Peaceable Kingdom (mobi) (30 page)

What remained when the tears were finished was a black column driven straight through her heart.

She decided to let it stay there.

They were in the bedroom. Their fights were always in the bedroom. Now this final one and it was as though they were a pair of boxers breaking to their respective corners. He sat down on the bed. She sat in the chair by the dresser. Both smoking their Winstons. Both in silence. She was the one who broke it.

“You know you’re the best I’ve ever had, Tommy.” Her voice was still a little shaky. She supposed that was all to the good.

“I know. You told me.”

“I’m gonna miss that. I’m gonna miss a lot of things.”

“Yeah.”

She looked at him a moment and then stood and began to unbutton her blouse.

He noticed.

“What’re you doing?”

“One last time, Tommy. You said you’d always want me. No matter what.”

“Hey look, I dunno.”

“You said.”

She slipped the blouse off her shoulders. She wore no bra. At thirty-five her breasts were still fine and she knew it. So did he. She unzipped the skirt and let it fall. She pulled down the black silk panties. Stepped out of them and walked to the bed.

“Look Shiela . . .”

“You
owe
me. I want you, y’know?”

She leaned over and unbuckled his belt and unzipped his fly and Janine or no Janine she could see that he wanted her too. At least his body did.

That would do.

“Pull up.”

“Okay but listen. This doesn’t mean anything, Shiela. I’m still outa here tomorrow.” He slid out of his teeshirt.

“I know. Pull up.”

He lifted his ass off the bed and she pulled down his jeans. The briefs came off with them. The black column in her heart now matched by the angry red fleshy thing rising off the bed. He looked at her.

“Whatever. I still think this is crazy. But if you want, climb on.”

“Condom first.”

“Awwww, for chrissake.”

“Condom first, Tommy. You think I want to get pregnant?
Now
?”

She opened the drawer on the bedside table and took out a Trojan and peeled off the wrapper and slid it over him.

When they were finished she took it off again. Just like she always did.

“Hi, Janine.”

The younger woman standing in the doorway looked startled.

“You busy? Am I interrupting something?”

“Jeez, Shiela, it’s after midnight.”

Janine looked ready to run at a moment’s notice. She held the nightgown tight around her.
Guilty as sin
. Shiela smiled.

“Don’t worry. It’s not as though I wasn’t expecting something. Lucy Baskin told me months ago she thought the two of you were into one another. I just looked the other way is all. You know how it is. I’m not mad at you. We can probably even still be friends. I just wanted to talk to you. Tommy said he thought it might be a good idea.”

“
Tommy
did?”

Tommy was in bed, snoring. As usual after they fucked.

“Yeah. So what do you say? Can I come in for a minute? Just a minute?”

“Well, I . . . I guess. Yeah. Sure.”

She stepped aside and Shiela walked on in and when Janine turned around after shutting the door that was when Shiela planted a good hard right to her chin, an uppercut, still smiling and pleased all to hell about the six months’ boxing lessons which Tommy said were unfeminine and basically dumb because muggers didn’t box, he said, they mugged you and Janine slid down the door limp as a sack.

Shiela reached into her purse for the blue rubber gloves she’d meant to use for oven-cleaning one of these days and put them on and grabbed Janine by the ankles and dragged her across the piss-yellow carpet into the bedroom and dropped her feet and grabbed her under the arms instead and hauled her onto the bed. She took off her coat and draped it over the fake-brass foot-rail. She took off her sneakers and put them on the floor beside her purse. Then she went to Janine’s closet for a belt that would do the trick and found one that wasn’t just cheap imitation leather and climbed up on the bed and scattered the pillows so she could kneel comfortably with Janine’s head between her knees and looped the belt around her neck.

When she began to pull Janine woke coughing and sputtering
and trying to get her fingers in under the belt but it was too late for that and the thrashing didn’t help much either. Shiela had twenty pounds on her, easy. When her tongue protruded and her face went from red to greyish blue she unlooped the belt and got off the bed and went to her purse. She put the belt in the purse for later. Then she went back to Janine.

She tore at the nightgown noting that her own boobs were better than Janine’s though the rest of her she had to admit was young and dismayingly firm and then ripped off her panties and threw them on the floor. She took a few minutes to give the body a good beating, concentrating on the ribs and head and did that until the face was bloody and her knuckles throbbed. She went back to her purse again. She took out the condom and pin.

The condom was sealed at the end with a coated wire twistie-tie off a loaf of rye bread so she undid that wondering if any of these little guys were still alive in there and if they were whether they’d try to impregnate a dead Janine.

Dead or alive she knew it wouldn’t matter to anybody interested in DNA. But it was still interesting to speculate.

And then came the nasty part.

It couldn’t be helped.

She had to spread the legs and get up inside her, open her up. It wasn’t easy because what she discovered was that the dead don’t lubricate much but then she guessed that blood would do just as well and in fact make it look even better. The bruising too. It occurred to her that what it was
actually
going to look like to the cops was that Tommy’d fucked her after she was already dead.

Tommy, one of those necrophiliac-types like Jeffrey Dahmer? Tommy?
The idea made her giggle.

When she was through she slipped the condom over her blue-gloved index finger and pricked its well-end with the pin. Then she inserted the condom and pushed until she was certain the condom was pretty much drained of Tommy. Then she withdrew and packed up. The condom
and pin went into one ziplock baggie and the rubber gloves into another.

And that was that.

Driving home she tossed first one baggie and then the other and finally the belt out the window along the road a half mile or so apart from each other. When she got home Tommy was still sleeping.

