“Maybe we ought to think about a separation, I don’t know.” Her voice trailed off.
“I . . . I love you, Karin.” There was a little boy softness to his voice. “I’ve tried to be a good husband to you, I—”
“And you have been, you have, Frank. But it used to be not just good but great. We’ve lost that. I think I need that again, and I’m not sure I can find it with you.”
He nodded. “I see.” Dead silence. She’d expected a scene, some display of emotion, some tears or entreaties. Then she wondered why. The absence of such displays was precisely the problem. There was nothing solid about her husband, not until you got him into a courtroom. He gave her nothing to play against, left her with nothing but her plants, bold and refreshing in their nakedness, not wimpy and uncertain like Frank.
Frank looked at her, eyes moist. “What about Joe and Laura?” Tomorrow’s dinner guests. She had just suggested they separate and Frank was worried about his police buddy coming to dinner.
“We can go ahead with it, if you want. Put the best face on it. We can talk again Saturday night when we’ve both had a few days to think.” A pause. Still he didn’t look at her. “How does that sound?”
He nodded. Nodded again. “Fine.”
More silence. “All right, then. I guess I’ll go to bed.” No use in bringing up Jimmy at this point. It was her problem now, and by God she hoped she’d have the guts to resolve it if Jimmy tried anything further. She rose, walked by Frank, and made her way down the hall.
When she closed the bedroom door ten minutes later, prepared for bed, Frank, as far as she could tell, hadn’t left the couch, but sat alone in the dark.
***
It’d been a dull night until the phone rang. Nothing decent on the tube; Queenie flumphed down, head resting on her paws, as bored as her mistress; two loads of wash, his and hers, going through endless cycles; a paperback with a super cover but writing that made the night longer than it seemed. She’d been transferring damp clumps of laundry to the dryer when the call came.
Put the zest back into her life. Some fresh mystery, an unknown admirer. She hadn’t wanted to run down a list names while he was on the line, would’ve been gauche. Men liked to think they’re the only one, particularly in this chickenshit age of AIDS—homo disease, nothing for a good hetero woman to worry about, she’d read about that, how it was a scare the prude bastards had been able to brainwash the public into swallowing. Fuck ’em all. Fuck Wildmon, fuck Falwell, and fuck Jesse fucking Helms, for spoiling her fun.
Nona lay in bed, trying to concentrate on her novel but finding herself flipping instead through the Rolodex of old lovers in her head. None of them fit. Could it be someone new? But he’d mentioned her tattoo. A peeper in at windows, maybe. Frank Tanner. Ooh what an intriguing possibility that was, Mister Faithful Husband getting his rocks off by watching her through the blinds and talking dirty over the phone. Too scared to have it on with her in the open, afraid that Danny’s bitch might shiv him like she did Danny. Possible. Not likely. And even if it was Frank who had just put her through such amazing paces on the phone, Nona didn’t suppose the novelty would last very long. Fish or cut bait, Frank old buddy. It was time to shake on out of this place, time for a real abrupt change in her life. Go on a cruise, bed down with some rich guy, marry the fuck out of him. She still had plenty of tender young flesh on her body, firm and tight and smooth enough to snag any man she wanted.
It was so easy to drift along in these doldrums, get by, have her flings, go out, Jimmy didn’t give a shit if she fucked around, and now that he’d had some mad doctor turn his weenie into a sideshow attraction, Jimmy was less than nothing to her, it was like living alone as far as she was concerned. Comfy house, Jimmy paid the bills, no work for her but walking the dog, filling up and emptying machines to clean dishes and clothes, and fucking the odd neighbor or two. Routine, dead dull boring routine, with little likelihood of resurrection any time soon.
There was a rap at the windowpane, just above Nona’s head. The suddenness of it startled her. But she quickly forgot that, because its pattern—three quick knuckle taps followed twice by a soft drumming of fingertips—made her head go all nonlinear. Danny’s pattern. The signal that he was there in his jogging suit and that it was time for her to unlock the sliding glass doors to the kitchen and let him in for fun and games.
