Mulch (10 page)

P
ETER REMEMBERED WHEN HE’D FIRST MET HIS
current mistress. One night, because his wife hadn’t done it earlier, he was stuck with taking the dog for a late walk. It was spring, and the air smelled of spring’s ear-liest flowering blossoms. It must have been near midnight. He walked down the path in the woods and then for some reason up to Martha’s Lane. She had been standing among the trees in her front yard. Wearing white, looking up. Looking like a nymph conferring with the moon.

He had called to her. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes, I am all right,” she had called back softly, a lilt raising the “yes” to something special. “I am only out here at this hour to enjoy the beautiful smells.”

It turned out she was Austrian. He had gravitated toward her as if she had been a magnet, and had been held ever since. Translucent sort of beauty. That charm that only European women possess. Small, lithe, very sexual. And with the ability to love him like his current wife or his ex-wives had never done.

Her name was Kristina.

They met next for lunch at Le Steak in Georgetown. Then he had taken her to his place on Q Street. They had tea in the tiny garden. The acrid smell of the boxwoods hung in the damp air and somehow turned them on. They did their mating dance while sitting on French wire garden chairs. She was witty without once talking about Washington politics. They had a proper conversation but smiled conspiratorial smiles, knowing what they would do next and relishing it. Finally they looked at each other and decided the preliminaries were over. They took the tea tray into the kitchen—she carried it, and he put his hand on her silk ass—then rushed to the bedroom and fell at each other.

Two hours later the sheets were sweaty with their lovemaking, and they were fully acquainted. Comfortable with each other. After that, they met weekly and spent long hours in that bedroom, sometimes going out later to eat, sometimes just eating in.

That had been spring. Now it was fall. A seven-month affair: a little shorter than his average. The bitter, unexpected
cold of early November had hardened the ground just as fast as it had hardened his heart.

Kristina had cried too much when he told her they had to break it up. He could tell there would be trouble. At first he had been moved. Did this one really love him? For a fleeting second he considered another divorce, then a marriage to this continental, warmhearted woman. But a second terrible picture flashed across his mind: another bitter, rejected wife to get rid of. An open scandal the press would devour. His nomination down the tubes. No thanks. No woman was worth that.

It was then he realized how unhandy it was to have acquired a lover who lived in the same neighborhood. What if, in one of her hysterical moods, Kristina let something slip? She had seemed like the perfect woman. But even she must have woman’s mischief in her; what if she decided to squeal to his wife?

He knew that Paschen, an arrogant, hypocritical bastard who probably ran around on his own wife, would leave Peter no room for error.

Now he stood in Kristina’s living room. He had been here only once before, on that first night they met. Dangerous to be here but necessary. Just two blocks from his own house—perilously close. But it couldn’t be done at his place in Georgetown; the noise of a saw would carry through the walls of the row house.

He had it all planned. He had even practiced in his workshop. He had to do it right.

She was to leave tomorrow for one of her foreign buying trips. Gone for two months. Once he had resolved to do this, he had acquired a detailed knowledge of both her business and
her personal habits. It had been pathetically easy; Kristina construed it only as an intensification of his love for her. It had been just as easy to acquire samples of her handwriting. He’d write to the few people in the States who would miss her, regarding her plan to live abroad. At the proper time, his Hong Kong connection would send the letters.

A more sophisticated letter would go to her company, severing her relationship with them—a move that she had been contemplating anyway, and that the company knew about. Mail would be forwarded to his Hong Kong source, and then back to him in the States.

No one would miss her for quite a while.

And then the messy part. He thought nostalgically of the ease with which he had disposed of bodies in the jungles of Vietnam. A quick shot or knife thrust, and kick the body into the underbrush, where the animals and insects would take care of it within hours.

Here, he would have to use her laundry room. A bloody mess but no way around it. Store—in her freezer—the parts that could be identified. Deep-six them later in the Potomac. Dispose quickly of the rest. A perfect crime. As chance would have it, she had provided him with just the right type of innocent containers sitting out in front of her house. Otherwise, there would have been a storage problem bigger than the one he already had, in stowing somewhere the readily identified parts—or elements. Elements. That was the euphemism that readily came to mind; he grasped it gratefully.

With a start, he broke from his reverie. He looked over at her, sitting on the rose couch. Thinner than usual. Her hair looked like hell. He loved her hair. It was light brown with a
rosy tone. So he’d teased her a lot about her pink hair. And her eyes; he loved her eyes, with their slight slant. Some Mongol barbarian blood in there.

But now she looked like hell. Yes, and nervous. Could she read his mind? His gorge rose in his throat. He fought to keep his face smooth, noncommittal. He took a deep breath and strolled across the room. In his pocket he fingered a coil of strong, thin wire, fashioned with a padded loop on either end.

Her brown eyes followed him as he approached. He sat down beside her and draped a hand gently around her.

“You’re tense, my dear. Turn a little and I’ll massage your shoulders, like old times.”

She exhaled and took a deep, relaxed breath. “Oh, I’d love that so.” As he started kneading her shoulder muscles, she turned her face and quickly kissed one of his hands. A current ran through him of remembered sexual pleasure. She said, “We’re having our troubles now, Peter, but we can find some solution. Just don’t forget how much I love you.”

The words, the touching, sent a message right through him down to the groin, hardening his penis and softening his resolve. Then he pulled in his breath, bared his teeth in a grimace, and pulled the garrote out of his pocket. At that instant she turned and saw his changed face.

“Peter!” She howled it like an animal. Her eyes near his were more terrifying than any Vietcong’s had ever been. Then she attacked him.

Blown it! This 110-pound woman was fighting him! Shoving him in the face, scratching him, twisting away … how dare she!

