Killer Move - Michael Marshall [64]
“Sorry,” I said.
She looked up at me, and smiled. “S’okay.”
“It’s not, really.”
“You see me moving away?”
“I’m . . . married. And older.”
“True, both. But I’m not, like, an actual infant. I can do up my own laces and everything.”
“I know,” I said (though now I felt very ancient indeed), and tightened my arm around her shoulders, to show that I was taking her seriously.
We didn’t say much more after that. I sat, content to be wreathed in her smoke, her body warm against my side as it got darker and darker in my head, and her breathing got shallower, and eventually she fell asleep.
I sat there, supporting her meager weight, a still point at the center of the world.
Some time later, having half woken, she smiled drowsily at me and hauled herself to her feet. She stumbled off in the direction of the bedroom, pausing just long enough to glance back at me from the door.
I drifted back to sleep for a while, before waking again to find myself on the floor, her pack of cigarettes close to my face. Without giving the idea a second thought I took one, lit it, stuck it in my mouth, and dragged on it deep. I don’t remember whether it felt good or not, or whether I even finished it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
At two o’clock in the morning Hunter walks into the sleeping condominium complex and lets himself into the apartment on the second story. Everything is as he left it. He walks to the couch, lowers himself down, and sits in the darkness. It is very quiet. No one is awake at this hour. Through the sliding doors at the end of the living room he can see across the central area of tennis courts. There is a light in one of the condos opposite, but it is dim, most likely there to comfort and guide a child should he or she need the bathroom in the night. Hunter watches for ten minutes and sees no one. A child sleeps on, undreaming, unaware.
He turns back to look across the room. On the wall is a canvas. Pieces of coral and seaweed have been stuck to it, along with some shells. In the darkness they look like blots of black ink against shadow. He wonders how long ago Hazel Wilkins undertook this project, a quiet and earnest celebration of where she lived, while a now-canceled TV show played in the background. These things of the ocean, once alive and in transit, are now so still they seem to deny the very idea of change, dismantling continuation and breaking the world into an infinite series of present moments.
They’re there.
They’re still there.
They’re still there.
And so is he. He closes his eyes, and there is a flash of noise and movement in his head. He lets his skull tip slowly forward, and holds it in his hands.
He stands over the shape on the bedroom floor. This is where she ran. He is not yet sure what he’s going to do about the result. He steps over her and goes to the closet, pulls the doors open. From the interior comes the smell of perfume worn on other days. Dresses, blouses, jackets hang all in a row. There is a sufficient number that most touch the next in line, but it seems to him that if he were to take each item to a different town in the country, or even the world, they could not feel farther apart from each other than they do now.
He has never been responsible for someone’s death—not so directly anyhow. If it hadn’t been for Hazel Wilkins, he could have told himself everything was going better than planned. He broke this woman’s neck with his own hands, however, and he feels bad about it.
He turns from her closet and kicks her body, hard.
He goes into the kitchenette and makes himself a cup of instant coffee. He drinks it standing at the doors out onto the balcony, far enough back that—should anyone look over—they will see nothing but shadow. It is cold in this apartment. The body in the bedroom would likely not announce its presence for a couple of days, by which time he hopes it will all be done. Hunter doesn’t know how often the maid service operates, however. It could be that at 8:00 A.M. sharp tomorrow some poorly paid Mexican woman will be opening the door to