An Unexpected Visitor

The doorbell rings. He pops his head up from the comfort of his memory foam sofa cushions, groggy and confused. He isn’t expecting anyone.

He shuffles to the front door, trying to pat his hair down into a presentable shape, and opens the door. A woman is standing on his front porch, wrapped in a sleek winter coat with a bright red beret propped fashionably atop her neatly-combed brown hair. She scrutinizes him for a moment, before her face breaks slowly into a smile.

He realizes he’s only in an undershirt and sweatpants, and immediately feels cold and foolish.

“Can I help you?” He says, crossing his arms.

“Yes, actually,” the woman says, still smiling winningly. “One of my tires blew. I tried putting in the spare, but I can’t manage it with all the ice and snow on the road. I was wondering if you could help me?”

He peers at her suspiciously.

“My car’s just down the road,” she continues, gesturing elegantly with a gloved hand. “If you can’t help me, I can call AAA. I just don’t know when they’ll be able to get to me, up here in the mountains and all. And you...well. You look like you’d be up to the task.”

He straightens subconsciously. “Sure,” he says, then clears his throat. “Sure. Let me just put some clothes on, and I’ll take a look.”

“Thanks,” she says; dimples appear in her cheeks, and her smile is a blinding spot of radiance in the cold, colorless winter afternoon. “I appreciate it.”

A few minutes later, he’s on his porch, dressed in his nice (but not too nice) winter things, hair combed and mouth hastily rinsed.

She looks him up and down, smiles silently, and turns to lead the way down his driveway, towards the main road.

“So, uh,” he says. “Where is your car? I’m guessing it’s down on Raymond? Damn snowplows always get to Raymond last.”

She glances over her shoulder to nod and smile, before refocusing on picking her way safely down the road, brushing past low-hanging tree branches as she goes.

“You know, I, uh,” he says. “My house was designed by a pupil of Arthur Erickson. Not sure if that name rings a bell for you?”

She doesn’t look at him, instead turning down the road, away from Raymond Street.

“Oh, your car isn't on Raymond? Well, it’s easy to get lost out here, especially if you aren’t familiar with the area,” he says. “If your car is out in this direction, then it’s gotta be Fahey. God, if you’re stuck on Fahey then it’s going to be rough. Not that it’s anything I can’t handle—”

They reach Fahey Avenue. The woman looks up and down the roads closely, before turning to face him, all traces of her smile now vanished.

He goes still. “What’s wrong?”

She reaches into her coat and slowly, nonchalantly, pulls out a small handgun.

His stomach drops to his knees.

“Hold on,” he exclaims, hands flying up as he takes an involuntary step back. “Just—tell me what you want. We can work something out—"

"There's a pond about a mile down that way," she interrupts coldly, nodding at where Fahey disappears over a hill, meandering westward.

"Yes—but—?"

She gestures with her gun. "Start walking."

He turns on numb feet and stumbles up the road, mind racing. She falls into step behind him, gun pointed inches from his back.

"Look," he babbles. "I don't know who set you up to this, but I can pay you more than whatever they're offering. Name your price. Anything. Anything."

He holds his breath, but only hears the light crunching of her footsteps behind him, even and unhurried.

"Why are you even doing this? Any of my neighbors could drive by and see you threatening me with a gun. Just one witness and you'd be a goner. You think you're going to get away with this? Who do you even think you are, you bitch? Do you even know who I am?"

She remains stonily silent behind him.

"It was my brother, wasn't it?" He demands. "He got you to do this, didn't he? That asshole always had it out for me. I bet he told you one sob story after another, and now he's got you thinking I'm the worst person in the world. Well—well whatever he said I did, I didn't do it. He's always blaming me for the shit he gets himself into.

"Or was it Melissa? Crazy bitch never did get over me breaking up with her. Is she sending you after me to scare me? What does she want? She probably wants photos, to humiliate me. God, I don't know what I ever saw in her."

More silence. They're passing the pear tree that marks the edge of his property, now—an old, gnarled thing, with crumbling gray bark and arthritic branches curling in on themselves. Decked in delicate flowers in the spring and richly bountiful in the summer, it now stands barren and grim, watching silently as he walks by.

"Look," he says, and he can hear the desperation creeping into his own voice, "can't you at least tell me what this is about? If you're going to murder me in cold blood, don't I get to know why I'm being murdered?"

They turn off the road, following a narrow footpath into the dense, snow-caked woods. He's running out of time. He pauses, trying to think, but she jabs him hard in the back. He stumbles on.

“You just wait,” he sputters angrily as he plows his way through unshoveled snow. “Even if you—even if you pull this off, the cops’ll find you. You’ll make some slip-up, you women always fuck up this sort of thing. The detectives will be on you like flies. My lawyer will hunt you down and drag you to court. You’ll spend the rest of your miserable life regretting ever coming after me.”

The woman holds her silence, her measured footfalls still urging him on.

He stops suddenly, ignores her when she jabs him in the back. She’s only a woman, and not nearly as tall or broad as him. He could probably take her—

She cocks the gun warningly, the sound cold and sharp and all too close in the crystal-clear air. He clenches his shaking hands into fists and continues on.

They round a bend in the path, and the trees peel back to reveal a frozen pond, its surface pockmarked with imperfections and scattered with windblown snow.

He turns back to look at the woman. She gestures calmly.

“Are you kidding?” He exclaims. “The ice won’t hold both of us.”

She looks at him, unblinking, waiting. He swallows, turns, and begins making his way onto the frozen surface of the pond. She stands at the edge, gun trained on him, and watches.

He stops when he reaches the center of the pond and turns to look at her. Even from the center of the pond, he can see the apathetic determination in her eyes, the finality of his own situation.

“I promise,” he says, “I don’t know what this is about. Just tell me—is this personal? Did I do something to upset you? Did someone else hire you? Please, I—”

The woman lowers her gun, pointing it toward his feet.

“Please—don’t—!” He shouts frantically, waving his hands. “I’ll do anything. I’ll tell you anything. Just please, don’t—please, please—”

An explosion of sound rends the air, and the ice beneath his feet explodes. He slips into the freezing water with barely a splash, his scream trapped in his throat.

The woman lets the gunshot ripple through the trees before sitting down at the edge of the pond. A bitter wind rises, stirring the branches; somewhere deep in the woods, a lone bird calls.

Several minutes pass. The surface of the pond remains undisturbed. The woman gets up, dusts off the snow from her coat, and starts back down the footpath.

---

“And you’re sure you didn’t see anyone with him?” A police officer asks a stooped older man as they stand on Fahey, at the edge of the older man’s property, in the waning sunlight.

“Yessir,” the older man says, shaking his head solemnly, pulling his worn winter jacket closer around himself. “Just him, with his gun. Often goes shootin’ in the afternoons. Didn’t think nothin’ of it. ‘Sides, if someone was with him, there’d be footprints, wouldn’t there?”

“Guess so.” The officer scratches behind his ear absently with his pen. “It’s looking like a suicide, for sure.”

“Yeah,” the old man mumbles noncommittally.

They look down Fahey, past the pear tree, in the direction of the pond.

Overhead, a cardinal leaps from a tree branch and takes flight.