know exactly which perfume to buy. He remembered the tender way she’d dabbed a little behind each ear and on her wrists when he’d taken her out on New Year’s Eve, and how pretty she’d looked in the black cocktail dress she was wearing. In the restaurant, Kevin had noticed the way other men, even those with dates, had glanced in her direction as she passed by them on the way to the table. Afterward, when they’d returned home, they made love as the New Year rolled in.
The dress was still there, hanging in the same place, bringing back those memories. A week ago, he remembered removing it from the hanger and holding it as he’d sat on the edge of the bed and cried.
Outside, he could hear the steady sound of crickets but it did nothing to soothe him. Though it was supposed to have been a relaxing day, he was tired. He hadn’t wanted to go to the barbecue, hadn’t wanted to answer questions about Erin, hadn’t wanted to lie. Not because lying bothered him, but because it was hard to keep up the pretense that Erin hadn’t left him. He’d invented a story and had been sticking to it for months: that Erin called every night, that she’d been home the last few days but had gone back to New Hampshire, that the friend was undergoing chemotherapy and needed Erin’s help. He knew he couldn’t keep that up forever, that soon the helping-a-friend excuse would begin to sound hollow and people would begin to wonder why they never saw Erin in church or at the store or even around the neighborhood or how long she would continue to help her friend. They’d talk about him behind his back and say things like, Erin must have left him, and I guess their marriage wasn’t as perfect as I thought it was. The thought made his stomach clench, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten.
There wasn’t much in the refrigerator. Erin always had turkey and ham and Dijon mustard and fresh rye bread from the bakery, but his only choice now was whether to reheat the Mongolian beef he’d picked up from the Chinese restaurant a couple of days earlier. On the bottom shelf, he saw food stains and he felt like crying again, because it made him think about Erin’s screams and the way her head had sounded when it had hit the edge of the table after he’d thrown her across the kitchen. He’d been slapping and kicking her because there were food stains in the refrigerator and he wondered now why he’d become so angry about such a little thing.
Kevin went to the bed and lay down. Next thing he knew, it was midnight, and the neighborhood outside his window was still. Across the street, he saw a light on in the Feldmans’ house. He didn’t like the Feldmans. Unlike the other neighbors, Larry Feldman never waved at him if both of them happened to be in their yards, and if his wife, Gladys, happened to see him, she’d turn away and head back into the house. They were in their sixties, the kind of people who rushed outside to scold a kid who happened to walk across their grass to retrieve a Frisbee or baseball. And even though they were Jewish, they decorated their house with Christmas lights in addition to the menorah they put in the window at the holidays. They confounded him and he didn’t think they were good neighbors.
He went back to bed but couldn’t fall asleep. In the morning, with sunlight streaming in, he knew that nothing had changed for anyone else. Only his life was different. His brother, Michael, and his wife, Nadine, would be getting the kids ready for school before heading out to their jobs at Boston College, and his mom and dad were probably reading the Globe as they had their morning coffee. Crimes had been committed, and witnesses would be in the precinct. Coffey and Ramirez would be gossiping about him.
He showered and had vodka and toast for breakfast. At the precinct, he was called out to investigate a murder. A woman in her twenties, most likely a prostitute, had been found stabbed to death, her body tossed in a Dumpster. He spent the morning talking to bystanders while the evidence was collected. When he finished with the interviews, he went to the precinct to start the report while the information was fresh in his mind. He