First Thrills - Lee Child [122]
Dirt nap, Victor announced to himself.
Week after week, Vic floated dead, bobbing along the ceiling of his ranch style bungalow. Below him, his desiccated husk withered into the Naugahyde of the Barcalounger.
The TV blasted.
Program after program. Commercial after commercial. Season after season. Through live coverage, and summer reruns. Through hurricanes, murders, and high-altitude bombings. Through real cops, fake cops, fake real cops. Through make overs, liposuctions, and boob jobs. Through entertainment, infotainment, and docudramas. Through re-enactments, dramatizations, and purely fictional events. Through summer, then winter, and then through summer again. The television glowed blue and white, flickering over Victor’s lifeless face.
Marina had showed him how to set up his automatic payments. She’d been sure to leave enough money in the checking account to cover at least a year of utility bills. There were so many passwords, and clicks, and “I Agree” buttons—it was so easy to cash out the stocks and drain the 401K. And who had the money now? Maybe Boris.
It was two years before anyone came to the house. The visitor didn’t come to see Victor. He came to read the meter. He let himself in the side gate and walked around the back of the house.
The pool was drained dry and full of palm fronds. They’d blown down from the date palms over the course of two spring seasons when the winds are high and fierce. The dried palm fronds crinkled and rustled in the arid cement bowl of the pool. Tree rats harbored in the withered leaves, burrowing into the arboreal necropolis.
The meterman stepped back from the pool. Where there are rats, there are snakes.
He heard a television blasting. It was a game show. A crowd roared; Wheel of Fortune.
Some old person, he thought. Can’t hear.
He rang the back doorbell, then pounded on the door. He walked over to the glass sliding door, looked in the window through the gap in the vertical Levelors. He saw Victor—his profile sagging, his hair bristling, his leather hands were clamping black talons dimpling the armrests.
When the gurney wheeled out onto the driveway, the silver cord that attached Victor to the brown husk dissolved. He floated freely, into the cloudless sky, looking down at the streets in their tidy grids, the rows of palm trees lined up so neatly, so intentionally, and the swimming pools, blue and twinkling like merry gems.
As he floated higher, Victor realized, without alarm, that the shimmering silver pieces that suggested his form were drifting apart. The spaces between the silver became wider, and wider, until there was nothing but space. A brief thought flashed. Victor knew that he would, himself, be on television that evening. And he felt curiously happy, because he no longer cared.
*
CYNTHIA ROBINSON lives in San Francisco. She is the author of the Max Bravo series of black comedy mysteries. St. Martin’s Press is publishing The Dog Park Club in 2010 and The Barbary Galahad in 2011.
J. T. ELLISON
I’ve just killed Carol Ann. Sweet, innocent Carol Ann. Her blond hair flows down her back and trails in the spreading pool of blood. What have I done?
I’ve known Carol Ann for nearly my whole life. Every memory from my childhood is permeated by the blonde angel who moved in across the street when I was five or so. Skipping up the street after the ice cream truck, getting lost in the shadows during a game of hide-and-seek, watching her sit in the window of her pink room, brushing that glorious hair. We were two peas in a pod, two sides of the same coin. Best friends forever. Forever just turned out to be an awful long time.
Our relationship started as benignly as you’d expect. I’d seen the moving truck leave and knew that a family had taken the Estes’ house. Mrs. Estes died, left her son with bills and a dozen cats. I missed the cats. I’d wondered about the family, then went back to my own world.
Carol Ann spied me sitting on our front step, twirling my fingers through the dandelions in the