The Ax

41

He's drunk. I can tell that much before I even see him, from the way he drives his car, the excess caution with which he steers this dark-colored Subaru station wagon around the driveway curve toward his house.

There are half a dozen methods, right in this house, by which I can finish him off with no trouble, and even make it look like accidental death. Which would be a lot better than yet another murder of a paper mill manager.

The Subaru jolts to a stop, out front. I'm not watching from the kitchen, I've moved on to his living room, his TV room, whatever he might call it. In one of the windows there, I can stand without any light behind me, and watch. I was afraid, if I'd stood in the kitchen doorway, he might see a silhouette.

Everything he does is in slow motion. Some time after he stops, the lights go off, so I suppose the engine went off then, too; I'm not sure I can hear it, through the glass. And then, a little while after that, he opens his door and climbs wearily out. The interior light goes on, but my concentration is on URF — I'm thinking of him now as a kind of dog, named "Urf" — as he slams the car door and makes his way around the front of it.

Come in, come in. Come home, go to bed, rest, sleep. I'll wait here. Or farther back, in the unused room on the other side of the unused entrance, just in case you decide to come on in here and fall asleep in front of the television set.

He makes his way around the front of the car, leaning on the hood, and then he turns right again, and opens the passenger door, and a woman gets out.

Damn! I stare at her, and she's about as drunk as he is. A large woman in sweater and slacks, weaving. I see her stand beside the car, holding on to the open door, and I hear her voice, quite loud: "Where the hell is this?"

"My place, Cindy! Damn! You know my place!"

She grumbles something, and moves forward. He slams the Su-baru's passenger door and follows her, and in a minute I hear him fumbling with his keys.

Not tonight. He picked her up at the bar, and he's done it before. So not tonight.

But he doesn't pick up a woman every night, not Urf. There are nights he sleeps alone.

As the stumbling sounds of them move across the kitchen, I fade back across the TV room into the hall and to the door I used when I came in tonight. I tug on it, and it opens more easily this time, more quietly. Not that they'd hear much. I slide outside.

There are more lights on now, in the kitchen and in the bedroom. I skirt around all three vehicles parked here, staying out of the lightspill. I walk away down the driveway. I am not at all discouraged.