“Is Henry Jewish?” he asks, and immediately realizes the banality of his words, yet she quietly says, “Yes, but he’s not very religious.” He hopes that perhaps she now realizes she shouldn’t be here, and that her seduction was misplaced. It’s time to go.
He pats the pocket with his keys, and then his eyes abruptly look down to his jacket. He moves his hands from one pocket to the other, stopping for a moment and then repeating the process.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
His hands stay in motion while his body turns to scan the floor, as if the object of his interest might somehow lie at his feet. He walks back to the couch and lifts the cushions before he comes back.
“Did you lose something?” At first he doesn’t appear to hear, as he scans the floor, the kitchen counter, and the hallway.
“My wallet. Can’t find my wallet. Dammit! I just went to the bank and took out a lot of cash. Goddammit! We’ve got to go. I must have dropped it at the beach or at Citarella’s. Come on. First I’ll drop you at the bus stop.”
“I don’t want to go just yet. Maybe after some more wine. Maybe when you get back.”
Her smile teases him. She stretches here arms behind her head, which accentuates the swell of her breasts. Her mouth opens and her lips seem to ripen. She knows what she’s doing, but he has no interest in such games. Not now. Not anymore.
“I said I want to go now.” His voice rises.
He grabs at her upper arm, but she pulls away.
“Don’t.”
“Sorry. Look I don’t have time for this. I’ll be back soon, but be ready to leave when I get here.”
He moves down the steps and out the door without looking back. He doesn’t see her, but senses she still stands and watches him while he feels a mocking smile, until the closing door swallows the image.
It takes longer than the few minutes he’d hoped. The beach yields nothing, and so he drives to Citarella’s. It’s not under the table he sat at, and he goes inside and asks a cashier. She directs him to the manager who’s on the phone. It’s maddening. There’s nearly five hundred dollars in the wallet, but he can’t rush it.
“Yes, we found the wallet,” the manager says without hesitation after the briefest of inquiries.
As his Lexus enters his own street, a car he doesn’t recognize turns at the far corner. Another few weeks till summer and this street will be full of cars. His watch shows almost forty minutes have passed since he left. Dammit. What if Sara had called while he was out? He parks and leaves the car door open as he jogs up the front steps.
The door opens about three-quarters of the way and then stops. Something blocks further effort. Something heavy, but there’s still enough room for him to easily enter.
She lays there without moving. Her eyes closed. He calls to her, but his voice is no more than an echo. At first he thinks she’s playing some game with him, some final attempt at seduction, a stupid, vain idea, he later realizes, yet she looks so serene, lying there, composed in sensuality with one long leg stretched against a stair riser, as if she had been placed there by an artist, a bowl of fruit in a still life.
But then he sees blood seeping from the back of her head. He calls to her again without response. Then he shouts, as if a higher octave would make a difference. He draws a breath to calm himself and lifts one of her hands. The same one he held minutes before. The warmth is still there. He speaks to her now. Soft words that go unheard, but he continues. Then he reaches a finger toward her neck to check her pulse. He knows how to do this from a course in emergency medicine the firm gave some years ago.
He sits beside her, staring blankly at the entrance door, seeing nothing. He has no comprehension of what has just happened, so he cries. At one point he drops his head to her chest to check for a heart beat—uselessly. How could this have happened? How? How? But he knows. The stupid newly finished floors. Stupid. Stupid. He stands and wipes his face with his fingers. She is dead. Who should he call?
And then the reality begins to seep in.
CHAPTER 2
He remains seated beside her and loses track of time. Through a blur he sees his watch. Three hours have elapsed since the bus arrived. His crying has stopped. He holds her hand. It’s still warm, yet he senses stiffness in the fingers. A part of him realizes he should call someone, probably 911. He stands and moves his shaking body to the downstairs phone, but hesitates before he takes the instrument from its cradle.
What would they think? he wonders. It was an accident, but there is no proof. No witness to his sordid thoughts.
“It was just an accident,” he shouts into the empty hallway. Yet some prosecutor might claim he bludgeoned her to death in a jealous, frustrated rage. What was she doing at his house? they would ask. Did she refuse you when you wanted sex? And Sara? She would ask the same thing and shout that she knew all along he was screwing someone else. And there would be no answer that could satisfy all of the questions. Even the complete truth would be insufficient.
“I wasn’t even here,” he shouts over and over again into empty space, and absurdly remembers the potential legal problems he faces. In those cases his innocence was suspect, but here, while there is no question, why would anyone believe him?
“This is madness,” he says aloud, yet in some deep recess of his brain, in some effort at rationality, he has already decided he must find a way to move the body.
A storage shelf in the garage provides a supply of large steel-flexed trash bags. He takes two silver colored bags from the carton. He’s about to leave when he impulsively grabs a pair of gardening gloves from the same shelf. He returns to the hall. She has not moved. He almost wished she had. He would pay the penalty if she survived, but she lies still and motionless. His tears return and he sits on the steps for several minutes until they dry.
He has never been this close to a dead person, but there is no particular discomfort. He slips on the gloves, and then lifts her body and tries to maneuver it into the bag. The body is all deadweight, a thought that in other circumstances might have brought a smile, but this is not such a time. The body moves surprisingly smoothly into the sack. Her face is the last part to be covered. Her eyes are closed as if in sleep.
“I’m so sorry,” he says and lingers for a moment before he impulsively leans forward and brushes a kiss across her forehead. He starts to close the bag when he remembers her shoes. He takes the pair of white sandals, and slips them in as well. Then he slides the second bag around the first. It is actually a harder process that takes him several minutes. Perhaps the rigor has already begun. He rolls the bag over in the hallway and it seems secure.
Only then does he see her straw bag, as it hangs over the edge of a high step where its own fall must have ended, somehow immune from gravity’s further demands. He brings the straw bag down and reopens the double plastic bags. He inserts the bag beside the lifeless form. His motion forces him to move his arm across the front of her body, necessarily across her breasts. He gulps down his bile and finishes his work, for that is what this has become.
That is when he sees the bloodstains for the first time. A purplish mass rests on the tiles where her head had landed. He finds a sponge, wets it, and begins to soak up the residue. Twice he flees back into the downstairs bathroom to vomit. He retches long after there is nothing left to expel, but the sight of her blood and other clotted matter that clings to the tiles is too much.
Many minutes pass before he concludes that the blood is gone, yet a small stain in the grout remains between some of the tiles. He curses silently and goes back to the garage for another remedy. He will bleach the grout he thinks, but there is no bleach in the laundry area. He could go out to buy bleach, or just clean the area as well as he could, and make up a story for Sara. Yes, that is what he’ll do. The stain is too small for her to notice right away. The bleach will need to wait for another day. There will be many stories to concoct for Sara and others. He realizes with a stark revelation, as if a bright light has been turned on in a black room, that his deception has only begun, despite his absolute innocence.
Then he remembers the photo, his photo, still embedded in the memory of Heidi’s cell phone. A cold sweat rises on his neck, and tightness invades his chest. He feels a rumbling in his body, something new and beyond anything he’s ever felt. He knows he must again untie the plastic bags and retrieve the phone from her straw handbag.
