And now, all this blood from one head. From Dave punching another human being's face, banging the skull off pavement. Hysterical, she was sure, from fear. She held her gloved hands under the water and checked them again for holes. None. She poured dishwashing liquid all over the T-shirt and scoured it with steel wool, then squeezed it out and went through the whole process again until the water that dripped from the shirt when she squeezed was no longer pink but clear. She did the same with the jeans, and by that time Dave was out of the shower and sitting at the kitchen table with a towel wrapped around his waist, smoking one of the long white cigarettes her mother had left behind in the cupboard and drinking a beer, watching her.
"Fucked up," he said softly.
She nodded.
"I mean, you know?" he whispered. "You go out, expecting one thing, a Saturday night, nice weather, and then?" He stood and came over by her, leaned against the oven, and watched her wring out the left leg of his jeans. "Why aren't you using the washing machine in the pantry?"
She looked over at him and noticed the cut along his side already going a puckered white after the shower. She felt a nervous need to giggle. She swallowed against it and said, "Evidence, sweetie."
"Evidence?"
"Well, I dunno for sure, but I figure blood and?other stuff have a better chance of sticking to the insides of a washing machine than to a sink drain."
He let out a low whistle. "Evidence."
"Evidence," she said, giving in to a grin now, feeling conspiratorial, dangerous, part of something big and worthwhile.
"Damn, babe," he said. "You're a genius."
She finished wringing out the jeans and shut off the water, took a small bow.
Four in the morning, and she was more awake than she'd been in years. She was Christmas-morning-when-you're-eight kind of awake. Her blood was caffeine.
Your whole life, you wished for something like this. You told yourself you didn't, but you did. To be involved in a drama. And not the drama of unpaid bills and minor, shrieking marital squabbles. No. This was real life, but bigger than real life. This was hyper-real. Her husband may have killed a bad man. And if that bad man really was dead, the police would want to find out who did it. And if the trail actually led here, to Dave, they'd need evidence.
She could see them sitting at the kitchen table, notebooks open, smelling of coffee and the previous night's taverns, asking her and Dave questions. They'd be polite, but scary. And she and Dave would be polite back and unruffled.
Because it all came down to evidence. And she'd just washed the evidence down the kitchen sink drain and out into the dark sewers. In the morning, she'd remove the drainpipe from under the sink and wash that, too, douse the insides with bleach and put it back in place. She'd put the shirt and jeans into a plastic trash bag and hide it until Tuesday morning and then toss it into the back of the garbage truck where it would be mashed and chewed and compacted with rotten eggs and spoiled chickens and stale bread. She'd do this and feel large, better, than herself.
"It makes you feel alone," Dave said.
"What's that?"
"Hurting someone," he said softly.
"But you had to."
He nodded. His flesh was gray in the semidark of the kitchen. He looked younger still, as if fresh from his mother's belly and gasping. "I know. I do. But still, it makes you feel alone. It makes you feel?"
She touched his face and his Adam's apple bulged as he swallowed.
"Alien," he said.
5
ORANGE CURTAINS
SUNDAY MORNING AT SIX, four and a half hours before his daughter Nadine's First Communion, Jimmy Marcus got a call from Pete Gilibiowski down at the store telling him he was already in the weeds.
"The weeds?" Jimmy sat up in bed, looked over at the clock. "Friggin' Pete, it's six in the morning. You and Katie can't handle six, how you going to handle eight when the first church crowd comes in?"
"That's the thing, though, Jim. Katie ain't here."
"She ain't what?" Jimmy threw back the covers and got out of bed.
"She ain't here. Supposed to be at five-thirty, right? I got the doughnut guy honking his horn out back, and I got no coffee ready on account of? "
Jimmy said, "Uh-huh," and walked down the hallway toward Katie's room, feeling the cold drafts in the house on his feet, the early May mornings still carrying the raw bite of March afternoons.
"? a group of bar-hopping, drinking-in-the-park, methamphetamine-in-their-squashes construction workers come in here at five-forty and cleaned us out of Colombian and French roast. And the deli looks like shit. How much you paying those kids to work Saturday nights, Jim?"
Jimmy said, "Uh-huh," again and pushed open Katie's door after a quick knock. Her bed was empty and, worse, made, which meant she hadn't slept here last night.
"'Cause you either got to give 'em raises or shitcan their worthless asses," Pete said. "I got an extra hour of prep work before I can even? How ya doing, Mrs. Carmody? Coffee's brewing now, hon, won't be a sec."
"I'm coming in," Jimmy said.
"Plus, I got all the Sunday papers still bundled up, circulars on top, look like crap? "
"I said I'm coming in."
"Oh. No shit, Jim? Thanks."
"Pete? Call Sal, see if he can make it in by eight-thirty, 'stead of ten."
"Yeah?"
Jimmy heard the sound of a hand standing on a car horn from Pete's end. "And Pete, Christ's sake, open the door for Yser's kid, will you? He ain't going to wait all day with those doughnuts."
Jimmy hung up and walked back to the bedroom. Annabeth was sitting up in bed, sheets off her body, yawning.
"The store?" she said, drawing the words out with another long yawn.
He nodded. "Katie no-showed."
"Today," Annabeth said. "Day of Nadine's First Communion, she no-shows for work. What if she no-shows at the church?"
"I'm sure she'll make it."
"I don't know, Jimmy. If she got so drunk last night, she blew off the store, you never know?"
Jimmy shrugged. There was no talking to Annabeth when it came to Katie. Annabeth had only two modes in terms of her stepdaughter? either irritated and frosty or elated that they were best friends. There was no in-between, and Jimmy knew? with some small amount of guilt? that most of the confusion stemmed from Annabeth coming into the picture when Katie was seven, just getting to know her father, and barely over the loss of her mother. Katie had been openly and honestly grateful for a female presence in the lonely apartment she'd shared with her father. But she'd also been wounded by her mother's death? if not irreparably, then at least profoundly, Jimmy knew? and anytime that loss would sneak up and slice through the walls of her heart over the years, she'd vent it mostly on Annabeth, who, as a real mother, never quite lived up to all the things Marita's ghost could have or would have been.