A FREE Short Story from ROSES ARE RED
A Long Distance Relationship
"I don't care. You killed a man. I'm going to call the cops."
Allan Gunther stared at Margaret, wondering what he had ever found attractive about her. Her face was red with dark circles engulfing her eyes. Worse yet, she wore no make-up. She had already washed her face and changed in to one of the t-shirts that she wore to bed when they weren’t having sex. "It was an accident," he said abruptly.
"It doesn't matter, you hit the guy and you didn't stop the car. That makes you a murderer," she picked up the beige receiver. Her eyes flicked down the list of important phone numbers stuck to the wall with yellowed tape.
"Man, what did you want me to do? I'm still on parole. You know I would have failed a breathalizer test." Allan referred to the party that they had attended last night, or, more accurately, this morning. It had been a long date. "Besides, I have enough grass in that car to get me put away for a lifetime."
"You killed a man," she repeated. She was visibly upset. Allan speculated she was about to cry. She always looked horrible when she cried.
"Margaret. Put that phone down,” he commanded.
She ignored him, her chipped red fingernails pressing down the grey push buttons.
"Damn it! Stop!" Allan shouted, trying to pull the phone out of her hand. She held fast. Allan shoved her back against the wall. Her body thudded into the hollow plasterboard. The sound echoed before he shoved her back a second time. Her head snapped as if to separate from her neck, but she still clutched the receiver. She looked at him with dazed eyes, then she swung the receiver into his face.
The ear piece crunched against his right cheekbone. The disconnected buzz of the phone rang out. Both of them paused.
"Want to play games?" He asked, each word causing his jaw to vibrate with pain. His hand surrounded her hand holding onto the phone, forcing the phone down on her head. It was easy. Physically, she was no match for him. Again, and again, he slammed the receiver down.
She crumbled to her knees. Her other arm rose in a futile attempt to protect her head and face. He brought the solid plastic down on those skinny finger bones covering her forehead. Her hand fell away. He felt strong and powerful.
He swung again. The hand holding the phone no longer opposed him. He swung again, this time the skull no longer crushed. It gave way. The receiver dug deep into her brain.
Her body slumped backwards, the receiver jutting out of her head. Still her fingers clung to the handle. His own hand had never touched the murder weapon. The coiled cord of the phone strained, stretching from the wall.
She wore an old t-shirt, something with a fat cat on it. Her legs were bare and twisted odd on the floor. If she were alive it would have been a difficult position to hold. Allan examined the blood seeping around the receiver. Her eyes looked blankly beyond him. She was dead.
It was funny. He had always thought death was dignified, sort of calm and peaceful. Death was a corpse in a coffin, hands crossed on the chest, a smile of contentment upon bloodless lips. There was no dignity in her death. Her mouth gaped open and her tongue had rolled back between crooked teeth. The angle of her head revealed the double chin she was always trying to lose. The nipples of her breasts pressed hard against her thin t-shirt. She was a slut, Allan thought humorously, in death as well as in life.
"Hey Babe, tell me, is death a turn-on? Better yet," his gaze fell on the useless receiver, "call me." He stepped over her body into the kitchen, taking out the makings for a ham and sweet pickle sandwich. Allan wasn't sure what he was going to do with her body, but the sandwich would help. He always thought better when he wasn't hungry.
He had time, he thought, luckily the bitch had died quietly. There would be no nosey neighbors coming downstairs or calling the cops. All he could find was wheat bread. Lately, she had gone on a health craze and bought nothing else. Allan wasn’t into the fiber, better to have food that tasted good. He squeezed a smear of mustard on the brown grainy bread. She was out of mayo.
Allan nibbled on the crusts of his sandwich. He decided he was glad that she was dead. Margaret had become a bit of a nag recently. They probably would have broken up, anyway. Allan scanned the flimsy lock on the backdoor across from the kitchen table. He had told her to replace it. Of course, she hadn't listened. It was a piece of junk. Anyone could break in merely using a screwdriver.
Allan stood up and walked over to the door. The lock was a chain arrangement, the kind easily pushed in from the outside. Allan dumped the remaining half of his sandwich in the garbage can. The bread fell open, the mustard smearing against the white plastic trash bag. For a second, he thought about DNA being collected at the Brown’s Chicken murders from a half-eaten chicken wing, but then again, it was an old girlfriend that blew that case open, they had that DNA for 20 years and it did nothing to solve the case…
He went out the front door and leisurely walked around back. No one was around. He wasn't surprised since it was eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning. All the kids were inside watching cartoons while their parents slept. He climbed down the cement stairs to Margaret's basement apartment, passing the rusted garbage cans stored next to her backdoor. Margaret had always been complaining that the garbage cans were attracting bugs into her apartment. Allan wrinkled his nose, they smelt bad, too.
