After Sundown

by Mark Morris

  Her head is full of static and she can’t put her thoughts together. Why does David have Bill’s gun? Did Bill give it to him for protection? Is he scared of her? Does he think she wants to kill u? Then she sees it: the framed poster for the Jamaica World Tour Festival 1982 hanging at an angle. Her gut goes hollow. She knows the code to the safe behind that poster but she doesn’t need it because the safe is open and the $53,000 Bill keeps there is gone. They’ve been robbed and her first instinct is to pick up the house line and call David and then she realises they’ve been robbed by David.

  Immediately, she feels close to Bill. They’re victims of a terrible crime. They’ve both been betrayed. David stole Bill’s money. David took his gun. What did David do to Bill? She needs to find her ally. She grabs a Grammy off Bill’s bookshelf and hefts it in one hand, holding it like a club. She didn’t get out of the LV by dicking around.

  * * *

  “What do I do?” David asks Miloje.

  They stand at the end of their perfectly made bed with its perfectly smooth duvet. The gun makes a dent in its centre, right next to the unzipped duffle bag of money. It is the most terrifying sight either of them has ever seen.

  “You’re sure he paid you this money to kill Mrs. Caroline?” Miloje asks, her throat closing tight on the last three words.

  Back home, her youngest cousin got killed when he confronted a man for stealing his car. The man was a bodybuilder and ex-con who didn’t like the accusation. After it was too late, they learned his brother had borrowed the car and forgotten to say anything. Miloje was eight when she learned that you had to be certain about things.

  “He gave me fifty-three thousand dollars and a gun,” David says. “What am I supposed to think?”

  “Why did you take it?” she wails.

  “I panicked,” he snaps.

  They must calm down. Miloje makes herself sit on the ottoman and presses the palms of her hands together. “You’re not going to do it?” she asks.

  Her second cousin proposed to his girlfriend without asking anyone first. Her parents liked him very much. She said she loved him very much. But it turned out her parents had already arranged another marriage for her and her brothers burned down her second cousin’s barn and killed all his sheep. That’s when Miloje learned to never assume anything.

  “Of course I’m not going to do it!” David says. “I am a dancer.”

  This is David’s dream. He told her constantly about his seven years at dance academy before his mother sent him to America to avoid the draft.

  “Now you have a gun and a lot of money,” Miloje says. “And a boss who thinks you are killing the other boss. This is a very dangerous situation.”

  Miloje came to America to avoid dangerous situations. She does not like what is happening right now.

  “I will put it all back,” David says. “And pretend nothing happened.” Miloje feels her chest tighten.

  “You can’t,” she says. “What if then he does it himself and blames you? Once you touched these things we cannot apologise.”

  “You want me to kill a human being?” he asks. “It is not like the movies, you know!”

  Eighteen months ago, Miloje paid David US $10,000 to marry her so she could get her Green Card. The bosses didn’t ask many questions, and David never pressed her for details about her life, but more than him, Miloje knows that killing a person is not like the movies.

  “This is already too far,” she explains. “We must leave. Right now.”

  “Yes, we must leave,” he says. “But with proper notice. Now I will return these things and tell the boss there has been a misunderstanding because of my poor English. Then we will give two weeks’ notice after this is forgotten.”

  He picks up the duffle bag and the gun and walks to the door. “You watched 60 Minutes with me,” Miloje says, going after him, grabbing his arm. “You know how Americans are with guns. You really think this rich man owns only one? If you say you are not doing this murder, he might shoot you.”

  David turns from the waist with great dignity.

  “We do not know each other well,” he says. “But one thing you should know by now is that, as a dancer, I can tell a person’s thoughts by their body language. The boss is angry, but it is passing. I will be safe.”

  Then he stalks through the door as if he’s walking onstage.

  Over the course of this arrangement, Miloje has come to feel a great deal of affection for this prissy man. If anyone can defuse this mess it is he. But then she thinks about her lawyer cousin, Branko, and the mess he made when he tried to negotiate a lease dispute between their uncles and she twists her hands together, and they are very cold.

