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The first thing Hallie did when her fiancé died was to shear off her hair. His corpse was still warm in the bedroom as she stood before the bathroom mirror, washed the blood from the blades of the scissors, and watched it swirl down the drain. She lifted her long blond tresses away from her neck and began to cut. As the tangled strands landed in the trashcan she felt a heavy weight falling away.
She looked in the mirror and smiled. The person smiling back was someone she didn’t know, a naked woman with tears in her eyes and jaggedy points of hair sticking out all over her head. Hallie could hardly wait to get to know this beautiful stranger. Now she could start fresh, begin her life all over again. She turned on the shower and when the water was almost too hot to bear, she stepped in. She lathered herself with shampoo and soap that released the scent of flowers. After drying herself with a thick, fluffy towel, she used it to wipe down the shower and the sink. She stuffed the towel into the trashcan and, almost as an afterthought, she dropped in the scissors too. She stepped into the bedroom, averting her eyes from Martin’s body on the bed. Her clothes still lay heaped in the corner where they’d been when he died. She carried them into the bathroom and hastily put them on, glad to see that her jeans and shirt showed no traces of blood. Hallie hadn’t intended to kill him. It was an act of self-defense. Martin always liked to play rough in bed, but this time he’d closed his hands around her throat more tightly than ever before. Struggling to breathe, she choked out, “Basta!”—Italian for enough, their safe word, the signal that he must stop. He ignored her. Squeezed harder. Her body bucked, her arms flailed. She banged her hand on the bedside table and felt something metal. Cool, hard. The scissors. Earlier in the afternoon they’d been shopping. Martin had bought a new cashmere coat. Back at the house, he’d taken the coat and Hallie into the bedroom. He snipped off the hangtags and hung the coat in the closet. Then, abandoning the scissors and tags on the table, he flung Hallie onto the bed. As his hands crushed her throat, she gasped for breath. Her lungs felt ready to explode. Pinpoints of bright light danced in the darkness in front of her eyes. Her fingers closed around the scissors. She pulled them in close, next to her head. “Basta!” She tried to scream it, but she couldn’t push the word past the band of fists sealing her throat. Frantic to make him release her, she jabbed at his hands with the scissors. Jabbed again. Without letting go, he lowered his head to kiss her. It was luck, or perhaps fate, that guided the blades to the hollow at the base of his neck and thrust them deep into his flesh. Martin collapsed on top of her, bathing her face in his blood. For a long moment she lay there, too shocked to move. Then she rolled out from under him and curled into a ball, crying as she sucked in sweet, wonderful air. Surely Martin hadn’t planned to kill her, any more than she intended for him to die. But what if he had meant it? What if he’d concocted a scheme to get rid of her and blame her death on innocent lovemaking that, in their passion, they let get out of hand? Or maybe he wouldn’t explain what happened but would simply wrap her body in the cashmere coat and toss her in the lake, as if she never even existed. Lately they spent most of their time together quarreling. She’d been pressing him for decisions about their future. Maybe his hands wringing her throat had been his answer to her demands. The shifting slant of the afternoon light through the curtains told her time was running short. She made herself get up and go into the bathroom. That was when she took the scissors to her hair. Martin loved it long. He once said he’d kill her if she cut it. She always assumed he was making a joke, using a figure of speech. Now she stared at herself in the mirror again, running her palm over her shorn head. It felt so odd. She wondered if anyone she knew would recognize her. If not, that was okay. She scarcely recognized herself. Better take the stuff in the trashcan with her, Hallie decided. She lifted out the plastic liner with all of its telltale contents and shoved it into the shopping bag that had held the cashmere coat. The bag would look less conspicuous if someone saw her leaving the house. Self-defense, yes. Even so, Hallie didn’t want to stay around to tell her story to the police. She paused by the bed long enough to pull a blanket over the body. “Goodbye, Martin,” she said. “I loved you, you know. I believed all the promises you made. I should have known that for you, love would never be enough.” Hallie had no idea where she would go, what she would do next. For so long, her life had revolved around Martin’s plans, Martin’s needs, Martin’s whims. She no longer had a real sense of what she, Hallie, wanted and needed. But she was eager to find out. To her surprise what she felt now was not grief but relief, not a sense of loss but an opening of possibilities. The bedroom door made a satisfying click as she shut it behind her. Martin’s wife was in for a surprise when she got home. About the author: Margaret Lucke flings words around as an author, editor, and teacher of fiction writing classes in the San Francisco Bay Area. She writes tales of love, ghosts, and murder, sometimes all three in one book. She is a former president of the Northern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Visit her at https://margaretlucke.com/
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Remember, Ricky, when we were kids and used to throw stones off the bridge into the Susquehanna? The second the stone left your hand, you knew its whole future was set, how it would soar and splash and fall to the bottom of that river that seemed to flow on forever. I wish you were here right now. God, I do.
