Murder in the Rough

by Otto Penzler

And here was the kicker: she wanted him to pretend to be Allen.

  “Tell him I told you everything,” she said. “Tell him he should go away.”

  She’d never sounded more like a child, like a girl scheming with dolls at the corner of the playground.

  He pushed her off his chest. “No,” he said, “no way. Absolutely not.”

  Rachel explained it again, as though he’d missed something the first time around. She told him she had no choice. She’d made a mistake, and that was her sin to bear, but she didn’t want it to be Allen’s. She couldn’t go to her friends—they were all members of the church. She couldn’t tell her family. Who else did she have?

  “Give me one reason,” he’d said to her. “Seriously. What makes you think I’d do this?”

  He had to give her credit. Rachel gave him the truth.

  “Because,” she said, head bowed, her hands folded in her lap, “you’re the only person on earth who loves me enough to help me.”

  He sat for a long while in the passenger seat of her little car. He inhaled her perfume and watched her wide red-rimmed eyes. Did she know what words like that would do to him? She did—she’d told him so. This was Rachel; she was still good; that she’d cheated on Allen didn’t automatically cut out her heart. How much would she have had to suffer—and suffer for him—even to consider asking? Even if he and Maya were happy together, Rachel’s request would have been unthinkable. And then for her to hear he’d lost Maya, and to ask this of him, anyway…

  “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I don’t know if I can.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “I hate Allen. You know that.”

  She nodded.

  All his truths were close to the surface then. He wondered if spilling them—telling her everything—would be an even exchange. If he could say, I’ll do this, but first you have to listen. You shouldn’t be with Allen. You should have been with me. We both know that, and I won’t lift a finger until you tell me you loved me all along.

  Or he could be worse. Ask for more. Kiss me, and I’ll do it.

  Come home with me, and I’ll do it.

  Give me one night of what you gave that boy. What should have been mine all along.

  He closed his eyes. That would just solve everything, wouldn’t it? Answering blackmail with blackmail.

  “I want you to answer one question,” he said. “And I want you to be honest with me.”

  Her shoulders hunched. “All right,” she said in a tiny voice.

  He wanted to ask her, once and for all, about her wedding night. About what they’d almost done. But he looked at her eyes, her see-through skin, her raw red nose. She was afraid of him now. What he might ask. That in itself was an answer: if she was afraid, didn’t that mean she knew she was lying to herself? That there were truths, yet, to speak?

  That she’d been wrong?

  He changed his question. “What’ll happen to us if I do this?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  But she did know. He figured he did, too. And it would be true no matter what he answered. He’d climb out of her car tonight and never see her again. The weight of all their secrets, already creaking and vast, had just been made unbearable. How could they ever face each other again? And Rachel had known all along. She’d known when she hatched this crazy plan. Yet she’d dialed his number and cried and thrown what was left of them to the fire, anyway.

  So. Helping her was a matter of pure charity, unless he dragged something unpleasant from her in exchange.

  His mind summoned up a picture of her straddling him, right there on the passenger seat, her skirt bunched around her hips, her mouth open to his, his hands pressing the curves of her hips down and down—

  No. No. He loved her. He always had, and no matter how much he’d wished for more to happen, she’d never had to fuck him to keep it. He’d always just given it. And if there was anything he was going to leave her with—anything that would make their whole sad history worth its own pain—it was the idea that his love, unlike any other she’d found, came for free. Pete didn’t owe her that—but that was the point, wasn’t it? She’d been right: he did love her enough.

  And maybe, a month from now, a year, maybe she’d look over at Allen and see what she’d saved, and what it cost, and she’d finally, finally understand.

  “Okay,” he said, and felt a tightness in his chest that could only be grief. “I’ll do it.”