  * * *

  Shoving his walker across the sodden back yard, rain pounds Bill, soaking him to the bone, and the freezing cold practice room makes him shake. He can’t stop. It feels like a seizure. He can’t get the heat on. Where are the fucking towels? He makes a mental note to tell David to fix the heat then remembers that if everything goes right he won’t see David ever again.

  He lowers himself onto the black leather sofa, plastering his ice-cold clothes to his body, and he feels very alone. He’ll have to live out here by himself after all this happens. There’ll be police everywhere, then Caroline’s funeral, all kinds of crap to deal with, and only after it’s all done can he start interviewing new housekeepers.

  He checks his Omega: it’s been twenty-eight minutes. He said he’d wait three hours but he can’t. He’ll go crazy. He’ll freeze to death. He sits, knees jiggling, trying to hear something over the roar of the rain against the French doors.

  He looks at the three guitars leaning on their stands and sees thick dust on their bodies and pickups. This is the one part of the house David and Miloje don’t clean, and he hasn’t been out here in a long time but right now he could stand some blues. He sees himself hunched over his guitar, playing some Leadbelly or some Robert Pete Williams, drowning in their jangling chords until the music makes his fingers start walking by themselves. He imagines doing some kind of stripped down recording, like the Boss on Nebraska, or getting Rick Rubin out here to give him the Johnny Cash treatment, releasing a spare, haunting album oozing dark emotions. Something authentic and American, call it Murder Ballads, let his feelings really bleed. Caroline would like that.

  What is he doing?

  What he’s set in motion will ruin his life. Murder Ballads is a great idea, the best one he’s had in a long time, but if this happens it’s fucked. But he can turn things back. It’s not too late. He can stop this. The only person who knows is David and he can trust David not to say anything. He can’t sit here and wait for poor, dumb, sweet Caroline to get shot. He’ll never record his album and suddenly more than anything in the world he wants to record this album. He knows Rick’s manager. He can call him today. But first.

  He opens the door and steps back out into the freezing rain before his clothes have a chance to dry. If anyone dies today it’s going to be him, catching his death of cold.

  * * *

  Caroline puts the Grammy on the hall carpet to dial 911 because her fingers shake too much to walk and type at the same time. She gets a busy signal. How can 911 be busy? She tries two more times. Still busy. She looks at her texts. Nothing from Bill. She texted him three minutes ago: David is rubbing os. Has gin. Where are you?

  She made sure she spelled out ‘you’. He hasn’t texted back.

  She hoists the Grammy and steps into the living room just as a gust of rain cracks across the big glass panel along the back of the house. Through it she sees the blurry outlines of Bill’s studio. If he’s not in the house, that’s where he’ll be. They’ll hide out there, lock the doors, and wait for David to finish robbing them and leave.

  She edges between the sofas and the coffee tables, the lamps giving their comforting golden glow. She wishes she could curl up under a blank
et and read a book.

  Cold radiates off the huge wall of glass as she approaches. She looks down at the Cire Trudon candles, still burning, and wishes she hadn’t wasted them. Behind her, something shrieks and grinds and she jumps, whirls, and sees David pushing one of the Breuer chairs back into place with his knee.

  Both of them hold very, very still.

  “I cannot hurt you,” he says.

  “Why are you carrying those?” she asks.

  David looks down at first one hand, then the other, like he’s surprised to see the gun and the duffle bag there. “Mr. Bill asked me to clean them,” he says. “Now I return them to his office.”

  That makes no sense. How do you clean a duffle bag? Why would Bill suddenly ask him to clean his gun? She hefts the Grammy in one hand.

  “You should put them down,” she says.

  “I will return them to the office,” he says. Then he notices the Grammy in her hand. “If you give me that, I will return it also.”

