And so six weeks later (what could I possibly discover in a year that I hadn’t found out already?) I married him.
We spent a year in Duluth, bought a Belgian sheepdog to lie around the hearth and protect us. (“Belgian sheepdogs are always on the move,” I read later as Smokey relentlessly paced the apartment.) I left the interviewing job and had a brief stint as an administrative assistant, and an even briefer one as a new-accounts person in a now defunct bank. In January Andrew came home aglow. He was being transferred to Atlanta.
I packed our furniture (which is now somewhere near Seattle, I imagine — there was some paragraph about labeling in the moving contract) and we headed south.
It was in Atlanta that I painted the house. And it was in Atlanta that I discovered what I had overlooked in Andrew. For all his interest in literature and sports and his acumen in business, he had one passion that I had ignored. The evidence had always been there; I should have seen it. Another person would have.
Above all else, Andrew loved sunbathing. Not going to the lake, not swimming, not water skiing — sunbathing. He loved the activity (or lack of it) of sitting in the sun with an aluminum reflector beneath his chin.
Each day he rushed home at lunchtime for half an hour’s exposure. He oiled his body with his own specifically created castor oil blend, moved the reflector into place, and settled back — as Smokey paced from the living room to Andrew and back again.
The weekends were worse — he had all day. He lay there, not reading, not listening to music, begrudging conversation, as if moving his mouth to talk would blotch his tan.
I thought it would pass. I thought he would reach a desirable shade of brown and stop. I thought the threat of skin cancer would deter him. (Castor oil blocks the ultraviolet rays, he told me.) I coaxed, I nagged, I watched as the body that had once been the toast — no pun intended — of Duluth was repeatedly coated with castor oil and cooked till it resembled a rare steak left on the counter overnight. On the infrequent occasions he left the house before dark, people stared. But Andrew was oblivious.
Vainly, I tempted him with Braves tickets, symphony seats, the complete works of Virginia Woolf.
In March the days were lengthening. Andrew’s firm moved him “out of the public eye.” I suggested a psychiatrist, but the few Andrew called saw patients only during the daytime.
By April his firm encouraged him to work at home. Delighted, he bent over his desk from sunset till midnight and stumbled exhausted into bed. By nine each morning he was in the sun. The only time he spoke to me was when it rained.
In desperation, I invited a psychiatrist to dinner for an informal go at Andrew. (That was the two-hour-late meal, and he was the looped guest I mentioned earlier.)
Finally I suggested divorce. But when I went to file, my lawyer insisted I read the Georgia statutes, this time carefully. It is not a community property state — far from it. And as Andrew pointed out, I was unlikely to be able to support myself.
So the only way left was to kill him. After all, it would matter little to him. If he’d led a good enough life he would pass on to a place closer to the sun. If not, he could hold his reflector near the fire.
For once I researched painstakingly, browsing through the poisonous-substance books in the public library, checking and rechecking. I found that phenol and its derivatives cause sweating, thirst, cyanosis (a blue coloring of the skin that would hardly be visible on Andrew’s well tanned hide), rapid breathing, coma, and death. A fatal dose was two grams. Mixed thickly with Andrew’s castor oil blend, I could use five times that and be assured he would rub it over his body in hourly ministrations before the symptoms were serious enough to interfere with his regimen. If he got his usual nine A.M. start Saturday morning, he would be red over brown over blue — and very dead by sundown.
I hesitated. I’m really not a killer at heart. I hated to think of him in pain. But given his habit, Andrew was slowly killing himself now.
I poured the phenol into Andrew’s castor oil blend, patted Smokey as he paced by, tossed the used phenol container into the trunk of the car, and went off for a long drive.
I don’t know where I went. (I thought I knew where I was going — I thought I wouldn’t need a map.) Doubtless I was still in the city limits as Andrew applied the first lethal coating and lifted his reflector into place.
It was warm for April; ninety degrees by noon. I rolled down the window and kept driving. If I’d thought to check, I wouldn’t have run out of gas. If I’d thought to bring my AAA card, I wouldn’t have had to hitch a ride to the nearest hamlet.
The sun was low on the horizon but it was still well over a hundred degrees when I pulled up in front of the house. Andrew’s contorted body would be sprawled beside his deck chair. I hoped Smokey hadn’t made too much fuss. Cautiously I opened the door. Warily I walked through the living room.
I heard a sound in the study and moved toward it.
Andrew sat at his desk.
He looked awful, but no more so than usual.
I ran back to the car and grabbed the phenol container out of the trunk. It was too hot to hold. I dropped it, picked up an oily rag, and tried again.
Slowly I read the instructions and the warning: “If applied to skin can cause sweating, thirst, cyanosis, rapid breathing, coma, and death.” I read on. “Treatment: Remove by washing skin with water. To dissolve phenol, or retard absorption, mix with castor oil.”
I slumped against the car. The sun beat down. Why wasn’t I more thorough?
Glaring at the phenol container, I read the last line on the labeclass="underline" “Caution: Phenol is explosive when exposed to heat or oxidizing agents.”
I dropped the oily rag. But of course it was too late.
The Gold of Mayani
by Walter Satterthwait
“Dead,” said Dr. Murmajee, small stubby hands clasped together below the round swell of stomach. As always on these occasions, he wore a sagging black suit, a limp white shirt, a drooping black tie flecked with soup stains, and a frown whose solemnity was not entirely persuasive. Staring down at the bed, he nodded with elaborate sadness. “Quite dead, oh my yes.”
“Yes,” said Sergeant Andrew Mbutu patiently. “To be frank, doctor, that is a fact I was able to determine for myself. I was hoping that you might be able to add to it.”
“Ah,” said Murmajee. He turned to Andrew, thick eyebrows raised in the round Indian face. “There will be an autopsy?” Fascinated by the innards of Wazungu, Europeans. As though he expected to find, hidden among them, some hitherto overlooked gland whose secretions produced white skins, internal combustion engines, computers, imperialism.
“Yes,” said Andrew. “Certainly.” Give the dog his bone. “But in the meantime, what can you tell us about the corpse?”
“Ah,” said Murmajee, lower lip in a thoughtful pout. “Ah. Well, the knife, I should say — without committing myself precisely at this point in time, of course — I should say that the knife is rather suggestive. Yes? Wouldn’t you agree, sergeant?”
“Yes, doctor,” said Andrew, and sighed. Futile. No commitment until after the autopsy, lest someone pilfer the doctor’s new prize.
Little doubt, however, that the knife in question was indeed suggestive. Its black plastic handle, loosely encircled by stiff white fingers, protruded like a long, obscene power switch, set to off, from the solar plexus of the corpse.