Bill's hat at Noir @ the Bar L.A. |
THE REPAIRMAN
by Jen Conley
On a November afternoon, when Erin Lewis
was on maternity leave, a repairman arrived on her doorstep holding a large
gray tool bag. She was expecting him because her husband had arranged for the
dishwasher to be fixed. His dirty white truck sat in her driveway under a heavy
gray sky.
“I’m
a little late,” the repairman explained and although the voice was perfectly
normal, something about it nagged at her.
“It’s
fine,” she said and stood back to let him in.
“Just
in there?” he asked, nodding towards the kitchen down the hall. When he passed
by, his scent made Erin shudder. She couldn’t place it, but somewhere deep
inside a dark bell went off.
In
the kitchen, the repairman placed his bag on the floor next to the dishwasher.
She asked if her husband had described the trouble.
“Yep.”
He swung around and underneath the roughened skin, the graying beard and
balding head, underneath the girth of his large body, she suddenly saw who he
really was: Bill Vinson. She was thirty-eight years old, lucky to have gone
through therapy and lucky to have pulled her wrecked mind together and lucky to
have met Kevin on a train to New York and set up this life: a nice marriage, a decent
colonial house to live in, and a healthy two-month-old daughter. I was
worried about you but you did good, her mother said often.
Now
this man, Bill Vinson, stood in her kitchen with his tool bag and his
repairman’s clothes, smelling slightly of stale alcohol. He must drink at night
before bed, Erin thought.
“Cooking
dinner?” he asked, eyeing the raw chicken next to the cutting board. An onion
and two carrots lay next to it.
“Yes,”
she said.
“Well
don’t let me get in your way. Just tell me to move. I’m easy as a summer
breeze.”
He
turned and bent down in front of the dishwasher. She had a sudden urge to kick
him. But then, from the sound of the baby
monitor, Erin heard her sleeping daughter move.
“Let’s
see…” he said.
Erin
walked to the far counter and withdrew the long knife from the holder. The
knives were new and sharp. She returned to the cutting board and began to chop the
carrots which had been peeled earlier. She went down hard, making little dents
in the wooden board. Her daughter moved again but Erin continued cutting.
“This
is an easy fix,” the man muttered.
Erin
picked up the onion, hacked off the sides, and ripped off the outer layer.
Within seconds, she was chopping it to pieces.
“Now
don’t cry,” she heard him say.
She
stopped cutting. He was standing behind her.
“Onions,”
he said.
Her
bones rattled.
“I
gotta get something in the truck.”
Erin
said nothing.
When
he was gone, she looked up and stared through the kitchen window. The backyard
trees rocked in a gentle wind. The memory returned: she was fourteen, locked in
a room with Bill Vinson, a twenty-year-old, still hanging out at high school
parties. She’d told her mother that she had gone to her friend Jamie’s house
and Jamie had told her parents they were going to the movies. There was liquor and
Bill was cute and he was talking to her about the band Molly Hatchet and soon
they were in a room, her shirt undone. Then it went bad. She was too small to
fight it off. She cried and asked him to stop but her head was spinning from
the booze. To make things even more horrid, when he was done, someone popped
out of the closet and snapped pictures of her on the bed. She never did figure
out who took the photos for the room was dark and the flash popped three times,
brightening the walls for each wretched moment, Bill and the mystery guy
snickering. They left her there in tears. She managed to get out and get home,
her mother finding out days later when Erin confessed she was worried about
pregnancy. It turned out she was lucky.
Now
Bill was whistling. Erin lifted the plate with the raw chicken and slid it onto
the wooden board. She began slashing through the meat, piece after piece. Her
daughter moved again and let out a brief whimper. Erin looked at Bill, crouched
like a gopher, fiddling with the dishwasher. She returned her focus to the chicken
and began to hack at the meat. Years of pain. Embarrassment. Kids had found
out, had seen the photos, and she’d been teased and labeled a whore. “It’s
nothing new,” her mother had said sadly when Erin cried to her. “It has always
happened to young women.” Life had been thrown off, as if she were kicked off
the paved road, thrown to the side. She suffered.
Now
she could slice his throat. Stand behind him and take her knife and cut
straight through. Blood would spurt against the open dishwasher, gush to the
tiled floor. His body would droop, slip down, die.
How
she had been shamed and had lived with it. He deserved this death, she thought,
standing behind him, the knife in her hand. He deserved it.
Bill
scratched the back of his head. Muttered to himself.
She
stepped closer. How she had wished for this moment. How she had sat with her
tears, her fury, all those years ago. I
want him dead. Dead.
She
moved closer. The hair thin on his skull.
Her
daughter moved.
Erin
licked her lips, gripped the knife’s handle.
There
was a little murmur from the monitor, a little cry.
Then
Bill Vinson slowly turned his head and saw Erin holding the knife. His big body
fell back against the counter and he sat cornered, his hands up. “Whoa,
whatever I did…”
His
eyes flickered and she knew he recognized her.
And
that was good enough.
She
put the knife down.
Her
daughter’s wail bellowed through the monitor.
BIO:
Jen Conley's stories have appeared in Thuglit, Needle, Beat to a Pulp, Shotgun Honey, Out of the Gutter, Grand Central Noir, Big Pulp, Literary Orphans, All Due Respect, Protectors, Plots With Guns, Yellow Mama, All Due Respect and others. An editor at Shotgun Honey, she’s been nominated for a Best of the Web Spinetingler Award and shortlisted for Best American Mystery Stories 2012. She lives with her son in Brick, New Jersey. Follow her on twitter @jenconley45
That's what I call self-control.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jen.
Great tension here, Jen. Sometimes the threat of violence is more effective than the act itself. Congrats on third place.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Col
Thank you!!!!!
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