  He’s not pointing the gun at her. He’s holding it weird, fingers wrapped around it like a rock. She takes a step backwards and to the right, putting the table between them. David puts the duffle bag down and comes forward, hand outstretched. In his other hand he holds the gun like he’s going to club her with it.

  “Stay away, David.”

  “Don’t be afraid, I will take everything back to Mr. Bill’s office,” he says.

  David keeps coming. The panel of glass is at her back. She tries to keep as much of the table between them as possible but now he’s coming around it.

  “Go to his office, David,” she orders. “You don’t need the Grammy.”

  David hears the tone in her voice and tries to reassure her because maybe she knows more than he thought.

  “I will go,” he reassures her. “I will take the music award, and this bag, and this foolish thing,” he lifts the gun halfway, “and we will not think about them again, okay?” Why does he keep coming? Why won’t he stop?

  “David,” she says, and her voice is very high pitched. “You’re scaring me.”

  Does she know Mr. Bill’s plan, David wonders?

  “I am a student of dance,” he tries to reassure her. “I will never hurt another human being.”

  Then David stops and Caroline sees his mouth close hard and his eyes go wide, and she snaps a look over her shoulder and sees a blurry figure pushing his walker through the rain, and it’s Bill and she cannot wait for David to have both of them in range and David is still staring out the window, and he shifts his hand around the gun, and she doesn’t even think, she hurls the Grammy at him, feeling her shoulder click painfully when she lets go.

  It flies at David fast and slams high into his chest with a solid THWUMP and she hears a phantom standing ovation from the bleachers as the right side of his body goes slack, his hand springs open, and he drops the gun.

  She hasn’t done any warm up, she didn’t stretch, her ligaments are tight, but it’s the final sprint at Soulcycle and an inner warrior possesses Caroline and one foot is up high, flat on the table, her pelvis shrieks in protest, and she pushes herself up, launching herself at David, knees aimed at his chest, ready to ride him to the ground, his eyes wide as hardboiled eggs, fear scrawled across his face as she comes down at him in a perfect arc, knees like guided missiles. And he steps aside.

  Her knees smash into the back of the sofa and she feels her right kneecap break loose and get shoved between the muscle and the skin on top of her thigh and she didn’t know her flesh could stretch this much and she lands on the Grammy with the small of her back, and fire rockets up her spine and her side rolls over the gun on the floor and her right kidney erupts with hot liquid and she squirms on the floor, wailing.

  There’s a crack and a gust of icy wind and Bill shouts, “No!” and David has his hands on her, and she tries to get away, and he tries to hold her down, and she hears Bill shout, “Keep it all!” and David looks at him, and Bill shouts, “I changed my mind. Keep the money. It’s okay.”

  David looks back at Caroline to make sure she is not hurt and that’s when she shoots him in the balls.

  * * *

  Bill hears the air in the living room go SMACK and the shockwave slaps his face and David’s back gets stiff, then hunches, and he takes two steps back before squatting slowly to the floor, hands over his groin. At the last minute he shuffle-steps to the side, uttering a long, agonised groan, so that he does not sit on the carpet.

  “My,” he says, face white as paint. “Carpet...”

  Black blood oozes between his fingers and then it’s a torrent, and then it sprays in time with his pulse, a puddle growing on the slates between his legs, and Caroline and David stare at each other, and David’s lips turn blue, and he leans forward until his forehead rests in the middle of the puddle.

  “I didn’t,” Caroline gasps, hauling herself up, clutching the back of the couch. “I didn’t want to – FUDGE FUDDRUCKER SUGAR – I had to, I had to, he attacked me, he tried to kill you, he was robbing us – FUDGE! SICLE! – He hurt my leg. How’s my – I can’t look at it.” Her face crumbles into agonised tears. “How bad is it? SUGAR! I really, really hurt my leg. I don’t know what to do!”

  Bill stares at his wife’s right leg, already swollen tight beneath her yoga pants, straining the fabric, and David bowed to her, not moving, and what the fuck? Bill needs a minute to think, to reshuffle the fucking pieces.

