Pump Six and Other Stories (32 page)

Her hands whipped from his face to the pillow and back, an animal's panicked thoughtless movements. Gasping coughs filtered through the down. Her chest pumped convulsively, striving to suck air through the pillow. Her nails nicked his ear. She was losing coordination. She'd stopped bucking. Her body still writhed, but now it was easy to keep her trapped. It was only the muscle memories of struggle. He pressed harder with the pillow, putting his entire weight into killing her.

Her hands stopped scratching. They returned to the smothering pillow and touched it gently. A querying caress. As if they were a pair of creatures utterly separate from her, pale butterflies trying to discover the cause of their owner's distress. Two dumb insects trying to understand the nature of an airway obstruction.

Outside, a lawn mower buzzed to life, cutting back spring greenery. A meadowlark sang. Pia's body went slack and her hands fell away. Bright sunlight traced lazily across her blond hair where it tangled in the pillow and spread across the sheets. Slowly he became aware of wetness, the warmth of her releasing bladder.

Another lawnmower buzzed alive.

White soapsuds swirled, revealing one of Pia's pink nipples. Jonathan scooped up a blob of crackling bubbles and laid it gently over the breast, covering her again. He'd used half a bottle of moisturizing bath liquid, but still the bubbles kept fading, revealing her body and its increasing paleness as the blood settled deeper into her limbs. Her eyes stared away into the ceiling distance, at whatever things dead people saw.

Gray eyes. He'd thought they were creepy when he first met her. By the time he married her, he liked them. And now they were creepy again, half-lidded, staring at nothing. He wanted to lean over and close them, but hated the thought that rigor mortis might make them spring wide again. That he might find her staring at him, after he had pressed them closed. He shivered. He knew it was morbid to soak in the bathtub with his dead wife, but he didn't want to leave her. He still wanted to be close. He'd been washing her death-soiled body, and suddenly it had seemed so right, so appropriate, that he should climb in with her. That he should mutter an apology and climb into the overfilled tub and join her in a final soak. And so here he was in a cooling bath with a cooling corpse and all the consequences of his repressed angers settling heavy upon him.

He blamed spring sunshine.

If it had been a cloudy day, Pia would now be drawing up grocery lists instead of squeezed into the bath with her killer husband, her stiffening legs shoved to one side.

She'd never liked taking baths together. Didn't like having her space imposed on. It was her quiet time. A time to forget the irritations of a purchasing department that could never get its sourcing priorities in order. A time to close her eyes and relax completely. He'd respected that. Just like he respected her predilection for Amish quilts on their bed and her affection for wildlife photos on the walls and her pathological hatred of avocado. But now here they both were, sharing a tub that she'd never liked sharing, with her blood pooling into her ass and her face slipping under water every so often so that he had to shove her upright again, shove her up out of the suds like a whale surfacing, and every time her face came out of the water he expected her to gasp for air and ask what the fuck he'd been thinking keeping her down so long.

Sunshine. After months of winter gray and drizzling spring it had suddenly turned warm. That was the cause. The elms had budded green and the lilacs had bloomed purple and after years of gritted-teeth dutiful attendance to work and marriage and home ownership and oil changes, he woke to a day permeated with electric possibility. He woke up smiling.

The last time he remembered feeling so alive he'd been in fifth grade with a beat-up blue BMX that he'd raced through subdivision streets—jumping curbs and stealing chromie caps all the way—to pour his entire allowance into Three Musketeers, Nerds, and Bubblicious at a 7-Eleven.

And then Pia had rolled over and poked him with her elbow and reminded him that he'd forgotten to do the dishes.

Jonathan stirred the bath water. Their naked bodies rippled under the thinning suds: his pink, hers increasingly pale. He leaned out of the tub, jostling Pia's body and almost immersing her before he got hold of the bubble bath. He held the bottle high and let soap spill into the water, a viscous emerald tangle that trailed over her legs. He upended the bottle completely.
Green Tea Essence: Skin Revitalizing. Aloe, Cucumber and Green Tea extracts. Soaks away Tension, Softens and Moisturizes Skin, Revitalizes Spirit.
He tossed the empty bottle on the floor and turned on the water again. Scalding heat poured over his shoulders, filling the tub and gurgling down its overflow spout. He leaned back and closed his eyes.

