The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes

Thirty-one

He was stretched out on the couch, not asleep and not awake, while Turner Classic Movies went on plumbing the emotional depths with In A Lonely Place. From the first close-up of Bogie’s face, you just knew this could only end in tears.

The phone rang.

He picked it up, saw who it was. It rang again while he tried to decide whether or not to let it go to voicemail, and midway through the third ring he picked up.

“I was all set to leave a message,” Barb Hamill said.

“Well, if you’d rather—”

“Silly. I was thinking I could come over, actually.”

“Hang on,” he said, and muted the TV, leaving Bogart and Gloria Grahame in a wordless pantomime.

“You know,” she said. “If you feel like company.”

“Hell.”

“Shall I take that for a no?”

“I’ve got a client coming,” he said. “In about half an hour.”

“A client? I hope she’s cute.”

“It’s a man,” he said, “and he’s a long way from cute. He thinks his wife’s cheating on him.”

“Is she?”

“If she’s not,” he said, “it’s not for lack of provocation. He’s a moron, and his commitment to personal hygiene is sort of tentative.”

“Ewww.”

“So if you had any ideas of dropping by for threesies—”

“I didn’t,” she said, “but if I did, you just nipped them in the bud.”

“But he won’t be here for half an hour,” he said. “Are you in your office?”

“In my car, actually.”

“Parked?”

“No, driving around.”

“And talking on the phone while you’re driving? I think this is one of those states where that’s against the law.”

“It is, but my phone’s hands-free. It’s still against the law, but how can they tell? I’m not holding a phone, I’m just talking to myself, so the worst they can do is assume I’m crazy.”

“Now why would anybody get that idea?”

“I know, it’s preposterous, isn’t it?”

“Utterly,” he said. “Now if you were to park the car—”

“We could have a conversation. Is that what you were going to say?”

“It is, and—”

“And I’ll probably want to have my hands free. Did I take the words right out of your mouth?”

“You did.”

“Hang on a minute. I think I might like to find a spot where there’s a chance I’ll have some privacy... Okay, this is good. Are you still there?”

“I’m right here.”

“And I’m wearing panties, but... there, now I’m not. Now what are we gonna talk about? I haven’t done anything since I saw you, except fake an orgasm with the man himself, and I can’t see triggering a real orgasm by telling you about a fake one.”

“I’ve got something to tell you,” he said.

“You do? Oh, how nice. Has little Doak been a naughty boy? And was he playing with anybody I know?”

“This was years ago.”

“Oh?”

“Back in New York, when I was a cop.”

“Tell mama.”

“There was this woman I met at a party,” he said, and described Phyllis, letting her be a little more attractive than he remembered her. He dropped her cop husband out of the picture, made her a little younger, and had her living at home with her parents.

“She liked to be choked,” he said.

“Really?”

“You never heard of that? Yeah, she liked it. When she was getting close, you know.”

“To coming.”

“Uh-huh. ‘Oh, baby, choke me a little. Just a little, not too hard, but choke me.’ ”

“And you didn’t feel weird doing that?”

“No, I sort of liked it. And she would come really hard that way.”

“I don’t know if I’d like it.”

“Well, try to imagine it,” he said. “Are you touching yourself?”

“Of course.”

“Are you wet?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, imagine my hands on your neck, just applying the least little bit of pressure. And you’re a little bit afraid, because suppose I lose control? But you’re also excited, because it’s out of your hands now, and all you can do is let go.”

“Oh, wow,” she said. “I guess I get it. It’s a little freaky, though. You’d be inside her and choking her at the same time, huh?”

“You bet.”

“Are you hard now, baby? I’ll bet you are.”

He wasn’t. He felt nothing, really, which was interesting in and of itself.

“Like a tree trunk,” he said. “Like a rock.”

She was breathing hard, moving toward the edge. He waited, and she said, “Then what happened?”

“She got pregnant. Swore it was mine, but how did I know?”

“She was seeing other men?”

“She said no, but I had my suspicions.” Waiting for her to ask.

“What did you do?”

“Well, I went to bed with her. We had to be quiet, you know, because she was still living in her parents’ house, and of course I didn’t have a place to take her.”

“You were married.”

“Uh-huh. And she was really nice, you know, with her tits getting bigger because of the pregnancy, and her belly just beginning to swell. You couldn’t see it when she was dressed, but it showed when she was naked.”

“And you went to bed with her.”

