The Kind Worth Killing (5 page)

We stayed that way for a while, at least an hour. My arm, which I refused to move, began to ache, then turned numb, as though it weren't there at all. I ordered another gin and tonic, thought about what she had said about murder. It made sense. Why was the taking of a life considered so terrible? In no time at all there would be all new people on this planet, and everyone who was on the planet now would have died, some terribly, and some like the flick of a switch. The real reason that murder was considered so transgressive was because of the people that were left behind. The loved ones. But what if someone was not really loved? Miranda had family and friends, but I had come to recognize, in the three years that I'd been married to her, that they all knew down deep what she was. She was a shallow user, content to get by on her looks, and have things handed to her. People would mourn, but it was hard to imagine anyone truly missing her.

The plane began to rise and dip a little, and the pilot's deeply American voice came over the speaker. “Folks, we've hit just a little bit of turbulence. I'm going to ask you to return to your seats and fasten your seat belts till we've passed through this rough patch.” I finished my drink just as the plane dropped suddenly, like a car going too fast over a hill. A woman behind me let out a sharp gasp, and my new accomplice jerked awake, looking up at me with her green eyes. I don't know if she was more surprised by the plane's sudden lurch or by her position, snuggled up against my arm.

“It's just turbulence,” I said, although my stomach, which had lurched with the airplane's first dip, had tightened with fear.

“Oh.” She straightened up, rubbing at both eyes with the palms of her hands. “I was dreaming.”

“What were you dreaming about?”

“I don't know anymore.”

The plane bucked a few more times, then began to straighten out. “I've been thinking about what we were talking about,” I said.

“And?”

A year before the arrival of Chet, back when my beautiful orange cat Bess was still alive, I found her one morning trapped against the vegetable garden fence by a huge, matted black stray. Bess was hissing, her fur ruffled, but she was clearly in retreat. I watched as the feral tomcat leaped onto her back, sinking his claws into Bess's haunches. I know that cats don't really scream, but that is the only way I can describe the sound that Bess made. An almost human scream of terror. I charged forward, clapping my hands, and the stray tore off. I took Bess back into the house, and searched her fur for blood. There wasn't any, but I knew that the horrible cat would be back.

“Just keep Bess inside,” my mother said.

I tried, but Bess cried at the door, and it was a semester during which my father was hosting his senior seminar at our house; students came and went Tuesday and Thursday nights, swinging through the front door to smoke cigarettes on our steps, and Bess could easily escape.

It was spring and starting to get warm and I slept with my window cracked. One morning, just past dawn, I heard Bess yowling outside,
a ferocious, terrified sound. I pulled on sneakers and ran downstairs, exiting out toward the back garden. In the gray, early morning light I spotted them right away, Bess backed against the fence again, the horrible black stray crouched and ready to attack. They were each frozen in the terrible moment, like a diorama at the Museum of Natural History. I clapped my hands together, yelling, and the stray merely turned its ugly matted head my way, appraised me with indifference, and turned back to Bess. I knew right then that the feral tom would kill Bess if he got a chance, maybe not on that morning but some morning, and that I would do anything to stop that from happening.

There was a pile of paving stones on the edge of our unfinished patio. They had been there so long that moss had grown on some of them. I picked up the largest one I could carry; its edges were sharp and it was slippery with dew. I walked quietly and quickly to stand behind the stray. I didn't need to be quiet. He was unafraid of me, intent on terrorizing Bess. Without thinking about it, I lifted the paving stone above my head and hurled it down onto him as hard as I could. He turned his head at the last moment and made a squalling sound as the edge of the stone caught him on the skull, the whole stone coming to rest on his body. Bess bolted, racing across the backyard as fast as I'd ever seen her move. The stray's body shivered, then lay still. I turned to the house, expecting to see a bedroom light turn on, the house woken by the sound of murder, but there had hardly been any sound.

It had been easy.

