by Allan Retzky
He directs the car up his driveway and stops. He lets the engine idle, and they sit for a moment. The ocean beats a cadence against the sand and there is the odd, shrill cackle of birds, but the air is otherwise quiet. He sighs, ready to move the Lexus into reverse, but she interrupts his idea of escape and asks, “Can I see the inside?”
Even before he thinks of an answer, she is pulling the door handle open.
“Take care on the steps,” he says. “They’ve just been refinished.”
He slips his loafers off in the entrance and watches as she slides off her white sandals as well. He notices for the first time that her toes are coated with deep burgundy polish.
“I like to do what the host does.”
Her words drip with unvarnished innuendo. At the top of the stairs she turns and surveys the area.
“The view is great.”
Then she surprises him by ignoring the view as she walks around the room, touching small sculptures, and analyzing a succession of wood-block prints and lithographs on the wall farthest from the windows.
“Do you live here alone?” she asks
“Most of the time,” he answers truthfully. “I’m married, but my wife spends most of her time in Manhattan.”
She shrugs. He believes she doesn’t care. The more she speaks, the more he comes to believe she is a latent free spirit, a throwback to the sixties, someone who would have rolled naked in the mud at Woodstock, screwed her brains out for a week, and only then went off to medical school. She continues to survey the room. There is a tightening in his chest as he thinks of her naked in Woodstock or here on the forest-green couch. An intense urge begins to grip his body. He has to think of something else. Now. He turns away and imagines the ocean two hundred feet beyond the window. He thinks of the last big storm that blew shingles off his roof. He considers these things until the urge passes. He realizes more fully that this is a mistake. She shouldn’t be here.
“Where is this from? It looks like this house.”
He needs to turn his head to see her standing in front of the pen-and-ink sketch of this very house. A rough design he made over twenty years ago and showed to an architect who liked the idea. He bought the land only after the architect agreed to design plans to fit the sketch. The drawing hangs on the wall leading to the master bedroom.
“It’s my design,” he says. “It’s this house.”
“Ach, fantastish,” she says. He is happy to show off something that is his alone. He ignores the fact that she speaks German.
She walks toward him and asks if she could have something to drink. “Perhaps some red wine,” she suggests.
“I guess I can do that,” he says, but there is edginess in his answer. He feels as if he is sliding into a deep pit without a handhold.
“Very nice, thank you,” she answers, “but can I first use your bathroom?”
He points to the end of a short corridor. “The door on your left.” She picks up her bag and moves in the direction he points. He hears the water running and the toilet flush. She is there for several minutes, but he gives it little thought. He spends the interval choosing a wine.
When she returns, he tells her about the sketch he made years ago as he pulls the cork from a bottle of Merlot. He pours a modest serving into a single glass. He has no intention of joining her. He holds the glass in his left hand and walks to where she has stopped, in front of the deep-green couch.
“Please sit,” he says as she takes the glass. She takes a large sip, almost emptying the glass. He sits on the opposite couch and looks straight ahead through the large window at the ocean.
“Please sit over here,” she says. “You seem so far away.”
Posner moves to the other couch, just as she asks, “Can I rest my feet here?”
He waves his arm to the side in a universal gesture. She raises her hips and both legs spring forward onto the couch. She crosses one leg over the other and he faces ten polished toes. Then she shifts her legs back in parallel. She reallocates her skirt so that he has a clear view of her browned upper thigh. She spreads her legs more than slightly. The invitation is clear.
They talk aimlessly. She sits on the couch, ignoring the view, chatting about her hospital duties, her parents in Vienna, and why she doesn’t want to stay in New York. He becomes edgy. He wants her to leave.
“Do you like my polish?” she asks, sliding her body down and raising one foot, barely inches from his face. The temptation is there, but he abruptly stands before she makes contact.
“I think we should go,” he says.
She rises and follows him slowly to the top of the stairs. He feels her stare, but his eyes are fixated on her painted toes.
“Can I see you again?” she asks.
She smiles, doesn’t wait for an answer, and searches her large straw bag, until she withdraws a card printed with her name and a New York number. Then she offers her hand, a puny gesture, he thinks, but he takes it anyway.
“I’d like to see you again,” she repeats. “Whenever you want. Whatever you want to do.”
Whatever is the only way something could happen, he thinks, but while there is more than a flicker of interest, he isn’t crazy enough to start. He knows that a fuck in the room not twenty feet away from where they stand is where it would end. That’s what whatever means. She was right about guilt, though. He feels it squeezing him like a fog that has crept into the room, filling every available space and daring, even mocking him to try to touch her. He wants to release her hand, but she holds his with even more pressure.
He sees from the quickening in the rise and fall of her chest that her breath comes in shorter increments. The pink dress fabric strains forward and he feels his cock swell. He looks away, out through the window, across the pine-coated dunes, as he’s done only minutes before. Anything to forget the surge that has gripped him. He knows that she only has to brush against his groin and he would be lost, but then she eases the pressure on his hand and the rush begins to ebb.
“I have a boyfriend,” she says. “His name is Henry, but I do like to meet other men.”
