To Die For (20 page)

But the other way of looking at it that Suzanne told me is everything that happens is just meant to happen. Like she was just meant to get the job at WGSL where we’d get to be friends. And then Jimmy was just meant to fall in love with her. She said that kind of thing was always happening to her. Like one time she went to this Aerosmith concert and Steven Tyler looked right at her, even though she wasn’t sitting in the front row or anything. And that was just when he started playing her all-time favorite song, “Dream On.” I mean, you could say it was just a coincidence, but you’ve got to wonder.

That night at the mall together was weird naturally. I mean, we knew what Jimmy and Russell were doing of course. She’d be taking a pair of pants down off the rack and holding them up to see what they’d look like with her vest, and I’d be thinking, This could be the very second it’s happening. This could be his last moment on earth.

We went into Essence and tried on perfumes. Just for fun. We weren’t actually buying any. We just kept squirting each other, like we were little kids. I mean, I had one smell on my wrist and one on my elbow and one behind my ear. You got so you couldn’t tell them apart. It must’ve been all those perfumes at once, all mixed together that did it, because all of a sudden I started feeling like I was going to throw up. I told Suzanne I had to go to the ladies’ room. I just stood over the toilet bowl for the longest time, but nothing happened. So then we went to get a milkshake, to calm me down.

We were sitting there drinking our shakes. And then I just felt this crazy feeling like, We’ve got to stop it right now. We’ve got to call them up or something, or borrow a car. One way or another, we just had to get back to Suzanne’s house before it was too late. I think it was on account of I was watching this little boy and his mom having an ice cream cone together. I started to think that Larry used to be a little boy like that, and he had a mother someplace that probably loved him a lot. I thought about Patrick Swayze getting shot in
Ghost
, and how I bawled my head off. And for a second there I got to wondering if Larry really did hit Suzanne or if that was just something she said to make me feel better about the whole thing. He always looked like kind of an easygoing guy to me. I thought about their wedding picture that I used to see on Suzanne’s desk at school and how proud and happy he looked that day, with his hand stroking her cheek like he could hardly believe she was real.

I told Suzanne I thought we’d made a big mistake and we had to do something. She said, “Don’t worry, everything will be OK, you’ll see. It’s too late by now anyways.”

“We could try,” I said, and then I started bawling.

“Shut up,” she said. It surprised me, her saying that. So I started crying even harder than ever. She said she was sorry, but I just had to understand that we were doing the only thing we could, and we couldn’t change now. “It’s not even so important what you do in life, Liddy,” she said to me. “The important thing is following through with what you started. Sticking by your commitment.”

Then we went into Victoria’s Secret. She loved that place, but to tell you the truth I was always kind of embarrassed going in there, and especially that day. Looking at bras and panties, knowing what was going on back at the condo. It had me weirded out. “When you wear really beautiful, good-quality lingerie,” she told me, “even though nobody can see it, you just get this feeling of being beautiful, and it shows in how you act.” She said the first time she ever goes for a tryout for some TV job, she’s coming to Victoria’s Secret first to buy a matching bra and panties set. Real silk.

Then the mall was closing, so we went out to the parking lot. I’ve got this sick feeling, not from the shake, but she’s acting like this was just another shopping trip, no big deal. She says it’s her broadcasting training that does it. She knows how to stay cool under pressure.

We get to the car. I don’t know what I expected to see, blood spattered all over the seat maybe. But everything’s just the same. Just like when we pulled in the parking lot. Then she spots the note Jimmy and Russell left on the dashboard. About how they didn’t do it after all.

I’m so relieved I just about wet my pants. I start giggling all over the place. I just laugh and laugh.

Suzanne, she just buckles her seat belt and turns on the tape player. “We’ll try again in a couple of weeks,” she says. Then she says how she’s got to get this whole mess over with before summer vacation. So she’ll have a chance to go down to Florida. And take Jimmy and me with her.

That made it easier to think about what we were doing. With Larry and all, I mean. Just knowing I’d get to Orlando. I always dreamed I’d get there someday.

