Orchard Grove Page 10

  He watched them, that evil grin painted on his face, thin lips growing tighter and tighter. When he rubbed his now hard self through his pants with his free hand, I thought I might be sick.

  “Now Susan,” he whispered from somewhere down deep in his throat, “this is where the fun begins.”

  Lana pulled away from my wife, locked eyes on her husband.

  “We kissed already, John,” she said. “Now leave it alone. These are good people.”

  “We’re just getting started, sweetheart,” he said. Standing, he aimed the automatic at my wife’s chest. If he pulled the trigger at that close range, he’d blow out the entirety of her respiratory system. “Come on Suzy Q, pull off your shirt.”

  Again, she looked at me. My heart now in my mouth, I was powerless to do anything about it. Maybe I could stab him in the hand with a plastic knife or fork, but even that would take some strength and agility on my part. Strength and agility were something I simply did not have with my mangled foot. Susan knew it too, because without an argument, she stood up, pulled off her top. She did it, not with a look of excitement or lust on her face, but one of defiance, while she glared at John’s eyes. Into them, and through them, like white-hot lasers.

  She stood there, in her black bra, not at all sure about what was coming next, but waiting to hear it from the mouth of the devil.

  “The bra,” he said, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat, waving the pistol in the air as if saying, And be quick about it.

  Without a word, her brown eyes never veering from his, she reached around her back with both hands, unclasped the bra, set it onto the chair.

  Maybe it was the pot or the drinking, or a combination of the two. But sitting at the table, unable to do anything about the creep who was holding a gun on both my wife and his, I felt as though trapped in a dream. This wasn’t happening for real. It was happening inside my head, like a vivid nightmare. At the very least, the whole thing was like something I might write for one of my film noir treatments. Things like this just didn’t happen in real life. Only in the movies, or in pulp fiction.

  “I gotta hand it to you, Hollywood,” John said out the corner of his mouth while leaning into me, “you sure know how to pick ‘em. Your woman is a primo piece of ass.” Then, straightening back up. “Now beautiful, I want you to take my wife’s shirt off.”

  For the first time, Susan seemed rattled, like the game hadn’t already gone far enough.

  “Do it,” he demanded, waving the gun yet again, his shooting finger sliding from the trigger guard to the trigger.

  Silently, my wife turned to Lana, began the process of pulling off her shirt. When she was down to only her white bra, Susan unclasped it, and allowed it to fall away.

  John exhaled a sour, rancid breath.

  “Sit down, Lana,” he said.

  Doing as she was told, Lana sat down in the chair immediately beside Susan.

  “Now,” he said, running his tongue over dry lips, “spread your legs.”

  Slowly, Lana spread her legs and cocked her hips forward, and slightly upward. While under the circumstances, I should not have been turned on in the least, I found myself aroused and hating myself for it. Maybe the reason behind my excitement had little to do with Lana spreading her legs, but had everything to do with the way she did it. From where I was sitting, she didn’t open her thighs because a gun was pointed at her. She did it because she wanted too. Because this was a crucial part of the game. This was how it was played.

  This also was how the game was played: Detective John Cattivo pressed the barrel of his service weapon against the back my wife’s head.

  “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.

  Moments 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.

  “No P90X?” I said.

  “I’m quitting the class,” she said. “And I wish not to talk about it further.”

  Balancing myself on my crutches, my body felt electric with a nervousn
ess I’d never before known. Maybe I’d changed since Lana moved in two months ago, but what I was now witnessing was a profound sea change in my wife, and it was an unnerving experience.

  “Don’t you want to talk about anything?” I said. “I mean, later on. When you come home?”

  She sipped more coffee, pursed her lips.

  “Let’s not talk about anything anymore,” she said. “We talked it all out last night. Right now, I have a kid’s summer program to run.”

  And with that, she set her coffee cup down on the counter, grabbed her car keys, and left for work without a goodbye.

  She can’t very well afford a hotel room on meager babysitting earnings.

  So she decides that the next best thing is to invite her dates (as she’s come to call them) to take walks with her in the thick, wooded areas that line the banks of the Hudson River. The bike path that also parallels the river where once a now abandoned rail-bed existed, is now used by joggers and bicyclists. But at night, the path is deserted and as quiet as a cemetery.

  It’s also deserted on the warm summer night she walks hand in hand with a boy she went to grammar school with not too many years ago. A boy, now seventeen, named Ted. On the shorter side, Ted sports a thick build, like the champion wrestler he’s become. She holds his hand tightly while they make their way through the brush to the riverbank where they can get a view of the lit-up buildings that line the banks on the Troy side of the Hudson. From where they stand, she with her leather bag slung around her shoulder, the water lapping up against the gravel bank, they inhale the gamey fish smell of the river. They also make out the occasional bass that breaks its surface in its hunt for low flying insects.

  When the wrestler starts to kiss her and feel her up, she pretends to enjoy it, just like she always does. And in a small way, she does enjoy the touch of his hands on her bare skin and on the patch of soft hair located below her belly button. But then the touching soon becomes clawing. The more he claws and paws at her, the more the enjoyment gives way to revulsion, and revulsion to white-hot anger. At the same time, she feels energized and confident. If that makes any sense. She experiences a real conviction for what she’s about to do…for what she’s done in the past. Not an ounce of guilt could be mined from her bones. Not after almost four years of enacting her revenge. Not after all those bodies that lie on their backs, headless and soulless.