Posner wants to hear none of this. Not the fact that there is a boyfriend who must surely suck on her painted toes. He had a second cousin named Henry, a gangling, acne-faced teenager when he last saw him more than forty years ago. The name merges with his memory’s image of his cousin.
“Henry gave me this.” She absently fingers a gold chain necklace from which hangs a small capital letter H. “To remember that both our names start with H.”
“And what does Henry do?” he asks as if he might find some positive trait in the man sufficient to move her down the stairs and farther away from the bedroom.
“He’s a resident in radiology. Also at Mt. Sinai.”
Posner has regained his composure and has a sarcastic urge to say that Henry’s balls were already probably burned away by radiation and that his sexual future was at best iffy, which is probably why she is here, but he says nothing. He feels her fingers slip away from his hand as she turns toward the steps.
“Is Henry Jewish?” he asks, and immediately realizes the banality of his words, yet she quietly says, “Yes, but he’s not very religious.” He hopes that perhaps she now realizes she shouldn’t be here, and that her seduction was misplaced. It’s time to go.
He pats the pocket with his keys, and then his eyes abruptly look down to his jacket. He moves his hands from one pocket to the other, stopping for a moment and then repeating the process.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
His hands stay in motion while his body turns to scan the floor, as if the object of his interest might somehow lie at his feet. He walks back to the couch and lifts the cushions before he comes back.
“Did you lose something?” At first he doesn’t appear to hear, as he scans the floor, the kitchen counter, and the hallway.
“My wallet. Can’t find my wallet. Dammit! I just went to the bank and took out a lot of cash. Goddammit! We’ve got to go. I must
have dropped it at the beach or at Citarella’s. Come on. First I’ll drop you at the bus stop.”
“I don’t want to go just yet. Maybe after some more wine. Maybe when you get back.”
Her smile teases him. She stretches here arms behind her head, which accentuates the swell of her breasts. Her mouth opens and her lips seem to ripen. She knows what she’s doing, but he has no interest in such games. Not now. Not anymore.
“I said I want to go now.” His voice rises.
He grabs at her upper arm, but she pulls away.
“Don’t.”
“Sorry. Look I don’t have time for this. I’ll be back soon, but be ready to leave when I get here.”
He moves down the steps and out the door without looking back. He doesn’t see her, but senses she still stands and watches him while he feels a mocking smile, until the closing door swallows the image.
It takes longer than the few minutes he’d hoped. The beach yields nothing, and so he drives to Citarella’s. It’s not under the table he sat at, and he goes inside and asks a cashier. She directs him to the manager who’s on the phone. It’s maddening. There’s nearly five hundred dollars in the wallet, but he can’t rush it.
“Yes, we found the wallet,” the manager says without hesitation after the briefest of inquiries.
As his Lexus enters his own street, a car he doesn’t recognize turns at the far corner. Another few weeks till summer and this street will be full of cars. His watch shows almost forty minutes have passed since he left. Dammit. What if Sara had called while he was out? He parks and leaves the car door open as he jogs up the front steps.
The door opens about three-quarters of the way and then stops. Something blocks further effort. Something heavy, but there’s still enough room for him to easily enter.
She lays there without moving. Her eyes closed. He calls to her, but his voice is no more than an echo. At first he thinks she’s playing some game with him, some final attempt at seduction, a stupid, vain idea, he later realizes, yet she looks so serene, lying there, composed in sensuality with one long leg stretched against a stair riser, as if she had been placed there by an artist, a bowl of fruit in a still life.
But then he sees blood seeping from the back of her head. He calls to her again without response. Then he shouts, as if a higher octave would make a difference. He draws a breath to calm himself and lifts one of her hands. The same one he held minutes before. The warmth is still there. He speaks to her now. Soft words that go unheard, but he continues. Then he reaches a finger toward her neck to check her pulse. He knows how to do this from a course in emergency medicine the firm gave some years ago.
He sits beside her, staring blankly at the entrance door, seeing nothing. He has no comprehension of what has just happened, so he cries. At one point he drops his head to her chest to check for a heart beat—uselessly. How could this have happened? How? How? But he knows. The stupid newly finished floors. Stupid. Stupid. He stands and wipes his face with his fingers. She is dead. Who should he call?
And then the reality begins to seep in.
CHAPTER 2
He remains seated beside her and loses track of time. Through a blur he sees his watch. Three hours have elapsed since the bus arrived. His crying has stopped. He holds her hand. It’s still warm, yet he senses stiffness in the fingers. A part of him realizes he should call someone, probably 911. He stands and moves his shaking body to the downstairs phone, but hesitates before he takes the instrument from its cradle.
What would they think? he wonders. It was an accident, but there is no proof. No witness to his sordid thoughts.
“It was just an accident,” he shouts into the empty hallway. Yet some prosecutor might claim he bludgeoned her to death in a jealous, frustrated rage. What was she doing at his house? they would ask. Did she refuse you when you wanted sex? And Sara? She would ask the same thing and shout that she knew all along he was screwing someone else. And there would be no answer that could satisfy all of the questions. Even the complete truth would be insufficient.
