Break and Enter

by Colin Harrison

  By the time the cab dropped him before the restaurant awning, he had decided that spending over a hundred and fifty dollars for dinner was ludicrous, a crime. Then he saw Janice. She was waiting for him just inside, wearing the tight blue dress she knew he liked and her pearl necklace, a gift from his mother. She wore new shoes and her hair was up in a French braid.

  “There’s my date,” he said to her after coming inside. Her eyes were excited, willing to play. He wondered if her mood was due to John Apple. He could cut that fruit in two and get different answers: One, Janice was bright and perky because Apple’s attentions to her put her in a more confident position in respect to Peter, or perhaps, two—something he could never ask—things had gone sour with Apple and Janice was becoming more accommodating.

  They ordered dinner and a bottle of wine. He told her about his mother’s upcoming surgery. Janice smiled sadly.

  “She’s the mother I lost.”

  “I know. I always knew that.”

  “We picked out my wedding dress together. It was—”

  “It was,” he interrupted boldly, “a full-length, off-the-shoulder, lace wedding dress, with tiny hooks in the back, size six. It had to be let out just a bit in the bust”—he tossed back his wine—“and the dress and alteration cost a total of five hundred and sixty-six 1983 Reagan dollars.”

  Janice looked away, distracted.

  “You know these things about me no one else will ever know.”

  “Of course I do,” he responded, sensing the opportunity. “I know where the three fillings are in your teeth, not that that’s such a wonderful detail. I know you rode a camel at the circus when you were six. You were hit by a car when you were riding your bike on your fifteenth birthday, and the driver was a fat, hysterical woman in her fifties. I know your left ankle aches in wet weather as a result. You sleep on your stomach and always have. And, of course, you peed in the cat box in the bathroom when you were three years old.”

  “That was an experiment.” She tasted her food. He waved at the waiter for another bottle.

  “I know that you are one of the very few people who can tie a maraschino cherry stem in a knot using only your tongue and teeth. What else? Your mother never would explain why the dates on her birth certificate and her driver’s license didn’t match. I know you’re a better driver than me and most men. I know—”

  “Peter, I don’t like the way you figured out where I live.” The tone shifted; he should have realized Janice would want to scold him. “Snooping around there was pretty sleazy.”

  “I’m a desperate man. That is said in truth, not in jest.”

  “What did you do, go in the bedroom and read my journal?”

  “I went in there, but there was no time for that.”

  “You would have,” she asserted.

  “Probably,” he laughed.

  “Well, I was pretty upset. My lawyer is, too.”

  “Berger predicted you’d get somebody tough like him.”

  “Berger never liked me.”

  “Sure he did,” Peter said with a full mouth.

  “He said I was the kind of woman men loved but didn’t like.”

  “I like you, and I love you.”

  She wasn’t interested in this response. “So often men are only interested in women who present a challenge. If a woman is simply decent and loving, the man will tire of her. I see it at work. These women are trapped in patterns. No matter who they talk to, they still go back to their abusive man. Or another abusive man. It’s what they know.” She squinted and tapped her head. “Their universe includes a man like that.”

  They ate quietly. He wondered if the evening could be redeemed. Janice, he noticed, was enjoying her wine again, tasting it against her lips with her tongue, and, after the main course was cleared, when he ordered a third bottle with dessert, she smiled at him, sharing an unspoken secret.

  “Well?” Her eyes were bright, her voice soft now.

  “I can’t decide. Part of me wants to take you home with me tonight, and part of me thinks it will only cause trouble.”

  “I feel that way, too.”

  They looked at each other.

  “You seeing anyone?” Peter risked.

  “Jealous?” Janice tasted her chocolate torte.

  “Of course,” he said quietly.

  “It’s too soon. You should know that about me.”

  He grunted credibly, amazed at the smoothness of their lies. He would not be depressed by it, however.

  “You?” She looked up. “I’d imagine you’d get pretty itchy pretty quickly.”

  “I itch.”

  “Sure,” she teased, her tongue on her bottom lip.

