He and Ali worked on the smallest bedroom first.
“Like a cage in here,” said Ali.
Steve spun the rolled weathersheeting so an end flopped down.
Ali lifted a utility knife from the tool belt she’d strapped onto this muscled man who seemed less boring than her husband. She cut a translucent sheet, held it over the only window. Cold air blowing in from outside flapped the plastic and goose-bumped her flesh. She heard Steve ripping free strips of duct tape from where he loomed behind her hips.
Why did I think of it like that? she wondered.
Felt him brush against her as he bent to tape and seal all the edges.
“We’re done here.” Steve stared at her. “This is a kid’s room.”
She felt her goose bumps receding as the now-sealed room warmed, wondered if he noticed her nipples had yet to go down under her sweatshirt. Then she heard herself share a secret out loud: “Kids cut into your chances.”
“And all you can do is screw them up.” Never even told Louise that, thought her husband, Steve, as he led Ali to the second bedroom.
Where, in the dust and cobwebs stirring with the drafts from two windows, the bed was big enough for a surging teenage boy.
Ali said, “Feel the furnace? Like it started blasting more heat.”
Steve swallowed as she slid the zipper on her hooded sweatshirt down, down, spread her arms wide as she took it off.
For no reason she knew, Ali shook her blond hair free from a ponytail so it fell across her blue denim shirt with its pearl-white cowboy snaps.
Steve shook his head. I want “driving down the highway, white hash lines coming at the windshield,” and it’s the going, not the getting anywhere.
White pearl snaps.
They plastic-sealed the two windows against the howling wind.
Work together, Ali thought. It’s harder for the world to win if it’s more than just you. She felt like she was back in the trailer park, a girl hearing Gramma turn up the radio for some “Sealed with a Kiss” song. Ali knew how to do that, had done it and it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t that kiss.
Ali said, “We should . . . keep going.”
“Yes,” answered Steve. Yes. White hash lines. White pearl snaps.
They walked the corridor along the third-floor railing. Rising from the living room came the whump-ruh sounds of Parker ripping out molding.
As Ali led Steve into the third, the last, the master bedroom.
Whump-ruh. Whump-ruh.
That bedroom door slammed. Closed. With them inside.
“Old houses—always settling,” repeated Steve.
“Sure,” said Ali. “Sure.”
Covering the first window, Steve held the plastic in place while Ali taped it to the wall.
The heat swelled in that closed room. Steve shed his outer shirt. Its flannel smell sweetened the air for Ali as Steve savored the whiff of coconut shampoo from that morning at the motel when she’d showered naked.
Ali went between Steve and smudged glass to seal the last window.
Feels like I’m stoned, she thought as she finished. Her hips brushed Steve’s loins. She turned. Her breasts brushed his arm. Don’t think yes.
Like a tear, a bead of sweat trickled down from her temple.
Steve saw his fingertips catch that drop on her cheek.
She sucked in his finger.
Then he was kissing her, she was kissing him. White pearl snaps popped like machine-gun fire as he ripped open her shirt No! she said pressed his hands to her swollen breasts. Oh she pulled open his jeans Don’t want he whispered as she leaped onto his neck like a vampire while he pulled off her jeans and panties, her legs thrashing them down to her still-on boots. They crashed onto the bed. Dust billowed. His mouth devoured her she knew she’d never come like this over and over again Stop she pulled him deep into her and it was like he’d never been this good, had this so good Want Highways and Not Him and they cried out came collapsed on the bed.
Knew that in this house, they’d do that again and again and again, like running their hands along the bars of a cage until their fingers bled.
Whump-ruh. Whump-ruh.
“Listen,” Bob in the basement told Louise. “Guess Parker can work.”
“He’ll do what it takes to get out of here.” She positioned a sheet of drywall against the wooden studs of an insulating wall.
“Yeah.” Bob reached for a hammer. “Took fifty years, but his dad ran out of the money he inherited with this place a few weeks before he died.”
