Orchard Grove

by Vincent Zandri

  In a word, Susan was predictably unpredictable, and once upon a time, I loved her for it.

  Her hand shifted now. South. She began to stroke me. I was no longer seeing Susan in the window. I was instead seeing Lana lying on the dining room table. I was seeing her moist, naked skin glistening in the sunlight that leaked into the room through the dining room and living room windows. I saw the soft but still firm flesh on her thighs and I was feeling her all over again.

  “Would you do things to her while I watched?” Susan added as she picked up the pace of her stroking. “Or better yet, Killer, would you like it if I did things to her while you watched?”

  My mind was on fire. Mind and body. Susan’s actions and words were that much of a turn on. That potent. There was still love between us. Love and lust. I felt myself sinking into the softness of the mattress while Susan raised herself up onto her knees and straddled me.

  “Please,” was all she said, her voice having achieved a kind of rich deepness to it, as if it wasn’t the Susan I married who was speaking to me, but an imposter who’d taken over her body. “Please, please, please…”

  Only seconds after I entered her, she came with a loud scream. Looking up at her face, I realized she wasn’t watching me while we made love. Instead she was peering over her shoulder, out the slider window onto the Cattivo’s back deck and the blonde beauty who was surly out there sunning herself in the hot, sultry, afternoon sun.

  As dusk approached our home on Orchard Grove, Susan and I finished another beer apiece and got dressed. I didn’t mention the name Lana, and neither did she. Yet, our blonde-haired neighbor might as well have been standing in the same room as us. She was not a white elephant, but instead, a white devil.

  When Susan entered into the bathroom to clean up and fix her hair, I hobbled over to her dressing table, picked up the perfume bottle, smelled it.

  Lavender.

  Susan was wearing the same perfume as Lana. Should I confront her about it? Or simply chalk it up as a coincidence? In the end I decided to do something else.

  “Darling,” I said through the closed bathroom door. “Did I mention you received a package from UPS today? Something from Victoria’s Secret.”

  The water stopped and silence replaced it.

  “Victoria’s Secret,” she asked, her tone one of surprise. “I don’t recall ordering anything.”

  The door opened and she stepped out, looking fresh and put together, like she’d just woken up. She eyed the torn package set out on the table.

  “Who opened it?” she said, her brows raised at attention.

  “Arrived that way,” I said.

  Slipping my hand off the crutch, I grabbed the package and handed it to her.

  She hesitated.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” I said.

  I noticed then a distinct tightness in her facial muscles.

  She said, “Sure. Why Not? It’s already opened anyway.”

  She pulled off the paper and opened the box. Reaching in with her fingers, she pulled out the thong underwear.

  “Wow, nice stuff,” I said, trying my best to act surprised. “You really are making an effort at pulling our marriage back together.”

  She tried to work up a smile, as if going along with my reasoning was just fine and dandy by her. That’s when I leaned into her, kissed her gently on the cheek.

  “What’s that for?” Susan said, surprise in her voice.

  “Thanks,” I said. “For what you’re trying to do… for us.”

  She bit down on her lip, nodded.

  “It’s good to know the spark is still there,” she said. “That love is still there… even if the money isn’t.” She bit down on her bottom lip liked she’d caught herself. “Excuse me, the work isn’t there.”

  I couldn’t help but feel a slow burn at the money-slash-work comment. But that didn’t prevent me from feeling good about the spark she so aptly mentioned. I made like I was about to turn away, get on with my life, such as it was, when I once more eyed the package in her hands.

  “Is there a note stuffed inside?” I said.

  Susan’s face turned red. The note was hidden under the underwear, which meant she was able to pretend it didn’t exist.

  “No silly,” she said. “Why would I send myself a note?”

  I laughed, but it was entirely forced.

  “Exactly,” I said. “You’d have to be your own secret admirer.”

  The shades on the slider window were now drawn so that there was no seeing in, no peering out. If you listened hard enough, you could hear the voices of Lana and her husband while they enjoyed their cocktails and barbequed out on the deck. Or maybe enjoy was too strong a word for it. Because the voices were not always kind. They were, more often, filled with acid.

  Susan went back into the bathroom, this time with the Victoria’s Secret package in hand, closing the door behind her. After a few seconds, I heard the toilet flush, and although I had no way of knowing it for certain, I imaged that the pink note card from “You know who” was now on its one-way trip to the Albany water treatment plant stationed along the Hudson River.

  I went to the window, stood still and listened. While John accused Lana of spending her day with her new friend, Hollywood, and she defended herself by replying, “Just because I have a man who is a friend and an interesting person, doesn’t mean I’m fucking him.”

  She was right of course. And also, very wrong.

  It was all very strange.

  By all means, I should have been shaking with fear considering the nature of the Cattivos very audible argument along with the fact that her husband was a hothead cop who carried a gun. When Susan came out of the bathroom for the second time, she was holding the underwear in her hand, the paper package and the box it protected now apparently tossed out. Opening up the drawer under the table, she set the underwear inside, then closed the drawer back up.

