Wilderness Page 4

  "Killed somebody? No. But the thought doesn't bother me." Newman said, "For cris sake Janet, keep it down."

  She cocked her head at him and the flint edge came into her voice. It always scared him when the edge came. "Oh, you find me loud? Am I embarrassing you?"

  "No, it's just that if we do it, we wouldn't want people to say they heard us talking about it." He felt as if he'd been bad. His stomach ached slightly with apprehension. Her disapproval is devastating. She just looks hard at me and I get scared. Talk about pussy-whipped. "We are talking about murder." Hood said, "He's right, Janet."

  She smiled at Hood and nodded. "I know, Chris, it's one of the problems of the whole problem, isn't it? We have to kill this man Karl so that neither the police nor the gangsters know we did it, or even suspect us. I assume his friends or whatever would want to revenge him even if they only suspected."

  "And they're not concerned with rules of evidence, Janet," Hood said.

  "So we can't even be spotted," Janet said. "If they recognize us, we're dead." Hood smiled. "That sounds about right," he said.

  "We're still talking about murder here," Newman said.

  Hood sipped at his Perrier water. Even in the booth with the Newmans he seemed remote, partly in shadow. They each leaned forward, arms on the table. He leaned back in the corner of the booth.

  "What difference does it make what you call it," Janet Newman said. "Don't play word games. We have a problem here and we're thinking about a solution. You had the original idea."

  Newman looked at his beer glass. "This isn't a goddamned curriculum question. We're talking about a human life."

  Janet made a hissing sound. "I know what we're talking about," she said. "I had a lot of chance to think about it last night while I was lying on the bed tied up. It's not going to happen to me again. That's a goal. I'm looking for a process by which we can achieve that goal." "Process-oriented," Newman said. "Really sharpened the old management skills being chairman of that curriculum committee. "Scuse me, Chairperson." Janet Newman said, "Oh, Jesus Christ, Aaron." Chris Hood said, "Excuse me a moment." He slid out of the booth and walked halfway down the bar. A heavy man in a white three-piece suit and a black shirt with no tie was leaning over the left shoulder of a woman at the bar. She was wearing an ankle-length flowered dress and sandals. As Hood approached, the woman said something to the man and shook her head hard.

  Hood put his left hand gently on the man's shoulder and smiled and murmured something.

  The man said, "Who the fuck are you?" Hood murmured again to the woman. She nodded.

  The man said, "Get your hands off my shoulder, Jack, or there's gonna be trouble."

  Hood's hand tightened slightly on the man's shoulder, and he murmured again and nodded toward the door.

  The man said, "Fuck you, buddy," and Hood hit him in the kidneys with his right fist. The punch traveled six inches. The man yelped. Hood's left hand slid down the man's arm, got the wrist, and levered it up behind the man's back. His right hand took hold of the man's collar, and Hood and the man in the white suit walked very fast toward the front door and outside.

  The bartender put another drink in front of the woman in the long flowered dress, and Hood came back in the bar, walked down to the Newmans' booth, and sat down. He sipped at his Perrier.

  "Sorry," he said.

  "I was about to rush out and join you," Newman said. "What happened out there?" Hood smiled and shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "Man just decided to move to another bar." "What if the man is too hard to handle?" Janet said.

  "They usually aren't," Hood said. "And besides-" he took a two dollar roll of nickels out of his coat pocket'I have a helper."

  Newman laughed. "All right, Chris," he said. "Want me to work here on busy nights? We could really do a tune on some guy."

  "How about Adolph Karl," Janet said. "Can you do a tune on him?"

  Newman finished his beer and belched. "I bet we could," he said.

  "Chris and I? Huh? What you say, Chris. Can we take him?"

  "What's that the man said once," Hood answered. "To kill a man you need three things: the gun and the balls?"

  "We can get the gun okay," Newman said. He ran get and the together.

  "And we got the rest." Newman's color was high and he drummed on the table edge with both hands.

  Janet Newman said, "I'll be interested to see how you feel about it tomorrow."

  "Why," Newman said, "cause I been drinking? I'm not drunk."

  "Why not sleep on it. And you might want to think what you're trying to involve Chris in."