“I wasn’t even here,” he shouts over and over again into empty space, and absurdly remembers the potential legal problems he faces. In those cases his innocence was suspect, but here, while there is no question, why would anyone believe him?
“This is madness,” he says aloud, yet in some deep recess of his brain, in some effort at rationality, he has already decided he must find a way to move the body.
A storage shelf in the garage provides a supply of large steel-flexed trash bags. He takes two silver colored bags from the carton. He’s about to leave when he impulsively grabs a pair of gardening gloves from the same shelf. He returns to the hall. She has not moved. He almost wished she had. He would pay the penalty if she survived, but she lies still and motionless. His tears return and he sits on the steps for several minutes until they dry.
He has never been this close to a dead person, but there is no particular discomfort. He slips on the gloves, and then lifts her body and tries to maneuver it into the bag. The body is all deadweight, a thought that in other circumstances might have brought a smile, but this is not such a time. The body moves surprisingly smoothly into the sack. Her face is the last part to be covered. Her eyes are closed as if in sleep.
“I’m so sorry,” he says and lingers for a moment before he impulsively leans forward and brushes a kiss across her forehead. He starts to close the bag when he remembers her shoes. He takes the pair of white sandals, and slips them in as well. Then he slides the second bag around the first. It is actually a harder process that takes him several minutes. Perhaps the rigor has already begun. He rolls the bag over in the hallway and it seems secure.
Only then does he see her straw bag, as it hangs over the edge of a high step where its own fall must have ended, somehow immune from gravity’s further demands. He brings the straw bag down and reopens the double plastic bags. He inserts the bag beside the lifeless form. His motion forces him to move his arm across the front of her body, necessarily across her breasts. He gulps down his bile and finishes his work, for that is what this has become.
That is when he sees the bloodstains for the first time. A purplish mass rests on the tiles where her head had landed. He finds a sponge, wets it, and begins to soak up the residue. Twice he flees back into the downstairs bathroom to vomit. He retches long after there is nothing left to expel, but the sight of her blood and other clotted matter that clings to the tiles is too much.
Many minutes pass before he concludes that the blood is gone, yet a small stain in the grout remains between some of the tiles. He curses silently and goes back to the garage for another remedy. He will bleach the grout he thinks, but there is no bleach in the laundry area. He could go out to buy bleach, or just clean the area as well as he could, and make up a story for Sara. Yes, that is what he’ll do. The stain is too small for her to notice right away. The bleach will need to wait for another day. There will be many stories to concoct for Sara and others. He realizes with a stark revelation, as if a bright light has been turned on in a black room, that his deception has only begun, despite his absolute innocence.
Then he remembers the photo, his photo, still embedded in the memory of Heidi’s cell phone. A cold sweat rises on his neck, and tightness invades his chest. He feels a rumbling in his body, something new and beyond anything he’s ever felt. He knows he must again untie the plastic bags and retrieve the phone from her straw handbag.
First the outer one, and then the inside one. He sees her face again. What can change in a few minutes? he wonders. Yet she looks paler, as if the Iranian sun has begun to recede from her skin.
He pulls out the straw bag and removes the cell phone with the idea that later he will smash it into bits and distribute the scrap residue in the ocean. He reties the bag and stops.
He needs a plan. He needs to think. He walks upstairs and stares out the window at the ocean. The dark clouds have passed and the absence of motion at the tops of the sand pines tells him the w
ind has died. The sun hangs white, low, and alone to the west. Sara will be on her way to her Long Island meeting. He doesn’t have much time, but his sense of logic and planning begin to return. He knows what he will do next, but first he washes the glass she used, returns it to the cabinet, and recorks the wine, which he leaves on the countertop. He stands at the top of the stairs, and then moves down toward the silvery bundle.
He’s late getting to East Hampton Airport to pick up Sara. There’s been just too much to do, too much to think about. He needed to put things as they should be before she comes. As he drives, he remembers how they met. It was her father who introduced them at a year-end cocktail reception at Posner’s firm where her father’s investment company was a client.
“Sara, this is Amos Posner, whose firm handles some of our overseas commodities business,” Jacob Auslander spoke as one hand pressured Amos’s elbow to turn.
Amos pivoted his body away from the open bar without the glass of red wine he’d ordered and faced a very tall brunette with shoulder-length hair, dark eyes, and a clear, pale complexion. She was wearing a simple black cocktail dress with a strand of tiny pearls and matching earrings. He absorbed all of this in seconds, even before Jacob introduced his daughter Sara.
“She’s a lawyer. Just moved back east from Chicago.”
Jacob went on for at least another minute, but Amos wasn’t listening, only looking.
“Don’t forget your wine,” she said breaking into their mutual concentration.
Soon after they met, they discovered that she was coincidentally doing legal work for a British subsidiary of his firm. There was a chance meeting in London less than three months later. Three weeks after, they spent a weekend at Inverlochy Castle in Scotland and within six months they were married.
And now it’s possible that the very survival of their marriage has come down to what’s happened today and what he’s done about all of it. He fights off a series of tremors that invade his hands, rubs sweaty palms on his pants, and wills himself to stay calm as he pulls up to the terminal entrance.