“A man’s got to have a hobby.” Donnie poked his lower lip out so far it almost reached past his beer gut.
After that he clammed up. Well, it’s useless to argue with someone who won’t talk. I felt like braining Donnie with the nearest frying pan. I settled for flouncing into the bedroom and locking the door. Donnie had to sleep on the couch.
We argued about the Princess off and on for the next month. Actually, I did all the talking. Donnie continued childishly refusing to argue.
I marched out to the garage one day to have it out with the car. Donnie was still at work, and I hadn’t yet picked up the kids from Shirley’s World of Fun. I stood in front of that Chevy with my hands on my hips. I narrowed my eyes down into a mean look and let my cigarette dangle out of my mouth.
“It isn’t over yet, sister. You’re just an overrated pile of tin. I’ll find a way to get you out of my life.” My cigarette fell. I grabbed for it automatically and burned my fingers.
The car sat innocently staring at me, unmoving in the half dark of late afternoon. I sucked on my burned fingers and called that Chevy names. Still no reaction. But as I walked past on my way to the door, she bopped me on the knee with her bumper. I swear that car attacked me.
A huge blue bump rose up on my knee. I had to lie to Donnie and tell him that Frisky had jumped on me and knocked me down. Sure. That bloodhound’s about as lively as a sloth. All the while I told my story, my heart kept thumping inside my chest like a trapped rabbit. I guess that was when I first decided to kill the Princess.
But I am not stupid. I read, watch TV, go to movies. I know that whenever someone gets murdered, the first suspect is the one with a motive. Since I’d already let Donnie know how much I hated the Princess, he’d know it was me the minute the boys at the body shop gave him the bad news about his car’s fatal accident. Then it would be no more marriage, no more stepdog, and no more children.
It seemed clear that the first thing I had to do was to eliminate myself as a suspect. I started by fixing Donnie’s favorite dinner. I had my sister-in-law Reva come get the kids for the evening. She owed me one after I’d straightened out her account down at the bank and saved her a lot of financial embarrassment.
“What’s that you’re cooking?” Reva asked the moment she stepped into the kitchen.
“Donnie’s favorite dinner. Blackened roast beef.”
Reva bent down to peer nosily into the oven. “Looks burnt to me, Corrinne.”
“It’s not burnt. It’s supposed to look that way,” I stared her down.
Actually, I’d invented the recipe by accident one day when I got talking on the phone too long with my sister in New Orleans. Donnie was mad to find supper burned, so I made up the story about it being a real recipe. It turned out he loved it fixed that way.
When Donnie got home, he slid his lunchbox down the countertop, and it splashed into the sink. I smiled and didn’t say a thing about him being clumsy.
“Where’s the kids?” he asked.
“At Reva’s. Honey, this is a special evening just for the two of us.” I pointed dramatically toward the dining room end of our kitchen, at the real tablecloth and the table set with glass dishes and metal silverware instead of paper and plastic.
Donnie’s eyes, his best feature, seemed to get bluer and even sort of round. Usually they’re almost square like his face. “Corrinne, you’re a sweet doll.”
Donnie went to wash up while I lit the candles. All I’d been able to find were the ones left over from Little Donnie’s birthday last month, but I’d arranged them strategically in little groups, so it wasn’t too dark. Then I put on Donnie’s favorite music, the soundtrack from Oklahoma. We could dance after dinner.
“Donnie,” I said as he came in and started sawing the roast beef apart. “I’ve been wrong about the Princess. If you love her, then I... I love her, too.” Good thing he can’t see my eyes, I thought, ducking my head.
Donnie put his knife down and tried to rub the circulation back into his hand. “Gosh, sweet sugar, I don’t know what to say. I sure am lucky to have a woman who knows how to compromise.”
Obviously, Donnie’s idea of compromise was for me to do what he wanted. But that was okay. I waited a month, making sure to talk nice about the Princess every day, before I started in on the second part of my plan. The actual murder.
The first thing I did was to take the Princess out for a little spin. I had an awful time unlocking her door. It was like she knew what I was up to. She drove fine, though, until I deliberately started her across the Oak Street tracks ten minutes before the freight train was due.
I got out and fluttered all helpless and slow in my red high heels to a gas station. “Help! My car is stalled on the track!” I flapped my hands up and down and made damsel in distress sounds.
The station attendant rushed to a phone and called the police. Unknown to me, they notified the train conductor in time for him to stop the train. Meanwhile, the helpful station attendant roared down the street in a tow truck and yanked the car off the track. I hadn’t counted on that. It cost me, too.
Naturally, I didn’t tell Donnie. He had no clue I’d actually driven his precious car. After that, I took the Princess out twice more. Actually chuckling with delight, I left her parked in front of the post office with the keys in the ignition. No one took her. I tried to push her down a hill and off a cliff. She kept stopping, as though someone was mashing the brakes hard. On the way home she bucked and snorted like she wanted to toss me out.
The unaware Donnie, now under the impression that he’d won the argument, spent even more money on that heap. And he practically lived in that garage when he wasn’t at work. Spare car parts littered our house like stadium debris after a football game.
Little Donnie said his first sentence —“Where’s my daddy?” Sherri said she wished she was a princess. As for me, I spent a lot of time hunched in front of the TV, cramming handfuls of stale popcorn into my mouth when I wasn’t sucking on cigarettes. My anger kept building up in me like a tree growing.
One night Donnie kept busy polishing the Princess while I watched a gangster movie. That was how I got the brilliant idea to hire a hit man. How professional of me, I thought, wishing I could reach back far enough to pat myself on the back.
I told Donnie I was working late for the next week and got Reva to come over and mind the kids.
“Working late? Hah!” She put her hands on her ample hips. She looks a lot like Donnie — curly red hair, dimpled chin, square and stocky build — only on him it looks better. “Guess I won’t tell my dim-witted brother. Maybe if another wife runs off on him, he’ll figure out to leave that car alone.”
“You’ve got it all wrong, Reva,” I said primly.
“Hah!”
Lake Boulder’s a small town. The gold rush and the lumber rush are long over, and the town fathers are talking about starting a gambling rush. But it was big enough for me to find what I was looking for in just three days.
Bull Don’t-ask-my-last-name was a scrawny down and out type. He said he lived in the bad half of a duplex across town, but he didn’t tell me exactly where. We settled on a hundred and fifty down and another hundred and fifty when the job was done. I had a secret stash I’d been saving to surprise Donnie next summer at vacation time. This would be a slightly different kind of surprise. I already felt relieved at the thought of seeing the last of the stepcar.
I wanted Bull to get rid of the car as soon as possible, and he said he would. Two weeks later the Princess still ruled, serene and shiny, in her garage palace behind the house. I resolved to hunt up Bull and prod him a little bit before I went crazy.
I found my hit man at his usual evening location — a bar sporting the Statue of Liberty in green and pink neon on the roof. Bull had deteriorated since our last meeting. He had a fresh black eye and assorted scrapes and bruises, and his left arm was in a cast.