  He leaned forward. His head felt loose on his neck. Janice, he saw, was completely drunk.

  “I’m crazy about you, you know.”

  “How crazy?”

  “I’ve got deep reserves of affection for you, stored in fifty-five-gallon barrel drums.”

  She laughed and pretended to scowl.

  “No, it’s true. A big warehouse near the river. I’ve got a man running a forklift twenty-four hours a day, stacking drums up to the ceiling. Rows ten high and five hundred long.”

  “His name, please, for our records.”

  “Joe Cupid. He has lavender eyes and a tattoo on his chest, a wild riot of roses.” That actually described a rape defendant he prosecuted several years back, but Janice didn’t know that. “He was trained and handpicked for the job.”

  “Stop. It’s not fun anymore. You’re making fun of me.”

  “I’ll stop, Janice,” he said quickly to erase the moment.

  They were quiet for a minute.

  “I don’t want any kind of answer now,” he began. “Just think about what I’m going to say.” The wine filled him with hope. “This is the proposition: You move back into the house. I quit my job now—”

  “In the midst of this big case?”

  “Yessiree Bob, and we go somewhere, anywhere. I’ll get some quiet work, something with reasonable hours, and we’ll start having a family. We’ve got about five years left to have a family, Janice. You’ll be a great mother. I’ve always said that to you. We have a lot of things to work out, and I’d just like another chance to work on them. I mean, Jesus, Janice, it’s been so many years together and you’re my life, you know what I mean? We grew up together, Janice. We were kids when we met. I’ll be honest with you—I can’t throw all that away. A person can’t throw away everything. Any psychiatrist will tell you that. I’m going a little crazy without you, Janice, I’m doing things—”

  “What have you been doing?” she said, worry in her voice.

  He remembered the nude, still form of Johnetta Henry. He did not want to know why he was thinking of her.

  “What are we going to do?” Janice asked.

  “Let me say what I was going to say.” Peter had heard an open door in her voice. “I want you to consider coming back. Like I said, I’d get a different job, we’d move somewhere out of the city if you want, or stay. You could start having those kids, the whole deal. Damn it, why can’t we have a hell of a good shot at it? We’re the kind of people who should be able to make a go of something like this. Aren’t you a little burnt out on dealing with all these other people’s problems? I am. I don’t think of myself as the same as the average guy out there, getting a divorce when the first problem pops up.”

  “I used to imagine you holding a little dark-haired girl in your arms,” Janice interrupted happily. “I used to think about things like that.”

  “Well, keep thinking about them,” he said softly. “They’re damn good things to think about.”

  “You tip the waiter?” she asked.

  “Thirty percent.”

  “Peter,” she scolded happily.

  “I’ve had a great night. I’m thankful.”

  She handed him the car keys. “You drive.”

  In her Subaru—the license of which was recorded on some computer file within Vi
nnie’s empire—he flipped on the heater and rummaged through the cassette box, pulled out an old James Taylor tape, and popped it in the machine. Sweet Baby James crooned songs of love and suffering and loyalty. He drove slowly, conscious of how drunk he was—they had killed the third bottle with Janice going heavy. It was easy to get a DWI, and the papers invariably picked up on city officials caught drunk. He timed the green lights on Market Street. Bulky specters of men stood on billowing steam grates, silhouetted before the bright glass lobbies of the office buildings. They didn’t scare him—they could all go to hell, or to the piss-stenched, rat-infested tunnels under the subway, which was the same thing. Tonight he was warm. Janice held his free hand.

  “Hey, you,” she murmured. He watched a flashing police car cross two blocks ahead and slowed. Janice pushed her forehead into his shoulder. “Why do I love you?”

  “ ‘Cause that’s the way it is,” he concluded drunkenly.

  “Am I doing the wrong thing now?”

  “No,” he said. “I honestly don’t think so. I’m very happy about what you’re doing.”

  He turned off Market. Cobblestone thudded beneath the tires, a sound that meant they were home. There was an open parking space under a streetlamp two doors from the house.

