(I read this at a Sisters In Crime gathering a couple weeks ago.)
A jagged shadow sliced across a vacant brownstone where Andre crouched under the stairway.
There had been a steady drizzle since midnight. The streets were slick and the trees and buildings near where Andre waited glistened. In the summer even in the rain on the Upper West Side had a strange mix of activity. Broadway, Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues became a carnival in the warm weather with crowds of singles strolling from bar to bar, while, the cross-town blocks were islands of quiet where only an occasional taxi zipped through.
Andre leaned his immense shoulders against the wall of the brownstone, determined to wait as long as it took. His breathing had become quick and excited and his mind raced. Standing so still actually hurt his body. And the narrow niche where he stood under the stairs reminded him of something, something that had happened so long ago he had difficulty determining whether it had been real or a dream.
“Get down,” his father’s voice echoed in his mind. Hiding under the stairs reminded him of when he lived with his father. “Get down,” his father’s tone, more like a bark from a dog than words, and he recalled how he’d crawl into the corner of a closet where his father buried him in coats and dusty blankets. It had happened a lifetime ago and back then he had been small enough to fit into a large dresser drawer.
“You’re a puny little shit,” his father would say, then close the drawer with him in it. His father frightened him and Andre would wish himself smaller and smaller until he thought he had disappeared. When his father closed the drawer Andre became frightened that he‘d grow and his father would not be able to get him out of the drawer again and he would die and that spiders and bugs would eat him.
Thunder cracked overhead and a thousand veins of light spread across the sky as if the skin had been ripped from the night. A sudden explosion of rain hit the street and pounded onto the garbage cans next to him and a pile of dog shit on the stairway reeked as the rain beat it into a soft pungent mound.
He remembered waiting for his father’s secret knock, one hard, two soft, and then another hard knock. After a while he liked hiding. It became a game he played, being invisible…no one could see him…no one in the whole wide world…but he could see them.
“I’m not a little shit any more,” he whispered, and he carefully looked out into the street to see if Caly was coming. She lived six doors further down the block. This would be the best place to get her, just before she reached her apartment. He knew that tonight she had stayed late at the gym. “She thinks she owns the damn place,” he snorted. “I’ll fix you. You’ll never be in my way again.” His body pulsed with excitement. “Beverly’s mine, bitch. Everything was fine until you wheedled your way into the picture. You don’t know who you’re fuckin with.” He looked out into the dark and nervously stroked the towel that he had slung over one shoulder.
He’d only come up with the idea yesterday. For weeks now, though, he had thought about killing Caly. At first he had only thought about reading in the newspaper that she had been the victim of a hit and run, or that her body had been found floating in the Hudson River. Then he began to imagine his hands around her neck and his fingers would tingle as he thought about squeezing and squeezing until her eyes popped out and rolled across the floor like two marbles fallen from a hole in a sack.
He felt a tingle at his elbow. He brushed at his arm in panic, thinking that a spider had crawled onto him. And then he heard the soft padding of footsteps coming quickly up the street. He quieted his breathing, stood perfectly still and eased deeper into the shadow. The night betrayed her as each step echoed again and again on the quiet street. He listened. It had to be perfect, and he carefully looked out from the stairway and then he recognized her thin frame, her quick jerky excited walk.
A few more steps. Another step. One more step. And then in the dense tangle of shadows, she walked directly in front of him. He jumped out, grabbed her from behind, and threw the towel around her face and secured a portion of it under her chin, just the way he had rehearsed. It had only taken seconds. She had no chance to scream.
He twisted the towel ends into a tight knot behind her head. She clawed desperately at the air. A surge of power rushed through him and he hoisted her over his left shoulder. She kicked at him and jerked her body frantically from side to side. Her flailing annoyed him. He gave the towel a hard yank. He heard a soft crunching sound, like the crack of a large knuckle, and she lay silent, soft and warm against his back in a deathly sleep. It had happened in seconds. Served her right, he thought as he carried her into the shadow beneath the stairway.
“Brilliant, fuckin’ brilliant,” he whispered. The words settled into the dark like bats sticking to damp cement walls. He released her, and she slumped to the ground in a limp heap.
