Cat Striking Back

He’d moved on at last, had found her back there, lying there naked as a jaybird, lying on that blue beach towel, her clothes folded up in the tote bag she carried, a bottle of suntan lotion and a bottle of water beside her. She’d looked up guiltily, and then yawned. Said she fell asleep, hadn’t meant to be gone so long. When he lit into her, she sassed him back. Said her tan was fading, and didn’t he like her to have an all-over tan? Didn’t he like her to look nice?

“Nice for who?” he’d said, thinking about the neighborhood couples they hung out with, the guys he played golf with-the guys he sometimes wondered about.

“Nice for you,” she’d said sharply. “Who else would I want to look nice for, baby?” And she’d reached up to him.

“Get up and get dressed, I’m not rolling around in the dirt with you.” But then he’d laughed. “I’ll give you a roll later, in some fancy hotel with a good bottle of Scotch and maybe a mirror on the ceiling.” That made her laugh. But when he’d pointed out that the sun was going to set soon, that it sure as hell couldn’t tan her much, she’d snapped at him again, seemed like she was always snapping at him.

“I told you I fell asleep. The cool evening air’s good for my skin.” Half the time, the woman made no sense. Except for the one thing she was good at. Then her head was clear, then she was all business.

“Get dressed,” he’d told her. “Get up now and get dressed.”

“It isn’t even close to dark yet.” Instead of pulling on her clothes, she’d just lain there looking up at him, and didn’t that make him mad. He’d jerked her up, madder every minute. “Get dressed and get home! I’m ready to leave now!”

That’s when she’d started mouthing off at him. “I’m not your slave. This whole thing was my idea, my pla

Swearing, he went around the pool and down the mud-slick steps, nearly falling, crossed the stinking mud, slipping twice, knelt down, and shook her. Her body was limp, and that was when he started getting scared. He tried to turn her over. When he lifted her head, blood started ru

Sickened, he’d pushed her hair away to look. There was blood all over, underneath her hair, her hair soaked with it, a pool of blood that curdled into the sour mud and mixed with the mud on her face. A hell of a lot of blood, some of it ru

But then, even as he knelt there, the blood had stopped ru

Now, at five thirty, folks would be getting home from te

Well, she’d sure as hell screwed it up, and what the hell was he supposed to do now? He felt trapped, and his fear began to build. Standing in the empty pool looking down at her, bloodied and dead, he’d wondered if anyone had seen her going down the street earlier, seen her heading for the Parker place, or seen him slip down there later? Anyone seeing them would wonder why they weren’t leaving. She’d told everyone when they’d take off. Had bragged to everyone about the fancy vacation, the fancy Miami and Bahamas hotels where they’d be staying. She knew all the details, flight time, co

He kept coming back to what he was going to do, now that their careful plans were shot to hell. His nerves were shattered, thanks to her. He wasn’t sure he could pull this job off alone.

Leaving her lying in the mud, he’d walked home as nonchalantly as he could, as if he was out for a stroll before he got in the car for a long trip. Up ahead three women had stood in a yard talking, but then they’d gone inside. He could hear kids yelling in a backyard, and that had made him sweat, afraid they’d come racing out to the street and see him, and that one of them would remember, later. The yards of the houses on his left were wooded, dropping steeply down to the street below. The street he was on, his own street, ran on up the hill for half a mile, where it ended at a narrow, precipitous drive along the side of the hill, a view of the roofs below. Walking casually past his neighbors’ houses, he couldn’t stop seeing her dead.

He’d managed to avoid meeting anyone. Slipping into his own house, he’d tried to figure out how to handle this. He’d never thought too much about how to get rid of a body, how hard that would be. One minute he was glad she was dead, with her bitchy ways, the next minute he was scared as hell, angry that she’d done that to him. In the empty house, he’d stood looking at her purse and suitcase, feeling a stab of loss, and for the first time since it happened, he found it hard to breathe.

It always took a while to catch up with him. He went into the bathroom, got the prescription asthma spray he used. She said his inability to breathe was more in his head than in his respiratory system. That was another thing that maddened him, her know-it-all attitude. He’d told her he had a mild case of asthma and that it was easily controlled. When they were first married she’d tried to baby him over it, but he’d shrugged that off. She never knew the real cause; he’d tried to hide the severity of those attacks from her.

Usually he could ease the breathing, but he couldn’t stop the tightness in his chest that made him feel like he was being crushed, as if he was sealed inside a wall. In the bathroom, inhaling the spray, that dark memory from his childhood filled him.

He’d had the vision for so many years that sometimes he was no longer sure if that horror had really happened. Not sure if he’d seen that victim when he was a child, or even if he’d been the victim, himself. Or if the vision had come only from Poe’s dark tale that he’d read over and over, the story of the man sealed in a cellar wall. Only, this time when he couldn’t breathe and that scene hit him, it was her he saw, it was her sealed, dead, inside the cellar wall.

He’d sat shakily at the kitchen table until the breathing came easier, then he’d gotten up, poured a glass of milk, and found some crackers. And soon, with some food in him, he started wondering if he could move her now, if he dared get the car out before dark and go back, if he dared take a chance. The notion ate at him until he headed for the garage, unloaded the car’s toolbox and blanket from the trunk to make room, and stuffed them in the backseat. He found the shovel and put that in, too.