The Subtle Art of Brutality

He searches for a moment. Then his eyes light. “Yeah. About a month ago it happened. Some car pulled into our driveway—we could hear the bass coming a mile away—and I figured it was just somebody turning around. With the school practically next door a lot of parents will do that. So, initially we didn’t think much of this dude parked there.”

“Friend of hers?”

“Something of hers.”

“Can you describe the car?”

“It was wine red with gaudy gold-spokes in the wheels. ’80s model sedan, four-door. Had a ridiculous license plate that read BMPIN.” He spells it.

“This state?”

“Yup.”

“You took good notice.”

“Thanks. I did a tour as an MP. So anyways, then he shuts his engine off and now I’m wondering what he wants. We get door-to-door salesmen all the time. They show up whenever the kid’s asleep and ring the doorbell. We’ve got a Jehovah’s Witness church a few miles away and they stop by. Same thing with convicts selling magazine subscriptions, all that stuff. I went out to the porch to meet the guy.”

“Ballsy.”

“He was white or Hispanic; either way he didn’t have an accent. I’d put him at five-eight, one-seventy. Looked like a punk. His hat was off to the side with a flat bill, baggy pants. Shifty. He asked if Delilah ‘still stayed here.’ I said no. He looked in the windows as he left.”

Bellview shifts his gaze to Abigail. “He saw my wife.”

Now that he mentions it, his wife has the same stats as Delilah; color, build.

“He think you were lying?”

“I think so.”

“Your wife, seen through a window in passing, bears a resemblance to Ms. Boothe.”

“I guess so. Because he came back.”

12

“The same day?”

Bellview smiles and rubs his scalp. “No. A few days later.”

“Still asking for her?”

“I wasn’t here.”

I look to Abigail. “What happened?”

She’s holding the little girl. The toddler favors her father’s look but has her mother’s dark beauty. Abigail hands the daughter to her husband and looks at me. Pleasant.

“Well, that ghetto douche who thought I was that drug addict, it gives me chills.”

I can see faint, ghostly traces of the jeopardy she felt then. They surface as she brings the memories forward. Peruse any women’s shelter and see. Abigail’s traces aren’t bad by comparison.

“Well, it actually wasn’t much which is why we didn’t think too hard about it. Tyler went to the store, and while he was gone this guy shows up and bangs on the door. I didn’t know what to do but I didn’t want to be...oh, we were still new in the neighborhood and I guess I didn’t want the cops to come screaming to our house, lights blazing. I called Tyler and told him to hurry. Then I answered the door.”

“No cops?” People do stupid shit like this.

“No. Well, I should say I cracked it just enough to tell him I called the police—I’m so stupid, I know. I just didn’t think. The man, he looked drunk or something and he just barged into the house. I tried to shut the door but he was just so sudden—I screamed and he looked at me like he was trying to figure out who I was or something. I ran back to the baby’s room and that’s when Tyler got home.”

I look at him, he nods. “I called the cops on my way home. I pulled up, got out. I came inside and went right up to him. I recognized the car. On the phone, Abby said he was beating the front door so I just drilled his ass. Best punch I’ve ever thrown. He was out like a light. Then the cops came. An ambulance. He refused treatment. He looked like my slug sobered him up. He said he used to date Delilah and she cut off contact and he thought she still lived here. Thought I was her new man and I was lying to him. Thought Abby was Delilah.”