Shorts - Sinister Shorts (23 page)

She shrugged. “My mom's decided to enroll me in private school next fall. So this is my last day here. Could you possibly double the credit on the story? I worked
really
hard on it.” Her words, her posture were as always. Only the force behind her words betrayed the sea change in their relationship.

“I guess I could. Yes. Well, we're really sorry to lose you, Roo. Stop in to say hi next year. And you have a nice summer, now.”

“Have a hot one, Mr. Capshaw.”

He watched her leave, closing the door on his class for the year. Outside, Mr. Cahill, taking advantage of the school-wide exodus, started up the leaf blower. Ignoring the din, Carl rushed to clear his desk. He wanted to get home early and curl up with Cath in the hammock. He needed her to steady him, to bring him down from the lunatic elevation of his thoughts. Because there was no tragedy here. No harm done to anyone! No suicide! No murder! Looking around the classroom, he allowed the prosaic sight of crooked desks and beat-up linoleum to mute the twanging of his heart.

He dismissed his sixth-period study hall early and finished marking his students' stories. Before leaving, before putting the gun in his pocket to stow in the locked box at home, he reread the ending of Roo's tale.

“She would dispense with her mother's criticism, that she was a greedy girl, that nothing satisfied her. That breaking the rules led to heartache. How worth it it was to have a hope, play it out, and blunder. What did her mother understand about the moments that fed a girl's soul and in between, the pleasurable hunger of her waiting?”

She needed to cut it. She needed to tone down the florid language, be more subtle. He wrote on her paper to “watch the fragments” and gave her an A.

Laughing to himself, restored, he wondered how she would interpret her grade.

On the way home, he stopped to buy roses, yellow ones, Cath's favorite. He felt such love for her, such appreciation. He couldn't believe his luck, but he was so thankful for another chance. It had been an aberration, he said to himself in the car on the way up the hill to his house. He would never, ever do it again.

“Cath,” he cried, throwing open the front door. “Cath?”

A yellow note, very brief, had been stuck to the front of the refrigerator.

She would not be back.

Juggernaut

From the Hindi,
Jagann-ath
. A large, overpowering, destructive force or object-an idol of Krishna which is drawn on a huge cart during an annual parade, under whose wheels devotees throw themselves to be crushed…

The first accident gave Neal the idea for the second accident.

He had spent the evening of the first crash pouring coins down the throat of the Silver Ghost, the name of his favorite slot machine at Harrah's Tahoe. As usual, when he was about to give up, eager, in fact, to watch the cherries, plums, and jackpot signs line up, signifying nothing, three bars kachunged into place and seventy-five dollars in tokens pinged into the bin. It was not a big win, considering his investment that evening, but it was enough to keep him going until his eyes were bloodshot and the free drinks from earlier in the evening had invaded his bloodstream and slithered over his brain stem. Now he felt tired. Exhausted. Oh, how he could not wait for bed.

His car was hard to find because he had not parked in the usual spot, so he floundered around the lot looking for it under stars bright as burning spear points, shivering. Up here in the Sierra, November always came as a rude shock. October blew through like fire, all reds and oranges and gusting wind. Winter chased right behind it like a hound from some bone-biting, cold hell.

Finally, he found the Toyota crouched in the far end of the lot, almost touching the dark forest beyond. He wished he were drunk, but no such luck. The abysmal state of his stomach had kept him prudent, along with the hot cups of coffee toward the end of the session.

Too bad, because a clear head brought him around to thoughts of Juliette, who would be waiting at home, mad because once again-once again, she would say, in that new and strident tone he hated-she had to spend the evening alone. Of course, she wouldn't say that at first, she would stand at the kitchen counter watching him with her mouth sullen, refusing to talk, refusing to respond.

As he started the engine, he drifted into a pleasant fantasy. She would decide for once to treat him right. He would come through the door and find her sleeping in a pretty pink negligee like the one she wore when they were first married. He would crawl into bed. Her fragrant arms would rise to pull him down beneath the cool white sheets. Not a word would be spoken; no guilt would be heaped on him.

Checking his rearview mirror for oblivious drunks, he backed out slowly, drove through the valet parking area and out toward the street, where he stopped to wait for a break in traffic before entering. It was while he was there, mentally with Juliette, imagining what they would do in bed, that a stretch limo roared up behind him, screeched its brakes, skated into a skid, and slammed into him with the force of a locomotive.

The next day he awoke in the hospital, loaded up on Darvon. He had jammed his foot on the brake and been thrown forward, almost through the windshield, he was told. Luckily, car traffic along the highway had been light, so no other car had been involved. Aside from a moment of paralyzing fear as he saw the car sliding along the ice toward him in his rearview mirror, he remembered almost nothing of the accident.

He was shook up, that was all. The doctor and the chiropractor he found later legitimized the exaggerated backache and the jaw trouble. His lawyer settled for twenty-five thousand from the limo company, and with another twenty-five hundred thrown in by the casino for nuisance value, he had enough for bills and gambling money until February.

To add to his good fortune, there had been that moment when Juliette arrived at the hospital, her blonde hair shimmering down her shoulders like the falls near Emerald Bay, gorgeous and young. He basked in the envy of his fellow patients and for just a few moments there at the beginning when she thought he was really badly hurt, he basked in the glow of her concern.

“Your hands?” she had asked first thing and, for a second, he couldn't think why she would care. Then he remembered. He played the piano in the bar at the casino, didn't he? When he had a job, which she thought he did.

“The doctor says no permanent damage,” he told her.

She pulled his hands to her chest and left them there to feel the pulsing life underneath her sweater. Five years of her, and he would never get enough.