  "For cris sake don't you want me to do it? A minute ago you were talking like you wanted me to do it. You want me to do it, I'll do it."

  The waitress appeared, looked at Newman's empty glass. Hood shook his head very slightly and the waitress went away.

  "Because I want you to?" Janet said.

  "Yeah. You want it. I'll get it for you."

  "Not because you want it?"

  "It don't matter what I want. I do whatever you want, babe. You want something done, I'm your man."

  "So it's all up to me," Janet said.

  "Some of it is up to me, Janet," Hood said. He was sitting back in his corner, and the shadow of the booth hid his eyes. "It's up to me how far I get involved in this."

  "Of course, Chris. If you don't involve yourself, I very much doubt if Aaron will. Even if he thinks so now."

  "Bullshit," Newman said. "I'll do it with him or without. I got you, babe, I don't need anything else." Hood smiled and was silent.

  "Always self-sacrifice, always the martyr to love," Janet Newman said.

  "If you do this it will be because you want to. I'm not going to be the one." "Fuck this," Newman said and stood up. "I'm going home. You coming?"

  "I have my car," Janet said, "remember?" Newman said, "Yes, so you do," and turned and walked out of the bar.

  In the booth Janet and Hood were silent. Then Janet said, "Chris. He's going to do it, the son of a bitch. Or I'll do it myself. Those bastards. They will not do that to me again."

  "You're thinking about revenge, Janet, and safety."

  "So what."

  "He's thinking about honor and courage, maybe justice."

  "Shit."

  "Not to him it isn't. They're hard things to think about. Being the kind of man he thinks he ought to be is hard. It's a burden."

  "Being the kind of woman he thinks I ought to be isn't very easy either," she said. "I just think that killing Adolph Karl is the only intelligent solution to the problem we've got. It will serve as justice for the young woman he killed, it will prevent him from doing it again, it will take our own lives out of jeopardy, it will, I admit this, ease my own sense of violation. And it will solve Aaron's problems of honor and manhood or whatever you think is bothering him."

  "What do you think is bothering him?"

  "Oh God, Chris, I don't know and I'm sick of trying to figure it out.

  He's not a man, he's a big child. Everything has to be romance and chivalry and…" She gestured aimlessly with her hand.

  "And a code of behavior," Hood said. "I read the books. That's not always a bad thing, Janet."

  "Live with it a while," she said.

  Hood was silent.

  "Would it bother you to do it, Chris? To kill Adolph Karl?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "I agree with your summary of the situation. It seems your best move."

  "It'll bother Aaron, I can assure you."

  "He's never done it before," Hood said.

  "Kill someone?"

  "Yes."

  "Neither have I," Janet said, "but it doesn't bother me."

  "I've got another edge on Aaron," Hood said.

  "You're probably in better shape," Janet said.

  "No," Hood said. "I kind of like it."

  CHAPTER 7.

  Newman woke in the morning uneasy and feeling guilt. As always after he'd been drinking he ran back in his mind
to see if he'd done anything bad. He felt hot with embarrassment that he'd tried to swagger with Chris about being a bouncer in his pub.

  The air conditioner was humming, Janet was still asleep, her back to him, her hair up, a blue scarf tied around it. There was an old maple tree in the front yard. Its trunk was four feet in diameter. The thick healthy green leaves moved gently against the sky outside the bedroom window. He felt the stab of fear as he thought of Adolph Karl.

  Two cops had called him a psychopath. He'd talked with such conviction last night about killing him.

  He slid under the covers over against Janet. His pelvis pressed against her buttocks. He put his left arm over her and put his hand on her breast. She was wearing a bra. Like armor, he thought. Always a bra, underpants, pj's, socks, no matter how hot it is. Must be security or something. Sometimes a fucking bathrobe. She rolled over onto her stomach away from his hand.

  "I gather," he said, "you don't care for a little nooky?"

  "Un-unh," she murmured, still half-asleep.

