Curtains (19 page)

He couldn’t explain. If she had been in the
grocery store with him, she’d have been impressed by the
watermelon’s vibrancy and vitality. Even though the melon was no
longer connected to its roots, it was earthy and ripe, a perfectly
natural symbol for the last day of summer. But he was afraid if he
opened the door, it would just be an ovate mass of dying fruit.

“I liked this one,” he said.

“Where are my things?”

“I—” He looked at the floor, at the beige
ceramic tiles whose seams of grout were spotless.

“You forgot. On purpose. Just like
always.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and suddenly his throat
was dry and tight, and he thought of the husband and how he must
have slid open the cutlery drawer and selected something that could
speak for him when words were worthless.

“Of course, you’re sorry. You’ve always been
sorry. But that never changes anything, does it?”

“My medicine—”

“Have a seat in the living room, and I’ll
bring it to you.”

He went and sat on the sofa, afraid to muss
the throw pillows. The early local news came on the television. A
fire on the other side of the county had left a family homeless.
Then came the obligatory follow-up on the murder.

“Investigators say they may have uncovered a
motive in last week’s brutal slaying—”

Click. He looked away from the screen and
Maybelle stood there, the remote raised. “Evil, evil, evil,” she
said. “That nasty man. I just don’t know what goes through people’s
minds, do you?”

Ricky wondered. Maybe the husband had a wife
who controlled the television, the radio, the refrigerator, the
garage, and wrote large charity checks to the animal shelter.
Maybelle gave him his pills and a glass of water. He swallowed,
grateful.

“I read that he was an accountant,” Ricky
said. “Just like me.”

“Takes all kinds. The poor woman, you’ve got
to feel sorry for her. Closes her eyes to go to sleep and the next
thing you know, the man she trusted and loved with all her
heart—”

“—is standing over her, the lights are off
but the knife flashes just the same, he’s holding the handle so
tight that his hand is aching, except he can’t feel it, it’s like
he’s got electricity running through his body, he’s on fire and
he’s never felt so powerful, and—”

Maybelle’s laughter interrupted him. “It’s
not a movie, Ricky. A wife-killing slasher isn’t any more special
than a thief who shoots a stranger for ten bucks. When it comes
down to it, they’re all low-down dirty dogs who ought to be locked
up before they hurt somebody else.”

“Everybody feels sorry for her,” Ricky said.
“But what about the husband? Don’t you think he probably feels sick
inside? She’s gone, but he’s left to live with the knowledge of
what he’s done.”

“Not for long. I hear the D.A. is going after
the death penalty. She’s up for re-election next year and has been
real strong on domestic violence.”

“He’ll probably plead temporary
insanity.”

“Big surprise,” Maybelle said. “Only a crazy
man would kill his wife.”

“I don’t know. With a good lawyer—”

“They’re always making excuses. He’ll say his
wife made him wear a dress when no one was looking. That he had to
lick her high heels. That she was carrying on with the pet store
supplier. It’s always the woman’s fault. It makes me sick.”

Ricky looked at the carpet. The stains must
have been tremendous, geysers of blood spraying in different
directions, painting the walls, seeping into the sheets and shag,
soiling the delicate undergarments that the wife no doubt wore to
entice her husband into chronic frustration.

“Ricky?”

Her voice brought him back from the last reel
of his fantasy film and into the living room.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” he said, lying only a little.

“Ready to go back to the grocery store?”

“Yes.”

“And not forget anything this time?”

He nodded.

After shopping, getting all the items on the
list, he sat in the grocery store parking lot and re-read all the
newspapers hidden beneath the seat. He looked at the mug shot and
visualized his own face against the grayish background with the
black lines. He pored over the details he already knew by heart,
then imagined the parts not fleshed out in the news accounts: the
trip up the stairs in the silent house, a man with a mission, no
thought of the act itself or the aftermath. One step, one stroke at
a time. The man had chosen a knife from the kitchen drawer instead
of buying one especially for the job. It had clearly been a crime
of passion, and passion had been missing from Ricky’s life for many
years.

