Pump Six and Other Stories (33 page)

"It's not what you think."

Gabby waved her hand, embarrassed, and stepped back from the open door. "I shouldn't have barged over here. I should have called. I didn't mean to interrupt things. I can get the shovel myself if you tell me where it is."

"Umm. Okay. You can go around through the side gate. It's in the shed, hanging off pegs by the door." Why didn't he come clean? He just kept playing the charade, pretending that he was still the man he'd been a few hours before.

"Thanks a ton. Sorry for barging in." Gabby turned and bounded down the steps, leaving Jonathan standing in the open doorway. He closed the door. Gabby's ponytail flashed briefly outside the living room window as she jogged past and slipped into the back yard. Jonathan wandered back into the bathroom and sat on the toilet's edge. Pia was floating.

"Nobody really cares, do they honey?"

He studied her stiffened body and then turned the faucet to add more hot water. Steam rose. He shook his head, watching as it poured into the tub. "No one pays any attention at all."

People died all the time. And yet people still did their chores and went to the store for their groceries and dug rocks out of their back yards. Life went on. The sun was still bright outside and the lilac-scented air was still there and it was still a beautiful day, and he wasn't going to have to do his taxes ever again. He shut off the water. Electric energy tingled in his limbs, an antsy youthful hunger for sun and movement. It really was a wonderful day for a jog.

The nice thing about completely ruining your life, Jonathan decided, was that it was finally possible to enjoy it. As he ran past his neighbors and waved and called out to them, he thought about how little they truly understood about how glorious this warm spring day had become. It was a thousand times better than he'd even guessed when he woke up in the morning. The last day of freedom felt so much better than a million days of daily grind. Sunny days were wasted on the guilt-free. Warm spring air enfolded him as he ran. He stopped at every stop sign, jogging in place and luxuriating in a world that was exactly the same as it had always been, except for his place in it.

It almost felt as if he was jogging for the first time. He felt every sweet breeze, smelled every bright flower, and saw every warm person and they were all beautiful and he missed them all terribly. He observed them from an incredible distance, and yet with extraordinary clarity, as if he was viewing them with a powerful telescope from the surface of Mars.

He ran and ran and sweated and gasped and rested and ran again and he loved it all. He wondered if this was what it was to be Buddhist. If this was what Pia had sought in her meditations. This centered sense, this knowledge that all was transient, that everything was effervescent and lost so easily. Perhaps it would never have existed, except for this sudden nostalgic love spurred on because he was about to lose it all. God, it felt good to run. To simply work every muscle and feel the pavement hit his shoes, to see the trees with their newly greened neon leaves, and to feel for once that he was paying attention to it all.

He kept waiting for someone to notice his difference, to recognize the fact that he was now a murderer, but no one did. He stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought a bottle of Gatorade, grinning at the clerk as he got his change and thinking,
I'm a murderer. I smothered my wife this morning.
But the old man behind the counter didn't notice Jonathan's scarlet letter M.

In fact, as Jonathan chugged his green electrolytes, he suddenly felt that he was not at all different from this lovely man behind the counter with his orange vest and corporate convenience logo on his back. He had the feeling that he could invite the wrinkled guy home and they could pull a couple bottles of Fat Tire Ale out of the fridge, or if the old man preferred something lighter, PBRs perhaps, whatever the guy wanted, they'd open their cans of watery beer and they'd go into the back yard and lie on the grass and soak up sunshine, and at some point Jonathan would mention casually that his dead wife was soaking in the bathtub and the man would nod and say, "Oh yes, I did something similar with mine. Do you mind if I take a look?"

And they would both go back inside and stand in the bathroom's doorway, studying Jonathan's floating lily and the clerk would nod his snowy head thoughtfully and suggest that she'd probably prefer to be buried in the back yard, in her garden.

After all, that was what his own wife had wanted, and she'd been a gardener, too.

On Monday, Jonathan emptied his bank accounts and IRAs and changed everything into cash: fifty and hundred dollar bills, fat wads of them that he stuffed into a messenger bag so that he walked out of the bank carrying $112,398. His life savings. The wages of sin. The profits of dutiful financial planning. The clerk had asked if he was getting a divorce, and he blushed and nodded and said it was something like that, but she didn't stop him from clearing out the account, and mostly seemed to think it was funny that he was beating his wife to the punch. He almost asked her on a date, before he remembered the reason she was counting all that cash onto the counter for him.

