fucking store,” Snyder said.
“Un-huh.”
Snyder began to cry.
“I fucking loved her all my fucking life. Now she goes, I got fucking nothing.”
Mrs. Snyder’s voice was barely a squeak.
“I won’t go,” she said.
“Shut up. You already went, bitch.”
“You need help with this,” Jesse said. “We can get you some help.”
“Help,” Snyder said. “Fucking help. I’m her and she’s me and you broke us up, you lousy fuck. You think you can get me help when my fucking life is completely fucking fucked?”
“It’s not fucked yet,” Jesse said. “Don’t do something that will permanently fuck it.”
“I got no life without her,” Snyder said. “She ain’t leaving me. And I ain’t leaving her. Ya unnerstan? Not fucking ever.”
He drank too big a drink from the bottle, and spilled some on his shirtfront. He was crying.
“We can help you with the booze,” Jesse said. “We can still fix this.”
“Fix fuck,” Snyder said. “All I got now is booze.”
He took another drink. Then he dropped the bottle and put his left arm around his wife’s neck. He waved the handgun at Jesse.
“I’m going to shoot her,” he said.
Snyder started to thumb back the hammer. Only his face showed over his wife’s shoulder. Jesse took the long- barreled .22 from the small of his back, leaned toward Snyder as he pulled it, and with his gun arm fully extended and steady, shot Snyder once through the middle of the forehead. It made a small, neat, dark hole. Mrs. Snyder stood still and screamed, as Snyder’s arm went limp and slid off her neck and he fell over and lay still.
Chapter Fifty-nine
Jesse sat on his deck alone in the early evening. Still light. On the table next to him was a fifth of Dewar’s and a bucket of ice and a big bottle of club soda. He held an unused glass in his hand, turning it slowly as he sat. The salt wind came tentatively off the harbor. There were cocktails being drunk on a couple of the cabin cruisers moored near the town dock. Jesse could hear a radio somewhere. A ball game. Probably the Sox. Funny how you could tell what it was by the sound of it, without quite being able to hear what was said. Across the harbor the pennants strung along the yacht club dock moved with the declining evening air.
Thank God it’s… what is today… Tuesday. Thank God it’s Tuesday.
He turned the glass in his hands. It was a squat glass, thick, with a hint of green.
He’d had to shoot him. Snyder would have done it.
He stood and put some ice in the glass. The ice took on the green tint even more faintly than the glass.
If he loved her so goddamned much, why was he going to shoot her?
He poured four ounces of scotch over the ice. The ice showed translucent through the amber scotch.
Maybe it wasn’t love, maybe it was need.
He unscrewed the top of the soda bottle.
Which was not the same thing.
Jesse poured soda over the ice on top of the scotch.
So, if he needed her, why would he shoot her?
Jesse stirred his drink slowly by moving the ice cubes around with his forefinger. A rowboat moved across the surface among the moored boats. A man sat in the back. A boy was rowing. The boy was having trouble keeping the boat on course, but the man didn’t seem bothered by it. He let the boy make his own adjustments. Jesse held his glass up and looked at the way the light came through it. There was moisture on the outside of the glass.
It was about control.
He could hear the water move below the deck. Occasionally he heard a seagull squawk. There was the faint sound of music to go with the ball game. And occasionally laughter from the partying power boats.
That was why Snyder beat her up. He had to know he could control her and then he could know he wouldn’t lose her. Shooting her would be complete control.
Jesse swirled the glass a little, listening to the sound the ice cubes made against the glass.
The dumb bastard thought he loved her.
The rowboat reached the wharf and after a struggle the boy brought it around so that it was against the landing float. The man reached out and held it steady while the boy climbed out. Then the boy held it steady for the man. Jesse made a gesture of toast toward them with his glass.
The man and boy took some tackle out of the rowboat and walked up the wharf and out of sight. Jesse sat turning his glass in his hands. Then he stood and walked to the railing of his deck and looked down at the cola- colored water rocking against the seawall below him and dropped his drink, glass and all, into the ocean.
