His And Hers
by Leslie Alan Horvitz
"Rebecca Wells, John Aikens."
Craig Butler, always the proper host, exchanged a look with John. John was amazed. Here was a woman who actually lived up to her billing. What legs, he thought, what breasts. What ripeness. And the eyes -- the eyes were fantastic. She tilted her head as if to study Aikens from another, superior, angle. In the blazing Connecticut light pouring in through the window her hair wasn't quite so dark as John had at first imagined from a distance.
"I've told John all about you, Rebecca," Butler said.
Having done his duty, Butler excused himself. Turning to Aikens, Rebecca asked him if he was a businessman. "And why do you think that?"
"I think that because everybody else here is a businessman. You must have money too. I hope you don't think I'm being too bold."
"Oh no, not at all." He was delighted by her. "You're right. I am a businessman -- but it's my own business. Computer software." Did he expect her to ask him to elaborate?
But all she did was nod and repeat, "Computer software, yes, I see." And then she went on to say, "I'm an artist, or like to think of myself as one -- a graphic artist. I bet I know what's going on in your mind. You think I'm hopelessly marginal, naive, lost in the backwaters of the modern world."
"Not at all."
"But you're just being polite." John realized that she was challenging him in some way, and he liked that.
"No, it's not just politeness. Craig told me about you. After what he said, I can't believe you're naive."
Suspicion came into her eyes. "So he must have told you about Alan -- my husband," she said. Then she thought to modify this and said, "My ex-husband." When he hesitated too long in replying she added, "Whatever Craig said, he doesn't know the half of it."
Craig told him Alan Coates was a photographer. He took pictures for slick magazines, mesmerizingly erotic shots that turned all his subjects into victims, handcuffed, strapped down, whipped. But then he was known to be a strange character, twisted and devious, possibly psychopathic. He'd beaten on Rebecca, knocked her around for the five and a half years they were married. Why had she stayed with him? A mystery. No one seemed to know. It was a wonder Rebecca had survived all the tumult, drama, and violence. What she needed, Craig believed, was stability in her life, the kind of stability that he was convinced John could provide.
"I'm nearly thirty," she said leaving the party with John. "You're in your midfifties."
"Do I look that old? It must be the paunch and the baldness."
"No, I don't think so. I think when you were young you decided to that everything in life has to be taken seriously. When you do that, you age quicker. It shows."
He wondered about this. "So does that mean you won't have dinner with me tomorrow night?' She threw her head back, laughing. When she reached her car, a Honda Civic that could have done with three thousand dollars' worth of bodywork, she turned to him and said, "What time tomorrow?"
He courted her ardently. He sent her South American roses and took her to expensive restaurants just reviewed by the Times. He sent her crystal dishes and jewelry from Tiffany's and dresses from Bergdorf's that didn't exactly fit and which had to be exchanged. She accepted his gifts, but held back from sleeping with him. Nor would she invite him to her apartment located on the fourth floor of a suspect-looking building in the West Fifties. She said she was ashamed to let him see it.
"One day," he said, "I will build a house -- the grandest house you've ever seen." In college, he explained, he'd harbored an ambition to become an architect. Now that he had the wherewithal, why shouldn't he build a house of his own?
"Yes," she said distantly, "that sounds nice."
"But I don't want to build a house if I can't have you in it."
They married. It took John by surprise. He'd been asking her for over three months. Maybe he'd simply worn her down. Whatever the reason for accepting his proposal, he rejoiced. A week after their wedding he came to her with a blueprint which he draped across the table in front of her. "This is it!" he said.
"This is what?"
"This is our wedding present to ourselves, this is our house." He'd just closed on the property -- a two-and-a-half acre plot -- in Fairfield County. When he first took Rebecca to see the site she was surprised, and a little disappointed, to find it so isolated. To get to the next house over you'd have to walk half a mile through woods and open field. For John's sake, though, she feigned enthusiasm.
Six weeks after the foundation had been laid in John turned up at the site to talk to the contractor, a strapping man named Ted Sykes. Drawing him aside John said that he'd like Ted to do him a favor.
"Whatever you say, Mr. Aikens, you're the boss."
"I'd like to have another room added to the house."
"Another room?" Sykes regarded the blueprints. "Where would you like to put this room?"
"By the study -- in back of it. But this room...it has to be special."
"Special? In what way special?"
