Chapter Twenty-seven
Brooklyn, 2011
Joe hustled through the crowd to bring two beers to the table; a pilsner for Henry and an IPA for himself. Henry, his face folded into a hangdog expression, barely looked up as he sat like a lump.
“Come on, man, buck up, it can’t be that bad.”
Henry could’ve easily disagreed with him, but instead he took a long drink of his pilsner.
“Look, there are always going to be bumps in any marriage,” Joe offered philosophically. “These are things you got to work through. Everyone goes through it.”
Henry knew not everybody went through what he was experiencing. He hadn’t planned to talk to anyone about what had been happening between Sheila and himself—it seemed too much of a betrayal of his wife to do so, but Joe had insisted they go out for beers after work and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Something’s eating at you, Henry,” Joe had said. “The way you’ve been moping around the office the last couple of days, you’re not fooling anyone. So we’re going to hoist a few, and you’re going to spill your guts.”
Henry had gone with his buddy to humor him. He couldn’t imagine saying out loud the thoughts he’d been having, but as they sat drinking their beer, he mentioned how he didn’t even know what Sheila did.
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve been married for three months, and I have no clue what she does for work. Or even if she works. When I try asking her, she tells me a little of this and a little of that, and then she gets mad if I push it.”
Joe’s expression turned serious. “That’s odd,” he said.
“She’s got money,” Henry said. “I have no idea how much, but her place on Central Park West costs a fortune. I’d need to be making ten times what I am now to afford it.”
They were on their second beers, and Joe was already beginning to look a little bleary-eyed. He gave the matter some thought as he drank some more, then speculated, “Maybe she won the lottery?”
Henry shrugged, looking miserable. “Maybe that’s it. All I know is I have no idea what she does when I’m at work.”
What Henry said was true, but he had his suspicions. That first night they’d met, the thought had popped into his head that Sheila could be a call girl. That she had sat at his booth only to drum up business. After they had sex that first night, he was half expecting her to charge him for the night and was somewhat surprised when she didn’t. He had felt guilty about having those thoughts, but when she later took him to her apartment on Central Park West (where they now lived) and she refused to tell him what she did for work, the thought that she might be a call girl, albeit a high-priced one, had once again popped into his head. She was certainly beautiful enough for that to be the case, and it would explain a lot of things; her lack of interest in sex and why someone as beautiful as Sheila would settle for Henry. After all, if she were being paid by guys all day for sex, why would she want any more from him, and why would she want anything other than a nice guy? If that was what it was—that Sheila was a high-priced call girl, and she simply wanted Henry for companionship when she wasn’t working—he could live with that. But things had turned more ominous over the past week.
Joe pondered over what Henry had told him, and finally made up his mind. “A little mystery in a marriage isn’t the worst thing,” he proclaimed, before finishing off his IPA.
“I think I might be losing her,” Henry said as he choked back a sob. Up until that moment he hadn’t let himself admit that his wife might be about to leave him. He didn’t think he could live if that happened.
“Sounds like you’re jumping to conclusions,” Joe said. He rubbed his bony jaw, giving the matter more thought. “I admit it’s odd she won’t tell you what she does, but you’re making a pretty big leap there.”
“Sheila has become so distant recently. The last three days she’s gotten home past two in the morning, and she won’t tell me where she’s been.”
“No kidding?”
Henry shook his head, afraid he might start bawling if he tried speaking.
“Call in sick tomorrow,” Joe said. “Follow her. Find out what she’s doing.”
The next day Henry did as Joe suggested, paying the doorman fifty dollars to call him when he saw Sheila in the lobby. He got the doorman’s call a few minutes after five, and he hurried from the bench in Central Park where he’d been camped out for the day, and spotted his wife as she left the apartment building, but then quickly lost her as she jumped into a cab.
He tried again the next day, this time renting a car. Sheila again left the apartment building a little after five, jumping into a cab, and this time Henry was able to follow her to a seedy bar in Queens. She was in there no more than forty minutes when a man exited the bar and stood outside of it as if he were waiting for someone. This man was about Henry’s height and age, balding, and looking about thirty pounds overweight. Certainly not good-looking, but a sick feeling crept into Henry’s stomach as he thought that this might be playing out the same as that night he had first met Sheila. He was proven right when a few minutes later Sheila left the bar and headed straight to this man the moment she spotted him. They walked together until they reached a car that they both then got in. Henry followed them to the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens and watched as the car pulled into the driveway of a small two-level house, and then as Sheila and this man entered the house together.
