Frank sat in the kitchen. His stomach was filled with lead.
She should have been back hours ago.
He turned the radio on, as quietly as he could. Every time the man’s voice grew louder, hiding up in his nose, Frank heard a bomb go off.
Every time he blinked, Frank saw a bomb go off. Every time his heart beat, he knew a bomb went off.
He saw her arms strewn blocks apart. He saw her chest, cracked wide open. He saw her leg, split in two.
He couldn’t stand the common, nasal, mean accent anymore. He clicked the radio off.
He thought of turning a light on, of finding some comfort in bright, but knew he couldn’t. Any change in light, in the sound of footsteps, in voices that carried, was asking to die. He slowly moved downward, and lay on the floor. He imagined a man six miles away, hearing a wrinkle in time and coming to kill him. He shivered.
The last time he was warm was in Canada.
He thought of his mother’s dining room table.
Then the lock moved.
His heart beat so loudly that he was sure he was dead.
It was Mariah.
He watched her take off her coat, not talking.
Underneath, she wore nothing but a tight dress that hung close to her body. Her eyelashes looked like spider’s wings and her eyes were wet. She reached her arms, sinewy bone, above her head. They moved like two ballerinas.
“I thought you were dead,” he spat.
“Things took longer than expected.”
“Did it work?”
She nodded, vacant. The violence surrounded her like nuclear waste, incandesant and powerful, seeping into the sky.
“I thought you were dead.”
She moved towards the mirror above the sink and lit a match. She was wearing a blonde wig, and her face was powdered impossibly white. The wig curled around her face. In the hazy dark, she became Jean Harlow. Kim Novak. Grace Kelly.
She pulled the wig off like Indians scalped intruders; vicious, furious.
Her red hair fell down her back like blood.
He watched her in the mirror. She brought a cloth to her face and moved it across her cheek bones in small circles.
“But can you think of a better way to die?” she asked.
“Run,” whispered the voice in his head, “Run as fast and far as your feet can take you.”
He moved towards her. Tears ran down her face.
“I want to drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beating heart."
He let her.
That night, she made love to him with a gun to his head.
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