The Ax (16 page)

“I know it.”

“Where is the car? At the shop?”

“It’s the only car I’ve got, Bill,” I said. “It’s right outside.”

“Let’s look at it.”

“Okay.”

We went out, and he looked at it, and looked at the estimate again, and then he looked at me, and casually he said, “You get a new position yet?”

“Not yet,” I said.

He nodded, and we went back inside, and he said, “I’ll fax these things off to the company today. There shouldn’t be any problem.”

“Great,” I said. “When will it be okay to get it fixed? It looks kind of ugly now.”

“Tomorrow, I hope,” he said. “I’ll give you a call, when they fax the approval.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

We shook hands, and I left, and drove home.

It’s a wide-ranging conspiracy.

Tuesday was our first meeting with the counselor. Marjorie had arranged it, not through any of the state agencies, after all, but through that church where we’d met Father Susten eleven years ago. “His name is Longus Quinlan,” she told me, as we drove south toward Marshal, where the office was.

I was surprised to hear it was a man we were on our way to see, expected Marjorie to have preferred a woman, but I covered whatever surprise I might have showed by saying, “Longus. That’s a weird name.”

“Maybe it’s a family name,” she said.

Our appointment was in a newish redbrick building four stories high on the edge of Marshal, called Midway Medical Services Complex, midway between what two points I don’t know. Life and death? Sanity and lunacy? Yesterday and tomorrow? Hope and despair?

Columbia Family Services was on the top floor. We rode up uncomfortably together in the elevator, and found a receptionist at the top, who took our names and asked us to wait in the reception area there, a simple pastel space with simple pastel furniture, clearly designed to keep everybody calm until we can get this trouble sorted out.

We only waited a minute or two in this well-meaning but very boring place before the receptionist said, “Mr. and Mrs. Devore?”

We were the only people waiting. We stood, and she pointed down the hall to our right and said, “Room four.”

We thanked her, and walked down to room four, where the door stood open. We stepped in, and a heavyset black man of about forty, wearing white shirt and dark tie, got to his feet from behind his desk, smiled at us, and said, “Mr. and Mrs. Devore. Come on in. Why not close that door there.”

Had Marjorie known he was black? I shot her a quick look as I shut the door, but her profile was blank, unreadable. She didn’t look in my direction at all, but went straight over to sit in the chair Longus Quinlan gestured to. I came over, then, and took the remaining chair, and now we made a triangle.

It was a small office, with venetian blinds over the wide window at the back. The desk faced the door from under that window, with the other two chairs angled to face it from the side walls, closer to the door, so that people in those chairs faced the person at the desk directly but still had a good clear view of each other.

Once we were all seated, he gave us an amiable smile and said, “I’m Longus Quinlan, as you probably guessed. Father Enver told me he didn’t really know much about you two, your connection with the church was before his time. Father Susten, was it?”

We agreed it was, and he nodded and said, “Before my time, too, but I’ve heard good things about him.” Drawing a printed form toward himself, picking up a pen, he said, “Let’s just get the boilerplate out of the way to begin with, okay?”

Well, the boilerplate, as he called it, took the whole first hour. I was sitting there waiting to hear how Marjorie would describe her affair to this counselor—waiting also to hear if there would be any clues to the guy’s identity—but we never got to that. We got to all the normal personal information, and we got as far as bringing up the fact that our difficulties—unstated difficulties, as yet—seemed to be caused by my having been out of work for almost two years.

Then the time was up, that fifty-minute hour, and he put his hands together on top of the form on his desk and smiled at us and said, “I’m glad you’ve come to me, not because it means you’ve got a problem, but because it means you’ve got the desire to
solve
that problem. And what I’m here for, as I guess you already know, is not to solve the problem for you, because I can’t do that. It can only come from inside yourselves. A Band-Aid from me isn’t gonna help. My job is to help you look inside yourselves and see what strengths are there, see what you really want from each other and from life, and help you find the way that’s already there inside you to rise above your problems and make things come out right. But one thing.”

He held up a hand and raised a finger and smiled past it at us. “We don’t yet know what it is you want,” he said. “You
think
you know what you want. What you probably think is, what you want is what you used to have. But it may turn out, that isn’t what you want, after all. That’s one of the things we’ll have to discover along the way.”

What he’s saying, I realized, is that we may wind up ending the marriage when this is all over, and then that’ll turn out to have been what we wanted all along, and he’ll have turned out to have done his job. Pretty good. How do I get into this line of work?

It was agreed we’d come to see him every Tuesday at this same hour, and he’d bill the insurance company—we’re still covered, for a while longer—and after he was paid by them we’d make up the difference, the twenty percent deductible that was our responsibility.

Then we left, shaking his hand and thanking him, and in the elevator going down, I said, “I’ve had a lot of job interviews went just like that.”

