Orchard Grove (13 page)

“This is beginning to sound like a Cialis commercial,” I said, after a time. “Fifty is the new thirty. Or so I’m told.”

She set the beer bottle onto the nightstand, then turned over onto her side, facing me directly.

“How old do you suppose Lana is?” she asked.

There it was again. The spark in my pulse, this time accompanied by an electric jolt in my stomach. “Why do you ask?”

She reached out, set her finger onto my chest, caressing the light patch of black hair that shaded my sternum. “Do you find her attractive?”

Turning to her, I worked up a slight smile. “What are you getting at, Susan?”

“If you could, would you have sex with her?” Her hand was no longer caressing the patch of hair so much as it was slowly tickling the tight skin on my belly, then lower onto my trimmed patch of pubic hair. “Would you slowly undress her if you could? Put your hands on her?”

Listen, Susan was my wife. She was gorgeous. A knockout. A head turner. But she was also a highly educated woman who came from a sturdy Jewish background with loving, well to-do parents and an older sister who doted on her like she was still in kindergarten. What all this equated to, of course, was a sense of strong family values, and a personal moral bar that Susan had set very high for herself.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t naughty from time to time.

If it wasn’t for Susan, I wouldn’t have known what great sex, as opposed to passable sex, was. I wouldn’t have known anything could possibly exist beyond the standard foreplay, missionary position coitus, roll over and fall to sleep. As controlled as Susan was, she also had a fiery, out of control side to her that showed itself at the oddest of times. Rather, at times when I’d least expect it. She was the kind of woman who could gently take a crying child aside in the classroom, whisper something encouraging and sweet into his ear, and before you know it, the tears would be replaced with a smile and laughter. But she was also the kind of girl who would pick up a bottle of red for us on the way home to share in bed. At least, that’s the way it
had been
for us not so long ago, before my career took a nosedive.

In a word, Susan was predictably unpredictable, and once upon a time, I loved her for it.

Her hand shifted now. South. She began to stroke me. I was no longer seeing Susan in the window. I was instead seeing Lana lying on the dining room table. I was seeing her moist, naked skin glistening in the sunlight that leaked into the room through the dining room and living room windows. I saw the soft but still firm flesh on her thighs and I was feeling her all over again.

“Would you do things to her while I watched?” Susan added as she picked up the pace of her stroking. “Or better yet, Killer, would you like it if I did things to her while
you
watched?”

My mind was on fire. Mind and body. Susan’s actions and words were that much of a turn on. That potent. There was still love between us. Love
and
lust. I felt myself sinking into the softness of the mattress while Susan raised herself up onto her knees and straddled me.

“Please,” was all she said, her voice having achieved a kind of rich deepness to it, as if it wasn’t the Susan I married who was speaking to me, but an imposter who’d taken over her body. “Please, please, please…”

Only seconds after I entered her, she came with a loud scream. Looking up at her face, I realized she wasn’t watching me while we made love. Instead she was peering over her shoulder, out the slider window onto the Cattivo’s back deck and the blonde beauty who was surly out there sunning herself in the hot, sultry, afternoon sun.

A
s dusk approached our home on Orchard Grove, Susan and I finished another beer apiece and got dressed. I didn’t mention the name Lana, and neither did she. Yet, our blonde-haired neighbor might as well have been standing in the same room as us. She was not a white elephant, but instead, a white devil.

When Susan entered into the bathroom to clean up and fix her hair, I hobbled over to her dressing table, picked up the perfume bottle, smelled it.

Lavender.

Susan was wearing the same perfume as Lana. Should I confront her about it? Or simply chalk it up as a coincidence? In the end I decided to do something else.

“Darling,” I said through the closed bathroom door. “Did I mention you received a package from UPS today? Something from Victoria’s Secret.”

The water stopped and silence replaced it.

“Victoria’s Secret,” she asked, her tone one of surprise. “I don’t recall ordering anything.”

The door opened and she stepped out, looking fresh and put together, like she’d just woken up. She eyed the torn package set out on the table.

“Who opened it?” she said, her brows raised at attention.

“Arrived that way,” I said.

Slipping my hand off the crutch, I grabbed the package and handed it to her.

She hesitated.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” I said.

I noticed then a distinct tightness in her facial muscles.

She said, “Sure. Why Not? It’s already opened anyway.”

She pulled off the paper and opened the box. Reaching in with her fingers, she pulled out the thong underwear.

“Wow, nice stuff,” I said, trying my best to act surprised. “You really are making an effort at pulling our marriage back together.”

She tried to work up a smile, as if going along with my reasoning was just fine and dandy by her. That’s when I leaned into her, kissed her gently on the cheek.

“What’s that for?” Susan said, surprise in her voice.

“Thanks,” I said. “For what you’re trying to do… for us.”

