Things Could be Worse by David Terrenoire

THINGS COULD BE WORSE

By David Terrenoire

I’m standing there in the motel room, unbuckling my belt and watching Christina pull off her shirt when I say, just as a little foreplay, “God, I can’t stand the thought of Bob touching your breasts.”

      Christina pops her bra and lets it drop to the floor. “What do you think, Jimmy? Maybe we should kill him.”

      I laugh, but I don’t think it’s funny. I watch Christina wriggle out of her jeans and I hear her say, “We can make that happen, Jimmy, real easy.”

      There. When she said “easy,” that’s when I should have run home to the wife and kids. But as every errant husband knows, it’s impossible to run with your pants down around your Adidas.

      She says it again. “We can, Jimmy, we can make that happen.”

      And it’s like I’m falling through ice. The motion is on the floor, along with her panties. “Is that what you want, Jimmy?” she says, and snakes her arms around my neck and presses that hot spot against my thigh.

      I gasp and with my blood nowhere near my logic centers, I don’t say no. God help me, I don’t say no.

      A few weeks scamper by. Christina doesn’t bring it up again and I think maybe it was a joke, and I’m relieved. Because even if Bob accidentally fell into a cement truck, there’s no way I’m coming out on the shiny side of divorce court. Mindy would make it her life’s work to see me shredded, balless and broke before I was turned loose by her lawyers.

      Then I see Bob striding across the lawn and I can’t breathe for a minute, but then I see Bob is smiling so I open the door. Bob is a big man, a building contractor who juggles jackhammers for fun, and I have no doubt he would beat me into a wet spot if he knew I’d been banging Christina since last Christmas eve, when she unwrapped my present in the hall closet as everybody else was singing carols on the lawn.

      Bob takes off his cap. His hair is spiked with sweat. He wipes his face with his T-shirt sleeve. His forearm, as big as a grouper, is speckled with dirt. He says, “Christina thought you might have some boxes.”

      “Boxes?”

      “Yeah, we’re taking a bunch of books and stuff to the dump, if you want to look.”

      When I don’t answer Bob adds, “Christina says you like to read.”

      “Oh, right, yes.”

      “I haven’t touched a book since college,” Bob says, like it’s the same as sucking Jello shots from a cheerleader’s navel.

      Over Bob’s shoulder I see Christina walk across the yard. Her legs are bare and even in a shapeless gray T-shirt her body radiates a heat that makes me twitch. She brushes back hair so black it’s violet in the sun and says, “Jimmy, you remember those liquor boxes?”

      “Liquor boxes?” She’s wearing cotton work gloves and all I can think of is her hands, soft and sweaty and pink, inside those gloves.

      Bob laughs and says, “I think we woke Jimmy up from his nap. What’s the matter, pal, a little groggy?”

      I back away so they can come in. “Mindy’s not here,” I say, apropos of nothing.

      “I know,” Christina said.

      I let Bob pass and I raise an eyebrow at Christina but she just smiles and says, “This’ll only take a minute, Jimmy, and then you can go back to bed.”

      My garage is a jumble of bikes, fishing poles and busted tools that I haven’t moved in years. It’s so jammed with crap that I can’t remember the last time I parked the Jeep inside.

      “Jesus,” Bob says, “don’t you throw anything away?”

      “What’s this?” Christina pulls a blue plastic tarp to the floor, bends over and unrolls it across the cement. Instantly, I flash on Christina naked, her ass in the air, looking over her shoulder with that smile she smiles when she does something truly wicked. I blink away the vision and force myself to concentrate on the blue tarp. “That was on a boat I was building.”

      “I love boats,” Christina says.

      “She must have been a big one,” Bob says.

      “Thirty-two feet,” I say, but I’m thinking of the night I watched Christina bring herself to orgasm against our swimming pool’s water jet.

      “You ever get her in the water?”

      “What?”

      “The boat.”

      I take a deep breath. “Oh,” I say. “No. The boys started climbing on it and Mindy said it was too dangerous to keep. So I sold it.”

      Behind Bob, Christina digs into a box full of rakes, shovels, and tomato stakes. She finds an aluminum softball bat, turns to me and smiles that smile. Bob sees my face and starts to turn. Christina steps into it, brings the bat around in a major league swing and connects with the back of Bob’s head. There’s a loud tunk, my stomach flips and Bob falls across the tarp, spraying blood on my legs. All I can say is, “Jesus.”