He supposed this fit some pattern of domestic violence, some statistical map of human behavior. The FBI kept statistics: a murder every twenty minutes, a rape every fifteen, a shoplifting every thirty seconds. Someone had to kill their wife every so often to make the statistics work. It just turned out to be him. Statistical duty. In his job, he expected a certain amount of instability from the servers, from the hardware and software that hosted the applications he wrote. He planned for it. Just like the FBI did. Shit happens. While his friends were catching the last of Colorado spring skiing, or running to Home Depot for renovation projects, he was fulfilling statistical requirements.

From where he lay, he could just make out blue sky through the high bathroom window. The optimistic blue, infused with gaudy unrestrained sunshine. All he'd wanted was to do something nice with that sunshine. To go for a jog. Or a bike ride. Or go for brunch and read the paper. And then Pia said there were dishes to do and all he could think about was that: the scabby lasagna pan, the stained sauce pots, the filmy wine glasses, the bread board crumbs, and the dishwasher that he'd also forgotten to run so he'd have to do more dishes by hand. And dishes led to taxes, April 15 bearing down on him like a tank. He should have talked to his investment advisor about his 401(k) but now it was Sunday and there wasn't anything he could do, and he'd probably forget again on Monday. And that led to the electric and phone bills that he'd forgotten to mail and that he should have set up for direct deposit but he kept blowing it off and now there was probably going to be a service fee and then there was his laptop lying on the living room floor where he'd dumped it, a beartrap of billable hours just waiting to get its jaws latched onto his leg. The Astai Networks project kept refusing to compile and his demo was set for eleven on Monday and he had no idea why the program was suddenly so completely screwed.

Lately, he'd been looking at Starbucks baristas and wishing he had their jobs. Tall, grande, latte, cappuccino, skinny, whatever. Not much complexity there. And when you left work at the end of the day you didn't have to think about a fucking thing. Who cared if they made shit for money? At least they wouldn't have to pay much in tax.

Taxes. Did murderers even do taxes? What was the IRS going to do? Arrest him now?

Jonathan frowned at the thought of arrest. He should call the police. Or Pia's mother, at least. Maybe 911? But that was for emergencies. And while the murder had been an emergency, this slow, soaking aftermath wasn't. He stared at Pia's dead body. He should cry. He should feel bad for her. Or at least for himself. He put wet fists in his eyes and waited for tears, but they didn't come.

Why can't I cry?

She's dead. Dead as doornail. You killed Pia. Everything about her is gone. She won't wear that blue and red peasant skirt you bought for her in San Francisco. She won't ask for a German shepherd puppy again. She won't call her mother and talk for three hours about whether to plant acorn squash or zucchini in the back yard.

He kept listing things that Pia wouldn't do again: no more lectures about flossing, no more holding hands after movies, no more Jelly Bellies and reading in bed . . . but it felt like a farce, just like the tears. A bit of play-acting, in case God was watching.

He pulled his knuckles from his eyes and stared up at the ceiling.
It was an accident.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on God, whatever God was supposed to be like: a man with a white beard, some fat woman Gaia thing like in some of Pia's books, some round Buddha guy from when she'd been on her meditation kick.

I didn't mean to kill her. Really. You know that already, don't You? I didn't want to kill her. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned . . .

He gave it up. He felt like he had when he'd been busted for stealing candy from the 7-Eleven after his allowance ran out. Faking the crying. Acting like he cared even though he couldn't summon sincerity. Mostly just wishing that they hadn't noticed the bandolier of Pez dangling from his pocket. He knew he should care. He did care, dammit. He didn't think Pia deserved to die with a pillow over her face and shit in her panties. He wanted to blame her nagging, but he was clearly the one in the wrong. But mostly he just felt . . . what?

Angry?

Frustrated?

Trapped?

Lost and without redemption?

He laughed to himself. That last one sounded trite.

Mostly he felt surprised. Stunned by his world's complete realignment: a life without a wife or taxes or a Monday morning deadline.
I'm a murderer.

