Worse Than Murder

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It was a Thursday night and I sat in the big chair by the radio with my feet on the hassock, the radio turned up so loud that it had a brazen metallic quality like a public-address system at a carnival. Burns and Allen and Eddie Cantor — they all screamed at me trying to make me laugh, trying to drive the fear and the hurt out of the small apartment. I kept the bottle of rye by the chair and drank from the bottle — gasping swallows that made my stomach turn and did nothing to slow the merry-go-round in my head. But instead of gay wooden horses on that merry-go-round, I kept thinking of the three of us — Todd Jain, which is myself, Billie, my wife — and the body of the stranger in the kitchen.

Maybe I should have known more about Billie. I came home from the wars and found her and decided in the space of a breath that she was what I wanted.

She had been singing in Laurie’s Old Cuba, and not singing very well — but good enough for me. Medium blonde, medium height, medium blue eyes — and a special sense of laughter. I got her to sit at my table, and right then we both knew how it was with us.

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