For his second wife he had married a woman who was ten years younger. Heather was Corvette curvy and she liked to dance until she was sweaty and she didn’t seem scared of him in the moments when his temper revealed itself. He had met her at a bar in the Quarter after a Saints game. She was the daughter of a banker and she had that carefree swagger of the beautiful and the rich. She never went out into the night without being detailed from head to toe and she drank like a man. Her natural hair color had long been forgotten and she was well versed in using what she had to get whoever or whatever she wanted. She’d been surprised when Larry asked her to marry him and he’d been surprised she said yes. She shined on his arm when he walked into a room and he had at one time liked the envious and lusty stare that she commanded.
In the first years they had been sustained by a rough, physical energy, like two rival prizefighters. Heather had always liked that Larry could find something to hate. Liked it when he talked about his dead brother and how one day he was going to settle the score. Liked it when he talked about somebody who had screwed him on a job or tried to get the best of him in a barroom. Liked that he was raw, the fierceness that came into his eyes when he was rushing toward the edge. She stoked his temper and picked fights with him just to get the blood up so that they could tear into one another like starving animals. But like those prizefighters, they were also driven by wins and losses and their relationship was more like a competition and recently Heather seemed to be winning.
Larry had always known that sooner or later she would grow restless and drift toward the stares that followed her. Knew she’d look for something else to do. And though he had known it was coming, when it began he ignored it. Told himself that her excuses were legit. No I don’t care if you spend the weekend shopping with your friends and no I don’t care if you go down to the Panhandle with your friends and no I don’t care if you go and gamble with your friends. And as she caroused he sat at home and raged. He drove around and raged. And then he recruited Walt, who had lost a marriage of his own, to ride around and rage with him. And he drank more and more and walked around with unfocused eyes, the same unfocused eyes that looked out the truck window now at the house where the man lived who had killed Jason.
The clouds had been gathering in him for a long time now and the storm had arrived. Snuck up on him the way that they sneak up in the summertime with the heavy gray clouds appearing in the western sky and then moving in like vultures and bringing lightning and wind and sometimes there isn’t even time to close the windows. The clouds had been gathering and somebody was going to fucking pay.
He was there to do something but he hadn’t decided what. It didn’t look like anyone was home. Not a light on. Nothing parked in the driveway. He had taken a box of matches from the glove compartment and thought about a fire but instead he had lit a cigarette. He took the beer from between his legs and finished it and tossed the can into the yard.
He reached over to the glove compartment again and this time he pulled out an envelope. He opened it and took out a handful of photographs of Heather and a blond man sitting in a restaurant in the Quarter. They sat at a long table covered with a white tablecloth and the wineglasses glimmered in the light of the low chandelier. She smiled in every photograph. And so did he. The people leaning around the table with them all smiled. Even the goddamn waiter was smiling. Her dress was cut low and she wore a necklace he had given her two birthdays ago. Larry thumped the face of the blond man and knew the motherfucker wasn’t smiling right now. There were more photographs of them leaving the restaurant. Going into the lobby of Hotel Monteleone. Sitting at the Carousel Bar with her hand between his legs. Holding hands as they waited on the elevator that had taken them up and into the room where the blond man had done thrilling things to Larry’s wife. Or she had done thrilling things to the blond man, which is the way Larry figured it.
Copies of these photographs had been stuck into the blond man’s pants as he lay halfconscious on the hood of the car. Larry held on to this set to take to his lawyer who had told him that if you don’t want her to get your money you’d better get some proof. He’d been meaning to take them to the lawyer for a week but hadn’t. His hate had been redirected with Russell’s homecoming and he was pretty sure he was about to goddamn explode. He stuffed the photos back into the envelope and the envelope back into the glove compartment and he slammed it shut.
He grabbed the crowbar and got out of the truck. He walked to the front of the house and attacked the windows, spraying the glass and wood into the house and onto the ground and he felt the sting of shards on his arms and face as he moved from window to window, each one suffering a more violent death than the one before as his blood roared with the destruction. When he was done he walked back to the sidewalk and turned and admired his work as he breathed heavily and swung the crowbar at his side as if he were getting ready to go again. He caught his breath and lit another cigarette and waited to see if Russell might poke his head out of one of the holes but he didn’t. He was for the moment satisfied and he tossed the crowbar over into the truck bed and climbed in the truck. He eased along the street at a walker’s pace, hoping that the racket would rise the neighbors to look out their windows or come out of their doors to fear what he had done.
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