He opened the screen door. Ignoring his ring of keys, he propelled his shoulder into the door. The door frame buckled and the door swung wide open. Allan looked down with satisfaction at the shattered metal links of the chain. Pieces of the brittle aluminum had fallen to the ground. Again, he stepped over Margaret's body, pausing beside her battered head. "Honey, you're going to die in a most horrible robbery. Some vicious doper forces his way in. You wake up. Realizing you're not alone, you go to call the police. But you’re too late. Your robber hears you. He attacks you, trying to stop the call from going through. He succeeds." Allan stood back up, "I like it. Especially the bit about you trying to call the cops, kinda ironic."
He walked to the linen closet. Grabbing one stripped pillowcase, he pushed the rest of the neatly folded sheets and towels on the floor. He stepped through the mess, the heel of his shoe dragging a flowered tablecloth into her bedroom. Allan emptied her jewelry box into the pillowcase and threw the satin lined box on the bed. Pulling out her dresser drawers, he dumped her sweaters in a loose pile. He knew what he was doing. Burglary was the reason he was on probation.
Allan went into the closet, flipping open the few shoe boxes storied there. It was amazing how many people kept their valuables in shoe boxes. All he found were some high heeled pumps. He tipped over Margaret's mattress. The bedspread slid to the floor. The jewelry box fell beneath the bed table, muffled, it chirped out 'Happy Days Are Here Again.’
He hit the jackpot. Allan collected the crumpled bills from their hiding place. She had nearly a thousand dollars warming her bed. He knew only one way she could have gotten that kind of money. The little whore, he sneered, stuffing the cash in his pocket.
From the dining room he took her fancy silverware from its velvet wrappings. The set was the real thing, a gift from her mother. Lastly, he messed up the living room a little. He scattered DVDs and CDs across the early American style braided rug. Using his coat sleeves he jerked the TV forward so that it hung over its stand. His cuffs had gathered a nice frosting of dust. For the first time, Margaret's lax housekeeping did not bother him. Fingerprints could only be picked up from a clean, flat surface, and her sloppiness had averted that problem.
Allan stood back to admire his work. It was perfect. It looked just as if a burglar had been scared off in the middle of the job. Allan briefly considered taking the pillowcase, but he left it beside the television. It looked more convincing.
About to leave, Allan spied the colorful cover of a CD that he had always liked. He picked up the plastic case off the floor, exiting out the back door. "See yah, darling," he said over his shoulder. “I'll cry at your funeral."
Driving away from Margaret’s apartment, Allan began to feel his energy drain. He tapped his fingers against the plastic dashboard, his thoughts still racing. His relationship with Margaret had been an off and on again thing. He had ignored Margaret at the party last night, not even introduced her around. He figured that was the real reason she had been angry with him, not the hit and run. No one there had even known they were together. Bar hopping was a pretty good alibi—if he did get questioned.
She was dating someone else on a regular basis for over a year now. The jerk had a wimpy name like Ralph. He hoped that the cops would pester old Ralphie. The tapping noise that he made started to annoy Allan. Unconsciously, his fingers had been tapping out the Lone Ranger theme. The rhythm was compulsive and it brought back the old series and its black and white values. He pictured the Lone Ranger and Tonto heading a posse to string up the local horse thief. Clean justice, back then. Allan started thinking about Margaret lying on the floor, the dial tone of the disconnected telephone line blaring into dead ears. Hell, they hung horse thieves; he wondered what they did to women killers in the olden days. Probably nothing, a horse was more valuable.
Allan squeezed his fingers into a fist to stop the tapping. His palms were damp, sweating, making the steering wheel slippery. He was fast losing control. Allan turned down a side street, looking for a parking space. The last thing he wanted was to be pulled over by a cop for a traffic violation.
He hadn't gotten any sleep last night. While he had felt that rush of energy that comes with an all-nighter, it was fading fast. On second thought, he wasn’t sure that his bungled burglary set-up would fly, it might be a good idea to just leave town for a while. He needed to sleep.
Allan found a parking space on a quiet block of apartments, the kind of buildings with courtyards that were too dark and shady to grow anything but weeds and mud. Allan climbed into the back seat. He laid his head on an old beach towel and knocked his collection of CDs onto the floor. He tossed the one that he grabbed at Margaret’s place on top. When he was a kid and his parents would drive somewhere at night, Allan could remember taking naps in the backseat. He had been about five years old and real tiny. He had liked to sit on the car floor, back then, because he felt like he was part of the car motor. He'd pedal his legs and stop when the car stopped. He was tired. Allan closed his eyes. His arm dropped to the floor and he brushed a finger against the short pile of the car rugs. Every winter he had to replace the rugs because of all the salt and crude from the streets just ruined the rugs.
It was three o'clock. He had slept for nearly four hours. Allan got back into the front seat, running his tongue over his teeth. He had morning gummy mouth. Allan stretched and yawned. Starting the engine, he decided that he needed some food. He drove over to the neighborhood's twenty-four hour Mr. Donut shop.