He came home and dropped his bag on the couch and carried the phone into the bathroom to sit with Pia while he bought himself some time. He called his job and told them his wife had family troubles and that he needed to take vacation and sick time early. Sorry about the Astai demo. Naeem could probably sort it out. He told a few of his and Pia's friends that Pia had a family emergency, and that she'd flown back to Illinois, to help. He notified Pia's work, saying that she'd be in touch when she knew more about what kind of emergency leave she might need. He chatted with Pia's parents and told them he was taking her on a surprise vacation for their anniversary and that phone service in Turkey would be unreliable. Every conversation closed doors of friendly inquiry. Every conversation lengthened the time between suspicion and discovery.

The steadiness of his voice surprised him. Somehow it was hard to be nervous when the worst was already done. He bought a pair of plane tickets in his and Pia's names to Cambodia with a departure a month away. From Vancouver, just to confuse things a little more. And when he was done, he made himself a gin and tonic and sat and soaked with Pia one last time in her macerate. There was a smell about her now, the rot of her guts, the gasses of her belly. The ruin wreaked by hot water on dead flesh. But he soaked with her anyway and apologized as best he could for remaking his life via her dead body. Then he went over and reclaimed his shovel from Gabby.

By the light of a few alley street lamps, he buried Pia in the back yard under a part of the garden. He left a note for the police, describing generally what had happened—including an apology—for when he was finally caught and needed some faceless court to forgive him and let him out in less time than they would have demanded of a pot grower. He scattered sunflower and poppy and morning glory seeds on the mound and thought that the 7-Eleven clerk would approve.

That night, he drove across the mountains. He wondered if he had finally crossed the line between Manslaughter and Murder, or Murder Two and Murder One, but didn't really care. A bit of travel just seemed in order. A long vacation before a longer prison sentence. Really, it wasn't much different from changing jobs. A bit of a break before the new job started.

He sold his car in Las Vegas for another five thousand in cash, pretending to be a gambling junkie sure his luck would turn around. Then he struck off down the road, headed for the interstate and the wider world beyond.

On a desert on-ramp he stuck out his thumb. He wondered if his luck would keep holding and then he wondered how much he really cared. He marveled that he had ever worried about something as trivial as a 401(k) allocation. He was on the road to Mexico with its sun and sand and pleasant rhythms and . . . who knew? Perhaps he would be caught. Or perhaps he would simply disappear into his strange new life.

Jonathan had once read that Japanese samurai lived as if they had already died. But he doubted even they had any idea what that really felt like. Standing beside the hot Nevada interstate with gritty winds and big rigs blowing past him, he thought he might have an inkling.

By the time he'd pulled Pia from the bath and buried her, he'd feared she would fall apart from all her soaking. His mother used to say that if you stayed in a bath too long you'd shrivel up and disappear. But Pia had held together all right, even after a couple days. She was gone, but still recognizable. He, on the other hand, was still around—and yet utterly changed.

A sporty RAV4 hit the on-ramp. It whipped past him in a flash of white, then slowed suddenly and pulled onto the margin. Jonathan jogged after it, his messenger bag of cash jouncing against his hip. He yanked open the little SUV's door. A kid with a crushed cowboy hat studied him through mirrored Ray-Bans.

"Where you headed?"

"San Diego?"

"You pay gas?"

Jonathan couldn't help grinning. "Yeah. I think I can help with that."

The kid motioned him in, gunned the little engine and accelerated onto the highway.

"What are you doing in San Diego?"

"I'm actually going to Mexico. Somewhere with beaches."

"I'm going to Cabo for spring break. Gonna get drunk, suck titties, and go native."

"Sounds nice."

"Yeah man. It's gonna be great."

The kid cranked up the stereo and whipped the RAV4 into the passing lane, zipping past eighteen-wheelers and late weekend traffic returning from Vegas to L.A.

Jonathan rolled down the window, reclined his seat, and closed his eyes as the stereo throbbed and the kid yammered on about how he wanted to be in a skateboard video someday and how much he was going to get laid in Mexico and how you could buy phat weed down there for nothing.

