Yes. I'm scared, but is that why I'm hesitating on this thing? Chris wouldn't hesitate. Chris would go right to it. Ah, but I'm not Chris, nor was meant to be.
He shut off the water and stepped out of the shower. The world is out of joint. He toweled dry and went back upstairs to the bedroom to dress. He never used the upstairs bathroom. She used it to get dressed for work. A steamy shower would ruin her hair.
The bedroom was empty. She was in the bathroom getting ready for work.
He dressed and made the bed, tightening the sheets, making careful hospital corners, smoothing the quilt over the pillows. She never made the bed right, she simply rolled the quilt up over sheets and pillows so there was a sense of lumpiness under the quilt, and when you got in at night the sheets were wrinkly.
He had breakfast on the table when she came into the kitchen. As he heard her step on the back stairs he poured the coffee, and everything was ready when she sat down. There were melon slices arranged on a plate, and toasted oatmeal bread, and strawberry jam, and coffee.
Almost never did either of them eat the melon, but he liked the look of it on the table.
She'd spent more than an hour making up and getting her hair organized.
She wore a white muslin shirt with loose sleeves and a slotted neck, and high-wasted apricot colored pants with a draw waist and tapered legs over high heels. She smelled of perfume.
'Christ,' he said, 'aren't you beautiful.' She said, 'Thank you.'
'You come to any conclusion about what we were saying last night?'
She looked at him over a triangle of toast. 'Have you?'
'No.'
'Why don't you talk with Chris?'
'How can he help?'
'He's decisive,' she said, 'and he seems to have some understanding of some male hang-up you may have, which I don't seem to.'
'Like honor?'
She gestured with her toast and shrugged.
'Talk to him.'
'You want it done, don't you? You want it done and you figure Chris will talk me into it.'
'Whatever he did, Chris would do it and have it done,' she said.
'Like that drunk last night, a couple of quiet words, the guy doesn't respond and vap in the kidneys and out the door. You like that?'
'I don't like uncertainty. I don't like having someone walking around who might, anytime, decide to degrade me or kill me. And I have no say in the matter.'
'I won't let him touch you again.'
'So how will you stop it. Follow me everywhere with a gun? Hire bodyguards? There's only one way to control this situation.'
'So why don't you do it? You're the big fucking feminist. You want Karl shot why don't you shoot him?'
'While you're doing what? Lifting weights and looking at yourself in the mirror? Home baking a cake? I've never fired a gun in my life.
I'm tough but I'm not physically strong. You're big and strong. Aren't you?'
He felt trapped and confused. He swayed his head back and forth, staring at the tabletop. 'Why don't you leave me the fuck alone,' he said. His voice was thick and shaky.
'Why do you persist in seeing this as something I'm doing to you,' she said. 'Why do you want to see yourself attacked.'
'Don't give me that encounter-group bullshit. Use your assertiveness jargon someplace else. I don't want to see myself attacked. You are pushing and pushing. You want something done you don't let up. You keep on and keep on. I'm not talking about it anymore. Now that's it.
You insensitive son of a bitch.'
The lines at the corners of her eyes deepened and her perfectly made-up face darkened slightly. She looked at the kitchen clock.
'Jesus Christ,' she said, 'I'm late. Aaron, you've got to deal with this. We've got to be able to talk about it. I was involved in this problem myself. Remember?'
He brought his open hand down hard on the tabletop. Coffee spilled.
'I said I wouldn't talk about it. You want to keep grinding it into me? You want to keep reminding me what some guy did to my wife and I haven't lifted a finger?' He raised his hand again, clenched it into a fist, and brought it back down on the table, twisting his shoulder and neck as if he were trying to hammer a hole through the tabletop.
'I gotta go,' Janet said. 'I'm late. I gotta go. But I won't give up. We've got to talk about this.'
Newman hit the table again. His wife picked up her briefcase and her book bag, tan with a green design, and her purse and went out the kitchen door to her car.
Newman sat at the kitchen table and stared at the Today show. He was breathing hard as if he'd run a distance. His sight blurred with tears. With his clenched fist he hit the table softly. Barely moving his fist, over and over.
He was still sitting at the table at nine-thirty when Chris Hood walked across the backyard from his small white house to Newman's big one. He came in the kitchen door without knocking.
'Coffee?' he said.
Newman said, 'Instant,' and nodded at the jar on the counter. 'Water's probably still pretty hot.'
Hood turned the gas flame on under the kettle, got a cup from the cabinet, and put a spoonful of instant coffee in it. He got two slices of oatmeal bread out of the second drawer to the right of the sink and put them in the toaster. When steam came from the kettle he made coffee, put margarine on his toast, and sat down at the table. He had on a blue T-shirt that said Adidas in white lettering across the front and he looked, as he moved and the small muscles played intricately beneath the skin, like a fine mechanism in perfect working order.
'You want to talk?' Hood said.
'About what?' Newman said.
'About us killing this guy Karl,' Hood said. 'You got any jam?' 'Refrigerator,' Newman said. Hood went to the refrigerator and took out a two-pound jar of strawberry preserves.
'Good,' Hood said. 'Smucker's, they're the best kind.' Newman nodded. 'You and me?' he said.
'Yes.' Hood put strawberry jam on his toast.
'You and me go out and actually shoot this guy Karl?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
'Janet's right,' Hood said. 'Everything she said. It's the only way to go.' 'Maybe,' Newman said. 'But why you?'
Hood grinned. 'What are friends for?'
Newman shook his head. There was no humor in his voice. 'Why?' he said.
'It's true,' Hood said. 'I'm living alone. Jerry can manage the place for me if he has to. It's the kind of thing I can do.'
'Kill someone?'
'Well, scuffle, fight, hit, handle trouble, you know.' Newman continued to look at Hood.
'I'm good with my hands,' Hood said.
Newman nodded. 'Yeah, I know that, Chris, but' Newman put his palms up-'kill someone? Someone you don't even know?'
'I know you. And Janet. And it's what I can do.'
'This is their business, you know. They're professionals. What if they kill us instead?' 'No point playing tennis with the net down,' Hood said. 'It's part of the fun.'
'The threat of death.'
'Sure. No fun if there wasn't some strain to it. Not too much point in doing it.' 'I thought you wanted to do it because it was a logical way to solve our problem.' Hood said, 'No. I think you should do it for that reason. I'm willing to help for other reasons. And besides, I know you. It'll eat your liver till you've done something.' 'Or Janet
