Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 143, No. 1. Whole No. 868, January 2014

The Purloined Pigs by Dennis McFadden

Dennis McFadden’s stories have appeared in dozens of publications, including the literary journals Crazyhorse, PRISM International, and The South Carolina Review. His crime fiction has twice been selected for the Best American Mystery stories series. In 2010, Colgate University Press brought out a collection of his stories entitled Hart’s Grove. He’s produced this impressive body of work while also serving full time as a project manager for the New York State Department of Health.

When he was three or four his mam told him there was no such a thing as Santy Claus, nor Father Christmas, nor any of them. She told him Santy Claus was invented in the dark ages by Oliver Cromwell solely for the purpose of keeping the Paddies simple and deluded. His da disagreed, saying there was no way a Brit could ever be so clever, but his mam was nothing if not firm in her convictions, and the one time his da brought home a Christmas tree — a spindly wee orphan of a tree at that — didn’t his mam come in and pitch the thing straight through the window, tinsel, ribbons, and all. A brilliant enough event in its own right, made all the more so by the fact that they were living at the time in the third-floor tenement on Rutland Place, the tree narrowly missing old man McGonagall as it crashed to the cracked and dirty pavement down below. Up until now, that had been Lafferty’s most memorable Christmas.

Up until now. The snow falling on Blue Bucket Lane, a rare and fabulous thing, was only the beginning. Miraculous mightn’t have been overstating the case, not so much for being the first snow to fall on the village of Kilduff in any number of years, and not so much for happening on the very eve of Christmas, but for the nature of the transformation, Blue Bucket Lane going from a squalid stretch of brown mud, dead grass, and bland cottages into a wonderland of glitter and grace. Lafferty stood for a time in the doorway, watching the plump flakes float down dark and white through the lamplight, gathering on the berm of the lane and the dirty yards, clinging to the clusters of branches and limbs.

Miraculous too, the snowfall, for its timing. Had it come two nights earlier, it would have found your man shivering sleepless and homeless under his sodden old newspapers at the base of the Kilduff Cross on the green across from his turf accountant’s shop. Having finally been tossed out of her house for all and good by his wife, Peggy, the locks on the doors changed, the Gardai forewarned and watching. The last straw — his extended visit to tend to the needs of the widow Reagan — having finally broken the back of the camel in question. So it was easy for Lafferty to look out now at the new snow, spotless as the soul of a baby, and imagine a fresh beginning. He was no spring chicken anymore, Lafferty wasn’t, turning the corner at forty before you knew it. Time to settle down, grow up. Time to try to make a go of it with Peggy. Hadn’t they once upon a time been crazy mad with the lust and the love for one another, two decades ago to be sure, but wasn’t that a feeling that might be recaptured, and wasn’t the snow falling so white and fresh a sign that slates could be wiped clean, that leafs could be turned, that lives could start over again.

Peggy came up to him in the doorway. “Move your arse, Terrance, or I’ll be after tossing it right back out in the snow again. My guests’ll be here any minute.”

“Yes, my love,” said Lafferty.

“ ‘Love’ my arse,” said she.

“Oh, I do,” said he, “I do,” and Peggy had to smile, at last. Having long ago grown immune to his charms and inveiglements, it had been awhile since she’d smiled at his clever bon mot, and he took the smile to be confirmation that the sign of the snowfall was true, that clean slates and turning leafs and fresh beginnings were all possible in God’s sweet world.

“The toilet needs scrubbing,” said Peggy, the smile run away from her face.

She was giving her Christmas party. She’d invited her friends and coworkers from St. Christopher’s, where she was a nurse. In addition to a pack of promises concerning the nature of his future behavior, which included gainful employment, it was the party, in fact, that helped him worm his way back. Not just the labor of the preparation, mind you, for appearances beyond polish and shine were important, the appearance in particular of a happy couple graciously, charmingly (this is where Terrance came in) entertaining their guests on a Christmas Eve. She cooked, he cleaned. And cleaned and washed and dusted and swept and mopped and scrubbed and polished, one chore after another, eager and uncomplaining, at least within her earshot. His mam hadn’t raised her son for physical labor, much less physical labor befitting a scullery maid, but a night or two in the cold and barren roads of Kilduff could fine-tune a man’s attitude, and nor had his mam raised a fool. Lafferty looked at the condition as temporary. He figured after the new leaf was turned, after the relationship was reestablished, then the labor would naturally sort itself out by appropriate role and gender, and the old order would eventually reemerge. All he had to do was keep his nose clean and his tool sharp. And though he doubted the old order would go so far as a move back to Dublin, who knew? He’d never wanted to leave the city in the first place, to move to a godforsaken village the likes of Kilduff, out in the heart of County Nowhere. When she’d told him she wanted to leave, to quit the city, to start anew in a small cottage in a little village, where perhaps she and Terrance could start over as well, without all the gambling and drinking and unsavory sorts to lead him astray, and maybe even have the child she’d been hoping to have, he’d told her by God he was staying. He was a Dublin boy through and through, born and bred. But once again the want of a roof over his head put the spoil to his best-laid plans, forcing a reconciliation, a reluctant move to the country. That particular reconciliation, like all those that followed, had faltered, and so Lafferty hoped — sincerely this time, perhaps — that this one might somehow fare better.