A couple sat in one booth sipping coffee and munching on muffins. Allan ordered a jelly-filled donut and coffee, sitting on one of the round stools next to the counter. He moved his finger, tracing the fake marble pattern baked into the counter-top. Allan swallowed some coffee, but the jelly donut no longer seemed appetizing. Reaction had sat in. He stirred more cream into his coffee. He had killed her with the same violent passion that he had made love to her.
It was like when they were in bed and Margaret was bitching about him crushing her and Allan no longer cared whether Margaret was getting anything out of it because the raw need had overcame him and all he could think about was himself. It had excited Margaret. She considered it a compliment, knowing that she could push him over that edge. She'd egg him on with cries, moans, and ragged flesh wounds from her nails. She was the type of girl that a bouncer would point out when you asked if the bar had any hot pussy tonight. That edge had snapped.
A man stood shouting into pay phone, talking fast and furious in Spanish. Pay phones were rare now, just about everyone had cell phones. Only the poorest of the poor needed a pay phone now a days. The man’s words meant nothing to Allan. He only knew how to count to six in Spanish and ask for a blow job, but he understood the tone. He toyed with the plastic lid of his coffee, breaking it into pieces, listening to the angry man's conversation.
The man lowered his voice. Everyone else seated in the vinyl padded booths seemed to be ignoring the man, but Allan couldn't keep from staring at his back, at the defensive hunch of the shoulders, at the thick red neck chaffed from years of too tight collars on hot summer days.
The man's ruddy skin was pleasant to Allan. Normally, he looked down on Mexicanos, but the short man on the phone seemed beautiful to him. Like an actor, the man's voice was full of the subtleties of his emotions while he struggled to converse at a civil volume. Even the man's dark, dirty curls seemed coiled in his suppressed anger.
"More coffee?" The waitress stood in front of Allan. Her apron pockets filled with pens and an order pad were directly at eye level. When she turned around her ass was also at eye level. She had a nice heart shaped ass.
"Thanks." Allan held the cup steady as she refilled it. He reached out for more cream. When he had finished stirring the cream in, Allan saw that the Spanish speaking guy was gone. He must have slipped out of the door while his back was turned.
Without the man's bulk, Allan stared directly at the pay phone. From the angle at which he sat, he could only see the phone in profile. It appeared almost human, an olive green rectangle with a grey receiver projecting out like a nose. The silver cord looked like a big fat lip in a political caricature. Allan tried to ignore the phone and sip his coffee, but his eyes kept returning to it.
It seemed to him to be moving, sort of like it was breathing. The grey receiver appeared to sway gently like inhaling and exhaling nostrils, sort of like a cartoon bull about to charge a matador.
Allan blinked, knowing that his eyes must be playing tricks on him. He stared straight at the phone, daring it to move, knowing that he'd catch the movement. It was there. Allan swore that the receiver had moved, slow, like a vibration.
"Lady," Allan walked over to the waitress, "Can I have change for the phone?" He waved a crumpled dollar on the countertop.
"Sure, hon." The cash register rang merrily as the drawer slid out. Allan took his four quarters and walked to the phone. Facing it, the human appearance of the pay phone was even more distinct. The coin slot on top resembled nothing more than the slit of an eyelid winking. The coin changer was a mouth. The phone cord now looked like a long, skinny, silver neck. Allan reached out and twisted it in his hand.
Besides the coin slot were three numbered instructions for using the phone: 1.Stop; 2.Listen for the tone; 3.Deposit coins. He’d never risk calling Margaret on his cell phone, but an anonymous pay phone call, that was doable. Allan held the receiver to his ear. The dial tone was clear. He put a handful of quarters in the machine and dialed Margaret's number.
It was an impulse. Thinking about the phone's face, Margaret's face had come to mind. He hadn't checked for a pulse. He hadn't checked for a heartbeat. What if she wasn't dead, but merely stunned? Weighing the hard plastic of the receiver in his hand, Allan wondered whether a plastic phone was really hard enough to kill. She could have been still breathing, knocked into a state of temporary shock by the blows to her head.
The ringing seemed deeper, more ominous than he had ever heard before. One, Two, Three—longer, the space between rings dragged—Four. In between each ring, Allan thought that he could hear something, some background noise, like someone was listening in. Allan banged the receiver down after the fifth ring. The phone landed against the metal hook, as it bounced back up, Allan heard it loud and clear—she was breathing, mocking, loud gulps of air, taunting him that he had failed, but her phone had been left off the hook, disconnected.
Allan realized that her phone shouldn't have rung at all. He should have gotten a busy signal. She must have gotten up and hung up the phone back up. He was in trouble. The receiver was back in his hand and Allan jerked it back, stretching the cord as far as it would go, he crashed the receiver into the wallpapered wall. His sudden violent action focused all the customers' attention upon him. The waitress' mouth parted like she was about to say “don't.” She was too late. Allan stalked out of the donut shop. The phone receiver swung from its cord, like the pendulum on a clock.
