Orchard Grove Read online

  “Be with me,” she said, her voice deep and throaty, filled with a starving desire. “I want to feel like her. I want to be her.”

  It didn’t matter that I’d been with Lana only an hour before. Less than an hour before. That her lavender scent tainted my skin. My wife excited me almost as much as Lana did.

  I don’t know what prompted me to say the things I was about to say. But I only know that I felt an overwhelming need to say them.

  “I want you to know something. Something… about… Lana.”

  “Tell me,” she begged. “Tell… me… now.”

  “I was with her,” I whispered. “This morning.”

  She made a little crying sound, followed by another moan. “Did you fuck her?”

  “No. I did not. But I wanted to. I wanted to fuck you both, together, in the same bed.”

  She shouted out then, climaxing violently. I lost my balance and nearly dropped down onto my right side. If I hadn’t managed to reach out for the table, I would have gone over and damaged yet another piece of my body.

  Susan breathed in and out, then ran her hands through her hair. She turned, slowly pulled up her jeans. When she leaned into me and kissed me on the mouth, I felt like she wasn’t my wife, but an imposter. But when she raised up her hand, slapped me across the face, I knew that the imposter had exited the building, and the real Susan had returned.

  “I love you,” she said. “And I hate you so much right now, because I know that you love her. And the worst part is that I can’t blame you.”

  She stepped away from the table, crossed over the dining room, through the kitchen and into our bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Maybe my face still stung from Susan’s slap, but my foot was throbbing. I knew that if I didn’t start taking better care of it, I would lose the index toe entirely. Stealing a quick glance at the white sock that covered it I could see that it was bleeding again, the tip of the sock stained with rich red blood.

  Getting myself dressed, I poured another shot of whiskey and drank it down. It was going on high noon, and in only a few hours we would be heading back over to the Cattivo’s for a barbeque in which it was quite possible I’d play an instrumental role in John’s accidental death. The only thing that stood in the way of the plan now was letting Susan in on it. It was something I had to do, whether I liked it or not.

  Feeling the effects of the whiskey kicking in, calming and sedating me, I hobbled across the kitchen floor to the bedroom door, gently rapped my knuckles against the solid wood panel.

  No answer.

  Placing my hand on the opener, I turned it counter-clockwise and pushed the door open. That’s when I saw that Susan was lying on the bed face down in her pillow. I made my way over to her, set myself down beside her on the mattress. I knew I had to tell her about my conversation with Lana, about what she’d asked me to do. But how the hell do you go about explaining something like that to a woman who is already deeply confused and brokenhearted? Where exactly, do you begin?

  Reaching out, I gently set my hand on her shoulder, and began to massage it.

  She rolled over, looked up at me. Her eyes were red and swelled. We were quiet while I focused on the slider window that provided the view onto the wood deck where Lana was, no doubt, sunning herself right at this very moment. I so badly wanted to make my way to the window and look at her. But I used every ounce of strength left in my body to resist the temptation.

  “Lana has asked for a favor,” I said after a time.

  Her melancholy eyes suddenly grew wide, not like she was surprised over Lana asking me for a favor, but more like she already knew what the favor entailed. Almost like she’d been standing outside the door of the Cattivo gunroom when the question was posed.

  “You have my attention,” she said softly. “What kind of favor, Ethan?”

  I told her. Straight up. No rocks. No whiskey chaser. Told her about the accidental suicide plan and the reward of insurance money. About John’s plan to kill Lana. About her black eye. About having her all to ourselves.

  She did something that surprised me then. Instead of sitting up straight and announcing to me in no uncertain terms that we needed to go directly to the police… the very police with whom John belonged… she did something completely different. She laughed. Not loud, or silly, but gently and thoughtfully. Like I’d just told her a joke that was neither brilliant nor memorable, but that nonetheless made her think and grin for a few seconds.

  “Did you give Lana your answer?” she said.

  Her question or questions, came as yet another surprise.

  “Do you really want to know?” I said.

  “Tell you what. You keep your answer to yourself.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “John Cattivo is one of the most horrible men I’ve met in my life. I also believe he somehow enslaves her. Or why else would she be with him?”

  Funny her use of the word enslaved, especially when I saw their relationship as having worked the other way around. Lana having enslaved John a long time ago, turning him into the monster that he is today. Still, she is dependent upon him, and under that circumstance, she is most definitely a slave.

  “Money,” I said after a beat. “Lana claims to have nothing of her own. John is all she has. And now, she enslaves us, Suze. You and me.”

  “Money,” she repeated. “And we’re irreparably broke. This isn’t about love or lust or desire anymore, and it’s not about ridding the world of a man better off dead. It’s about money. But what you have to ask yourself is this, Ethan. Are you willing to commit murder in the first for money? Or are you willing to commit murder for the woman? Because either way, you’re going to rot in hell.”

  I looked at my wife lying on the bed beside me while my back was pressed up against the headboard, my right foot laid out on the mattress, the white sock stained with dried blood. Her brown eyes were gazing upon me and into me. I pictured the stunning blonde woman sitting out on the back deck just a few feet away. I wanted her right now. I wanted Susan too. Wanted them both, again, and again. Wanted them together.