It was in the very spirit of that reconciliation, in fact, that Lafferty went to the bother of procuring a gift, a Christmas gift, for the first time he could remember, maybe for the first time ever. In the thrift shop by Connor’s News Agent, he found a porcelain pigs figurine, forking over the last two bob to his name, two bob he’d worked hard to attain, a coin or two at a time here and there, beneath the cushions of Peggy’s sofa, in a little ceramic box in the corner of her dresser, scattered in the junk drawer of her kitchen cabinet. For didn’t herself collect pigs. If there was any irony in her penchant, Lafferty never looked for it. She had porcelain, pewter, stuffed, and plush, pigs of all sizes, shapes, and colors, on this shelf or that, this room or that, kitchen, bedroom, and parlor. The figurine he’d spotted amidst the junk in the thrift shop stood out head and shoulders above the other pigs, and he suspected it might be what Peggy might call adorable: six inches high, white in color with only a blush of pink, a mama pig and baby pig standing up on their hind legs, clutching one another as if in fear, looking up with four large and wondering eyes at the world at large. It came in a box that Lafferty wrapped in pretty paper he found in Peggy’s desk, and stashed the thing on the top shelf of the closet in the bedroom behind a shoebox and well out of sight to surprise her with come Christmas morning. He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face.

Guests began arriving, smiles as white as the snow they were shaking from their shoulders. Time and again, Lafferty showed his own teeth, as well as the jolly dimple in the middle of his own chin. They were nurses mostly, of either or indeterminate gender, with significant others and spouses, a receptionist or two, and technician as well. Some he remembered from this gathering or that, some he didn’t, though he’d have been hard-pressed to put a name even to those he did. He saw to it that all were hailed and well met, that a drink was in every hand, including his own, to be sure, nibbles within easy reach, taking their coats to brush off the snow and pile on the bed in the bedroom. The tree was lit up and sparkling, the music loud and choirful, the gas flame in the stove sputtering blue and red and yellow, a fine approximation of a Yule log. The chatter was loud as well, bouts of laughter frequent and earnest. An hour in, it was apparent the thing was going right as the mail, and when Lafferty looked at his wife talking up a big fellow with gold in his teeth and his wife who was skinny and pale, Peggy all smiles and ease, he figured the roof over his head was secure, at least for the immediate future.

A woman named Cassidy came, a woman known by all as Cassie. When Peggy introduced him he said pleased, and Cassie said she’d met him before, did he not remember, and Lafferty had to admit he did not. At the Commodore Pub, said she, the day they gathered to bring in the summer. If drink was taken, Lafferty explained, that might account for his failing to remember a face so pretty as hers, at which point Peggy interjected that with Terrance there was always drink taken, which might account for his failing to remember where he lived a great deal of the time. She’d a pretty face indeed, Cassie did, nose regal and thin, brown eyes hiding a quiet panic, her eyebrows, sandy and fine like her hair, set straight in a line beneath a forehead with an eternal crease of incomprehension. She appeared entirely unable to quite put a name to whatever it was she was watching. When Peggy told him from the corner of her mouth a bit later that Cassie, plump, lonely, and neglected, had “problems,” that her husband had left her, and Peggy had invited her mostly from pity, Lafferty took in the desperate and thirsty look of the woman and saw her for what she was: a mortal temptress God had placed on the path to his reconciliation. The flesh of her body, near as Lafferty could judge beneath her loose-fitting dress and sweater, seemed at the crossroads of aging, still firm enough to be enticing, ample and relaxed enough to be inviting.

