danger. I was part of a family, a pack if you counted the Pugs. I carried my martini out to the backyard under the pretext of relaxing, but actually to assess the perimeter of our property in case of attack. There were no houses in back of ours except for in the far distance, where the ground rose up to the mountain. On either side we were separated from the neighbors by five-foot cinder-block walls. The neighbors to the right were snowbirds who wouldn’t be returning until the weather cooled. Someone could easily hop over that wall. Or simply unlatch the gate leading to our backyard, though the rusty latch made so much racket the Pugs would surely be alerted. They had followed me out and were sniffing for lizards by the bougainvillea. I should have a shepherd, I thought, or at least a hound. These guys put together wouldn’t make one decent dog.
I walked out a bit to the life-size statue of Saint Francis and wondered whether Jane bought it for Carlo before or after she bought the Pugs. By that time the drink settled me some and I was able to go back over my experience of the afternoon more calmly than before, like watching someone else’s movie frame by frame. Old women. Condom on a string. Blood in the van. Broken bones. Other bodies. Photo of me. News clip on a DVD. Barbie lunch box.
Nothing.
Dinnertime came and there we were, just like always, cozily munching on chicken curry sandwiches that Carlo, trying to be subtle in his hovering, fixed for us. The Pugs sat at attention waiting for the empty dishes to be lowered at the end of the meal so they could clean up the chicken residue.
There was nothing on the news that night about a body being discovered outside the city, no ticker headline running across the bottom of the television that read Former FBI Agent Sought in Tucson Slaying. I had mixed emotions. If the body was found it might be identified. And knowing who it was would lead me closer to finding out who sent him. On the other hand, with every twenty-four hours that passed, decomposition and insect activity would destroy more and more evidence of my involvement.
Either way the time dragged. In the evening the phone in the kitchen rang twice, once from a telemarketer offering us reduced rates for credit card transfers, and once from Carlo’s sister in Ann Arbor. Each time I was certain it was Max coming to get me after discovering the body. After that I unplugged the phone and turned off my cell so I could relax a little.
At bedtime, still with the events of the day replaying in my head, I kissed Carlo to reassure myself, though I noticed that our glances slid by each other in a way they never had before, as if I was afraid my eyes would reflect what I had seen that day and he sensed my secrecy. Just my guilty conscience working my imagination, I’m sure, but this is what it would have been like at the best of times, married in the Bureau: half-truths and sliding eyes. As it was, despite all my precautions, I couldn’t keep from fearing that it was only a matter of time until Carlo would discover the woman I really was and look at me the way Paul had.
Carlo turned the ceiling fan on and the light off, and in the dark my thoughts shifted. If I hadn’t tried to cover up the incident in the wash, if I had told Max about what I did, he would have found the envelope with the photos that showed I was a target. Then I would have had him on my side. If that were the case, I would have given anything to repeat the last ten hours, given anything but Carlo, that is.
Long after his breathing had settled into that quiet rhythm that told me he was asleep, I reached over and lightly brushed his hand through the sheet, my touch lingering on his man-size knuckles. When that didn’t wake him I folded slowly, one millimeter at a time, my fingers around his thumb, trying not to imagine it disappearing, my ending up with nothing but a wad of bedsheet in my grip.
What do they call this, obsessing? I was obsessing.
I finally fell asleep to the sound of a pack of coyotes somewhere in the arroyos beyond our property. It was a chorus of