  For all the time Pete spent imagining Allen, envying Allen, hating Allen’s pious oblivious guts, he’d only met him twice. Once on Allen’s visit to Purdue and again at his wedding to Rachel. Everything else Pete knew of him came through speculation or through Rachel—from her photo albums, from the calls she’d made to Pete since she’d married: roughly one a year. And even the Allen he’d met in the flesh, whose hand he’d shaken, seemed to loom over Rachel. Pete remembered: Allen standing in front of the chapel, straight as a plastic groom atop a cake, smiling at Rachel’s slow, ghostly approach; standing with his arm around Rachel’s waist as they waited to enter a West Lafayette restaurant; waiting patiently for Rachel to unlock the door to her apartment, before kissing her briefly on the cheek.

  Pete stayed at his own apartment the night before Allen’s visit to campus; he’d tried for Rachel’s bed, but she was in too much of a tizzy, scrubbing and dusting her already antiseptic apartment, alternately hugging Pete and pushing him away.

  “I can’t face him,” she said just before he left for the night. “He’ll know right away something’s wrong.”

  “So tell him,” Pete said. “Break it off.” He meant this as a joke—it just slipped out—but once the words were in the air, Rachel froze, her eyes meeting Pete’s in terror.

  “I can’t. I can’t.”

  Pete could have punched himself. He’d been so careful, and now—

  “Oh, Pete.” She put her face into her hands. “I can’t see you anymore.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do. I’ve been—I’ve been meaning to say it for a long time now.” Her voice had dropped to a rasp. “I hate myself for leading you on. You mean the world to me, but—I think we have to say good-bye.”

  His anger surprised him—weeks’ worth of unworldly calm drained from him like blood. He wasn’t mad at her—he was mad for her. For what she was doing to herself.

  “You can’t say good-bye to me,” he said.

  “I can. I have to.”

  He reached for anything he could.

  “Is this the same way you said good-bye to Daniel?” he asked.

  Rachel’s mouth opened. “No,” she said. “Don’t you try to hurt me. You’re better than that.”

  He held up his hands; her vehemence had scared him a little. “Okay. Okay. Listen. Can we just talk after the weekend?”

  “We can’t. Not anymore.” Her grief returned. “I’m too weak.”

  “So loving me is weak?”

  She sagged. “No, Pete. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve been so happy with—”

  He walked to her. “I just don’t think we’re done.”

  She put her forehead against his. He wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “I can’t imagine leaving him,” she said.

  “Have you tried?”

  She didn’t answer—which, Pete had begun to learn, was a reliable answer of its own.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll stay away this weekend. Just—”

  “That’s the problem,” she said, shuddering. “He wants to meet you.”

  Pete didn’t want to. Nor did Rachel want the meeting to happen—and even now Pete couldn’t understand how she managed to survive it. But they minimized the damage: Pete would pretend to be on his way out of town. He and Allen would shake hands, say nice things, and it would be over.

  And that was what happened. Pete met the two of them Friday night, outside the restaurant where they were going to have dinner. They all stood on the sidewalk. Allen was t
all, straight-backed, so blond his eyebrows were barely visible on his forehead. He was a handsome man—as handsome, Pete had to admit, as Rachel was beautiful. He wore a dark green suit and tie; his shoes were shined. Next to him Rachel—in a long dress—smiled with the corners of her mouth turned down and looked as though she might, at any moment, be sick.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Allen told Pete after a strangely soft handshake.

  “Likewise,” Pete said.

  “I know you’re in a hurry. Just wanted to say thanks for being such a good pal to Rachie here. She tells me you’re a blessing.” He gave Rachel a hearty squeeze around the waist.

  “Well,” Pete said, “that goes both ways.”

  Allen grinned, showing very straight white teeth. Pete thought he looked exactly like a giant ear of Indiana corn, and had to swallow back hysterical laughter.

  They all smiled at each other. Pete said, “Well, you kids have a good weekend,” and they said good-byes. And, because he had nothing better to do, Pete went to his apartment and played the bass into his headphones for hours, distortion cranked. He told himself he wasn’t the sort of guy who went and spied.

