The next day he woke me at dawn and drove me across the East River to a field on the remote outer fringes of Queens County, where he showed me how to fire the thing, and while I was no sharpshooting prodigy, it turned out I had a steady hand and a good eye, and by the time the sun crept high enough to touch the telephone wires that stretched across one corner of the field, he again wore that expression of satisfaction, or maybe relief, and made me unload the pistol by myself and pack it back correctly into its case.
He didn’t say much on the way home. It was November, and the wind was cold on our faces, so that you couldn’t operate your mouth without great muscular effort. But in Brooklyn we stopped at a coffee shop and had breakfast, and Father said something, into the smoky silence, that shocked me. He said, in reluctant, gruff words: “Your mother would be proud of you.”
And that was the only time we ever spoke of her.
As a result, whenever I hold that pistol, or think about that pistol, I think of my mother, or rather the memory of my mother accompanies the pistol. Also the taste of coffee, the damp, greasy smell of that Brooklyn shop, frying bacon. And my father, looming over all.
Speaking of looming. There’s Samuel, planted a few yards away, made monstrous by the swinging lantern, staring in shock at the pistol in my hand. He says, You can’t be serious, as if he really means it, as if he doesn’t think a woman with a pistol knows her business.
“Of course I’m serious,” I say.
And I think my mother would be proud of me.
They say there are numerous sharks off the Florida coast, man-eaters. Maybe it’s true. Florida still seems like such an exotic place to me, like the Antipodes, dangerous, sharp-fanged creatures lurking in its swamps and waterways, brimful of poison and malice. And I’ve always thought how ignoble they were, those poisonous lurkers, hiding inside the tranquillity of the water where nobody expects them, and then—snap! Not what you’d call honorable.
On the other hand, as I now perceive, the sharks and the alligators and the snakes have to eat, don’t they? And we each destroy our necessary prey in the manner offered to us by Nature. We do what we must to survive in this harsh and bitter universe.
Still, the universe, or at least that infinitesimal fraction of it laid out before us now, seems anything but harsh and bitter. The air is dark and warm, the automobile’s engine drones in our blood. The headlights slide across the twists and snarls of the mangrove on either side, while ahead of us the gray road blackens into shadow.
We pass a small signpost, indicating that the beach lies half a mile ahead, and Samuel brings the car to an easy stop. Sets the brake, switches off the headlights, cuts the engine, and for a moment there is nothing to see, nothing to hear except the faint roar of the surf, moving in rhythm with my breath. The whir of insects. Samuel finds my lap and wraps his hand over mine. His palm is dry and strong. I feel as if we’re in a womb, waiting to be born.
“It’s awfully dark,” I whisper. “How are you going to make your way?”
“I’ll manage.”
“That’s where he made his fortune, you know. Carl Fisher. He invented the first really practical headlight for cars. The Prest-O-Lite.”
“Fisher? That chap in Miami Beach?”
“Yes. Clara’s great friends with them. The Fishers.”
Samuel makes a noise of assent that suggests he isn’t nearly so fond of the Fishers as his sister is. How strange, to be whispering about headlights and tycoons at a moment like this. He leans down to the floorboards and finds the electric torch, which he lights for an instant or two, under the protection of the dashboard, just long enough to check his watch.
“I should start,” he says.
“I should come with you.”
“No!” His voice rises. Then, back to a whisper: “No. For God’s sake. Stay here with the motor. Be ready for when I return. We’re going to have to bolt out of here like lightning, do you understand? Can you still drive?”
“Of course.”
“As soon as I leave, get behind the wheel. If you hear anything, start the engine. Not the headlights, just the engine. I’ll move as fast as I can. If you see anyone other than me, just leave. Drive straight on back to the hotel and pretend you’ve never left. Clear?”
“But how will I know what’s happened? How will I know . . . ?”
I can’t say it.
“Because I will find you and tell you,” Samuel says. “I’ll see to it myself. I promise you, Virginia, I’ll finish this for you.”
You might think he whispers this sentence with passion, but he doesn’t. He speaks with as much passion as a man promising to bring home meat for dinner, and I remember that he’s a soldier, that he’s gone into battle, that he once spent years inside a German prison and then escaped. And I remember the nature of what he’s promising—to kill his own brother, partly for his own sake but mostly for mine—and of course you must steel yourself for a thing like that. As dangerous and wicked as Simon is, he shared a cradle with Samuel, they’re twins. And maybe Samuel isn’t going to strike down his twin by the force of his own hand, but the result’s the same. Simon’s going to die tonight, and Samuel is going to make sure he dies.
Though the air is thick and warm, not the slightest breeze off the water, I start to shiver a little. To tremble. I haven’t been myself in so long; I haven’t been strong and healthy in so long. I can’t separate the sickness of the past month from whatever it is I’m experiencing now. Samuel hears the chatter of my teeth and asks if I’m all right, and I tell him yes. Just anxious.
His palm appears on the side of my face. “Don’t be anxious. I’ll see this through.”
“Yes.”
“When it’s finished, when I’m back—”
“Don’t say it.”
“But you know.”
“Yes.”
His face is close to mine; I can feel its warmth. “I’m no good at this. Not like Simon.”
“I don’t want you to be like Simon.”
“If I could, I’d show you. I’d make you mine this moment.”
The shock of those words sends me into a kind of daze. I remember what Clara said, that Samuel is somehow in love with me, and the idea—making love to Samuel, the act of intercourse with Samuel, the act of intercourse with anyone at all—is so strange and perverse and alluring that my stomach heaves. His mouth hovers next to mine, but he doesn’t kiss me. I have the feeling he’s waiting for me to say something, to give him permission, and that if he kisses me he might actually do the thing he’s just suggested. Here in the dark, in the quiet, hastily and without any wooing: just copulation, brutal and primitive, the way soldiers do before they go into battle. Or afterward. And there is a corresponding urge in my belly to play my own part in this age-old transaction, to open my lips and my legs and allow him a warrior’s rights, the way his own beautiful Fitzwilliam ancestress opened her lips and her legs to her king. (How strange that I should recall that story, at such a moment.) But this is my husband’s brother, about to stain himself with my husband’s blood, and I find that this urge in my belly, this daze in my brain is more like nausea, more like shame absorbed into physical symptoms.
“Not yet,” I whisper. “Not like this.”
He lifts his head away and opens the door of the car. “Remember what I said.”