The bulkhead to the basement was unlocked. I crept down the dark, leaf-slicked steps and groped around the entryway, finding one of the snow shovels that lined the wall. I used the edge of the plastic shovel to slip the paving stone off the stray, then pushed the shovel under the inert body. I could see no damage on the matted head; I was terrified that the cat was not dead, just knocked unconscious, and would spring up any moment, come at me hissing and full of vengeance. But when I lifted the cat it flopped like a dead thing, and I was suddenly struck with a bad smell, a trail of defecation that had sprayed from the cat when
it died. I had expected blood but hadn't expected shit. The smell sickened me, but I was happy I'd killed that disgusting cat.

He was not as heavy as I thought he would be, his stiffened fur giving the impression that he had been larger than he was, but he was heavy enough. I managed to carry the cat about ten feet away, to the edge of the woods, and dropped the body on top of some rotted leaves. I spent another five minutes digging up debris and tossing it on top of him till he was covered. It was good enough. My parents never went in the woods anyway.

Climbing back into bed, shivering from the cold, I didn't think I would fall asleep again, but I did, easily.

I checked on the corpse of that stray for the next few days. It lay there, undisturbed, buzzing with flies, till one morning it was simply gone. I guessed it must have been dragged away by a coyote or a fox.

Bess resumed her cat's life, coming and going from the house, and sometimes, when she brushed against my ankles, or purred in my lap, I imagined she was thanking me for what I had done. She had her kingdom back, and all was right with the world.

After what happened with Chet the night of the party, I immediately thought about the incident with the stray cat. It gave me ideas about how I would kill him and get away with it. It seemed crucial that the body never be found. And if that was the case, then I needed to find some things out about Chet.

After the party Chet seemed to disappear for a little while, not coming out of the apartment, and not visiting the house. I did see him one night. He was on the lawn, looking up at my bedroom window. I'd just turned the light off to go to bed, and that's when I saw him there, swaying a little, like a tree in a breeze. He'd been watching me. I'd left the window cracked and the shade slightly up so that some air got into the room. I felt stupid and afraid, and tears pricked at my eyes, but I told myself that Chet would not make me cry again. I now knew for sure that he was simply biding his time, waiting for a good opportunity to rape and murder me. I did consider telling my mother about what had
happened but I thought she'd be on Chet's side, that she'd wonder why I was making such a big deal about it. And my father was still away with Rose, the poet, and the way that my mother sometimes talked about it late at night, it sounded as though he wasn't coming back. I asked her once, while she was making a giant batch of hummus in the kitchen.

“Has Daddy called?”

“Your daddy has not called,” she said, spacing the words out for maximum effect. “Your daddy, last I heard, has made a fool of himself in New York, so I expect we'll see him back here soon enough. You're not worried, darling, are you?”

“No. I was just wondering. What about Chet? Did he leave?”

“Chet? No, he's still here. Why'd you ask about him?”

“I just hadn't seen him. I thought that maybe he'd moved out of the apartment and I could go up there again.” I loved the small apartment above my mother's studio, with its whitewashed walls and huge windows. There was an old red beanbag chair that had once been in our house and been moved to the apartment. It had a small rip along its vinyl bottom and was slowly losing its little pellets of filling, but I missed it. When the apartment was empty I'd bring books over there to read.

“You can still go up there. Chet won't bite.”

“Does he have a car?”

“Does he have a car? God, I don't think so. I don't even think he has a place to live right now, besides with us.”

“How'd he get here if he doesn't have a car?”

She laughed, then licked hummus off a finger. “My bourgeois daughter. Darling, not everyone has a car. He took a train from the city. Why are you asking so many questions about Chet? Don't you like him?”

“No, he's gross.”

“Ha, now you really do sound like your father. Well, whatever you two think, Chet is a real artist, and we are all doing the art world a huge favor by allowing him some space to focus this summer. Keep that in mind, Lily, that it's not all about you all the time.”

