The Best American Mystery Stories 2017

by John Sandford

  Only when she’s alone would she utter even a mild profanity—Damn! God damn. Oh hell . . .

  Only if she were very upset. Only if her heart were broken.

  He can say anything he likes. It’s a masculine prerogative to say the coarsest cruelest words uttered with a laugh—as a man will do.

  Though he might also murmur Jesus!

  Not profanity but an expression of awe. Sometimes.

  Jesus! You are beautiful.

  Is she beautiful? She smiles to think so.

  She is the woman in the window. In the wan light of an autumn morning in New York City.

  In the plush blue chair, waiting. Eleven a.m.

  Sleepless through much of the night and in the early morning soaking in her bath preparing herself for him.

  Rubbing lotion onto her body: breasts, belly, hips, buttocks.

  Such soft skin. Amazing . . . His voice catches in his throat.

  At first he scarcely dares touch her. But only at first.

  It is a solemn ritual, creamy-white lotion smelling of faint gardenias rubbed into her skin.

  In a trance like a woman in a dream rubbing lotion into her skin, for she is terrified of her skin drying out in the radiator-heat, arid airlessness of The Maguire (as it is called)—the brownstone apartment building at Tenth Avenue and Twenty-Third where she lives.

  From the street The Maguire is a dignified-looking older building, but inside it is really just old.

  Like the wallpaper in this room, and the dull-green carpet, and the plush blue chair—old.

  Dry heat! Sometimes she wakes in the night scarcely able to breathe and her throat dry as ashes.

  She has seen the dried-out skin of older women. Some of them not so very old, in their sixties, even younger. Papery-thin skin, desiccated as a snake’s husk of a skin, a maze of fine white wrinkles, terrible to behold.

  Her own mother. Her grandmother.

  Telling herself don’t be silly, it will never happen to her.

  She wonders how old his wife is. He is a gentleman, he will not speak of his wife. She dares not ask. She dares not even hint. His face flushes with indignation, his wide dark nostrils like holes in his face pinch as if he has smelled a bad odor. Very quiet, very stiff he becomes, a sign of danger so she knows to retreat.

  Yet thinking, gloating, His wife is not young. She is not so beautiful as I am. When he sees her, he thinks of me.

  (But is this true? The past half year, since the previous winter, since the long break over Christmas when they were apart—she was in the city; he was away with his family in some undisclosed place, very likely Bermuda for his face and hands were tanned when he returned—she has not been so certain.)

  She has never been to Bermuda, or any tropical place. If he does not take her, it is not likely that she will ever go.

  Instead, she is trapped here in this room. Where it is always eleven a.m. Sometimes it feels to her as if she is trapped in this chair, in the window gazing out with great yearning at—what?

  An apartment building like the building in which she lives. A narrow shaft of sky. Light that appears fading already at eleven a.m.

  Damned tired of the plush blue chair that is beginning to fray.

  Damned tired of the bed (he’d chosen) that is a double bed, with a headboard.

  Her previous bed, in her previous living quarters on East Eighth Street, in a fifth-floor walkup single room, had been a single bed, of course. A girl’s bed too small, too narrow, too insubstantial for him.

  The girth, the weight of him—he is two hundred pounds at least.

  All muscle, he likes to say. (Joking.) And she murmurs in response Yes.

  If she rolls her eyes, he does not see.

  She has come to hate her entrapment here. Where it is always eleven a.m. and she is always waiting for him.

  The more she thinks about it, the more her hatred roils like smoldering heat about to burst into flame.

  She hates him. For trapping her here.

  For treating her like dirt.

  Worse than dirt, something stuck on the sole of his shoe he tries to scrape off with that priggish look in his face that makes her want to murder him.

  Next time you touch me! You will regret it.

  Except: at work, at the office—she’s envied.

  The other secretaries know she lives in The Maguire, for she’d brought one of them to see it once.

  Such a pleasure it was, to see the look in Molly’s eyes!