He caught himself holding his breath. He neither meant nor intended to be judging the flesh of another woman. He meant to spurn temptation. He looked at his wife. Pretty, prettier, dark hair in thick waves and ringlets, fine fistfuls of flesh evident beneath the close-fitting clothes. She was the woman for him. Amen and case closed.

For a time Lafferty chatted up a fellow with the ugliest wife he could find. His name was Conboy, beanpole tall and lanky with a small face and square jaw, hair balding back across the crown of his head. He paused before every laugh to make sure, Lafferty guessed, that he got it. His wife, Angelica, was a frightful scramble of straight hair, chicklet teeth, and a wee nose buried by the heft of her glasses, but Lafferty loved her wit. When the topic turned to the lamentable earthquake in Turkey and the countless hundreds dead, didn’t she say, “Ah, sure, they probably all had it coming,” and Lafferty hoped he could grow up someday to appreciate a woman such as that. Passing through the parlor, he exchanged cowboy quick-draws with a big heavy fellow by the name of Quinn with tight curly hair and a roadmap of red veins and splotches on his cheeks, the big fellow clutching his chest like it was shot full of hot lead, and in the kitchen he fell in with Browne, a grave and studious man, the prominent gray hair of his eyebrows threatening to conquer his face altogether. Browne was espousing to his wife, Ginger, and a cluster of others his conviction that there was no such thing as the present, that the present didn’t exist, that the word itself should be stricken from the dictionaries of the world. Someone said what about now? Right now when they’re all standing about, weren’t they in the present, and Browne said certainly not, it’s in the past by the time the word leaves your lips. Someone said now quicker but Browne insisted it still existed only in memory, nowhere else, and for a time they stood about shouting now quicker and quicker, trying in vain to snatch the present and keep it from becoming the past. Lafferty saw Cassie standing at the fringe, feigning interest, trying to hide the confusion on her brow. She was standing directly beneath the overhead light of the kitchen, which lent her fine, sandy hair a metallic and reflective quality that Lafferty could have taken for a halo, if he’d been so inclined.

When the time came for party pieces they congregated around the tree, great flakes of snow still licking at the window from the darkness outside. Ginger Browne went first, encouraged by the crowd who’d heard her first-rate voice before, giving a grand rendition of “O Holy Night,” hitting the high notes with gusto. Song after song followed, three nurses in a fine bit of diddlyi, Lafferty concluding they must practice in the ward when they ought to be healing people, and a little man named Enright offering a quavering version of “Wild Mountain Thyme,” making the most of a voice that was mournful and thin. Will you go, lassie, go, sang every voice in the room, except for that of a dark fellow by the name of Adams who’d been sulking behind his close-cropped beard since the moment he arrived on the outs with his wife. When it came time for Lafferty’s own piece, he demurred, glancing at Peggy, who knew that his usual was a rousing rebel song, “The Boys of the Old Brigade,” far from a favorite of hers, and he’d not had enough drink taken at any rate, wasn’t in the mood, too busy being the host, too busy minding his p’s and q’s — a redundant effort on his part, as Peggy was minding them too. When they urged and insisted, Lafferty stepped to the middle of the room, cleared his throat, and recited,

The rhyme was well received and Lafferty was off the hook, and he opened himself another bottle of stout, and looked at the clock on the mantel. Another piece or two ensued, till it petered out over a sad effort by Mr. and Mrs. Quinn, who stumbled through a Bavarian folk song they picked up on German holiday. Lafferty noticed his own cheeks had got sore from smiling. A sad state of affairs. In an evening at the Pig and Whistle with his mates, didn’t his smile last twice as long, and didn’t his cheeks never grow weary of it. There were different qualities of smiles, those that came easy and those that did not, those that took place, say, for instance, at your wife’s Christmas party with a passel of partiers you hardly knew, and with the keen eye of your wife forever watching for the smile to be sure it was there and sincere, and which required all the more toil to maintain. Cassie was one of the first to leave, fetching her coat from the bedroom and carrying it with her out into the snow, pausing only to say a few words to Peggy passing by. Lafferty thought she’d have slunk out undetected if she’d been able, and he was relieved to see her depart, taking with her the fleshy temptation, seeing it as the first step toward an empty house, which was to say toward an empty bedroom in which he and his wife, Peggy-o, could at last consummate their reconciliation. For wasn’t your man growing all the more randy with each passing stout, each passing hour, the longer he’d looked upon the temptation, having been celibate now for so many days. Five at least, going on six.

