Small Town

“Well, there’s a sobering thought,” she said. “Even thee and me, eh? God knows there’ve been times I felt like it. When that Carmichael cunt managed to work things out so that she stayed and I got the ax, I’ll admit I had fantasies about killing her. I mean I thought about it, I ran it through my mind, but there was never a chance it was going to be real. And, of course, getting out of that rathole was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“And me.”

“That and bringing Hannah back from China, and how could I have done that if I was serving twenty-five to life? So I’m certainly glad I didn’t screw it up by letting Lesley Carmichael have it with her monogrammed Tiffany letter opener.”

“Was that how you fantasized it?”

“That was one of several ways. But it was never real, and I honestly don’t think I could ever do anything like that. I’m tough as an old boot, sweetie, and God knows I’ve got a temper, but it never gets physical. I never even throw things. Some women throw things, did you know that?”

“Fortunately,” he said, “most of them can’t hit what they’re aiming at.”

“I wonder if dykes throw things. All those games of softball, they could probably knock your eye out at thirty paces.”

“The women who fling glass ashtrays at me,” he said, “tend to be at least nominally heterosexual. I know what you mean, though, having fantasies and knowing that’s all they were. But there was a time when it was more than a fantasy.”

“For you, you mean?”

“For me.”

“I don’t suppose Lesley Carmichael was the designated victim?”

“No, I didn’t even get pissed at her, actually. I’d figured they were going to drop me sooner or later. No, this was earlier. I was thinking about killing my wife.”

“Jesus, the way you said that.”

“How did I say it?”

“Like you were thinking of going to a movie, or taking a tai chi class. So, I don’t know, dispassionately?”

“Well, it was a long time ago.”

“And you were really thinking about it? Like, thinking of doing it? Does Karin even know? I guess not, or she might not have been in such a rush to post your bail.”

“It wasn’t Karin.”

“Hello? How many wives have you had, sweetie?”

“Two. I got married right out of college.”

“I never knew that.”

“Well, it’s not a secret, but it doesn’t come up all that often. It was over in less than a year, and not a moment too soon, let me tell you. We fought all the time, and neither of us wanted to be married, and least of all to each other. Nor did we have a clue how to get out of it. I swear I don’t ever want to be that age again.”

“I think you’re safe.”

“We were driving somewhere flat. I want to say Kansas, but it could have been anywhere in the Great Plains. Were we on our way to visit her parents? No, we’d already been to see them, they lived in Idaho, he ran a family-owned lumber mill. Her father, that is. Her mother baked her own bread and smiled bravely. You can imagine what a good time we had there.”

“And then you were in Kansas.”

“Or someplace like it, and in a motel for the night, and we’d been at each other’s throats all fucking day. And the thought came to me that I was going to have this bitch around my neck for the rest of my life. And there was this voice in my head: Unless you kill her.” He frowned. “Or was it Unless I kill her?”

“Honey, it only matters if you’re writing it. An inner voice, who cares if it’s speaking in the first or second person?”

“You’re right.”

“Only a writer...”

“I guess. Point is I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Here was this impossible situation, and only one way out of it.”

“Aside from walking out the door, which didn’t occur to you.”

“It absolutely didn’t, and don’t ask me why. All I knew was I was stuck for life unless she died.”

“You’re not even Catholic.”

“No, and neither was she. Don’t look for this to make sense. In my mind it was ‘til death us do part, and that was beginning to seem like a splendid idea. Here we were, in the godforsaken middle of the country, on our way to a teaching job I was going to take in western Pennsylvania. They were expecting a married guy, but if I wasn’t married I didn’t really have to go there at all, did I? I could tell them my plans changed and thanks but no thanks, and I could come to New York, which was what I’d wanted to do in the first place.

“And nobody knew me in New York, and if I ran into anybody I knew I’d tell them the marriage didn’t work out, that Penny left me and never said where she was going. Of course her parents wouldn’t know where she was, and they’d get to wondering, but I had that figured out, too. I’d beat them to the punch by calling them with an address for them to give to Penny when they spoke to her. In case she wanted to get in touch, I’d say, sounding like a man with a broken heart.”

“Wouldn’t they eventually go to the police?”

“I suppose, but it would just be a missing person, not a homicide, and nobody would know where to look for her. They certainly wouldn’t have any reason to start digging in a cornfield in Kansas.”