  And it is true—this is a very nice place really. Far nicer than anything she could afford on her secretary’s salary.

  Except she has no kitchen, only just a hot plate in a corner alcove, and so it is difficult for her to prepare food for herself. Dependent on eating at the automat on Twenty-First and Sixth or else (but this is never more than once a week, at the most) when he takes her out to dinner.

  (Even then, she has to take care. Nothing so disgusting as seeing a female who eats like a horse, he has said.)

  She does have a tiny bathroom. The first private bathroom she’s ever had in her life.

  He pays most of the rent. She has not asked him, he volunteers to give her cash unbidden, as if each time he has just thought of it.

  My beautiful girl! Please don’t say a word, you will break the spell and ruin everything.

  What’s the time? Eleven a.m.

  He will be late coming to her. Always he is late coming to her.

  At the corner of Lexington and Thirty-Seventh. Headed south.

  The one with the dark fedora, camel’s hair coat. Whistling thinly through his teeth. Not a tall man, though he gives that impression. Not a large man, but he won’t give way if there’s another pedestrian in his path.

  Excuse me, mister! Look where the hell you’re going.

  Doesn’t break his stride. Only partially conscious of his surroundings.

  Face shut up tight. Jaws clenched.

  Murder rushing to happen.

  The woman in the window, he likes to imagine her.

  He has stood on the sidewalk three floors below. He has counted the windows of the brownstone. Knows which one is hers.

  After dark, the lighted interior reflected against the blind makes of the blind a translucent skin.

  When he leaves her. Or before he comes to her.

  It is less frequent that he comes to her by day. His days are taken up with work, family. His days are what is known.

  Nighttime there is another self. Unpeeling his tight clothes: coat, trousers, white cotton dress shirt, belt, necktie, socks and shoes.

  But now the woman has Thursdays off, late mornings at The Maguire are convenient.

  Late mornings shifting into afternoon. Late afternoon, and early evening.

  He calls home, leaves a message with the maid—Unavoidable delay at office. Don’t wait dinner.

  In fact it is the contemplation of the woman in the window he likes best, for in his imagination this girl never utters a vulgar remark or makes a vulgar mannerism. Never says a banal or stupid or predictable thing. His sensitive nerves are offended by (for instance) a female shrugging her shoulders, as a man might do; or trying to make a joke, or a sarcastic remark. He hates a female grinning.

  Worst of all, crossing her (bare) legs so that the thighs thicken, bulge. Hard-muscled legs with soft downy hairs, repulsive to behold.

  The shades must be drawn. Tight.

  Shadows, not sunlight. Why darkness is best.

  Lie still. Don’t move. Don’t speak. Just—don’t.

  It’s a long way from when she’d moved to the city from Hackensack needing to breathe.

  She’d never looked back. Sure they called her selfish, cruel. What the hell, the use they’d have made of her, she’d be sucked dry by now like bone marrow.

  Saying it was sin. Her Polish grandmother angrily rattling her rosary, praying aloud.

  Who the hell cares! Leave me alone.

  First job was file clerk at Trinity Trust down on Wall Street. Wasted t
hree years of her young life waiting for her boss, Mr. Broderick, to leave his (invalid) wife and (emotionally unstable) adolescent daughter, and wouldn’t you think a smart girl like her would know better?

  Second job also file clerk, but then she’d been promoted to Mr. Castle’s secretarial staff at Lyman Typewriters on West Fourteenth. The least the old buzzard could do for her, and she’d have done a lot better except for fat-face Stella Czechi intruding where she wasn’t wanted.

  One day she’d come close to pushing Stella Czechi into the elevator shaft when the elevator was broken. The doors clanked opened onto a terrifying drafty cavern where dusty-oily cords hung twisted like ugly thick black snakes. Stella gave a little scream and stepped back, and she’d actually grabbed Stella’s hand, the two of them so frightened—Oh my God, there’s no elevator! We almost got killed.