But weren’t his hopes to be dashed. For after the last guest had finally straggled out into the snowfall, after your man had made a conscientious and conspicuous effort to tidy up the desperate litter of bottles and ashes and saucers and such while herself only sat in the quiet and rested, didn’t she go into the bedroom then all alone. And tell him through the closed and locked door that he’d earned his way back into her home, but not yet back to her bed.

There was always the pigs. His ace in the hole was the pigs up his sleeve. Lafferty, disgruntled and randy and lonely, stood for a time with his simmering blood in the dark of the living room looking out through the window at the flurries still chasing one another around the lamppost. The ground was covered and glistening, the tree limbs gleaming as well. Two nights ago being warm and dry and sheltered from the snow would have been plenty enough, but now it seemed scant consolation. You always want more than whatever you have, a truth he was born with. He considered for a time tapping on her door again and telling her of the pigs, of the gift he had for her that couldn’t wait till morning for her to open. See what else it might open. But in the end he did not. Best not to press the issue, best not to hurry the woman. In the end he decided to wait. He was certain she’d adore the pigs once she’d laid her eyes on them, and the morning would come soon enough. Love in the morning was a favorite of his. In the end he was content to take the little wool blanket from the shelf in the hallway and wrap himself up on the sofa safe from the snow and the cold, listening to the warm hum of the flame in the stove, savoring as he fell asleep the pleasant anticipation of delayed gratification.

As soon as he heard her next morning with the kettle he was up and into the bedroom, and straight to the closet shelf. But there was nothing there but empty. He reached deeper. Still nothing. He knocked aside the shoebox, the other boxes and what-nots and bric-a-brac, searching with increasing anxiety for the gaily wrapped parcel of pigs. He looked on the floor of the closet, in the rest of the room, on the shelves with the other pigs, everywhere there were pigs, to see if she’d discovered the thing and placed it on display. It was nowhere to be found. The pigs were missing entirely.

In the kitchen she stood, in her purple robe, her hair sideways to Sunday from sleeping. He in his rumpled trousers said, “Did you find it? Did you open it?”

“Find what?” says she. “Open what?”

“I’m after buying you a gift, which I hid in the closet. It’s not there now.”

The look on her face said not again, Terrance. The lips on her face said nothing.

“I bought you a bloody gift — it’s gone. It’s missing. It’s not there now.”

“Terrance—”

“I amn’t lying!”

She couldn’t look at him. She turned to her cup, saying nothing. Lafferty’s heart was hammering. He wasn’t lying. Not this time. Peggy stood at the kitchen counter, her head with a sad little shake, not looking toward your man in the doorway. Outside through the window the morning was blazing, a brilliant sun rising on new-fallen snow. Lafferty let his fist unclench, his blood settle down, his thoughts travel back. There was the time he’d given her the squashed box of chocolates. Another time the empty ring box, and once before the roses that were spotted and wilted too soon, and there’d been other assorted gifts down the years, all ruined or flawed — all ruses of one sort or another, all attributable to imaginary thieves or cheaters, all engaged in imaginary plots to beat down the good intentions of your man.

But this time he wasn’t lying, not at all. Except in the eyes of his Peggy-o.

Peggy went off to work, St. Christopher’s being open as ever, Christmas day or not. Lafferty sat at the table while she fixed herself another cup of tea and toast, never offering any to him. If you get hungry, help yourself, she said as she was leaving, which was something at least, he supposed. She showered and dressed behind closed doors, and as she was leaving she told him to finish picking up from the party, if he didn’t mind, not bothering to hear if he minded. He stood at the window and watched her drive off in her little brown Ford, watched the warm sun turning the snow to slush. Blue Bucket Lane shiny, wet, and black.

He looked around at the leftover litter, then back again out through the window. The leftover litter could wait. He hadn’t given up hope, not yet, for the idea of the pigs and the role they might play was still very much in his mind. He hadn’t given up on his pigs.