The tires squealed as Allan pulled out. He was hyperventilating. The car was too warm and the air conditioner was kicking in too slow. Allan rode the gas pedal all the way back to Margaret's place. Margaret was dead. He must have dialed the wrong number. Margaret was dead. He repeated the thought in his mind like a refrain. Ding, Dong, the wicked witch is dead. Yet, even as he tried to reassure himself that she was dead, Allan thought about the horrible possibilities, if she was alive… She'd throw him in jail for attempted murder and for the hit and run. His careful plan of ransacking her apartment would have been wasted. Allan glanced back at Margaret’s CD that he had thrown onto the backseat floor. That was possession of stolen goods. It all made his actions seem premeditated. If she was alive, she could really hurt him.
Allan parked the car several blocks from Margaret's apartment and walked towards her place. It was the late afternoon, now. There were too many people around to risk going back in through the front or back door. He decided to enter through a side window. Since Margaret lived in the basement, it would be relatively easy. Allan looked for an open or unlocked window, figuring that he wouldn't want to break any glass.
Noise could bring someone around. Allan checked all the windows and found that only the bathroom one was unlocked. Allan looked around to make sure that no one was watching him from the apartment building next door.
The bathroom window was tiny, narrower than the other windows. The glass was the opaque bumpy stuff always used in bathrooms. Margaret usually opened the window when she showered to let the steam escape, since her bathroom fan didn't work. Allan yanked off the bug screen and jimmied the window as far open as it would go, a whole ten inches. Allan squeezed himself through the small space from years of practice of getting into places where he didn't belong. His shoulders would be bruised later, but he was in. His feet were resting on top of her sink. The bathroom was filthy as usual. Her hairbrush sat next to the soap. Allan noted with disgust that the bristles were layered with fly-away strands of hair. He was always telling her to clean her hair brush. It was nasty. Allan stepped down onto the toilet and onto the floor.
He cautiously entered the hallway. Margaret hadn't turned on the lights. "Where are you, Margaret?"
Allan walked into her bedroom. "I won't hurt you, Margaret.” The room was in the same ransacked condition that he had left it in. "Margaret, where are you hiding? Margaret?" Allan banged his hands against his thighs, heading back to the kitchen where she had fallen. "It's all right, Margaret. I won't hurt you."
The apartment was dark, but he could still see her body slouched against the wall. The phone was making a high pitched disconnected dial tone. That was wrong. When he had called her number, he hadn't gotten a busy signal. The phone had rung. He knew it. He walked straight over to her.
Allan stared at her head. It had fallen forward. Allan tugged at a hunk of her hair to see her eyes. She was dead. Very dead. Allan released his grip on her hair. He backed up, instinctively, not wanting to be near her.
Siren.
The Police.
Allan turned around, looking down the hallway at the front windows of the apartment. He saw two cops running towards the building. Cop legs with cop shoes. Someone must have seen, or heard, him break in. For second, Allan turned and started heading back to the bathroom, but he knew that he'd never crawl out of that narrow window in time.
Wait. There were tests, tests that would prove that Margaret had been dead long before he had broken in. God, time of death would only clear him, but only if he hadn't known Margaret. He didn't have a chance.
Allan barreled through the kitchen, knowing that the back door was his only way out. He leapt over Margaret's body, he thought that he had made it, until he felt the curled wire of the phone cord pull him back and down like a noose around his ankle. He landed chin forward onto Margaret's dirty kitchen floor. He heard the splintering explosion of the front door being kicked in.
"Stop, this is the police. Don't move."
Allan dragged himself up from the floor and kept going for the backdoor. He knocked over the garbage can by the door and he stumbled over it. An immense pain erupted at his shoulder. A bullet, Allan thought. He had reached the cement back stairs. Allan tried to crawl up them.
"Don't move."
A cop kicked him in the ribs. Allan stared at the neatly pressed uniform, the button tabs on the shoulder. He couldn't see the cop's face very well. "It's a fucking neatnik cop," Allan stated slowly, "hope that you're good at cleaning up messes."
Allan saw the gun pointed at his smile.
"Scumbag," the cop muttered.
Allan tried to pull himself up and raise his hands up at the same time. He slipped, hitting his head on the cement.
He woke up on a hospital bed, but he wasn't alone. There was a ringing that seemed to come from inside his head. Loud and harsh like a large animal breathing, it rang, that damn phone. Tinnitus, from a blow to the head, right, what did the doctors know? He was barely able to communicate during his initial police interview, "Can't you hear it? Fuck her, the damn bitch won't stop calling me."
About the Author
Carrie Green is the author of 'Roses are Red,' "Violets are Blue,' and 'Sugar is Sweet.' Her new novel, 'Walk a Lonely Street' will be published soon. Carrie's books are available on Amazon.