W
E WERE GOING TO
try again that Thursday night. She had a job interview in the city. She told us the husband would be working over at the restaurant till eight-thirty, nine o’clock. She got all signed up to send the dog to a kennel overnight to have his hair brushed and shit. Lydia gets the gun again. Me and Jimmy, we take out them black suits and gloves. It’s like what they say, dèjá vu all over again.

And this time everything goes smooth. Door’s open. We disconnect the TV and VCR, scatter her jewelry around a little. Open some drawers. Then alls we got to do is stand there waiting for the sound of him pulling his truck in the driveway. After a while we hear it.

You can hear Jimmy breathing deep then and shaking. Me, I could be squirrel hunting. I’m just thinking about the thousand dollars. And how once she’s got her insurance money I’m going to tell her I want five. Which is still a bargain.

Door opens. He sets down his briefcase. “Honey?” he says. Must’ve forgot she was going to be at the meeting. He’s just reaching for the light switch when I grab him around the neck.

“What the hell?” he says. “What—”

“Don’t move,” I say.

“What do you want?” he says. “Why don’t you just take what you want and get out of here?”

This is already more chatter than I was planning on. The guy should of been history by now. Only Jimmy’s froze. He’s just standing there with the gun. Not moving.

“Jimmy,” I say. “Now.” He’s still just standing there.

“Wait—” says the guy. You can tell now he’s had enough time he’s beginning to figure out this ain’t no ordinary burglary. I mean he was scared the minute I grabbed him, but now he’s about to shit in his pants. He’s like some fish flopping around on the pier that’s going to stop breathing in about ten seconds if he don’t get back in the water and he knows it too. He’s desperate. Gives me his gold chain. His watch. But when I tell him to take off his ring he says no. “I can’t do that, man,” he says. “My wife would kill me.” Poor dumb asshole, I’m thinking. If he only knew.

Up to now the guy doesn’t see Jimmy’s face on account of how I’ve got him by the neck. But now he kind of jerks around to where he’s looking right at Jimmy. Which if he ever had a chance of getting off is like, curtains for him. I get the feeling he knows that now too. He’s not even fighting me so much anymore. He’s gone limp all of a sudden. That’s when he turns to me and says, “You know my wife?”

Bam bam. Jimmy does his thing. Hubby there, he flops down on the rug. So much for not getting no blood on her fucking carpet.

We’re out of there.

T
HE DAY THEY RESCHEDULED
, Suzanne was going to be out of town, auditioning for this arts and entertainment job at a TV station in the city. They picked that night because they knew Larry’d be working at the restaurant till eight-thirty, nine o’clock. Which gave the boys enough time to get their stuff together, pick up the gun over at my house, drive over to the condo, and get everything set up inside before he got back.

Suzanne was cool as a cucumber that day. She stopped by school just when they were letting us out, to show me the outfit she was wearing to her audition. It was a pantsuit, peach colored. She had this matching peach-colored bag, and mauve shoes, mauve scarf, mauve and peach earrings. I said, “Aren’t you a nervous wreck?”

“Why should I be?” she said. “I always feel relaxed on camera. All I have to do is be myself.”

“I mean about tonight,” I said. “You know. The job. At the condo.”

“Oh that,” she says. “Why should I be? It’s not my problem. Or yours either.”

“I know,” I said. “But I can’t help it. I can’t help thinking about it, wondering if we’re doing the right thing.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” she says. “We’ve talked this thing to death. Who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong? Am I God or something? How are we supposed to know anything for sure? All I know is, you can talk a thing to death. You can go back and forth forever: Should I? Shouldn’t I? And then you know what happens? You’ve wasted your whole time talking, and never accomplished anything. Sometimes a person just has to take action.”

“I know,” I said. But at night when I lay in my bed, I keep seeing his face. I keep remembering that time he dressed up as Cupid, in this big diaper, for Valentine’s Day, and came by her office at the TV station with a giant bunch of balloons. I keep thinking about the way he set the timer on their VCR so even if he wasn’t home he’d always get to look at her weather reports. And then I looked in the car, and there was this present he gave her one time, of these two little dolls, a boy and a girl, with wobbly heads on a spring. He put them in the back window of her car so when you drove along, they kissed.

“I keep asking myself if maybe the two of you should just go to a marriage counselor,” I said. “Maybe have a trial separation.”

