Jake Needham - Killing Plato

I couldn’t have been any more stunned if Anita had reached over and slapped me, which in a way I guess she just had. Her tone didn’t suggest there was a great deal of room for argument, so I sat in silence and offered no response.

Later, looking back, I couldn’t remember how long it was before Anita spoke again. It was probably less than a minute, but at the time it felt like hours passed as my mind churned through every conceivable way to account for Anita’s obvious distress. I discarded each possibility in turn and wound up back again exactly where I had started: utterly and completely mystified.

Evidently something absolutely awful had happened, but I was going to have to wait until Anita was ready to tell me about it, and to do it entirely in her own way.

After a while Anita turned her head away from the windows and looked at me, then she folded her arms across her body as if she had suddenly become cold. I studied her face, but could read nothing in it.

“I’m going to London for a while, Jack.”

All at once I was aware of the sound of the air conditioning humming in the background. It sounded somehow unnaturally loud.

“When? Tonight ?”

Anita shifted her body in the chair, turning further away from me.

“Things aren’t right,” she said. “With us. Just not right.”

“What are you talking about, Anita?”

She went on as if I hadn’t spoken.

“I hoped getting the house in Phuket might help. Maybe even give us some kind of a fresh start. But obviously that’s not going to happen.”

I leaned back and exhaled loudly, not even trying to hide my irritation. Anita seemed so upset she had scared me half to death and all the time it was just about that goddamned house again.

“Okay, now I get it-” I began, but that was as far as I got.

“No, you don’t,” Anita snapped. “You do not get it, Jack, and you never will.”

Anita stood up and took several quick steps as if she were leaving the room. Then she stopped and turned back, her arms still folded tightly across her body. I remained sitting in the chair watching her, tilting my head in puzzlement and rubbing at the back of my neck.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do. But you’re dealing with it just as you do everything else. You acknowledge only what you want to know. You shut everything else out.”

And just like that, I saw.

I realized then exactly what was happening, and even though the massive shock of it nearly paralyzed me, some part of my consciousness still marveled at how I could have missed it up until then. The telephone turned off, the bags in the hall, the sitting in the darkness waiting for me to come home. Now it was all so obvious.

Anita was leaving me.

“Something has changed since we were married, Jack. Something’s changed, and I don’t like it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s all too much.”

“Too much what ?”

“Too much like little boys playing spy games, hiding in the woods until people end up dead. Then you come out just as if nothing happened and go on just as you were before. You have no idea of danger, no concept of risk. Maybe you’ll be the next body to turn up somewhere, Jack. Did you ever think of that?”

“I’m just a teacher, Anita. I’m not playing spy games and I’m not in any danger.”

“Oh, bullshit, Jack. Everybody you know is a spook, a criminal, or a cop. And if you’re not up to your neck in one thing, it’s another.”

The words were tough, but the look on her face was tougher.

“Look, if this is about Plato Karsarkis,” I stammered, “last week you were saying you thought I ought to help him, and now you’re saying-”

“I’m not talking about Plato. I’m talking about you .”

“About me?”

“Not you, I guess. Not really,” she said. “About what you do.”

“Same thing.”

Anita shook her head very slowly.

“I knew you’d say something like that,” she said.

“Look, Anita,” I started, “think about-”

“I’ve done so much thinking these last few days that I can’t think straight about anything anymore. But I do know this, Jack. We have to be apart for a while. We have to sort things out.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, I do. And if I have to sort it out for us both, then I’ll do that. I need some time to decide, and believe me I’m thinking of you, too. I’m not sure I’m the right one for you.”

“I’m sure, Anita. I’m absolutely sure.”

“Please, don’t say that. Don’t make this any worse than it already is.”

“I don’t want to live without you, Anita. I won’t go back to the way I was before.”

“I have never asked you to change for me, Jack. I know you and I don’t think you could even if you wanted to. I’m not saying…oh, fuck , I don’t know what I am saying, let alone what I’m not.”

Anita was crying now. I could see the tears in her eyes and I watched as they rolled down her cheeks, first from one eye and then from the other. I wanted to stand up and walk over and put my arms arut my around her, but I knew absolutely that would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Instead I looked out the window and followed the blinking white lights on the wingtips of an airliner as it climbed out over the city and disappeared to the south. I wondered where it was going and who was on it, and I wondered whether I might like to be on it, too.

“Look,” I finally said, “it’s after midnight and you can’t go out there alone tonight. You take the bedroom and I’ll sleep on the couch in here and tomorrow we’ll decide what to do.”

“No,” she said, “my flight is tonight. I have a car waiting downstairs.”

There was a long silence as we both groped through our pain, looking for purchase or maybe just a place to hide. I glanced away, not able to bear the sight of Anita’s tears any longer, but there was nothing at all I could do right then to make them stop.

“I’ll do whatever you want, Anita.”

“I want you to go into your study,” she said in a voice that was suddenly clear and strong. “I want you to wait there and let me leave without making things any worse than they already are.”

“Yeah,” I nodded as if in a daze. “Okay.”

“Just give me some time, Jack.”

“Time to decide?”

“Yes,” she said. “Time to decide.”

Anita walked over and collected her purse from the chair where she had been waiting for me. I stood up, but she turned away without looking at me. I put out my arm to stop her and she brushed by it. When she reached the doorway, she stood for a moment with her back to me.

“Please do what I asked. Go into your study and let me leave, Jack.”

Then she went into the bathroom and closed the door. I could hear her crying.

I didn’t say anything. I just left the living room, walked into my study, and closed the door. I was sick at heart and I didn’t know whether I felt hopeful or hopeless or what I felt, but it was Anita’s move now and whatever feelings I might have or not have weren’t going to change that.

I settled behind my desk and spread my hands on top of it, palms down. The room seemed to move around me and I sat as still as I could, holding onto the desk until it stopped. When it felt safe to turn loose, I lifted one hand cautiously and poked with my forefinger at a glass heart that lay on top of a stack of papers. It was crystal and Anita had given it to me for my last birthday, a beautiful pebbled glass heart with a ribbon of red winding through it. I hadn’t been sure what else to do with it so I had kept in on my desk and used it as a paperweight.