  “I love this street,” Janice whispered, shaking her head sadly. “I always have, long before we ever moved here.”

  “Well, we’re home now.”

  He saw fear—a trusting fear—in her eyes. It was the same fear he saw in the families of murder victims, fear that the world had been torn apart and could never be put together again, trust that he would reassure them, offer them something to help.

  “You love me?” she asked.

  “Yes, Janice. Yes.”

  He reached for the door.

  “Wait,” she whispered. “Let’s just wait a moment here.”

  He pulled her to him and made an affectionate whistling noise against her eyebrow.

  “Hmm?” she said.

  He kissed her nose, dabbed his tongue against its tip. She smiled sleepily. He was glad they had made it home safely.

  “I want it again,” she said as in a dream, gathering his hand to her breast.

  He complied, then kissed her on the forehead and gently on the cheeks and nose again, then the lips; a deep, open kiss, then nuzzled in the private place behind her ear. He didn’t care if she fell asleep and they didn’t make love, just as long as he could hold her. That was all he asked. If she fell asleep in their bed, he would feel that God loved him. That was silly and hokey, but he believed it. Maybe he would start going to Quaker Meeting again, out of gratitude. Janice would fall asleep and he would curl up with her and hold her and know who he was again.

  “It’s cold out, too cold for sleepy ladies,” he whispered, tucking in her scarf. They locked the car and walked toward the dark house. Janice touched her finger to the iron railing that ran up the beveled granite steps to their door.

  “You sure you love me?” she asked him. “You want me?”

  “Yes.”

  Inside, Janice dreamily walked up the stairs, heading straight down the hall. “It’s clean,” she said. He followed her. She let her fingernails trail along the wall. “Oh, my.” She smiled when they were both inside the bathroom. “You are not allowed in here now, mister—sir.” She checked the box beneath the sink and found her old diaphragm and the curled-up tube of contraceptive jelly. Deep within some sober sector of his brain, Peter guiltily rejoiced that he had replaced the diaphragm in its case. Was he evil for doing so? Of course he was.

  “This will come in handy,” Janice said.

  “Don’t use it,” he told her. “Don’t.”

  “No?” Her eyes filmed and her lip quivered happily.

  “Have to start sooner or later, right?”

  They embraced and she kissed him, pushing her wine-soaked tongue deep into his mouth. “I do love you, Peter Scattergood, and I do wish to be your wife, forever. Now get out of here so I can do my business.”

  Before he left her, he looked into the bathroom mirror, and what he saw—it was too good to be true—was his wife in his arms, her silky brown hair falling across his fingers, her nose buried into the wool of his suit, the youthful, eager flush on each of their cheeks and his own dilated, glad eyes defying the harsh light in the mirror. And wouldn’t it be wonderful to make love knowing that this might bring a baby? Finally, after thousands upon thousands of copulations, with the sense that something truly wonderful might be created? The possibility was profoundly erotic.

  “Okay,” he whispered, hugging tighter. “I’ll do the door and the heat and the lights. Be back up in a minute.”

  Then, having floated goofily down the stairs, something about the sound of the front-door lock as it turned made him pause. He realized that when he had passed the bedroom on his way down, the door had been closed. A minute ago it had been open.

  Worried about an intruder, sweating suddenly, Peter tried to climb the stairs. But the wine made him sway from the wall to the banister. He fell forward and crawled stupidly on hands and knees to the top step. What he saw there made him stop. Janice paused naked with her hand on the door to the bedroom. She stood radiant beneath the soft hall light, her shoulders and breasts and arms gilded. Her nipples were hard, perhaps from the cool air. She was completely familiar to him. He knew all of her, every line. The sight of her naked seemed the most natural and wonderful thing in the world.

  “My bathrobe’s not here.” She stuck out her bottom lip in mock sadness, then smiled at him. He was unable to talk, for he knew that smile and had craved it for weeks—it meant their history together was cherished, irrevocably intimate, that she forgave him all and forgave both of them, that her best hope was renewed. She turned the handle and walked into the bedroom.