“We could fix the house up to live here,” came out of her mouth.
“Who?” Bob drove a nail through the drywall to the stud. “All of us? Forget that. Me and Ali? Sticking us in Nowhereland isn’t our deal. You and Steve? The only thing he’d want about this place is the hundred miles of highway between here and any job he could get, and one day driving that much road, he’d just keep on keeping on.”
“Somebody’s gotta live here!”
“Damn, Louise, what’s your problem?” Bob hammered in a nail.
“I . . . don’t know. I felt like . . . Somebody’s gotta keep this place going.”
“That’s not our flip.” Bob hammered in counterbeat to the noise upstairs in the dining room, the only noise that was close enough to hear.
Louise knew that look on Bob’s face as they positioned new drywall. That was his ain’t-I-cool look that paid off only if he confessed.
“What’s going on, Bob?”
Whump-ruh. Whump-ruh.
Bob worked his hammer, too. “I was going to tell you guys when we got back to Denver. If I’d told you before, you might’ve settled for less than the big payoff.
“Didn’t you wonder,” he said, “who’d want to buy this nowhere place from us for enough cash to make us fixing it up worth our while?”
He hammered Sheetrock into place.
Said, “You know the Nature Preservation League?”
“You’re on its national board of directors.”
“If the economy’s going green, green is how you gotta go.”
“What did you do?”
“Our names aren’t on the deed, just the limited partnership for a place that’s being rehabbed as a ‘luxury getaway home.’ Figure the stats of a mansion, pictures of rehab happening, and the ‘paper worth’ becomes what it could be if this was what it’ll never be, which is paradise.
“In five weeks, NPL will announce they’ve bought the land all around here for a new edge-of-the-mountains preserve. Of course, a house smack in the middle of that fucks up the NPL plan, so the board—”
“Which you’re on.”
“—so the board will offer the owners of this being-fixed-up mansion a buyout of what the place would be worth—”
“If this place were that paradise,” said Louise. “Board member you will make sure it happens. And the rest of them will never know.”
“Everybody gets what they want! We’re doing well by doing good. This house gets rehabbed back to nature for people to love forever.”
“I want something to love forever,” whispered Louise from her bones.
“No forever here,” said Bob. “This house is headed to the bulldozers.”
She said, “Why is it so quiet?”
“That asshole upstairs quit working,” said Bob.
Louise left him in the basement.
Walked upstairs.
Alone.
Bob swung his hammer, Bam!
His plan was beautiful. Bam! Perfect. Bam! Nothing could stop—
Screaming!
Upstairs!
Bob ran from the basement to where Louise stood in the living room.
To where Parker sprawled on his spine in an oozing pool of blood, the back of his head impaled by nails jutting from a chunk of discarded molding.
“Holy shit!” Bob checked: no heartbeat, no breathing. Stared at the chunk of wood jutting from under Parker’s head, knew nails on the other end of the wood stuck deep into th
at skull.
Bob nodded to other chunks of wood scattered around the room.
“If he hadn’t been stoned, if he’d worked neat, not left trip-and-fall-on-me danger lying around . . . Easy explanation.”
Clumping feet ran down two flights of stairs.
Ali charged into the room, stopped.
Louise wondered, Why is she looking at Bob and not the body?
Ali cried, “Tell me what happened!”
Her husband said, “An accident. Must have been.”
In ran Steve, wearing his Bruce Springsteen concert T-shirt that had been under his flannel shirt. Louise thought, Why is Bruce on backward?
Bob pulled his cell phone from its belt pouch. “No signal.”
The blood pool oozed toward them.
Louise suddenly knew Steve would never give her morning sickness.
Ali stared outside at the raging blizzard. “What are we going to do? We can’t get to help and help can’t . . .”
“We figured to be here four days,” said Bob. “Now we got no choice. No phone. Heat, enough food, but . . . We can’t live in here with a corpse.”
Bob and Steve zipped into their ski parkas. Put on gloves.
