taken a big bite when they’d interrupted him.
He seemed surprised, though not exactly. More like disappointed and angered.
What happened next took her breath away.
It was almost as if he’d expected to be discovered. He was ready to act. In one smooth and lightning motion, he was up out of his chair and around the table, wielding a long knife. Mary saw in that instant that he was wearing flesh-colored rubber gloves. The bite of pastrami remained in his mouth, forgotten and unchewed, a long red slab of the thinly sliced meat protruding like a shredded tongue. Donald, paralyzed with shock, had no time to react. It was as if his assailant had rehearsed for this moment, as if it were choreographed. The man was on him without hesitation and the knife blade flashed.
The explosive violence, the sudden blood flow and horror, rooted Mary where she stood. Donald lay folded on his side like a full-scale, discarded doll at her feet, the plaster pineapple still clutched in his right hand. It had all been so fast, so fast!
It has to be happening to someone else. I’m here but only watching, like a movie… Time, time for everything, about to stop…
A powerful hand gripped her hair and yanked her head back and she knew her throat would be slashed.
Instead, the long knife blade lanced like ice low into the softness of her belly. It took her breath away and numbed her more than hurt. Each time she began to fall, the blade winked in the kitchen light, piercing her and holding her up with its force. Somewhere in her terror her mind was working. She wanted to drop, wanted this to end, but he wouldn’t let it happen. Not yet. She couldn’t die.
He knows where to stab me where it hurts but won’t kill me!
He’d been standing back from her and slightly to the side. So he doesn’t get too bloody. Now he shifted position and his face was inches from hers and in brighter light.
I know him! My God, I know him!
He stabbed her differently then, harder, just beneath her breasts and twisting up to touch and detonate her heart. The explosion of pain turned the world white and then dim, dimmer…
The last thing she saw was her killer’s leering face, with its lolling pastrami tongue-familiar, faint memory from a thousand nightmares that had become real. She sank, sank, and both her palms were flat on the floor, in warm liquid. Through silent blackness she crawled until her feeble, bloody right hand contacted something solid, a wall.
With her forefinger she blindly began to write.
32
Hiram, Missouri, 1989.
They heard his heavy footfalls on the front porch’s wood floor; then the door opened and closed.
It was no surprise. As was his custom, Milford was home in time for the dinner Cara had simmering on the stove. She’d set the burners on warm and the oven’s thermostat at 150 degrees; then she’d come up to the master bedroom, where Luther waited.
Luther raised his nude body off Cara and sat on the edge of the bed. He was breathing hard, watching the bulge of his slight belly go in and out like a bellows. A bead of perspiration clung to the tip of his nose, then plummeted to leave a dark, almost perfectly round spot on the carpet. He studied the spot for a moment, losing himself in it while his breathing evened out.
There was no hurry. The lovers knew Milford’s habits. He’d stay downstairs and sit in his usual chair and have his usual before-dinner scotch.
Nevertheless, Cara was nervous. She climbed out of bed and dusted herself with deodorant powder; then she slipped her dress over her head and smoothed the material. After switching the slowly rotating overhead paddle fan to a higher speed, she went to the vanity mirror and arranged her hair. Luther, who was by now back into his Levi’s and holding the rest of his clothes, kissed the side of her neck. She locked gazes with him in the mirror and they exchanged smiles that were amazingly similar in their secret desires and contemplations.
Luther headed for the door.
“Luther!” she whispered in alarm.
He paused.
“Don’t forget.” She pointed to the covered china plate on the dresser that held a sandwich along with vegetables from the beef brisket dinner staying warm downstairs. Some of Milford’s food that Milford wasn’t going to eat.
Luther grinned at her and picked up the plate, his shirt draped over his wrist to free his hand that wasn’t holding his shoes. Barefoot, he left the bedroom and padded down the hall to the narrow stairs in the back of the vast house. He wasn’t worried about making some slight noise. If Milford happened to hear it downstairs, he’d attribute it to Cara moving about above him, or simply to the sounds an old house frequently made, like the creaks and groans of an old person acknowledging age.
When he reached the undecorated third floor, Luther relaxed. Milford and Cara planned on painting and furnishing the rooms on this floor, but they hadn’t gotten around to starting the project and both of them knew they probably never would.
Moving more freely, Luther made his way down the hall to where a stout rope with a knot at the end dangled from the ceiling as if waiting for a hangman to tie a knot. He put down his shoes temporarily, yanked on the rope, and the folding stairs to the attic levered down from their opening in the ceiling.
Luther retrieved his shoes, climbed the stairs, then with a practiced effort raised them from above.
He was in the dim, shadowed attic, with no sign below of his passing.
Cara had fixed him up with a cot and a sleeping bag, and even an electric hot plate in case the food she gave him needed warming. He had books, most of them on painting and interior decorating, which he read by the light of one of the bare bulbs that hung from rafters by their cords. He’d removed one of the lightbulbs and replaced it with a screw-in socket, from which ran an extension cord that provided power for the hot plate and an ancient but quiet box fan. When he read at night, he usually draped the old blanket he’d cut in half over the vents at each end of the attic so no light escaped. That was when it became uncomfortably warm and he’d lie nude on top of the sleeping bag.
If he got too uncomfortable, late at night he’d venture down the back stairs into the main part of the house. Milford was no worry; he also enjoyed a nightly before-bed scotch and slept soundly.
Sometimes Luther and Cara had sex in the early-morning hours while her husband slept upstairs or, if they were in the attic, while he snored beneath them. Most of the time, however, they followed a routine of making love during the mornings or afternoons, when Milford was at the mine office and Luther had free run of the house. They could act with more abandon if they weren’t afraid of waking Milford.
Occasionally Luther would sneak down from the attic and quietly slip into Milford and Cara’s bedroom and watch them sleep, wondering how it would be if he were Milford, if Cara and the house, and being a solid citizen in Hiram, were all his to have and to hold and enjoy.
Maybe it didn’t matter, he told himself. He was quite happy with things as they were, living secretly in his cozy attic nest. It was almost as if he were Cara’s pet, under her protection. She’d told him once during sex that it gave her a delicious thrill knowing he was in the attic while she and Milford were living their dull lives downstairs, or while Milford was making love to her.
In a sense, Luther thought, things had worked out very well. Everyone had what they wanted. Everyone was…happy enough, which was about all anyone could ask of life in this hard world.
So, during the night, Luther would leave the attic only secretly, and not often. He also ventured outside occasionally in the daytime, making sure no one saw him coming or leaving the house. Though lately he hadn’t gone out at all; there was always the possibility he’d draw attention, that someone would recognize him and ask where he was staying, what he was doing with himself these days.
The limited times of sunlight and fresh air weren’t worth the risk, considering everything he needed was here, in the vast old house he regarded as his home. In the mornings, after Milford had left, Luther showered and brushed his teeth in the downstairs bathroom. Cara did his laundry separately, washing and drying during the day so Milford
