Gargantuan_ A Ruby Murphy Mystery - Maggie Estep [102]
ATTILA JOHNSON
36.
Long Shot
My wife’s thighs are more generously fleshy than the last time I was between them. She’s put on a few pounds, which is probably the only reason I am here. At her thinnest, she is craziest. At this weight, which I’d wager is about one-twenty she is usually okay, because she has enough meat on her bones to keep her connected to earth but not so much that she feels and acts leaden.
It’s shocking to taste her. It has been three months, but it feels like as many decades. And if someone had told me this morning when I woke up to the horrible wheezing sound of a dying old man that I’d be making love to my estranged wife a few hours later, I’d have told them they were crazier than Ava’s ever been.
Ava is wiggling her hips and moaning in pleasure and for a moment I think of Ruby and a spear of guilt shoots through me. I was on the verge of loving her, but I probably never could have crossed over that precipice because of this woman, this savage, this moaning she-beast Ava who is in my blood just as I am in hers. My wife shakes in orgasm and I pull my head away and am about to enter her, to descend softly into her world, when the phone rings.
I jump to my feet.
“Attila! Calm down! It’s just the phone, come back here.”
“No. They’re after me,” I say, panicked, already looking for my clothes.
“Baby, if anyone is really after you, they’re probably not going to call first.”
“Answer it, Ava, please.”
“You want to talk to your assassin?”
“Just answer it.”
Ava reaches over and picks up the phone.
She listens then waves her hand at me, signaling that it’s nothing to worry about.
I go into the bathroom and throw water on my face. I stand naked in front of the mirror, looking at my torso. The muscles that will be of no use to me now. The muscles that will never again know what it’s like to hold back a thousand pounds of thoroughbred for the first half mile of a route race, the muscles that will probably turn to Jell-O now that their purpose has been taken from them. I can hear Ava, still talking on the phone. I walk down the hall to look at Grace’s room. It doesn’t look like a little girl’s room. It’s bare and tidy, the only decoration a huge poster I gave her of the racehorse Cigar. On the dresser is a little toy stable with some plastic horses arranged in order of size. Next to these there’s a bobblehead doll of the great race mare Xtra Heat. I’d never before noticed that my daughter’s only toys were representations of horses. There are no dolls or stuffed animals. It occurs to me that I don’t know my daughter at all anymore. I’m not sure when she turned into the creature who would inhabit this formal, minimalist room. I feel my chest tighten but I also feel relief just to know I’ll see her soon.
“Baby,” I hear Ava calling me.
I walk back into the bedroom.
“Who was that?”
“It’s a long story,” she says, looking sheepish, “and not necessarily one you will like. But I’ll tell it to you later. Please get on top of me,” she says, reaching for me.
“What, Ava? What have you done?” Between the false lightness of her tone and her evident urge to get me preoccupied, it’s clear that she’s done something bad.
“Just come here,” she ventures.
“No, Ava. Tell me,” I say, sitting at the edge of the bed.
“I thought I had to do something drastic to get your attention.”
I don’t like the sound of this.
“What? What have you done?”
“That awful girl,” she says, thrusting