27

One of my ex-wives, I can’t remember which, used to tell me that if I was going to bring her something it should be something she could eat or wear or she didn’t want it. So when I arrived at Martina’s that night I was carrying a plastic bag with two containers of Harthi’s best Indian and a couple of big naan breads. Women love food. You can’t go wrong. You can buy them the wrong ring or a tacky necklace or last season’s handbag but when you bring a woman food and she’s hungry, well, you might as well be Prince Charming.

Martina unlocked the door. She looked at me, then at the bag hanging off my index finger.

“You got a thing about chunky women or something?”

“No,” I said. “But you’ve got free rein up to five hundred kilos. Then I might need to reconsider things.”

She took the bag from me and kissed my lips. She was wearing studded earrings in the shape of red ladybirds that were anatomically correct, as though two of the insects had decided to curl up there for the night. I smiled and felt one of them with my fingers. She held my hand as we went to the table. It had been years since a woman wanted to hold my hand.

All her cutlery and plates and cups were mismatched, as if she’d just bought singular pieces she liked the look of in secondhand shops. Each was beautiful in its own way. I went through her cupboards and gathered everything. She stood by the balcony doors, lost to me, her fingers wandering in the lace hanging beside her. I stopped and watched her, knew she was watching the two patrol officers in the squad car on the street. I remembered my second wife telling me that there were times that I would come home and I would be away at the same time, a shell of myself, inaccessible to her. How unfair it was, she would tell me, how teasing to have my body and not my mind. I knew what that loneliness felt like then. Martina was a ghost. The loss of her stung.

I went to the window and put my hand on her arm, and some warm and bright flicker of herself returned. We wouldn’t eat. We put the food in the fridge, stripped off and climbed into her bed together, and she fit the curves of her body to mine, her hands folded under my chin. We were still strangers and I was glad for it. There was so much to learn. The scent of her hair under my nose was new and welcoming.

“When I was little,” she whispered, “I’d fight with my brothers. Play fights. There was never any competition in it but they enjoyed how worked up I could get. I used to like it until that moment came when I would be pinned and I would test each limb, each muscle, to try to find an escape. When there was none, there was always fear. I knew we were playing. I knew they loved me, sort of. I’d come to realize though, at that time, that my power meant nothing. All my power meant nothing. It was a game but . . . it wasn’t a game. That’s what it was like in those days in the cage. That’s what it’s like now. I’m pinned, Frank. I’m pinned just by knowing he’s alive.”

It was utterly dark and her voice sounded small, like it didn’t matter if I heard her words or not. She was asleep almost instantly, as though she had been waiting years for a safe time.

The night has many shades. For Eden they came on like a blessed heat—the warmth of a job begun, the intense blaze of time as it ticked away. She was sweating as she pinned the black plastic sheet over the large wooden table, folding the edges into perfect forty-five-degree angles to form hospital corners, which she taped tightly. Eric stood by the door to the fish-gutting room, staring out at the stillness of the marina.

All about them the stink of fish was thick, a sour and salty smell, and the only sound was the familiar roar of the duct tape and the sloshing of water against the pillars beneath the boathouse. The licking of the waves sounded, to her, like the clunking of approaching boots. Eden trembled. She fancied she could hear, with her heightened senses, the sucking and gaping of barnacles and other sea creatures when the water receded. She laid out the cable ties, one at each corner, for Benjamin Annous’s wrists and ankles. From a black leather pouch Eden extracted three long, spotless blades: a serrated hunting knife, a narrow filleting knife, a pointed chef’s knife.

At the screech of the blades against their sheaths Eric walked back into the room and closed the door quietly. Along the wall hung less precise instruments, the weapons of the fishermen—hooks and picks and cleavers and scrapers. In the corner was a large and menacing machine, its munching teeth ajar and welcoming, rows of unlabelled cans lined along its shelves. This was Benjamin’s workplace. He spent his days and nights here, snuffing out small, dumb lives hour upon hour, pulling innards from pulsing bellies, stripping vitality from wet flesh.

Benjamin Annous. The one who had begun the shooting.

Eden stood at the table, her gloved palms spread on its surface before her, leaning on their weight. Eric came up beside her and picked up the nearest blade. He smiled. He was remembering now, part of his ritual. Eden reached up and pressed his hand down, sinking the blade back onto the table.

“No,” she said. “This time it’s my turn.”