  He rolled back over to his own side of the bed and lay on his back. His throat felt tight and again his eyes stung but no tears came. He thought of her as he had seen her on the bed the night before. Naked and helpless. Couldn't even spit. Desire buzzed in his stomach. He looked at her beside him. She was on her stomach, her face turned away. Except for the slight rise and fall of her back as she breathed she was inert. One of her hair rollers had come loose and was half hanging out from her blue scarf.

  "You want me to kill some guy for you," he said.

  She moved slightly, still asleep, and said, "Ummm."

  He laughed without humor, or sound, and got up. He slept naked. In the bathroom mirror he looked at himself. He had the weight lifter's mass. Pectoral muscles, deltoids, triceps, all over-developed. But there was fat, too, a roll around his waist that thickened his whole body, flesh that softened and sagged his chest over the big pectoral muscles. His upper eyelids had sagged so that the top round of his eye was covered, and the flesh under his chin was loose so that if he tucked his chin back at all his neck disappeared.

  He flexed at the mirror. He looked better when he flexed. What seemed soft was suddenly revealed as hard, what might have been fat was in fact shown to be muscle. Not bad for forty-six. If I could only drop twenty pounds I'd be splendid for forty-six.

  In the shower he thought about Adolph Karl. But would it be right, he thought. Do I have the right to take the law into my own hands.

  Christ" I sound like a comic strip. Who was that masked man anyway?

  But do I? But if I don't, how can I stand being dishonored so? "I could not love thee half so much loved I not honor more." I wonder if Robert Lovelace was married. Was he just worrying about the ethics of it to avoid doing it? Was he simply scared?

  He lathered his hair with apple-scented shampoo and let the hot water run over him rinsing the shampoo away. Let's look at the problem of scared. He tried to examine himself, to study his spiritual condition the way one might examine a painting. But his spiritual condition was evasive. It wouldn't stay in frame, it shifted. Like looking at an electron, he thought. The act of observation changes its behavior.

  Yes. I'm scared, but is that why I'm hesitating on this thing? Chris wouldn't hesitate. Chris would go right to it. Ah, but I'm not Chris, nor was meant to be.

  He shut off the water and stepped out of the shower. The world is out of joint. He toweled dry and went back upstairs to the bedroom to dress. He never used the upstairs bathroom. She used it to get dressed for work. A steamy shower would ruin her hair.

  The bedroom was empty. She was in the bathroom getting ready for work.

  He dressed and made the bed, tightening the sheets, making careful hospital corners, smoothing the quilt over the pillows. She never made the bed right, she simply rolled the quilt up over sheets and pillows so there was a sense of lumpiness under the quilt, and when you got in at night the sheets were wrinkly.

  He had breakfast on the table when she came into the kitchen. As he heard her step on the back stairs he poured the coffee, and everything was ready when she sat down. There were melon slices arranged on a plate, and toasted oatmeal bread, and strawberry jam, and coffee.

  Almost never did either of them eat the melon, but he liked the look of it on the table.

  She'd spent more than an hour making up and getting her hair organized.

  She wore a white muslin shirt with loose sleeves and a slotted neck, and high-wasted apricot colored pants with a draw waist and tapered legs over high heels. She smelled of perfume.

  "Christ," he said, "aren't you beautiful." She said, "Thank you."

  "You come to any conclusion about what we were saying last night?"

  She looked at him over a triangle of toast. "Have you?"

  "No."

  "Why don't you talk with Chris?"

  "How can he help?"

  "He's decisive," she said, "and he seems to have some understanding of some male hang-up you may have, which I don't seem to."

  "Like honor?"

  She gestured with her toast and shrugged.

  "Talk to him."

  "You want it done, don't you? You want it done and you figure Chris will talk me into it."

  "Whatever he did, Chris would do it and have it done," she said.

  "Like that drunk last night, a couple of quiet words, the guy doesn't respond and vap in the kidneys and out the door. You like that?"

  "I don't like uncertainty. I don't like having someone walking around who might, anytime, decide to degrade me or kill me. And I have no say in the matter."

  "I won't let him touch you again."

  "So how will you stop it. Follow me everywhere with a gun? Hire bodyguards? There's only one way to control this situation."

  "So why don't you do it? You're the big fucking feminist. You want Karl shot why don't you shoot him?"