He showered and dressed. Made himself a cup of tea, took a biscuit from the tin, brushed his teeth like a good lad. Glanced out again at the sun going higher, the snow going slushier. Never once taking much notice of the shower or clothes or tea or biscuit, the toothbrush or sunshine or slush. Lost in thought was he, of pigs and reconciliations. He rummaged through Peggy’s desk till he found her address book, and sure enough there was the one he was seeking. Peggy was nothing if not an organized woman. Putting on his jacket, he walked down the lane into the heart of Kilduff, squinting against the brightness from under the bill of his cap. He made his way past the Pig and Whistle, so regrettably closed, past the green which was still mostly white, where stood the Kilduff Cross, his erstwhile home. A pack of brats on the green, noisy and busy, building snowmen, throwing snowballs, all in a frenzy, racing the sun. One he recognized by his crimson cheeks as the Gallagher lad, nephew of one of his mates, and when he flung a snowball at your man, Lafferty caught it on the fly, returning the thing with a good deal more velocity, and, sure enough, not another was flung his direction. At the corner by Connor’s, closed up too, he stopped and waited. That was where the bus stopped as well, and soon it appeared down the road.

Three stops and a half-hour later, one town over, he disembarked, walking up a slushy street of squat trees and close-packed flats, checking the numbers on the doorways. When he found the one he was looking for, 36, he climbed the small stoop and gave a good rap, and the woman named Cassidy came to the door, still dressed in her bathrobe and slippers.

“Terrance Lafferty?” she said.

“In the flesh,” says your man.

“I never thought I’d see your puss again.” The confusion on her brow at its deepest.

“In the flesh,” he repeated. “May I come in? We need to talk.”

“We do? I’m not really dressed.”

“If it’ll put you at ease, I’m willing to undress as well.”

A flash of red shot through her face. The confusion, though, entirely gone.

What was it truly that brought him to Cassie’s? The suspicion ignited by her reputed “problems,” along with the fact that she’d fetched her own coat from the bedroom, all on her own, and ventured out into the night and the snow falling down and the bloody thing over her arm? Not wearing it on her at all?

Or was it the fleshy temptation? The gratification too long delayed?

It was a fine distinction, not worth the time to consider. For didn’t she step aside. And didn’t your man step into the void.

In the grand scheme of things over the length of his life, Lafferty had accomplished nothing. He lived and loved the best he knew how, according to his own set of rules, perfecting the art of getting by, and so he’d never climbed a high mountain, nor built a great bridge, nor won any prize in a race. Nevertheless, he knew how it felt. He believed every life was touched by moments of grace, moments when all things come together in harmony, and the soul rises up in the gooseflesh to take a peek for itself, and this was what Lafferty felt as he stepped inside the neat and dim little room, seeing immediately his pigs on the mantel shelf, feeling the closeness of this woman, this Cassie, who stood sharing his space, sensing a kinship both ancient and new. He looked about the room, goosebumps letting up. Not a stick was out of place. The curtain hung down in pale wavy pleats, a yellow hue from the sun beating off the boards of the house next door. A clean soft carpet of dark and light circles, a trim sofa beneath the window with plush crimson cushions, a doily of lace square in the middle of the coffee table, the chairs and the lamps and tables just so. And the mantel with the candles — the candles and pigs.

“Lovely,” said he, and took a deep breath.

“What is?” she said. Then, “Are them tears? Are you crying?”

“Aye.” He wiped at his cheek. “Tears of joy.”

“Joy? Aren’t you the strange one, though.”

“The joy of reconciliation.” Crossing to the mantel, he looked at the pigs, the mama and baby clutched there together, returning his gaze with their wide fearful eyes. He seized the figurine, held it high, then clutched it to his tweeded bosom. “Reunited once again with my wee piggy darlings.”

How the face of her blossomed in shock and surprise, a dozen replies scrambling helter-skelter in her eyes. Not a one found its way to her mouth. “Why’d you take ’em?” said he.

She finally spoke. “I didn’t know they were yours.”

“Rubbish. You took ’em off my closet shelf.”

“Peggy’s closet shelf. I thought it was something she’d purchased for you. She’s ever after saying what a pig you are. That’s why she collects ’em, she tells everyone. She calls ’em her bevy of Terrances.”

Though stung, Lafferty nevertheless soldiered on. “Why in bloody hell would you be after taking ’em from anybody?”

She sighed, looking down at the floor, at the dark and light circles underfoot. “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” says she. “That’s what I’m seeing the shrink for.”

A flaming kleptomaniac. A new one on Lafferty. He’d known plenty of light-fingered chaps in his day, had indeed himself been known to borrow the occasional item that didn’t belong to him in the strictest legal sense, but only out of necessity, when no other option was available, and only when the item in question was something which was well and truly needed at the time of its procurement. The idea of stealing on impulse, of taking something utterly useless just because it was there for the taking, was something he sat on the sofa beside your woman as the whole story poured out of her and tried to wrap his head around. She’d been arrested. A convict she was, indeed, indeed. Six months of weekends in the hoosegow after her fourth arrest for shoplifting, and the reason she was seeing the shrink was because it was a court-ordered condition of her probation. Wasn’t her thieving the reason her husband, an accountant with a hairy back and smudged eyeglasses, had left her in the first place.