Dragged the body through the door held open to the storm by Louise.
The chunk of wood stayed nailed to Parker’s skull.
Louise wiped clean the fogged glass of the newly framed window to watch Bob and her just a husband drag the corpse through shin-deep snow to Parker’s pickup.
Steve and Bob plopped the corpse in the pickup’s passenger seat. The wood chunk nailed to a skull bumped the rear window. They slammed the pickup door, then struggled through bitter cold swirling snow to the house.
“It’s over,” Bob told everyone as he and Steve shed their coats in the front hall. “Done. Tragedy, but it ain’t the being dead, it’s the dying, and we’ll get through the storm—Hell, fix the place up. The probate will work as long as we’ve got a straight story.”
Ali whispered, “What do I know?”
“Honey,” said her husband, “we all know . . .” Bob stared at his wife. “Why are your snaps done up crooked?”
Louise heard Steve say, “All this, what’s happening, it’s like . . .”
Steve shook his head. Like he couldn’t free the right words.
Ali reached out her hand to Bob. Whispered, “Please!”
He lurched toward her like a robot.
“Please get me out of here!” she told her husband.
Bob dropped to his knees before his wife. His strong hands cupped her perfect moon hips as he buried his face in the front of her jeans.
A bellow tore from Bob: “That’s not our smell!”
Bob rocketed to his feet, lifted Ali off hers. Threw her away.
Ali flew through the dining room crashed onto the table/bounced off it to the floor. Bob charged Steve, yelling, “That’s not the deal!”
Steve backpedaled as dizziness swirled Louise. She saw Bob slam into her husband, knock Steve onto the table, choke him.
Louise leaped onto Bob. He reared away from Steve to shake the wildcat off his back. Louise felt herself flung from him, flying—
Slamming into the dining room wall.
That absorbed her collision softer than wood should: Why—
Bob’s fist hooked toward her face.
As Steve swung the hammer and cracked Bob’s skull.
Bob crumpled to the floor.
Steve swung the hammer down on him again. Again. Again.
Stopped. Turned to look at his wife.
Louise saw her legal mate splattered with blood and bits of brain.
He dropped the hammer beside dead Bob, said, “You okay?”
“What’s happening?” she whispered.
“We had to do it!” yelled her husband. “Bob, he . . . he went crazy!”
Ali moaned on the floor across the room.
Louise helped her sit up and lean against the wall. Saw the bend in Ali’s arm that meant broken.
Steve loomed beside them. Said, “Is she . . . What happened upstairs . . . We . . . It’s like it’s all gone crazy in here! If you think about it—”
Louise whispered, “Parker said not thinking was the way to be here.”
“Parker’s dead,” said Steve.
“So is Bob.” She looked at her husband.
Steve pressed both hands to his temples.
“Story,” muttered Steve. “We just need . . . a story. Bob went crazy, killed . . . killed them, and we, we’re okay, we—Don’t want hate this place!”
Louise grabbed her husband’s blood-flecked arms. “If we know it’s here, we can hear what it knows.”
“What are you talking about? Ghosts? No such thing as ghosts. When you’re dead you’re dead, don’t want to die don’t . . . Wait.”
“Yes, wait: not ghosts. Not . . . people. The house! The house itself!”
Ali moaned.
The wind howled.
Steve staggered from the dining room where he’d killed a man to the living room where another man had been killed.
Louise ran after him.
Found him standing staring down at the floor.
“Blood,” he whispered to her. “We could clean it up. Make this place look great, be great, fix it solid again and . . . and . . .”
Sorrow twisted Steve’s face: “I didn’t want to fuck her!”
“Yes you did!” Louise grabbed his forearm. Dug her nails into his flesh. Felt the exertion push away wind in her skull. “Of course you wanted to fuck her! Everybody wants to fuck Ali! But you wouldn’t have because you want other things more even if—”
Doesn’t matter what I’m thinking if it was true before!
Louise blurted, “Even if you don’t want our baby to love forever! You care about other stuff enough to not fuck her except we came here!”
