Continued from
A cry in the dark and a shoutout to the cave (OS):The rising sun awakened Marta, and she realized she had fallen asleep on the sofa. She listened to the sounds of a quiet house; the ticking of her grandmother's wind-up clock in the hallway, the mechanical whirring of the refrigerator as it moved inexorably toward its last tray of ice cubes. Marta allowed herself a bitter moment as she thought about the money Steve wasted on his City Council campaign. "Really," Marta said to herself, "$1,000 for one yard sign? And with
my credit card! Dammit, Steve, there goes my new refrigerator." With that bitter thought, Marta realized there was something she didn't hear- Steve.
For one long moment, Marta savored the thought that Steve had finally accomplished something. She said to herself, "If he'd put it in his mouth, I wouldn't have heard it. Right?" A flash of guilt followed the faintly eager smile across her face. Marta had been raised with good, solid Midwestern values, and she knew
that didn't include smiling at the mental picture of her husband lying on the bedroom floor with a Walther P38 in his mouth. Besides, she had a pretty good idea how difficult it would be to clean up after, and that wiped any trace of a smile from her face.
The moment passed when Marta heard a long, ragged snore from the spare bedroom Steve called his "office", followed by a moist, flatulent eruption. Steve had nodded off in front of the computer, as he so often did after snorting his Oxycontin. Marta looked in the door, then her gaze lingered on the Walther and the unopened box of cartridges on the bedside table. She dismissed the thought that flitted through her head; she had watched enough
CSI to know she would be caught, and she'd seen enough
NCIS to know a good investigator would get her to confess.
Steve was quiet for a few seconds, then snored again, a ragged, uneven gasp for air. Marta knew Steve's doctor had warned him about sleeping without the CPAP, but this morning she didn't mind that every gasp for air shortened Steve's lifespan. But, she had a headache from falling asleep on the couch, and his gasping and snoring made her head throb.
"Wake up, dammit", she said. Steve snorted, farted again, and stirred. He realized, after Marta did, that he was wearing the same underpants he had been wearing for the past two days (or was it three?, he asked himself). He scratched his neckbeard, went to the bathroom, and relieved himself with the door open. Marta looked at the Walther again; a long, lingering, almost languorous look. The sound of the toilet flushing brought her back from her reverie.
"Mini-tacos?", Steve slurred, the remnants of Oxycontin still turning his words to fuzz. "Get 'em yourself," Marta said. Steve waddled to the kitchen, scratching various body parts as he went. He grabbed two mini-tacos from the box in the freezer, stuffed one in his mouth, and warmed the other in his hand. Marta realized he had not washed his hands after using the toilet.
"When are you going to get out of the house?", she asked. Steve made a face like he was thinking about the answer (was he? She didn't really know anymore). "Don't wanna", he slurred. "Frank Smolish and the Cravers...er, the Clavers...ummm, Fronk SOLICH.. aww hell,
they are out there. And the voters of the First Ward are still out there".
Marta responded, crossly, "I don't care if the Ghost of Ronald Reagan himself is out there, carrying a copy of
Atlas Shrugged! You
will take a shower and put on clean underpants, you
will get out of this house, and you
will take our granddaughter to the park!" She punctuated every "
will" with a harmless, but attention-getting tap on Steve's forehead from the rolling pin she had picked up from the counter.
Steve was more frightened of Marta than he was of the voters of the First Ward, of the Ghost of Ronald Reagan, of a ghostly copy of
Atlas Shrugged, or even of franksolich. He sulked on the way to the bathroom. As he showered, Marta considered, then dismissed the thought; no one would believe that Steve had shot himself in the shower. She sighed.
More to come...
