The Killing Hour

I stop at a coffee shop and insert myself inside another slice of normal life, the type of slice where normal people are doing normal things on a day-to-day basis that doesn’t include blood. It’s a more upscale café than the one I sat at two mornings ago. All the furniture is made from shiny metal and shiny wood, and several mirrors and paintings have been jammed up on the wall, each an identical distance from the last. I sit at a window where I can keep an eye on the car because the gun is beneath the front seat. I order some lunch from a waitress who’s obviously psychic because she says things like ‘See you’re reading the paper’ and ‘Nice day outside’. I drink coffee and, in a rare moment of healthy consumption, I have a glass of orange juice. I read my ten-thousand-dollar newspaper. It offers up stories about politics and about companies going broke. There are articles about foreign wars where people kill in the name of God. If He won’t help them then He sure as hell won’t help me. I stare at the crossword I would probably half complete if I had a pen. When my bacon and eggs arrive I nearly inhale them off the plate before the waitress can put them down. When I finish I trap a twenty-dollar note beneath the plate as a tip because I’m awestruck by her psychic abilities. I especially like the one when she told me I looked as though I’ve been through the wars. I want to ask what her thoughts are on tonight but decide I might not like her predictions.

The first thing I see when I step outside is Kathy. She’s standing over the road staring at me. With the sun in my eyes it’s hard to read the expression on her face. My breath catches and my world sways and I have to look down to steady myself, and when I look back up she’s walking away from me. I step onto the road and a passing car toots at me and I’m given the finger. I dash in front of the next car and make it over the road. Kathy is half a block ahead of me and still walking. I call out but she doesn’t stop even though I’m certain she must hear me, must recognise my voice, must want me to follow. I continue to run, closing the distance quickly. I almost reach her when she turns the corner and is gone. Kathy has abandoned me the same way I abandoned her.

I drive home at a casual speed, my heart slowly recovering from seeing Kathy. I’m in no hurry to be anywhere yet I feel as though I’m running at a hectic pace.

The Glock feels better at home than at the store because I don’t have to pretend I know what I’m looking at. Holding it in my hands I feel liberated. I feel like I’ve beaten the system designed to keep people like myself from owning such a weapon. I turn it over in my hand, studying the lines and textures. The cold metal isn’t quite metal, according to Arthur, but a high-impact synthetic material that he didn’t name. He nicknamed the Glock the ‘plastic pistol’, yet it still has a suggestion of violence that makes me feel like things might turn out okay.

I know little about guns but I’ve fired one before. It was a Colt something or other, loud and powerful. I’d gone to a pistol range with a fellow teacher. I remember the sound the gun made, even through the earmuffs. My ears had rung for twenty minutes when he fired off six rounds before I’d pulled the muffs over my ears. I also remember the stance I was shown and the technique. Tight in my right hand. My left hand curved around the base of my right securing the weapon, my thumb low so the slide couldn’t come back and catch the web of skin between my thumb and finger.

I pick up the magazine and check to make sure it’s empty. I slip it into the gun and slap the butt of it, clicking it into place. Then I play. I point it around the kitchen, the dining room, the lounge. Action Man is having fun. For a while I do everything that the safety manual tells me not to do. I point it at things. I pull the trigger. The slide pulls back. It clicks into place. On each pull my face tightens and my eyes half close as I expect to hear thunder when it pulls a bullet from thin air. I feel like a kid playing war. I move around corners, keeping the gun low like they do in movies.

I wonder if I should test it. I could go over to the paddock where I buried the cardboard box and fire off a few shots if nobody is around, but I decide against it. I can’t squeeze the drama of being caught into my schedule. I would be charged, fingerprinted and my fingerprints would quickly match those found at the two dead girls’ homes. I put the gun and the magazine back in the box and hide it in the ceiling with all the cash.

I change into shorts and a T-shirt before hitting the phonebook and finding a carpenter who can come out today. I only have to wait an hour for him to arrive. He’s a young guy, maybe only twenty, who talks like a teenager and thinks I must be one too. He calls me ‘man’ every few minutes or so and talks about surfboards as he fixes my back door. I guess I ought to be flattered that he thinks I’m young enough to understand. I pay him in cash and he gives me an invoice. I realise the very act of having my door fixed means I think there’s a chance I’m going to live through this.

I lock up the house and head outside. The day is still young, I have time to kill and I know how to kill it. I drive out to New Brighton, the radio off the whole time because nobody can say or sing or advertise anything that’ll make me feel any better. I listen to the traffic and to my thoughts and don’t really like the sound of those either. I park as close as I can to the pier. The sun has peaked and is coming down. One day hopefully it’ll just fall right into the Earth. Probably won’t be today. The breeze is warm but the temperature has dropped down to around twenty-five.