Saturn in Retrograde 3:13

She was in most respects a happy woman. Except, of course, when Leland beat her.

It was just something she had to bear, she realized. Divorce was not an option if you were the wife of a highly respected local physician. Not if you had no way to maintain the lifestyle to which you had become accustomed.

Wasn’t that the meaning behind it all, anyway? To enjoy as much of life as you could, possibly, enjoy, despite the circumstances? Her circumstances were, remarkably, descent. He didn’t even get angry all that often anymore. Just sat upstairs in his study, brooding.

Her name was Anna, and she had come from a distant land to marry Doctor Durant. It had been like a page torn from a fairy book romance then. She had escaped life on a farm in miserable County Cork to come and live in America. To be looked after by servants, and to be kept like another pet in the collection of her dear, mad and maddening husband.

He was not all that handsome, she surmised one evening, looking out across the veranda, but he had handsome money. And she finally knew, after so many years of cold, intense pondering, what the meaning of her future might be. It was to be a kept lady.

A pretty bird in a nice, residential cage. At least it beat cooking breakfast for farmhands.

She had the entire house to herself. It was so dark, so quiet at night. She liked nothing better than to go out on the balcony in the dead of the evening, her white chemise slip blowing lightly in the gale, and stare up at the stars. Often, Leland was gone at night.

That was good. That was very, very good. More time to plot and ponder. More time to dream.

She supposed that one day she might be a ghost. She knew that, quite possibly, this old house with its ceilings and its wide expanse of lawn, and its lush, over-bright garden in the back, would probably outlive them. Outlive their marriage, their loves, their hopes and would continue to hold the patterns of their existence within itself until time ceased to move into the yawning mouth of infinity. And would she still be here, out on the terrace, looking up at the stars?

What did the future hold? Already, there had been a Great War, the airplane, the automobile, the radio. Would Negroes ever have the same rights as white men? She hoped so, for God’s sake.

Her favorite woman in the world was their old black cook Henrietta. Anna winced sometimes to realize the contradiction inherent in America being the “Land of the Free” and an entire class of its citizens being unable to sit at the same lunch counters as her and her husband, and all the other women like her and all the other men like her husband.

Tonight, the wind blew lightly, cooling the damp sheen of sweat that had accumulated in her lonely bed. What must it be like, she wondered, to have a man that you could count on being there when the sun went down? Jules had started to slip out more and more, with a nod and a few mumbled words, saying he was going to be “busy” this evening. She never asked him where he went. She damn well knew better.

She realized he might be having an affair. But what did it matter? Whether he was or he wasn’t, it was an option that was forbidden her and granted him as a privilege of his male station. She wanted to spit when she thought of it. She wondered if that was something that was ever going to change either.

She pined for a lover. For comfort. For a man that was understanding, gracious, a joy to be with. It was getting cold. She pulled her robe tight around her, cast a glance down the road at the mammoth hotel erected by Mr. Rexroth, a friend of her husbands, and went back through the glass doors and into the darkness of her room.

Mr. Rexroth was one of the more distasteful individuals she had to accommodate on behalf of her husband. He was a skinny, putrid little blackguard with a perpetual cigar smoldering at the end of his liver-colored lips. But it was his mustache, a black streak that approximated a smudge of greasepaint, that seemed to add the appropriate villainous cast to his character. She loathed him.

He was forever, infernally, falsely, forcedly polite. And he was a masher. She could feel his lecherous stare whenever Leland walked in the door with him in tow.

“Well, and there’s the lovely Anna Durant. My, do you get lovelier every time I look at you?”

And then he would take her hand, bow, and plant a little kiss on the knuckles. It made her want to be ill.

“C’mon, Rexroth, let’s go into the study and go over some of those accounts. I think something needs to be settled.”

And the two of them would trudge upstairs, and slam the study door, and be there until late, drinking gin and smoking a veritable bumper crop of expensive cigars.

She was left to putter in the garden or sit with ice tea and a good book.

She walked over to her bed and slipped off the robe. She slowly slipped beneath the covers, wondering, not for the first time, if there was anything more to life. Then she closed her eyes.

For the last time.

***

He had carefully dipped the entire body in nitric acid. It left a sort of pink sludge behind, a noxious poison soup that was easily disposed of by flushing down the drain. He had done this afterward, eager to be rid of the mess. It was going to be a long, hard few weeks for him.

He knew he wanted to get rid of the bitch after he found out that she had been involved with Rexroth. He got Morgan so hammered that Morgan had to fess up. And what did he do then? He busted him in the kisser, hard. Morgan was tough, but Leland was that much tougher. The old scoundrel fell over in his chair and tried to deny it. Said he’d been fooling. Said he was just trying to get the best of him. Well, piss on it. He was suspicious now, and that was all it took.