“I did,” he said, and spun it out for her, describing a round of imaginary foreplay, letting Barb get into it. She’d lost her edge some with the news of the pregnancy, but now she was getting it back.

“And then I was inside her.”

“In her pussy.”

“No, in her ass,” he said, “the way you like it.”

“And she liked it, too.”

“No,” he said, “she never liked it in the ass. In fact she hated it.”

“Then why did you—”

“Because I liked it,” he said. “And what did I care what she liked or didn’t like?”

“But—”

“And I got my hands on her throat,” he said, “and I choked her the way she liked to be choked, the little cunt. And all of a sudden she didn’t mind that I was fucking her in the ass, she was into it, and she was moving in that nice rocking motion, like you’re moving now, aren’t you—”

“Oh—”

“And what I do, I just keep squeezing. Both hands, as tight as I can make them, and she starts twitching like a fish on a line, twitching like crazy, and I can feel the cartilage giving way, and I don’t stop, I can’t stop, and I come in a flood as the life drains right out of her.”

A long, long silence.

Then she said, “That was terrible.”

“Just a story, babe.”

“What on earth made you say all that?”

“Oh, just a change of pace. I thought you’d enjoy it.”

“How could you even think that? You just ruined everything. You realize that, don’t you?”

“How is anything ruined? Hey, don’t tell me you don’t know the difference between fantasy and reality. I made up a story, I tried to make it exciting for you.”

“It was much too real.”

“Well, maybe I’m a better storyteller than I realized.”

More silence, and he let it build. Then she said, “I think maybe this whole thing is taking a turn I don’t like.”

“Oh?”

“Maybe we need a break. Maybe I won’t call you for a little while.”

Like forever, he thought. He said, “I’ve got a better idea, Barb. Let me see if I can’t get rid of my client, and you can come over. We’ll go to bed, and then I’ll choke you a little bit—”

“Please stop.”

“—and you’ll be able to see if you like it, and—”

“I’m hanging up.”

“Now why would you want to go and do a thing like that?”

But it was he who pushed the button and ended the conversation. And the relationship with it, he thought, and not a moment too soon.

About time he let go of Barb. His life was complicated enough without her in it.

In a Lonely Place, the sound restored, reached its dark ending. He turned off the set and sat in front of it, his eyes on the blank screen.

After a while he called Lisa, caught her just as she was leaving for work.

“Stay on the floor for your whole shift,” he told her. “Be around people. Don’t duck out even for a minute, don’t make any phone calls.”

“On this phone, you mean.”

“On any phone. And we’re done with these phones. We can’t use them anymore, and owning them is dangerous. Do you have any saved messages?”

“Just one. In case I needed to hear your voice.”

And what would happen when someone else heard it? He said, “Well, the first thing you do is delete the message.”

And he told her the rest — how to dismantle the phone, how to get rid of it. He’d be doing the same with his, he said.

But how would they be able to talk?

“We won’t,” he said. “Not for a while.”

After their last visit to the love nest, he’d watched the Lexus drive off, then spent a few minutes buying some things for cash at J. C. Penney’s. Black wash pants, a black hoodie, a pair of black sneakers.

He was wearing his purchases when he left the house. The Baby Browning with its green stone grips was in one pocket. The Taurus revolver, all its chambers loaded, was in another. His own lawfully registered Smith stayed behind on the closet shelf, while the Ruger nine remained out of easy reach in the kitchen cupboard.

Got in his car, sat behind the wheel with the key unturned in the ignition, going over it all in his mind. Knew it was time, knew what he would do and how he would do it. It wasn’t a terribly complicated plan, but the best ones never were.

He had it figured out. He could do it.

He started the car, drove off, turned left at the end of Osprey Drive.

He had a full tank of gas. He had a few hundred dollars in his wallet, a couple of credit cards that were nowhere near maxed out. He could cut east and pick up I-75 and just drive. Be safe to use the credit cards, because nobody would have any reason to be looking for him. Because he hadn’t done anything, and he didn’t have to do anything, did he?

He’d already ditched the Lisa phone. Wished he’d saved a message, wished he could have heard her voice one more time, but he hadn’t, and now he couldn’t because the phone was dismantled and discarded.

Just get on the Interstate and go. Forget everything else, blue eyes included, before it was too late.

But it was already too late, wasn’t it? Really, truly, wasn’t that the final message of all the films he’d been watching? Hadn’t it been too late from the beginning?