by Peter Ferry
"May I ask you a few questions?"
"Course."
"Are you bonded and licensed?"
"I am not," she said without explanation or apology.
"K. How many employees do you have?"
"You talking to her. I be the CEO, CFO, and the entire rank and file, honey." She laughed easily.
"K. Please don't take this personally, but do you have a criminal record?"
"Nope. I ain't never got nothing but traffic tickets."
"No DUIs?"
"Nope."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Positive."
"Alice, do you have a car?"
"Such as it is."
"Okay, Alice." I paused for a minute, looked at my checklist, and made a decision. I told her I would like to hire her to do something other than housework. The job would take about one hour and pay three hundred dollars in cash. It would be clean, 100 percent legal, and absolutely safe. I told her I wouldn't ask her to do anything she didn't want to do, and that she could say no at any point, no questions asked, but she would have to do it right now.
"This very minute?" she asked.
"Within the next few minutes. Would you like to hear more?"
She didn't answer and I thought I'd lost her; then she said, "Keep going."
"Okay." I asked her if she knew where the church was.
"Yes, I know it." It was ten minutes from where she lived.
"Okay. If you want to take this job, go get in your car and drive to the church as soon as we hang up the phone. Go into the church—it's open—and sit in the next to the last pew on the left side. I'll come and sit in the last pew right behind you. Do not turn around. I do not want you to see me, and if you do, our deal is off. Understand?"
"What you want me to do?"
"I'll tell you when you get here. You still interested?" Again she hesitated. "Alice, if you have any qualms—"
"Honey," she said, "I can't afford me no qualms. Give me fifteen minutes." She was there in twelve. From the laundromat I watched her park her car half a block away and hurry toward the church. She was a big woman of maybe thirty-five who had bad knees and hair, but who wanted my business. Inside she was right where she was supposed to be, and I sat down behind her.
"Alice, I'm Tom. Please don't turn around."
"Uh-huh. What you want me to do?"
"Across the street there's a pawnshop called Quality Loan."
"I know it."
"If you are willing, I'll give you a money order, and you'll go to Quality Loan and purchase this item for me." I slid an index card across her shoulder and she took it.
"Item #1058. What is it?"
"It's a pistol. You ask the man for item #1058, and he'll have you fill out two forms, one state and one federal. Fill them out truthfully. As long as you're truthful, everything is perfectly legal. Then he'll make a phone call to get approval. The answer may take fifteen minutes, it may take a half hour. You either get approved, delayed, or denied. If you have no criminal record and no DUIs, you'll get approved. Then you give the man the check, and he'll give you the gun. There's an outside chance that you'll get delayed; then they have three days to approve or deny."
"Then what?"
"Then nothing. The deal's off. You come back here, sit down, I sit down behind you and give you a hundred dollars in cash for your trouble, and we say good-bye."
"That's all?"
"That's all if you can't make the purchase, but you can; you will be able to as long as you don't have a criminal record or a DUI, and it's all perfectly legal."
"Not the next part," she said.
"Hold on. You buy the gun, then come back here and sit where you are sitting. I'll sit down behind you again. You show me the item, then put it down on the pew beside you. I hand you three hundred-dollar bills." I leaned forward and fanned the bills in front of her for a moment. "You leave the item under your coat on the pew and go up to the chancel to pray . . . you Catholic?"
"For three hundred dollars I am."
"You go up to the front to pray. When you come back, the item will be gone and so will I. Then, at your convenience but within the next week—the next seven days—you go to the police and tell them exactly what happened. You bought a gun for self-protection, went to church, left it on the pew in a bundle with your coat, went to pray, and someone stole it from you. What's the world coming to. That's it. You're clear and free, and I'm long gone."
I waited.
"You sure it's legal?"
"As long as you report it."
She waited. "Listen, could I sleep on this, do it tomorrow—"
"Tomorrow's Sunday."
"Monday, then?"
"Sorry. It's a one-shot deal. It's now or never."
