I sat up, water dripping.
“Give me that before I kill you,” I said.
Her brow darkened. She switched the .45 to her right hand and pointed it at me. “You’ve got it backward, stud.”
At that moment my hand touched one of the toys I’d tossed in the bath. A smiling yellow duck with a blue sailor’s cap bobbing on the ebb and flow. Driven by self-preservation and instinct, I scooped up the duck and pitched it sideways at Suzie as hard as I could, at the same instant leaping over the side of the tub.
The toy hit Suzie straight in the eye. The money hand cupped the injury; the envelope fell to the octagonal-tiled floor. Half blind, ravaged by sudden terror, Suzie lurched backward.
I ripped the toilet-seat cover from its hinges, raised it over my head, and brought it crashing down on her noggin.
“UUUhhh!”
She crumpled to the floor, the .45 spinning across the tiles. For an instant I thought about hitting her again. Finishing her off.
But I wasn’t the killer type. Never appealed to me. All I wanted now was out. Out of that crummy apartment. Out of our stale, end-of-the-road existence.
Suzie was still breathing, her chest rising and falling. On my knees, I retrieved the pistol from where it had skidded under the tub, collected the cash, my glasses, the stash of weed, my sweat-sodden clothes, and bolted down the hall and out the door. At the top of the stairs, I stopped long enough to yank on my duds, then hightailed it down three flights, sprinted to my Lexus. The transmission squealed as I drove helter-skelter into the night.
Passing through the empty streets, I began to shake. Foreboding pounded in my head like a stampede. The packet of money burned in my pocket. The owners would be back for it. Back like a bad dream of raging biker mayhem. And what about Suzie? Would she leave town, go stay with her sister in Memphis? Or, consumed by revenge, hunt me down?
* * *
At two in the morning I found myself parked at the curb outside Pauline’s place. The emptiness of the house seemed to call to me.
I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning on her sofa, a sheet spread over the scratchy velvet, the .45 close at hand.
Too soon the September sun, spewing through the living room’s picture window, slapped me awake. I’d forgotten to pull the drapes shut. Exhausted, I lay there contemplating all the shit hitting the fan, wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Then it occurred to me: Technically, the sofa isn’t Pauline’s anymore. None of this is.
Pauline was out of business.
Standing at the picture window gazing at the front lawn, I noticed a folded copy of the Dallas Morning News wrapped in plastic lying on the walk. Panic flared. Rushing outside, I retrieved the newspaper and tore it open. But there were no front-page photos of Drew and Pauline’s bodies stretched out on gurneys at the city morgue. I breathed a sigh of relief.
At that very moment, one of Pauline’s neighbors appeared out of nowhere. One moment she was in absentia, the next clipping dandelion heads in her front yard. As I stood at the curb flicking through the newsprint pages, she sauntered in my direction. Fifty-ish, forehead a maze of tiny wrinkles, brushed-steel hair tied in a bun. Her soft nose and olive skin looked Spanish. She wore a white tube top and the tightest pair of peach-colored capris I’d ever seen. Her lips held a piquant smile.
“God’s given us another beautiful day,” she said.
“Praise the Lord,” I replied.
“How’s Pauline?”
“On a trip,” I said. “I’m looking after the house for her.”
“Nice deal for you.”
What did she mean by that?
“Great meeting you,” I said.
“My name’s Rose. Come over for a drink some time.” She turned away and I watched her peach-shaped buttocks wend their way blithely up the curved walkway, until they disappeared into the chiaroscuro of her front porch.
I wondered how much Rose knew about Pauline’s sexual predilections.
Finding a carton of OJ and a bottle of Freixenet in the fridge, I made a pitcher of mimosas. Then lit a jay and smoked it at the kitchen sink, staring into the backyard. What I needed to do was disappear, change my spots, become the invisible man.
* * *
An hour later I parked my Lexus next to the toolshed in the deserted subdivision. A shovel and three bags of lime lay in the trunk. Bought at different stores. Paid for in cash.
In the sauna of the toolshed, I worked like seven devils to dig a trench for the bodies. I wore the gardening gloves. Sweat ran in rivulets from my body. The odor of decaying flesh made me gag, taste acid on my tongue.
