The Secret Lives of Married Women
“A fine, passionately wrought novel from a writer whose prose I’ve long admired. Wald’s vision of the world has much to teach us about the brevity of desire and the longevity of pain.”
—Junot Diaz
“Psychologically complex... Wald clearly knows her varied characters, whom she portrays in a sympathetic and unsparing light.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Remarkable and fascinating... Wald writes with a simplicity and frankness that are unusual but perfectly suited to her subject.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“Elissa Wald’s style is both delicate and tough, her images haunting...I read it in one sitting, and I hope Wald receives the attention that she deserves for producing such a lovely and challenging work.”
—
Pat Califia
“Elissa Wald is a brave, disturbing new voice in American fiction. She works all the margins of the wild side and brings us news from those frontiers that very few writers have dared approach.”
—
Pat Conroy
I had time to take in every detail of the room—the black-and-white photo of the New York City skyline above the headboard, the heavy mauve curtains and the sheer white scrim behind them, the sparkling view through the window, the wide expanse of the bed.
I had time to take in every detail of him. He was handsome. His tie was loosened. His shoes were shined.
By the time he put his papers aside, my scant black panties were soaked through and there was an ache between my legs.
Finally he stood and slowly approached me until we were eye to eye. He had a few inches on me but not many. Looking straight into my gaze, he took off his belt and held it across my mouth.
“Kiss it,” he said.
I kissed it.
“Kiss it like you’d like to kiss me,” he said. “Kiss it like you love it.”
My mouth opened and I tongued the leather, nipped at it like a kitten.
He took it away and cracked it against the wall next to my head. I whimpered in real fear. Then he wrapped it around my neck, sliding the leather end through the buckle so that it was at once a collar and a leash.
“Down on all fours,” he said...
FIFTY-TO-ONE
by Charles Ardai
KILLING CASTRO
by Lawrence Block
THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER
by Roger Zelazny
THE CUTIE
by Donald E. Westlake
HOUSE DICK
by E. Howard Hunt
CASINO MOON
by Peter Blauner
FAKE I.D.
by Jason Starr
PASSPORT TO PERIL
by Robert B. Parker
STOP THIS MAN!
by Peter Rabe
LOSERS LIVE LONGER
by Russell Atwood
HONEY IN HIS MOUTH
by Lester Dent
QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE
by Max Allan Collins
THE CORPSE WORE PASTIES
by Jonny Porkpie
THE VALLEY OF FEAR
by A.C. Doyle
MEMORY
by Donald E. Westlake
NOBODY’S ANGEL
by Jack Clark
MURDER IS MY BUSINESS
by Brett Halliday
GETTING OFF
by Lawrence Block
QUARRY’S EX
by Max Allan Collins
THE CONSUMMATA
by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
CHOKE HOLD
by Christa Faust
THE COMEDY IS FINISHED
by Donald E. Westlake
BLOOD ON THE MINK
by Robert Silverberg
FALSE NEGATIVE
by Joseph Koenig
THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH
by Ariel S. Winter
THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS
by James M. Cain
SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT
by Max Allan Collins
WEB OF THE CITY
by Harlan Ellison
JOYLAND
by Stephen King
SECRET LIVES
of
MARRIED WOMEN
by
Elissa Wald
A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK
(HCC-113)
First Hard Case Crime edition: October 2013
Published by
Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street
London SE1 0UP
in collaboration with Winterfall LLC
Copyright © 2013 by Elissa Wald
Excerpts from
Different Hours
by Stephen Dunn, copyright © 2000, used by permission of the author
Cover painting copyright © 2013 by Glen Orbik
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Print edition ISBN 978-1-78116-262-0
E-book ISBN 978-1-78116-263-7
Design direction by Max Phillips
Typeset by Swordsmith Productions
The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.
Printed in the United States of America
Visit us on the web at
www.HardCaseCrime.com
For Nikolai and David
Part One: The Man Under the House
PART ONE
The Man Under the House
1
Before that summer,
the summer of fear
—
It makes me cringe to know that I sound like a tabloid wife. I can’t talk about what happened, even to myself, in a way that seems real. The words that come to me sound like something I’ve read in line at the supermarket.