The windfall caused problems. Soon after he got home from the hospital the fights with Juliette resumed. She wanted the money, wanted to put him on an allowance, wanted his paychecks, wanted to save for a future, and yammer yammer yammer. He never could hold his own in an argument with her. Her words pounded on him like a club, so he hurt her back the only way he knew how, with the back of his hand and sometimes when she just would not shut up, with his fists. He always regretted it, always begged for her forgiveness, and she always came through after a day or two.

If she ever left him… but he would not allow her to leave. She knew that. He would hunt her down and bring her back. He had done it before, and she knew he would do it again. Marriage made two people one. He would no more let her go than he would let his left leg walk off without him.

Nothing meant more to him than Juliette. She was his biggest score, the one he would hold on to.

One day, a few months after the first accident, Neal went shopping at the jewelry store at the outlet center for a little present for her. He wanted something that would tell her exactly how bad he felt about a minor fracas of the night before. The saleslady pulled out a display of glamorous-looking gold necklaces. All the glitter in one place made him nervous-he turned his back briefly to count his money.

He had spent most of the insurance settlement, so he counted out his singles. When he was satisfied he could just swing the thinnest gold chain and was about to say so, the saleslady said, “Let me show you some other necklaces I think you'll love!” Sweeping the expensive chains back underneath the counter, she came up with another display that looked identical to him. Leaning in conspiratorially, she had said, “Vermeil. All precious metal, of course.”

“Gold?” he had asked.

“Sterling silver with a fine layer of gold on top. Better because it's just as beautiful and has the same intrinsic worth, but is more reasonably priced.”

“I'll take it,” he said, selecting a thick, flashy one he knew Juliette would love. He would tell her it was solid gold. She would never know the difference.

While the woman stooped under the counter finding paper to wrap it up, he happened to look out the store window. Out on the highway, a Caddie was hanging a left in front of a beat-up white Pontiac coming down the opposite side of the highway.

Only the Pontiac couldn't stop, not with the icy sleet coating the road. There was that same eerie moment of screeching brakes and watching a quarter-ton of metal sliding forward on pure inertia. Then crrrunch!

The Pontiac driver got out, rubbing his neck. Lucky break for him.

That moment, an idea that he had nursed like a seed since November sprouted into full foliage. Here was real money, ready for the taking. Risky, but a much better bet than the slots. A way to bring peace back home, enough to please Juliette, enough to get him out of hock, enough for a few more games, any one of them a potential big winner.

All he had to do was make sure whoever hit him next time was massively insured. And make sure he didn't get killed.

And he knew just the man to help him out.

The saleslady handed him a small package wrapped in metallic paper. “She's going to love it.”

“She will,” he said. “You are so right.”

That afternoon, after he gave Juliette the necklace and collected his thanks from her, he said casually, “Why not call Lenny and Carol? Invite them for dinner tonight. They haven't been by in quite a while.”

They were sitting together on the couch in the living room. A rare fire burned, and Juliette's cheeks glowed as orange as persimmons in the light. She had been studying for a test at the kitchen table. An older sophomore at Lake Tahoe Community College at twenty-three, she wanted to better herself, she always said. Still holding the chain, she turned to look at him. “But you hate Lenny.”

“Correction,” he said. “Your big brother hates me. Always getting on me about the way I treat you.” He had a lock of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. His hand slipped along like it used to slide over the ivory keys a long time ago when music had seemed to have a direct line from his imagination to his fingers. He laughed, although he didn't feel funny. “He had you all lined up to marry some straight little civil engineer, some meat loaf who would agree with everything he said, yessir, that's right, Lenny, uh huh, you are so smart…”

He waited for her to say she was glad she'd married him but she was silent, looking into the fire.

“Old Lenny doesn't get it,” he went on, annoyed, but aware this was not a good time to pick a fight. “How close we are. How well we fit.”

“No, he's never understood it,” she agreed, and her hand tugged on the new necklace.

The words grated, and the feeling behind the words grated more. Was there the tiniest suggestion that she, too, didn't understand it? He made his voice calm. “But hey, he's family. We should see them more.”

She had turned back to him. He put a lot into the smile he gave her. She smiled back tentatively, then jumped up to make the call. She thought this was a peace offering like the necklace, another part of the “I'm sorry” game. Fine. Whatever it took.

He hoped she would cook something tasty, something to take his mind off those dark, glowering eyes of Lenny's, and Carol's jittery chat.

They arrived about seven, stomping the snow off their shoes in the entryway on a thick rug Juliette put there for that purpose.

“Sonofabitchin' cold night,” Neal said, holding the door, giving them a big smile.

As usual, the wrong thing to say. A thought-policeman, Lenny was already glaring at Neal. Lenny thought he was better than Neal, better educated, more intelligent, classier… just thinking about it made Neal angry, but he kept his smile locked in place.

Fortunately, Carol and Juliette smoothed things over, making those female sounds that reminded Neal of spicy smells, permeating the air with promise but ultimately just amounting to a lot of warm air breezing through the room. They made it through dinner with just one really bad moment, when Lenny mentioned that he had spent some time down at Harrah's one night with some out-of-town associates-only reason he'd ever go into one of those nasty places-and was so disappointed that Neal was not, as advertised within the family, playing in the piano bar. “Asked the bartender,” Lenny had said, shoveling in a mouthful of cacciatore. “Told me they hadn't seen you in months.”

That made Juliette send Neal a visual promise that said, Later, honey, you will make me believe he is mistaken or this lovely evening that started out so well will be spoiled. “That guy must be new, Lenny” was all she said. “Neal's been working steady, haven't you, Neal?”