  “The devil won’t know a goddamned thing,” I said. “That is, unless you tell him first. You wouldn’t do that to me, would you Susan?”

  She didn’t get the chance to answer me. Because through the slider window came the heavy engine noise of an SUV pulling up in the Cattivo driveway.

  Detective Cattivo was home again, and if what Lana said was correct, he brought Carl Pressman with him.

  I stood up, shoved the crutches under my arms, hopped on over to the window. As suspected, Lana was sitting out on the deck, sunning her body, only a pair of black bikini panties for clothing. After a few seconds, John came storming out the sliding glass doors. As anticipated, he was accompanied by his partner, Carl. John was wearing a blue blazer, but the front tails on his gray button down were no longer tucked in while his beer gut protruded over his belt buckle. From where I stood in front of the slider, he looked like he’d been wrestling around with someone or something, and enjoying it.

  The taller, darker Carl was also wearing a lightweight blue blazer, but his shirt was neatly tucked in, his goatee impeccably trimmed, the aviator sunglasses masking his eyes.

  Lana sat up, grabbed her robe from off the chaise beside her, and put it on. Did it with no special sense of urgency, which convinced me first that both men had seen her naked plenty of times before, and second, that she moved slowly on purpose, just to further piss off her husband.

  “What’s happening?” Susan said from the bed.

  I raised up my hand, as if to shush her.

  I listened while a few indiscernible words were exchanged between John and Lana. By now, Susan had gotten up and come around the bed, taken her place beside me at the window. We should have been more careful with our eavesdropping. But when John turned, focused his eyes directly at us, as if he could see our faces through the glass, I instinctively pulled back and so did Susan.

  “Do yo
u think he caught us in the act?” Susan said.

  “I think we’re standing far enough away from the window,” I said. “The glare from the sun should be enough to shield us.”

  She stood with her back pressed up against the wall. She was breathing heavily, and very afraid. “But they know we’re looking at them. Lana can feel it.”

  “I know what you mean about Lana,” I said. “About what she can intuit and what she can’t.”

  This time when I looked out the window, I used only my right eye, and from a farther distance from the glass.

  “What’s happening?” Lana said.

  I saw Lana get up from the chaise lounge. But John reached out, pushed her back down.

  “The son of bitch just shoved her,” I said. She was wearing her sunglasses, but I could see her black eye plain enough inside my head. I could feel her pain.

  “Oh Christ,” Susan said. She pulled away from the wall and assumed a similar position to myself. One in which she was more or less peeking with only one eye and from a greater distance away from the window.

  Together we saw John pull out his automatic and point it at Lana.

  “My own goddamned partner,” he barked.

  Even from where I was still standing, I could see Lana’s face turn pale.

  “Stop it, John,” Carl said.

  But Cattivo swung the pistol around, aimed at his partner’s face.

  “You shut up,” he said. Then, smiling, he added, “You know, Carl. I don’t blame you. You fell under her spell like everyone else does. When you fuck my wife’s mouth, you’re just doing what comes naturally. Doing what dozens have done before you.”

  Carl’s hands were raised up in surrender. But I wondered just who he was surrendering to.

  “I won’t see her ever again,” he said. “I promise, John.”

  “Sure you do, Carl. They always make promises they can’t keep.”

  He shifted the pistol back to his wife.

  “This thing ends today, Lana,” he said. “You got it? My partner is entirely off limits. You got that?”

  Lana issued him a stare, her blue eyes unblinking. She nodded.

  As John returned his service weapon to its hip holster, he once more turned and stared directly at our window, offering up a wide, strangely satisfied, if not evil grin, as if he knew full well I was watching. Then he disappeared back inside the house, with Carl on his tail. Less than a minute later, we heard the SUV starting up, and backing out of the drive.

  Lana crossed her arms over her chest and stared down at her bare feet, the crying heart tattoo plainly visible. I couldn’t be sure, but I swear she had to be crying. For certain I knew she was crying when she wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands and slowly, achingly, stood up.

  Susan and I turned toward each other at the same time, locked eyes.

  “I’m going to buy some wine,” she said. “Some red, bloody fruit of the vine to bring as a gift tonight to the Cattivos.”

  “Then you agree to Lana’s plan?”

  “I’m agreeing to seeing that horrible piece of scum go to hell, even if it means we follow him there.”

  We didn’t discuss what would or wouldn’t happen at the Cattivos house anymore that afternoon. Resolved to what we, or I, had to do to save Lana’s life and rid the world of John’s, we simply went about our business with a strange new sense of optimism. So optimistic in fact, that I sat in front of my typewriter and began to write something other than notes.

  FADE IN: I typed.

  I began a script about a writer who lives in downtown Manhattan and who falls hopelessly in love with a married woman when she and her banker husband move into the vacant apartment next door. He’s not sure why he should fall so desperately in love with this woman whom he knows nothing about. Only that he does.

  The wrinkle comes about when the woman asks him to help kill her husband. The husband is worth a lot of money dead, and if it was made to look like an accident, they both share in the insurance money and become millionaires overnight.

