Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [29]
“You’re saying things turned violent?”
“No, it’s just a figure of speech. But he grabbed her arm.”
“Could you hear what were they saying?”
“So far as I could tell, they were fighting about a vacation.”
“Do you remember what they said?”
“I remember it like I remember the first thing my husband said to me on our wedding night after we made love for the very first time.”
“Go on,” Hastroll said.
“He said, ‘Christ, Thelma, I thought you was a virgin.’”
“I meant the Pepins.”
“Oh,” she said. “Something about leaving for Australia that night, dropping everything else. They didn’t even need to pack, he says, which is crazy, she says. But then while they’re arguing, I start thinking to myself. Why does a husband all of a sudden show up and demand his wife go somewhere with him? Because he’s up to no good, I says. Running from something.”
Hastroll paused to clean his glasses. “What happened after their argument?”
“Alice just stormed outside. David, he went and sat in his car like he was staking her out. But then he got a call on his phone and was all upset again.”
“Upset how?”
“Jumpy. Fidgety. Like one of those towel-head kiosk owners when you look at their magazines.”
“And then?”
“The kids, they was loading up the buses for a school trip Alice was taking them on. She boards the bus, and then he follows right behind in their car. And the next day, what do I hear”—her voice cracked—“but that she’s dead.”
She shook her head. “Trouble,” she said, blowing into a tissue. “I got a nose for it.”
Hastroll hadn’t had sex with his wife in five months.
True, there had been periods when he and Hannah had lived together like a pair of monks, but this current streak broke all records. A powerful horniness had come over him. For a while he sustained himself on a steady diet of masturbation, shocking himself by how proficient and stealthy he’d become. He beat off in the shower, using Hannah’s expensive conditioner for lubrication. He ejaculated into the toilet, after which he took a long, constricted, slightly sore pee. He jerked off in bed, within seconds after Hannah fell asleep, shorts down and knees up, legs forming what he liked to call his little tent of pleasure. Oddly, his panopticon of playthings never included Hollywood stars—who were they to an unglamorous detective?—but were always centered on women he knew. Recently, he’d spent much of his fantasy life screwing Georgine Darcy to tears. His questioning of her had formed the concrete basis of his fantasies and in his favorite one he came home to find her in his apartment. The bitch was robbing them, stealing Hannah’s jewelry, and he discovered her as she was trying to beat a retreat.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“Why, Detective Hastroll,” she said. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by to tell you something suspicious I’d rememered about David, and the door was open, so I came in and saw your wife’s jewelry and just had to try it on, but I guess I’ll be going.”
He grabbed her by her wrist and threw her down on the couch. “You’re not going anywhere!”
She tried to get up and they wrestled, but he threw her down on the couch again, immediately growing an erection Georgine noticed, putting the back of her hand to her forehead and staring at Hastroll’s prodigious lump. “Help!” she whispered, and kicked off her shoes. “Help, police!” He lifted up the skirt of her dress and saw—my god!—that she had garters on but no underwear. Her bush was narrow and perfectly trimmed, a strip of yellow mink as blond as a towheaded child’s hair.
“Police!” she screamed as he entered her. “Police!”
“Ward?” Hannah said from the bedroom. “Are you all right?”
The sound of his wife’s voice was magic. It could arouse him to steel-stiffness or wilt him like a dog told to play dead.
“I’m fine!” he called, fumbling with his drawers, knocking the Kleenex box to the floor while flushing.
He’d assumed, given Hannah’s current situation, that she couldn’t have cared less about what he did with Mr. Penis. But one night,