Safe Haven(100)

She peeked up at the clock again, certain that this would be the longest five hours of her life.





38





Damn!” Kevin kept saying. “Damn!” He’d been driving for hours. He’d stopped to buy four bottles of vodka at the ABC store. One of them was half gone, and as he drove he saw two of everything unless he squinted, keeping one eye closed.

He was searching for bicycles. Four of them, including one with baskets. He might as well have been looking for a specific piece of plankton in the ocean. Up one road and down the next, as the afternoon wound down and dusk settled in. He looked from left to right and back again. He knew where she lived, knew he would eventually find her at home. But in the meantime the gray-haired man was out there with Erin, laughing at him, saying, I’m so much better than Kevin, baby.

He screamed curses in the car, pounding on the steering wheel. He flipped the safety on the Glock from the off to the on position and back again, imagining Erin kissing him, his arm around her waist. Remembering how happy she’d looked, thinking she had tricked her husband. Cheated on him. Moaned and murmured beneath her lover while he panted atop her.

He could barely see, fighting the blurriness with one eye. A car came up behind him on the neighborhood streets, tailgating for a while, then flashing his lights. Kevin slowed the car and pulled over, fingering the gun. He hated rude people, people who thought they owned the road. Bang.

Dusk turned the streets into shadowy mazes, making it difficult to see the spindly outlines of bicycles. When he drove past the gravel road for the second time, he decided on impulse to turn around and visit her house again, just in case. He stopped just out of sight of the cottage and got out. A hawk circled overhead, and he heard cicadas humming, but otherwise the place seemed deserted. He started toward the house but could see already from a distance that there was no bicycle parked out front. No lights on, either, but it wasn’t dark yet, so he crept to the back door. Unlocked, just like before.

She wasn’t home, and he didn’t think she’d been home since he’d been here earlier. The house was sweltering, all the windows shut tight. She would have opened the windows, he felt sure, would have had a glass of water, might have taken a shower. Nothing. He left through the back door, staring at the neighboring house. A dump. Probably deserted. Good. But the fact that Erin wasn’t home meant she was with the gray-haired man, had gone to his house. Cheating, pretending she wasn’t married. Forgetting the home that Kevin had bought for her.

His head throbbed in time with his heartbeats, a knife going in and out. Stab. Stab. Stab. It was hard to focus as he pulled the door closed behind him. Mercy of all mercies, it was cooler outside. She lived in a sweatbox, sweated with a gray-haired man. They were sweating together now, somewhere, writhing in sheets, bodies intertwined. Coffey and Ramirez were laughing about that, slapping their thighs, having a good old time at his expense. I wonder if I could do her, too, Coffey was saying to Ramirez. Don’t you know? Ramirez answered back. She let half the precinct do her while Kevin was working. Everyone knows about it. Bill waving from his office, holding suspension papers. I did her, too, every Tuesday for a year. She’s wild in bed. Says the dirtiest things.

He stumbled back to his car, his finger on the gun. Bastards, all of them. Hated them, imagined walking into the precinct and unloading the Glock, emptying the clip, showing them. Showing all of them. Erin, too.

He stopped and bent over, vomiting onto the side of the road. Stomach cramping, a clawing in his gut like a rodent was trapped inside him. Puked again, and then dry heaves and the world spun when he tried to stand. The car was close and he staggered to it. Grabbed the vodka and drank and tried to think like Erin, but then he was at the barbecue holding a burger covered in flies and everyone was pointing and laughing at him.

Back to the car. Bitch had to be somewhere. She’d watch gray-hair die. Watch them all die. Burn in hell. Burn and burn, all of them. Carefully, he climbed in and started the car. He backed into a tree as he was trying to turn around, and then, cursing, tore out on the gravel, spinning rocks.

Night would soon be falling. She came in this direction, had to be down this way. Little kids couldn’t ride far. Three or four miles, maybe five. He’d been down every road this way, looked at every house. No bicycles. They could be in the garage, could be parked in fenced yards. He’d wait and she’d come home sometime. Tonight. Tomorrow. Tomorrow night. He’d stick the gun in her mouth, aim it at her breasts. Tell me who he is, he’d say. I just want to talk to him. He’d find gray-hair and show him what happened to men who slept with other men’s wives.