by A J Grayson
It’s pineapple, David, I’d answered. I can smell it from here. Smells revolting.
I remember he smiled at me – that devious, tender smile of a newly-wed on a honeymoon, still sorting through learning his lover’s tastes.
You just think you don’t like pineapple, he answered, teeth gleaming in the seaside sun. There was moisture on his shoulders. But you haven’t tried it like this. It’s all in the mixture.
I must have smiled back, because I remember him laughing. And I remember lifting the drink to my lips, driving the umbrella out of the way with my nose, pretending with every ounce of my own newly-wed’s passionate intensity that I didn’t want to vomit all over my shiny new husband.
And now … the counter, the smoothie of the day. And a little note. Remember the beach? Maybe this is the combination I’ve been looking for all these years. –D.
I’m smiling again. Damn it, he does it to me every time. Makes something he knows I’ll hate and still he has me grinning like a schoolgirl.
I lift the glass to my mouth, sure I’m going to hate it but still willing to give it a try – but I’m right. It’s putrid. All the gelatine-esque revulsion of a pureed banana, accentuated with that fermented fizz that makes pineapple so loathsome. I can barely swallow.
I manage to get the mouthful down with two gulps of trying, but I’m already overturning the rest of the glass into the sink as I sidestep towards the coffee pot. Thank God, David is at least that aware of reality. This morning, the coffee is a necessary mouthwash, if nothing else. At this stage I’d take rubbing alcohol.
I down half a cup in three quick swallows.
And then the pictures start.
I don’t know what triggers them. I have the carafe in my hand, refilling my cup. There is nothing to spark memory, nothing unusual, but I suddenly have images in my mind.
Though they’re not images. That’s not the right word. Images are vague, amorphous things, while these are crisp. Vivid. Like photographs. Physical things that I see, perfectly clearly, in my head.
The jolt of their appearance is so forceful that I slam the carafe down on the counter. I want to examine the scene, see if I’ve broken the glass; but the images are still there, shining out of a radiant, white light. No more coffee pot, no more kitchen. Just – vision.
There’s a woman, waterlogged and still.
My stomach becomes a knot.
The woman. Emma Fairfax. The river. I can see the texture of her skin.
And I remember David’s briefcase – the sight pours out of somewhere within me. The briefcase concealing Sadie’s wet leash, and despair, and …
… a box. Oh God, a box, with cloth and blood, and—
It hits me, all at once, that these are memories from last night, and they explain the odd feelings that have been pulsing within me. Something happened last night. I saw something. I saw these things.
Before I know why or how, my feet are once again in motion. My hands have let go of my coffee and my legs are steering me towards the stairs, up to the heights of our rented home.
Like they’ve lives of their own. Like they’ve lives. Like they’ve lives …
32
Amber
I’m at the door of David’s home office in fewer strides than the trip normally takes. I’m in a state, the memories gradually emerging, each hazy and inarticulate. My chest is fluttering, my breathing is short and rapid. I’m utterly confused, yet simultaneously, inexplicably horrified of what I’m going to find.
I push open the door, and in a reality that shouldn’t surprise me, I see absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Everything looks just like it always does – at least, the few times I’ve ever been in here.
There is no briefcase. Of course there isn’t. David’s already gone to work.
I step over to the desk, though, and my belly trembles. The wood grain is the same as in the image bouncing in my memory – the sheen surface that was covered in files I’d sifted through and set aside. A tangible connection to the strange memories that began downstairs. I feel a powerful recognition at the swirl of the lines and the striations of colour in the fake panelling. But there are no files here. No signs of disarray. Everything is in its place, tidy and presentable.
I feel like a madwoman. This has got to be the greatest damned overreaction to a bad pineapple smoothie in the history of—
But then the memories ambush me again, this time with almost physical force. The briefcase is back, and the leash, and I’m consumed by the absolute conviction that there is something else terribly, horribly out of place. Right here, right now.
The box.