"It has to be secret. I don't want anyone knowing that it's there. Maybe you could put a revolving bookcase in front of it. I'm sure you can come up with something ingenious."
"I don't see where that would be a problem, Mr. Aikens."
"One more thing."
"And what would that be, Mr. Aikens?"
"Don't say anything about this to my wife."
A week passed and then Rebecca came to see how the work was coming herself. Her appearance slowed down progress considerably as the workmen sought to get a better look at her. It was only September, still warm, and Rebecca wasn't wearing a great deal.
She told Sykes she'd come to ask a favor.
"A favor?"
"I'll pay extra for it."
Sykes screwed up his face in puzzlement.
"What I'd like you to do is put an extra room on for me -- behind my dressing room upstairs. It wouldn't have to be a large room. It could be the size of a large closet. Would that be difficult to do?"
No, he assured her, it could be easily accomplished.
"But you mustn't tell my husband about it, ever, all right?"
Sykes looked at her. Was this some kind of a game the two of them were playing at his expense? Well, it was none of his business. So long as he was paid.
It was a beautiful house when it was completed by spring, splendid in its wooded isolation. John was immediately at home in it, not so Rebecca who continued to wonder when she would feel like she belonged. Maybe never. She longed for the commotion and frenzied excitement of New York and sat for hours by the window when John was away at work in that very city, watching for the sight of another human being.
Rebecca never was in any doubt as to what purpose her room would be put. Only days after moving in, she was taping up photos on its walls. These were special photos, all taken by Alan Coates. Some of these photos found their way into magazines but most could never be published. For they were damning evidence of something, she wasn't sure what. Sexuality run amok maybe. It wasn't the nudes she was ashamed of, the nudes were nothing. But there were other photos that showed her in a bewildering variety of sexual contortions, alone and together, with Alan, with men and with women, too.
She was strangely happy to have them with her, though she wouldn't have been able to say why, and she was happier still to have the opportunity to put them on display, even if the display was intended only for her own eyes.
The prospect that her husband might one day discover them simultaneously exhilarated and scared her. But boredom was a terrifying thing and this was one way to keep it from getting the best of her.
It took John longer before he decided what to do with his room. The idea came to him after a business trip to Houston during which he'd purchased a .32 Smith &Wesson. It had always seemed to him important to have a gun, especially since his house was so out of the way, so exposed. He knew that Rebecca loathed guns. If she ever found out that he'd acquired a gun she'd insist that he get rid of it. But she wouldn't find out. How could she? He'd keep the gun in his private room. Little by little, without being quite aware of it, John was turning into a gun collector. It wasn't having the guns so much that he liked, it was the idea of smuggling them into his room without his wife catching on. He liked the sense that they were there for him; they were his preserve, his secret. Some of these guns he kept loaded -- just in case. Just in case of what, though, he had no idea.
Two years went by. Rebecca was growing restless. She moped about the house, ignoring John's repeated entreaties to get out more, join a reading group or volunteer organization or take up graphic arts again, something, anything so she wouldn't be so depressed and moody all the time. But she understood the problem: it wasn't a lack of work or a goal that was getting her down. It was her marriage; it was smothering her, it was like a wound out of which her life was seeping away. She loved John still, but in the way one loves a distant parent. But maybe that wasn't love at all, she thought, maybe there was another, better name for it. It got so that the only place in the house, possibly in the whole world, where she felt alive was in her room, surrounded by her pictures, by Alan's pictures.
I am going crazy, she told herself. Alan had spoiled her for anything else but a life filled with madness.
For John, New Year's Eve was always an occasion. Rebecca, on the other hand, could have lived without it. She didn't like being around a lot of people, even people she knew. But John's friends? How she dreaded it. And yet what choice did she have? John was anxious to show her off, let people envy the beauty he'd collared for himself.
Sixty or seventy people turned up for the party. Rebecca could scarcely recognize more than half a dozen faces. Maybe, she thought, they were friends of friends who'd come along for the ride. As soon as she could she made some dumb excuse and went to bed.
It wasn't until late in the morning that she awoke, her mouth as dry as the Sahara, a painful throbbing at her temples. As soon as she managed to get to her dressing room she realized at once that something was wrong. The mirror leading into her secret room was ajar. She was certain she hadn't left it that way. She stepped inside. She saw immediately what it was: one photograph -- only one -- was missing. It occurred to her that somebody had slipped in during the party. But how would anyone know to look there?
"Rebecca, are you up yet?"