Knees on her pillows, Nona grabbed the pull cord and wrenched the blinds up. Nothing. Her reflection staring back at her. Outlines of their redwood fence and the dark backyard. Lights on in some second-floor windows the next street over. She was suddenly conscious of her bare bosom in full view above the window sill. Good. Flash the dead Rocklinites, shock a few of them out of their torpor, the zombie hoards. She had a sudden fear that a monster, skin all lizardy and mouth sharp-fanged and dripping some clear disgusting fluid, would leap up like a jack-in-the-box and shatter the glass to seize her. Yeah, right, she scoffed, but not before her brain did whirligigs around the idea.
Letting the blinds fall, Nona planted the book on her nightstand, unhangered and put on a long frilly nightgown, and opened the bedroom door. Walked the dark hallway in a dream state. This was total bullshit, some sick prankster having fun with her head. Rooms dark ahead, except for a spill of light from the porch. It was Jimmy, it had to be him, around once somehow to hear Danny signal her, now for god knows what reason playing hooky from work and pulling this weird shit on her, maybe whacked out from her having rejected his bionic dick. It was suddenly clear: Jimmy’d been the vampire on the phone too. Pitiful asshole turned away from her bed, he’d used Ma Bell to pimp for him.
Behind the curtains drawn over the glass doors to the kitchen, she saw shadows moving. Fingered a fold back at one sly edge, not wanting to give Jimmy the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten her out of bed.
It was Danny Daniels.
Nona’s stomach clenched. Wild thoughts raced in her brain, refusing to cohere. Danny hadn’t died at all, they had somehow conspired to play a cruel joke on her, deprive her of the best lover she’d ever had. (Flip!) Danny had a twin brother. (Flip!) This was all a dream just like in a lousy movie. (Flip!) He was a walking corpse, one of George Romero’s zombies, poised to smash a fist through that glass, stiff-leg her down the hallway to her bedroom, and eat her as a midnight snack. Yeah, get real.
Her hand drew back the curtain, its rings clicking at the rod above, slowly, almost without her willing it. She stared at him through the glass as if he were a wax figure of Cro-Magnon man and she a dazed schoolgirl. He smiled, gestured at the door, mimed unlocking it. Wolf sat beside him in shadow, tongue lolling out. There was no fear in Nona, just bedazzlement. In the past, she would keep him locked out, do a slow striptease for him, fondle herself, make herself wet so he could see the moonlight glisten on her flesh, then unlock the door and feel his fevered need rush in to overwhelm her; and then the game of delay would begin anew, she the dominatrix, he the slave. But now the shock of seeing him put even the idea of falling into the old patterns out of her head. Her left hand met the lock, flipped it down, started to slide the door open.
Then his hands came up and she felt the force of the smudged glass barrier vanishing from between them, the air subtly cool with night on her legs, her face. He came in, Wolf right behind him, and swept her up into his arms, his lips meeting hers, his tongue pushing them open, thrusting deep into her mouth. Its cold meaty taste was not as she remembered, not the sweet savage tang she loved so, but a bitter putrescence coating the roof and walls of her mouth like a slathering of plasma. She tried to pull away, but Danny’s right arm encircled her and his left hand braced the back of her head like a dentist’s chair, pressing her face against his with such force that her lips stretched white and her jaws began to throb from being forced open so wide.
Then suddenly her head was free. Danny ripped at her nightgown, tore it downward so that her shoulders hurt and her breasts stung from his fingernails catching gouges of flesh in the throes of wrenching aw
ay her clothes. But he wasn’t after sex, not in the least, she could feel the bad energy radiating off him like heat off tarmac, the violent intent. Rearing back, Danny pulled his tongue out of her mouth, which felt stretched and tingly and hung open as if a spring had broken somewhere. Then his hand spidered up to her face, shoving something into her mouth, a piece of nightgown she thought at first, but saw the socks, tasted the thin smooth old-man white-shanked flavor of them. His arm unvised her, but before she could respond, he spun her about and bent her over the table, yanking her arms behind her and tying them together at the wrists. She’d started to work the gag out of her mouth so she could scream for help, but he thrust it back in with three fingers—nearly cramming it down her throat—and sealed her lips with a rrrip-kiss of tape, as tall and wide and tight as Jack Nicholson’s wickedest grin.