I had gotten what I wanted to get from my mother. Chet didn't have a car, and had arrived here by train, which meant that he could easily pack up his stuff and leave for good. That made my job a whole lot easier. I began to prepare, spending time in the meadow next to the old farmhouse, gathering the largest rocks that I could carry. I also made myself visible to Chet, dragging one of the old lounge chairs out to the sunny patch of yard between the main house and the studio. I didn't want him to keep avoiding me, since it was crucial that he trust me to a certain degree, crucial that we establish some sort of relationship. The first few days when I lay in the sun, reading, my headphones on, Chet did not make an appearance. Once or twice I thought I saw his silhouetted frame in the slatted glass door of the apartment as he watched me. But one day he wandered out to smoke a cigarette, standing on the top landing in his paint-splattered overalls, no shirt on underneath. I peered over the top of the Agatha Christie I was reading and he nodded in my direction, raised a hand. My gut reaction was to ignore him, to not give him the pleasure of a response, but I forced myself to raise my hand and wave back.

The next day when I went to my reading spot, it was hot and muggy, the kind of day when you wake up sweaty and take a cold shower, and start sweating again as soon as you get out of the shower. I pulled on my green bikini. I'd had it for two years but my body hadn't developed much. It fit up top, although it was a little tight down below, where I now had hips. I pulled on a pair of shorts—ones I'd asked my mother to buy me earlier that summer. They were madras plaid and she said they made me look like a Kennedy, but she bought them for me anyway. I took my book and a bottle of sunscreen to the chair that faced Chet's apartment. I hated the sun, and I hated heat. I had red hair and freckly skin so all the sun did was make my freckles darker. I slathered myself with the sunscreen, trying to remember if the high number on the bottle was a good thing or a bad thing. I kept an eye on the apartment and pretty soon I saw Chet peering through the window. I could make out the orange tip of his cigarette winking on and
off. Fifteen minutes passed, and I was listening to my tape of
Les Mis
and reading
Sleeping Murder
when Chet emerged with a mug of coffee, descended the studio steps, and casually wandered toward where I was lounging.

“Hi there, Lily,” he said, standing about five feet away, the already high sun lighting up the hair along his bare arms and shoulders so that he almost shimmered. He smelled like he hadn't showered in days.

I said hi back.

“What are you reading?”

I started to hold up the book cover toward him dismissively, then remembered that I needed to be a little bit nice so that he wouldn't suspect anything when I came to his apartment later. “Agatha Christie,” I said. “It's a Miss Marple.”

“Cool,” he said, and slurped at his coffee mug. Like everything else he owned, the mug was covered in paint. “Things okay with you?” he asked.

I knew that what he wanted to ask was if things were okay with
us,
with what had happened the night he came into the room. He wanted to know if I remembered him being in there. “Yeah,” I said.

He rocked his head back and forth. “It's fucking hot out here, man.”

I shrugged and returned my eyes to the book. I'd done enough and I really didn't want to talk to Chet anymore. I pretended to read but I could feel him still studying me. Sweat had pooled where the two triangles of my bikini top met, and a single drop was inching its way down my rib cage. I willed myself to not wipe the sweat away with Chet watching, even though the unbearable progress of the drop felt as though Chet's eyes were slicing me with a razor. He took another loud sip from his mug and wandered off.

My father came back. There was a lot of yelling and some tears. The Russian left, and for some time, my parents were constantly in each other's company, drinking like they used to on the unfinished back
patio, listening to jazz albums. I was glad that my father was back for a few reasons, one of them being that with my parents' attention turned toward one another, I could focus on getting rid of Chet. I had set up everything perfectly in the meadow, the pile of rocks growing every day, and the rope in place down the old well. It had just become a matter of picking the perfect day, a day when no one would see me cross the front yard to where Chet was living, or see the two of us walk together into the woods. That day came on a quiet Thursday three days after the return of my father. I spent the afternoon in my room rereading
Crooked House
and listening to the muffled sounds of my parents drinking. They'd started early, sharing a bottle of wine at lunch, then moving to the patio outside, drinking gin and listening to music. When the last record ended, a new one hadn't begun, and I heard their bedroom door thunk shut, then laughter. I looked out my own bedroom window; it had just become dusk, the shadows from the nearby woods lengthening across the weedy yard. I knew the timing was perfect. There were no other visitors at Monk's House right then, and my parents were unlikely to emerge from their bedroom until morning.