John's voice reached her from downstairs. Quickly she left the room, closing the mirror door firmly behind her.
# # # #
When the letter came in the mail a week later (with no return address) she knew what it was before she opened it. There was a demand as she'd more or less expected there to be. It was the nature of the demand, though, that surprised her. This was what she read:
"I don't think you'd like your husband finding out about your room. I can guarantee he won't but only if you let me come by some day this week. I would like very much to share your room with you. I'll be calling soon."
She was trying to decide what her next move should be when the phone rang. She nearly jumped out of her skin. So soon? she thought. But it was only the repairman calling about the balky dishwasher. The man about the room called later that afternoon.
"You've gotten my letter," he began. The voice was refined and ingratiating, the voice of someone pitching life insurance.
"Yes," she said at last. "What do you want?"
"I'll stop by tomorrow, around ten. I think that should be okay. Your husband will be gone by then."
The following morning John delayed leaving for half an hour. She was sure he would bump right into her blackmailer at the door, and then what would happen? She wanted to scream. Why wouldn't he leave?
And then when he finally did she couldn't stop shaking. Yet it occurred to her that for all the tension she was feeling she was really enjoying the experience; she'd been so bored for so long that even terror held the promise of deliverance for her.
At exactly ten o'clock a man came up the flagstone walkway. He was an entirely presentable man of about thirty. He didn't look like anyone she remembered from the party, though.
He rang, he waited, warming his hands with his breath. Through the glass eyepiece she could see now that he had a mustache and that the mustache was probably as fake as his lush thicket of auburn hair. He rang again.
She stood there, her heart palpitating. It could have been Alan out there, that was the kind of excitement she was feeling. What, she wondered, do I do now?
# # # #
"And what happened between the two of you after she let you in?" John asked Richard Potter.
"Well," Potter said, "we talked. I followed the script you gave me."
"But I didn't give her any script," John reminded him. They were meeting at a coffee shop downstairs from the Actors' Equities office where John had met -- auditioned might be a better word -- Potter two weeks before. "Well, we talked about her room, about those pictures. They were really something, I had no idea." His voice was flat. How he expected to succeed in a stage career was beyond John's imagining. I assume you told her to cooperate with you in order to guarantee your silence."
Potter hesitated. A look of uncertainty clouded his features. "Well, yes, that was what you told me you wanted me to say."
"Christ." Why had he chosen this ass when so many more talented out-of-work actors were available? It should never have gotten to this point. "Did you do anything to her?"
"Do anything?" Potter looked genuinely puzzled. "I told her to take down the photographs and give them to me."
"Did she?"
"She said she'd have to think about it."
"I don't believe you," John said after a moment.
"Pardon me?"
"I said I don't believe you. I think something went on between you and my wife." The look of of hurt innocence that came over Potter's face seemed so patently false to John that it was all he could do to keep from striking him. "I never did anything you didn't want me to do," Potter protested.
That was too ambiguous for John's liking.
"Look," Potter went on, "if you and your wife are having some problems it's not my business. I did what you said and now I want my money." It was two hundred and fifty down, two hundred and fifty on completion of the assignment.
"Fuck you if you think you're getting another penny out of me!" John said, not knowing whether he was more infuriated with this untalented actor or with himself. He rose from his seat, threw down money for the coffee, and started for the exit.
"This won't be the end of it!" Potter called after him in a voice intended to get the attention of the other customers in the coffeeshop -- the only audience he would ever have, John decided.
The trouble was, John hadn't thought his plan through. He'd been hoping to frighten Rebecca enough so that she'd make a clean breast of it on her own, eliminating the need for Potter. The threat having failed to move her to action, he'd gone ahead and hired the actor. Had he believed that in her panic Rebecca might draw closer to him? Was he hoping that he could turn Potter into the same kind of enemy Alan Coates had once represented to them both?
When he arrived home he looked for some change in her. There was no light in her eyes, but there never was; he suspected the generous use of Elevil or Valium. The conversation they had was empty certainly, but then that was not so unusual either.
Saturday, midmorning, the bell rang and John answered unthinkingly. It was Richard Potter. Lucky that Rebecca was still in bed asleep.
"What do you want?" he demanded, knowing full well what Potter was after.
"The money. And expenses for transportation out here. I don't see why you're make such an issue of this, man. You got the bread. Anyone with a house like this, two hundred and fifty bucks is pocket change."