***
Frank stared at his clock-radio. Eleven-fifteen. He was used to hitting the sheets at ten, conking right out. It wasn’t like him to toss and turn, although he was only doing that in his head. Behind his back, Karin lay at the edge of the mattress, lightly snoring.
Karin seemed an architecture of contradictions: one moment brick-solid, the next a house of cards. He loved her. He’d told her so. But he hadn’t sounded convinced, hadn’t moved her one iota. All part of the barrier he’d somehow constructed between his passion in the courtroom and his confusion in the real world, endless dithering on about how to behave on the world-stage. He had no sturdy religion to hold to and often envied those that did, even while he feel relieved to be above their simplicity, their occasional intolerance. He sometimes wished he were more like some of the senior attorneys. Henry Scithers came to mind, or Peyton Thancher, a man who exuded contentment in every context, who had found pleasing form in the law, welcomed it into his head, and let it flow freely from his heart and mind into every action, public or private, he performed. Thancher did not seem a slave to order, nor so obsessed by it as to oppress family or co-workers with his moral rectitude. No, he was easy with it, partnered with this inner spirit in a more harmonious bond than kept him partnered with Scithers and Wilde. Frank bunched pillow under his head and wished he were that forthright.
Had to face facts, though. Wishing wasn’t going to cut it. Maybe he’d corral the older man before lunch the next day, open his heart, ask for advice, probe into what he cared to reveal about his past, discover the secret of the man’s happiness, then do his damnedest to incorporate what he’d learned into his own life. No. He’d lived long enough to know that sort of thing never worked, that when you tried such measures, you tended to poison the well of relaxed camaraderie the two of you had dug in your days of first acquaintance. Besides he expected there was more to Thancher than he supposed; clay feet were best kept in the finest shoe leather money could buy.
A few backyards away, a lonely dog bayed a few times, then gave it up. Frank ached inside, dreading the loss he felt powerless to stop. Counseling came to mind, then he heard Karin say the word separation with the merest hint of hesitation, heard too divorce, its unspoken echo, burst into a million bewildered souls, like a fist of bats split and scattered by a glare of angry light.
He wanted to heal his marriage, to reinvigorate it. He’d never wanted anything so much, nor been so stymied, in his life.
***
Danny saw it all—from the moment when Nona unlocked the door until he collapsed into sleep above her headless body—through a haze of red. The red of his rage, the red of Nona’s blood, the ameliorative red of one whose rosy lenses filter out the harsh world.
He was on a resurrection high, a revenge high. All those times she’d excited him with her pretense at power, a pretense he fell into the habit of playing to—he knew now that, thought he’d been physically stronger, the games they played hadn’t been games at all, but had revealed her genuine power over him. No time to figure why. Just time enough to set things right, reclaim his manhood, take Nona all the way through and out the back end.
An arm about her waist from the back, a lift, and she was airborne. Nona felt as light as a toddler, though her head whipped to and fro like buffeting wind and her legs bicycled furiously all the way to the bedroom, striking walls but knocking nothing over. Queenie had pulled back into the bedroom from the first, a bad odor in her snout, and now she snarled and barked at Wolf, who looked both confused and menacing. He had her trapped where Jimmy’s closet cornered the wall. The crimson carrot of his penis jutted from its furry sheath. Good. Bitch was either in heat or Wolf’s revival had hornified him, but either way, Danny wasn’t about to let him waste it on a dog.
He slammed the door to Nona’s death chamber, feeling the already dark forces in him grow darker. “Attack her, Wolf,” he said. “Kill Queenie.” There was a growl or two of protest, a moment when Danny thought Wolf would defend his bitch and attack his master. But in the end, training triumphed over instinct. He leaped at the cowering collie and tore her throat out, her head forced into an endearing angle against his jaws as he charged in to open her veins. In the mirrored closet doors, blood leaped to meet blood, sheeting down like waves of Ocean Spray. When Nona, still in one arm, turned away from the sight, Danny carried her closer, ordered Wolf away, forced her left foot down into the gore, let her feel her pet’s death throes even as she refused to watch them. Nona’s struggles dimmed into the beating of so many butterfly wings. His mind fixed on the refusal of Queenie’s quivering body to accept death until it crept into her heart and chilled her out. Fascinating. A real object lesson.
