Orchard Grove (15 page)

“You know what I want you to do, Suzey Q, now don’t you?”

Her unblinking eyes locked on Lana’s face, Susan bit down on her bottom lip. For a brief moment, I thought she might bite right through it. John gave the pistol a slight push against her head. The fire that erupted inside my stomach made me want to kill him on the spot. If I could have, I would have torn his head off and shoved it down his throat, scalp first. But I was helpless and hopeless.

“Do it, Susan,” he ordered. “Kiss Lana. Feel her up. Do it now.”

Leaning into Lana, my wife kissed her and touched her while John stood over them and watched, his automatic forever aimed for their heads, as if the act they performed had better be good, or the consequences were life or death.

“Lower, Suzey Q,” he demanded, his index finger brushing the trigger. “On your knees. Go lower.”

Susan knelt down so that her torso was between Lana’s legs.

“Now feel for my wife’s panties,” John said.

Susan reached between Lana’s legs, slipped her fingers inside Lana’s black panties.

“Push them aside, Suzey Q,” he said, his Adams apple bobbing up and down in his throat. “Tease my girl.”

Brushing back her hair with her free hand, Susan, pulled the panties aside, revealing Lana’s perfectly groomed sex. We all focused on her sex, and Lana was anything but repulsed. Rather, she seemed to enjoy the teasing. But I was not enjoying it. Yet a part of me was loving it. What the hell can I say, because what the hell could I do?

“Come on, Suze baby,” John pushed. “Kiss the girl.”

Lana leaned forward, wrapped her hands around the back of Susan’s head, and began kissing her passionately.

My heart pounded and my head began to fill with adrenalin. The noise in my skull was like a jet plane that had suddenly blown its engines mid-flight, and now the whole thing was taking a nosedive, the wind screaming across the wings, the passengers screaming, crying, wailing.

But my misery was compounded one hundred fold by the fact that I was as hard as a rock, and I despised myself for it. Screw biology, I chanted to myself. Screw the fact that I am an animal as much as John Cattivo. My not having a gun pointed at the two women didn’t make me any less savage, any less cowardly. It just meant that I didn’t have a gun.

The situation was treacherous. Deadly. Yet, after a full minute had passed, both women were still kissing… kissing passionately, despite the weapon pointed at them. Was it possible that they were enjoying this? This game that really wasn’t a game at all? Or perhaps “enjoying” wasn’t the right word. Maybe they were simply surviving. Doing what they were told in the interest of saving their skin.

The pregnant robin that lived in the eaves flew out of its nest then, startling me. It flew out into the darkness until it returned a couple of seconds later, perching itself on the deck rail. Her protruding brown belly pulsed with every frantic beat of her heart.

“What have we here?” John said eyeing the bird, while the women separated and the robin chirped, as if screaming at us all to get away from her home. “Bird hunting season.”

When he aimed the automatic at the bird and fired, the dark of night flashed brilliant white and the robin evaporated into so much blood, bone, and feathers. The girls shrieked while I grew dizzy and sick. I swallowed something cold and bitter when an apparently satisfied John returned the automatic to his hip holster.

“You can all get dressed now,” he said, that evil grin still plastered on his face. “Show’s over.” Then, turning to me. “Was it good for you too, Hollywood? Maybe now you got something to write about.”

I watched as both girls stood up, in all their perspiration-glistening semi-nakedness. A glistening made all the more radiant from the candlelight. When Lana whispered something into Susan’s ear, my wife nodded, and wiped a tear from her eye with the back of her hand. She then quickly gathered up all her discarded shirt and bra, and walked past John without giving him even a cursory glance. She escaped back into the house, closing the sliding door behind her. I tried to get up to follow her… go to her, but Lana stopped me.

“Don’t,” she said. “Leave her alone for a while.”

“Yeah, she needs to gargle,” John said with a gravelly laugh.

I pulled myself up anyway, shoved the crutches under my armpits.

“This night’s over,” I said, my wide eyes locking onto John’s, my bottom lip trembling with an anger so profound it was bleeding from my pores. “You son of a bitch.”

“Calm yourself, Hollywood,” he said. “We were just having a little adult fun. Besides, judging from that bulge in your pants, you weren’t having an entirely crappy time either.”

A sheen of red passed by my eyes. “You could have killed my wife. I can have your badge for this.”

He took a step forward so that his meaty thighs where pressed up against the table. He squinted his eyes and glared at me.

“You’re not thinking of calling the cops are you, Hollywood? Cause I am the cops. Don’t forget, I can ruin your life at any time.” He once more drew his automatic from its holster, thumbed the clip release, and held it up into the candlelight. “Oh, and sorry about the bird. I know you’re like Mister Audubon Society.” He laughed, slapped the clip back home, re-holstered the weapon. “Dangerous fucking world out there. For people and birds.”

“Come on,” Lana said, as she threw her top over her exposed breasts. “Let’s go, John.”

The Albany detective began to sing “I fought the law and the law won… I fought the law, and the law won…” He grabbed hold of an apple from the dish, took a big bite out of it, then tossed it like a baseball out into the darkness. Together they stepped off the deck and out of the light. They made their way through my gate and eventually through their gate and into their yard, which, at this point, seemed so close but also a million miles away. When I heard their back sliding glass door open and slam shut behind them, I knew that as soon as the opportunity presented itself, I was going to find a gun and shoot Detective John Cattivo dead.