“Bitch! Die!” He roughly grabbed her arms and wrenched
them back as if breaking wings off a chicken. She screamed. Then quickly he slipped the wire around the small neck, avoiding those large, angry brown eyes. Now it was easy—just a matter of keeping a tight hold. The screams turned to gurgles. Her objecting body arched up in a parody of lovemaking. The fingers—God, he thought he’d neutralized those arms and fingers—clawed at her neck where the wire was now buried deep.

Finally, she drooped like a dead flower.

And he, he who was twice her size, was left gasping for breath. It had always amazed him what superhuman strength invaded humans when they were being killed.

F
ROM THE RECREATION ROOM WINDOW
L
OUISE
looked out at the scene of togetherness. The family next door—Roger the father, Laurie the mother, their twelve-year-old son Jeff, and their exemplary older son Michael—were busy raking the woods.

“Honey, come here, quick,” she called to Bill. “They’re
raking
the woods next door.”

“That so?” In tattered Saturday clothes, he was raptly watching a basketball game on television, hunched forward,
hands on knees. His eyes were locked on the sports action.

She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. Quietly she said, “The house is on fire and our child is burning.”

“That so?” murmured Bill, then sat forward and yelled, “Shoot, baby, shoot!” She looked at him in disgust and went to get her jacket out of the front hall closet.

“Ma,” summoned Janie as Louise passed her room. “You leaving?”

“No, I’m going outside to play,” she said, smiling. She came in and sat on the end of the bed where Janie sat propped up with her French II workbook. A neat pile of notebooks was stationed next to the bed. “Actually,” said Louise, “I’m going outside to beg the neighbors for their leaves.”

Janie hid her blond head in her hands. “Oh no, Ma, tell me no,” she said in a pleading voice. She opened her hands and peered at her mother in disbelief. “Is Michael out there? And you’re going to humiliate me by asking for their
leaves?
Can’t we get some more on our way to Bethesda?” She swung her feet down and sat on the edge of the bed next to her mother. “Tonight. Tonight I’ll even help you swipe them in the neighborhood if you’ll just—”

“Janie, just cut it out,” said Louise. She stood up. “You are being so sensitive I can hardly believe it. I thought you were the environmentalist. I thought you would have read about mulching and using the resources that we have. Leaves are just something else that needs recycling. There’s no sense in sending them to the recycling fields of Fairfax County when we can use them in our own backyard. All I’m doing is asking
who are nutty enough to rake their woods to save them for me.”

Janie, more composed now, got up, stood very tall, looked her mother almost eye to eye, and said, “Okay, Ma. I get you. But you may be ruining a future romance before it even starts.” Then she laughed, and Louise gave her daughter a little hug. Michael, the boy next door, was the same age as Janie but totally engrossed in, as Janie said, “being as perfect as his parents have always planned.”

Louise put on her work jacket, gloves, and gardening boots. She went outside and strolled casually over to where Roger was raking. “Beautiful day,” said Louise, and then felt foolish. It was one of those overcast, chilly Saturdays when many people simply threw up their hands and hit the local movie house. “On second thought, it’s kind of gray … kind of like the world is.” Roger’s favorite subject was international affairs. He was considered an expert.

“Hi, Louise,” he said, smiling at her. “Not so bad out here after you work up a little sweat. As for the world situation, that’s also causing me a lot of grief. I should be at work right now; probably have to go in for a while tomorrow.”

“Hello, Louise,” called Laurie, walking over, her red hair attractively windblown. Jeff and Michael came over, too, and Louise realized raking wasn’t their favorite occupation.

“Do you always rake your woods?” inquired Louise politely.

“Well, it
is
a yard,” said Roger, adjusting his glasses and studying her more closely. “Even though there’s no grass. But Laurie’s going to plant some ferns around in here.” He pointed to the now bare ground.

“I’m pretty excited about it,” said Laurie. “I’ve talked to a landscaper, and he’s recommended that I order six dozen ferns to be put in in the spring. They’re supposed to spread. Then he also suggested a grouping over here—” she pointed to a spot where nature had already planted a gracious clump of small trees—“a few azaleas and a few variegated cotoneaster.”

“That will be great,” said Louise. She turned to the children. “And how are you, Jeff … and Michael?”

“Part of the slave labor around here,” said Michael, batting his rake like a tennis racquet. “I’d rather be doing my physics than this.” He was slim, with dark red hair like his mother, and vivid brown eyes. Jeff, several years younger, seemed drab in comparison. He watched his brother and smiled faintly.

“Physics. I didn’t know students took up physics in tenth grade.”

“A special program they used to have at Sylvan Valley but don’t have any more,” Laurie explained. “Kids who tested at one-fifty IQ level or above”—her eyes skidded toward her son, who continued to pat the air with his rake as he stared into the distance—“were admitted in sixth grade, so by ninth grade they’re at least a year ahead in science. Michael is one of the twenty or so who went through this program.”

“Well,” said Louise. The look on Jeff’s face made Louise want to change the subject. “Maybe I can save you a little work out here. Rather than have you bag your leaves, can I please have them? We have a low spot on the edge of the property near the stand of bamboo, and as you might have seen, I’ve been gathering bags of leaves to put in there and raise the level a bit.” She looked at the large piles of leaves the
Kendrickses had labored to achieve. “Bill and I have a large drop cloth. We can just come over and gather them up with that.”

“Oh, no, Louise,” said Roger. “We have lots of recycling stuff. We’ll just bag them up and leave them on the edge of your property.” He looked at Michael, a strange look from a parent to a child, thought Louise. As if Roger were in awe of this handsome boy at his side, in awe perhaps of the fact that he, the father, was still in charge. “No. What we’ll do,” said Roger with finality, “is have Michael carry the bags to your backyard and put them with those others you’ve collected.”