Besides, the insurance money was going to be sweet. It was going to be enough to open up a new set of offices, with new equipment. It was going to be enough to do a lot of things that he wasn’t going to be needing Anna for anymore.

He had left that day, late in the afternoon, putting on his hat and this time, instead of giving her the silent treatment, he had very lovingly, very tenderly turned around and looked at her as she came down the stairs.

“Gone for the night?” She asked, hopefully. He turned. She was as lithe, as beautiful as a young girl from County Cork could be. She had been all his, for a while. But now, she seemed old. Tainted. He realized the thrill of possession was gone. Now, she seemed more like an interloper, a parasite than anything.

“Yes, dear, I’m going out to the Lodge. There’s an emergency meeting tonight. Tony called and said it was mandatory. Sorry, my dear.”

She looked strange for a moment.

“Sorry. What on earth are you sorry for?”

“For spending so much time away in the evenings. I have never let you in on what I do but trust me, it’s nothing that would jeopardize our marriage or happiness. You have no reason to be suspicious of me, I mean to say. I am a man of honor. Truthfully Ann, you’ve made me the happiest man in the entire world.”

“And you’ve made me the happiest wife,” she said, quietly, forcing a smile. She looked at him as he stood there, taking in his huge frame, his sharp professional suit, his general “give ‘em hell” bearing. He was so damned ugly, his nose a large, thick wedge, his eyes a deep, evil blue that seemed somehow to be so empty. So lifeless.

And he was an unnatural, aggressive man in bed. And a bit of a dud, to be quite frank.

“Well, must be going now, my dear. Don’t wait up. I will probably be very late.”

“Okay.”

He walked quickly through the door, swinging his briefcase, his highly-polished shoes clacking. He walked down the sloping hill to the walk and got into his car. He would then proceed out of town to a non-descript house used often for purposes of bootlegging and prostitution. It was at the end of a country road and handled by a black pimp named Firpo Lewis.

Morgan would be waiting there. They would drink. Morgan owed him a couple of favors, and he had pretty much made his intentions apparent the night before, whether what Morgan was said was true or not. It didn’t matter now. All he had thought about for the past three days was the life insurance policy he had taken out on Anna. Dear, sweet country girl from a foreign land, doomed to die in the Land of the Free.

It had certain poetry about it that he found comforting.

***

At first, he was going to panic because he thought the place was deserted, but he realized the cars must have been parked in the ancient barn in the back.

He rolled into the front yard.

He knocked the code on the door.

“Cops.”

He was let in quickly.

“Well I’ll be a…it’s Doc. Come on in. Mr. Rexroth is waiting for you.”

“Firpo, you are a ni--er after my own heart.”

“Well, thank you, sir. Sure is good of you to say.”

“If they ever try to hang you just let me know. I’ll come around with my buck knife, and set you loose. You hear me, boy?”

“Loud and clear, Doc. I hear you loud and clear.”

The place was like some barren cross between a cocktail lounge and a criminal hideout. A few straggling, homely women sat around on buggy furniture, wearing yesterday's dismal refuse of dresses and frilly bed wear.

Rexroth sat at a battered old table in what, under normal circumstances, would have been a kitchen. He was playing solitaire and chain-smoking. Beside him a bottle of cheap hooch was half-empty.

“Hey, so why do you want to do this so bad all of a sudden? You know I was just pulling a fast one. Why now?”

He crushed a cigarette, pulled another one, and lit it. He barely looked at Leland. But that was okay.

“Anna, dear Anna, I have decided, has, uh, failed in her wifely duties. I have decided it is time to, ah, ah, well, as you well know, I am not a man to be frustrated. Or the sort of man to allow certain opportunities to go by when opportunity knocks. I have recently had a mind to expand my medical practice.”

Morgan nodded. He laid down a few more cards, inhaled his cigarette shakily, and didn’t lookup.

“So. You want to turn in one of the two favors I owe you, huh? And so. And so…”

“I just want to borrow a car. That’s it.”

Pause.

“So…you aren’t going to be requiring any, ah, shall we say, any hands-on help? Just need some wheels. Cover you.”

“Exactly.”

Pause.

“She’s a doll. Wish you’d reconsider.”

He puffed his cigarette.

“You know I can’t refuse. You’re in the driver's seat. It’s yours. But if anything happens, you don’t know me. I’ve got contacts you know. In the joint.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“Who’s threatening? I’m making you a promise. It‘s outback. After you get done with it, ditch. I don‘t want to know about it.”

“Okay.”

Leland got up slowly, feeling as if his head was spinning.

He walked out the rickety kitchen door; it was a bright day. It was going to be a black, star-shot night, according to the astronomy column in the Gazette. He walked out across the yard to the old barn.

