Requiem for Moses

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was almost time for him to leave for the service station. It was almost time for her to leave for Carl’s Chop House. Both had drawn late shifts. At least they’d been able to spend some time together this afternoon.

Claire McNern and Stan Lacki had slept until nearly 3 P.M. They awakened slowly, playfully. They made love, which made them feel as if they inhabited a continuum, since they had fallen asleep just after making love.

Claire stretched out, taking far more than her side of the bed. Stan sat propped against a pillow at the headboard. He lit a cigarette. Claire overreacted, vigorously waving the smoke away. He had sworn several times to quit cold turkey on their wedding day. That promise was the one and only hesitation he had about marrying Claire.

Claire wore a satisfied smile and nothing else.

“Whatcha thinkin’?” he asked.

“About marrying you.”

Stan matched her smile. “It won’t be an awful lot different.”

“Sure it will. We’ll have our own home.” Presently, each rented an apartment. They got together at whichever place was more convenient. “And we can have a garden. We can decorate the place any way we want.”

Stan was swept up in her musings. “And we can have friends in. We can have parties. And we’ll have a big driveway so I can repair cars on the side.”

“Don’t go crazy over that now. We don’t want the place to look like a junkyard.”

“Hey, go easy on that junkyard bit. My repair work is how we both got dependable used cars. You’ll never have to worry that some clunker will give out on you. That’s why I drove the tow truck-I’m going in early so I can take your care in and fix it. You’ll have to take a cab to work. That way I’ll rest easy that you’re safe.”

She slapped him lightly on the thigh. “You don’t have to worry about me, sweetie; I can take care of myself.”

“I do worry. There’s nothing much going on around Carl’s. The area is almost deserted-like whole chunks of the city.”

“Silly! I always park in the lot. And we have valet parking, so there’s always somebody there. So-nothing to worry about.”

After a double drag on the cigarette, he snuffed it in the ashtray, which was near to overflowing.

“Honey,” she said, “don’t you think you ought to start quitting now? Enough things are going to change once we get married without you trying to go cold turkey.”

“I can do it. Besides, there aren’t that many new things that will be happening.” He grinned. “It’s not like we’ll have to get used to what we want in sex. I don’t think there’s much more we can learn.”

“I’d like to try.”

“If you think you can try something new, I’m game. You been reading some sex book?”

“Would that be all bad? We could learn some new things. We always can learn more.”

“I guess.”

Stan shook another cigarette out of the pack and tapped the filtered end against the night tabletop. The tobacco firmly set, he lit the cigarette with his dependable Zippo.

“Another one?” she groaned.

“Claire, get off my case, okay? I told you: once we’re married. Until then, let me smoke in peace.”

“Rest in peace!”

“Claire!”

“Okay, okay. Let’s talk about the house some more.”

“You sure you wouldn’t rather get a quick nap? We’re gonna be working late tonight-real late.”

“What do you mean ‘real late’? I’m getting off at the usual time. And that’s not real late. What’s cookin’?”

“Gerry’s not going to relieve me. He got called away. His mother in Charleston got real sick. He’s got to go there. The boss asked me to cover for him. It’s triple time, hon.”

“You’ll be alone practically all night!”

“I’m like you, honey; I can take care of myself.”

She frowned. She was serious and he was being flippant. “Not when somebody’s got a gun,” she protested. “And here, everybody’s got a gun.”

“I’m behind bullet-proof glass. And if anybody finds some way of getting through that, we’ve got our orders: Give ‘em the money. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“But I do.”

“Triple time! ‘Cause it’s not my shift and I’m staying overtime.”

“The hell with triple time!” In some sort of protest, she pulled the sheet up over herself.

“The money’s good, Claire.”

“We could use it; we don’t need it. It’s not like we’re going to have kids. We don’t have to put anything aside for their clothes or food or education. Other couples have to do that. Other couples lead ordinary lives!”

“We talked about this before.” He crushed the cigarette into oblivion. “We can adopt; we can have children.”

“I don’t know ….” She turned on her side, back toward him. “Any kid we adopted wouldn’t be our own kid. Somebody’s castoff. We drive used cars and we raise used kids? I don’t know ….”

She turned to look at him. “It’s that damned Green! I felt so good when he was dead. Why did he do that to me, Stan? Why?” It was almost a wail.

He felt exactly as she did about Green. But he always tried to soft-pedal his genuine emotion so as not to further upset her. “I don’t know. I suppose I can understand why he would take your baby. I mean, it was his, too. And he sure as shit didn’t want it. So that’s the part that makes some sort of twisted sense: He wanted an abortion and he did it.

“But, hell, it was in your body! You’d think you’d’ve had something to say about it.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m mad as hell about it. I could kill him for that. But he took my uterus too. He told me it had to go. At first, I was grateful he took it. I mean if it was cancerous, I was lucky to lose it. But from what that nurse said there was nothing wrong with the uterus. He took out a perfectly healthy uterus. Perfectly healthy! And now I can never have a baby!” Her body shook as she sobbed silently.

He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “That one’s got all hell beat.”

“And then he dumped me. How can anybody put that together? He takes my healthy baby. He takes my healthy uterus. And then he dumps me. Why? Why? Why?”

Stan shook his head. “I guess he just raises meanness to a science.”

“And the bastard isn’t even dead!”

With an unusual hardness in his voice, Stan said, “If I could-if I could get close to him, I’d kill him for you. I’d kill him for me,” he added almost as if to himself.

“You would?”

“I never even thought of killing anything but maybe an animal. Not a human being. But if I could get close to Green, I’d think of what he did to you, and then I could kill him. I know I could.”

She looked at him unblinkingly. She was utterly serious. “I was ashamed to tell you … but … after I called him and he just laughed and hung up on me … well, I actually started to plan on how to get to him. I mean, I know I can get through to him on the phone. I think I could arrange to meet him someplace. Then, with nobody else around, I’d kill him.”

Stan was shocked. “You could do that? You would do that?”

“As long as I didn’t get caught. I’d have to plan it very carefully, but …” She shrugged. “Then I think maybe I’m daydreaming. But if it’s a daydream, at least it seems to help. I think of killing him. I think of him dead. And I feel better.”

“Maybe …” Stan said, “maybe we could do it together.”

“What?”

“Together. Maybe we could do it together. If you can arrange to be alone with him, maybe you could arrange for me to be there too. Maybe together we could do it.”

“You’re … you’re serious!”

“I think I am. I’d just have to keep thinking of what he did to you.”

“This is dangerous.”

“I know. We’d have to plan it carefully … very carefully. So we wouldn’t get caught. We don’t want to spend the rest of our lives in jail-separated.”

“That too. But … actually killing somebody? We’d have to search deep inside to see if we could really do it. Once we get him alone, that’s no time to wonder whether we could do it.” Her chin was firmly set. “I could do it as easy as stepping on a bug.”

They both laughed.

She started to stroke him. He smiled as he slid down into the bed alongside her.

Foreplay seemed unnecessary. They discovered that murder could be an aphrodisiac. “One for the road,” he whispered.