The sudden image of it almost blinds me. I don’t believe in divine revelations, but it’s almost like that: a flash of light, a vivid image. Solid knowledge.
A small shoebox, under the desk, filled with blood and horror and guilt and, oh God …
I dive under the desk. It’s really a dive, almost perfectly head-first, catching myself on the balls of my palms. I feel a sharp pain in my wrists as they meet the dense carpeting, but then—
Shit.
There really is a box.
Even though I’m now on all fours, I feel myself go off balance as I see it. I wasn’t expecting it actually to be there, I realize that now. Despite everything. My avalanche of memories and visions over the past minutes have each taunted me, but then they’ve each been proven wrong. There is no case. No leash. Just anxiety and suspicion.
But the box is really here. The reality of it is like an assault. The harsh fact that it actually exists means this isn’t all just emotional confusion or leftover drink. There’s a box, right where memory said it would be. Small. Cardboard. The right shape.
And it’s going to be filled with impossibility and horror …
I feel as if my insides are dissolving, but I pull myself closer and force myself to drag the box towards me. I’ve never been composed of so much dread. I know what’s inside. I know. It’s horrible and indefensible, and I realize my world is going to fall apart the second I open it.
But I have to open it, and I do.
The churning emotion stops. I’ve reached that point of emotional overload where it simply doesn’t register any more at all. I tear the lid off the box and am an indistinct, undefinable mass of nothing.
The lid hits the floor. I blink, and then I don’t know whether to scream or to laugh.
My expectation is fulfilled. I see what I knew I would see; but at the same time, I realize that I don’t. Not at all.
There’s white cloth inside the box, just like I remember it in my head. And it’s spotted with red. Red in the very folds of its fabric, glaring and crimson. But the red isn’t blood. Of course it isn’t blood! You paranoid wreck! Instead, the bold UCLA lettering of David’s alma mater twists in rusty crimson across the folds.
I am so relieved I can barely breathe, and yet I’m furious with myself. Damn it, Amber, stop with this bullshit! I simply don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. What sort of dream or drink possesses a woman this way? Is the quiet monotony of normal life really getting to me this badly?
I put the cover back on the box, ashamed of myself, forcing resolve to take shape within me. I will get over this – this spectacular nothing that bears testimony only to my fragility and stupidity. I’m a grown woman, not some child afraid of monsters and visions.
Then, as I start to slide the box back into its former position at the back of the footspace beneath the desk, my sides quiver. A goose somewhere loses its skin as its bumps rise all at once across my back.
There’s something else there, beneath where the box had been.
A streak of red stains the beige carpeting. It’s rusty, and I reach out my nail-nibbled fingertips to run them across it.
Something has dried into the fibres. Something that crumbles at my touch.
Everything in me wants to cry out blood! It’s blood. You knew it was blood from the very beginning! But I simply can’t keep wandering down the path
of mindless dreams and hungover visions. I won’t allow it. This could just as easily be mud. It’s beneath a desk, after all. It’s where feet go.
I slide the box back into its position, directly over the stain. It’s nothing. This is all nothing. I will not make it into anything more.
There’s a beeping at my wrist. My watch scolds me. You have to be at the bookshop in thirty minutes … What the hell are you doing under your husband’s desk?
I right myself, readjusting my hair and blouse after my little adventure.
Ridiculous creature.
And my feet are pulling me back down the stairs, towards the kitchen, the door and the car beyond.
With just enough time for another cup of coffee to go.
33
The act of dealing with murder is not as difficult as society makes it out to be. Physically, it takes a bit of effort, of course, depending on the means one chooses to employ. But of the great moral crises that plague human consciousness with guilty soul-wrangling and despair, of these I have experienced absolutely none.
Sometimes, things just need to be done.
