she held her head that she was smiling at me. On the floor by her elbow was the bottle of champagne. Beside it sat two glasses.
All the lights were off; the room was illuminated solely by the logs burning in the fireplace, the reflection of which trembled off of the mirror on the opposite wall, making it seem to shake slightly, as if someone were pounding his fist against the outside of the house. The front curtains were pulled shut.
I saw the duffel bag before I saw the money. It was standing by the entrance to the kitchen, buckled over, empty. The money was on the floor. It had been meticulously laid out, packet by packet, to form a seamless green surface across the carpet. Sarah was lying on top of it.
"This is the plan," she said huskily, through her mask of hair. She lifted the bottle toward me. "We're going to get a little drunk, and then I'm going to fuck you on the money."
The mock sexy baritone of her voice failed her on the last few words, and, suddenly shy, she finished with a giggle. "We've made our bed," she said, gesturing with her hand toward the money, "and now we're going to sleep on it."
I didn't move from the doorway. I still had my hat and parka on. There was a long pause, while she waited for me to say somethin
g. I didn't; my mind was blank, numb.
"Do you want to eat something first?" she asked, her voice taking on a note of concern. "Have you had dinner yet?"
She sat up a little, the rug slipping down her shoulder, revealing one of her breasts.
"There's some cold chicken in the fridge," she said.
I slid the door shut behind me, then turned back toward her. I didn't know how to tell her; I was waiting for an opening. I felt as if I were about to do something very cruel.
"Where's Amanda?" I asked, unable to think of anything else to say.
Sarah flicked the hair away from her face. "Upstairs," she said, "sleeping." And then, after a pause, "Why?"
I shrugged.
She sat up a little more, leaned back on her hand. She gave me a long, inquisitive look. "Hank?" she said. "What's wrong?"
I came into the room, edging my way around the money, and sat down behind her on the piano bench. I leaned forward to drop my boots to the floor, but then decided against it and placed them in my lap instead, resting them on the bag of money. It made a crackling sound beneath their weight. The boots were stained black around their soles. They stank of wine.
"Have you been drinking?" Sarah asked. She had to spin around to see me, and as she did so, she sat all the way up, crossing her legs.
I gave her a slow shake of my head. "The money's marked," I said.
She just stared at me. "You're drunk, Hank. I can smell it." She pulled the rug up around her shoulders, covering her breast. Her left knee stuck out down below, hard and pale in the firelight, like marble.
"It's marked," I said again.
"Where did you go? A bar?"
"If we spend it, we'll get caught."
"You reek, Hank. You smell like Jacob." Her voice rose on this last statement, becoming angry. I was ruining her celebration.
"I haven't had anything to drink, Sarah. I'm perfectly sober."
"I can smell it."