Read Online The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 by Otto Penzler - Free Book Online Page A

her fingers on the keypad, trying to make herself dial Pat Gallagher’s number. After a time, she began to cry.
    She did call that evening, by which time a curious calm, unlike any other she had ever felt, had settled over her. This may have been because by then she was extremely drunk, having entered the stage of slow but very precise speech, and a certain deliberate, unhurried rationality that she never seemed able to attain sober. Both Pat and Babs immediately offered to come and stay with her, but Mattie declined with thanks. “Not much point to it. She said she’d wait . . . said she
liked
waiting.” Her voice sounded strange in her own ears, and oddly new. “You can’t bodyguard me forever. I guess
I
have to bodyguard me. I guess I just have to.”
    When she hung up—only after her friends had renewed their insistence that she call daily, on pain of home invasion—she did not drink any more, but sat motionless by the phone, waiting for Don’s return. It was his weekly staff-meeting night, and she knew he would be late, but she felt like sitting just where she was.
If I never moved again, she’d have to come over here to kill me. And the neighbors would see.
The phone rang once, but she did not answer.
    Don came home in, for him, a cheerful mood, having been informed that his supervisor at the agency, whom he loathed, was being transferred to another branch. He had every expectation of a swift promotion. Mattie—or someone in Mattie’s body, shaping words with her still-cold lips—congratulated him, and even opened a celebratory bottle of champagne, though she drank none of her glass. Don began calling his friends to spread the news, and Mattie went into the kitchen to start a pot roast. The steamed fish with greens and polenta revolution had passed Don quietly by.
    The act of cooking soothed her nerves, as it had always done; but the coldness of her skin seemed to have spread to her mind—which was not, when considered, a bad thing at all. There was a peculiar clarity to her thoughts now: both her options and her fears seemed so sharply defined that she felt as though she were traveling on an airplane that had just broken out of clouds into sunlight.
I live in clouds. I always have.
    Fork in one of his hands, cordless in the other, Don devoured two helpings of the roast and praised it in between calls. Mattie, nibbling for appearances’ sake, made no attempt to interrupt; but when he finally put the phone down for a moment she remarked, “That woman at the Bridge Group? The one who said she was going to kill me?”
    Don looked up, the wariness in his eyes unmistakable. “Yeah?”
    â€œShe means it. She really means to kill me.” Mattie had been saying the words over and over to herself all afternoon; by now they came out briskly, almost casually. She said, “We discussed it for some time.”
    Don uttered a cholesterol-saturated sigh. “Damn, ever since you started with that bridge club, feels like I’m running a daycare center. Look, this is middle-school bullshit, you know it and she knows it. Just tell her, enough with the bullshit, it’s getting real old. Or find yourself another partner, probably the best thing.” He had the cordless phone in his hand again.
    The strange, distant Mattie said softly, “I’m just telling you.”
    â€œAnd I’m telling you, get another partner. Silly shit, she’s not about to kill anybody.” He wandered off into the living room, dialing.
    Mattie stood in the kitchen doorway, looking after him. She said—clearly enough for him to have heard, if he hadn’t already been talking on the phone—“No, she’s not.” She liked the sound of it, and said it again. “She’s not.” Then she went straight off to bed, read a bit of
Chicken Soup for the Soul,
and fell quickly asleep. She dreamed that Olivia Korhonen was leaning over