Peter Abrahams - A Perfect Crime

Francie was almost at Brenda’s gate before she remembered the show. Switching on the radio, she caught Ned in midsentence, the signal weak and scratchy with static but audible: “… pain will ever go away? Maybe not-that’s the truth of it. But it will change into something else, something more manageable. Time may not be a healer, but at least it turns wounds into scars, if you see what I mean.”

“I think I do, Ned.” The woman was crying. “Thank you.”

“Rico from Brighton. Welcome to Intimately Yours.”

“Hey. Great show. Can we switch to something different for a second?”

“Thursday, Rico. Anything goes.”

“I’d like to talk about the Big A.”

“The Big A?”

“The A-word, Ned.”

“Adultery?”

“You got it.”

“And what’s your angle?”

“The scientific angle.”

“Which is?”

“You know,” said Rico. “Nature’s law. It’s in a man’s best interest to get his genes out there as much as possible and it’s in a woman’s best interest to have a man around to help with the kids. I mean, that’s a contradiction, right?”

“And the implication?”

“That it’s not about morality. You do what you gotta do.”

There was a long pause, full of static. Then Ned said, “Why don’t we throw that out to the listeners-the Big A, a question of-”

Francie lost him completely. Night had fallen now. Her headlights glinted on Brenda’s gate. She unlocked it, drove through and up the hill. At the top, she tried the radio again, and Ned came in clearly. “… reduce this to a bunch of genes? Let’s take another call.”

All at once, Francie had a crazy idea. She had a phone, it was a call-in show, she knew the number. Why not call him? He’d never said not to call the show. Free-form Thursday. She picked up the phone and dialed; no chance of getting through anyway.

“Intimately Yours,” said a voice. “Who’s this?”

“Iris,” said Francie. “On a car phone.”

“And what did you want to talk about?”

“Genes.”

“Mind turning off your radio? You’re next.”

Francie waited, her heart beating its Thursday beat again. What was the saying? Hide a tree in the forest. Did it apply to what she was doing? Maybe not. Maybe this wasn’t such a good “You’re on.”

Ned spoke, right in her ear, but with a tone he never used with her: “Iris on her car phone, welcome to the show. What’s on your mind, Iris?”

Maybe not a good idea.

“Iris? You there?”

Francie said, “I just want to tell you how much I like your show. Thursdays especially.”

Silence. It seemed endless. Then the line went dead. She turned the radio back on, felt herself blushing like a schoolgirl.

“… lost Iris. Let’s take another call.” Ned, his voice pitched higher than she’d ever heard it. Not a good idea, not well executed, not funny. Francie pounded her hand on the steering wheel.

Early retirement: an infuriating suggestion. On the computer in his basement office, Roger opened the file containing his resume and made a single change, adding IQ-181 (Stanford-Binet) on the line below the date of his birth. He printed the resume, read it over. The new entry didn’t look bad, no worse than a long list of specious awards, for example. Quite professional. He prepared a mailing list of potential employers for the revised resume.

After that, Roger logged on to the Puzzle Club, started the Times of London crossword. Where was he? Hell, in ideal form: that would be dystopia. Seven across, six letters: ugni, sylvaner. He typed in grapes. Ten down, nine letters: loss. Roger paused, sat for a few moments, then went up to Francie’s bedroom; their bedroom. He bent, looked under the bed. The painting of the grapes and the skateboarding girl was gone.

Roger grew aware of Francie’s clock radio, broadcasting to an empty room; she was like that, leaving on lights, running the tap the whole time she brushed her teeth. “Genes or no genes, Ned, ” a woman on a phone line was saying, “it’ll always be cheating in my book. ”

“Sounds like the first line of a country hit,” said a studio voice, gentle and sympathetic: the kind of male tone suddenly common in broadcasting, a tone Roger hated.

“Let’s take another caller,” the man said as Roger moved to shut him off. “Who have we got? Iris on her car phone, welcome to the show. What’s on your mind, Iris?”

A long pause. Roger was unfamiliar with Francie’s clock radio; he fumbled for the switch, found the volume instead, turning it louder.

“Iris? You there?”

“I just want to tell you how much I like your show,” a woman said. “Thursdays especially.”

Roger froze. Time seemed to freeze with him. The radio went silent, until at last the smooth-voiced man cleared his throat and said, “Oops, looks like we lost Iris. Let’s take another call.”

“Hi, Ned. Can we get off this adultery thing for a minute? I’m having a problem with my-”

Roger turned off the radio, stood motionless by the bed.

Francie. Beyond doubt. What had become of her, calling any talk show at all, to say nothing of a smarmy, prurient one like that? To let herself be used by them, like one of those pathetic big-haired women on television? He left the room, closed the door, stopped. And why would she call herself Iris?

Car phone. What was the number of Francie’s car phone? Roger didn’t know, had never called it. He went downstairs to the kitchen desk where Francie kept all the household accounts. He found the latest cellular phone bill, noted her number, and dialed it, leafing through the bill as he waited for a ring.

“The cellular phone customer you have called is not available at this time,” said a recording.

Roger wondered where she was.

Francie drove down to the stone jetty, printing fresh tire tracks in unbroken snow. The snow should have warned her of what lay ahead, but not until her headlights shone on the river, white instead of black, did she realize it was frozen. She got out of the car, stepped onto the jetty, looked down into the dinghies: five or six inches of snow on their floorboards, caught in the ice.

Francie gazed across at the island, the tops of the elms white against the night sky. She hadn’t anticipated this; a New England girl, and she hadn’t foreseen winter, the changes it would bring for Ned and her. Now she saw them very clearly-motel rooms, dark parking places, furtiveness. Her mind recoiled, and Ned’s would, too. Without the cottage, they had a relationship entirely mental, like some Victorian exercise in frustration. How long could that last?

Francie walked to the end of the jetty, sat down. Her feet took charge, lowering themselves to the ice. Then she was standing. Nothing cracked, nothing split; the ice felt thick and solid. She went back to her car for the painting, then moved out onto the ice, one step after another.

Francie walked across the river. She wore leather city boots, not even calf-high, but high enough. The snow on the river was only an inch or two deep, the rest blown away by the wind. This was easy-good traction, and no rowing, no tying up-with Brenda’s wintry island more beautiful than ever. A moonless, starless sky, but she could see her way easily; the snow brightened the night. A shadow stirred in the elm tops, rose high above. The owl. Francie paused to watch, lost it in the darkness, took another step. The next moment she was plunging to the bottom.

Down she went in complete blackness, icy water bubbling around her, so cold it made her gasp, swallow, gag. Her foot touched something: the bottom? She pushed off, a panicked, reflexive kick, and frantically kicked toward the surface-or what she hoped was the surface, because she could see nothing but bubbles, silver on the outside, black within. But the surface didn’t come. Was she moving at all? So heavy: she struggled with her coat, freed herself from it, tried to get rid of her boots, could not. She kicked, wheeled her arms, felt pressure building in her chest like an inflating balloon, and always the never-ending shock of cold. Her head struck something hard and she sank.