When I was done, I collapsed in the front seat of my car for a while. I must have fallen asleep. My watch said eleven o’clock when I called the office and resigned over the phone. “Opportunity down in Tampa I can’t pass up,” I said.
Finally, I drove the Lexus to the customer parking lot of the bank where I’d financed it. I put the keys in a business envelope along with a note saying I was moving to Thailand, wrote my loan officer’s name on the outside, and left the envelope with the security guard in the bank’s lobby.
I took a bus back to Pauline’s.
The second night I slept in Pauline’s bed, the Smith & Wesson tucked under the pillow.
A week went by. I grew a beard.
I decided not to use Pauline’s car, which was parked in the attached garage. If she was on a trip, she would be using it. A small Latino supermarket was within walking distance. I bought some nondescript clothes at a nearby thrift shop. I avoided Rose at all costs.
After a month, I put a For Sale sign in the front yard.
* * *
During the period of adjustment to my new identity, I slept no more than two hours a night. A pair of psychos haunted my dreams. One tall and lean and cold as outer space. The other a steroid hybrid of rippling muscles and zombie eyes. They burst through the front door, screaming obscenities, demanding the money, wielding high-tech weaponry, razor-sharp Special Forces knives. I jolted awake, drenched in sweat, and stayed up until dawn.
Other times it was Drew and Pauline chasing me through the empty streets of the abandoned subdivision, fetid flesh dripping from their bones, moans escaping their decaying lips. Hollow eye cavities inhabited by swarms of evil wasps.
And sometimes it was my buck-naked swingers group laughing and pointing as I ran in circles, my hand on my swollen dick, begging for relief to no avail.
Without sleep, I had no appetite. Steak, chicken, any kind of meat or fish made my stomach crawl. I was barely able to swallow a few boiled vegetables. A dry slice of multigrain bread, a bowl of brown rice. Chamomile tea.
A shot of booze left me retching in the sink. A snort of blow sent me raging around the house chased by giant carnivorous insects. Weed brought waves of paranoia. Once my raison d’être, sex now repelled me. The thought of it called up visions of Pauline’s voluptuous corpse lying in a shallow grave covered in dirt and lime dust.
To keep busy I started taking yoga classes at a storefront studio next to the Latino grocery. The instructor, an aging blonde with the lithe body of a twenty-year-old, lent me books by the Anglo Zen masters. Charlotte Joko Beck and Alan Watts. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Gary Snyder’s poems. On sunny days throughout the winter, I sat in the lotus position on the back deck contemplating my fucking navel.
In March I took down the For Sale sign and paid a corrupt acquaintance at the Registry of Deeds three hundred dollars to file a forged warranty deed transferring Pauline’s property to my name. The house had belonged to her mother. The mortgage had been paid off long ago.
To celebrate I went for a salad at a nearby health food co-op. As I approached, Suzie burst out of the bar next door. I’d lost close to fifty pounds eating vegetarian fare. My bearded face, framed by shoulder-length hair, had grown thin and ascetic. My thrift shop clothes matched the simplicity of a holy man—or a stumblebum. Suzie walked right past me without a glance and climbed in
to the passenger side of a slick BMW idling at the curb. The guy behind the wheel sported a John Waters pencil mustache and a dimpled chin. I wished him luck.
By the time spring rolled around, with new green leaves, hopping robins, and cooing doves, my nightmares had mostly stopped. Surely whoever owned the ten grand had taken a write-off. Attributed the loss to force majeure. I never went back to the toolshed. R.I.P. Pauline and Drew.
The only dream that kept coming back was the one where my sex club pals were laughing at my swollen schlong. The women rebuffing my entreaties, refusing to grant me the relief of a quickie or a handjob. I wandered in a surreal nightmare of shunga woodblock porn. I knew if I could rid myself of this last haunting from my past, I would be safe, flying under the radar.
One morning I sat at the picnic table in the backyard sipping a cup of green tea and reading the classified ads in the Observer, Dallas’ free alternative newspaper. And there it was, the answer to my prayers:
Tired of living on the ragged edge of sex addiction? Give Swingers Anonymous a chance. Meeting every Thursday, 7 p.m. at Zion Hall. All who are afflicted are welcome.