"It's the principle," John said, realizing that he was already defeated and would give the man what he wanted. "All right," he said. "Please wait here."
But Potter wasn't willing to wait out in the cold. He insisted on following John.
That Potter should get a look at his private room was outrageous, but there was no helping it.
Over time, his private room had turned into a small arsenal, with nearly sixty guns -- handguns, rifles, semiautomatics, even AK47's and Uzis -- that he'd picked up in his travels. It was the guns that drew Potter's attention, not the safe which John was in the process of opening.
"This is some fucking collection," Potter said. Quickly John counted out the bills. "Now get the fuck out of my house." He turned to put the money into Potter's hands.
It was only then that he saw that Potter was pointing a gun at him. "I want all the money in there. You can leave the jewelry, I don't need the jewelry. But the money I could use."
There was probably close to twenty thousand in cash in the safe -- money John preferred the IRS to remain ignorant of -- and he was damned if he was going to allow some asshole like Potter to have it.
"Take this and get out or -- "
"Or what?"
"Give me that damn gun and I'll forget all about this. Otherwise you can bet I'll press charges." He had no idea whether the gun was loaded or not. But the odds were that it wasn't. Clearly Potter believed he had the advantage. "And what are you going to tell the police after I tell them I fucked your wife and that you paid me to do it?"
A frenzy engulfed John. Without knowing what he was doing he threw himself on Potter. He barely registered it when the gun went off. So it was loaded after all. It occurred to him that he might have been shot, and that it was only shock keeping him from feeling the pain. But then Potter sagged into his arms like a distraught lover. Astonished, John released him and he collapsed to the floor.
Acting again, John thought. He lowered his gaze to where Potter lay unmoving. "Get up!" he urged.
Nothing doing. John pulled on his arm to lift him up. Only now did he observe the blood that had begun to appear on Potter's shirt.
"My God, it was an accident! Can't you see that it was an accident?" he yelled at the fallen man. He felt for a pulse. There was none. But even so, John stayed where he was, almost as if he thought that he could wait out Potter, that Potter couldn't stay dead forever. I need time to think, he decided after a while. I need a drink and time to think. Blood was all over him, too. He hadn't noticed. He heard Rebecca calling to him from the kitchen. He had no idea what she was saying. "In a minute!" he shouted to her and then hurried to clean himself and change his clothes.
All through the weekend John considered his dilemma. Certainly he
couldn't leave the body where it was. But what was the alternative?
Call the police and tell them the truth? Or say
By the following Tuesday he was no closer to a solution than he'd
been on Saturday. He returned to the room to see whether he was suffering
from a hallucination. But Potter was still there, beginning to decompose.
Maggots were making a feast out of him.
By Wednesday evening, the smell, contained at first in the secret
room, had spread, leaking out into the study, then inexorably making
its way through the other rooms. Now it permeated the whole of the
house. "What do you suppose it is, some dead animal that got in or
something?" Rebecca asked him.
A dead animal is right was what John thought but his only response
was to say that he would go have a look. She insisted on looking with
him. Of course, they found nothing. Rebecca decided to scrub the floors
with ammonia and harsh detergents. She cleaned behind furniture and
in places even their efficient cleaning woman hadn't gotten to in
two years. She sprayed the house with scents that came in cans.
The smell grew worse.
Early on Thursday morning, unable to sleep, John got up and, on impulse,
opened the mirror and stepped inside Rebecca's room. Then he stood
in the middle of it like a forlorn child, turning around and around,
staring at the scores of sordid poses of his wife, desiring her all
the more because he would never know her the way Alan Coates had known
her.
After a time he became aware of movement on the other side of the
mirror. He felt like he'd been in a trance. Now, emerging from it,
he was surprised to find that he'd been crying.
He opened the door.
"Oh," she said quietly when she saw him. She was wearing a robe, mostly
open. He tried to move his eyes from her partially exposed breasts
to her face.
"I think," he said, "that maybe we should talk." His voice sounded
funny to him.
"If you'd like. But I'm not sure there's anything to discuss."
She knew that he'd put Potter up to it. He could see it in her eyes.
He felt guilty and enraged for feeling that way. She was the one who
should be feeling guilty.
"Yes, there is," he said, fighting for his composure. "The smell."
"The smell?"
"He's down there."
"Who is?"
"Potter. I killed him. I didn't mean to, but we fought and the gun
went off." The explanation sounded lame even to him. He was watching
her face for her reaction but her face had gone blank.