The miles sped by. Jonathan let himself relax and think again about Pia. When he pulled her from the bath, he'd been amazed at how soft her skin had become.

The next time he got married, he hoped he'd be softer, too.

The first thing I saw Thursday morning when I walked into the kitchen was Maggie's ass sticking up in the air. Not a bad way to wake up, really. She's got a good figure, keeps herself in shape, so a morning eyeful of her pretty bottom pressed against a black mesh nightie is generally a positive way to start the day.

Except that she had her head in the oven. And the whole kitchen smelled like gas. And she had a lighter with a blue flame six inches high that she was waving around inside the oven like it was a Tickle Monkey revival concert.

"Jesus Christ, Maggie! What the hell are you doing?"

I dove across the kitchen, grabbed a handful of nightie and yanked hard. Her head banged as she came out of the oven. Frying pans rattled on the stovetop and she dropped her lighter. It skittered across the tuffscuff, ending up in a corner. "Owwwwww!" She grabbed her head. "Oooowwww!"

She spun around and slapped me. "What the fuck did you do that for?" She raked her nails across my cheek then went for my eyes. I shoved her away. She slammed into the wall and spun, ready to come back again. "What's the matter with you?" she yelled. "You pissed off you couldn't get it up last night? Now you want to knock me around instead?" She grabbed the cast-iron skillet off the stovetop, dumping NiftyFreeze bacon all over the burners. "You want to try again, trogwad? Huh? You want to?" She waved the pan, threatening, and started for me. "Come on then!"

I jumped back, rubbing my cheek where she'd gouged me. "You're crazy! I keep you from getting yourself blown up and you want to beat my head in?"

"I was making your damn breakfast!" She ran her fingers through her black tangled hair and showed me blood. "You broke my damn head!"

"I saved your dumb ass is what I did." I turned and started shoving the kitchen windows open, letting the gas escape. A couple of the windows were just cardboard curtains that were easy to pull free, but one of the remaining whole windows was really stuck.

"You sonofabitch!"

I turned just in time to dodge the skillet. I yanked it out of her hands and shoved her away, hard, then went back to opening windows. She came back, trying to get around in front of me as I pushed the windows open. Her nails were all over my face, scratching and scraping. I pushed her away again and waved the skillet when she tried to come back. "You want me to use this?"

She backed off, eyes on the pan. She circled. "That's all you got to say to me? 'I saved your dumb ass'?" Her face was red with anger. "How about 'Thanks for trying to fix the stove, Maggie,' or 'Thanks for giving a damn about whether I get a decent breakfast before work, Maggie.'" She hawked snot and spat, missing me and hitting the wall, then gave me the finger. "Make your own damn breakfast. See if I try to help you again."

I stared at her. "You're dumber than a sack of trogs, you know that?" I waved the skillet toward the stove. "Checking a gas leak with a lighter? Do you even have a brain in there? Hello? Hello?"

"Don't talk to me like that! You're the trogwad—" She choked off mid-sentence and sat, suddenly, like she'd been hit in the head with a chunk of concrete rain. Just plopped on the yellow tuffscuff. Completely stunned.

"Oh." She looked up at me, wide-eyed. "I'm sorry, Trav. I didn't even think of that." She stared at her lighter where it lay in the corner. "Oh, shit. Wow." She put her head in her hands. "Oh . . . Wow."

She started to hiccup, then to cry. When she looked up at me again, her big brown eyes were full of tears. "I'm so sorry. I'm really really sorry." The tears started rolling, pouring off her cheeks. "I had no idea. I just didn't think. I . . . "

I was still ready to fight, but seeing her sitting on the floor, all forlorn and lost and apologetic took it out of me.

"Forget it." I dropped the pan on the stove and went back to jamming open the windows. A breeze started moving through, and the gas stink faded. When we had some decent air circulation, I pulled the stove out from the wall. Bacon was scattered all over the burners, limp and thawed now that it was out of its NiftyFreeze cellophane, strips of pork lying everywhere, marbled and glistening with fat. Maggie's idea of a home-made breakfast. My granddad would have loved her. He was a big believer in breakfasts. Except for the NiftyFreeze. He hated those wrappers.