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  Katherine forced herself to keep her gaze focused on Miz Harper. That statement wasn’t meant for her. Or so she told herself.

  “Well, by the time the police got there, they found her sitting, all dressed up, and dry! In her dining room.” Miz Harper dropped her voice. “Her bags were packed, everything she owned tucked in suitcases except what she was wearin’.”

  “What?”

  “Well, the police sat down and talked to her. Everyone knew she’d left before her second show. She claimed her car had been stolen, again, and had to take a cab home. Well, she was making dinner for her honey. She said.” Again, Miz Harper harrumphed. “Steak and potatoes, just like they’re playin’ house. But when the officers started slicin’ her icebox pie, she screamed.”

  Katherine leaned forward.

  “She claimed she didn’t go to Oak Cliff and kill her fiancé, she had baked a pie.”

  Katherine was certain the woman was drunk. Nothing made sense. “A pie?”

  “Not just any pie. Rat poison pie.” She sat back. “She was gonna kill him, make it look like a heart attack, right there in her kitchen.”

  Katherine’s hands turned to ice and the laughter, the impossible hysteria, wouldn’t be kept down. I jumped the cue, she thought. Again.

  SWINGERS ANONYMOUS

  BY JONATHAN WOODS

  M Streets

  We all went over to Pauline’s to admire her breasts. She was the newest member of our swingers group. For her coming-out party she was hosting an afternoon barbecue at her place. A small yellow-brick ranch on a cul-de-sac over off of Primrose.

  When I got there, five or six members were wandering aimlessly in the backyard, drinking beer or soda pop direct from the can. I walked up to Pauline and kissed her on the cheek. Her chin-length weedy-brown hair smelled of coconut crème rinse, transporting me momentarily to a tropical shore. As I stepped back, her baby blues flashed wickedly.

  “That’s a cool T-shirt you’re wearing,” Pauline said. It was a Smiths T-shirt commemorating one of their albums. I’d bought it at a local indie record store.

  “I wish I could say the same about yours,” I replied. I couldn’t because Pauline was naked as a wombat from the waist up.

  We were standing at the brick grill in her backyard. Below her exposed belly button she sported a pair of camouflage spandex microshorts two sizes too small (and camouflaging nada). The erotic ebb and flow of her ankles, the delicate arch of her feet, and her toes tipped with tangerine-painted nails were displayed in orange flip-flops. Her breasts hung full and languid and translucent as a tide-worn shell.

  “So, Bill, what do you think?”

  “Spectacular,” I said.

  Apparently satisfied with my response, Pauline turned and began flipping the row of beef patties riddled with hormones sizzling on the grill.

  When the burgers were done, we all lined up and helped ourselves to deli potato salad, Heinz Boston baked beans, garlic toast, and an assortment of condiments. After dinner everyone got undressed. Six guys; five women. By then there were too many mosquitoes, so we adjourned to Pauline’s living room and had a rousing good time. Pauline did all the guys one way or another.

  Afterward people casually climbed back into their underwear, then the rest of their clothes, brushed their hair in the mirror above the sink in the single bathroom, and left with a smile or a frown, depending on their psychological bent. In the end there was just Pauline and me and Drew Baker.

  Drew was drunk and high on some pills he’d scored down by the Greyhound bus station. He couldn’t find his pants anywhere. Staggering back and forth in a vain search, he stumbled over the end of the sofa and rolled onto the carpet, where he lay laughing his ass off at nothing in particular. Through the picture window behind him the sun’s fiery orb exploded in climax upon a cloud-strewn sky.

  Pauline sashayed into the dining room, ostensibly to fix herself a highball and maybe put on some clothes. I watched her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the opposite wall of the living room. Leaning over the brilliant surface of an old walnut table, a family heirloom, she hoovered up the last two lines of blow.

  Moments later, still starkers, she walked back across the hall and stood in the arched entrance to the living room, holding a pair of gray slacks. Looking at her, I started to get stiff again.

  Scrunching the pants into a ball, she threw them in my direction. “These must be dickhead’s,” she said.

  Her throw was way off. As the slacks arced toward the floor, I made a wild grab. And came up empty. Except my hand hit something solid in one of the pockets, knocking it loose.