Who can understand the twists of fortune, the dharma that brought me to this point in space and time? But one thing my mother told me: never look a gift horse in the mouth. Everything was going to be fine.
About the Contributors
Matt Bondurant’s newest novel, The Night Swimmer, was featured in the New York Times, the Daily Beast, and other media venues. His second novel, The Wettest County in the World, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s 50 Best Books of the Year, and was adapted into a feature film, Lawless, by director John Hillcoat. His first novel, The Third Translation, was an international best seller and was translated into fourteen languages worldwide.
Catherine Cuellar is a third-generation Dallas native with a degree in creative writing from Rhodes College. She cohosted North Texas’ literary author interview series The Writers’ Studio on public radio and has appeared in Dallas’ storytelling series “Oral Fixation: An Obsession with True Life Tales.” Currently she serves as executive director of the Dallas Arts District.
Lauren Davis is a native New Orleanian and noir aficionado with long-standing family ties to Dallas. She is pursuing an MA in history at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she also studies creative writing. She is the recipient of several TIPA awards, and is currently at work on a novel titled Crescent City Martyrology.
Ben Fountain has lived in Dallas for thirty years. His novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk received the 2012 National Book Critics’ Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has received the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, and a Whiting Writers’ Award. His short stories have appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, and the Paris Review, among other places.
J. Suzanne Frank is the author of many novels; the most recent is Laws of Migration. Her passion for history has taken her to Egypt, Greece, Israel, and throughout Europe. An eighth-generation Texan who lives in Dallas, she directs the Writer’s Path at SMU.
Daniel J. Hale is an Agatha Award–winning author, the executive vice president of Mystery Writers of America, and a creative writing instructor with the Writer’s Path at Southern Methodist University. His short stories have appeared in several anthologies, including Nelson DeMille’s The Rich and the Dead. A former resident of France, Hale holds degrees from Cornell University, the Bowen School of Law, and SMU. He lives in Dallas.
David Haynes teaches and directs the creative writing program at Southern Methodist University and is also part of the faculty of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He is the author of six novels for adults and five books for younger readers. His latest novel is A Star in the Face of the Sky. For more information, visit faceofthesky.com.
Fran Hillyer is retired from a twenty-eight-year career teaching English and creative writing. She received the Texas Exes Award for Outstanding High School Teachers and the Inspirit Accolade from the Episcopal School of Dallas. Her published works include the poems “Dreaming the Miraculous Baby” in the Texas Institute of Letters collection; “Little Lies” and “Four Years Old with Mother and Eternity” in the Texas Observer; and What’s the Word?, a vocabulary program for SAT.
James Hime’s debut novel, The Night of the Dance, was an Edgar Award finalist. He is the author of three Jeremiah Spur novels, including Scared Money and Where Armadillos Go to Die. He is the CFO of the real estate department of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, but when he’s not on an airplane or in an office tower in the Middle East, his permanent address is in Dallas with his wife Paulette.
Harry Hunsicker, a fourth-generation native of Dallas, is the former executive vice president of the Mystery Writers of America. His debut novel, Still River, was nominated for a Shamus Award, and his short story “Iced” was nominated for a Thriller Award. His story “West of Nowhere” appeared in The Best American Mystery Stories 2011, edited by Otto Penzler and Harlan Coben. Hunsicker’s fourth novel, The Contractors, will be published in 2014.
Kathleen Kent is the author of two best-selling novels, The Heretic’s Daughter and The Traitor’s Wife. In 2008 she was the recipient of the David J. Langum Sr. Award for American Historical Fiction. Her third novel, The Outcasts, set in 1870 Texas, was published in September 2013. She lives in Dallas and is working on her fourth book.
Oscar C. Peña, poet, essayist, and jazz musician, was born and raised in Kingsville, Texas. He has published a chapbook, Fire of Thorns, and has been a juried poet at Houston Poetry Fest. His work has been published in the San Pedro River Review, Austin International Poetry Festival anthology Di-vêrse’-city, Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival anthology Boundless, and Texas Poetry Calendar. He lives in League City, Texas, with his wife.
