Page 63 of Little Deaths

Desire was a tenacious seed; once sown, it kept finding ways to grow back, no matter how brutally reaped. Shortly after that, he had started sneaking into her room. At first, it had only been to watch her sleep, as if studying the beauty of her in repose was the key alone to possessing her. But soon, not even that was enough. He got into bed with her and, with shaking hands, let himself do almost everything that he had been wanting to do in the limo.

Everything—except for the one line that he couldn’t bring himself to cross.

And then she had caught him after just a few evenings of this; she had caught him and had sent him away. Excised from the family like a diseased branch. Maybe he was sick. But if he was, it was endemic; his parents had fallen prey to their demons, and it had consumed them from the inside, out. The whole foundation was already rotten.

If walls could talk, he thought drunkenly, trailing his fingers along the ugly spotted counters,the floors would scream.

His lips twisted. That was clever. He made a mental note to file that away for one of his books, despite knowing in the back of his mind that he’d forget as soon as he was sober and his thoughts were no longer flying apart in a livid cloud of atoms.

Still dragging his hand over the granite, Rafe let his fingers drift over the wall. His wineglass, newly filled, was in his other hand. The kitchen fed into the living/dining area where the smashed bar still gleamed with pieces of broken glass. His eyes drifted upwards to the chandelier, which was made of stained glass. Little sculptures of rainbow birds perched on the lip of each of the two tiers, as if they were bowing over a varicolored fountain. His mother picked out that piece, as he recalled. In her better moments, she’d always appreciated whimsy, as long as it came from something that wasn’t alive.

There weren’t many traces of Donni in this house. She had bought some of the furniture and a few pieces of the better works of art. One of the prettiest was a piece of Gallet art glass: a vase so exquisitely wrought that it appeared to be made out of carved green jade. The lucky bamboo fountain sitting in the bowl of polished brass was also hers, though his father constantly made her unplug it. He took another sip of wine as he bent to plug it in, listening to the burble of the water trickling over the polished jasper rocks.

On the far wall was a Roy Lichtenstein painting from hisNudesseries, featuring a blonde woman with neon lipstick arching in a way that showed off her big tits. His father had bought it after the divorce, hanging it in stark defiance of the living room’s ‘70s take on Scandinavian austerity. Rafe stalked over to it, lifting the frame by a finger.

Just as he remembered, there was a safe on the other side.

He didn’t know the combination but he supposed he ought to tell Donni it existed—if she didn’t already know about it. He suspected she did not. His father liked his secrets.

And so did Donni. She was hiding something from him, and he would find out what it was that made her so cagey on the subject of his father’s death.

She’d asked him why he hadn’t had sex and he’d given her a dismissive answer. But the truth was, the longer he had waited, the less casual it felt. When he imagined fucking in his head, it was all-consuming: heat, fire, and darkness, like a fuse being blown. He could get himself off, but that wasn’t the same. He knew it wouldn’t feel the same.

Because the only time he’d ever felt that way was when he was with her.

Rafe let the frame fall back against the wall and took another long sip of the wine, rolling his shoulders to unbunch the muscles in his back. That was when he heard the faint creak of a floorboard in the foyer, as if someone was watching and trying very hard not to be heard.

“Donni?” he said, half-turning. “Is that you?”

Have you been watching me this whole time?

Silence.

Frowning, he studied the empty living room and the adjacent hallway, before turning back to the kitchen with a scoff. That was probably enough wine. It was making him imagine things.

But he paused where the kitchen intersected with the foyer, faced with a sudden wall of black. An intruder—but like something out of a nightmare. Where its face should have been was a strange patina of red and white swirls.

Instinctively, Rafe snatched up his phone, blindly punching redial, before red-hot pain burst along his periphery in a sparkling display of color and light. Then a second burst of pain followed the first and he lost his grip on the phone.

The last thing he heard was the shatter of glass.

???????

A to Z PO Boxes was in a part of town Donni rarely ventured. It was located in a strip mall with a hair salon that couldn’t manage curly hair and a hole-in-the-wall that sold Philly cheese steaks that would make any true sandwich connoisseur cry.

It was hard to imagine her husband taking the Mercedes out here, parking it in the lot, and thinking to himself, “Gee, I think I’ll sign up for a PO box.” But apparently at some point just before his death, he had done exactly that.

She adjusted the silk vest she had thrown over her tank top and belted in place before checking out her face in the rearview mirror.I look tired, she thought, but it felt like she always did lately. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten a full night’s rest.

As she got out of her car, she thought she saw someone a few rows down looking at her. It wasn’t someone she recognized but she wasn’t exactly a stranger in town, either. Once she would have waved, determined to show that she was friendly and just like everyone else. But those days had passed and she ignored the other woman, hitching her purse up higher under her arm.

A to Z PO Boxes looked like any other mail office on the inside. There were rotating wire racks filled with stickers and boutique cards and envelopes, and walls of bubble mailers and wrapping paper in a rainbow of colors. A man was seated behind the desk, holding a cup of coffee and a book of sudoku, both of which he set aside as the bell overhead chimed her arrival.

“Ah,” he said. “Mrs. Nicastro, I presume?”

That put her off because she hadn’t told the man on the phone what she looked like and since she hadn’t spoken, there was no way he could have recognized her voice. But then as she stared at him, he started to look sheepish and added, “Unless I’m mistaken?”

Business must be slow.“No, sorry.” She looked at him warily. “It’s me. You, uh, said you had some things for my husband?”