We both waited. She looked at the index card and read the number: "One-oh-five-eight. You got the check?" she asked me.
"I do."
She put her hand back for it. "Let's go then."
I bought a soft drink and a Sun-Times to occupy myself while I waited in the laundromat, but I was too nervous to even look at the paper long enough to read the headlines. I just looked out the window and at my watch. It was taking forever. Maybe she had to wait for service. Maybe she called the police. No. Maybe she went out the back door with the gun. No. What was taking so long? It had been forty-two minutes. Then I turned away for a moment because a man had brought his dog into the laundromat and the Hispanic attendant was trying to get him to take it out; the man was raising his voice. I thought he might have been drinking. I was concerned that the attendant might call the police. When I turned back, Alice was hurrying up the steps of the church; another couple of seconds, and I would have missed her. I crossed the street and stopped in the vestibule, calmed myself before stepping through the padded doors into the cool stillness of the sanctuary. I sat down and touched Alice's shoulder. She put a heavy box in a bag on her shoulder so I could see it, see the brand name and illustration, but she did not let go of it; she held it tightly. I handed her the bills, and she looked at them, rubbed them between her fingers as if they were made of fabric. Then she pulled herself heavily to her feet, saying, "Go say a prayer." She stopped, her back still to me, in the aisle. "So who am I suppose to pray for?" she asked, without expecting a reply. "I'm hoping it ain't your wife."
"Wait a minute," I said. "Don't turn around, but listen for a minute. I'm not going to shoot anyone. I'm a writer. I'm doing this for a story just to see if it can really be done. That's all."
"Uh-huh," she said. I watched her plod heavily down the aisle.
I went out the front door, down the steps, around the corner and across the one-way street, put the gun under my seat, got a single "ruff" out of Art, who was asleep, nothing out of Cooper, and drove away without passing the church again. I was on the highway in six minutes. Adrenaline made me keen. I let out a howl and a laugh that surprised myself and startled the dogs. God, I hadn't had so much fun in I didn't know how long, perhaps ever, and I told myself, "It's only a game. It's still a game." But, of course, I now owned an illegal firearm. If a cop stopped me, I would tell him just what I'd told Alice—"I'm a writer"—and driving back into the city, I thought about the story I'd already started to write.
Now I want to tell you about the day Lydia broke up with me. I've already written three versions of the story, searching, I suppose, for one in which I don't look so bad, but I can't find it. Sometimes you just look bad and there's no way around it.
It happened the next Saturday morning; it was almost as if I were the first item on her list of Saturday chores, but that's probably unfair. She did it in typical Lydia fashion: quickly, cleanly, efficiently, effectively. I would have made a mess of it, but then I didn't do it at all, did I? I guess I knew all along that if I just did nothing, Lydia would eventually do something. After all, I'd already put a deposit down on an apartment for October first and arranged to stay with John Thompson until then.
She was the first person all summer to ring my doorbell,
and I had to search for the buzzer to let her in. She took one look around the apartment, at the big cluttered table, the lists on the walls, my bike, the furniture pushed back, and said, "Jesus Christ, does Carolyn know about this?"
"Don't worry; it'll all be shipshape when she gets back."
"I need to tell you something," she said still standing in the middle of the room. "I've taken a job in Milwaukee." That's how she told me that she was breaking up with me. "And I've rented a place that doesn't take pets. You're going to have to keep Art."
"Milwaukee? Is that what you were doing up there that day all dressed up?"
"Not really. It was a headhunter deal that just came out of the blue, and I did it just to see what my options were, but they ended up offering me the creative director's position, and I've taken it. So if you want, you can have the apartment. My movers are coming on Monday."
I waited. We just stood there looking at each other. "Is that it?" I said.
"Look, Pete, all summer I've been thinking about how much I love you, and I do. I know it took me a long time to admit it, and maybe that's the problem, but I do. Anyway, all summer I've been thinking about the wrong thing. I should have been thinking about how much you love me, and the answer is 'not enough.'"