Allan Gunther stared at Margaret, wondering what he had ever found attractive about her. Her face was red with dark circles engulfing her eyes. Worse yet, she wore no make-up. She had already washed her face and changed in to one of the t-shirts that she wore to bed when they weren’t having sex. "It was an accident," he said abruptly.
"It doesn't matter, you hit the guy and you didn't stop the car. That makes you a murderer," she picked up the beige receiver. Her eyes flicked down the list of important phone numbers stuck to the wall with yellowed tape.
"Man, what did you want me to do? I'm still on parole. You know I would have failed a breathalizer test." Allan referred to the party that they had attended last night, or, more accurately, this morning. It had been a long date. "Besides, I have enough grass in that car to get me put away for a lifetime."
"You killed a man," she repeated. She was visibly upset. Allan speculated she was about to cry. She always looked horrible when she cried.
"Margaret. Put that phone down,” he commanded.
She ignored him, her chipped red fingernails pressing down the grey push buttons.
"Damn it! Stop!" Allan shouted, trying to pull the phone out of her hand. She held fast. Allan shoved her back against the wall. Her body thudded into the hollow plasterboard. The sound echoed before he shoved her back a second time. Her head snapped as if to separate from her neck, but she still clutched the receiver. She looked at him with dazed eyes, then she swung the receiver into his face.
The ear piece crunched against his right cheekbone. The disconnected buzz of the phone rang out. Both of them paused.
"Want to play games?" He asked, each word causing his jaw to vibrate with pain. His hand surrounded her hand holding onto the phone, forcing the phone down on her head. It was easy. Physically, she was no match for him. Again, and again, he slammed the receiver down.
She crumbled to her knees. Her other arm rose in a futile attempt to protect her head and face. He brought the solid plastic down on those skinny finger bones covering her forehead. Her hand fell away. He felt strong and powerful.
He swung again. The hand holding the phone no longer opposed him. He swung again, this time the skull no longer crushed. It gave way. The receiver dug deep into her brain.
Her body slumped backwards, the receiver jutting out of her head. Still her fingers clung to the handle. His own hand had never touched the murder weapon. The coiled cord of the phone strained, stretching from the wall.
She wore an old t-shirt, something with a fat cat on it. Her legs were bare and twisted odd on the floor. If she were alive it would have been a difficult position to hold. Allan examined the blood seeping around the receiver. Her eyes looked blankly beyond him. She was dead.
It was funny. He had always thought death was dignified, sort of calm and peaceful. Death was a corpse in a coffin, hands crossed on the chest, a smile of contentment upon bloodless lips. There was no dignity in her death. Her mouth gaped open and her tongue had rolled back between crooked teeth. The angle of her head revealed the double chin she was always trying to lose. The nipples of her breasts pressed hard against her thin t-shirt. She was a slut, Allan thought humorously, in death as well as in life.
"Hey Babe, tell me, is death a turn-on? Better yet," his gaze fell on the useless receiver, "call me." He stepped over her body into the kitchen, taking out the makings for a ham and sweet pickle sandwich. Allan wasn't sure what he was going to do with her body, but the sandwich would help. He always thought better when he wasn't hungry.
He had time, he thought, luckily the bitch had died quietly. There would be no nosey neighbors coming downstairs or calling the cops. All he could find was wheat bread. Lately, she had gone on a health craze and bought nothing else. Allan wasn’t into the fiber, better to have food that tasted good. He squeezed a smear of mustard on the brown grainy bread. She was out of mayo.
Allan nibbled on the crusts of his sandwich. He decided he was glad that she was dead. Margaret had become a bit of a nag recently. They probably would have broken up, anyway. Allan scanned the flimsy lock on the backdoor across from the kitchen table. He had told her to replace it. Of course, she hadn't listened. It was a piece of junk. Anyone could break in merely using a screwdriver.
Allan stood up and walked over to the door. The lock was a chain arrangement, the kind easily pushed in from the outside. Allan dumped the remaining half of his sandwich in the garbage can. The bread fell open, the mustard smearing against the white plastic trash bag. For a second, he thought about DNA being collected at the Brown’s Chicken murders from a half-eaten chicken wing, but then again, it was an old girlfriend that blew that case open, they had that DNA for 20 years and it did nothing to solve the case…
He went out the front door and leisurely walked around back. No one was around. He wasn't surprised since it was eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning. All the kids were inside watching cartoons while their parents slept. He climbed down the cement stairs to Margaret's basement apartment, passing the rusted garbage cans stored next to her backdoor. Margaret had always been complaining that the garbage cans were attracting bugs into her apartment. Allan wrinkled his nose, they smelt bad, too.