  I guess it was the same plot as the 1940s film classic, Double Indemnity. But I didn’t care. It was a timeless story that resembled real life, and the studios, especially big Hollywood studios, were suckers for new twists on old classic plots. Even if in the end, I had no choice but to shelve the project or else implicate my own participation in a murder-for-money-and-lust scheme, it felt good to be writing scripts again. To hear the clatter of the typewriter, to be filling the blank page with directions and dialogue for first time since Lana moved in next door, and wrapped a ball and chain around my soul.

  By the time Susan returned from the liquor store with three bottles of red wine, I’d already written five pages. It was going on five o’clock and if what Lana told me was true, John would be arriving home drunk from his Friday afternoon out with his fellow officers within the hour. Heading into the bedroom, Susan changed out of her jeans and into a short denim skirt and a tight black T-shirt accented with a silver necklace that supported a metal cross. Her dark hair was long and brushed out, and I wanted to swim in it. Wanted to swim in it along with Lana.

  Taking her into my arms, I kissed my wife on the mouth. I was dreading what I was about to do to John, but at the same time, feeling somehow optimistic about the future. About the three of us together. I felt like a man who was about to enter into a decisive battle, but somehow knew of the outcome before anyone else did. And the outcome was wonderful.

  “Do you think it’s possible for three people to fall in love with one another?” I said.

  “Life is strange,” she said. “That’s as far as I go with this.”

  She grabbed up the wine bottles and made for the back sliding glass doors.

  Lana was already waiting for us on the deck. Despite the ordeal she was put through earlier with her husband, his partner, and a gun pointed at her face, she looked fresh and lovely in a short, white, summer-weight skirt that stopped just short of mid-thigh. Instead of wearing her leather sandals, she chose to go barefoot, her toes having been manicured and painted in lipstick-red nail polish. A fresh application of makeup covered up her shiner, and the blood tears that fell from the crying heart tattoo on her ankle seemed to pulsate with her every step, as if they were fully anticipating precisely how this night was going to end.

  “Come in,” she said, wrapping her arms around Susan, kissing her gently on the mouth. “John’s not home yet.”

  She took the wine bottles from Susan and set them out on the outdoor table beside a wood cutting board that contained a hunk of blue cheese and a green apple that had already been sliced up into several wedges with the paring knife that also rested on the board. Lana did not say a word about our plan to kill her husband, but instead she insisted that I open up one of the bottles and pour three big glasses, which I did.

  “To us,” she said, her smile sly and somewhat energetic, as she raised her glass with one hand and fingered an apple wedge with the other. “To a brighter future.” She sipped the wine, then bit down on the slice of apple.

  Raising our glasses to our lips, Susan and I drank. The wine was warm, rich, sweet and bitter at the same time. I swear, as the liquid descended into my body, I felt something more than just liquid enter into me then. It felt warm but also cold, and it seemed to lodge itself inside my ribcage beside my heart where the soul resides. All that needed to happen then was a lightning bolt to strike the apple tree out back, and the voice of Satan rising up from out of the depths screaming, “You’re mine now!” But of course, it was a nice peaceful evening on Orchard Grove, with a welcome breeze soothing us from out of the north.

  The strange thing was that I hadn’t yet let on to Lana that Susan knew about our plan. But somehow Lana already knew the truth. I could read it on her face like the title page on a script. Maybe the last thing Susan wanted was to openly speak about assisting in a murder, but as soon as her eyes met Lana’s I’m sure she had nothing else in mind other than getting rid of John before he got rid of her firs
t and did so under the guise of a legal circumstance… a tragic, but oh so common, accident. If it could only be accomplished so that it looked like an accident, all the better.

  We stood on the back deck drinking wine, eating cheese and apple wedges as the late afternoon sun assumed its summertime orange afterglow. Susan and Lana seemed as happy as two girlfriends who’d just spent the day shopping. How is it that they were so calm? So confident? At the same time, my heart was pounding and I could feel cold droplets of sweat pouring down my backbone.

  Holy Christ, I was about to become a murderer… Didn’t matter that the guy who was going to die had it coming…

  Something else made the situation surreal: The sexual tension between the three of us was so thick and palpable you could cut it with the paring knife that rested on the cutting board. But it was replaced by sudden alertness and a kind of call-to-action when we heard the SUV pulling up in the driveway, its tires squealing on the macadam when it came to an abrupt stop.

  “And that, my lovelies, will be the resident evil of the Cattivo household,” Lana said, her face growing noticeably tight. She finished off her wine, set the glass down onto the table.

  Turning to Susan, we locked eyes. She didn’t have to say word for me to know what she was thinking. Do what you must do, and I will support you one hundred percent because I love you and because the man who is about to die aimed a loaded gun to my head and plans on killing Lana.

  Coming from inside the house, a door opening and slamming shut. Heavy footsteps followed, and after that, the sliding glass doors were thrown open. John walked out, his face red, wide-eyed and as agitated as an angry pit bull. His 9mm was holstered to his hip.