  I was quite certain she could make out the war of words being waged by our new neighbors, but for some reason unbeknownst to me, she decided not to comment on it. Instead, she headed into the kitchen, picked up the phone, and dialed the local Chinese restaurant.

  “Do you want wanton soup with your sweet and sour pork, Killer?” she called out.

  “Sure, baby,” I said, my gaze shifting from the slider window to the bathroom. “Whatever you say.”

  Hobbling across the bedroom, past the dressing table and into the bathroom, I peered into the wastebasket. The torn packaging material and the Victoria’s Secret box had been tossed inside it. Bending down carefully, my left hand holding to the crutch for balance, I quickly rummaged through the box and the paper. The note was gone. My gut could be trusted after all.

  Susan had disposed of the note, like so much waste.

  By today’s artificial intelligence standards, her method for attracting victims would never be considered very scientific. It was the 1980s after all. The pre-digital age. There were no personal computers. No Match.com. No Facebook. No Craigslist. You had to do things the old fashioned way, which meant posting want-ads in the “personals” section of the local newspapers and freebie news rags.

  Looking for a date? was one headline that could always be counted on to produce.

  Another was, Young lady is sooo very lonely.

  But the go-to atomic bomb of headlines...the one that always generated the most responses from the sex-starved middle-aged pervert crowd… was Lady looks sixteen!

  Of course, she was sixteen at the time, which is why the last ad always proved the most effective, especially when the potential client requested she send along a snapshot. You’d be surprised how easy it was to lure an adult male into a meeting at a strange motel and how easy it was to dispose of him once she was able to Mace them, and/or tie them up to the bedposts (usually at the victim’s request).

  But soon she became bored with the middle-aged crowd. How many time could she be expected to enact the ultimate revenge on her step-monster over and over and over
again? Not to mention the chances she was taking by leaving the bodies behind for the police to discover. Sure she was careful about prints, but it was only a matter of time until someone at the APD or FBI picked something up off the surface of a chair, a bed sheet, a lamp, or the bathroom toilet.

  Now that a young police officer… a tall, slim, Clint Eastwood look-alike detective by the name of Nick Miller… was working the case, she decided to switch gears. From now on, her victims would be much younger. Much stupider, and far more innocent.

  They would be teenagers, just like her.

  The next night, the Cattivos arrived right on time. I was sure I smelled booze on John’s breath the moment he came through the door. He was wearing a yellow IZOD polo shirt that seemed out of place for a cop who carried a gun on his hip at all times. Because the skin on his thick arms was exposed, I couldn’t help but take notice of a tattoo he sported on his left interior forearm. It was a heart that was dripping or, crying, blood. It matched precisely the tattoo that painted Lana’s ankle, but with one slight difference. Written across John’s heart was the name Lana, in big bold black letters.

  He noticed me noticing it, so he lifted up his arm, more to show me his bulging bicep than the tattoo. Or so it seemed.

  “I got drunk one night, came home with my heart on my sleeve. The usual story.” He belly laughed.

  “Looks like Lana’s,” I observed, but immediately wondered if I should have said it.

  “Good of you to notice, Hollywood,” he said. “What else have you noticed about my wife?”

  Lana stepped forward as if to intervene, or at least change the subject. She was holding a bottle of wine in each hand. She turned to Susan.

  “Red and bloody,” she said, handing my wife the bottles. “Just like you ordered.”

  The funny thing was how Susan and Lana were dressed alike, almost like they’d consulted with one another before getting together at the appointed seven o’clock hour. And maybe they had. Both were wearing V-neck T-shirts and short skirts. They were also wearing similar brown leather sandals. Maybe the color of their clothing differed (Lana wore all red and black, while Susan’s skirt was plain yellow, her T-shirt white), but they seemed to complement one another. Both took the time to pick out some nice jewelry for the evening. Susan’s choice for a necklace was a silver broach shaped like an angel over her neck. Lana wore a simple string of pearls, which I guessed were real and very old. Both sported an eclectic assortment of silver bracelets around their wrists.

  A smiling, if not beaming Susan began carrying the wine across the living room floor to the dining room and then down the two stairs to the already open slider.

  “Who’s having wine?” she asked.

  “We all are,” I said, following her with my crutches.

  “Let’s get loaded,” John said walking beside me. Then, taking hold of my arm with what felt like a vice grip so that I nearly went over onto my face. “Let’s get the girls drunk,” he said into my ear. “I’m already there. You got any beer, Hollywood? Or don’t screenwriters drink beer? You probably drink something all stuffy and shit, like brandy from out of snifter.”

  Somehow I managed to work up a fake laugh. “Plenty of beer on ice out back.”

  I pulled my arm away from him, rebalanced myself on my crutches. I knew in my heart that I already hated his guts. But I had to get through the night without showing it. I’d worked in Hollywood for a lot of years. I knew how to play the game. How to suck up to people I hated. People whose egos surrounded them like a thick, plastic, translucent bubble.

  He took pulled his hand back, slapped me on the shoulder. Just a little too hard.

  “You be a good man, Hollywood,” he said. “Crack me one of those beers and maybe I’ll let you hold my gun.”