  “Bill, I can’t walk,” Caroline sobs. “You have to call someone. David needs help. SHIP SHIP SHIP FUDDDGE!”

  This can still work. David tried to rob them and Caroline fought back, and no one will know what he almost did, and Jesus fucking Christ she shot him in the dick, where the fuck did Miss Peace, Love and Understanding learn to shoot a gun? “I’ll call 911,” he says, because okay this isn’t plan A but plan B’s not so bad, and once this blows over he can focus on Murder Ballads. No one knows he had anything to do with this mess, it’s a terrible accident but he’s still clean.

  “Don’t move, I’ll get you some ice,” and even as he says it he knows that’s pretty underwhelming. “And Vicodin, and Percocet, I promise. Hang on.”

  She digs her fingers into the back of the couch, swaying on one leg, staring directly up at the high ceiling, uttering a string of fake profanity.

  He shoves his walker into the kitchen, fast, and stops, staring at the ouija board on the counter. I will kill u.

  You were right, he thinks, only you got the wrong person.

  But is David dead? As cold as it sounds, he has to make sure, because if David wakes up in the ambulance then this is for nothing. He needs to be sure.

  “Caroline?” he says, taking a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer as an excuse to go back and check on David. “Caroline, put this on your knee.” He rolls his walker into the living room and Caroline isn’t holding onto the back of the sofa, she’s not lying on the floor, she’s not hopping around in pain, there’s only David, slumped over like a ballerina, thoughtfully bleeding on the slate. Caroline is gone.

  * * *

  The minute Bill went into the kitchen the things he said cut through the screaming red fog of pain inside Caroline’s head.

  I changed my mind.

  She has to get to the garage. Her leg hurts so much. It weighs five hundred thousand pounds. It is full of broken glass. Her knee is mush.

  Keep it all.

  The money. He meant the money. Every light in the hall goes on, screaming bright, turning everything flat and shadowless. Bill. That’s what happens when he tries to use the lighting system, he can only turn them all on full.

  I changed my mind.

  She drags herself along the wall, leaning a shoulder against it, one hand has her purse in it, her purse has her keys in it, and everything is spilling all down the hall behind her, and she’s hunched over, hop-stepping on her left leg, trying
to protect her right, hearing things fall out of her purse behind her, but she has the gun. She’s safe if she has the gun.

  I will kill u.

  Bill is sick. She’s known it for a long time but denied it and tried to fix him with love, but ever since he got the walker he’s gotten sicker and sicker and now she’s killed David. She’s killed a man. Bill made her do it. Bill’s sickness forced her to kill David.

  He paid poor David to kill her and she had to protect herself and she feels very very very very sorry for what happened but it’s not her fault.

  Her muscles stop working from the waist down. The garage door is too far. She sinks to the carpet, numb, but she will not let him get her. David’s sacrifice will not be for nothing. She rolls herself onto her back. She won’t make this easy for Bill.

  * * *

  Bill stands in the garage, water running down his legs, listening to make sure no one heard him come in the garage door. He took his walker all the way around the house and he can’t feel his skin anymore. It is cold, tight, and hard as marble. He feels fucking dead.

  But he has to finish this now. Caroline killed David, now he must kill Caroline. Then he can focus on his album. He never should have started this, but now it’s happening so he has to see it all the way through. He’ll close his eyes and get it over with and then he can go back to what’s important: his album. The only people who win are the people who finish.

  Quietly he pushes his walker across the concrete floor. He stops at the door and grips the knob with both hands and uses all his strength to open it slow as shit. Through the crack, he peers down the hall.

  Halfway down, Caroline lies on her back, head propped on her purse, arms outstretched, holding the ugly, chunky little gun over her crotch with both hands, pointing it back down the hall. If he had any fucking doubts before, they’re gone with the wind: she’s pointing it right where he’d be coming if he hadn’t gone all the way around the house.

  Eight years of trusting her and taking care of her, but the ouija knows the truth.