      Christina shrugs. “That was easier than I expected.”

      I look down at Bob. He’s curled into a fetal position. Blood spreads out from his head like an evening shadow. Bob’s body jerks.

      “He’s not dead,” I say. “It’s not too late. I can still fix this.”

      “Where are you going?”

      I don’t stop to answer. I take the stairs to the kitchen two at a time and snatch the phone off the wall.

      Christina puts her hand on the receiver and says, “You can’t, Jimmy. It’s done.”

      “He’s not dead!”

      Christina steps close to me. I smell the heat in her hair and feel her breasts against my arm. “I thought you wanted this.”

      “Not this, for God’s sake. I didn’t want this.”

      “You should be clear about what you want, Jimmy.” Christina presses against me and kisses my neck, then my face. “Don’t worry. It’ll all work out for the best, trust me.” She kisses my mouth. Her tongue finds mine. When she pulls back her lips and teeth glisten.

      From the garage Bob screams and I jump. Bob screams again.

      Christina says, disappointment in her voice, “Oh, all right. Go help him. I’ll call 911.” She picks up the phone and shoos me away.

      I run down the steps and into the garage. Bob is whipsawing around on the tarp. Blood sprays from his head, his eyes are wide, but I doubt if he sees anything. His legs are whipping back and forth. He shrieks, over and over, and each shriek rips through my chest like razor wire.

      I feel Christina behind me. I start to ask if the ambulance is on its way but her hand, still in its work glove, is holding my gun, a little .32 I’d bought when there were burglaries in the neighborhood. She points it at Bob and I watch her squeeze the trigger and the little gun jumps and sharp cracks blister the air, so many times I lose count. The gun locks open on an empty magazine. Gun smoke and silence surround us like dust.

      “Let’s roll him up and put him in the Jeep.” Christina tosses the still-smoking automatic onto the tarp and flips one edge over her husband. “Come on, Jimmy.” She stops and looks up at me. “You’re not going to throw up, are you, Jimmy? Because that’s one thing I can’t stand. If you’re going to be sick, go outside and close the door, I don’t even want to hear it.”

      We roll Bob tightly in the tarp.

      “You’ll have to carry him. He’s too heavy.” She hits the switch and the garage door clanks open.

      My skin buzzes. I feel the earth roll and shift. I smell old cardboard. I smell blood, pennies on a hot stove. I smell my own sweat.

      “Help me, Jimmy.”

      I bend down and pick up one end.

      Christina laughs. “It’s Mu Shu Bob.”

      I drag Bob out to my Cherokee and open the back. The two of us load Bob inside.

      “I’ll get my keys,” I say, although I have no idea where to go. I’m just walking through this, one step at a time. I’m back in the air-conditioning, the air cold on my face and arms. I take my keys from the hook in the kitchen. When I turn around, Christina is there, close. She kisses me again, this time very hard. It hurts but she won’t let me pull away. Her hands, naked and warm, unbuckle my belt. Christina steps back and pulls her shirt over her head. Her thumbs go inside the waistband of her shorts and she pushes them down, past her thighs, and steps out of them. Naked except for her Keds, she pulls me to the kitchen tile. She’s strong, and she’s rough. “I can’t,” I tell her. “I can’t.”

      “I’m so ready, Jimmy. I’ve never been so ready.”

      I am on my knees, between her thighs. “Wait,” I say, “let me get a thing.”

      “No,” she says. “Not this time. I want to feel you inside me.”

      And then she pulls me to her and I’m lost in her heat. Christina is rougher than she’s ever been. Her nails scratch into my neck. She bites my shoulder. She pulls my hair and screams out my name. When it’s over and we lay panting on the kitchen floor she says, “Kiss me,” and when I do she bites my lip, drawing blood.

      “Goddam, Chris.”

      “That was the best, Jimmy, the best ever. God, if I’d known murder would make me this hot, I’d have done it a long time ago.”

      We get up, pull on our clothes and Chris says, “Take Bob.” She hands me the keys and I stare at them, as if I can’t quite figure out what they are.

      “Take him where?”