She took off her clothes and got into bed.

She felt the familiar humid warmth of him beside her and thought for a moment how sad it was, really, that he’d be leaving anyway. Not where he wanted to go but somewhere.

She’d been telling him the truth before.

God’s honest truth.

He was far and away the best she’d ever had.

Dora followed them down into the Forty-second street station, standing well back in the line as he paid for both their tokens.

Big spender
.

She watched him take her hand as they went through the turnstiles side by side, then fished a token out of her change purse and followed them down the stairs to the uptown local waiting on the tracks. Her luck was holding—she slipped into the car ahead of theirs just as the doors slid closed in the face of the old black bag lady behind her. The woman howled and swatted at the door like she was chasing flies.

So many of these women. So many flies
.

She could see them through the door windows, standing, straphanging, swaying together as the train pulled away. The back of Howard’s suit looked wilted with heat and humidity. The woman was smiling.

Dora gave him this much, he’d always had taste.

The woman wore a black silk jumpsuit, possibly
Versace—
black
, for God’s sake, on a day like this—looking fresh and clean despite the ninety-degree weather. Her skin was pale, drawn tight across the delicate facial bones, her hair long and black, lips stained bright red and teeth very white.

Her body was not unlike Dora’s, but built on a different scale. The woman had easily three inches on her and maybe four—five seven or five eight—so that the slim thighs looked even slimmer, the breasts and buttocks fuller by contrast.

Early thirties.

Irish, probably.

And money. The jumpsuit was expensive. So were the heavy silver bracelet and the ruby-studded earrings.

She was the best one yet as far as Dora was concerned.

Good for you, Howard, she thought.

Bastard
.

They got off at Sixty-sixth, walked out of the station and up to Sixty-eighth and then eastward toward the park. A homeless woman in front of the Food Emporium was hawking the
Daily News
. To Dora she looked like one of those dust bowl photos by Walker Evans, all gaunt angles and sad hard lines. The teeth in her mouth would be rotten. Her flesh would smell of mildew and old leaves.

She felt a flash of pity for the woman that was not entirely free of pity for herself.

It was rush hour. Yet this far uptown the sidewalk traffic was light, and she had no trouble following them. At Columbus they turned north past Fellini’s, and he took her hand again as they stopped for a moment in front of a boutique, gazing in at the lingerie in the window, while Dora ducked inside a store and picked up the latest copy of
Elle
. The
Elle
fit nicely with the light tailored Burberry suit and Mark Cross briefcase.

Just another pretty young career woman on the rise
.

The magazine was an accessory.

With the first one it had been glasses. For some reason no
one ever worried about a woman wearing glasses, and the girl, some goddamn
secretary
no less, had opened the door immediately. All Dora’d said was that she was looking for Howard, she was an old friend from school and he’d given her this address in case he wasn’t at his own apartment—and since he wasn’t here, either, would the girl mind if she left him a note? Sure, said the girl and turned her back on Dora to show her in. She took the six-inch stainless-steel carving knife out of her handbag, reached up into the girl’s frizzy red hair, pulled her head back, and slit her throat
.

The rest of it was harder. She had to get the body into the bedroom, up on the bed, and strip it naked, making it look like a sex crime and not what it was, an execution, and the girl was heavier than she looked, heavier in fact than Howard usually liked them, so that she had to wonder what it was the girl had—she wasn’t all that pretty, really
—not like this one—
and she supposed it was the sex, it had to be; Howard always did think with his prick. And considering that took some of the unpleasantness out of inserting the handle of the electric broom and then, rolling her over, the bottle
.

On Seventy-first street they moved east again. Halfway between Columbus and Central Park West they turned up the stairs of a renovated brownstone. Number thirty-nine. The woman opened the door. Dora crossed the street, staring up at the windows, slowly walking by. It was dusk by then, and the apartment would be dark inside. She watched. Once again her luck was good. The woman had a front apartment. She saw the light go on the third floor, had a brief impression of high white ceilings and plants hanging in the window. She looked away and continued walking.

At Central Park West she turned back the way she came. She glanced at the apartment and saw that the curtains were drawn now, their color indistinguishable. Dark, heavy material. At Pizza Joint Two she asked the waiter for a table by the window and seated herself facing east so she could watch the entrance to number thirty-nine across the street.

She ordered shrimp parmigiana, antipasto, and a glass of wine.

She looked at her watch. Six-thirty-five.

If her luck still held, he wouldn’t stay the night.

And then this would be the easiest yet. Easier even—and far less dangerous—than pushing MaryBeth Chapman, budding blond account exec for Shearson, in front of the Seventh Avenue express at Thirty-fourth street. If anyone had noticed her hands on MaryBeth’s back, they hadn’t said anything. Maybe there was too much shock at the sound of it for anyone to have reacted even if they had noticed—the liquid
crack
like a huge balloon full of water bursting and a tree-limb snapping, both at once. The enormous red spray
.

Easier than both the others because he’d brought the others to his apartment first, and she’d had to wait and follow them once they were alone, planning it, getting to know their habits somewhat—where they lived, who they saw, and where they went
.

Here she only had to wait till he left. Then she could go in asking for him the same way she had with the secretary holding the copy of
Elle
in front of her because it looked right there, a prop. Subliminal. She was neat and fashionable and wasn’t any threat to anybody, and the brand-new
eight-
inch knife was handy in the briefcase. She would cut her a little differently. Rob her this time. Nothing sexual. No connection from a police point of view. Clean and tragic
.