She bit down on her lip, nodded.

“It’s good to know the spark is still there,” she said. “That love is still there… even if the money isn’t.” She bit down on her bottom lip liked she’d caught herself. “Excuse me, the
work
isn’t there.”

I couldn’t help but feel a slow burn at the money-
slash
-work comment. But that didn’t prevent me from feeling good about the spark she so aptly mentioned. I made like I was about to turn away, get on with my life, such as it was, when I once more eyed the package in her hands.

“Is there a note stuffed inside?” I said.

Susan’s face turned red. The note was hidden under the underwear, which meant she was able to pretend it didn’t exist.

“No silly,” she said. “Why would I send myself a note?”

I laughed, but it was entirely forced.

“Exactly,” I said. “You’d have to be your own secret admirer.”

T
he shades on the slider window were now drawn so that there was no seeing in, no peering out. If you listened hard enough, you could hear the voices of Lana and her husband while they enjoyed their cocktails and barbequed out on the deck. Or maybe enjoy was too strong a word for it. Because the voices were not always kind. They were, more often, filled with acid.

Susan went back into the bathroom, this time with the Victoria’s Secret package in hand, closing the door behind her. After a few seconds, I heard the toilet flush, and although I had no way of knowing it for certain, I imaged that the pink note card from “You know who” was now on its one-way trip to the Albany water treatment plant stationed along the Hudson River.

I went to the window, stood still and listened. While John accused Lana of spending her day with her new friend, Hollywood, and she defended herself by replying, “Just because I have a man who is a friend and an interesting person, doesn’t mean I’m fucking him.”

She was right of course. And also, very wrong.

It was all very strange.

By all means, I should have been shaking with fear considering the nature of the Cattivos very audible argument along with the fact that her husband was a hothead cop who carried a gun. When Susan came out of the bathroom for the second time, she was holding the underwear in her hand, the paper package and the box it protected now apparently tossed out. Opening up the drawer under the table, she set the underwear inside, then closed the drawer back up.

I was quite certain she could make out the war of words being waged by our new neighbors, but for some reason unbeknownst to me, she decided not to comment on it. Instead, she headed into the kitchen, picked up the phone, and dialed the local Chinese restaurant.

“Do you want wanton soup with your sweet and sour pork, Killer?” she called out.

“Sure, baby,” I said, my gaze shifting from the slider window to the bathroom. “Whatever you say.”

Hobbling across the bedroom, past the dressing table and into the bathroom, I peered into the wastebasket. The torn packaging material and the Victoria’s Secret box had been tossed inside it. Bending down carefully, my left hand holding to the crutch for balance, I quickly rummaged through the box and the paper. The note was gone. My gut could be trusted after all.

Susan had disposed of the note, like so much waste.

B
y today’s artificial intelligence standards, her method for attracting victims would never be considered very scientific. It was the 1980s after all. The pre-digital age. There were no personal computers. No Match.com. No Facebook. No Craigslist. You had to do things the old fashioned way, which meant posting want-ads in the “personals” section of the local newspapers and freebie news rags.

Looking for a date?
was one headline that could always be counted on to produce.

Another was,
Young lady is sooo very lonely
.

But the go-to atomic bomb of headlines...the one that always generated the most responses from the sex-starved middle-aged pervert crowd… was
Lady looks sixteen!

Of course, she was sixteen at the time, which is why the last ad always proved the most effective, especially when the potential client requested she send along a snapshot. You’d be surprised how easy it was to lure an adult male into a meeting at a strange motel and how easy it was to dispose of him once she was able to Mace them, and/or tie them up to the bedposts (usually at the victim’s request).

But soon she became bored with the middle-aged crowd. How many time could she be expected to enact the ultimate revenge on her step-monster over and over and over again? Not to mention the chances she was taking by leaving the bodies behind for the police to discover. Sure she was careful about prints, but it was only a matter of time until someone at the APD or FBI picked something up off the surface of a chair, a bed sheet, a lamp, or the bathroom toilet.

Now that a young police officer… a tall, slim, Clint Eastwood look-alike detective by the name of Nick Miller… was working the case, she decided to switch gears. From now on, her victims would be much younger. Much stupider, and far more innocent.

They would be teenagers, just like her.

T
he next night, the Cattivos arrived right on time. I was sure I smelled booze on John’s breath the moment he came through the door. He was wearing a yellow IZOD polo shirt that seemed out of place for a cop who carried a gun on his hip at all times. Because the skin on his thick arms was exposed, I couldn’t help but take notice of a tattoo he sported on his left interior forearm. It was a heart that was dripping or, crying, blood. It matched precisely the tattoo that painted Lana’s ankle, but with one slight difference. Written across John’s heart was the name Lana, in big bold black letters.