Afternoon Delight

“What should we do with the body?”

I stared at the corpse on the kitchen floor. I had been expecting afternoon delight when I’d slipped out of work early.

“Well?” Annabelle said, folding her arms across her chest.

“I’m thinking,” was my flaccid response. “Explain what happened again.”

“For Chrissakes! That doesn’t matter!”

“Someone saw him come here,” I said, trying to buy myself some time. “His car is out there somewhere.”

“We have no Mrs. Kravitz. Everyone was at work.” Annabelle lit a cigarette.

“Someone will miss him,” I said. Smoking was a new habit for her. “Trying on another vice?”

“Focus,” she said, pointing at the body.

I shit you not, it’s disconcerting coming home to a dead body. “He’ll be missed.”

“Sure as shit, honey. How do we make sure they don’t come looking here?”

“We wait ‘til dark.”

“Everyone will be home then! We have to do it now.”

“Do what now?”

“I don’t know! That’s your half of shit-to-know.”

“Fine. Pull the car into the garage and we put him in the trunk.”

“No. He’ll leave forensic shit everywhere,” she said, striking a pose with her hand in the air and the cigarette dangling from her fingers.

“Forensic shit…?” I watched the ash grow on the end of the cigarette. Was she actually going to smoke it? “Put a tarp down first.”

“Well, duh! Where are you going to take him.”

“Me?”

“Your half…”

“… of the shit-to-know?” Of course it was. Annabelle took a long puff on the cigarette. “So you do smoke it.”

“Huh?”

“Maybe there’s an idea in your half of the shit-to-know? ‘Cause I’m fresh out. It’s not every day a captain’s wife kills the CO.”

“Don’t get snarky with me. He had it coming.”

I ran my hands over my Army brush-cut. “Fuck!”

“I’m surprised it took that long to come out.” She pranced to the kitchen sink, turned on the water and put the cigarette under the stream.

“What the hell?”

“I don’t want to start a fire,” she said and continued her prance over to the trash can.

Why had I married her? I watched as she bent over and put the butt in the trash. Oh yeah, that’s why.

“Why can’t you come up with a solution? How stupid are you?”

Pretty damn stupid. “What if we just did the obvious and called the police?”

“You’re a fucking moron!”

I was really feeling it right about then.

“I’ve got priors,” she said, putting her hands on her hips.

I threw my hands in the air and said, “Solicitation is not a felony! You won’t—“

“How would an idiot like you know!”

I picked up my car keys.

“Oh no you don’t!” she said, blocking my way.

“Are you sure you want a moron’s help?”

“I want your muscle. I have an idea.”

She had all kinds of ideas. Some of them even worked. “I hope it’s better than this smoking idea.”

“This is sweet. Judy, next door, was screwing him. Drop him in their backyard, and it will look like they did it.”

That could work. We were living off-base, but so was most of the base. We’d clustered in this neighborhood for ease in commuting. His car was out there and he could have been visiting Judy, or anyone from the base, just as easily as he was visiting us. Were there any loose ends? “What did you hit him with?”

She pointed to our blown-glass sculpture of an angelfish on the kitchen table. It sparkled in the afternoon sunlight.

“It’s pristine,” I said.

“Well, yah. I washed off my fingerprints and his forensic shit.”

“Maybe we should trash it. Break it into tiny pieces and—”

“No way! It was my mother’s!”

All the more reason to get rid of it. “Well…”

“I have a better idea. We plant in their house.”

“The hell?”

“Sure, it makes perfect sense,” she said, tapping her index finger on her lower lip. “If they did it, the murder weapon should be in their house. And the best part is, I can still see it.”

Now who’s the moron? “Sure. You do that. I’ll move the body. Why isn’t there blood?”

“I didn’t stab him, I beaned him!”

“Are you sure he’s dead?”

“Not breathing equals dead.”

I picked him up in a fireman’s carry and took him outside to the backyard fence.

“No!” Annabelle screamed.

Adrenalin exploded through my body and I ran back into the house. “Who saw?”

“No one, you idiot. If you drop him, the forensics guys can tell and will know the body was moved.”

“How do you… never mind. What’s the plan?” My legs were quaking from the sudden dash carrying all that weight.

“Just walk through their gate,” she said, waving her hand in the air.

“Someone will see.”

“No one is home. I’ll say it again so it penetrates your…”

“Shut the fuck up.” I had been holding my CO over my shoulder the entire conversation and was not happy. I trudged out of the house again, but this time through the front door with a dead body over my shoulder in broad daylight. By the time I got to the gate, I was just about done for.

“Here,” Annabelle said, and I saw her perfectly manicured paw unlatch the gate and shove it open.

I trudged through and carefully laid him in the middle of the lawn. I bent over and rested my hands on my knees to catch my breath. I heard Annabelle close the gate. I’m fit, but damn! I looked around at the surrounding houses. No one was at the windows.

When my legs stopped feeling like jelly, I hopped the fence into my yard and went inside my house. Annabelle wasn’t around, so I looked out the front window. I shit you not, she was talking to Judy!

“Shit shit shit!” I said as I flung open the front door and ran to Annabelle’s side.

“—didn’t think you knew,” Judy was saying to Annabelle. Judy held the glass fish.

“God bless Facebook! Right, honey,” she said, turning to me and smiling. She playfully put one finger on my lips in the universal sign of shut-up.

“Well, it’s a lovely birthday present,” Judy said, eying the fish suspiciously. “You’re so thoughtful.”