  The falling object was a stuffed white business envelope. It landed facedown on the hardwood floor. Ka-thud. Fat, dumb, and happy.

  Kneecaps popping, I scrunched down on my heels like a dishdasha-clad Ali Baba waiting to be executed at the side of a dusty Mesopotamian byway and flicked open the unsealed flap of the envelope. An etching of Benjamin Franklin looked up at me.

  I stared back, my blood quickening. I ruffled through the wad of currency like a blackjack dealer with a new deck of cards. They were all brand-new hundred-dollar bills. I guessed around ten thousand dollars’ worth. I looked at Pauline and made a gargoyle face. It was a lot of money, ripe for the taking. Her eyes glinted with greed.

  Drew stopped laughing and pushed himself up on his elbows. Suddenly he was completely sober. “Hey! I’ll take that.” Before I could respond, from out of left field Pauline vaulted across the room and, using the side of her foot just like a Manchester United goalie blasting the ball into midfield, kicked Drew in the head. Drew spoke nary another word. His body slumped sideways, head lolling at an odd angle.

  What the fuck? I thought. What I said was: “Where’d you learn to kick like that?”

  “My three older brothers all played soccer.” She looked down at her toes, at her nakedness, which now seemed totally out of place. “I need to get dressed,” she said, “but I need a drink first.”

  Quickly she walked across the dining room and pushed through the swing door into the kitchen. I stared down at Drew. He looked like a goner. Which was a big fucking problem. My brain, emptied of any thought, drifted like a vulture high above the Serengeti. A scream echoed through my head. Then I realized it wasn’t just something my mind had dreamed up. It had come from the kitchen. Followed by a heavy crash, the shattering of glass, a harsh exhalation of breath. Then silence. I tiptoed to the kitchen door and pushed it partway open before it struck something unyielding. The door was open enough for me to crane my head around the edge and peer into the kitchen. Directly below, Pauline lay faceup on the linoleum floor, a sleeping naiad, a stoned-out party girl, a dead duck. The fluorescent lights exaggerated the royal-purple capillaries entwined beneath her snow-white skin like veined marble in a gothic tomb. Her head acted as a blunt doorstop.

  Near one twisted foot a melting clump of ice glinted in the overhead lighting. To the right of the body, a shattered glass-windowed display cabinet door hung from one mangled hinge. She must have slipped and fallen backward against the cabinet with her full weight.

  A splintered segment of the wooden cabinet frame had pierced Pauline from back to front, its jagged point defiling the symmetry of her bodacious chest. A line of crimson spiked downward from the exit wound like the graph of a tech stock in free fall. Eyes wide open in an endless stare signaled the end of the line for Pauline. A pool of dark blood oozed from beneath her cadaver.

  Two dead in less than five minutes. One the result of drug-induced random violence; the other a household accident gone rogue.

  My brain whirled.

  No one was going to fucking believe this. No one in law enforcement for sure. Not coming from the lips of a convicted felon, even if I’d paid my debt to society. Well, officer, it’s like this. I met this woman at a swingers party. Afterward, for no reason that I know of, she kicked one of the participants in the head and broke his neck. Next moment, before I could do or say anything, she slipped on an
ice cube on the kitchen floor, impaled herself on a sharp stick, and died instantly. It’s God’s truth, officer.

  Playing out this little scenario in my head, I located my boxers and slipped them on, followed by a pair of khakis and my Smiths T-shirt. I hefted Drew’s envelope of money, then shoved it into my front pocket. As I did so, I wondered what he’d been doing with so much cash, who it really belonged to.

  What I needed to do first was get rid of the bodies.

  * * *

  A half hour later both stiffs, wrapped in blue recycling bags, lay in the trunk of Drew’s navy-blue Volvo. I mopped the kitchen floor with Spic ’n Span. Wiped the dining room table clear of any coke residue I wasn’t able to inhale.

  The dead pair could have been ill-starred lovers from a work by James M. Cain, except they were all too real. So was the sweat that had soaked through my T-shirt. And the fear that burned at the bottom of my stomach like battery acid.

  During the entire cleanup job I wore a pair of suede garden gloves I found in Pauline’s pantry. I was still wearing them as I drove too slowly down Primrose. The Volvo steered like a fucking Sherman tank.