      “You know those new condos Bob’s building, out on the Point?”

      I nod, still staring at the keys in my palm.

      “They’re pouring the foundations tomorrow. Understand?”

      “OK.”

      Christina puts her arms around my neck and kisses me. Suddenly, she giggles. “It’s funny.”

      “What’s funny?”

      “Bob always did lose himself in his work.”

      I still can’t move, wanting this to be a practical joke on good ole Jimmy. But Christina is the only one laughing.

      “I’ll clean up the garage,” she says, “Now go.”

      I nod. She kisses me once more. “I’m free,” she says, “and all because of you, Jimmy. All because of you.”

      I drive out through town and along the shore. The sun is still high and it’s brutally hot. The humidity presses against my face like a pillow and I can hardly breathe. I turn the AC all the way up and zip the windows down. I hit scan and let the radio hunt from station to station. The five-second fragments of song and chatter keep me from thinking about the bad turn my life has taken. Hell, the bad turn Bob’s life has taken.

      The building site is north of town, at the end of a long sandy road lost in the pines. We used to get drunk and naked up here when we were kids, but now there are condos in almost all the wild places and I wonder briefly where teenagers go to make out.

      The trees open up onto a broad, bulldozed plain overlooking the water. Far out beyond the breakers is a lone sloop, it’s jib and mainsail a bright triangle against the sparkle. I think of myself at the tiller, the wind powering me through the light chop. I feel the thrum of the sheets. I taste salt. My tongue touches my lip where Christina bit me.

      I park at the far end of the site and get out. The air is filled with the smell of tidewater, lumber and raw cement. I open the back of the Cherokee, pull out the shovel, and walk onto the foundation. The gravel crunches beneath my soles. I scrape a long spot clear with the blade, dig a shallow trench in the sand and go back for Bob. He’s heavy, but I shoulder him in, cover him up, and smooth it all out. There is nothing to mark Bob’s grave but a slight rise in the gravel. I take off my shirt and wipe the sweat from my face.

      At first, I think my ears are ringing from the heat. But then I hear them clearly, just beneath the rhythmic hush of the waves. I hear sirens. First one, then another, and then another. They’re getting louder.

      * * *

      It’s an election year and when I look at the prosecutor all I can see are headlines in his eyes. My attorney suggests a deal and the prosecutor laughs. I mean he laughs out loud. Then he lists the evidence. My tarp. My bat. My gun. My skin under the rape victim’s nails. My semen inside the rape victim’s vagina. Then, the prosecutor leans across the table and says, “But it could be worse, Jimmy.”

      “How? How could this be worse?”

      The prosecutor smiles and says, “You could be in Texas .”

      * * *

      My trial is less than a week away so when I’m told I have a visitor, I expect to see my lawyer. Instead, I see my wife. Through the glass she tells me that she’s filed for a divorce. I nod. Of course, I say.

       “Mindy, would it help if I told you I didn’t kill Bob?”

      “I know you didn’t,” Mindy says. “You couldn’t.”

      I breathe out a sigh and let my head drop to my hands. When I look up into Mindy’s face, I see her smiling. “Thank you for that. Thank you.”

      “But it really doesn’t matter, does it?”

      “No,” I say, “probably not.”

      Mindy picks up her purse. “I have to go, Jimmy. I’m taking the boys to stay with my parents for a while.

      “That’s good,” I say.

      “Bye, Jimmy.” Mindy stands up and leaves.

      The jailer walks me back to the cellblock. As we pass the window that looks out over the parking lot, I ask the jailer if I can watch my wife drive away.

      He shrugs and says, “Why not?”

      Three floors down is the lot. I watch Mindy’s convertible back out of the parking space and stop. The top opens and my heart leaps with the thought that I’ll see my sons.

      The top is all the way down. Mindy straightens up the wheel and drives between the parked cars toward the jail. She stops to let a patrol car drive by.

      Beside her, in the passenger seat, Christina sits back, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses, her black hair shining in the sun. She fiddles with the radio for a moment and then, as if she knows I’m watching, she looks up at the window and smiles that smile, that wicked smile, just for me.

Copyright 2006 by David Terrenoire

David Terrenoire is author of the novel Beneath A Panamanian Moon (St. Martin's) and the blog A Dark Planet.