He opened the screen door. Ignoring his ring of keys, he propelled his shoulder into the door. The door frame buckled and the door swung wide open. Allan looked down with satisfaction at the shattered metal links of the chain. Pieces of the brittle aluminum had fallen to the ground. Again, he stepped over Margaret's body, pausing beside her battered head. "Honey, you're going to die in a most horrible robbery. Some vicious doper forces his way in. You wake up. Realizing you're not alone, you go to call the police. But you’re too late. Your robber hears you. He attacks you, trying to stop the call from going through. He succeeds." Allan stood back up, "I like it. Especially the bit about you trying to call the cops, kinda ironic."
He walked to the linen closet. Grabbing one stripped pillowcase, he pushed the rest of the neatly folded sheets and towels on the floor. He stepped through the mess, the heel of his shoe dragging a flowered tablecloth into her bedroom. Allan emptied her jewelry box into the pillowcase and threw the satin lined box on the bed. Pulling out her dresser drawers, he dumped her sweaters in a loose pile. He knew what he was doing. Burglary was the reason he was on probation.
Allan went into the closet, flipping open the few shoe boxes storied there. It was amazing how many people kept their valuables in shoe boxes. All he found were some high heeled pumps. He tipped over Margaret's mattress. The bedspread slid to the floor. The jewelry box fell beneath the bed table, muffled, it chirped out 'Happy Days Are Here Again.’
He hit the jackpot. Allan collected the crumpled bills from their hiding place. She had nearly a thousand dollars warming her bed. He knew only one way she could have gotten that kind of money. The little whore, he sneered, stuffing the cash in his pocket.
From the dining room he took her fancy silverware from its velvet wrappings. The set was the real thing, a gift from her mother. Lastly, he messed up the living room a little. He scattered DVDs and CDs across the early American style braided rug. Using his coat sleeves he jerked the TV forward so that it hung over its stand. His cuffs had gathered a nice frosting of dust. For the first time, Margaret's lax housekeeping did not bother him. Fingerprints could only be picked up from a clean, flat surface, and her sloppiness had averted that problem.
Allan stood back to admire his work. It was perfect. It looked just as if a burglar had been scared off in the middle of the job. Allan briefly considered taking the pillowcase, but he left it beside the television. It looked more convincing.
About to leave, Allan spied the colorful cover of a CD that he had always liked. He picked up the plastic case off the floor, exiting out the back door. "See yah, darling," he said over his shoulder. “I'll cry at your funeral."
Driving away from Margaret’s apartment, Allan began to feel his energy drain. He tapped his fingers against the plastic dashboard, his thoughts still racing. His relationship with Margaret had been an off and on again thing. He had ignored Margaret at the party last night, not even introduced her around. He figured that was the real reason she had been angry with him, not the hit and run. No one there had even known they were together. Bar hopping was a pretty good alibi—if he did get questioned.
She was dating someone else on a regular basis for over a year now. The jerk had a wimpy name like Ralph. He hoped that the cops would pester old Ralphie. The tapping noise that he made started to annoy Allan. Unconsciously, his fingers had been tapping out the Lone Ranger theme. The rhythm was compulsive and it brought back the old series and its black and white values. He pictured the Lone Ranger and Tonto heading a posse to string up the local horse thief. Clean justice, back then. Allan started thinking about Margaret lying on the floor, the dial tone of the disconnected telephone line blaring into dead ears. Hell, they hung horse thieves; he wondered what they did to women killers in the olden days. Probably nothing, a horse was more valuable.
Allan squeezed his fingers into a fist to stop the tapping. His palms were damp, sweating, making the steering wheel slippery. He was fast losing control. Allan turned down a side street, looking for a parking space. The last thing he wanted was to be pulled over by a cop for a traffic violation.
He hadn't gotten any sleep last night. While he had felt that rush of energy that comes with an all-nighter, it was fading fast. On second thought, he wasn’t sure that his bungled burglary set-up would fly, it might be a good idea to just leave town for a while. He needed to sleep.
Allan found a parking space on a quiet block of apartments, the kind of buildings with courtyards that were too dark and shady to grow anything but weeds and mud. Allan climbed into the back seat. He laid his head on an old beach towel and knocked his collection of CDs onto the floor. He tossed the one that he grabbed at Margaret’s place on top. When he was a kid and his parents would drive somewhere at night, Allan could remember taking naps in the backseat. He had been about five years old and real tiny. He had liked to sit on the car floor, back then, because he felt like he was part of the car motor. He'd pedal his legs and stop when the car stopped. He was tired. Allan closed his eyes. His arm dropped to the floor and he brushed a finger against the short pile of the car rugs. Every winter he had to replace the rugs because of all the salt and crude from the streets just ruined the rugs.
It was three o'clock. He had slept for nearly four hours. Allan got back into the front seat, running his tongue over his teeth. He had morning gummy mouth. Allan stretched and yawned. Starting the engine, he decided that he needed some food. He drove over to the neighborhood's twenty-four hour Mr. Donut shop.