  But apparently he was. Across from Rachel’s apartment was a small bar, which he guessed was a safe place not to be seen by two churchgoing lovebirds. He sat nursing a beer and watching Rachel’s apartment building through the smudged front windows. At midnight she and Allen appeared, walking down the sidewalk hand in hand. They were too far away for him to see Rachel’s face. They kissed good night—more like brother and sister than lovers—and Allen walked away, hands in his pockets, back straight. For a moment Pete’s heart thumped mightily—he wasn’t staying?—before he remembered. Of course. Allen was still worried about lust raising its scaled head between them. He’d be staying in a hotel, somewhere safe from the corruptive influence of Rachel and her curves and her breathy voice and beautiful beating heart.

  Pete argued with himself for half an hour and then left the bar and knocked on Rachel’s door.

  She was already in her pajamas. She saw him, and her face was swept with panic.

  “You can’t be here.”

  “Allen’s in a motel, isn’t he?”

  He walked past her, into her living room.

  “You’ve been in a bar,” she said.

  “I had a beer. I’m not drunk.”

  “Seriously, Pete—”

  “So. Have a good time?”

  She closed the door. “No. I had an awful time. I spent all night trying not to throw up.”

  He went to her, put his arms around her.

  “You smell like smoke.”

  “Sorry. I had to see you.”

  “Please go home.”

  He stroked her hair. “I want to hold you.” He said that to her a lot then.

  She leaned into his arms. “This is crazy. It’s so wrong. He’s right here in town.”

  “And I’m right here in your apartment.”

  They fell into her bed. She cried for a while, but then they were twisted together. And then she was gasping, and writhing, and finally crying out. She fell against his shoulder.

  In a better world than theirs, Rachel took his hand then and said, Oh, Pete, I love you, too. I’m leaving him.

  Instead, she bent her head, and he heard her whispering underneath and between her sobs. And when he asked her, “What’s wrong?” she told him she was praying.

  “Praying?”

  “Because we’ve sinned.”

  His history with Rachel was one of small moments like this—little turns of phrase that might as well have been turns of fate. Like his whole life, all his actions, had skidded sideways on the smooth marbles of her words—words like “we” instead of “I.” If she’d said “I,” he might have let it go.

  Instead, they argued. Maybe this was inevitable. She was, after all, a Christian, and he was, after all, not, and he’d come to her at a time that highlighted any number of her quote-unquote sins. And, for all the deep and heartfelt conversations they’d had about respect for the other’s beliefs, this was a deep canyon. Maybe, no matter what had happened, an uncrossable one. (How relieved had Pete been, after all, when on their first date together Maya had looked up from her coffee and said, You’re not some Jesus freak, are you? ’Cause that’s a deal-breaker. How glad had he been not to have God in the room when he first unbuttoned Maya’s jeans? When she’d groaned and slid him into her? He’d spent the year after Rachel’s wedding celibate, and the return of sex to his life was as close as he’d ever come to having a religious experience of his own.) It was easy to forget, when Rachel was pressed close to him, cooing his name, that she saw him as flawed—that for all his doltishness, Allen had one advantage over him that Pete would never overcome: Pete could make her come, but Allen could bend his head and grab Rachel’s hand and talk about Jesus and mean it. He could sin and talk of absolution, all in one night.

  An hour later they sat on opposite ends of Rachel’s bed; he still remembered the sickly look on Rachel’s face, the way she crossed her arms over her breasts. Their terrible circular argument: “Rach. Tell me this. Am I a good person?”

  Her anger, softening: “Pete. Yes.”

  “Do I care about you?”

  Her eyes turning inward. Thinking, no doubt, of something Allen hadn’t done. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Do I care about other people?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would I ever hurt you?”

  A pause. “No.”

  “But if I die tonight, I’m going to hell?”

  She turned her head toward the closet door, her lips pressed tight together.

  “Say it,” he said. “I want to hear you say it.”

  “Pete.”