Before the
summer of the stalker,
the summer
I looked at my husband and saw a stranger,
I was drinking in a bar with Rae and having a conversation about intimacy. It was a conversation I’d had many times before, with any number of thirty-something women who were worried about their chances of marrying in time to have children. Rae was thirty-six, the same age as me. She was our realtor, and it seemed she was also becoming a friend.
I had married just two years before, and now had a one-year-old daughter. (I was also a few weeks into my second pregnancy, but didn’t know it yet.) As a result, my part in this time-worn dialogue had shifted from sharing the despair to dispensing counsel. Usually these women had spent their time—as I had, myself, until very recently—investing in a series of untenable characters, men whose inability to commit was as clear as the color of their eyes.
“I do want a family. I do,” Rae was telling me. “And I know I’ve got to get on it soon. But I don’t know if it would be fair to date right now because the truth is I’m still getting over someone else.”
“Oh,” I said. “So—you just ended a relationship?”
“If you can call it that.”
“Let me guess: married man?”
“Worse than that. Even worse.”
Hearing this, I couldn’t help leaning in.
“Okay, how should I put this...let’s call it a ten-year tryst. With a stone-cold thug. The guy’s a gang leader and a dealer, he’s done all kinds of time. And no, we didn’t have an official relationship. We had nothing but insane, unbelievable sex. Trouble is, it was so good with him that no one else does it for me.” Rae shot me a sidelong glance. “This is probably more than you wanted to know.”
“Not to worry,” I told her. “I want to know everything.” This, at least, was the truth. And then I said my usual lines.
I know just what you’re doing, because I spent almost two decades doing pretty much the same thing. If a man was married, or engaged, or living on another continent, or certifiably insane, or gay, or a priest, or a prison inmate serving a life sentence, I was all over him.
A few of these categories were invented for emphasis, but not many.
On the other hand, if a man was single, appropriate, and well-intentioned, I couldn’t run away fast enough. And when my relationships never seemed to work out, I decided I wasn’t lucky in love. It took me years to understand that I was afraid of commitment myself, that the suffering was essentially self-inflicted. But even once I could see what I was doing, it took many more years to be able to change. Because that’s what I was used to; that’s where I was comfortable. It may have been bleak and lonely, but in some sense it was safe.
And Rae asked the usual question in response. “So how did you cross the road?” she wanted to know. “How did you get to the other side?” And here I had another practiced answer.
You know, I don’t think it’s quite like that...at least for me, it’s more of an ongoing process, and to be honest, I still struggle with it. But I think you have to reach the point where you want it more than you don’t want it. Where you’re ready
— really
ready
—
to let it into your life. I’ve come to believe that intimacy is available to anyone who’s truly ready to give and receive it.
That conversation took place in the early spring.
A couple of months later, I was standing in front of our new home: a weathered split-level with cedar siding and asphalt roof shingles, set back from a somewhat busy street. This was in Vancouver, in Washington State, just a few miles north of Portland, Oregon. We would be moving in the next day.
I was at the edge of the driveway, scanning the street, when a man hailed me from the house under construction next door. A workman, well over six feet tall and broad-shouldered, with reddish-blond hair, a goatee, dusty clothes and work boots.
“Hey, are you moving in here? It’s a great house. I’m Jack,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Walt’s cousin.” Walt was our house’s former owner.
I was waiting for a house painter who was late. The night before, my husband had given him painstaking directions over the phone. Afterward he said the man sounded slow, or maybe drunk. I wasn’t confident that he would show up.
“Do you know any painters?” I asked after shaking his hand.
“I’m a painter,” he said. “What do you need painted?”
“Just one small room,” I told him. “But it has to be today. I’d like it to air out overnight so my little girl won’t be breathing in any paint fumes.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “Tell you what. Why don’t I do it on my lunch break?”
“It’ll take longer than a lunch break.”
“Well, I can finish it tonight if need be.”
“Really? Don’t you want to see the room first?”
No need, he told me. He knew the room. (The little one across from the master bedroom, yes? Yes.) He knew the house, he said, like it was his own. He’d do it for a hundred bucks.
This was an appealing offer, as the first painter had wanted one fifty. Just as I began to hope our original man wouldn’t show up, his battered blue van pulled to the curb across the street.