There it was again. That wishy washy, Charlie Brown way of his, never a problem in the courtroom, but life was so much more complex and rudderless than the law. Law, an elaborate structure of words that closed in the blood and guts of chaotic reality. There seemed to Frank no clear-cut ground for belief in anything, no convenient right or wrong. People who met him first in the office or at home and who then had occasion to observe him in the courtroom were invariably astonished at the force of his words, the conviction behind them. Mere role-playing; not a lie, no, he believed in his client’s cause while he was arguing it, but belief was so much more uncertain when he put off his lawyerly role and the whirligig world rushed in.
That was his problem with Karin. She had met him in the turmoil of her trial for murder; then there’d been the fervor he’d had to employ afterward to ensure she received the treatment, both physical and psychological, she needed for full recovery. Events came with a built-in structure, a mold to pour his passion into. But then things had died down, and it was just the two of them alone in this house, unshared insecurities making for unease. She’d started to draw away, visiting the graveyard with increased frequency and canceling, against his advice, her remaining sessions with Doctor Williamson.
Maybe he could bring her a gift, candy or a basket of goodies, talk to her about all of this, talk it out.
But then, he thought, maybe it was too late for that, months too late.
***
Karin felt touched by Frank’s phone call all day, a little thing, his “I love you,” but nice to hear and nice to feel again in her ear when she recalled it. After the early morning watering, after the weeding and replanting that followed, she had an idea: She’d pick a bouquet for Frank, say mid-afternoon, clean up that vase Granny Eva’d given her, the tall pink and green one accumulating dust in the garage, and put it out on Frank’s nightstand with a little love note attached. Maybe come home from her visit early, invade his study, seduce the hell out of him.
The day had started with a nip in the air, so Karin had worn socks and jeans and two layers on top as she went from one plot to the next, water wand in hand, keeping up her running conversation with the flowers and giving their root systems just the amount of water they needed. Later in the morning, she had traded in her jeans for drawstring pants and stripped off one layer above, to her ten-year-old peach blouse with the rip in one elbow; but she always rolled up the sleeves, so that didn’t matter. In between bouts of weeding, she wandered among the flowers as usual, talking to them, touching them, bringing her face close to their blooms, breathing their fragrance. But today, after her discovery at the cemetery, she did these things with a new consciousness.
Perhaps she’d absorbed her granny’s gardening skills at her elbow those many years ago, so much so that they’d become instinctual or, at the very least, below conscious awareness. But today, she had a new appreciation, a new reverence, for her power. Where before she had imagined that she was a mere catalyst, bringing forth what existed in the flowers themselves but remaining herself unchanged, now she felt the gentle flow of power through her fingers, her lips, her cheeks, every part of her skin that touched stem or leaf or bloom, now she felt the life-giving force that flowed through her and coaxed out what was strongest and healthiest in each plant.
It seemed not as intense as it had been the previous evening, but she thought perhaps it ebbed and flowed, and besides, there wasn’t now the high adrenalin of discovery she’d had to draw on at Danny’s grave. In any event, one thing was clear, thinking back on the year since she had taken his life: Her gardening skills, as good as they’d been before, were continually improving. This power she had been blessed with was growing stronger. And, more important to her well-being, her own personal strength, long suppressed by a lifetime of abuse—first from her father and then from Danny—was cautiously flowing back into her life, rising with increasing confidence to the surface.
She ate lunch and drove out to the nursery for some new seedlings and a two-cubic-foot bag of organic compost. When she returned, the sun had pushed the mercury up past ninety-five. The white mailtruck was stopped by the Ryder house. Karin waved at the pith-helmeted mail carrier, who waved back, a sheaf of mail in his hand. Frank loved to receive mail, loved collecting it himself when he arrived home, no matter if it was all throw-away stuff. That was fine with Karin, who expected nothing but gardening mail, catalogs and magazines, and she could wait a few hours to see them appear on the dining room table.
