What You Wish For 
David Terrenoire

David Terrenoire lives in North Carolina. He may be
reached at davidterrenoire@hotmail.com
©Copyright 2001
David Terrenoire

I’m lying naked on the motel bed, watching Christina unbutton
her blouse when I whisper, “God, I can’t stand the thought of your
husband touching you.”
“Then kill him,” she says, real casual, like she’s been thinking of
this for a while.
I laugh, but it’s not funny. I watch Christina slide out of her jeans
and I hear her say, “We can make Bob go away, Jimmy, real easy.”
There. That’s when I should have sprinted back to the wife and
kids. But as every stray husband knows, it’s tough to run with your
pants down around your Adidas.
She says it again. “We can do that, Jimmy. Real easy.”
And it’s like I’m falling through ice. The proposition is on the
floor, along with her underpants, and with my blood nowhere near
my logic centers, I don’t say no. That’s what keeps me awake
nights. I don’t say no.
A few weeks go by and I begin to relax. Christina doesn’t bring it
up again in our weekly bounce and I’m glad because, even with
Bob out of the picture, there’s no way I’m coming out on the shiny
side of divorce. Mindy, my wife, knows too many lawyers.
But just as I begin to think it was all a bad joke, I see Bob
striding across the lawn. He’s smiling so I open the door. Bob is a
big man, a building contractor who juggles jackhammers to keep in
shape, and he’d beat me into a wet spot if he knew I’d been
plowing his playground since Christmas. The thought of Bob angry
gives me that sphincter tuck, like I’m looking down an open
elevator shaft.
Bob takes off his cap. His hair is spiked with sweat and he wipes
his face with his T-shirt, revealing a stomach chiseled by more
discipline than I’ll ever have. He says, “Christina sent me over for
boxes. We’re taking a bunch of books and stuff to the dump, if you
want to look.”
When I don’t answer Bob says, “Christina says you like to read.”
“Oh, right, yes.”
“I haven’t touched a book since college,” Bob says, like reading is
the same as sucking up tequila shots from a coed’s navel.
Over Bob’s shoulder I see Christina walk across the yard. Her legs
are bare and even in a shapeless gray T-shirt her body radiates a
heat that knocks me breathless. She brushes back hair so black it’s
violet in the sun and says, “Jimmy, you remember those liquor
boxes?”
“Liquor boxes?” She’s wearing cotton work gloves and all I can
think of is her hands, sweaty and pink, inside those gloves.
Bob laughs and says, “I think we woke Jimmy up from his nap.
What’s the matter, pal, a little sleepy?”
I back away so they can come in. “Mindy’s not here,” I say,
apropos of nothing.
“I know,” Christina says. “This’ll only take a minute.”
My garage is a jumble of busted stuff. I can’t remember the last
time I parked the Jeep in here.
Bob says, “Don’t you throw anything away?”
“What’s this?” Christina pulls out a blue plastic tarp. Before I can
stop her she bends over and unrolls it, her backside up and in our
faces, and I get a flash of Christina naked, looking at me over her
shoulder, with that smile she gets when she’s doing something really
wicked. I blink away the vision and force myself to concentrate on
the blue tarp. “I was building a boat.”
“Wow. She must have been a big one.”
“Twenty-two feet,” I say, but I’m not thinking about the boat. I’m
thinking of the night I watched Christina bring herself to orgasm
against the water jet while the boys paddled around the shallow
end of the pool.
“You ever get her in the water?”
“What?”
“The boat.”
“Oh, no. The boys started climbing on it. Mindy said it was
dangerous.”
Behind Bob, Christina picks out an aluminum softball bat and
smiles that wicked smile. Bob sees my face and starts to turn.
Christina steps into it, brings the bat around in a major league swing
and connects with Bob’s head. There’s a loud tunk, my stomach
flips and Bob falls down, spraying blood on my legs. All I can say
is, “Jesus.”
Christina looks at me and shrugs, the bat in her hand. “That was 
easier than I expected.”
I look down at Bob. He’s curled into a fetal position. Blood
spreads out from his head like an evening shadow. Bob’s body
jerks.
“He’s not dead,” I say. I know I should be scared, but instead I’m
relieved. I can fix this. I can make this right.
“Where are you going?”
I don’t stop. I take the stairs two at a time.
Christina catches up to me. She puts her hand on the phone and
says, “You can’t, Jimmy. It’s done.”
“He’s not dead!”
Christina steps in and I smell the heat in her hair and feel her
body against my arm. “I thought you wanted this.”
“I didn’t want this. I didn’t want Bob dead.”
“You should be clear about what you want, Jimmy.” Christina
presses against me and kisses my neck, then my face. “Otherwise,
people might misunderstand.” She kisses my mouth. When she pulls
away her teeth glisten.
I hear Bob scream and I jump. Christina droops. With
disappointment she says, “OK. Go help him. I’ll call 911.” She picks
up the phone and shoos me away.
I run down the steps and into the garage. Bob is whipping
around on the tarp. Blood sprays from his head, his eyes are wide,
but they don’t see. Or if they do, I don’t want to know what it is.