  “Say it. Eternal torment, right? I use the brain your God gave me, and the heart he gave me, and I make the decisions I’ve made, and I’ve fallen deeply in love with someone sweet and good, and yet if I die tonight, I’ll spend all the rest of time burning in—what—a pit of lava?”

  She closed her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Some God,” he said.

  “Don’t,” she said, turning to him again, her face drawn. “Don’t. I believe what I believe, and you believe what you believe. Let’s just leave it.”

  He couldn’t resist, not now. “Do you love me? Answer, Rachel.”

  She began to cry.

  “I think you do,” he said. “And you can’t tell me, because you think God wants you to love Allen—”

  She raised her eyes to him, and this time he saw no equivocation. He’d crossed a line. But that was just too fucking bad.

  “God wants you to love a guy who’s good at praying but not much else. Right? That’s some God, isn’t it? To condemn you to a life with him? You spend your life with him, Rach, and you’ll be miserable. But if you spend it with me—”

  “I’ll what?” Her voice quivered, and her cheeks had gone white. “You think I’m happy? When every time you leave me I fall over and—and cry myself to sleep? I can’t eat. I can’t think. You want to take the credit for that, you go right ahead, Peter.”

  “You know I’m right,” he said. “You cry yourself to sleep because you know Allen’s not the guy. You know it. The hell-bound asshole you’re so mad at is the one who knows you best. You won’t be happy until you admit it.”

  She got up then and began searching on the floor for her blouse, sniffling furiously. He watched the knobs of her spine, shadowed by the bedside lamp, as she bent over.

  “Leave,” she said, buttoning herself up. “You leave right now.”

  He didn’t believe her, not then—if he had, he would have panicked. But instead, he stood and went to her. He did know her. He’d always known her. He put his hands on her shoulders and she stiffened, but he pulled her to him, anyway. He bent to speak into her ear. He smelled her perfume, her sweat, felt the smooth lines of her thighs against his. Even now she couldn’t resist pressing against him.

  “Let me ask you this,�
�� he said. “If I got saved tomorrow, what would you do?”

  She went completely still.

  “Would you leave Allen then?”

  After a long moment she said, “You won’t. It’s just some—some game you’re playing.”

  “No. It makes a point. If I prayed like Allen, would you love me then?”

  “I mean it. Go.”

  “Rach, you know I’m right. You love me. You fell in love with a guy who’s wrong for you. Why is that?”

  “I don’t love you,” she said. She was crying now, so much he could barely hear her words.

  He saw right through her. “You do,” he said. “And when you’re talking to God later, ask him why. Ask him for me. Tell him we’re both curious.”

  He stalked home, where he drank half a bottle of a roommate’s wine he found in the refrigerator, and passed out sometime in the early morning.

  Pete spent the following day in bed; he cracked his eyes at the sunlight and knew, immediately, that he’d made a terrible mistake. The line he’d been so proud of crossing had probably done worse damage than he could imagine, to him and maybe to Rachel, too. He’d be lucky if she ever spoke to him again. For the first time since he’d met her, he cried for her, over her. He held his pillow and talked to it as though it were Rachel lying in the bed beside him. But what could he do? He couldn’t apologize for what he believed. Her anger didn’t change the fact that he was right. He’d gone after Rachel’s one unalterable belief, and now he had to wait to see if she could forgive him that. If she loved him more than God.

  She called him on Monday. “I want to see you,” she said—but her voice was clipped, tired.

  They met at a coffee shop they both liked. Immediately he saw she hadn’t slept; she’d never looked so worn, so close to collapse. He imagined he looked the same way to her. He gave up.

  “I was out of line,” Pete told her. “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, then covered her eyes and began to cry.

  “Rach? What is it?”

  And she told him: she was saying good-bye. She had to. And it was worse, even, than that.

  She told him she had talked to Allen on Sunday, and they’d decided: they’d be married in the summer, and she’d transfer to his college as soon as she could.