my brother shot his friend to protect me, and I shot his friend's girlfriend and their landlord to protect my brother, but then he started to break down, so I had to shoot him to protect myself, and then the kidnapper...'
She stared at me, and the fear in her face made me stop, made me realize how I must sound, like I was insane, a psychopath.
'I'm not crazy,' I said, trying to make my voice come out rational, calm. 'It all makes sense. It all happened one thing after the other.'
There was a long moment of silence. It was broken finally by the roar of another plane flying over. The whole building echoed with the sound of its engines.
'I tried to make you leave,' I said, 'but you kept knocking on the door. You wouldn't listen.'
The woman clicked open her purse. She reached up, pulled off her earrings, and dropped them inside, one at a time.
'Here,' she said, holding it toward me.
I stared down at it. I didn't understand what she wanted me to do.
'Take it,' she said.
I reached out with my left hand and took the bag.
'I didn't do it for the money,' I said. 'I did it to keep from getting caught.'
She didn't say anything. She didn't know what I was talking about.
'It's like those old stories about people selling their souls. I did one bad thing, and it led to a worse thing, and on and on and on, until finally I ended up here. This is the bottom.' I waved the machete toward the cashier. 'This is the worst thing. It can't go any farther.'
'No,' the woman said, seizing on this last statement as if she thought it might save her life. She straightened herself up. 'It won't go any farther.'
She started to reach her hand toward me, and I stepped backward, shifting my weight.
'We'll stop it here,' she said. 'Won't we?'
She tried to catch my eye, but I looked away, down at the cashier's corpse. It was staring up at the ceiling.
'Let's stop it here,' she said. She stepped forward, hesitantly, sliding her foot along the tiles, as if she were on a frozen pond, testing the slickness of the ice.
I could still hear Sarah in her voice, riding just below the surface. I tried to block it out but couldn't. The purse was in my left hand and the machete in my right, held motionless before me.
'I'm going to help you do it,' she said.
She was right beside me now, edging around my body toward the open doorway behind me, moving slowly, carefully, as if I were some small wild animal that she was afraid to startle into flight.
'It's going to be okay,' she said.
She took another shuffling step and was in the doorway. I turned to watch her.
For a moment, I actually thought I was going to let her go. I was going to let her finish it for me, was going to place myself in her hands.
But then her back was to me. She was tiptoeing into the puddle, the store opening itself up before her, and whatever it was that had been holding me back was gone. I stepped out after her, raised the machete above my head, and swung for her neck. Like the cashier, she sensed it coming just before it hit. She started to turn and lift her hand, made a short squeaking sound in her throat, as if, absurdly, she were trying to suppress a laugh, and then the blade hit her, knocking her to the left. She bounced off the shelves there, dragging down some cans of soup behind her as she fell.
There were none of the cashier's melodramatic death throes. She simply collapsed into the puddle, bleeding, and was dead. The soup cans rolled across the tiles with a tiny metallic sound, which, when they finally stopped, deepened the silence of the store.
Everything was very still.
IT WAS close to seven o'clock before I reached home. I parked out in the driveway, and -- with a caution rising from the proximity of my neighbors' windows -- left the machete and the woman's fur coat in the car.
As I came up the front walk, I smelled the sharp, comforting odor of burning wood. Sarah had a fire going in the fireplace.
I took off my boots on the porch and carried them inside.
The entranceway was dark, the door to the living room shut tight. Down the hall I could hear Sarah moving about in the kitchen. There was the soft suction sound of the refrigerator being opened, then the clinking of glasses. She flashed by the open doorway, dressed in her robe, her hair down. She smiled toward me as she passed.
'Wait,' she yelled. 'Don't come in till I tell you.'
The kitchen light flicked out, and I heard her move into the living room. I stood very still in the darkened entranceway, listening, my boots in one hand, the paper bag full of money in the other. I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was excited, happy. She thought that we were free now, free and rich, and she'd planned a celebration. I couldn't imagine how I was going to tell her otherwise.
'All right,' she yelled. 'Come in.'
I stepped forward, nearly silent in my stocking feet, tucked the paper bag beneath my left arm, and slid open the door.
'Voila!' Sarah said triumphantly.
She was lying on the floor, propped up on her elbows. She'd taken off her bathrobe and picked up the bearskin rug from the hearth. It was wrapped around her body, like a blanket, and she was naked beneath it. Her hair, draped seductively over her face, hid her expression, but I could tell just from the way she held her head that she was smiling at me. On the floor by her elbow was the bottle of champagne. Beside it sat two glasses.
All the lights were off; the room was illuminated solely by the logs burning in the fireplace, the reflection of which trembled off of the mirror on the opposite wall, making it seem to shake slightly, as if someone were pounding his fist against the outside of the house. The front curtains were pulled shut.
I saw the duffel bag before I saw the money. It was standing by the entrance to the kitchen, buckled over, empty. The money was on the floor. It had been meticulously laid out, packet by packet, to form a seamless green surface across the carpet. Sarah was lying on top of it.
'This is the plan,' she said huskily, through her mask of hair. She lifted the bottle toward me. 'We're going to get a little drunk, and then I'm going to fuck you on the money.'
The mock sexy baritone of her voice failed her on the last few words, and, suddenly shy, she finished with a giggle. 'We've made our bed,' she said, gesturing with her hand toward the money, 'and now we're going to sleep on it.'
I didn't move from the doorway. I still had my hat and parka on. There was a long pause, while she waited for me to say something. I didn't; my mind was blank, numb.
'Do you want to eat something first?' she asked, her voice taking on a note of concern. 'Have you had dinner yet?'
She sat up a little, the rug slipping down her shoulder, revealing one of her breasts.
'There's some cold chicken in the fridge,' she said.
I slid the door shut behind me, then turned back toward her. I didn't know how to tell her; I was waiting for an opening. I felt as if I were about to do something very cruel.
'Where's Amanda?' I asked, unable to think of anything else to say.
Sarah flicked the hair away from her face. 'Upstairs,' she said, 'sleeping.' And then, after a pause, 'Why?'
I shrugged.
She sat up a little more, leaned back on her hand. She gave me a long, inquisitive look. 'Hank?' she said. 'What's wrong?'
I came into the room, edging my way around the money, and sat down behind her on the piano bench. I leaned forward to drop my boots to the floor, but then decided against it and placed them in my lap instead, resting them on the bag of money. It made a crackling sound beneath their weight. The boots were stained black around their soles. They stank of wine.
