Free Jack of Spades by Joyce Carol Oates

haze of headache pain, I thanked Grossman. I praised him, and I assured him that I would tell my editor how brilliantly he’d handled the case, but—“I don’t think that we should pursue the plaintiff further. Let’s drop the pathetic case now.”
    “What do you mean, ‘let it drop’? I don’t understand.”
    “I don’t want to sue her for—whatever you’d said: fees, court costs. Let’s just let it drop.”
    “Andrew, the plaintiff lost her case and she should pay costs. She should pay for her recklessness in bringing suit. Why should your publisher pay?”
    “I’ll pay. I’ll pay your fee and whatever the costs are. Just send me a bill.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the innocent party. My fee is paid by the publishing house. And I am well paid. But Haider is the losing party, and she should pay . Fees are deterrents in nuisance cases. Otherwise every idiot would be suing every other idiot and the courts would be jammed. This woman comes from a well-to-do family, after all.”
    I insisted, I didn’t want to further humiliate C. W. Haider. She was hospitalized—was she? She’d collapsed in the courtroom, and had to be taken away by ambulance . . .
    “How do you know that, Andrew?”
    “You told me.”
    “Did I? I don’t remember telling you.”
    Perspiration broke out on my forehead, and inside my clothes. My head throbbed with pain. I could not recall whether Grossman had told me any of this.
    “Yes, you said—you told me that Haider had collapsed in the courtroom and an ambulance was called. Just a few minutes ago, you told me this.”
    “Did I!”—it seemed that Grossman was genuinely perplexed.
    Quickly I stammered that I had to hang up, I couldn’t drive while talking on the phone and would speak with him another time.
    It was several minutes before I felt strong enough, and my scattered thoughts focused enough, for me to drive the rest of the way home to Mill Brook House.
    I entered the house, which was very quiet. I hadn’t noticed if Irina’s car was in the driveway. No one appeared to be home.
    Not even the cleaning woman. No one.
    Silence rolled at me, in waves.
    They are all dead, and you are free.
    And you are blameless.

10 “Spotless As a Lamb”
    And then, I waited.
    The Harbourton Weekly came out on Wednesdays.
    Stealing myself for a withering front-page headline— Local Author Rush Sued for Theft, Plagiarism in Hecate Co. Court.
    There were no stories about the events of Monday on local TV or radio. No reporters tried to contact me. Nor did Irina seem to know that something upsetting had occurred in my life, and of course I didn’t tell her.
    When at last the Weekly was delivered to our mailbox, and I opened it hurriedly, I saw nothing on the front page that bore my name or photograph. No Rush , no Haider.
    Slowly I walked back to the house. My hands were trembling and my eyes filled with moisture.
    In sudden dread I stopped to open the Weekly, to scan the “Court Beat” column on page six, even the “Police Blotter”—nothing.
    Through the entire paper, nothing.
    My heart lifted. I laughed aloud, in gratitude. I felt the euphoria of one who has escaped punishment, though I could not have said why.

II

11 Perfect Crime
    And now, it is time.
    For Andrew J. Rush to commit a perfect crime.
    In the night waking with a lurch of my heart. And my jaws aching as if I’d been grinding my back teeth.
    What time was it?—barely I could make out the numerals on the bedside clock.
    That time before dawn that is not-yet-dawn. The Hour of the Wolf it is called, when people who are gravely ill are most susceptible to death.
    Can’t you see? In front of your eyes?
    Your enemy—helpless.
    Your enemy—waiting.
    On the farther side of the bed Irina was sleeping. Since moving to Mill Brook House we’d acquired a “king-sized” bed vast as a field in which two living breathing heat-producing bodies can lie oblivious of each other through the night.
    Though sometimes, it is