“Is he doing you no good at all then, the shrink?” Your man leaned back on the soft sofa cushions, the yellow-hued curtain just over his shoulder. Cassie leaned up on the edge of the thing, her knees this close to touching his own as she wrung her hands, wrung the story out of her. Her bathrobe was soft and pink, of a stuff he thought was called chenille, and it kept falling loose with the wringing. He wondered was she wearing anything underneath, a distraction he found annoying as he tried to listen with sympathy and compassion.

“Well,” she said with a dab to her eye from a ragged scrap of tissue, “I amn’t stealing as often. Your pigs was the first in a fortnight. Nearly.” At that she lifted her face up to look at a far corner of the ceiling, as if trying to put a name to something.

“That’s a bit of progress, sure it is.”

She looked down again with a sigh, avoiding his eyes just the same. She laid a small hand by his knee. “He believes it’s all the fault of my mother.”

“Sure your mother was nowhere near my house.”

“Because my mother never gave me a gift, says he — she was a farming lass, dirt poor and hard as rock she was, and the giving of gifts on a birthday, or even on a Christmas, was something they never fell into. My shrink says it’s because she never gave me a gift, never gave me nothing, not love enough after all, is why I steal things to this very day — still trying to get my mother’s attention, says he, still trying to get her to love me.” At this didn’t Cassie look up at your man, the incomprehension on her brow replaced by an utter and painful understanding. “Terrance, I can’t remember the woman touching me at all after the day I turned ten.”

What was your man to do? Had he any choice then but to touch her? Even kleptos need love, he concluded. A little hug, he decided, only that and nothing more. A wee bit of comfort then.

He awoke in mortal discomfort, the sun on the other side of the house pouring in through the bedroom window. His elbow was aching, his arm was asleep, his ankle was itching like blazes, and Cassie asleep in the bed on the crook of his arm, her breathing trying to rise up to a snore. He’d dozed a bit himself, the session of love having been that vigorous and wholehearted. His skin all over — face and neck and arms and chest, his nether parts all down below — was flaky and crusted, the result of the drying up of all the lovely, salty fluids in which they’d been so bathed. Your man was not prone to regrets, nor could he ever imagine, philosophically, regretting the making of love in any form or manner, yet wasn’t a good deal of the discomfort he felt in his body infecting his thinking as well. Wondering the effect this tryst of fate might have on his reconciliation with Peggy. And sure wouldn’t she be home by now from work, wondering where the hell he was. What time was it? The clock on the stand was on Cassie’s side, facing an inch the wrong way, and no way your man could see it without moving. The sun pouring in was heating the room. On the little chair by the dresser sat the great, fat teddy bear, whose name she said was Eldridge when she moved him from off of her bed. And placed him where now he sat, staring at Lafferty with hard button eyes, the sun on his lower left foot. Just behind the closet door then, he noticed it there, for the first time, the end of the briefcase poking out.

When she came awake a few minutes later rubbing her nose, a bit of drool had pooled on his arm, and she wiped it away, then from her chin, embarrassed. She looked into his eyes, inches away, and for a moment he thought the confusion would run away with her face entirely, as if the memory of who he was was gone. As well as that of who she was. He watched the pieces fall together, a few of them anyway, behind her eyes as she blinked. “What time is it?” she said.

“You’re after reading my mind,” says he.

She sat up and looked at the clock. “Half four.”

“I’d best be heading home,” he said. “Peggy’ll be back by now.”

“Where was she?”

“Work,” he said, as though the question was a silly one. “You should know.”

“Peggy wasn’t working today. I make out the holiday shifts myself.”

Lafferty borrowed her confusion, put it on his own brow. “She told me...”

Cassie smiled, her wagging finger coming up to the dimple of his chin. “Don’t tell me you thought himself was the only one stepping out for his wee adventures.” But her finger quit wagging at the look on his face, the eyes of her growing tender. “I’m sorry, Terrance, I just assumed... Everybody knows. We thought it was an open marriage kind of a thing, yours and Peggy’s.”