“I explained that already,” she said. She was starting to sound mad at me, which was the worst. I guess I started to cry.

So she slapped me. On the cheek. Not hard, just enough to kind of shock me. I mean sometimes it’s the best thing a person can do for another person if they’re falling apart, knock some sense in them. “Get a grip!” she says to me. “If you keep this up you’ll ruin everything.”

“Right,” I said. That got me calmed down. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I wish I could be like you.”

“It’s probably just that time of the month,” she said. And as a matter of fact, it was. That hadn’t even occurred to me.

“Look,” she said. “Here’s twenty dollars. Go to the mall, get yourself a cute top. Treat yourself to a frozen yogurt—but make it the low-cal kind, OK? Then go home, tuck yourself in bed early. Everything will look different in the morning. It’s the waiting that’s hardest. Remember how it used to be, when you were a little kid, Christmas Eve? Listening for the sleigh bells and stuff?”

I didn’t tell her it wasn’t exactly like that at our house. “You shouldn’t be giving me this money,” I said.

“Forget it,” she said. “I want to.”

So that’s what I did. Went to Casual Corner, found this Bart Simpson Underachiever shirt, extra large for the baggy look. Got a piña colada frozen yogurt sundae. Went home, watched “MacGyver.” My mom had been giving me a real hard time lately, but for some reason that night she lay off me. At nine o’clock, when I told her I was going to bed, she turned off the TV herself, without even staying up for “Love Connection.” “I guess I’ll call it a night myself,” she said.

So then I just lay in my bed, wondering what was happening, over on Butternut Drive. Think about kittens, I’d tell my brain. Pretend you’re on a date with Bon Jovi. Imagine you could eat all the candy in the world, and none of it had any calories. But none of my usual stuff worked. I kept ending up with this same picture of Larry, opening the door to the condo, and Jimmy standing there, waiting for him, with my uncle’s gun.

When I woke up next morning, my nightgown was covered with blood. There was even blood on my hands, on my face, don’t ask me how. I remembered what happened the night before and I let out this scream. Then I realized, all that happened was I forgot to put in a fresh Tampax before I went to sleep. I was in the bathroom, washing myself off, when I heard the news on the radio. Larry was dead.

I
TRY NOT TO THINK
about stuff that much. It’s like what happens if a guy’s taking a foul shot in a basketball game and just before he shoots someone on the bleachers yells, “Miss it, dipshit.” Or you’re fucking and you’re just about to come and all of a sudden you picture your mother standing there or a priest or something. Messes up your mind. You try to keep your brain blank.

Which is what I was trying to do the night we did the job. Over at her condo there. Putting on those black pants, sticking the gloves in my pocket. Heading out the highway with Russell—the whole time I was just trying to not think about nothing. It’s like I’m playing Nintendo. I just concentrate on getting Super Mario where I want him on the screen without him getting zapped. I don’t look around the room or listen to the stuff people are saying or nothing. It’s like the whole world is on that screen. Those are the times you get to the highest level.

It was working too. Parking the car. Opening her back door. Sneaking in the kitchen, stepping past that exercise bike, it’s like I’m Super Mario just clipping across the screen. Disconnect speakers, Blip. Throw the jewelry on the rug. Blip. Empty drawers. Blip.

Then we’re just standing there waiting for him. It’s dark. And you don’t hear a sound except the TV set of the people next door.

And I think maybe it’s because I don’t have nothing to be doing no more, my brain starts to do tricks on me. I see the face of Freddy Kreuger in the shadows, holding one of them knives like you use for shucking clams. I see this teacher I had in third grade that liked me, don’t ask me why. Then I see one of them sea gulls we nailed down at the beach earlier that day, with his beak open and his eyes staring and a little trickle of blood seeping onto his feathers.

I try to block it out. I try to think up different pictures to put in instead. Like this girl from the December
Penthouse
. She didn’t have the biggest tits but she had this look on her face like she just said something to you, and it was something nice. She’s got one hand behind her head like they do. But the other hand’s touching herself down below, you know. And there’s this little piece of hair kind of curled around her finger, like it just happened by accident. I tried to picture my hand was right there, tangled up in her hair. Instead of holding on to the fucking gun.