  Later she would wish she’d pushed Stella. Guessing Stella was wishing she’d pushed her.

  Third job, Tvek Realtors & Insurance in the Flatiron Building and she’s Mr. Tvek’s private secretary—What would I do without you, my dear one?

  As long as Tvek pays her decent. And he doesn’t let her down like last Christmas, she’d wanted to die.

  It is eleven a.m. Will this be the morning? She is trembling with excitement, dread.

  Wanting badly to hurt him. Punish!

  That morning after her bath she’d watched with fascination as her fingers lifted the sewing shears out of the bureau drawer. Watched her fingers test the sharpness of the points: very sharp, icepick-sharp.

  Watched her hand pushing the shears beneath the cushion of the blue plush chair by the window.

  It is not the first time she has hidden the sewing shears beneath the cushion. It is not the first time she has wished him dead.

  Once she hid the shears beneath her pillow on the bed.

  Another time, in the drawer of the bedside table.

  How she has hated him, and yet—she has not (yet) summoned the courage, or the desperation, to kill him.

  (For is not “kill” a terrifying word? If you kill, you become a killer.)

  (Better to think of punishment, exacting justice. When there is no other recourse but the sewing shears.)

  She has never hurt anyone in her life! Even as a child she didn’t hit or wrestle with other children, or at least not often. Or at least that she remembers.

  He is the oppressor. He has murdered her dreams.

  He must be punished before he leaves her.

  Each time she has hidden the shears she has come a little closer (she thinks) to the time when she will use them. Just stab, stab, stab in the way he pounds himself into her, her body, using her body, his face contorted and ugly, terrible to behold.

  The act that is unthinkable as it is irrevocable.

  The shears are much stronger than an ordinary pair of scissors, as they are slightly larger.

  The shears once belonged to her mother, who’d been a quite skilled seamstress. In the Polish community in Hackensack, her mother was most admired.

  She tries to sew too. Though she is less skilled than her mother.

  Needing to mend her clothes—hems of dresses, underwear, even stockings. And it is calming to the nerves, like knitting, crocheting, even typing when there is no time pressure.

  Except—You did a dandy job with these letters, my dear! But I’m afraid not “perfect”—you will have to do them over.

  Sometimes she hates Mr. Tvek as much as she hates him.

  Under duress she can grip the shears firmly, she is sure. She has been a typist since the age of fifteen, and she believes that it is because of this skill that her fingers have grown not only strong but unerring.

  Of course, she understands: a man could slap the shears out of her hand in a single gesture. If he sees what she is doing, before the icepick-sharp points stabs into his flesh.

  She must strike him swiftly and she must strike him in the throat.

  The “carotid artery”—she knows what this is.

  Not the heart, she doesn’t know where the heart might be, exactly. Protected by ribs. The torso is large, bulky—too much fat. She could not hope to pierce the heart with the shears in a single swift blow.

  Even the back, where the flesh is less thick, would be intimidating to her. She has a nightmare vision of the points of the shears stuck in the man’s back, not deep enough to kill him, only just wound him, blood streaming everywhere as he flails his arms and bellows in rage and pain . . .

  Therefore, the neck. The throat.

  In the throat, the male is as vulnerable as the female.

  Once the sharp points of the shears pierce his skin, puncture the artery, there will be no turning back for either of them.

  Eleven a.m.

  Light rap of his knuckles on the door. Hel-lo.

  Turning of the key. And then—

  Shutting the door behind him. Approaching her.

  Staring at her with eyes like ants running over her (nude) body.

  It is a scene in a movie: that look of desire in a man’s face. A kind of hunger, greed.

  (Should she speak to him? Often at such times he seems scarcely to hear her words, so engrossed in what he sees.)

  (Maybe better to say nothing. So he can’t wince at her nasal New Jersey accent, tell her Shhh!)

  Last winter after that bad quarrel she’d tried to bar him from the apartment. Tried to barricade the door by dragging a chair in front of it, but (of course) he pushed his way in by brute strength.