The Blue Haven is the way you remember. Cold and rainy as it is today, this bar’s as good a place as any to shelter from the weather. The neon sign in the window glows like blue ice. I’m sitting at our regular table near the front. You know how I like to keep an eye on who comes through the door. I’m drinking my usual, Tenec’s Rye and water. That first sip of the day is like the kiss of a princess, but now I have a spin in my head and my tongue is a little numb. Terry’s tending bar. You know how he brags about the baseball bat under the counter. In twenty years, we never seen or heard of him laying a hand on it, right? Especially today. It’s slow, only a couple of old guys nursing their drinks ‘til they can go home to supper. When I first knew you were dead, I’m not kidding, it was like being dropped on the dark side of the moon. No air. No light. You wonder how a person’s heart can stand such pain. Since we were kids, Ricky, I always looked on you as a little brother, didn’t I? In a fight, you were very good with your hands. I was more the thinker, trying to use my brain to get us out of scrapes. When we grew up and chose the life, I swore that I would have your back. You know that. Your funeral this morning was beautiful. Rosewood casket, buckets of flowers. The largest wreathe was mine. All our friends were there, showing you tremendous respect. Even Lorenzo showed up, if you can believe it. God bless your poor Claudia and the kids. They were wrecks but put on brave faces. What could I say to them? The graveside service was a little rushed because of the wind and rain. As the priest droned on, I couldn’t take my eyes off the tarp covering the pile of dirt and your grave wide open like a mouth. I tried to slip away quiet at the end of the service, but Lorenzo cornered me, patted me on the back, shook my hand. After that, I needed to drop in here for a few drinks to restore my soul. The word on the street is that your exit was a professional piece of work. And everybody knows that you were treated with respect. It was late at night, so no witnesses. The paper said that you were probably walking with someone in the park, someone you knew, under the streetlights along the river. That the shooter fell a half-step behind and pumped one quick round into the back of your neck. Like flicking off a light switch. The shot didn’t leave a mark on your face. They left your body along the main park road so that you would be quickly found and trucked to the morgue, before rats or weather could mess with you. And the shooter tucked a C-note in your hand to tell the world that you were somebody, a high-value target. Ricky, I’ll probably never find out what you did to earn the bullet. But we both know how the hit would have come down. A call comes from a boss that you got to erase a guy and it has to be you because he’s your friend and trusts only you. If you say, “No, thanks, he’s a buddy,” well, you’re in the life and you know the rules. You get rubbed out for refusing the order and a second-string shooter takes out your friend instead and maybe botches the job. People say the greatest gift you can give a friend is to take a bullet for him. They’re wrong. The greatest gift is to have the guts to put a bullet into your friend with mercy and dignity. Knowing that you will have to live on, tasting ashes… But where are my manners? Here, I told Terry to pour you a shot of rye. I’m sorry for the rough weather you’re suffering out there today. I hope this nip warms your spirit. Take it, Ricky. Drink your fill, the angel’s share. And rest easy. |
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