For the next half hour Henry felt like he was dying inside as he tried to figure out what to do. His first thought was to burst in there and catch Sheila in the act of cheating on him and play the martyr and tell her with shocked outrage that it was over, except the idea of losing her made him sick to his stomach. He accepted quickly that he’d rather she sleep around (whether she was being paid or not) than lose her. Even with the trauma Sheila had put him through the last few days, he couldn’t go back to living alone, and he became terrified that if he broke into the house and confronted them Sheila would end things with him. He couldn’t risk losing her, but he couldn’t just drive away either. So he sat paralyzed in his fear and dread and despair as different plans of action raced through his mind. Finally, he decided he had to go in the house. He would physically pick Sheila up and carry her out of there on his shoulder if he had to, but he was taking her out of that house. Once he got her home, he would talk sense into her, and get to the bottom of what was going on. Somehow he would make Sheila see how much he loved her, and he would find a way to save their marriage. And maybe he’d also beat the heck out of her lover before he took his wife out of there.
The front door was locked and it appeared solid. Henry tried to break it open with his shoulder like he’d seen done on cop shows, but all he did was hurt himself. He rang the bell and got no answer. In his mind he imagined that his wife and this man were too busy making love in this man’s bed to answer the door, and that thought left Henry seething. He raced around the house searching for a window or another door that he could enter through, and in the back of the house he found a flimsier-looking door that he was able to kick open on his third try. This door led straight into the kitchen, and that was where he found them, but not the way he expected them to be. Sheila lay crumpled on the floor not moving. The man was lying on his back near her, his eyes bulging open. He looked paralyzed, but his lips were trembling slightly as if he were struggling to say something.
Henry stumbled toward Sheila as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. A hammer and chisel lay near the man, and a pool of blood seemed to be leaking out of the back of his head. Unless he was mistaken, a piece of the man’s skull also lay on the floor.
Henry moved as if he were in a trance as he kneeled by Sheila, the room blurring around him and his blood ran ice-cold as he expected to find his wife dead. But she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t even unconscious. When he gently turned her onto her back, her left eye was blinking and the left part of her mouth was moving. As incredible as it was, she was trying to tell him something. He bent his ear to her lips and listened to what she had to say. Her voice was a faint whisper at best, and it took time for her to push out each word, but she told him what he needed to know. That if he called for the police or for an ambulance they would arrest her as the Skull Cracker Killer, and that he would never see her again.
He backed away from her, and that was when he spotted the hypodermic needle on the floor. Something made him lift up the man’s head enough so he could see the back of his scalp, and sure enough a piece of his skull had been broken off exposing his brain. The room started spinning on Henry, and he sat heavily onto the floor.
He understood then that Sheila really was the Skull Cracker Killer, and knew why she had approached him that night in the bar. He also knew why she had slipped away from the booth when he had waved the waitress over. So that she wouldn’t be seen with him. For whatever reason she’d changed her mind after they’d gone down that alley, but her plan had been to do to him what she started to do to this man. Whatever was in that hypodermic needle must’ve left him paralyzed, and she had tried using the hammer and chisel to break apart his skull just like the way Henry had drawn in his skull-cracker comic books when he was sixteen.
Joe’s words came back to him. There’s someone for everybody.
There was a reason why he drew those comic books and Sheila was now killing people the same way, just like there was a reason why she chose not to kill him in that alley. Because they were soulmates. Sheila must’ve sensed that, even if she didn’t understand it at the time.
There’s someone for everybody.
With a certain finality, Henry accepted the truth of this. His wife was a monster, but that wasn’t going to change the way he felt about her, nor was he going to call the police. After all, he was more than somewhat monstrous on the outside, and even if he hadn’t realized it until now, he had to be also on the inside for Sheila to have recognized that they were soulmates.
His dizziness had passed, and he moved over to Sheila and put his ear near her mouth. It took a while, but she instructed him on what he had to do.