He sat up on the edge of the bed, his back to her. “Of course I know.” Of course he did. Hadn’t he seen her once with another man, or thought he had. But the restaurant where he thought he had was dim and smoky and he’d not got a clean look, and never made a word of mention about it, for hadn’t he himself been there at the time with another woman who was not Peggy. And hadn’t he convinced himself in all the days since that of course it hadn’t been her. And wasn’t the biggest, thickest, most self-centered eejit that ever breathed air sitting right here and now inside his own skin. “Of course I know,” he repeated. “What class of bloody eejit do you take me for?”

Cassie behind him said nothing. She touched his back in a kind of tickle where a small birthmark the shape of a tear was reputed to live. “I hope you knew,” said she. “You better bloody well have knew. Terrance, I amn’t the kind of woman to sleep with somebody else’s husband, not unless I thought it was... you know...”

He turned. She was leaning up against the pillows, clutching the sheet to her chest in earnest, the ache across her face. “Of course,” he said. He showed her his teeth. “You’ll steal the odd pig now and then from a woman, but never the same woman’s man.”

Cassie smiled too, a smile of a faltering sort. “Yes,” she said, “that’s it.”

He touched her cheek and he kissed it. Then he stood up to dress. Passing by Eldridge toward his clothes in a heap, he noticed the briefcase again peeking out from the closet. “What’s this?” says he, grasping it by the handle, hoisting it up.

Cassie sighed and slumped back down in the sheets, rolling away from him. She buried her face in the pillow, the words coming out of it muffled and low. “That’s the only other thing. That and your pigs was the only two things this past fortnight.”

He turned it, taking in the look of it. Sturdy brown leather, scuffed and worn, brass snaps and locks and corners. “Where’d you steal it from?”

She came up for air. “From the back of the ambulance. I was walking by on my way out of work. Sitting there offering itself to me, it was.”

“Ambulance?”

“They brought in two men, a car wreck. Desperate shape they were in, skulls cracked open, blood everywhere, this close to dead. I don’t know if they made it or not.”

Lafferty looked it over more closely. “What’s in it?”

“I have no bloody clue, Terrance. It’s locked.”

“Heavy,” he said, giving the thing a heft or two. Cassie sat up and started to dress, bra first, then underpants. Not your man. He sat back down naked on the bed, placing the briefcase across his knees. “Don’t you wonder what’s inside?”

“Aye,” says she, dropping the dress down over her head. A plain thing it was, with green dots. “But I hate to break it open. Ruin the bloody thing.”

“Probably nothing but papers inside.”

“Maybe magazines, I was thinking. Maybe books.”

“Have you a paper clip?”

She fetched one and stood watching him pick the lock. When he lifted the lid, the sight turned them both into stone, except for the quick blinking of four bulging eyes. For wasn’t the thing filled to the brim with bright Euro banknotes, high-denomination notes at that, all purple and yellow and green, from side to side, corner to corner, top to bottom. Reaching up over the rim. “My God,” she gasped when finally she could.

Lafferty thought his heart was going to attack. “What the bloody hell...” was all he could manage. He slammed the lid shut.

“Open it back up!” says she.

“Did anybody see you take it?”

She thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I never looked around. Sure I never do.”

“Suffering ducks and the price of turnips.”

“Terrance, I don’t care for that kind of language. Open it up again.”

He did. The money was still there. “What the bloody hell are you going to do?”

She sat down beside him on the edge of the bed. They both touched the banknotes, his right hand, her left, caressing, lingering. “I’ll have to get it back somehow. I certainly can’t keep it. I’m not a bloody thief.”

He looked at her. “You know what I mean,” she said. “Not a thief like this. I’ll have to get it back somehow to its rightful owner. Somehow without getting collared again.”

“Your rightful owner might be hard to find,” says your man. “The men carrying this around are not likely to be rightful owners. Nobody rightfully carries around a hundred thousand quid in cash.” They caressed a bit longer. “Someone’ll be looking for it. Someone’ll be looking hard, very hard.”

“How’ll I get it back to ’em? Do you suppose they’d miss just a few of them bills?”

“Yes, they would, and I don’t know. But you better be about it quick.”

Her hand dug down, riffling up through the bills. “I’ve an idea,” she said. The tone of her made him look up from the swag for the first time since he’d opened the case. He saw the face of a naughty girl, Cassie, no confusion on her brow whatsoever. “Let’s pour it all out on the bed,” says she, “and we can do it right on top of it like the king and queen of Siam. We can say we come into money.”