Match what makes sense with who you are, thought Louise. Use it like . . . like in that aikido demonstration on YouTube.
She yelled, “Parker realized it when he had a child’s mind! He stood outside and felt or thought something and knew enough to stay away and . . .
“His dad: maybe he pushed Parker’s mom away to save her!”
Words blurted from her: “Only needed him.”
“And then he ran out of money to keep you fixed up!” Louise yelled.
Steve blinked: “You . . . who?”
Louise grabbed him: “Us! The house hijacks our thoughts!”
Steve shivered.
Then she felt it, too, cold air, like . . .
She ran back to the hall between the living room and the dining room. The front door gaped open to the whiteout swirl of the blizzard. “Where’s Ali?” she whispered and ran to the dining room.
Found only Bob’s bludgeoned body.
Ran back to the hall where Steve stared out the open door.
Footprints in the snow led off the porch, past the white-mantled pickup truck, past their drift-buried rental car. Vanished in the blizzard.
“She chose,” said Louise. “Ali was that strong. Never realized—”
The door slammed shut in their faces.
Blessed heat circled them.
Steve said, “She broke the first imperative: self-preservation.”
Louise shook him. “Focus on what you knew before! Self-preservation isn’t the first imperative! Remember? Sophomore biology and the first imperative, the first imperative is preservation of the species!”
“You’re just saying that because you want to have a baby.”
Steve stepped toward her.
Louise took a step back.
Like we’re dancing.
“We don’t need a baby,” said Steve.
He took a step toward her. She took a step away.
His voice came out flat. Hammered. Fixed.
As he said: “We need a story for outsiders. To make them let us stay.”
“You want to leave me!” Louise backed into the living room and he danced with her. “P
lease remember you want to fuck Ali and leave me!”
Blood on the floor tried to stick her shoes to the wood.
“Just need our story,” he whispered. “Could say . . . Bob, Bob went crazy when we found out his plan.”
Louise stepped farther into the blood. “How do you know his plan?”
“And then he . . . he killed Parker and . . . and hurt Ali, that’s the truth! Tried to kill me and that’s the truth! But we fought him off and they’re all gone now and it’s just us and we have to, we’ll say we won’t let Bob steal our dream to fix this place up—we’ll say it’s in honor of Ali. And Parker!”
“No!” Louise stepped backward out of the blood pool.
Steve cocked his head. “Fixing all this could be a one-person job.”
He smiled. Held out his hand to her as he had for their wedding dance. Stood in sticky the color of raspberry swirls in their chocolate wedding cake.
Louise slapped his hand away. His boots slipped and his legs flipped out from under him. His crash shook the house.
The hammer Parker’d used. Lying on the floor by the newly framed window—No: not lying, moving, as like a wave, floorboards rippled to surf the hammer toward the blood pool and Steve’s waiting hand.
Louise ran up the stairs.
“Wait!” she heard Steve yell. “We can fix this!”
His footsteps charged up the stairs behind her.
She made it to the second floor. Raced up to the third, past bedrooms where visions of her husband fucking Ali fueled her fear with rage. She ran beside the hallway railing around the open space drop to the first floor.
Looked across that gap and saw Steve running after her, his face twisted and his fist full of hammer.
Stopped, as if on command, both of them crouching near the rail to glare across the stairwell chasm centering the heart of this crumbling house.
Across the chasm, Steve smiled: “Easy, hon. We’re home.”
Blasts of dust blew from the corners flanking Steve. Floorboards snapped up to slap back down again with a machine-gun racket as two energy waves rippled toward him. They met with a crack! and the wood he stood on exploded in splinters. The railing in front of him blew apart and the hole suddenly made in the mansion dropped him into the chasm of its heart.
He fell three stories without a scream.
Louise shut her eyes. Heard him land. Opened her eyes to a mushroom cloud of dust. She peered over the railing.
Home Improvement: Undead Edition Page 16