“Oh, Burke,” Marjorie said, and put her arms around me, and we kissed very warmly. But that was it, just that one instant. I pulled back, and so did she.

We listened to WQXR in the car again, going home. Along the way, I decided I didn’t think much of Longus Quinlan, but I’d go along with the program, because maybe it could help after all, some, along the way. And eventually I’d find out who the man is.

And if these sessions are the price to keep Marjorie in the marriage, I’m more than willing to pay. After I’ve killed her boyfriend, and after I’ve got my new job, things will be all right again.

Then, on Wednesday, Bill Martin rang up in the morning to say I could go ahead and get the car fixed, and when I phoned Jerry at the dealer he said he’d expected the call and had the necessary parts waiting, so after I dropped Marjorie at Dr. Carney’s office I drove on over to the dealership and they gave the Voyager its plastic surgery, to make it look like everybody else.

And now it’s Thursday again, and I’m on my way to KBA.

That’s where I sat the other day, the first time I came here, and walked up Footbridge Road. Now I sit in the Voyager, parked by the side of the road, next to that stub of stone wall where I caught my breath, last Sunday, after the climb. I sit in here, unnoticed, and I watch KBA and his wife put stakes in the ground, bring out flats of seedlings, dig and plant and fill. How they garden.

How they believe in togetherness, in fact. From this vantage, from the height of the Voyager, I can see down over the slope, the uncleared land above their house, and I can see them moving around together, working together, handing each other things, talking and sometimes laughing together. They’re goddam irritating.

I got here a little before nine this morning, and they weren’t yet out, but the Honda Accord was in the driveway, just as it had been last Sunday. I waited, sitting here, and at about nine-thirty out they came, dressed for gardening again, and they’ve been down there ever since, as the morning has slowly passed.

It’s like watching a Japanese art movie, seeing those two in the distance, putting in their crops, not knowing the bandit is in the hill above them, watching. This time, he isn’t waiting for the harvest, to steal it. This time, he’s waiting for them to separate, just for a few minutes. That’s all I need.

But it doesn’t happen. They brought a cordless phone out with them, and twice this morning I’ve watched the wife answer it. Once it was for her, and once she handed it on to him, but neither call made one of them go off alone into the house.

That’s what I need, for
her
to go in. If she does, and if it looks as though she’ll stay indoors for a while, I’ll get out of the Voyager and take the Luger from under the raincoat on the passenger seat, and I’ll walk down there and shoot him.

Or why doesn’t one of them take the car, and go on an errand? If he leaves, I’ll follow him and shoot him. If she leaves, I’ll walk down to him in his garden and shoot him.

But neither happens. They keep working, and I suppose they’re taking advantage of the cool and cloudy day to get all this hard laborious donkey labor done.

At twenty to twelve the mail delivery arrives, a youngish man in a small green station wagon with US MAIL posters in the windows. I suppose this is a second or third job, these days, for a lot of those people. At work most of their waking hours, and only sliding backward a little more every day.

Isn’t there something in
Alice in Wonderland
about that?

They put down their tools and walk down to the mailbox
together
. What are they, Siamese twins?

I could almost do it, shoot them both, but the memory of Mr. and Mrs. Ricks holds me back. How horrible that was. It’s enough I’m going to take this woman’s husband, I can’t take her life as well. I have to wait it out.

I’m very visible, parked just up the road, when they come out to the mailbox, but neither of them looks up in my direction at all. They’re very involved in one another. He opens the mailbox, pulls out the little messy stack, distributes some to her, keeps some for himself. I see her ask the question, I see him shake his head in response; no job today. Then they go up to the house, together, put their mail on the table on the side porch, and walk back out to their garden.

Twelve-thirty. They compare watches, and go inside, hand in hand. Lunchtime; of course.

I’m hungry, too. Just north of town, I noticed this morning, there’s a small mall, with an extensive garden nursery and an Italian restaurant. I wait two minutes after they disappear into the house, just in case he has to go to the store for something, but when he doesn’t emerge I drive on down to New Haven Road and turn left, and have a not very good spaghetti carbonara in the Italian restaurant, with coffee.

When I drive back up Footbridge Road, they’re in the garden again, still together. I’m reluctant to park in the same place as this morning, because sooner or later they’re bound to notice me, or neighbors farther up the hill will notice me. I drive another quarter mile, and pull off the road to consult my road atlas, and I see that this road is no use to me at all in this direction. It merely curves around and heads south, away from home. So I make a U-turn and drive slowly back down Footbridge Road.

Yes; there they are. There’s no point watching them any more today. They’ll simply keep on doing what they’re doing, and then they’ll go indoors together, and that will be the end of it.

Not a Thursday this time, then. Maybe Friday.

I drive on down to New Haven Road and turn left, and drive past the place where I had the not very good lunch—tomorrow, if I’m still on watch, I’ll have to find somewhere else to eat—and I head home.