He tried the thought out again, saying it out loud. "I'm a murderer." Trying to make it mean something to him other than that he wasn't going to bother with the dinner dishes now.

A knock sounded at the front door.

Jonathan blinked, returning to the world around him: the dead wife rubbing against his hip, the cooling water. His hands were wrinkled with the bath. How long had he been soaking? The knocking came again. Louder. A thumping, insistent and authoritative. The police knocked like that.

Jonathan leaped out of the bath and ran dripping across the floorboards to peek out between the shades. He expected cruisers and red and blue strobing lights and the neighbors all standing out on their porches, watching the drama unfold right on their quiet tree-lined street. A murder in the Denver suburbs. Instead, all he saw was his neighbor, Gabrielle Roberts. Gabby. A hyper-kinetic get-things-accomplished kind of girl he kept hoping would eventually be worn down by the disappointments of everyday life.

She spited him with summer mountain-biking expeditions, winter snow-boarding jaunts, a continuous stream of home improvement projects, and apparent pleasure in a job that had to do with telecom customer relations, the kind of thing that seemed perfect for deadening the soul, and which she nonetheless seemed to love.

She stood on the porch, black ponytail twitching, brows wrinkling as she leaned forward and beat on the door again. Bouncing from one foot to the other, moving to some internal techno beat that only she could hear. She had on shorts and a sweaty T-shirt that said "Marathoners Go Longer," along with soiled leather gloves.

Jonathan grimaced. Another home improvement project, then. He'd helped her move flagstones into her back yard one hot summer day a few years past, and she'd nearly broken him doing it. Pia had given him a back massage afterward and reminded him that he didn't have to do everything that people asked, but when Gabby had shown up at the door, he hadn't known how to refuse her. And now here she was again.

Couldn't she just stop and do nothing for a day? And why now, with Pia's body floating in the bath less than twenty feet away? How was he going to keep Gabby quiet? Would he have to kill her too? How would he do it? Not with a pillow, that was for sure. Gabby was fit. Hell, she was probably stronger than he was. A kitchen knife, maybe? If he could get her into the kitchen before she saw Pia in the bathtub, he could put a knife to her throat. She wouldn't be expecting that . . .

He shook off the thought. He didn't want to kill Gabby. He didn't want a mountain of bodies and blood piling up around him. He wanted this all to be over. He'd just tell Gabby what happened, she'd run screaming and call the cops, and he could wait on the front porch for them to arrive. Problem solved. They'd find him sitting in his bathrobe and his wife macerating in the tub and he'd go to jail for murder one, two, three, or four, or whatever it was and the neighbors would get their show.

They seemed like such a perfect couple.

But they were both so nice.

We had them take care of our cats when we went to Belize last year.

Fine. Bath time was over. Real life was starting up again. Time to face the music. He went to find a bathrobe and came back just as Gabby hammered on the door again.

"Hey! Jon!" Gabby grinned as he opened the door. "Didn't mean to wake you. Lazy Sunday?"

"I just killed my wife."

"Could I borrow your shovel? Mine broke."

Jonathan goggled. Gabby bounced expectantly.

Had he confessed or not? He thought he had. But Gabby wasn't running and screaming for the cops. She was breaking the script completely. She was bouncing back and forth from the ball of one foot to the other and looking at him like a golden retriever. He replayed the exchange in his mind. Had she not heard? Or had he not said it?

Gabby said, "You look really hungover. Late night last night?"

Jonathan tried to confess again, but the words lodged in his throat. Maybe he hadn't said it the first time. Maybe he'd only thought it. He rubbed his eyes. "What did you say you wanted?"

"I broke my shovel. Can I borrow yours?"

"You broke it?"

"Not on purpose. I tried to pry a rock out of the back yard and the handle snapped."

I killed my wife. She's soaking in the tub right now. Could you call the cops for me? I can't decide whether I should call 911 or the police department's main line. Or if maybe I should just wait until Monday and call a lawyer first. What do you think?
Finally he said, "Pia had a shovel in the back shed. You want me to get it?"

"That would be great. Where's Pia?"

"In the tub."

Gabby seemed to notice Jonathan's bathrobe for the first time. Her eyes widened. "Oh. Sorry. I didn't mean to—"