Inside, several hot cars and equally hot parts were strewn over the wide, dirt-packed floor. He walked around the little collection as if he were going to buy one. He didn’t know a lot about cars, but he appreciated fine things. The contours, the colors, he liked a machine that looked like it had some thought put into it.

A pair of dirty pant legs poked out from beneath one car.

Leland walked up to them and said, “Hey. Which one of these crates are operational?”

The legs, attached to a young man that hadn’t been expecting a sudden voice, bumped their unseen forehead against the underbelly of the chassis, and scrambled out, quickly standing up.

Before him, a filthy young man covered in grease and grime and missing a few front teeth stood, wondering if he was about to be beaten, shot, or arrested. Or some combination of the three.

“All be damned, man. Mister, you sure scared the hell out of me.”

Leland looked at the young hood. He was wearing one of those ridiculous damn hats that all the young men were wearing now. Made them look like Jazz joint junkies. And he was filthy.

Leland made sure to stand a safe, clean distance.

“Looking to buy a car, huh?”

“Looking to take one. Your Boss owes me a big favor.”

“Well, I’m gonna have to talk to him first.”

The young man quickly walked out the barn door, across the yard, and into the kitchen at the back of the house. He was a minor car thief and a major mechanical mind. He doubled satisfactorily as a toady. He was wanted for murder and rape in Illinois.

He stuck his head in the screen door. Rexroth was pulling from the bottle, smoking, playing solitaire. A long-legged floozy was idly hovering over him. He seemed to take no notice.

“Boss? Boss, did you say this guy could take a car?”

Without looking up, Rexroth said, “Yeah. That is exactly what I said, Charlie. Furthermore, I want you to start paying more attention to people when they come over. You spend all your damn time in the garage. Doc is no stranger here.”

“Oh, okay boss.”

Rexroth turned around slightly. The floozy continued giving him his little massage.

“And another thing, Charlie…take a damn bath, for God’s sake. You smell like you rolled around in coyote shit. Got that?”

“Sure, boss.”

“Okay. Get Doc a car that runs well. Go on.”

Rexroth laid down an Ace and an eight. He frowned. He knew damn well what Anna had in store for her in the next few hours. It didn’t chill his blood. After eight years at Durango Penitentiary he didn’t think anything could do that.

But it didn’t feed his appetite, either. Leland was one card short of being a full-blown psychopathic sadist. And he didn’t like doing business with guys like that. It made him triple uneasy.

***

“Okay, Doc. Boss said to get you a good car. These three run pretty smoothly. This one is probably your best bet.”

He walked around the showroom, stopping at a little black, nondescript Ford.

“Tell ya the truth, Doc. This here car probably runs the best. Purrs smoother than a pussy, if you ask me. But you may not want it. See, a guy did himself in this car. Yeah. Hooked a hose from the exhaust and rolled up the windows. Took forever to air out the stink. Do you think that sort of thing makes a difference, mister? I think it does. I ain’t superstitious, ya understand…it’s just…”

“I’ll take this one.”

He was headed back out the dirt road and back toward town in a matter of minutes. Around him, the world seemed to darken down, cloud up, the wind blew through tall grasses, and fields of corn held their stalks high in salutation to an angry god.

He had stopped and picked up an old suit in a second-hand the store changed in the car, and parked down the street, pretending to read the paper until just after dusk. He could see her milling around up there, turning lights on and off, wasting his electricity.

Running the damn bill up seemed to be her specialty. Well, he would turn her lights off tonight permanently. Then he could keep the house dim, dark, the way he liked it. He pulled from his pocket a short length of rope he had knotted especially for this particular occasion.

He waited. He waited. He got out of his car. He walked a piece up the sidewalk, casually, smoking a cigarette. He walked down to the end of the street, to the corner, right in front of his residence, and looked up at the terrace window.

He could see her come out in the dark. She was like some sort of forlorn bird perched up there, her white gown blowing around her. He thought he could see a little teardrop trickle, faintly, down the corner of one cheek. It was bad stuff. It made him feel spooky. He shook it. He didn’t have time for sentimental reflection. There was work to be done.

He walked back up the walk, up the low inclining hill to his backyard property. He slowed a minute while he made his way through the garden.

He let himself in the basement door. Quietly, so quietly he was sure he wasn’t even making a hint of noise, he climbed the basement steps, twisting the rope around his hand. He could feel his blood begin to rise. The only sound he could hear was the beating of his own heart.

He opened the basement door as quietly, as smoothly as a spy in an old movie. He walked out into the long kitchen, half expecting to see the Negro maid slaving away at cleaning the oven in the dark. Well, he could keep the maid at least. Somebody would have to be here to clean up after his little messes.

