“Shhh,” said Mary Foxe. She reached over my shoulder, prised my fingers loose one by one, and took the gun. Then she stuck a pipe in my mouth. I watched tobacco trickle into the bowl. I watched her hand, tamping the tobacco down. Tap, tap, tap, and the pipe moved between my clenched teeth. Tap and pour, tap and pour. She lit a match, and I watched the flame circle the bowl once, twice, three times, before it took and a mist rose.
“I know you think you’re going mad,” she said. “But you’re not. Don’t be perverse. Celebrate.”
She poured some scotch from the decanter on my windowsill and pushed the glass towards me. Between that and the pipe my sense of perspective began to return. I opened the desk drawer and the gun was in there, looking innocent, as if it hadn’t had an outing this evening, or ever.
Mary sat down and set the decanter at her feet. “Say something, you,” she said warningly.
“Mary,” I said. “I seem to have a memory — false, I hope — of you being my wife at some point.”
Mary stirred in her seat. “Oh, yes?”
“Yes. My loving wife. I did all I could for you. But you weren’t happy. You said I didn’t listen to you and that I treated you like a child. You moved out of the nice house I was working overtime to pay for, the house I bought because you said you liked it. I waited a week — everyone told me to give it time, that you’d come to your senses. I was always home on time, and never ran around on you. On weekends I drove you all over town like I was your chauffeur, took you to see the friends you wanted to see. I took you to the opera on your birthday, for crying out loud. I hadn’t put a foot wrong. But you didn’t come back. Your friends had lent you money and you’d moved into some tiny one-room apartment. I found that out by visiting a friend of mine who was married to a friend of yours. He said he didn’t want to get involved because his wife would raise hell for him if she ever found out he’d told me. So I turned on the waterworks. It shocked him so much he told me where you were and said he hoped I got you and my manhood back. . ”
I stopped for a while, because it was strange. The more I said, the clearer the memory became. I didn’t think I was going to be able to say any more — I just wanted to watch the thing play out in my head. Mary poured me some more scotch. That helped.
“I went round at dusk. I was drunk as drunk — that was my preparation for the possibility that there might be another guy there with you. I knocked on your door — I knocked with my head and my elbows, like I was trying to dance with the door. Amazingly, you opened the door, with this resigned look on your face that said you’d been expecting me. I said: Honey, and something else, something like Honey, look at me, can’t you see how it is? Come home. And you looked kind of sorry for me. But I saw that you had a chain on the door, and you kept it on even when you saw that I was just a wreck, and begging. When I saw that you had that chain on, I knew I was going to hurt you. I was going to get in there and hurt you. It was kind of like caging up an animal — something — the bars, the boundaries hard and cold like that — it just makes the animal as mad as hell, even if it was just a fluffy little lapdog before. It becomes another thing altogether. I stood up straight and I lowered my voice and, I don’t know how, because I was out of my skull drunk and could barely move my tongue, I began to talk to you as if I was sober and possessed of reason. I spoke warmly and with understanding and had some soothing response to every objection you made to letting me in. You let me in, and I almost fell in through the door, but I told myself keep it together, keep it together, you still love her. There was no one else there; you were all alone. I was so glad. I was so glad. I tried to hold you, to get a kiss from you. And you said, St. John, you’re hurting me. I only wanted to kiss you — how could that be hurting you? But you kept saying that I should ‘stop it.’ I’d slapped you a few times by then. Trying to make you quiet.”
She dimpled at me. “Go on,” she said.
“Well. . things went on like that between you and I. . ”
“Went on like what, exactly?”
“I kept hitting you, I guess. I picked up a chair and I backed you up against a wall and started slamming it on either side of your head, just to scare you, at first. ‘Shhh,’ I said. ‘Shhh.’ You got too scared, or not scared enough. You kept putting your hands up to protect your face — I just grabbed your arm and punched you until you were on the floor. I stomped on your hands.”
Mary nodded, as if going over a mental checklist.
“I kicked you in the head.”
She nodded again.
“Then you must have worked out that I kept going for you because you kept moving. So you kept still. I walked away and watched you from across the room, to see what you’d do if I gave you room. You didn’t do anything, just lay there. I walked towards you again and you held your breath. I stayed close and you didn’t exhale.”
“Go on,” Mary said wanly. She wasn’t smiling anymore.
“I crouched down and I talked to you. Just some things in your ear. No idea what I was saying — nonsense, probably. I was just talking to calm you down. While I was talking I slit your throat. Messily, because I couldn’t walk in a straight line, let alone guide my hand from ear to ear without stopping. It was a real mess. A real mess.”
Mary didn’t shudder or look shocked. She looked polite, if anything. Somewhere between polite and bored.
“It couldn’t have happened. I’d have got the chair for that.” I wasn’t really talking to her — more thinking aloud.
“Yes. You would have. But too late for me. What made you do it?”
“What made me—”
“Yes. Why did you do it?”
“You’re asking me why, in my false memory of our marriage, I killed you?”
“I’m trying to help you think.”
I made a few brief guesses — I was in a killing mood, I was afraid of time, I was fooled by some inexplicable assurance that I was merely dreaming out my revenge, making myself safe for the daylight hours. Love fit in somewhere, I wasn’t sure how — disbelief that it had gone away, trying to force its return, trying to create an emergency that would scare love out of hiding.
“You did it because of love? Because you loved me too much?” she asked jovially. Her merriment was giving me the creeps. The whole conversation was giving me the creeps — talking like this about something that hadn’t really happened. I shouldn’t have started it. She’d seemed so interested, though, and that was rare. Maybe she was trying to be nice in her own way.
Mary pulled the stopper out of the scotch decanter and took a long swallow. “Okay, never mind about love,” she said, wiping her mouth. “You hated me. Because I wouldn’t come back and I was making you hate yourself, making you think there was something wrong with you.”
“No. . I already told you. It was because of the chain on the door.”
“Mr. Fox.” Mary toyed with the cut-glass stopper. “Is this a joke?”
“You found it funny?”
“That you just recounted one of your stories to me as if it was something that you really did?”