Lafferty sighed a worried, sweaty sigh, which may have been accompanied by a nervous giggle. Not a bad idea, he supposed, but not one he could wholeheartedly endorse. “I don’t think you appreciate the gravity of the situation here.”

“I do,” she said. “Of course I do. But what’s another hour? And, I might point out, Terrance, your oul fella there is plumping out at the very idea.”

He couldn’t deny it. The danger, the decadence, the pure raw power of possessing, even for a bit, a bald fortune such as this were a strong aphrodisiac, not to mention the suggestion itself coming from the mouth of the woman. Nevertheless, your man was reluctant to dump out the money and all the unholy jumble, wondering how they’d ever pack it back together by neat denomination and stacked so tidy, but he was just this close to overcoming his qualms when the first knock sounded at the door in front. Followed by another more urgent.

Lafferty froze, but Cassie says, “Just my neighbor for a happy Christmas or some such,” and leans down for quick peck, saying, “I’ll be back in a shake. Dump it all out on the bed.” But he didn’t. Instead he shut the case, wondering how she could know the knock of her neighbor, doubting she could, a doubt soon confirmed when the next knock was a crash, the front door shattering in, followed by voices, the deep, angry voices of men. In his naked panic he snatched the first garment at hand, her pink bathrobe, shoving the briefcase aside with his foot, heading for the door in back. Donning the robe, slipping outside in the hard slush and cold of the yard, the sun hidden low, the protests of Cassie in the living room growing louder, the gruff and mean voices of men, then the sound of a fist thumping flesh.

The sound made him sick, stopped him short. He could run back to the rescue. No. There was more than one man, there were two or three men, they would be men who fought, mean men, not men who only loved for a living, him and Cassie would just be beaten or killed, or worse. Lafferty’s thoughts raging a blind frenzy. Help. Getting help was the only thing. Police, no matter, anyone, anything. A neighbor. A phone. He ran to the door of the house that was closest, his robe flying open, his naked feet unaware of the cold and the wet. He pounded but nobody answered, the door was locked when he jiggled the knob. Wrapping the robe tight, he went to the next door, and the one after that, door after door, but nobody answered at any, though there were curtains moving, faces peeping. No one would answer a door, no one would listen to the pleas of a man in a pink chenille robe up to his elbows and knees and open in front, shouting and pounding and running wildly from this door to that.

There were three men, tattoos and earrings. Crouching in the slush behind a juniper bush he watched them leave Cassie’s place. Carrying the briefcase, casing the road. When they’d driven away in a silver Peugeot, he waited, the curtains of the neighbors moving and shimmering still, and when he’d waited long enough he made his way back to her door. Through the shattered thing on its hinges he stepped. Cassie on the bedroom floor. Her face red meat, pulp, swollen and split, her fine, sandy hair all matted and red, dress gathered up by her waist, her nakedness there on display. Blood all about. He felt for a pulse. She was breathing. Sirens in the distance. He pulled down her dress to cover her decent, then dressed in a hurry — another art he’d perfected — returned quickly to the mantel, and was gone again out through the back, from garden to garden behind the flats, slipping off like a thief in the twilight to wait for his bus.

“Oh my God. They’re absolutely adorable. Terrance—” She looked at him standing there as though seeing him for the first time. “I can’t believe you actually bought me a gift. You actually bought anyone a gift. I’m impressed. It tells me something, Terrance.”

“What does it tell you?”

She stood. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table with a solitary cup of tea when he’d come in and presented the parcel without a word, watching her open it. Now she came up to your man, put her arms around him. “I’ll show you what it tells me,” says she. Lafferty sniffed, trying to catch a whiff of the other man.

In her bedroom they took off their clothes. Peggy was leaner, younger than Cassie. Lafferty looked for signs of the other man. Over inch after inch of his wife’s naked body, he looked closely for signs of the other man so as to block from his mind the image of Cassie the last time he saw her. He climbed into bed beside Peggy. When she began to kiss and grope he took her chin, gave her a peck, said let’s go slow, and when he did that, she looked at him again with the same awe the pigs had inspired, wondering who on the face of God’s sweet earth was this man in the bed beside her, this new man, mature and tender. She reached to the stand for the figurine, holding it there for them both to admire. “They are so adorable. I just love them.”

Lafferty looking in vain for something adorable. What he saw was two helpless pigs clutching one another in fear, four eyes filled to the brim with mortal terror.