Yes, a life may be taken. Something that cannot be given back. But the idea that this is a bad thing is only the romanticism of a too-compassionate generation. Calling life an inalienable right and all the rest – surely, that’s just emotionalism at its most absurdly poetic. Life is a gift, and if you make yourself unworthy of it, you deserve to have it taken away. Simple. If you go further, and make it into something sinister, then relieving you of what you’ve perverted is no evil at all.
I look down at this one’s mouth, his final breaths already departed, and I can all but hear those last wheezing moans, seeking compassion and forgiveness. But no guilt wracks me. There is no wobbly uncertainty of virtue or righteousness.
Only memories. Memories of how this life was used. How it’s brought me here. What it’s given and imposed.
What it’s taken away, and what it, now, will never take away again.
34
Amber
It’s 8.15 a.m. when I arrive at the shop, and I’m into my sheltered corner amidst stacks of newspapers, magazines and shipping invoices without much fluster. The morning has convinced me that something is off balance inside me. I can’t think of another explanation for my extremes of tense suspicion and overactive imagination. Or hell, of what’s amounted more or less into a descent into fantasyland. It’s not stress at home, of which I’ve never felt any at all, and Lord knows a bookshop is the antithesis of a fierce work environment. And I don’t think I tend to have strong emotional tendencies in general. Maybe my hormones are off balance. Maybe I’m pregnant.
Oh shit, maybe I’m pregnant.
The thought brings tingles to my spine, customers mingling in the spaces nearby with coffees in hand and passing glances at the papers I’ve laid out. David and I haven’t exactly been aggressively trying for children – no timing of cycles and fertilization-promoting postures or the like – but we haven’t been doing anything to upset the possibility, either. We’d both like kids, and we’ve talked about it often before. David will be a great father. As for me, my comic side generally teases that I’m mostly interested in children for the opportunity to fuss over and embarrass them as they grow. Terrible pity I’m not Jewish. Being a stereotypically overbearing Jewish mother has always sounded a real treat.
I can feel my lips arc into a smile. It’s probably nothing, but I make a mental note to pick up a pregnancy test at lunch all the same. It would be a surprise if it were true, but a brilliant one. Both David and I are quietly growing tired of people expressing muted surprise that we’re rounding forty with no children to our name.
Then the smile sags. Half an hour ago I was on the floor beneath my husband’s desk, wondering if he was concealing blood-stained clothes – this man who’s never been anything other than charming and open and honest. This man who in the present moment I’m thinking of as a father.
Shame on you, Amber.
‘Got you your tea, as usual, neighbour.’ Mitch’s voice once again arrives in the bubble of my personal space before his body catches up. ‘But, Amber … well, I don’t know how to say this. You were late, and …’
He’s tapping his fingers together in mock worry, hands empty, but there’s the edge of a grin at his teeth.
‘What happened to my drink, Mr Tuttle?’ I’m ashamed of my inner emotions, so I force frivolity into my voice to compensate. The question comes out in the mustered tone of a displeased schoolteacher, catching a student without his homework.
‘Well, it’s kind of got all,’ Mitch feigns a struggle for the right word, ‘drunk.’ He reaches to the side and a Peet’s paper cup appears in his right hand, which he promptly overturns. Not a drop spills through the lid.
‘Mitch, you bought me tea, and then you … drank it?’ I’m trying hard not to smile. An actual smile, not a forced one. The exchange is comforting, and the normalcy of Mitch’s humour soothing.
‘Didn’t seem right to let it go to waste. Wasn’t sure if you’d make it in before the tea went iced.’ Another toothy grin, and Mitch walks away.
His voice is almost immediately replaced by another.
‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ Chloe’s nest of hair becomes visible over a magazine rack where she’d been hiding until our boss was out of sight. ‘Sounds to me like, oh, I don’t know, a bit of flirting going on over there in the land of Mrs “I never flirt”.’
I face a moment of apprehension as I decide how to respond. I’m not trying to dodge her, as I was yesterday. There are times when everyone needs a little dose of crazy to make the madness around them feel sane, and Chloe is good for that if she’s good for anything.
