Free The Killer's Wife by Bill Floyd Page A

neighborhood. But what if they did? Would I be able to look at my son without seeing ruin?
    The shots in our front yard in El Ray, the neighbors watching and the cops converging while I held Hayden and screamed. The blood that fed the chambers of his heart. Echoes.

CHAPTER SIX
    1.
    W e were lying around his apartment, him wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts, me in only one of his T-shirts, the first time I saw the photograph. We’d just had our initial foray into actual sex. Three previous dates ended in some fumbling and dry humping, but this night I’d had quite a lot of wine, and holding back any longer seemed plain unfair to both of us. It was awkward, as such initial contacts usually are; both of us stayed neck to shoulder during the whole thing, facing past each other but close, really close, and it felt fine. He promised it would be better next
time and I told him he didn’t have a thing to worry about. The reassurances on both sides were nearly rote, but with the codicil that I actually liked this guy quite a bit, and it was the first time in a while that that had happened and he seemed to like me as well. We both recognized that tonight might not be the only night, but the first in a long string of nights. It was immediately comfortable on some fundamental level, and even the awkwardness of the intimacy quickly fell away into an easy, innocuous kind of conversation, good rhythms, neither of us forcing it, both of us secretly happy that it hadn’t been any more disappointing than expected.
    He lived alone, which was unusual for a twenty-three-year-old in our snug little college town. Most guys his age had roommates, out of preference if not necessity. My friends and I judged that most men didn’t have the mental capacity for living alone; they needed to spout off to someone about stupid shit or else they got backed up, and turned weird. Randy seemed capable not only of handling solitude, but also of using the time alone to develop himself to an impressive degree. He was what HR types call a “self-starter.” His apartment was tidy and fashionable without coming across as effete; a gas fireplace and a couple of nice reproductions on the walls, Impressionist ocean scenes and rustic landscapes. He’d dropped out of school his junior year, not from burnout but because he’d interned with Jackson-Lilliard, an international chemical company that had a regional office headquartered in Albany, an hour’s commute north from our campus town of Corvallis, and they’d offered him a full-time position at a salary no sane man his age
would’ve refused. That’s a damned rare outcome for what had begun as an unpaid internship; his mentor had been extremely impressed with the way he’d carried himself and the amount of time and energy he devoted to his work.
    He was an extremely impressive sort of guy.
    When Dana had pointed him out to me two weeks earlier, a face across the bar at Happy Sam’s, I knew right away that he was distinct from the frat boys and the indie rockers and the other types of posers who filled the classrooms and quads at school. It was there in his carriage, his mannerisms of restraint, the way he spoke quietly when Dana introduced us. He made himself clearly heard without raising his voice, even in the boisterous din of the bar. A sharp dresser, not conventionally hot but put together just fine, ripped biceps and a thick chest under a tasteful Ralph Lauren shirt. Confident enough that he didn’t have to take extra measures to impress anyone, he didn’t sport any jewelry aside from what appeared to be a real Rolex. When Dana invited him to our table, he didn’t offer to buy everyone’s drinks; he just bought mine.
    Now he returned from the kitchen to refill my wineglass. I was holding the framed photo I’d found on one of his end tables. “Is this you?”
    He traded me a replenished glass for the picture, and a nostalgic, smoky sort of smile crossed his face. “That was in Alaska,” he said,