Брайан Гарфилд - Suspended Sentences

He was physically unpleasant; she found him nearly repulsive, although she knew women who liked his type — he was muscular enough, a macho character with huge arms and a big chest and military sort of crew-cut, flat on top. He had a beer-drinker’s gut and the hands of a mountain gorilla; he looked more like a heavy-equipment mechanic than a realtor.

Mainly he sold small pre-war houses, in rundown areas, to blue-collar workers and their families. Presumably he looked to them like the kind of man they could trust. The word around the neighborhood was that his realty operation was a bit on the shady side — something to do with kickbacks to building inspectors and bribes to government mortgage people, Nobody had ever proved anything against Murdoch but he had just a slightly unsavory aura. In any case, she had always thought him unattractive, to say the least. But up to the time of Amy’s death she had not thought of him as menacing .

Now, however, there was clearly no question but that he was executing a deliberate and careful scheme of harassment against her. Revenge for Amy’s death.

When she turned the car into the lane Murdoch’s semi-antique Chevy station wagon was in the driveway. Good; it meant he’d come home for lunch. Carolyn got out of the car and walked halfway up the walk toward the Murdoch porch. It was one of those old clapboard places with the porch running around three sides of the house. Part of it, on the left side, was screened in as a sleeping porch. The rest had a little picket-fence type railing which was turning gray in patches and needed paint.

She fumbled in her handbag a moment and then looked up. Nobody was in sight. She gave the golf ball a good strong throw. It made a satisfying noise when it crashed through Murdoch’s front window.

And it brought him boiling out of the place, as she’d thought it would. “Damn irresponsible kids—” he was roaring; then he recognized her and his face froze and he went absolutely still.

She spoke up in a clear strong voice. “I’ve had enough harassment from you. I’m sorry, very sorry, about what happened to Amy and I wish I could make it up to you. I know you don’t understand this, or believe it, but I feel nearly as bad about it as you do. But I’ve had enough. Harassing me won’t bring her back to you — you ought to know that. Now you’ve had your revenge and you’ve had your satisfaction and you’ve made me feel absolutely rotten all these weeks, and now I want you to stop it. Do you understand? Stop it!”

He hadn’t said a word; he still didn’t. His eyes narrowed down to slits and he merely watched her, unblinking. But she saw that one fist slowly clenched and unclenched. It kept doing that, with a terrible slow rhythm, closing and opening.

He didn’t respond to her words at all. She looked at the massive strength of him and felt appalled by her own temerity but, just the same, she stepped forward — five paces, six, seven — until she was nearly nose-to-nose with him, and she shouted in his face with blind thundering rage: “Leave me alone, Murdoch! Do you hear me? Leave me alone! ” And she slapped him, as hard as she could, across the face.

He didn’t even move. He was like some sort of immutable granite rock.

She stood trembling, hyperventilating; she raised her arm again, to strike him, but he stirred then. It was as if he didn’t even see her threatening rising arm. He merely turned slowly on one heel and walked back up the steps to the porch.

She screamed at his back: “ Did you hear me, Murdoch? ”

He didn’t answer. He just disappeared inside; the screen door slapped shut behind him.

Lacking the courage to follow him into his house, she was forced to turn away and get in the car. She sat trembling for quite a while. She kept expecting to see his face at a window but he never appeared. Finally she drove off.

The phone: Charles. “Hi. I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch. I was out of town.”

“That’s what your secretary said.”

“I, uh, hell, this is awkward. Look, my wife and I — we’ve, uh, well, we’re going to give it another try. We’re trying for a reconciliation. For the sake of the kids, you know, and — well, we’ve been together a long time, nearly twenty years now. A lot of shared experience there. A lot of understanding. I think we may make it. I know it doesn’t usually work out, but we want to give it a try. I thought I’d better tell you...”

“I understand, Charles. Don’t worry about me.”

“Are you all right? No more trouble with Murdoch, I hope.”

“He made a little trouble. I had it out with him today. I don’t know if it will do any good, but at least it gave me the satisfaction of telling him off.”

“That was a gutsy thing to do. What did he say?”

“Nothing. Maybe he’s just chewing on what I said, thinking about it. Maybe something of what I said penetrated that little pea brain of his. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. Anyhow he didn’t do or say anything nasty.”

“Well, maybe that’s a good sign.”

“Maybe. I hope so. Listen, Charles?”

“Yes?”

“I wish you good luck and every happiness. I mean that.”

“I know you do. You’re a damn good person, Carolyn.”

“Good-bye.”

She went to bed and hugged the pillow to her; she felt acutely alone tonight. I have got to get out in the world , she told herself with force, and start making friends again . This was ridiculous. She was a healthy thirty-six-year-old woman without any entangling attachments or encumbrances; she was no beauty but she was reasonably attractive in her chunky short-waisted way — after all, there were men who liked freckles and big chests on their women — and it was idiotic to confine herself in this kind of self-pitying isolation; there was no need for it.

Tomorrow, she resolved, she’d start making phone calls. Even if it made her look like some sort of shameless wanton.

She fell asleep filled with determination; she awoke filled with the harsh scent of smoke. She couldn’t place it at first but then she coughed and tried to breathe and coughed again, choking.

The apartment was on fire.

The red glow flickered through the living room doorway. She leaped out of the bed, flung the window open, and climbed out onto the narrow ledge. It was merely a decorative brick escarpment but it gave her purchase for her bare feet; she held onto the window sill and yelled for help.

It was only a one-story drop and finally, when the heat and smoke got too much for her, she jumped to the lawn below, managing to hit the grass without breaking anything. The fire engines were just arriving — she heard the sirens and saw the lights and then it was all a welter of men and machines and hoses and terrible smells.

By morning half of the building was gutted but the fire was out, and she was taken, along with a dozen other displaced tenants, to City Medical to make sure there were no serious injuries.

The fire apparently had started in the furnace room immediately below her apartment and had come up the air ducts, spreading through the building; the hottest part of it had attacked her apartment and it was there that the worst damage had been done, both by the fire and by the tons of water that had been used to extinguish it. The superintendent was a skinny little Italian man with sad compassionate eyes who kept shaking his head back and forth like a metronome. “I’m sorry but it’s a total loss. You’ll want to get in touch with the owner about the insurance, of course, but I doubt that will cover your own personal things. Were you insured?”

“No.”

“Too bad, Miss. I am very sorry. If there’s anything at all I can do—”