The Killing Hour

The duffel bag of cold logs is still on the floor of my car and the handcuffs on the seat. I hide the cuffs in the glovebox. Being in my Honda mingling with other traffic is surreal. I look at drivers and pedestrians and I wonder what they think of me. Can they see who I am? Can they see what I’ve become? What I’m now fighting for? Then those thoughts are reversed as I look at their faces. Who are these people? I don’t know any of them. I don’t know what they’re capable of. Murder? Sure, statistically some of them have to be capable of that. But how do you know which ones?

The trip to the bank takes me past flooded gardens and lawns with new swimming pools that suggest the sun hasn’t been out all day. The streets are bone dry and make for safe driving. There’s no consensus about what to wear – some people are out in shorts and T-shirts, others in raincoats carrying umbrellas. I figure they’re all right. I park next to a beaten-up Holden with half of its hubcaps missing. Looking at it gives me an idea.

The bank is a plain-looking building in a row of other plain-looking buildings behind a box-shaped shopping mall. The glass doors open with a hissing sound. Potted palm trees guarding the entranceway almost reach the ceiling. A whole lot more potted plants are scattered around inside. Maybe it’s supposed to make the fee-paying customers feel more at ease. Me, I feel like I’m back in a forest. I look around for a river but the closest thing is a water cooler in the corner. It has an out-of-order sign because somebody has broken the plastic tap. I wait in line with more people who don’t know that in the early hours of the morning I buried a piece of Kathy in a field, near a creek, behind my house, while she watched me and judged me and begged me from a world her dead self has moved to.

I wait in the queue for five minutes before getting to the counter. I present my withdrawal slip to an old guy named George who will surely die before he retires, and even then still try and show up for work. His wrinkled face takes on a puzzled expression when he reads the amount on the slip, and he adjusts his bifocals to make sure he’s read the amount correctly, and then adjusts them again to make sure he’s seeing me correctly. Indeed he is, and the anguish on his face becomes more evident. He asks me to step aside, then a woman around my age comes from somewhere deep within the bank and leads me down a carpeted corridor into a small office.

Her name is Erica and she’s the sort of woman I would be flirting with if I didn’t appear and feel half dead and think the woman I possibly love might be dead. The small cream office has no window so the only view is the single door we came through, an aerial photo of Christchurch hanging on the wall and a vase filled with plastic roses. I look at the photo and wonder where I was when it was taken. More people were alive then.

A long desk with a computer and stacks of paper and office clutter sits close to the middle of the room with a chair on each side. It feels like an interrogation room, and when she starts asking me questions to prove my identity I look around for two-way mirrors. I wait for her to ask where I was on Sunday night but she doesn’t. I can see her desire to enquire about my bruises and cuts but she can’t bring herself to do so. She keeps brushing her hair back behind her right ear in a nervous way. She knows something isn’t right, but what can she do? She can think and she can suspect. But it’s my money. A small necklace with a silver crucifix hangs around her neck. I feel like letting her in on the big secret.

After fifteen minutes of signing papers Erica agrees to hand over my money. It takes staff another fifteen minutes to get the cash from their vault, and they count it out in front of me in a timid way that makes me think that they think I might be one bad-hair day away from shooting them all. They pack it into a small linen bag. I look for the huge dollar sign on the side to make it more obvious but don’t see one. I thank Erica, then before leaving, I take out the wads of notes and stuff them inside my jacket and pants pockets. It’s a tight fit.

I walk over to the shopping mall, skirting around a crane and some cement mixers and several workmen who don’t appear to be doing anything. In Christchurch there are always workmen working on malls. All the time. I buy a pre-pay cellphone and an answering machine before driving to a nearby army surplus store. The walls are painted camouflage green, which makes the building stick out more. Mannequins in the window are wearing desert and jungle uniforms. Plastic people off to war. I walk inside. The lighting is dim and the air is warm. Uniforms and outfits are hanging from wire coathangers. Stacked all over the place are army storage containers with yellow and white lettering stencilled on them. Old medals in glass cases. Old gas masks. Old everything. I look at a counter full of knives. I find a hunting knife with a sharp blade and with ridges along the top.