ANGER COLORED CHICK'S FACE AS I STOOD THERE WITH the dead phone in my hand. Apparently, I wasn't cooperating with his twisted fantasy. I watched as he made a huge effort to compose himself, taking half a dozen deep breaths.
"I need to tell you something," he finally said. "I've been waiting for just the right moment, and now that we're alone with no distractions, I think you need to understand a few things. It's important because it affects everything between us."
"There is no `us: Chick."
"When I first saw you in Hawaii almost a year ago, I had never seen anyone so breathtakingly beautiful… "
"Please, Chick… "
"Stop arguing and interrupting! Listen to me, for chrissake!" He took several more breaths, then calmed himself again and continued.
"Y'see, Paige, I've never been a man with a big emotional component. I don't know why that is. Maybe it was my dad dying so early in my adolescence. Maybe it was because my mother and grandmother were such hovering crones. I don't know what caused it. But then, in Hawaii last January, I saw you. You were my definition of human perfection. Right then a floodgate of emotion just opened. All these feelings I'd never felt before, they just swamped me."
"Chick, please! Don't do this. You don't have a clue who I am."
He cocked his head like an animal scoping prey. The look was chilling.
"But I was married, so it was one of those impossible things," he continued, as if he hadn't heard me. "You had Chandler. I had Evelyn. So you went home; I went home. That should have been the end of it. But Paige, I couldn't get you out of my mind-couldn't erase the memory of you from my thoughts. Little things, adorable things about you haunted my every waking moment. The birthmark on your calf, I love that birthmark. The way you like to sit with your legs tucked under you, the giggly laugh you have. The little hairs on your arms, so fine, so perfect?'
Jesus Christ, I thought. This guy is out of his fucking mind. "Chick, you've had quite a bit of wine, so let's stop this right now, before either of us says something we don't mean."
"I've been planning to tell you this for months, Paige. I've thought about nothing else for almost a year. From the second I first sawyou getting out of the pool at the Four Seasons, it was love at first sight."
He took another sip of the Bordeaux and set down the glass. "I have plans for us. Dreams."
I thought, I've had enough. This asshole murdered my husband. If I'm going down, then it might as well be swinging. So I shouted my next words right in his smug face.
"Plans for us? I'm not interested in you, you silly son-of-a-bitch. I still love Chandler!"
"Chandler is dead!" he shouted back. "He's gone. Evelyn's gone. It's just us now."
I could see where this was headed. He would convince himself that I wanted him, despite my protests. First rape, then maybe even murder.
Suddenly, Chick lunged toward me and grabbed my purse. "What've you got in there?" I was clutching the bag so tightly he must have sensed I had something inside. He jerked the bag open and pulled out the broken wineglass stem, waving it between us. "What's this for?"
I didn't answer.
His eyes fell on Bob Butler's letter and the drawing. He reached into the purse and plucked them out. He opened the letter first, took one step back, and scanned it quickly. Then he glanced at the picture.
The truth of Bob's accusation was immediately all over his face.
He dropped the letter to the floor. His eyes went dead, like the flickering glass eyes on the wall-hung animals.
He whispered something. At first I didn't understand him, but then he said it louder. "You complete me."
The insanity of that remark rocked me.
"You killed them both, didn't you? First Chandler, then Evelyn. All of it because of this twisted fantasy that you and I would one day be together?'
I had to get out of here now or die trying. "Give me the keys to the car, Chick."
"I can't let you leave, Paige."
"You gonna kill me, too?"
He stepped forward. Both his hands were extended toward me, a strange look of frustration clouding his face.
It was time to make my move, so right then, when he wasn't expecting it, I gave him a kin-geri, which is a polite Japanese term for a kick to the balls. My foot strike caught him squarely, in the bulge of those tight, Roberto Cavalli stretchies. He grabbed his crotch, doubled over, and then dropped to his knees in pain.
I exploded through the house and out the front door into the night. The fresh snow was almost a foot high on the porch. I ran down the steps, slipping once and going down, but I rolled immediately up to my feet and sprinted toward the gold Mercedes, running my fingers under the front bumper, looking for the hide-a-key. Nothing.
"Paige, come back here! Don't make me do this!"
I turned and saw Chick standing on the front porch holding a scoped deer rifle. I spun and ran as fast as I could, into the trees at the side of the drive. I had carelessly left my sweater inside and the cold, wind-whipped snow swirled around me. Then I heard a rifle's report, heard a limb snap nearby. I kept running, heading up the steep bank into the forest by the side of his driveway, my short choppy sprinter's stride churning in the deep drifting snow.