A couple sat in one booth sipping coffee and munching on muffins. Allan ordered a jelly-filled donut and coffee, sitting on one of the round stools next to the counter. He moved his finger, tracing the fake marble pattern baked into the counter-top. Allan swallowed some coffee, but the jelly donut no longer seemed appetizing. Reaction had sat in. He stirred more cream into his coffee. He had killed her with the same violent passion that he had made love to her.
It was like when they were in bed and Margaret was bitching about him crushing her and Allan no longer cared whether Margaret was getting anything out of it because the raw need had overcame him and all he could think about was himself. It had excited Margaret. She considered it a compliment, knowing that she could push him over that edge. She'd egg him on with cries, moans, and ragged flesh wounds from her nails. She was the type of girl that a bouncer would point out when you asked if the bar had any hot pussy tonight. That edge had snapped.
A man stood shouting into pay phone, talking fast and furious in Spanish. Pay phones were rare now, just about everyone had cell phones. Only the poorest of the poor needed a pay phone now a days. The man’s words meant nothing to Allan. He only knew how to count to six in Spanish and ask for a blow job, but he understood the tone. He toyed with the plastic lid of his coffee, breaking it into pieces, listening to the angry man's conversation.
The man lowered his voice. Everyone else seated in the vinyl padded booths seemed to be ignoring the man, but Allan couldn't keep from staring at his back, at the defensive hunch of the shoulders, at the thick red neck chaffed from years of too tight collars on hot summer days.
The man's ruddy skin was pleasant to Allan. Normally, he looked down on Mexicanos, but the short man on the phone seemed beautiful to him. Like an actor, the man's voice was full of the subtleties of his emotions while he struggled to converse at a civil volume. Even the man's dark, dirty curls seemed coiled in his suppressed anger.
"More coffee?" The waitress stood in front of Allan. Her apron pockets filled with pens and an order pad were directly at eye level. When she turned around her ass was also at eye level. She had a nice heart shaped ass.
"Thanks." Allan held the cup steady as she refilled it. He reached out for more cream. When he had finished stirring the cream in, Allan saw that the Spanish speaking guy was gone. He must have slipped out of the door while his back was turned.
Without the man's bulk, Allan stared directly at the pay phone. From the angle at which he sat, he could only see the phone in profile. It appeared almost human, an olive green rectangle with a grey receiver projecting out like a nose. The silver cord looked like a big fat lip in a political caricature. Allan tried to ignore the phone and sip his coffee, but his eyes kept returning to it.
It seemed to him to be moving, sort of like it was breathing. The grey receiver appeared to sway gently like inhaling and exhaling nostrils, sort of like a cartoon bull about to charge a matador.
Allan blinked, knowing that his eyes must be playing tricks on him. He stared straight at the phone, daring it to move, knowing that he'd catch the movement. It was there. Allan swore that the receiver had moved, slow, like a vibration.
"Lady," Allan walked over to the waitress, "Can I have change for the phone?" He waved a crumpled dollar on the countertop.
"Sure, hon." The cash register rang merrily as the drawer slid out. Allan took his four quarters and walked to the phone. Facing it, the human appearance of the pay phone was even more distinct. The coin slot on top resembled nothing more than the slit of an eyelid winking. The coin changer was a mouth. The phone cord now looked like a long, skinny, silver neck. Allan reached out and twisted it in his hand.
Besides the coin slot were three numbered instructions for using the phone: 1.Stop; 2.Listen for the tone; 3.Deposit coins. He’d never risk calling Margaret on his cell phone, but an anonymous pay phone call, that was doable. Allan held the receiver to his ear. The dial tone was clear. He put a handful of quarters in the machine and dialed Margaret's number.
It was an impulse. Thinking about the phone's face, Margaret's face had come to mind. He hadn't checked for a pulse. He hadn't checked for a heartbeat. What if she wasn't dead, but merely stunned? Weighing the hard plastic of the receiver in his hand, Allan wondered whether a plastic phone was really hard enough to kill. She could have been still breathing, knocked into a state of temporary shock by the blows to her head.
The ringing seemed deeper, more ominous than he had ever heard before. One, Two, Three—longer, the space between rings dragged—Four. In between each ring, Allan thought that he could hear something, some background noise, like someone was listening in. Allan banged the receiver down after the fifth ring. The phone landed against the metal hook, as it bounced back up, Allan heard it loud and clear—she was breathing, mocking, loud gulps of air, taunting him that he had failed, but her phone had been left off the hook, disconnected.
Allan realized that her phone shouldn't have rung at all. He should have gotten a busy signal. She must have gotten up and hung up the phone back up. He was in trouble. The receiver was back in his hand and Allan jerked it back, stretching the cord as far as it would go, he crashed the receiver into the wallpapered wall. His sudden violent action focused all the customers' attention upon him. The waitress' mouth parted like she was about to say “don't.” She was too late. Allan stalked out of the donut shop. The phone receiver swung from its cord, like the pendulum on a clock.