  The naked woman who walked out of the bedroom and shut the door five seconds later had been hurt so badly that she was unable to speak. She stiffened her back and looked into her husband’s face with eyes filled not with anger—though doubtless that would come later, in greater proportion than ever before—but with simple incomprehension, brute shock. Her mouth was small, her eyes wide. Peter felt a crushing pressure on his head, as if two massive hands rubbed his skull between them. Janice peered into him and well beyond toward the unfathomably horrible trick that had been played on her. He tried awkwardly to move toward her, fumbling his feet on the stairs. No! she mouthed. She held her hands out in front of her, motioning at him to keep his distance. She wanted no comfort from him.

  Neither of them spoke.

  Janice retreated to the bathroom. He heard a muffled choking noise. He sank to the carpet, somehow knowing what she had seen. Janice emerged with her dress on and carrying some clothing. Cold sober. Her polished pumps touched the floor in front of his eyes. Janice hurried down the stairs, found her coat and purse in the living room, and slipped out the door she had walked through not ten minutes before. The car engine roared to life, and she gunned her way out.

  In time he stood and lurched into the bedroom. A cigarette tingled in his nose. Janice must have known immediately. The room was dark, save for the red pin light over the bed.

  “I guess I fucked things up,” Cassandra’s remorseless voice came to him. He was dead-dull inside his mind, guilty as charged, no need for a confession.

  “Please,” he murmured in a low shocked voice. “Please leave here, please.”

  Chapter Eight

  IN THE HOSPITAL, the shift nurse asked him to wait outside while she checked his mother, saying she had lost more blood than expected because of the growth of the tumor. Peter checked his watch. Ten minutes was all he could afford. The new week was coming at him like the Market Street subway, one second a bright light in the distance, and the next, eighty tons of noise and violence about to run him over. The events of Saturday night had more or less trashed Sunday. Cassandra had gotten out of bed, the glow of her cigarette floating through the dark. Standing in the doorway—determined to crush
out any semblance of romance—he’d flipped all the bedroom lights on. She stood naked, her bony chest meager and sad.

  “Your wife is a very beautiful woman,” she’d said then, either in self-deprecation or in anger, he didn’t know which. She’d walked to his closet, where she’d hung her dress, then put her jewelry back on and brushed her hair. He’d watched the muscles in her arm. She was not attractive, not now, and yet a little jolt of misplaced sexual desire ran through him then. Cassandra had turned and met his gaze. Her voice was direct: “Remember, two women were disappointed tonight, not just one.”

  His response: “This time, leave the key here.” And she did.

  Sunday night, the local networks, desperate to scare up some sort of new twist on the Carothers case, had provoked the Governor into looking grimly into the camera lights and saying he was “taking a particular interest in this case.” The D.A. had also been chased down in Washington and had uttered a few sonorous words to the cameras about his faith in his staff. This activity was, of course, a non-statement but it added another concentric ring of media coverage, another piece of grist for the daily news cycle, and would make Hoskins levitate in anxiety. Lying in bed, Peter had watched the newscasts. How stupid and meaningless the speculation! A trial would be months away, yet the anchors frowned and shook their heads gravely. Soon, Peter hoped, maybe even that morning, he’d get some proof that Carothers had killed Johnetta Henry. Just a dime-sized speck of blood would do.

  He was due at work an hour ago but had called in to explain where he was. Hoskins had been unforgiving, even suspicious. “Tell everybody in your family to get better real fast, Peter. We got the Governor watching us.” As if there weren’t other cases going on that the homicide unit didn’t have to worry about. Carothers had rightfully been denied bail and so was safely in custody, yet Hoskins would surely have his foot jammed on the gas, ordering further forensic tests at the sealed apartment in West Philadelphia, hollering from his desk to various innocent passersby, and acting for all the world as if his day in the sun was approaching. Using Peter as the tunnel rat while he carried the torch from a safe distance.