Joseph Cirelli - Attack from behind

"I'm not going to make any scene I'm just gettin' out. Go on home, I just want to stop off for a beer or two."

"In that place? Don, please!"

"Go on, damn it! I don't need you motherin' me all the time. I'll see you later!" He got out and slammed the door without looking back and strode hurriedly into the painted-glass-front bar. Diane heard the high-pitched giggle of one of the hostesses as she called him familiarly by name.

She quickly wiped the tears from her eyes with the soft fabric of her sleeve and drove away before anyone saw her. But still, as she steered the car along familiar streets, around corners that she had rounded a million times, she felt very, very alone, as if she had somehow taken the wrong turn and was in some dreary, unfriendly city… a city like the one that she knew they would soon be moving to up north.

People in their cars or standing on their lawns were all strangers as she drove home alone. No one smiled or waved or tipped his hat.

Never in her short, happy life had she felt so alone… and so desperately in need… Oh, Don, why, why? Why do you blame me? It's not my fault about the job or even about the baby! Why!?

She had finally drifted off to sleep, reconciled at last to being alone on this night of all nights to be lonely. She had thought once of calling the sheriff's office, just in case something had happened to Don, but she decided against it. Everyone in Evansboro knew who he was – if he had been in an accident or something, the deputy would have recognized him right off.

But the alternatives that she had to face were almost as bad in their fashion… he must be with another woman, some hussy from the bar. Maybe they were in bed together right now, maybe he was kissing her… or worse! Maybe… Oh, Don, come home, come home!

Suddenly she awoke with a start, her head spinning from the jarring awakening and the sound of noise in the living room. But the voice that soon followed it was familiar enough… it was Don and he was dead drunk!

"Goddamn it, what's that footstool doing there!" he cursed loudly. "Son of a bitchin' broad never cleans up!"

She stood silently in the doorway to the bedroom, waiting for him to finish venting his booze-soaked rage against the furniture and against her. He weaved even as he stood still and when he finally saw her he waved her away with a limp toss of his arm.

"Go back to bed… I don't want'a talk to you."

"Why, Don? Why do you blame me?" she asked softly, careful not to raise her voice for fear that she would set him off on another rampage. He had never hurt her, never even laid a hand on her in anger… but there was always the first time.

"Aw, shut your face and go back to sleep," he muttered, his voice suddenly losing much of its incoherent drunkenness. "I'm all right just having a little fun, that's all."

"With a woman?" she asked before she could stop herself.

"Yeah! With a woman!" he shouted, waving his arm in the air, his fist clenched threateningly. "With three of 'em! I was fuckin' all three of 'em at once. What's it to 'ya? And not one of them got pregnant! Not one!"

She crossed the room to his side and put her arm around his waist and kissed him lightly on the cheek. He jerked away at first but she knew from years of marriage that he didn't mean it… he could have stayed away if he hadn't wanted to come home. Nobody forced him to come back to her.

"Let's go to bed, honey… you've got to go to work in five hours," she whispered softly in his ear. He let himself be led blindly into the darkened bedroom and just fell across the bed diagonally. Diane undressed him and folded his pants and shirt and managed to straighten him out on the bed so that she had enough room to crawl under the covers.

"I have to know, Don," she said softly when they were both in bed. "I have to know… is it the baby? Or is it the job? Would it be all right, the baby, I mean, if you had your job?"

He lifted his head with the last fading strength left in his liquor racked body; his eyes were only slits and his voice was weak but clear. "Of course it's the job, honey… You know I wanted a baby as much as you. But now… Goddamn it, I can't feed both of you without a job. I can't even take care of us. It's a rotten fuckin' deal, Diane! A rotten… fuckin…" His voice trailed off and his head sank onto the pillow again; almost immediately his breath began to come in snorting short gasps and he was asleep. Or passed out.

That faint glimmer of an idea, that spark that glowed in the recesses of her troubled thoughts, was growing now into a full fledged plan. Or at least the beginnings of one… she not only knew what she had to do, but she also knew when and maybe even how.

She turned onto her side, away from her sleeping husband, as if the lurid wantonness of what she planned made her unfit to touch him, even in their marital bed. It was a desperate plan and one that sickened her just to think of it… but she knew now that there was no other way.

It was the worst night of the week for Red, what with half the local guys off at Reserve meeting and the rest at the Moose Lodge. There was so little going on in Evansboro this night every week that most of the bars even closed up for lack of business; so it was either stay home and watch TV with a cold six-pack standing by or face the long drive over to Kinston where there was at least the chance of a little excitement.

Red was sort of in-between… too old for the Reserves and too young, he thought, for any of those hale-and-hearty fraternal groups like the Moose and the Elks, the only two that functioned in Evansboro. Of course, for the monied set, there was always the Forest Acres Club. Red could have joined, for as a house-owner in Forest Acres, he was automatically eligible, but he knew better than to try hob-nobbing with the company wheels over there. He might have been the last word on the loading docks, but with those front-office guys, he knew where he stood-one peg above the rest of the flunkies like Don Willard.

He was sitting in his favorite chair, one of those vinyl recliners with the built-in vibrator, a gift from his wife Louise before she ran off with some bum from up north. It was the only reminder of her that was left in the house – everything else was gone. Pictures, their wedding silver, even the clothes of his that she picked out. And the only reason he kept the chair was practicality – he liked it and replacing it would cost a bundle.

Red leaned far out over the chair arm and opened a drawer in the front of the telephone table. His fingers found a worn metal frame, the glass gone years ago, and he took it out reverently, like it was a holy relic.

He looked down in his lap at the photograph, nearly ten years old now and never too clear even when it was new. It was a photograph taken at the state fair up in Raleigh, the only one that he had of Diane.

She hadn't wanted to pose for the fifty-cent photographer, but after Red ran into her on the midway, she finally agreed, and the expression was perfect – the slightly sullen, bored look of a beautiful woman in a teenager's body. A woman who could have gone on to almost anything, but stayed on in Evansboro with a husband that would never amount to much more than a day-laborer.

Damn, you were some good-looking girl, Diane, and you're even nicer looking as a woman! You could have had me or a dozen other men just for asking, but you chose that grease-monkey Don Willard. You fool, Diane, you silly cunt fool!

Like he always did, he felt a hard-on coming as he stared at the faded photograph, his eyes undressing her and, in his mind's, boundless imagination, his hands hotly coursing over the smooth voluptuous curves of her ripe young body. He remembered those beautiful firm breasts, their high soaring pride as she stripped that stupid night at Sal's, the night that he got drunk and lost his temper… the last night that Diane ever so much as spoke to him until five years into her marriage.