"Potter?"
"The man who came here the other day."
"Oh," she said. "Him." She considered this for a moment. "But where
is he?"
"I would've thought you'd guessed, sweetheart. He's in my own little
room."
It was only later that he asked her the question that had weighed
so terribly on his mind. "Did you go to bed with him?"
She threw him a look that told him he'd overstepped his bounds, that
it was one thing to kill a man, but to have the audacity to accuse
her of betraying him this late in the game was simply vulgar. "No,
but now I'm rather sorry I didn't," she said.
Was she lying? He couldn't tell.
She was getting on her coat.
"Where are you going?" He couldn't suppress the panic in his voice.
"I have to think. I think better when I have some fresh air to breathe."
"You won't go to the police?" He knew how pathetic he must sound.
She just looked at him and then swept out of the house without another
word.
He must have dozed off. How long had he been asleep? Hours. He was
still dead tired, though. Something smelled. Not the usual stench,
there was another smell in the house. He sat up. Smoke.
As he scrambled down the stairs he saw that the fire had already worked
its way through much of the house. Flames were licking the floor,
crawling up the curtains, beginning to attack the ceiling which was
falling away in big, burning pieces. The air crackled with heat, he
could scarcely breathe.
He shouted out for Rebecca but heard no response. He rushed back up
the stairs but the fire had beaten him there. If he didn't get out
quickly he would never get out at all. So he raced back down the stairs,
choking and gasping. The fire danced close to him, singeing his calves,
his legs, his arms, his hands. But he made it to the door, pulled
it open, then he flung himself out into the bitter winter night.
The fire wasn't brought under control until early the next morning
by which time his house had been reduced to a blackened ruin. Even
with the fire extinguished cinders continued to come floating down
from the sky. A charred piece of paper dropped at his feet. When he
took a closer look he saw what it was. A part of a photo. Half a face,
part of an arm, a naked breast: Rebecca.
Investigators were picking their way among the rubble. All night long
John had been waiting for the fire fighters to carry out the bodies,
Potter's and Rebecca's. But it never happened. A man in a gray coat
approached him. A detective. He was saying something to John about
arson but John wasn't listening.
"What about my wife?"
The detective looked confused. "I don't know anything about your wife."
"You mean you didn't find any bodies in there?"
The detective shook his head. "No bodies. You were the only one."
It wasn't until several hours afterwards that John thought to return
to the site and discover what had happened to his safe. As he'd assumed,
the safe had come through the fire unharmed. But when he stooped down
to open it he found that it had already been opened. The money was
gone, so was the jewelry.
With every day that passed John expected to hear from her. His whole
life was spent in anticipation. Eventually he sold his business because
he couldn't think of what else to do. He was a wreck. Tranquilizers
were what he lived on, not food. He was drinking like never before.
His doctor warned him he was at risk for an ulcer, a heart attack,
a stroke. He didn't care. What he couldn't explain to the doctor was
that he was devoting himself, like a penitent, to waiting. It was
his mission.
He moved into a high-rise apartment in Manhattan not far from where
Rebecca used to live. Friends, grown weary of his tragic story, dropped
away. He was alone. He was waiting.
One afternoon, returning to his apartment, he was assailed by a weird
smell. It took him only a few moments to identify what it was. The
remainder of the day was then consumed in an attempt to uncover its
source. Eventually he found it. A hand. Potter's hand. He vomited
violently.
The smell wouldn't leave although he threw the hand out in the garbage
and opened all the windows. He thought of moving, but realized that
it wouldn't matter where he went. She would find him, and there would
always be more of Potter to send to him. He didn't dare imagine what
she had done with the body, where she was storing it. The worst part
of it was the smell, Potter's smell...The smell wrapped itself around
him, it got on his flesh and into his hair and planted itself on his
tongue. After a while it became inseparable from the smell of himself.
People seemed to shy away from him in the elevator and in the aisles
of the supermarket. He couldn't say he could blame them.
And Rebecca? he wonders. Where is she?
He continues to wait. Any day now, he thinks, she will come back.
NMM
This story appears in New Mystery I#2.
Mr Horvitz is co-author of the hot new bestseller LEVEL 4, VIRUS
HUNTERS OF THE CDC with Joseph McCormick and Susan Fisher-Hoch from
Turner Publishing. He is senior critic at New Mystery.
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