Emma Rathbone is the author of the novel The Patterns of Paper Monsters, for which she received a Christopher Isherwood Grant. She was born in Pretoria, South Africa. When she was six, her family moved to the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas. Her work has been published in the Virginia Quarterly Review and Five Chapters. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Clay Reynolds is a professor of arts and humanities and director of the creative writing program at the University of Texas at Dallas. His novels include The Vigil and Franklin’s Crossing. In 2012, he was awarded the WWA Spur Award for Short Fiction for his story “The Deacon’s Horse.” He is a member of the Authors’ Guild, Writers’ League of Texas, the Texas Institute of Letters, and Western Writers of America.
David Hale Smith is a literary agent based in Dallas. Since 1994, he has represented some of the most beloved authors in crime fiction. Along with fourteen Edgar Award nominations, his clients have won Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, Shamus, Barry, Macavity, International Thriller Writers, Eisner, and Bram Stoker awards, along with the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Merritt Tierce is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a recipient of a 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Award. In addition to telling stories, she works as the executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, an abortion fund that serves the low-income women of North Texas. Tierce lives near Dallas with her husband and children, and her first book—a novel called Love Me Back—is forthcoming from Doubleday.
Jonathan Woods divides his time between Key West, Florida, and Dallas. His stories have appeared in Plots with Guns, Thuglit, and 3:AM Magazine, and in the anthologies Speedloader, Crime Factory: The First Shift, and Noir at the Bar (Vol. I). His story collection Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem won a 2011 Spinetingler Award. BookPeople Bookstore in Austin, Texas named Woods’s A Death in Mexico one of the top five debut crime novels of 2012.
About the Akashic Noir Series
The Akashic Books Noir series was launched in 2004 with the award-winning anthology, Brooklyn Noir. Each book is comprised of all new stories, each taking place within a distin
ct location within the city of the book. Stories in the series have won multiple Edgar, Shamus, and Hammett awards and the volumes have been translated into 10 languages. Every book is available on our website, as eBooks from your favorite vendor, and in print at online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. For more information on the series, including an up-to-date list of available titles, please visit www.akashicbooks.com/noirseries.htm.
ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES
BALTIMORE NOIR, edited by LAURA LIPPMAN
BARCELONA NOIR (SPAIN), edited by ADRIANA V. LÓPEZ & CARMEN OSPINA
BOSTON NOIR, edited by DENNIS LEHANE
BOSTON NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by DENNIS LEHANE, JAIME CLARKE & MARY COTTON
BRONX NOIR, edited by S.J. ROZAN
BROOKLYN NOIR, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN
BROOKLYN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN
BROOKLYN NOIR 3: NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN & THOMAS ADCOCK
CAPE COD NOIR, edited by DAVID L. ULIN
CHICAGO NOIR, edited by NEAL POLLACK
COPENHAGEN NOIR (DENMARK), edited by BO TAO MICHAËLIS
D.C. NOIR, edited by GEORGE PELECANOS
D.C. NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by GEORGE PELECANOS
DELHI NOIR (INDIA), edited by HIRSH SAWHNEY
DETROIT NOIR, edited by E.J. OLSEN & JOHN C. HOCKING
DUBLIN NOIR (IRELAND), edited by KEN BRUEN
HAITI NOIR, edited by EDWIDGE DANTICAT
HAITI NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by EDWIDGE DANTICAT
HAVANA NOIR (CUBA), edited by ACHY OBEJAS
INDIAN COUNTRY NOIR, edited by SARAH CORTEZ & LIZ MARTÍNEZ
ISTANBUL NOIR (TURKEY), edited by MUSTAFA ZIYALAN & AMY SPANGLER
KANSAS CITY NOIR, edited by STEVE PAUL
KINGSTON NOIR (JAMAICA), edited by COLIN CHANNER
LAS VEGAS NOIR, edited by JARRET KEENE & TODD JAMES PIERCE
LONDON NOIR (ENGLAND), edited by CATHI UNSWORTH
Dallas Noir Page 26