I’m apprehensive, instead, because the memory of my last conversation with her fills me with a vague shame. I think I half accused her of lying, and I remember I was abrupt. I don’t know what to blame that on. Maybe the hormones. Hell, if it turns out I’m pregnant, she’ll forgive all. And I don’t want to sit in my corner today in silence, feigning solitary confinement.
‘How’s life on the other side of the Great Wall?’ I ask, ignoring her comment to me but sugaring my words, nodding at the magazine rack still between us.
‘Oh, so I exist, too, do I?’ Her head rises more fully over the shelving. ‘Even if I don’t bring you tea and sweets?’ Sarcasm like butter spread thickly on toast.
‘Mitch never brings me sweets,’ I push back. ‘At least, not yet.’
That’s it – just the right touch of provocation. ‘Yet.’ It opens a world of possibilities that I know Chloe will be all too anxious to anticipate.
‘So you do flirt with him, you ditsy little liar!’ She’s wholly upright now, breasts pressed against a shelf, leaning on it with a devious look. The eyeshadow of the day is tangerine orange and her lashes are mascaraed into spikes that ought to have a safety warning attached.
‘You know we’re both happily married,’ I say back, though I’m smiling broadly. ‘He’s just a genuinely good guy.’
‘Not saying you’re not happy at home, love. Just good to know you’re not dead to the rest of the world.’ She at last steps around the magazine rack and pats me on the head like a pleasingly attentive puppy. ‘It’s an important part of true awareness and the embrace of your illumined self.’
I can’t hold back a sigh, bemused as it may be. Chloe was a ‘deeply committed’ Hindu a few months ago, then for a few weeks profoundly Buddhist. Yoga and self-enlightenment are the current focus of her spiritual energies, which seems only appropriate to the Californian stereotype, and when she isn’t talking sex or gossip she’s taken to ruminating on the power of the inner heart to expand into eternal oneness.
‘My inner self thanks you for your concern,’ I answer. The words are tongue-in-cheek, but Chloe appears gratified at the recognition of her current spiritual prowess. Thank God, we have such an extensive spirituality section in the shop; there’s a nearly endless supply of enlightenment resources to hand.
I am calmed further by the fact that this singularly odd exchange is so very normal for her, and for us. The world has not, in fact, flipped entirely upside down.
I break with the theme as I look up at her. ‘Chloe, thanks again for your help yesterday. I know I was a little off form, but I’m really grateful for your interest. And for your email.’
Another contented nod. It’s not a difficult chore to gratify someone whose main interests in life are to be noticed and appreciated.
‘Hells, hon,’ she says, gushing, and I don’t even mind the nonsensical accent, ‘I ain’t one to hold a grudge.’
Chloe, the most well well-practised grudge-holder I’ve ever known, means this in all seriousness, and it looks like she’s contemplating reaching out and wrapping me in a hug. Wishing to prevent this, I rise up and peck a friendly kiss at her cheek, hoping that none of the glitter sparkling there will rub off on my lips.
‘I may have something to stir up the thank yous again,’ she adds as I sit back down, ‘that is, if you haven’t seen it already. Or maybe heard it on the drive in?’
Today my mind was full, and the radio in my car had stayed silent.
‘Heard what?’
‘Your body along the river. Not the only murder of the week, any more.’
My ears tingle.
‘Pardon me?’
‘Get yourself online and you’ll know the same details I do. But as of this morning, northern California’s scored another dead body.’
So the riverside killing is now a duo. Chloe, as usual, was melodramatic but not wrong, and within a few minutes of powering up my laptop I have access to morning headlines and reports that recount the discovery of the second body. Too fresh to have made it into any of the papers around me; but a suspicious death makes the online newsfeeds more or less instantaneously.
This one wasn’t by the river, but in a residential neighbourhood in a town south of the Bay. It was found in the early hours of the morning by a cleaner with a key to the house, who’d discovered something more than the usual layer of dust that needed tending to.