  Get a grip, I thought. Drive normally. If a cop pulls you over, you’ll have a hell of a time explaining the gloves. On further consideration it occurred to me that the gloves would be the least of my worries in the event of a meeting with a traffic cop.

  Once I’d merged onto Mockingbird Lane and blended with the usual early-evening traffic, I dialed Suzie on my cell. She answered on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  The sound of her voice made everything relax, as though my psych meds had suddenly kicked in. The red-hot nails driven by anxiety into my shoulders turned to cool wintergreen. Everything is going to be okay.

  “Hello!” came Suzie’s voice again, edged with irritation. “Is somebody there? Who the fuck is this?”

  “Suzie. It’s Bill.”

  “Hey, Bill. Swell of you to call. How the fuck have you been?” Before I could come up with a retort, her voice exploded across the ether and into my ear. “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!”

  Why is she being so adversarial? We slept together; shared bodily fluids. Ate scrambled eggs and whole wheat toast sitting across from each other in the breakfast nook, while reading sections of the local rag. When had things gone south between us?

  “I told you before, sweetheart. I’m showing some out-of-town clients around the better neighborhoods.”

  “Yeah, right. I know you, Bill. I can smell it through the phone. Pussy juice. You’re at the Bang! Bang! Club again. That’s exactly what you’re up to.”

  “Suzie, I know it’s late. Just bear with me. I’ll be home soon.” I felt the fat envelope of money pressing against my gonads. “And I’ve got a surprise.”

  “What kind of surprise?”

  “The kind dreams are made of.”

  A silence descended as Suzie pondered my plagiarism. She didn’t have a clue. “Bullshit,” she snapped. “You always talk in riddles. A fucking James Joyce you are.” Suzie had taken a couple of lit courses at the local community college. In fact, that’s where we’d met. Reading and discussing Joseph Conrad’s Secret Agent. Suzie preferred Colette.

  “Maybe this once I’m not bullshitting you.”

  But she had lost interest.

  “Have a good time at the Bang! Bang! Club, Bill. Be sure to catch a life-threatening social disease. And on your way home pick up some OJ at CVS.”

  The line went dead.

  I tossed my cell phone on the passenger seat and slammed my hand against the steering wheel. Ow! No fucking surprise for you, baby, I thought.

  Soon I pulled the Volvo onto the soft shoulder in front of a half-built McMansion I knew of. I’d tried to sell the house a few times. But there were no takers in this market. It was one of a dozen or so derelict construction sites located in an abandoned subdivision east of downtown past Buckner Boulevard. These crumbling, partially built homes prevaricated like street people waiting at a bus stop after the last bus has gone. The power company had turned off the electricity to the streetlights a long, long time ago.

  When I stepped out of the car, my shoes scrunched on gravel. The sound of traffic far off. The squawk of a nighthawk overhead. I lit a roach I’d found in the ashtray and inhaled deeply.

  A prefab shed surrounded by knee-high weeds sagged in the open field behind the house. Its corrugated roof cast the hard shadow of a Nazi officer’s cap. The sky behind was a deep-purple bruise on a black woman’s thigh.

  The shed had been dragged there from somewhere else, so there was no foundation, just a dirt floor.

  When night swallowed the world, I eased the Volvo up a rutted dirt track as close as I could get to the shed. I left the Volvo’s lights off. Where a ditch cut the driveway in two, I stopped the car. From there the shed was maybe a dozen feet away.

  I carried the bodies one at a time from the car to the shed. A bazillion stars, each colder than the diamond solitaire in a porn star’s belly button, provided enough light so I didn’t break my neck. Pauline I held in my arms like a bride. Stepping over the threshold, I dumped her nude corpse on top of Drew’s.

  After depositing the bodies, I bolted the shed door with the padlock I used for my locker at the Y. Tomorrow I would be back with a shovel and a couple bags of lime.

  Returning to Pauline’s neighborhood, I parked the Volvo behind a vacant office building four blocks from her place. Careful to take the leather gardening gloves, I left the doors unlocked and the key in the ignition slot. If I got lucky, someone would steal it. Take it on a joyride to Waco.