The tires squealed as Allan pulled out. He was hyperventilating. The car was too warm and the air conditioner was kicking in too slow. Allan rode the gas pedal all the way back to Margaret's place. Margaret was dead. He must have dialed the wrong number. Margaret was dead. He repeated the thought in his mind like a refrain. Ding, Dong, the wicked witch is dead. Yet, even as he tried to reassure himself that she was dead, Allan thought about the horrible possibilities, if she was alive… She'd throw him in jail for attempted murder and for the hit and run. His careful plan of ransacking her apartment would have been wasted. Allan glanced back at Margaret’s CD that he had thrown onto the backseat floor. That was possession of stolen goods. It all made his actions seem premeditated. If she was alive, she could really hurt him.
Allan parked the car several blocks from Margaret's apartment and walked towards her place. It was the late afternoon, now. There were too many people around to risk going back in through the front or back door. He decided to enter through a side window. Since Margaret lived in the basement, it would be relatively easy. Allan looked for an open or unlocked window, figuring that he wouldn't want to break any glass.
Noise could bring someone around. Allan checked all the windows and found that only the bathroom one was unlocked. Allan looked around to make sure that no one was watching him from the apartment building next door.
The bathroom window was tiny, narrower than the other windows. The glass was the opaque bumpy stuff always used in bathrooms. Margaret usually opened the window when she showered to let the steam escape, since her bathroom fan didn't work. Allan yanked off the bug screen and jimmied the window as far open as it would go, a whole ten inches. Allan squeezed himself through the small space from years of practice of getting into places where he didn't belong. His shoulders would be bruised later, but he was in. His feet were resting on top of her sink. The bathroom was filthy as usual. Her hairbrush sat next to the soap. Allan noted with disgust that the bristles were layered with fly-away strands of hair. He was always telling her to clean her hair brush. It was nasty. Allan stepped down onto the toilet and onto the floor.
He cautiously entered the hallway. Margaret hadn't turned on the lights. "Where are you, Margaret?"
Allan walked into her bedroom. "I won't hurt you, Margaret.” The room was in the same ransacked condition that he had left it in. "Margaret, where are you hiding? Margaret?" Allan banged his hands against his thighs, heading back to the kitchen where she had fallen. "It's all right, Margaret. I won't hurt you."
The apartment was dark, but he could still see her body slouched against the wall. The phone was making a high pitched disconnected dial tone. That was wrong. When he had called her number, he hadn't gotten a busy signal. The phone had rung. He knew it. He walked straight over to her.
Allan stared at her head. It had fallen forward. Allan tugged at a hunk of her hair to see her eyes. She was dead. Very dead. Allan released his grip on her hair. He backed up, instinctively, not wanting to be near her.
Siren.
The Police.
Allan turned around, looking down the hallway at the front windows of the apartment. He saw two cops running towards the building. Cop legs with cop shoes. Someone must have seen, or heard, him break in. For second, Allan turned and started heading back to the bathroom, but he knew that he'd never crawl out of that narrow window in time.
Wait. There were tests, tests that would prove that Margaret had been dead long before he had broken in. God, time of death would only clear him, but only if he hadn't known Margaret. He didn't have a chance.
Allan barreled through the kitchen, knowing that the back door was his only way out. He leapt over Margaret's body, he thought that he had made it, until he felt the curled wire of the phone cord pull him back and down like a noose around his ankle. He landed chin forward onto Margaret's dirty kitchen floor. He heard the splintering explosion of the front door being kicked in.
"Stop, this is the police. Don't move."
Allan dragged himself up from the floor and kept going for the backdoor. He knocked over the garbage can by the door and he stumbled over it. An immense pain erupted at his shoulder. A bullet, Allan thought. He had reached the cement back stairs. Allan tried to crawl up them.
"Don't move."
A cop kicked him in the ribs. Allan stared at the neatly pressed uniform, the button tabs on the shoulder. He couldn't see the cop's face very well. "It's a fucking neatnik cop," Allan stated slowly, "hope that you're good at cleaning up messes."
Allan saw the gun pointed at his smile.
"Scumbag," the cop muttered.
Allan tried to pull himself up and raise his hands up at the same time. He slipped, hitting his head on the cement.
He woke up on a hospital bed, but he wasn't alone. There was a ringing that seemed to come from inside his head. Loud and harsh like a large animal breathing, it rang, that damn phone. Tinnitus, from a blow to the head, right, what did the doctors know? He was barely able to communicate during his initial police interview, "Can't you hear it? Fuck her, the damn bitch won't stop calling me."
About the Author
Carrie Green is the author of 'Roses are Red,' "Violets are Blue,' and 'Sugar is Sweet.' Her new novel, 'Walk a Lonely Street' will be published soon. Carrie's books are available on Amazon.
