Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [209]
“Yes, I suppose I get it,” Krumholtz said. She was wearing a French perfume, which he recognized as one of the varieties of Plage de Soleil.
“I’m good at what I do,” Lorraine said with a fixed smile. “I’m a spell-caster. An energizer. I’ve got Jimmy in my grip and he has me in his.”
“And the wife?” Krumholtz asked. “Ellie?” This woman, Krumholtz thought, is trying to break my soul into little pieces just for fun. Out of sheer boredom.
“If you only believed in angels, Mr. Krumholtz, you might be lifted up now and then out of your pathetic little life.” Lorraine had touched him gently on the cheek. “But, sadly, no.”
From outside came the sound of a rifle shot.
“No one knows how we live,” she said. “And no one’s going to.” She lifted her head and listened. “Now I wonder what Jimmy’s shooting at?” She stepped backward and dropped onto the fainting couch. Krumholtz saw that she was wearing a small ankle bracelet of brilliant gold. “You can go,” she said.
Krumholtz returned to the corridor, again walking past the video of the midtown Miss Havisham, but he could not find the door out to the back terrace. He touched the thick glass in an effort to find the doorway. Night appeared to be descending on trembling batlike wings, and inside Mallardhof the music continued to float down from the invisible built-in speakers. At the moment, they were playing the first book of Debussy Préludes. Krumholtz had once been a pianist, playing keyboards in a rock band in high school, and had played in another band, Sweat Stain, in college, but had found no way of making a living from it and after majoring in music had gone into journalism, thinking that he might preserve some elements of artistic work in what he did. He had been a good enough pianist to work in a cocktail lounge to pay for his tuition, but greatness was far beyond him, and he knew it. You had to be a great musician to make a real living at it. He stopped to listen to the music. The sound was slightly smeary: an old recording: Walter Gieseking playing.
Cathy would be sitting the girls down about now, for dinner. They would be gathered under the kitchen light, maybe eating spaghetti together. Cathy made a great sauce. Her spaghetti sauce was one of her little glories. Krumholtz went through a brief shudder of longing for his wife and daughters and home. He had never felt anything but love for Cathy from the moment he had met her. He thought of asking someone in this infernal Olympian household for a telephone, so he could call to check up on her, see how she was doing. Lately he had been a bit worried about her. She had appeared to be distracted and preoccupied and hardly listened to him when he was talking to her. The job at the agency, she had told him, had been getting her down.
All at once he found the door out to the back terrace where Mallard had been chopping firewood. When he saw Mallard now, Krumholtz could make out that the man was covered with blood. He was bent over something with a knife in his hand and was cutting it lengthwise.
“A deer, damn it,” Mallard said. “Somehow it got on the property. You know, they eat everything. There must be a hole in the fencing. They can be very aggressive. And destructive.” Mallard had in his hand a four-inch field knife and another tool Krumholtz didn’t recognize. “Have you ever done this?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he said, “Some hunters bleed the deer. They cut its throat. But that’s ridiculous, because after all the heart isn’t pumping, so you have to hang the damn thing with its head down so the blood drains out. Anyway, we don’t do that. So what you do is, you get the deer on its back. Maybe