"Lydia—"
She raised her hand. "Stop. It doesn't matter. All that matters now is what I think, and I don't think you love me. Not in the way I love you. Not in the way I need to be loved. Pete, I've lost my belief in you. You know me. I'm an extremist; I can't live on maybe and sometimes. I do not want to be lying in bed alone late at night when I'm fifty-five wondering what your latest doubt is. I can't live like that."
"Lydia—"
"No," she said. "The thing is broken irreparably. It can't be fixed; it won't heal. I know that I can never trust you again, not with my heart. I tried all summer to get you to love me, and now the summer is over. Now I'm going to leave, and I'm going to ask you to let me. All your attempts to be a nice guy have only made things worse, so please let me go." She stood up and looked at me. She went out the door. I watched her go down the stairs. Then I went to the window and watched her cross the street.
I had no intention of killing the doctor. None at all. It was research or a game or a great indulgence, a return to the summers of my youth. Now I was pretending again, pretending to be a detective or a mystery novelist or the right hand of God. And I was having an enormous amount of fun. Still, I know that the only difference between a passenger and a skydiver is a single step, and the closer I got to the open hatch, the more exciting and pregnant my fantasy became. And I must admit that somewhere in me I knew that the ultimate thrill would be to discover that it wasn't a fantasy at all.
That's why I took the bullet that night. I had never intended to, but at the last minute I knew that it just wouldn't be the same with an empty pistol. I wanted verisimilitude. I wanted to feel that adrenaline rush again. I wanted to have the doctor in my sights and to make the decision not to pull the trigger. And I thought that I had everything planned right down to the last second and the final detail, but as it turned out, I was in no way prepared for what happened.
I practically idled up Sheridan Road refusing to even think about my destination, a man in search of a lake breeze on a warm autumn evening listening to a ball game on the radio. The Cubs were playing out the string and the announcers were working very hard—too hard—to not sound bored silly, distracted, and tired of it all.
I parked at the far end of the lot with a clear view of the doctor's black BMW. I opened the Trib over the steering wheel, section by section, and slowly the lot began to empty. When the spot to the left of the doctor's car became available, I looked at it a long time and then idled forward into it. This upped the stakes. Now I not only had means and motive, I had opportunity. I had proximity. In a few minutes he would be practically close enough to touch, certainly close enough to kill. My heart beat in my ears.
But it wasn't a few minutes. It was forty-five minutes after his last appointment had ended. It was getting dark and there were just three cars parked in the lot now, all side by side, with the doctor's in the middle. As each faded ray of light made my enterprise more conceivable, more possible, I imagined the scene. I envisioned it. I picked the heavy, cool gun up, held it, raised it to the open passenger window of my car. Too close, I thought. He would be right there. How could I shoot something—someone—so close? Blood would splatter. It might splatter on me. He might fall against my car and smear blood on it. I saw myself driving back down the lakeshore with a big smear of human blood on my passenger door, specks of blood on my glasses. What if he fell under my car, fell and rolled under my wheels? Drive over him? Get out and pull him away by the feet? I had almost come to the conclusion that I couldn't shoot him, that I couldn't shoot anything at such horrifyingly, intimately close range. But of course that would be the exact time to do it; when you thought you couldn't possibly, when you were absolutely sure you wouldn't. Then blam! And "intimate" was the word. It would be a very intimate act; I had not realized that. It would be as intimate as kissing him, as intimate—more intimate— than sex. . . .
I heard voices. He wasn't alone. "Shit," I said, relieved. I saw two figures cross my rearview mirror: a man and a woman. Quickly the doctor was at the door of his car and across my car I could see his torso. I held my breath. I had never been this close to him. Then the woman was there, too. She touched his elbow and pressed against him.
"Don't" he said. "We can't." Then she disappeared, and just as quickly, he had closed his door and started his engine and backed away like a drawn curtain, and there was the woman unlocking her car door and getting in.
"Oh fuck," I said. It was Tanya Kim. She heard me. She looked toward me. She backed out and was gone into the night.