He looked at the paper that held the wife’s
picture. He tried to juxtapose the picture with Maybelle’s. He
failed. He realized he couldn’t summon his own wife’s face.

He drove home and was in the kitchen putting
the things away when Maybelle entered the room.

“You’ve stacked my cottage cheese three
high,” she said. “You know I only like it with two. I can’t check
the date otherwise.”

“There’s no room,” he said.

“Take out that stupid watermelon.”

“But I like them when they’re cold.”

“Put it in the bathtub or something.”

He squeezed the can of mushroom soup he was
holding, wishing he were strong enough to make the metal seams rip
and the cream spurt across the room.

“I put dinner on the table,” she said. “Roast
beef and potatoes.”

“Green peas?”

“No, broccoli.”

“I wanted green peas.”

“How was I to know? You’ll eat what I served
or you can cook your own food.”

“I guess you didn’t make a cheesecake.”

“There’s ice cream in the freezer.” She
laughed. “Or you can eat your watermelon.”

He went to the dinner table. Maybelle had
already eaten, put away her place mat, and polished her end of the
table. Ricky sat and worked the potatoes, then held the steak knife
and studied its serrated edge. He sawed it across the beef and
watched the gray grains writhe beneath the metal.

Maybelle entered the dining room. “How’s your
food?”

“Yummy.”

“Am I not a good wife?”

He made an appreciative mumble around a
mouthful of food.

“I’m going upstairs,” she said. “I’m going to
have a nice, long bath and then put on something silly and
slinky.”

Ricky nodded.

“I’ll be in bed, waiting. And, who knows, you
might get lucky.” She smiled. She’d already brushed her teeth. Her
face was perfectly symmetrical, pleasing, her eyes soft and gentle.
He felt a stirring inside him. How could he ever forget her face?
Ricky compared her to the murdered wife and wondered which of them
was prettiest. Which of them would the press anoint as having
suffered a greater tragedy?

“I’ll be up in a bit,” he said. “I want to do
a little reading.”

“Just don’t wait too long. I’m sleepy.”

“Yes, dear.”

When he was alone, he spat the half-chewed
mouthful of food onto his plate. He carried the plate to the
kitchen and scraped the remains into the garbage disposal. He
wondered if the husband had thought of trying to hide the body, or
if he had been as surprised by his actions as she must have
been.

The watermelon was on the counter. Maybelle
had taken it from the refrigerator.

He went to the utensil drawer and slid it
open. He and Maybelle had no children, and safety wasn’t a concern.
The knives lay in a bright row, arranged according to length. How
had the husband made his decision? Size? Sharpness? Or the balance
of the handle?

If he had initially intended to make only one
thrust, he probably would have gone for depth. If he had aspired to
make art, then a number of factors came into play. Ricky’s head
hurt, his throat a wooden knot. He grabbed the knife that most
resembled the murder weapon shown in the press photographs.

Ricky turned the lights low, then carried the
knife to the counter. He pressed the blade to the watermelon and
found that the blade trembled in his hand. The watermelon grew soft
and blurred in his vision, and he realized he was weeping. How
could anyone ever destroy a thing of such beauty?

He forced himself to press the knife against
the cool green rind. The flesh parted but Ricky eased up as a
single drop of clear dew swelled from the wound. The husband hadn’t
hesitated, he’d raised the knife and plunged, but once hadn’t been
enough, neither had twice, three times, but over and over, a
rhythm, passion, passion, passion.

He dropped the knife and the tip broke as it
clattered across the tiles. The watermelon sat whole and smooth on
the counter. Tears tickled his cheeks. Maybelle was upstairs in the
dark bed, his pillows were stacked so he wouldn’t snore, the
familiar cupped and rounded area of the mattress was waiting for
him.

The husband had been a crazy fool, that was
all. He’d cut his wife to bits, no rhyme or reason. She hadn’t
asked for any of it. She was a victim of another person’s unvoiced
and unfulfilled desires, just like Maybelle.

Ricky spun and thrust his fist down into the
melon, squeezed the red wetness of its heart. He ripped the rind
open and the air grew sweet. He pulled at the pink insides, clawed
as if digging for some deeply buried secret. He was sobbing, and
the pulp spattered onto his face as he plunged his hands into the
melon again and again.