M
oments later, after hobbling my way indoors, I found Susan inside the bedroom.

She was tucked under the summer-weight blanket, lying on her side, already asleep. Or maybe she was just pretending. Without undressing, I leaned the crutches against the wall, laid down on my back, looked up into a darkness that seemed infinite, absolute and so very cold. I listened to the sounds of the summer night. A dog barking incessantly in a distant yard. A train hauling freight cars on the tracks that paralleled the river, its horn blowing loud and lonely. Cicadas buzzing in the trees.

After a time, I could make out the sound of sobs.

I rolled over, rested my hand on Susan’s bare arm.

“Don’t,” she said, her voice low and pained. “There was nothing any of us could do.”

I felt my insides drop. “I could have stopped him. I could have put up a fight.”

“And got yourself shot in the process.”

“He wouldn’t have shot me. He’s a cop. A bluffing asshole cop who put a gun to my wife’s head and made her perform a sexual act with his wife.”

“He’s crazy. I think he would have shot you and made it look like self-defense. Christ, you saw what he did to that little bird.” She wiped her eyes, sniffled.

My mind began to spin out of control. I pictured John, his holding her at gunpoint. I felt like a coward for not peeling myself out of my chair and going after him with my bare hands. So what if I had a bum foot? I should have done something. Anything.

But Susan was right. What good would it have done? I would have only managed to get myself shot. Or maybe there was another reason I didn’t do anything about it. Maybe a part of me …a big part of me… was just plain yellow.

My eyes wide open, they remained focused on the back of Susan’s head. At her black hair, still somewhat visible in the darkness.

“That man just might be the most evil person I have ever met in my life,” I whispered after a time.

“I don’t know how Lana can stand living with him,” she said. She cried a little more, wiped her eyes again. Then, “We should rescue her from him.”

Once more I was reminded about my desire to see him dead. I thought about the gun he pressed against Susan’s head. I saw the gun, once more heard the mechanical noise of the hammer being cocked. I saw the pregnant robin disintegrating into the night, felt the concussion of the gunshot. I wondered if any of the neighbors were alarmed by the sound of a gun discharging in the neighborhood. Or perhaps they chalked it up to leftover fireworks?

“I agree with you, Susan,” I whispered.

“Good,” she said. “Now let’s not talk anymore.”

“There’s something else I need to know first.”

“What is it?”

“Yesterday afternoon when you came home from the nursery school… did you see what we…” My voice trailed off, my throat constricting. I just couldn’t get myself to say it.

She inhaled deeply, as if requiring more than the usual strength to respond. “Yes, I saw you. You
know
I saw you. You looked directly at me through the plate glass.”

Pulse picked up in my temples. “But you weren’t angry.” It’s a question. “It’s unbelievable you didn’t claw my eyes out.”

“I was angry and hurt at first. But then something happened as I watched you… I can’t really explain it right now. It’s possible I went into immediate denial. I haven’t slept with you in a year. I should have expected something like this.”

I thought about my obsession with Lana. About the power she had over me. To be honest, I wasn’t shocked that I’d been right all along… that Susan had seen Lana and I through the plate glass window. What shocked me was her reaction. It wasn’t a normal reaction in any sense of the word. People are people and people get jealous. People kill one another while overcome with jealous rage.

I should have expected something like this…

Actually, no, she should
not
have expected anything like she saw when she peered through the living room window. Didn’t matter how long it’d been since we last slept together.

There was no excuse.

Susan’s strange reaction to my naked infidelity set off not a red flag, but an alarm inside of me. I thought about Lana’s phone. The WhatsApp voice message sent to a woman named Susan. A woman with long brunette hair.
My
Susan. I thought about the lavender-scented perfume on her dressing table. Thought about the silk panties. The alarm inside of me sounded off, and it told me that Lana and Susan had more of a history together than I wanted to believe. And maybe it was because of a secret history she shared with Lana that she wasn’t shocked or infuriated when she saw me making love to the blonde devil on the dining room table. She was simply indifferent.

“You don’t have to explain it,” I said, after a time, not wanting to confront the true nature of her relationship with Lana Cattivo. Not yet, anyway. “But I
am
sorry.”

“Sorry for what, Ethan?”

“For straying from our marriage. For stabbing you in the back.”

She began to laugh then. Not loud, but softly. “We haven’t touched each other all year,” she said. “I’d say that at this point, considering what just happened outside on the deck tonight, we’ve both strayed a little. And with the same woman. So that makes us even. Now go to sleep.”

For a long time I laid there listening to my wife’s breathing, until I too fell into a dreamless sleep.

I
woke up early the next morning only to find Susan lying on her back beside me, staring up at the ceiling. It was first light, and the unrelenting sun was only beginning to show itself through the thin shades, hot and unpleasant. Like it had put in for a day off weeks ago and was denied by God himself.

Turning silently away from her, I slid out of bed and grabbed hold of my crutches. I shuffled my way into the kitchen and made the coffee while Susan peeled herself away from the bed and showered. When she came back out she was still quiet. Her dark hair was wet and clean and glistening in the rays of sun that poured in through the kitchen windows. She drank some coffee, black, and tried to work up a smile that took terrific effort.