  It is childish, futile to try to bar the man. He has his own key, of course.

  Following which she was punished. Severely.

  Thrown onto the bed and her face pressed into a pillow, scarcely could she breathe, her cries muffled, begging for him not to kill her as her back, hips, buttocks were soundly beaten with his fists.

  And then, her legs roughly parted.

  Just a taste of what I will do to you if you—ever—try—this—again.

  Dirty Polack!

  Of course they’d made up.

  Each time, they’d made up.

  He had punished her by not calling, staying away. But eventually he’d returned, as she’d known he would.

  Bringing her a dozen red roses. A bottle of his favorite Scotch whisky.

  She’d taken him back, it might be said.

  She’d had no choice. It might be said.

  No! None of this will happen, don’t be ridiculous.

  She is frightened but she is thrilled.

  She is thrilled but she is frightened.

  At eleven a.m. she will see him at the door to the bedroom, as he pockets his key. Staring at her so intently she feels the power of being, if only for these fleeting moments, female.

  That look of desire in the man’s face. The clutch of the mouth like a pike’s mouth.

  The look of possession as he thinks, Mine.

  By this time she will have changed her shoes. Of course.

  As in a movie scene, it is imperative that the woman be wearing not the plain black flat-heeled shoes she wears for comfort when she is alone but a pair of glamorous sexy high-heeled shoes which the man has purchased for her.

  (Though it is risky to appear together in public in such a way, the man quite enjoys taking the girl to several Fifth Avenue stores for the purchase of shoes. In her closet are at least a dozen pairs of expensive shoes he has bought for her, high-heeled, painful to wear but undeniably glamorous. Gorgeous crocodile-skin shoes he’d bought her for her last birthday, last month. He insists she wear high-heeled shoes even if it’s just when they’re alone together in her apartment.)

  (Especially high heels when she’s nude.)

  Seeing that look in the man’s eyes thinking, Of course he loves me. That is the face of love.

  Waiting for him to arrive. And what time is it? Eleven a.m.

  If he truly loves her he will bring flowers.

  To make it up to you, honey. For last night.

  He has said to her that of all the femal
es he has known, she is the only one who seems to be happy in her body.

  Happy in her body. This is good to hear!

  He means, she guesses, adult females. Little girls are quite happy in their bodies when they are little/young enough.

  So unhappy. Or—happy . . .

  I mean, I am happy.

  In my body I am happy.

  I am happy when I am with you.

  And so when he steps into the room she will smile happily at him. She will lift her arms to him as if she does not hate him and wish him dead.

  She will feel the weight of her breasts as she raises her arms. She will see his eyes fasten greedily on her breasts.

  She will not scream at him, Why the hell didn’t you come last night like you promised? Goddamn bastard, you can’t treat me like shit on your shoe!

  Will not scream at him, D’you think I will just take it—this shit of yours? D’you think I am like your damn wife, just lay there and take it, d’you think a woman has no way of hitting back? No way of revenge?

  A weapon of revenge. Not a male weapon but a female weapon: sewing shears.

  It is appropriate that the sewing shears had once belonged to her mother. Though her mother never used the shears as she might have wished.

  If she can grasp the shears firmly in her hand, her strong right hand, if she can direct the blow, if she can strike without flinching.

  If she is that kind of woman.

  Except: she isn’t that kind of woman. She is a romantic-minded girl to whom a man might bring a dozen red roses, a box of expensive chocolates, articles of (silky, intimate) clothing. Expensive high-heeled shoes.

  A woman who sings and hums “Tea for two, and two for tea, you for me and me for you, alone . . .”

  Eleven a.m. He will be late!

  Goddamn, he hates this. He is always late.

  At the corner of Lexington and Thirty-First turning west on Thirty-First and so to Fifth Avenue. And then south.

  Headed south into a less dazzling Manhattan.

  He lives at Seventy-Second and Madison: Upper East Side.

  She lives in a pretty good neighborhood (he thinks)—for her.