Twin Cities Noir полностью

Becky opened the door to find a brown paper bag with deep red tomatoes and green and purple basil spilling over the top. Wasps buzzed around the bag. She glanced next door, but her neighbor didn’t seem to be home—no sounds came from his house or yard. Hank was meeting his buddies after work, so he wouldn’t be home until late. Hugging the bag to her chest, she carried it into the kitchen, set it down on the table, and flicked away the remaining wasps before pulling out the contents one by one, arranging them on the scarred Formica. A perfect head of romaine lettuce wrapped in paper towels. Cucumber and prickly zucchini. An old plastic yogurt container full of raspberries, a second one with gooseberries. Huge sweet bell peppers in green, red, and gold. At the very bottom, a small watermelon. After emptying the bag, she shook it upside down hoping to find a note from him, something like, Hope you enjoy the veggies, or, Compliments of my garden. But there was no message. She tried not to feel disappointed, but it would have been nice to find out was his name was.

The watermelon looked so good. Before she knew it, she had the big kitchen knife in her hand. She drove the blade through the rind and into the flesh until red juice ran over the kitchen table. After cutting herself a piece, she let the juice drip down her chin. It had been so long since she’d had really good fresh fruit. What was she going to tell Hank when he saw this stuff and asked her where it came from? She could already hear his voice, as cutting and sarcastic as her father’s. “So did you hitchhike to the farmer’s market? Or did the freak next door give them to you?”

On Sunday, Hank had caught her staring through the fence into the neighbor’s garden—the neighbor hadn’t even been home—but Hank had taken her by the shoulders. “Trying to make me jealous?”

She laughed stupidly, like someone on TV. Har, har, har. Then he hit with his closed hand, his fist. Not a slap that time. It hadn’t left an awful bruise or anything that makeup couldn’t hide, but the skin around her cheekbone was still tender.

When do you turn into a battered woman? she asked herself, holding the container of raspberries and staring into that deep redness. How bad did it have to get, how much harder would he have to hit her, before it was real?

What would she do with the fruit and vegetables? Eat what she could now and throw the rest away? But they were so beautiful, so perfect. The neighbor had given them to her. He wanted her to have them and she was keeping them. She had to rock herself and laugh at the thought of something that was hers, that she wouldn’t surrender.

Hours later, her voice dragged Neil out of a deep sleep.

“I’m warning you, Hank! If you ever do that again!”

“You’re warning me, huh? Well, bitch, what are you gonna do about it? Just what are you gonna do?”

The hands of Neil’s alarm clock hung suspended, green phosphorescence in the dark, spelling out the time—3:00 a.m.

“Damn it, Hank! I’m warning you…”

Slumped on the bed, Becky saw and tried not to see the ruined room, walls and ugly beige carpet smeared with the remains of the fruit and vegetables. What was worse was the pulp smashed in her hair and down the front of her clothes. Hank had locked himself in the bathroom and made no sign of coming out. Had he passed out in there? It was nearly 4:00 a.m. She had to get ready for work. Scooping the raspberry pulp out of her hair, she tried to hold it, then licked it off her fingers. In spite of everything, it still tasted nice, like the kind of raspberry purée she imagined they would serve in fancy restaurants.

One look at the clock—4:15—told her that she couldn’t waste any more time. She would have to wash her hair in the kitchen sink and let it dry on the bus ride to work. Dragging herself to the dresser to get some fresh underwear, she instead found herself opening the top drawer where the gun was nestled among Hank’s coiled belts. She picked it up, felt the smooth metal, its weight in her hands.

That evening there was no way to shut out the flute music. It was too hot to close the windows. The TV had been wrecked in the fight the night before. Hank stuck his head in his Discman and cracked open a beer. He acted as if the fight were a blank in his memory.

Becky didn’t dare go near the fence but just sat down on the back steps, closed her eyes, and listened. Neil, she thought. When she had come home, she found a letter addressed to him that had landed in her mailbox by mistake— from some woman in Bainbridge Island, Washington State named Gina Martinelli. Before Hank arrived back, she had slipped it into the neighbor’s mailbox.