He lifted Nona out, wiped her foot on the carpet, and carried her to the bed. Put her on her stomach, her foot bloodying the pillow, her face turned toward the carnage. “Stay put or I’ll hurt you,” he said. When she didn’t, he broke one of her fingers. Chose it at random and bent it back until it snapped. She protested under the tape, her eyes moist with pain, but she didn’t move after that. He tested her once when he went back to the kitchen and again when he visited Jimmy’s rack of tools in the garage, but remembrance of pain and Wolf’s close vigil kept her wide-eyed and quiescent.
“Watch this,” he said. An order. He dragged Queenie away from the wall, head lolled half off, blood now only a trickle. Belly up. The first incision went the length of her body, from the vent to the ragged gash of her throat. The other two, from paw to paw, fore and aft, right-angled his first cut. Methodically, he peeled off the white and butterscotch pelt, using Jimmy’s curved linoleum knife to separate skin from muscle, old wet rug reluctant to come up in one piece, but coaxable.
Nona whimpered.
Danny ignored her, but his head began again to throb, humming like a distant furnace and eating at him like the black bite of a gnat. Damned vestige of humanity. He’d make his wife plead through blood bubbles—when it was her turn to wear the shackles—for having saddled him with it. First she would get rid of it for good, then he’d do the same to her.
Washing his hands to get the grease off, he went to work. He turned Nona about, face now to the pillow, hands still tied behind her. No bedposts so he malleted a spike into the floor on her left, roped her left foot to it, her right foot to the base of her dresser, which he lifted, no problem, one hand sliding the rope end under. He hammered heavy brads, two to a side, half way into the window sill, then released her hands and secured them between the brads with tight-wristed rope, slamming the brads in so far that his blows gouged white smiles in the wood. Her arms were thrust before her, not straight out but angled slightly to welcome into her embrace some fat lover. Two feet of wall lay between sill and mattress, and Nona’s shoulders, Danny was pleased to note, paralleled the sheetfold a few inches down from where her pillow left off. But for her head, he could picture his hips fitting quite nicely into the magic trapezoid of her embrace. He had allowed some play in the leg restraints so he could put her in a kneeling position, which he now did, folding her thighs under her so that her knees were level with her navel, but letting the tension in the ropes keep her legs wide apart, plenty of room for hi
m to slip beneath her.
Time to strip. He shucked off Clarence’s oversized clothes, looking forward to selecting something of Jimmy’s when he was done here, hoping Karin would prove—after he savaged her—to have thrown away none of his own clothes. But Nona was waiting, butt out, big curvy breasts hanging down, a lost look in her eyes, and an unfortunate gag at her mouth. Couldn’t afford to remove it. The sound, the teeth: weapons at this point. He didn’t want anything to queer his chances with Karin. Old Nona’d humped him many times in this bedroom; now they—him and Wolf, the grainy footage flickering in his mind, wince-faced junkie hugging a stained caseless pillow as a Saint Bernard wuffled his dick into her hole—they were going to hump her, hump her brains out, hump her to death. He took her pastel-pink fuck-me shoes, the ones with the stiletto heels, out of the closet and put them on Nona’s night table next to the carving knife. Their curves and angles brought back past arousals, past humiliations, past climaxes she’d visited on him in this room.
Wolf was chomping at Queenie’s stripped guts. Danny retrieved the nearby pelt, the fur tickly warm against his left leg. The staple gun, on the dresser, felt good and cold and hard in his hand. Then his mind caught the tall candles there beside her jewelry box, white and winding in their squat wood bases, a black stiff whisker of a wick at the top—Nona’s fuck-me candles. Only moon and fire could light Nona’s ways, not the harsh man-made light that now lit her body. Danny flared a wood match from the tiny box beside them, lit them, doused the overhead light, filled his hands back up with pelt and staple gun, positioned the one against her back and buttocks, used the other to fix it there, Nona’s muffled screams and thrashings thrilling him with the depths of his own depravity. Dead or alive, he was damned; no question about it. He shuddered inside at the goad, gone now from gnat to mosquito to wasp. No way would he yield, not with the rest of him craving the total freedom to ride every impulse all the way, no stop of any kind, the joy of sane madness squeezing him like a toothpaste tube in its triumphant fist. Fuck the wasp-man inside, fuck him to hell and back!
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