A voice pulled him from the red sea of rage
in which he was drowning.

Maybelle. Calling from upstairs.

“Ricky?”

He held his breath, his pulse throbbing so
hard he could feel it in his neck. He looked down at the counter,
at the mess in the kitchen, at the pink juice trickling to the
floor.

“Ricky?” she called again. He looked toward
the hall, but she was still upstairs. So she hadn’t heard.

He looked at his sticky hands.

“Are you coming to bed?”

He looked at the knife on the floor. His
stomach was as tight as a melon. He gulped for some air, tasted the
mist of sugar. “Yes, dear.”

She said no more, and must have returned to
bed in her silly and slinky things. The room would be dark and she
would be waiting.

Ricky collected the larger scraps of the
watermelon and fed them into the garbage disposal. He swept the
floor and scooped up the remaining shreds, then wiped the counter.
He wrung out a dish cloth and got on his hands and knees, scrubbing
the tiles and then the grout.

The husband had harbored no secrets. A
pathetic man who made another person pay for his shortcomings. He
was a sick, stupid animal. Ricky would think no more of him, and
tomorrow he would throw the newspapers away.

He washed his hands in the sink, put the
knife away, and gave the kitchen a cursory examination. No sign of
the watermelon remained, and his eyes were dry, and his hands no
longer trembled.

Tomorrow, summer would be over. It was the
end of something, and the beginning of something else. Maybelle was
waiting, and he might get lucky. Ricky went to the stairs and took
them one step at a time, up into darkness.

###

The Truth Behind The Lies

People who only know my paranormal stories
may not know that I have written in almost every genre, including
mystery, science fiction, fantasy, literary realism, and even
romance, though my romance doesn’t always end happily ever after. I
just love to read everything and expand my borders. Patricia
Highsmith, Agatha Christie, Nancy Drew, Hardee Boys, Charlotte
McLeod, Elmore Leonard, William Goldman, and James Lee Burke are in
my library, and all your influences turn up in your work until you
get “experienced.” Which means you get lazy and fall into a shallow
groove and keep doing the same thing over and over again.

The Digital Era heralds Act II of my career,
and my crime novels like
The Skull Ring
and
Disintegration
show a different side of me, plus I wrote a
couple of screenplays that slide easily into the mystery box. With
this new freedom comes an easy break from the commercial
considerations that demand you build a simple, identifiable brand.
Now I’m the Scott Nicholson brand, and I respect you enough to
credit you with taste, looks, intelligence, and good breeding. In
other words, you’re willing to broaden you horizons and not get
locked into reading the same story over and over with different
titles and author names.

But maybe I’m trying to slip a fast one by
you, run a con and take your money because you like mysteries and
I’m a horror writer at heart. So here’s a little examination of the
facts.

Dog Person
– This was inspired by a
true story. My friend Al Carson was talking about his dog’s
expensive medical problems and how he decided to have Sally “put to
sleep” instead of spending thousands of dollars. We discussed a
fictional version of the tale and, in his version, there were two
shots–first was the mercy killing of the dog, then the suicidal
shot. I went with the version here, where the guy loves his dog so
much that he just can’t face life without her. And, of course, the
treacherous wife gets the fruit of her hateful labors. Originally
published in
Cemetery Dance Magazine #56
in 2006 and
selected by esteemed editor Ellen Datlow for inclusion in
The
Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror.

Dead Air
—I wrote this while attending
Appalachian State University in 1996. I worked at the college radio
station in virtually every capacity at one time or another: jock,
general manager, promotions director, sportscaster and news
announcer. The cool think was to have a little made-up “handle,”
and I toyed with Ricky Nix for a while but in the end stuck with
what I had. Maybe there’s a little lesson about media
sensationalism in here. After 16 years of journalism, I can’t say
I’ve always been proud of my other profession. Originally appeared
in
Blue Murder Magazine
#3 in 1997, which was a progressive
little PDF publication way ahead of its time.