“Then, what would the husband do? Get angry? Get quiet? Want to talk it out? We’d all react a little differently, but some would decide to solve the problem — permanently. And, how they’d go about it would probably depend on what they knew.
“A carpenter, for example, would own a nail gun, and the next time he was pouring cement into a building’s foundation, he’d have his problem solved. And a fisherman? Well, he’d probably take his wife’s lover on a boat trip, along with a rope, a rock, and a net.” I paused. “But a chef? I wonder what a chef would do?”
I looked at Vachon, who was now incapable of speech.
“I think a chef would look into all his cookbooks and find all the foods that had warnings; he would then invite his wife’s lover to share a meal.” I looked at the bowl and plate in front of Vachon. “For example, maybe he makes the soup with an extra ingredient — the botulism bacillus; then he might serve Death Cap mushrooms with the white ridge around their stems, and complete the menu with a Japanese delicacy — the poisonous fish fugu, which is delicious, but will kill you if it’s not gutted just right. And maybe a very angry husband would serve all three to his wife’s lover, just to make sure the job was done right.”
I smiled amiably at Vachon. “But, I don’t have to worry about you, Jean-Louis, my good friend, my best man. You would never do a thing like that — not with Carolyn. Now, as the chef who made this meal, I want you to know how much pleasure it gives me to watch you cat.”
Vachon stared at me, frozen with fear.
“Eat up,” I said, holding my smile. “Otherwise, Jean-Louis, I will start to wonder if there might be something between you and my wife. Go on.”
Vachon dropped his eyes to my plate and saw that my fish, leeks and mushrooms, and soup were all untouched. The ratatouille was the only thing I’d eaten. He suddenly noticed the fork in his right hand, a piece of fish speared on its four tines. Vachon started to lift the fork to his mouth, but his hand only moved a few inches. The fork dropped to his plate.
“I’m not hungry,” he said, his French accent suddenly thick.
“I understand,” I said. “A man can suddenly lose his appetite; it happens. So, let us just sit here for a while and enjoy your good wine. It will help you digest your meal that much faster.”
Vachon was a broken man. He stood up and smiled a ghastly smile. “I must go,” he said. “I just remembered an appointment.” And the Frenchman shot out of the kitchen. I heard the heavy front door close.
The nearest hospital was Bellevue. I guessed that Vachon would be there in about ten minutes. I’ve never had my stomach pumped, but I’ve heard it’s a miserable experience.
I looked down at the plate of food in front of me and realized that my appetite was back. I picked up a fork, cut a large piece of fish, and tasted it. Excellent. I’ve always enjoyed the puffer fish, a safe, distant cousin to the famous fugu.
The dining-room door swung open. I glanced up at the clock — 5 P.M. exactly. My wife is a wonderfully prompt woman.
“Edward! I just saw Jean-Louis jump into a taxi. He was screaming to be taken to a hospital. What happened?”
“He thinks that someone poisoned him,” I said, and took a sip of wine.
“But who would do that?”
“I would,” I said, “if I thought he was having an affair with my wife.”
Awareness came into her eyes, and, I think, a bit of relief. Sometimes, the hardest part of a mistake is ending it. Carolyn looked at me for a long moment, then sat on the stool where my old friend had been. She looked down at the half-eaten meal.
“Do you have a plate for me?” she asked quietly.
I shook my head.
“I deserve it,” she said.
“You probably do,” I replied.
I raised my left hand, took off my gold wedding band, and put it on the metal counter between us, next to the bottle of Vachon wine. Carolyn stared down at the ring that, in three years, she’d never seen off my finger.
“Your choice,” I said. “What will it be?”
Carolyn looked up at me, then down at the ring and the bottle of wine. Without hesitation, she picked up the Vachon, and my heart sank. So it hadn’t been just an affair.
“There’s no choice,” she said, and turned away from me. With a flick of her wrist, she tossed the dark bottle ten feet into the trash bin below the cutting board.
Carolyn turned back to me. “Do you have another bottle of wine that you could open? Something American — something that goes well with confession?”
I studied my wife’s face, the face that I wanted to see every day for the rest of my life.
“I’m sure I do,” I said. “Red or white?”
Timothy Williams
Something About Teddy
From Plots with Guns
Halfway between Dayton and Cincinnati, snow spitting and slush gathering on I-75, Tom Lennox regretted telling Teddy his secret. Teddy, nineteen or twenty with greasy blond hair smashed to his forehead by a sock cap and the tattoos and piercings that even nice kids his age had these days, wanted to make it a game.
“What about her?” he asked when they passed a woman in a Honda Civic. “How would you kill her?” Teddy propped his feet on the dash, licked his bottom lip. “You’d play with her first though, wouldn’t you? Do her before you did her.”
Lennox checked his rearview mirror and measured a car-length distance before he glided the Buick back into the right lane. Twenty-seven years on the road as a sales rep for Lindite Bowling Balls had made him a lot of things — twenty pounds overweight, enough money to support his wife’s addiction to Home Shopping, a few friends, and a cautious driver. Once the Buick had settled into its lane, he glanced at Teddy’s filthy Reeboks on the dash and fought the urge to slap him.
The boy was Crude. That was his wife’s term for boys like Teddy. Muriel taught geometry in their hometown of Port Huron, Michigan, and she said most of her students were crude these days. She was thankful that they had never had children. Lennox wasn’t sure. Maybe children would have changed things, would have given him a reason to come home from the road. Muriel’s womb had been the source of their problems. It still was. This afternoon she had an appointment with an oncologist who would confirm what both Muriel and Tom knew. She was beyond treatment. The fact that Muriel had insisted that he continue his sales route instead of coming home to accompany her to the doctor both angered and frightened him.
“Get your shoes off my dash,” Lennox said.
Teddy dropped his feet to the floor, sucked air between his teeth, and grinned. “Hey, you’d pop her before you popped her. Right?”
“I wouldn’t rape her.”
“Sure you wouldn’t,” Teddy said. “In a pig’s eye.”
“I’ve never raped anyone.”
Teddy leaned forward and took a last look through the rearview mirror. “I’d do her,” he said. “A lot of women like that. I read it in a book once.”
Lennox quickened his wipers against the snow and shifted his weight behind the wheel to give his hemorrhoids relief. He reached for a pack of Camel Lights, told himself he could wait ten more miles before he smoked another, and then lit it anyway. He’d been trying to quit for months but nothing worked. Not the patches or the gum or even the fear he felt when he climbed a flight of stairs and felt fluttering in his chest. He was forty-nine, a big, balding man carrying too much weight in his upper stomach, with high blood pressure and an even higher cholesterol count thanks to a lifetime of eating in diners and truck stops from Saginaw, Michigan, to Valdosta, Georgia — the endless ribbon of I-75 that he’d traversed for decades. Sooner or later, a half-clogged artery would clog completely or a platelet would burst free and hit his heart and Tom Lennox, excellent salesman, competent Canasta player, mediocre husband, would be a lump of dead weight for a maid to discover. There were nights when he lay in bed at a Motel 6 in Ohio or a Comfort Inn in Kentucky or a Ramada in Tennessee and prayed for sooner rather than later. He couldn’t imagine life at home without Muriel. The three-bedroom ranch house would be quiet and empty and there would be nothing but the sound of the television for company while he ate and drank alone. It would be exactly like being on the road.