He walked from the kitchen into the library. He was headed for the main hall and the beautiful, ornate stairwell that twisted into the upper stories of his house. He walked slowly, cautiously, creeping along in the shadows. He could feel his heart hammer now. His groin was a rigid as a cold, steel flagpole on a November morning. He liked this. He enjoyed this immensely. The thrill of the hunt. Closing in for the kill.

He stopped, suddenly. Something was wrong. There was something in the room that didn’t quite add up. He looked down, suddenly, at an immense billiards table.

He had never, in his life played billiards. He looked at billiards with extreme distaste. He considered the sport of very uncouth, slovenly men. Quid pro quo, there was no reason in all of heaven and earth that there should be a billiards table here, now, at eleven o’clock in the evening, when, several hours before there had been none. He spun around.

He was for a moment terrified that he had made a mistake.

That, somehow, he had managed to enter the wrong house. There was a small sort of couch affair he had never seen before. And lying on that couch, in what must have been an alcoholic stupor was a young man that looked like he had just emerged from some shanty-town hell hole.

Tanner Benjamin was certain that, in his entire life, he had only ever seen a single ghost. But it was an experience he would never forget.

It had been the night he had stayed at Kevin’s, drunk, miserable at the thought that Kevin was upstairs, at this very moment, defiling the one sublime object of his most heated infatuations. He had walked from the kitchen, after inspecting the refrigerator to make sure there were no severed heads in the ice box, and had walked back into the long, relatively bare room that served as a billiards room. He had lain down on the ratty old couch, the room spinning, the alcohol and marijuana he had imbibed reaching another bizarre sort of dip and climax affair.

His circuitry was frying. His synapses were shooting multi-colored snake-like fireworks.

He fell into a wonderful, fearful, half-dreamlike, half hallucinatory world of dancing images and strange visions. It felt like time had ceased to be.

He then heard a sound that he assumed was somewhere outside of himself. He blearily opened his eyes. It was like a scuffling in the dark. He sat up, in terror that there might be some strange, giant rat lurking about in the old building while he tried to sleep.

He jumped. Standing in front of him was a tall imposing man in a dark suit that looked like it came off the back of some dead gangster. He was wearing an old-time fedora and his eyes burned like twin fires of coal. He was twisting a knotted piece of rope between his gloved hands.

“You’re just a dream,” he said suddenly. “I am drunk, I am stoned, and I am still sleeping.”

Tanner lay back down, and shut his eyes, rolling over.

Leland looked at the image on the couch for a moment and suddenly realized why today had seemed so strange. All-day.

Every day. It was like he was caught in some sort of loop. How could he escape?

He turned, suddenly, and walked out the darkened, now unfamiliar room.

He headed back out the way he came. Except, when he got outside, everything else had changed, too. The garden was gone, and all that was left was a gravel driveway full of what he supposed were cars. But they looked so damn strange he wondered if they could fly. He walked out into the alley.

He knelt by an overflowing trashcan, in an almost mockery of the famous statue of The Thinker. He sat for an interminable period, as memory and consciousness began to fade. When he finally came to, he was sitting in his study, going over some papers he wasn’t, in the least, interested in. Today was the big day. He was driving out to the country to meet Rexroth.

He had a favor he wanted to cash in.

Tanner later realized he must have seen the ghost of Leland Durant. He heard faintly the story, just a few rumors, and was intrigued enough to check it out for himself first hand. He went to the archives at the University Library, began digging into local history, found out as much as he needed to know about Dr.

Durant, the suspicious disappearance of his wife, the investigation, the insurance claim. It had all gone down in what was now a bunch of cheap sleeping rooms. The same place he had passed out for the night.

Dr. Durant was suspected of illegal abortions. He was arrested in sixty-nine, at an ungodly age, for selling amphetamine to high school students. He had tried to stab the arresting officer that time.

But he always avoided an indictment. He had high-placed friends, locally. He was a Freemason, a friend to the KKK, and a friend to certain “crook-noses” that sometimes have interests in small towns. He shot two men to death in his own home, in his own office, because he claimed they were trying to “blackmail” him. Again, he got off scot-free.

He died in the mid-seventies, the only legal action every taken against him being a revoking of his medical license after the amphetamine arrest. But he had been beyond retirement age anyway and died four years later an embittered old boogeyman.

The local goblin. The stuff of dreary bedtime stories.

Or nightmares. Tanner would never forget the old photograph of Dr. Durant he managed to find in the microfiche at the library. His blood had chilled inside of him. He felt the tendrils of fear grip his spine.

The man in the photo had the same face. It was a bad photograph, a picture of him entering a courtroom. But it was undeniably the same.

Tanner didn’t sleep very well that night. He kept seeing those eyes. That mad, hungry look. That damned gaze of ultimate confusion.

He had seen death. And it had been terrible.