Panting, he shut the drawer quickly. He rushed to the living room doorway, slipping the cutter into his pocket unretracted, clutching the envelope in his hand. He killed the lights. He stepped into the kitchen. Almost gasping now, he moved to the counter in the dark, and to the window.
The front door opened and slammed shut. The living room lights went on. All his heroism died on the instant, a match blown out. There was no trace of calm at all, and there was sure as hell no grandeur. He felt as if he’d been transfigured suddenly into a bug, and he was almost mewling with terror as he hoisted himself onto the counter top.
Simon Taylor stepped into the kitchen and turned on the light. Just the look of him, his insolent masculinity, the sleek trench coat opened jauntily, the Italian shirt open at the throat, the black hair fallen on his brow – Benjamin was unmanned completely. He cowered on the counter top, drawing his feet in under him as if to shrink away. Simon Taylor looked at the envelope in his hand, gave a little shrug of his broad shoulders and laughed.
‘Don’t tell me you’re the best she could do,’ he said.
With a high whine of panic, Benjamin reached for the utensil jar. His fingers seemed to go off in all directions but somehow he managed to wrap them around a knife handle. He drew it out, and was heartened by the size of the blade. He gave something like a shout, and jumped down to the floor.
’Fuck you, you bastard!’ he said shrilly.
Taylor laughed again and shook his head. ’Christ!’
Benjamin advanced on him, wild. ‘Get the fuck out of my way.’
Annoyed, Taylor seemed to spit some lint off his tongue. Then, with a bored, whiffling noise, he stepped forward. Benjamin brandished the knife. Taylor slapped him, backhanded, hard, across the face. Benjamin felt the inside of his head balloon. He lost his balance and toppled over, the knife falling from one hand, the envelope flying from the other.
’Bloody ponce,’ Taylor said. He reached down and grabbed Benjamin by his coat front. He dragged him to his feet. By then, Benjamin had his hand in his pocket. Taylor yanked him forward. Benjamin pulled out his matte cutter and drove the blade into Taylor’s eye.
There was a soft pop and a blast of jelly and blood. Benjamin felt the liquid hit his cheek. Taylor’s mouth opened wide but he didn’t scream. He just crumpled to the floor, falling on to his back, one arm flung to the side. The matte cutter stuck up out of his eye socket, the handle wobbling. Benjamin gaped down at him. He wished he was a baby again on his mother’s knee. He wished he were atoms, blown into nothingness.
On the other hand, he had to get that cutter back. Choking down his gorge, he looked frantically this way and that. He saw the knife lying on the floor and swooped down, seized it. He crept up on Taylor’s body slowly, step by step, holding the knife protectively before him. He bent down, reaching for the handle gingerly.
Taylor grabbed him. His hand came up and clutched Benjamin’s wrist.
With a shriek, Benjamin fell on top of him and drove the knife into his body again and again and again.
3.
After only ten days, Jane Abbot began to have her moments: seconds, minutes at a time, when she could put it from her mind, when the black thoughts and suicidal daydreams dissipated. It was almost then as if nothing had happened, nothing ever. There were no more stories in the paper about Simon. The police had shrugged him off as a pimp and a drug dealer, and the press had stopped covering the murder after the second or third day. Everything else went on as usual. Her husband was distracted but quietly affectionate. Her son was full of comforting babble about his childish concerns. Only once was there a phone call, after about a week. She heard a shivery silence on the line, and then the one word: ‘… Jane?’ But she hung up so quickly it was as if the phone had never rung at all.
Sometimes, recalling some novel she had read, or some interview in a newspaper, she thought to herself: It really is like waking from a nightmare. Like coming out of a terrible dream.
In retrospect, of course, that was not the right comparison at all. Those ten days: they were just like moments, actually, moments of falling to earth. The mind does that sometimes to protect itself against inevitability. It protracts the falling time until it seems you are floating in air.
On the eleventh day, the Monday, as she returned from her son’s school, almost – really for minutes at a time – almost enjoying the clear, wintry air, she saw him again. That horrible little American. Lurking like a gargoyle by the garden fence. Gazing and gazing at her with that disgusting white glaze of lust in his eyes.
She felt herself collapsing inside. But she put her head down and crossed the street, tried to walk past him. He rushed after her – rushed after her! – calling out: ‘Jane!’
He caught the sleeve of her coat. She whipped round on him desperately, pulled free. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘For God’s sake.’
‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘You have to understand.’
She looked up and down the street. There were people - other people! – walking to work, walking right toward them.
She let out her breath. Her shoulders sagged. ‘Not here, for God’s sake,’ she said sadly.
She used her key to let them into the garden. It was artfully overgrown. Even now, with the trees almost bare, there was no seeing into the heart of it through the thick tangle of branches. At the center of the garden, there was a swing set, surrounded by hedges and with a wooden bench nearby. She took him there. The place was almost always empty during school hours.
She thought it best to speak to him with pity, but she felt no pity for him. ‘All right. What do you want?’ she said. Her breath made plumes of frost in the air.
The man’s big eyes fairly boiled at her. ‘I told you. You know,’ he whined. ‘I just want to paint you. I need to paint you, Jane. I need… to bring you back… To bring you back.’ He apparently couldn’t explain it better than that.
She stared at him – with wonder more than anything, but maybe even with some pity now too. ‘But you can’t, she said. ‘You must know you can’t. You can’t come near me any more. I can’t be anywhere near you. It would be… fatal. To both of us.’
He gestured helplessly. ‘But you wanted…’
‘No. Not that. Absolutely. Never that. Don’t put that on me.’
He ran his hand up through his greasy hair. He pleaded with her rapidly. ‘But no one knows. No one knows anything. You have to… Listen to me. Jane. You have a… a special face. It brings things to mind. Things people want…’
‘Damn it!’ It broke from her in a harsh whisper. She could even feel herself snap. ‘I told you. This…’ She moved her hand up to her cheek, but she didn’t dare touch herself. She was so frustrated she feared she would tear the skin away. ‘I’m not responsible for this! I can’t…’
‘You bitch! You will!’ he cried out suddenly. He grabbed her violently by her coat. He clutched roughly at her hair. His face, contorted, was pressed to hers. ’I have the goddamned photographs!’
He let her go, and they both stood a moment, shocked. But she was the first one to comprehend it, to understand what it was he’d said. The despair settled down on top of her with easy familiarity, the old blanket, the old shroud. She sank helplessly under its weight and sat down on the bench behind her. She stared blankly into the grass at her feet with a dazed and ironic smile.
There really must be an end to this, she thought. Some kind of end; a little peace; my God. If she could close her eyes; if she could sleep – sleep and sleep, enveloped in an element like water… She had thought of that often in this last year. Lying in her bath sometimes. It seemed it would be easy. With pills or with a razor. She had imagined herself: floating; floating away. It was within her power, at least, she thought. That peace, at least, she could achieve.