Quarter to three. Time to gather Frank’s bouquet and make it presentable, then pick some flowers for Danny—not as many as usual, since she would surely be able to revive at least the ones she’d left yesterday—and drive to the cemetery. In her bedroom, she peeled off what she’d been wearing and put on a halter top, three big buttons at the back and a pattern which entwined the bell-shaped white of lily of the valley with the purple of creeping myrtle; a wide-brimmed hat; and a pair of pink shorts, cuffed nearly to the crotch. She slathered sunblock on her legs, on her belly and back, on her neck, shoulders, and arms, so that her skin glistened.
At first Karin didn’t want to use the same basket to gather Frank’s flowers as she used for Danny’s. She went so far as to empty out the long wicker basket they kept rolls of wrapping paper in. But she decided it looked too big and bulky and just plain wrong and that she was being silly, so she refilled it and put it back up on top of the bookshelves in the front room where it belonged. She laid out two red-and-white checked dishcloths on the bottom of the basket and decided that made it sufficiently different to serve her purpose.
Then she went out the kitchen door and surveying the ruly riot of shape and color that was her garden. “Okay, folks,” she said under her breath, “which of you is ready to make the grand sacrifice for love.” Love felt strange to say, as regarded Frank, not quite true, yet not a word she felt like retracting.
A cluster of nymph gladiolus, white with an open red spade marking on each petal, beckoned to her first, and she smiled and made for them, there at the fence between her property and Alice Brown’s. She wandered like a bee from one part of the garden to another, picking out just the blooms that spoke to her feelings for Frank, or maybe for what she wished those feelings were. Halfway through her task, she heard Jimmy Gallagher trying to keep silent behind his fence, saw movement at that same knothole he loved to peep at her through. Fucking asshole, thought Karin, then scolded herself. Poor idiot’s harmless, if obnoxious as all hell. Still she felt angry at him, at the invasion of her privacy. She’d at least have to see about plugging up that knothole.
Then she heard a skittering behind her, like a dog scrabbling at a door. When she turned around, Jimmy was completing his leap over the fence, coming down on a bed of bearded iris. He righted himself at their expense and came out onto the cobblestones. “Hi,” he said, and broke into a nervous grin. There was sweat on his forehead.
Karin was too shocked to say anything.
He started toward her and Karin realized it was less shock that held her still as it was fear, an old fear now welling up out of its hiding place.
“Nice afternoon,” he said.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, but it came out soft and trembly. She felt outrage inside, huge and burly, but it was shackled down and didn’t show. The fear surged through her, filling its old haunts, settling in for a spell.
“Just paying a neighborly visit is all.” He ran his eyes over her. She’d seen him joke around before, even be mock-demonic to frighten the kids in the neighborhood, but there was something new in his eyes. She looked down, saw the huge bulge in his trousers, felt energy drain from her limbs. “You look very pretty this afternoon, Karin, quite quite lovely.”
“Go away.” Same damned little-girl voice. It seemed to come from a great distance.
“Lovely hair, lovely face, lovely—” he blinked and licked his lips, seemingly disquieted at the things coming out of his mouth, but also encouraged by them, encouraged to go
on, “—lovely breasts, lovely nipples, little twin darlings look like they’re hardening right up as I speak, lovely tummy, lovely inny belly-button, makes me want to lick right around it and inside it, lovely hips—”
“Please go away.” There was a break in her voice, a well of tears blurring her vision but not spilling out.
He stepped closer.
Inside, her anger thrashed about. She could catch a glimpse of it now and again, but far more overwhelming was the old awful feeling she thought she’d conquered. It had been with her forever, this fear that acquiesced, and now it held her just as firmly in its grip as ever.
“May I touch your beautiful body?”
“No,” she whispered, and felt his fingers on her arm, just above the elbow. She shuddered. Jimmy’s hand closed on her biceps and his other hand did the same on her left side, so that she was parenthesized by his desires.