  "While you're doing what? Lifting weights and looking at yourself in the mirror? Home baking a cake? I've never fired a gun in my life.

  I'm tough but I'm not physically strong. You're big and strong. Aren't you?"

  He felt trapped and confused. He swayed his head back and forth, staring at the tabletop. "Why don't you leave me the fuck alone," he said. His voice was thick and shaky.

  "Why do you persist in seeing this as something I'm doing to you," she said. "Why do you want to see yourself attacked."

  "Don't give me that encounter-group bullshit. Use your assertiveness jargon someplace else. I don't want to see myself attacked. You are pushing and pushing. You want something done you don't let up. You keep on and keep on. I'm not talking about it anymore. Now that's it.

  You insensitive son of a bitch."

  The lines at the corners of her eyes deepened and her perfectly made-up face darkened slightly. She looked at the kitchen clock.

  "Jesus Christ," she said, "I'm late. Aaron, you've got to deal with this. We've got to be able to talk about it. I was involved in this problem myself. Remember?"

  He brought his open hand down hard on the tabletop. Coffee spilled.

  "I said I wouldn't talk about it. You want to keep grinding it into me? You want to keep reminding me what some guy did to my wife and I haven't lifted a finger?" He raised his hand again, clenched it into a fist, and brought it back down on the table, twisting his shoulder and neck as if he were trying to hammer a hole through the tabletop.

  "I gotta go," Janet said. "I'm late. I gotta go. But I won't give up. We've got to talk about this."

  Newman hit the table again. His wife picked up her briefcase and her book bag, tan with a green design, and her purse and went out the kitchen door to her car.

  Newman sat at the kitchen table and stared at the Today show. He was breathing hard as if he'd run a distance. His sight blurred with tears. With his clenched fist he hit the table softly. Barely moving his fist, over and over.

  He was still sitting at the table at nine-thirty when Chris Hood walked across the backyard from his small whi
te house to Newman's big one. He came in the kitchen door without knocking.

  "Coffee?" he said.

  Newman said, "Instant," and nodded at the jar on the counter. "Water's probably still pretty hot."

  Hood turned the gas flame on under the kettle, got a cup from the cabinet, and put a spoonful of instant coffee in it. He got two slices of oatmeal bread out of the second drawer to the right of the sink and put them in the toaster. When steam came from the kettle he made coffee, put margarine on his toast, and sat down at the table. He had on a blue T-shirt that said Adidas in white lettering across the front and he looked, as he moved and the small muscles played intricately beneath the skin, like a fine mechanism in perfect working order.

  "You want to talk?" Hood said.

  "About what?" Newman said.

  "About us killing this guy Karl," Hood said. "You got any jam?" "Refrigerator," Newman said. Hood went to the refrigerator and took out a two-pound jar of strawberry preserves.

  "Good," Hood said. "Smucker's, they're the best kind." Newman nodded. "You and me?" he said.

  "Yes." Hood put strawberry jam on his toast.

  "You and me go out and actually shoot this guy Karl?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Janet's right," Hood said. "Everything she said. It's the only way to go." "Maybe," Newman said. "But why you?"

  Hood grinned. "What are friends for?"

  Newman shook his head. There was no humor in his voice. "Why?" he said.

  "It's true," Hood said. "I'm living alone. Jerry can manage the place for me if he has to. It's the kind of thing I can do."

  "Kill someone?"

  "Well, scuffle, fight, hit, handle trouble, you know." Newman continued to look at Hood.

  "I'm good with my hands," Hood said.

  Newman nodded. "Yeah, I know that, Chris, but' Newman put his palms up-"kill someone? Someone you don't even know?"

  "I know you. And Janet. And it's what I can do."

  "This is their business, you know. They're professionals. What if they kill us instead?" "No point playing tennis with the net down," Hood said. "It's part of the fun."

  "The threat of death."

  "Sure. No fun if there wasn't some strain to it. Not too much point in doing it." "I thought you wanted to do it because it was a logical way to solve our problem." Hood said, "No. I think you should do it for that reason. I'm willing to help for other reasons. And besides, I know you. It'll eat your liver till you've done something." "Or Janet will," Newman said.