  Minutes later I slipped behind the wheel of my Lexus, tucked the garden gloves under the seat, and drove. I thought about stopping at the Tip-Top Lounge for a vodka tonic and a cheeseburger. They served till two a.m. But I knew I had to get home and settle things.

  I pulled into my usual parking space behind the aging apartment building on a side street off lower Greenville Avenue where Suzie and I lived, and killed the engine. On a cautionary note I slipped the Smith & Wesson slide-action .45 from the glove box into the back right-hand pocket of my khakis.

  * * *

  When I walked into the apartment Suzie lay sprawled on the living room couch, her robe askew, nothing under. An MTV reality show at full blast.

  She looked at me like I was a hallucination.

  “Did you get the OJ?”

  “Let’s go to Paris,” I said.

  Her eyes bored into me, reading the tea leaves of my soul like a laser on a bar code. Her finger hit the mute button.

  “Fuck the frogs. Let’s go to New York,” she said.

  I frowned. “You just want to see Wayne again. Personally, I hate New York.” We’d lived there for a disastrous six months.

  “Wayne? Wayne who?”

  “Wayne the used car salesman.” I paused for emphasis. “Jesus Christ, Suzie. I’m talking about Wayne the happy-hour bar guy at Frag’s. The creep you boffed in the third-floor linen closet of the Chelsea. When you told me you were visiting your girlfriend Ida, who lived there.”

  Frag’s, on the edge of Soho, mimicked the décor of a Saigon brothel circa 1972. The waitresses and waiters wore baggy black pj’s with nothing underneath. Maybe it really was a brothel.

  “I’ve never been to Frag’s,” Suzie asserted. She suffered from selective recollection discontinuity disorder.

  Before I could raise the argument to the next level, the need to take a wicked whiz gripped me by the nads.

  “Gotta go! Gotta go!” I shouted, dashing down the darkened hallway to the left.

  Afterward, I looked in the mirror over the sink and saw a steaming pile of dog crap. Sex residue, sweat, and dread wafted from every pore and crevice. In desperate need of a bath, I throttled on the hot water spigot of the ancient claw-foot tub.

  Waiting for it to fill, I rolled a jay from the stash in the medicine cabinet. I tossed in a few bath toys, some lemon-scented oil. Steam clouded my glasses and the mirror;
lay thick as dew on every surface. Moments later I lolled suspended in amniotic bliss, the jay smoldering between my lips.

  There was a knock.

  The door opened partway and Suzie peered around the edge. A look of sly cunning played across her face. Lime-green baby doll pajamas rustled lasciviously under her robe as she entered.

  You know you’re in trouble when, upon your arrival, your girlfriend puts on clothes instead of taking them off.

  She pushed the toilet cover over with her foot. Old and heavy, it slammed down. BAM!

  Echoes ricocheted across the porcelain bowl. The seat’s loose brass fittings jingled.

  Suzie rested her butt on the throne and stared at my privates. For a second or two I wondered if she had a retractable sashimi knife tucked in the pocket of her robe. Then she scanned upward to my face.

  “You look comfortable, Bill.” She smiled, fake as false teeth. “So, where’s the surprise?”

  Squinting through a tendril of blue smoke, I lowered my shoulders into the water and smiled up at her. “Just kidding,” I said.

  “Don’t try to bamboozle me. On the phone you were for real. Your voice sounded different from your usual I’m-lying-through-my-teeth voice.”

  “My clients today were a complete pain in the ass.”

  “Don’t change the subject.” Stoned lightning flickered in each eyeball. “I know what it is. You sold a house.”

  “No.”

  “No, of course not. Why would I even think that? You haven’t sold a house in a fucking year. I’ve been subsidizing you for as long as I can remember, dancing in that jerkoff bar.”

  She looked at my clothes scrunched in a heap on top of my new Diesel sneakers she’d bought me for my birthday. Leaning down, she rummaged through the sweaty pile. Found the envelope. Why hadn’t I hidden it somewhere?

  Found the Smith & Wesson.

  Holy shit!

  Awkwardly clutching pistol and envelope in her left hand, she thumbed through the block of cash.

  “Wow, Bill. Looks like you hit the jackpot.”