“Smooth arms,” he said, looking only at the front of her halter. His hands squeezed her, like the hands of a butcher appraising meat, from elbows to shoulders. Then they traveled to her midriff, curving about her ribcage, and his nostrils, big and hairy, sniffed at her cleavage. He looked nothing like the Jimmy Gallagher she knew, and for one moment she thought he might be an impostor. Then she remembered Danny, how unlike himself he’d looked when he beat her and tormented her, and she knew that what she was seeing was something Jimmy kept inside, only bringing it out on special occasions.
“Don’t,” she whimpered.
“Calm down, Karin,” he said, and planted a small wet kiss on the top of her left breast. His thumbs made twin swirls about her nipples. “I won’t do anything you don’t really want me to. All you have to do is say no like you genuinely mean it, and I’ll stop.” His hands went around back of her, met in the middle.
“What are you doing?”
His hands fumbled at the buttons. “Taking off your halter.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you, Karin.”
The halter came loose. He tugged it off and tossed it aside. She made to cover her breasts, but he took her hands down and held them firmly at her sides.
“Christ in heaven, you are one beautiful woman.”
Her vision blurred with tears. He forced her hands together in front of her so that they came together palms out and her V’d arms pushed her naked breasts up and out. The sun shone hot upon them. His eyes burned into them, laser beams searing her flesh as he lowered his head to taste her.
***
Nona had come in just before nine that morning, right after Jimmy had gotten home from work. She’d been dressed to kill in a steamy black outfit, but she didn’t look like she’d been out all night. Pissed about something, though. “Stay the fuck away from me!” she’d bellowed, slamming the bedroom door in his face.
Fine. Fucking bitch. He had spare pj’s, toiletries, bedding, the works, in the guest room for occasions like this, or for times when she snagged a particularly decent lover and just didn’t give a fuck if Jimmy found out. He would usually see Mister Prick-of-the-Moment’s car by the curb, quietly invade his house, and slink into the spare bed for some shuteye, five or six hours’ worth, doing his best to ignore the humping and groaning two closed doors and a hallway’s distance away. Sometimes the rhythm of it lulled him to sleep.
Today, when he woke, Nona was gone. He’d had a bowl of Total, a shave, and a shower, remembering the slam of the laundry room door half-waking him at ten, the up-and-down rumble of the garage door completing the job, but he had soon subsiding again into sleep. As he was dressing, he’d heard Karin Tanner working in her garden, flashed on what she looked like through the knothole, and decided to check her out.
Something about her today had really turned him on. He thought at first it was the sunlight on her flanks or the way her halter strap cut across the valley down her back; some women had that nice V of flesh, the kind that made running your hands down the two halves of their back almost as exciting as stroking their breasts. But then he realized what it was: This was the same skimpy outfit she had been wearing that night two summers ago when he’d been privileged to watch Danny Daniels strip his wife and have her right smack in the middle of her fucking garden, over first her whimpered protests and then her suppressed cries of delight. He’d exposed his wife’s white nakedness, then his own, to the warm moonlight and stood beside her on the cobbles, stroking her, arousing her, then forcing her down to feed on him, like a wood nymph gnawing on a fat gnarled stub of branch from a dark tree trunk.
The crazy notion had popped into his head to take her now that same way in the blinding sunlight. It fed on his anger at Nona, the way she’d rejected him last night, the finality he’d felt in her door slam this morning. And it fed on his desire for Karin, a lust he’d nursed for years, and my my wasn’t it a big bruiser now? So before he could intrude any hesitation to stop himself, he pumped up his manhood and took a running leap at the fence.
Now here he was, those tender breasts within licking distance, her weak pliable hands just inches away from his erection, in for a penny, in for a pound. He felt soiled inside, and excited. Here he was—a night watchman and a damned good one—trespassing on his neighbor’s property, about to enjoy his neighbor’s wife, to steal her virtue from her. But hell, she’d resisted that night too before coming around. She knew he peeped at her, had to know he did that, and never said one word to discourage him from doing so, just kept wearing these tiny outfits, just kept showing him that little girl face that begged to be taken. Something in her attitude, he could feel it now, said I am a victim, please victimize me. Christ, he wasn’t any kind of rapist, she wasn’t resisting that was for damn sure, no was on her lips and he knew everyone said these days that no meant no, but her whole body, the way it trembled and melted at his touch, was saying yes, take me, get me hot, shove it into me.
