He shifts a little, peels his shirt away from his wet skin, wipes his forehead, taps out a beat on the bottle. Other than that: silence. It’s been silent for—he looks at his watch—an hour and twenty-seven minutes.
He drains his beer and sets the empty bottle on the floor by his shoes. Looks back up at the ceiling, and links his hands behind his head. Stretches his legs as far down the couch as he can and inhales: laundry detergent and Marlboros and dust, and underneath it all, the smell of damp that never really goes away, even when it’s as humid as all hell outside.
Chrissakes. This fucking damp will mess up his lungs and make him sick—and whose fault is that? He’s not down here night after night for himself. He’s here because of that bitch upstairs.
That whore up there, fucking other men, giving them what’s his. His fucking wife.
He’s not allowed to touch. He’s never allowed to touch anymore. Everyone and the fucking garbage man is allowed to touch her—and not just touch her, but touch her there, make her groan and cry out with her sticky red mouth, loud enough so you can hear her even down in the basement.
She must know he’s down here. She knows what it does to him, imagining her with other men. That’s why she turns it up, moans so loud. All these years she’s been a wife, a mother, and now she’s reminding him that she’s still a whore. She’s waking up that part of him, the part of him that responds to her like this.
She needs to be reminded who she belongs to. She needs to be reminded what she’s done to him. And she needs to be hit where it will hurt her most.
Jesus.
Look what she’s making him do.
Look at the things he has to do for love.
“When I thought you were asleep, I walked to the nearest phone booth and I called you. I knew if you heard it ring, you’d answer, that you’d think it was one of your johns. Gallagher. That cop—Salcito. No answer would mean you were sleeping too deep to hear it. I thought then that maybe I’d be able to go through the front door. Into my house. Into my kids’ room. Like a regular father.”
His breathing quickens, and there is a thickness in his voice.
She’s always thought of him as stupid. Just stupid slow Frank.
“So yeah, I called and when you answered, I picked a fight to get you to hang up. Then I crept back in and I heard you moving around, heard the dog whine and the door slam, and I knew that I could go in.”
He clears his throat. “I just walked into the apartment. Easy as anything.”
She’d thought she was ready to hear this. How could she have thought she’d be able to bear it?
“I unlatched their door and went in. They were asleep, both of them, lying on their sides, facing each other. Cin was muttering and sighing, and Frankie had his mouth open. Little soft snores like a puppy.
“I opened the window, thinking I might get them out that way in case you came back. Took off the screen and dropped it on the ground. But then I realized it was too difficult. Decided to carry them out through the apartment after all.
“Frankie half-woke up but I just said we were going for a ride and when he realized it was his daddy, he fell back asleep, quick as winking.”
There’s a roaring in her ears. It’s her blood she can hear. Her own blood.
She stares at him, focusing on the dark bristles on his jaw that his razor missed. The wrinkle in his collar. The cracked tile above his head. Desperately reaching for the ordinary, the mundane.
“Cin never woke up at all. As I took them out, I relatched the bedroom door again. Figured if you checked, that’d prove you cared enough about them. That you deserved them. I would’ve brought them back then, told you it was just a joke, that we’d only been around the block.”
“But you never checked, did you? When you came back with the dog, you never checked. I sat in the car and watched you sitting on the steps with a drink and a smoke like you didn’t have a care in the world. So I knew you hadn’t bothered to check they were okay, and I had to take ’em.”
She realizes that her mouth is open and dry. Tries to swallow.
“As I took them out, I noticed a stroller near the next building. Just on the grass. And a box lying near it. So I put the box on the stroller and wheeled the whole thing under the window. Guess I thought it might look like they climbed out themselves. Maybe used the stroller to step down.”
She focuses on the detail of his words. As though this will make the horror easier to bear.
“You didn’t think people might wonder how they could’ve moved the stroller? How they could’ve taken the screen down? Two little kids couldn’t have managed that.”
She marvels at how calm her voice sounds. She could have sworn she was yelling. But her voice comes out tiny and level.
He shrugs. “I didn’t think that far. I just wanted to mix things up a little.”
In his story, they’re still alive and she wants him to write her a new ending. “What were you going to do? With . . . with the kids?”