Deadly Beloved

RAYMOND CHANDLER,

“THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER,”

PARAPHRASED

ONE

The woman in the skimpy black bikini on the perfect beach on the too-perfect day was me.

I saw her from a God-like distance, the long legs stretched out, shoulders back accentuating the full bust, black hair brushing tan shoulders with help of a whispery breeze, well-carved handsome features that were almost beautiful taking on a serene cast as blue-green eyes studied the blue-green water that rolled gently to a picture- book tan sand shore.

I watched her taking it all in, as she lounged there on no towel, basking in a sun that seemed to turn the world white and yellow and orange, though the sensation was of warmth, not heat. The green of trees was a backdrop, more perceived than seen, the blue-green of the lake glinting with sun sparkle, and—like the black of the bikini—subservient to the solarizing rays.

Then I was within her.

Inside myself, feeling a sense of repose encouraged by the lapping of the waves and the laughter and splashing of a young couple, happy honeymooners perhaps, cavorting in the water. I watched them for a while, but they were indistinct in the shimmer of sunlight.

To the left of me, a digging sound drew my eyes to a boy around ten, in a yellow swimsuit with orange-red seahorses dancing on it, who was working with a shovel, gaining more raw material for the elaborate sand castle he was constructing, turrets and towers and even a carved-out moat.

The sound of splashing drew my attention back to the happy couple coming up out of the water, hand in hand, stumbling onto the sand to fall onto beach towels, dripping, laughing, kissing.

I smiled a little and gave them privacy they hadn’t requested by casting my eyes back out on the gentle rolling water with its diamond-like glimmer.

Then, as if a switch had been thrown, the world turned shades of blue and gray, and a wind began to blow, kicking up choppy waves. My hair started to whip and a sudden, troubling chill enveloped me, encasing me in goose pimples. I looked around for my own towel, but there wasn’t one, and wound up hugging my legs to myself, a shivering oversized fetus.

But when I glanced over at the boy building that sprawling castle, he didn’t seem to notice the wind and cold; even his sand-color hair remained unruffled, though the blue of fast-moving clouds shadowed him.

And that honeymoon couple didn’t seem to notice the rapid weather shift either, stretched on their backs on their towels, eyes closed, sunning under a sunless sky that stained them blue-gray—they might have been corpses laid out on morgue slabs, so oblivious were they.

My teeth chattered and my eyes returned to the rolling, choppy water, where emerged from the unruly waves a man in a black wet suit and full, masked scuba gear, including black flippers.

I studied him, squinting as if the sun were still glaring.

And then I saw it, in sharp focus: in his hands, a spear gun...

...which he raised and aimed at me.

I reared back, as he fired.

Dodging, I felt as much as heard the spear sink into the sand beside me and quiver there like a small tree shaken by the wind. I fumbled at my little pile of possessions—sun tan oil, a paperback, my purse....

The masked man in the skin of black rubber advanced, a terrible grin on the piece of his face beneath the mask, the flippers no impediment to his progress, his spear gun reloaded somehow, and he fired again.

As another spear thunked into nearby sand, I whipped the nine millimeter automatic from my purse and fired, three times, three small explosions that provided the dark sky with the thunder it called for.

All three shots hit him in the torso, tearing the rubber suit and making little red blossoms, one over his heart, shaking him like a naughty child...

...and yet he still kept coming.

And that damn spear gun was poised to shoot again.

Scrambling to my feet, I let go with four more rounds, four more thunder-cracks that tore holes in the afternoon and that rubber suit, and blood spurted in shimmering scarlet ribbons and yet still he came, the goddamn black-rubber Frankenstein monster, and I was moving backward, all but stumbling, still shooting, but soon the gun’s thunder-cracks had been replaced by the clicks on an empty chamber, and the sand made my retreat impossibly slow, and I felt hysteria come over me in a wave but I would be damned if I’d scream, and I was raising the empty weapon to club the son of a bitch when finally he tottered and collapsed in a pile of flesh and blood and rubber at my bare feet.

I looked down at him for the longest time before kneeling and taking in the bloody exit wounds of my multiple shots, any one of which should have dropped him, and I unceremoniously flipped the body over.

Reaching for the mask, my hand began to tremble. For some reason, I hesitated.

Then I sneered at the corpse, and ripped the damn thing off.

And the face under the mask was as handsome in its battered way as it was familiar, because it was my husband’s face, Mike Tree’s face....

“What the hell do you make of that, Doc?” I asked.

The psychiatrist’s office was dim, curtains in the anonymously male dark-wood-paneled office shutting out the late afternoon sun. Trimly bearded, balding, fifty-something, Dr. Cassel wore an impeccably tailored gray suit with a darker gray tie as he sat in a comfortable black leather chair beside his desk.

“Sometimes, Ms. Tree,” he said gently, “a spear is just a spear.”

I was nearby on a reclining chair, with him at my side. The chair was leaned so far back I might have been at a dentist, not a shrink. Of course this was almost the cliched couch that most head doctors have long since abandoned, though mine—whom I’d been seeing for over a year, since my husband’s death—was Old School enough to keep me comfortable and looking not into his eyes but into my memories and my troubles.

And I had plenty of both.

I was in brown slacks and a tan short-sleeved cashmere sweater—outside this office, a very crisp autumn in Chicago was in full sway. I’m five ten and one hundred forty-five pounds (I’d been ten pounds lighter in my dream) but have had few complaints about their distribution.

The doctor, by the way, was taking notes in a spiral pad—though he recorded the sessions, he was Old School about that, too, and the scratch of pen against paper provided a soft if percussive accompaniment.

“Why,” I asked, “would I dream I was attacked by my own husband?”

“Late husband.”

I gave up half a smile. “That hasn’t slipped my mind, Doctor....And why would I kill him?”

“He was a threat in the context of the dream.”

I shook my head. “No, a spear gun was the threat. Mike was the punchline.”

I could hear him shift in the leather chair. “Let’s start with the other elements—the child on the beach.”

“The kid Mike and I never had. Next.”

“The happy couple on the beach might well represent—”

“The happiness that was denied me. Denied us. Fine. But goddamn it, Doc, killing the guy I love...”

“Note the present tense.”

“You can still love dead people.”

“You can also resent them. ‘Killing’ your husband in your imagination is not an atypical response, Ms. Tree—feelings of abandonment experienced by those who lose a loved one—”

“Yeah, yeah, but why would Mike attack me?