Lydia left me a rug, a dresser, a coatrack, a boom box, a coffee table, an easy chair, most of the dishes, flatware, pots and pans, and an old-but-good maple dining-room set with ladder-back chairs that had once belonged to my parents. I instantly transferred my operation to this table and taped my lists around it, although by the middle of October, the lists were mostly new. I bought a bed, borrowed a couple of lamps, and brought home one of the couches students had donated to my classroom. For the time being, I didn't buy a television. I like TV, but I didn't have any time for it that fall; I was too busy. Unfortunately, what I was busy with was very seldom schoolwork, so in early November, I went to see John Thompson and told him that I needed some time off. I told him I wanted to take a leave of absence. He listened to my plans.
"How much time do you want?" he asked.
"One year, two semesters."
"If you do this, will you come all the way back and be the teacher you used to be?"
"Yes. I will or I'll resign."
He looked at me, thinking. "Tell you what I want you to do," he said. "Go home and write a letter of application to the sabbatical committee. Tell them you want to do some writing; you've got the credentials for that. You're way past the deadline, but who knows. Can't hurt to try, and you might get half your salary."
I invited Tanya Kim to dinner at my apartment three weeks before Christmas. I was straight with her on the phone; I told her I had things to tell her about Lisa and Decarre. I did not tell her that I had also invited Decarre's other two victims, Dorothy Murrell and Jeanette Landrow, nor at the last minute, Carolyn O'Connor, thinking that the others might feel more comfortable with another woman there. Carolyn could put anyone at her ease.
I decided to make a casserole, a favorite of mine with hot Italian sausage, artichoke hearts, rice, green peas, and Parmesan cheese. More of a man's dish, I suppose, but mighty good on a chilly, winter evening, and I'd serve it with a big mesclun salad full of nuts, berries and cherry tomatoes and good, crusty bread. I had tiny lemon tarts as a sweet, and three cheeses with fruit for afterwards.
About mid-afternoon it began to snow, and I thought for sure someone would use that as an excuse, someone wouldn't show, but they all di
d. Carolyn was the first to arrive. She brought some red-pepper hummus and her pictures of Europe, but I was too busy and nervous to look at them. "Hey," she said when she saw my Trek. "That's a serious bike."
"Pretty, isn't it?"
"I thought you were the guy who said you could find everything you needed in life at a garage sale. I don't think you got that at a garage sale."
"No, I sold out. I even got a helmet and a spandex outfit."
Jeanette came next. She carried with her a file that she held against her chest even after she was also holding a glass of red wine. She leaned against the kitchen counter, and we spoke of Christmas plans as I prepared dinner. Then came Dorothy. She was nervous and laughed a lot. Jeanette and Dorothy shyly, curiously, looked at each other when they had a chance, when the other was saying something. When the chatter died for a moment, Jeanette said, "I guess it's kind of an intervention, isn't it?"
Tanya came last. I poured her a glass of wine and carried a plate of crackers and hummus out to the living room, then went back to the kitchen and turned up the music. I realized then that I could feel my heart beating, and I raised my eyebrows at Carolyn and said, "We'll see." I half-expected Tanya to be gone when we went into the living room, or maybe all of them to be gone, but they weren't. Instead they were all sitting on the couch with Tanya in the middle. The two other women were doing the talking and mostly to each other, but Tanya was listening. She was listening and watching. The talk went on at dinner, and at times it gushed out, as if in relief. Everyone relaxed. Carolyn and I just listened, but we were not excluded. It was as if all of us were a part of a secret club, and I guess we were.
Tanya didn't say much, and she didn't show much, but she did drink a lot of wine and in the end both Carolyn and Dorothy offered to drop her off, but she said no, she wasn't driving; she wanted to walk.
At the door I said to Carolyn, "I never looked at the pictures."
"We could now quickly."
"I don't want to do it quickly, and I'm too pooped anyway. Let's have dinner next week, and I'll see them then."
"Okay, sure," she said. "Call me."