He took a small step closer, brought her palms right up against him, felt her feint at pulling away but pressed her hands to him so she could appreciate how large he was, so her backbrain could start thinking how nice it would be to take all of that manflesh in.
“Don’t,” she said, but their was a rising inflection in that word, a doubt that retracted it, reversed it, even as she spoke it. The rising tremble in her voice perhaps masked her rising excitation.
He stared at the soft perfection of her breasts, the hurt-pink nipples, pert and tiny, smaller than Nona’s and a deeper red. His nose brushed her left nipple, the one over her heart, then he lowered his lips to it, enclosing it, tonguing the hard flat point, feeling her upper body tremble at his touch.
Nearby, a garage door opened. Mine, he thought, but the direction was wrong. He lifted off the nipple, cocked his head. Sudden panic rushed into him. It was Tanner’s garage, the fucker was home early. His ears tried to make it Alice Brown’s garage, but that wouldn’t wash. Shit on a fucking stick!
He stepped backed from Karin Tanner, who stood there trembling in the warm sun, all dewy-eyed and rigid, like a girl at the doctor’s office steeling herself for a booster shot. “Here,” he said, retrieving her halter top, shoving it into her hands, “put this on.”
She didn’t move.
Jimmy slapped her, saw a teardrop fly from one eye. “Listen to me.” He shook her until she focused on him: “Put this on. Your goddamn husband is home.”
It flopped in her hand.
He snatched it from her, shaking with guilt, got her hands through the loops, pulled it up onto her chest, the damned boobs hung down a little, whirled her around like a rag doll, did up one button, then whirled her back, jammed it onto her tits till they looked right. “You don’t say a word about this, understand? You say anything and you’ll regret it.” He held a fist to her face.
Then he really had to go, fearing Tanner was already in the house, that he would walk by a window at any second and see his next-door neighbor with his wife. Christ, the fucking bitch was going to spill her guts he just knew it, so what the hell did it matter whether he made it over the fence
or not. Nah, she wouldn’t say shit, the raised fist had decided her, although he was just bluffing, he’d never really use it on her.
Jimmy tromped over the patch of iris again, stood on the horizontal timber a foot above the base of the redwood fence and hauled himself up and over the sucker, taking a handful of splinters for his haste and a slammed shoulder coming down hard on a smack of lawn.
***
Frank had cut out early after all, stopping at See’s on the way home and picking up a two-pound sampler. No card, just gift-wrapping. One more attempt to cut through to Karin, to break out of the awful rut their marriage had foundered into.
Glancing out the kitchen window, he saw her standing there in the garden, looking almost as if she had fallen asleep on her feet. He rapped on the window, waved when she turned her head. She slowly raised a hand and waved back, then reached down to retrieve the basket of flowers she’d been gathering.
Frank turned away and got a drink of organic apple juice from the fridge. He sat at the kitchen table with his glass. Two-thirds of the table top was covered with plants, which splayed off like greensward and leaped over a narrow chasm to the long shelf of cactus by the window. To the right where the mini-blind pull hung down, a tall Silver Torch cactus rose up like a big green spike.
Karin appeared on the patio, sliding the door open and leading the way into the kitchen with her basket.
“Hi,” he said. “I brought you something.”
“Home early,” she said, not looking at him.
Uh oh, he was in hot water. What, he wondered, had his phone call set off? “For you,” he said, offering his present. “Sweets for the sweet.”
She set the basket down in front of him, a feast of beauty she was about to waste on the corpse of a man who had beaten her nearly to death. He could not for the life of him understand it, and, yes he was jealous, jealous and something more, that this Danny, for all his faults, still offered Karin something he couldn’t. Not looking at him, she took the box and unwrapped it. “You bought this for me?”
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