  We ate the usual summertime fare. Burgers, hot dogs, potato salad, corn on the cob. For desert, Susan put out a bowl of ripe apples and a red Jell-O mold, neither of which anyone touched. Mostly, we drank. We drank a lot, as if seeking our own separate escapes. When the two bottles of red that Lana brought over were finished, she went back to her house to retrieve two more. When those were gone, the girls started in on gin and tonics. Meanwhile, I drank beer. One for every two that John was chugging. When he pulled out a plastic baggy of weed, I thought I might be seeing things.

  “You know what they say?” he said, while proceeding to roll a big fat bomber of a joint. “Cops always have the best dope.” He refocused his eyes so they were aimed at the fence at the far end of the perimeter. “That shit you’re growing down there is for teeny boppers, Hollywood.”

  “Still don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, a cold chill shooting up and down my spine at the thought of him snooping around my property.

  When he smiled, the edges of his thin mouth went vertical, making his presence even more sinister. The scruff that surrounded his mouth made him look like a pipe cleaner with big arms, big legs, and a big gun. I could not understand for the life of me what a hot woman like Lana was doing with him. Why she would have agreed to marry him and follow him all the way across the country to the very place she left decades ago, vowing never to return. He lit the joint with a Bic lighter he kept in his pocket, took a big toke off of it, and handed it to me.

  I took a drag, but not too deep. I was trying to pace myself, stay in control. Only reason I took a hit off it at all was to keep him from giving me a tongue-lashing. Handing him back the joint, he then passed it on to Susan who, at this point, was sitting so close to Lana she was practically on top of her. They were obviously hitting it off, and in some ways, they were enjoying their own private party. It was as if they’d known one another not just a matter of hours, but weeks, or months, and not just as acquaintances who shared the same P90X class.

  At one point, I decided I’d been holding in way too much beer for too long, so I grabbed my crutches and limped my way into the bathroom to relieve myself. By the time I got out, Lana was barking at John, calling him a “dickless wonder.” She was so stoned, she laughed when she said it. Even Susan started to laugh, although I could tell she was doing her absolute best to hold back the chuckles. But then, she too was stoned out of her gourd. Susan was no stranger to my pot patch out back (she’d already shredded and bagged the pot I left out on the counter to dry the previous day), but she was not a regular pot smoker, preferring the buzz of alcohol and the occasional pharmaceutical instead.

  Lana was relentless.

  She kept jabbing her husband, calling him “dickless.” And as I hobbled back onto the deck and sat down hard in the chair, I could see his round, hairy face begin to turn red, even in the candlelight. I could see a purple vein popping out on his forehead. The vein throbbed. I could see his hands opening and closing into tight fists, and I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat. As Lana handed me what was left of the joint, I thanked her, and went to pass it right on to John without my taking another hit.

  But he ignored me and did something entirely different.

  Instead of taking hold of the joint, he pulled out his gun.

  He aimed the piece at both girls. By that, I mean he planted the metallic green laser site on Susan’s forehead, then shifted it the few inches to Lana’s and back again.

  “Hey John,” I said, my heart jumping into my throat, “take it easy, man. They’re just joking around.”

  Any semblance of a buzz running through my veins quickly disappeared with the rush of adrenalin.

  “You shut the fuck up, Hollywood,” he said, his voice low, gravely, mean. “This doesn’t concern you.” Then, bursting out with laughter. “Well, okay, it’s your wife, so yeah, it concerns you.”

  Lana paused for a moment while she bit down on her bottom lip. But then, just as quickly, her face lit up again. Suddenly it was her turn to bust out laughing.

  “See what happens when you’re dickless like Dick Tracy here?” she said. “You carry around a spare dick.”

  Susan didn’t think a gun being point
ed at her face was any too funny. She wasn’t laughing anymore, nor was she about to resume laughing. Her face turned pale white in the candlelight.

  That black automatic in his hand, the barrel moving from one woman to the other, John grabbed hold of his beer with his free hand, downed what remained.

  “Let’s play a different game,” he said, slapping down the empty can.

  “What kind of game, dickless?” Lana said. She was unrelenting, gun or no gun.

  He turned to me, shooting me a quick look with his glazed eyes and disturbing pipe cleaner face. “How about we play your wife kisses my wife? Whaddaya say, Hollywood. You game?”

  I shot Susan a look. She caught my glance and didn’t have to say a word for me to know what she was thinking. Her eyes said, Let’s just play this stupid game and get him the hell out of our house.

  “Sure thing, John,” I said, pulse banging like tympani in my temples. “But maybe you should put the gun down.”

  “Nonsense,” he laughed, thumbing back the hammer. “Lana likes to play with my guns. Isn’t that right, Lana?” Then, waving the barrel at the women with the laser sight no longer engaged. “Come on girls, what’ll it be? On my count. Five, four, three…”

  When he got to one, Lana closed her eyes, lifted her left hand and gently took hold of Susan’s lower jaw, aiming her mouth for her hers. When she kissed my wife, she did so as passionately and as truly as she had when she first kissed me the morning before. At first I could only assume that she was as much into girls as she was boys. But then I began to sense this wasn’t the first time she’d played a dangerous game with her husband and she knew better than not to be believable in her performance.