Things went on as they had been going with Phil and Bunny, as though the subplot had not been introduced to the everyday drama of sneaking around to be with each other. She did not mention murder at their next tryst, but thought instead to treat him to his favorite sexual favor. “I want more than this,” she said to him as he left the apartment. Over the next few weeks, she repeated the performance, always with the same bittersweet good-bye at the door. Only gradually did she let him know how disappointed she was in his lack of will, canceling dates at the last minute or leaving earlier than planned or not being so compliant. But her strategies failed to work, for he took her actions as a sign of diminishing interest on her part, and she found the plot drifting away. It took an accident, an unexpected bit of bad luck, to lead him to change his mind.
Going to the icebox for some ice for Jerry’s nightly Cuba libre, she pulled too hard on the handle of the stuck door, which then flew open and smacked her squarely in the face, blackening her eye and splitting her lower lip. The poor dumb thing took care of her as best he could, a steak for the contusion and a cold compress for her mouth, and she almost felt a twinge of affection for the mug, but Jerry fell asleep on the sofa watching Playhouse 90, so she stole away to the telephone. “He suspects something, Phil. He hit me again.” On the other end of the line, he groaned. She managed to cry a little bit, too, and have him promise to come over on Friday morning.
The tenderness of his touch surprised her, as he ran his fingertips over the yellow and plum circle around her eye. Phil kissed her gently and withdrew when she winced and held her hand to the sore spot. Instead of taking her to bed, he made a pot of coffee, cracked a soft-boiled egg on toast cut into bite-sized pieces. Like a pair of newlyweds, they sat across the breakfast table and stared at each other. Bunny told her story of how Jerry had accused her of stepping out with Woody Pfahl, a fella who lived down in 2A, and when she asserted her innocence, her husband had struck her twice with the back of his hand. “He knocked me to the floor with the second one,” she said. “And called me a slut and a whore and said that he’d kill me if he ever so much as caught me talking to him.”
“Who is this Woody Pfahl?”
“Just some kid. A folksinger or a beatnik or something. You know the type.” She hid her face behind her hands. “You must think I’m hideous.”
He grabbed her by the wrists and wrestled her hands away from her face. “I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll kill the bastard. We’ll make it look like an accident or someone else did it. Maybe that Woody Pfahl.”
Her lip began to bleed again when she cracked a smile. “You will?”
“I could strangle him right now.”
“And then we can take care of Claire, and be together.”
Tamping a cigarette on the edge of the laminated tabletop, he seemed to be considering the proposition beat by beat. “Right. Jerry first, and then we just have to wait till it all blows over.”
“A little while, and then you leave her.”
There was a pause, a beat too long. “Sure,” he said.
Crimes of passion are best done in haste, while the heat of the moment bubbles in the blood. Too much planning for the perfect crime often leads to overanalysis and weakens the nerve necessary to make the kill. Instead, they dithered. For months, they went over possible scenarios of how Phil might stage an accident. A push from the subway platform into an oncoming train was dismissed over potential witnesses. In April, they thought of poison and nooses, razors and piano wire, a fall from a tall building, a safe falling on him from a tall building. By May, they were discussing the merits and drawbacks of arson, leaving the gas oven on all night, an electric hair curler dropped into the bathtub, and an overdose of sleeping pills. They debated smothering and strangling, knives and ice picks. On Memorial Day, they nearly agreed upon a blow to the head with a blunt object. Whenever she brought up the subject of divorce, he changed the subject back to murder. As the weather improved and all through springtime, all they talked about was murder, murder, murder.
A rumba came over the radio, and the girls twirled their highballs, twisted their hips, and tapped their toes. The baby shook his rattle like a maraca.
It took another accident, another random bit of cosmic mashup, to move from the discussion stage to the execution of the plan. Quite simply, Phil met Woody Pfahl. Standing outside of Bunny’s apartment building one morning, wondering whether to take the train uptown or hail a cab or just walk the dozen or so blocks to his office. He’d lit another cigarette and was trying to clear Bunny from his mind, having just left her bed after a particularly athletic romp. Funny how the talk of homicide really revved her motor. Up the block comes this kid, no more than twenty he’d guess, dark shades, wispy beginnings of a goatee, sucking on a Pall Mall like it was an all-day lollipop. The kid seemed lost in thought because he crashed right into Phil despite the lack of foot traffic at that hour.
“Hey man,” the kid said, “why don’t you watch where you’re going?”
Phil brushed the ash from his sportscoat. “You were barreling down the sidewalk like a bull. I was just standing here minding my own business.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t realize it was you.”
With one hand on the beatnik’s chest, he stopped the boy. “What do you mean by that? Do we know each other?”
“Look, man, I don’t want no trouble. You’re just the cat comes sniffing round here every once in a while.”