My shirt is soaked with sweat. I feel Christina behind me. Her hand,
still in her work glove, reaches past my shoulder. In her fist is my
gun, a little .32 I’d bought when there were burglaries in the
neighborhood. The sharp cracks snap the air. There are so many so
fast I can’t count them. The gun locks open, gray smoke spreads
across the room and silence falls over the moment like dust.
“Let’s roll him up.” Christina tosses the automatic onto the tarp
and flips one edge over her husband. “Come on, Jimmy.” She stops
and looks up at me. “You’re not going to throw up, are you, Jimmy?
Because that’s one thing I can’t stand. If you’re going to be sick, go
outside and close the door, I don’t even want to hear it.” She tucks
the tarp under Bob and rolls him up.
“You’ll have to carry him. He’s too heavy.” She hits the switch, the
garage door clanks open and I’m blinded by sunlight.
My skin buzzes. The earth rolls and shifts. I smell pennies on a
hot stove.
“Help me, Jimmy.”
I bend down and pick up the heavy end.
Christina laughs. “It’s Mu Shu Bob.”
Together, we load Bob inside the Cherokee.
“I’ll get my keys,” I say, although I have no idea where to go. I’m
back in the air-conditioning, the air cold on my face and arms. I 
take my keys from the hook in the kitchen. When I turn around,
Christina is there, close. She kisses me again, this time very hard. It
hurts but she won’t let me go. Her hands, naked and warm,
unbuckle my belt. Christina steps back and pulls her shirt over her
head. Her thumbs go inside the waistband of her shorts and she
pushes them down, past her thighs, and steps out of them. Naked
except for her Keds, she pulls me to the kitchen tile. She’s strong,
and she’s rough. “I can’t,” I tell her. “I can’t.”
She smiles and says, “You can, Jimmy. Admit it. You’re as ready
as I am.” And, God help me, I am. I am between her thighs and
she’s pulling me to her.
“Wait,” I say, “I need a thing. A condom. You know.”
“Not this time. I want to feel you inside me.”
And I don’t say no. I don’t say no.
Christina is rougher than she’s ever been. Her nails scratch into
my neck. She bites my shoulder. She pulls my hair and screams out
my name. When it is over and we lay panting on the kitchen floor
she says, kiss me, and when I do she bites my lip, drawing blood.
“Goddam, Chris.”
“That was the best, Jimmy, the best ever. If I’d known killing Bob
would make me this hot, I’d have done it a long time ago.”
We pull on our clothes, Chris hands me the keys and says, “You
know those condos Bob was building out at the Point?”
I nod, staring at the keys in my palm.
“They’re pouring the foundations tomorrow.” Christina giggles,
her hand at her mouth like a schoolgirl. “Bob always did say he
liked to lose himself in his work.”
I still can’t move, wanting this to be a practical joke on good ole
Jimmy, but Christina is the only one laughing.
“I’ll clean up the garage. Now go.” She kisses me again. “I’m
free,” she says, “and all because of you, Jimmy. All because of you.”
I drive through town. The sun is high and the streets bake. The
humidity presses against my face like a pillow and I can’t breathe. I
turn the AC all the way up. I hit scan and let the radio hunt from
station to station. The five-second fragments of song and chatter
keep me from thinking about Bob.
The building site is at the end of a long sandy road, on a point of
land where teenagers used to park, get high and make out. But
condos are crowding out all the wild places and I wonder briefly
where kids go today to lose their virginity.
The building site is a broad, bulldozed plain. Far out on the water
is a single sloop, its sails bright against the glitter. I imagine myself
at the tiller, the wind pulling me through the light chop. I can hear
the vibrating sheets and I taste salt on my lips. But the salt is blood,
and I’m dragged back to a world that’s so out of balance I feel like
I’m falling off. 
I open the back of the Cherokee, pull out the shovel, and walk
onto the foundation. I scrape the gravel away from the tamped
sand, dig a shallow trench, and go back for Bob. He’s heavy, but I
shoulder him in, cover him up, and smooth it all out. There is
nothing to mark Bob’s grave but a slight rise in the surface. I stand
back, take off my shirt and wipe the sweat from my face.
At first, I think my ears are ringing from the heat and stress. But
then I hear them clearly, just beneath the wind. They’re sirens. First
one, then another, and they’re getting louder.
• • •
It’s an election year and all I see in the prosecutor’s eyes are
headlines. My attorney suggests a deal and the prosecutor laughs
out loud. Counting them off on his fingers, he lists the evidence.
They catch me with the body. They find my tarp, my bat, my gun,
and Bob’s blood on my legs. “That’s just the murder,” he says.
“Then there’s the rape.” He holds up his other hand and counts out
a new fistful. My semen, my hair, and my skin found under
Christina’s nails.
The smiling prosecutor leans across the table and says, “Oh, don’t
get me wrong, Jimmy. This could be worse.”
My head is in my hands. “How?”
“You could be in Texas.” The prosecutor laughs again, but he
laughs alone.
• • •
They tell me I have a visitor. Other than my lawyer, I’ve seen no
one since the trial. One of the guards unlocks the door and I go in
and sit at the counter. My wife sits across from me, separated by
glass. I pick up the phone. “Hi, Mindy,” I say, “how are the boys?”
She ignores the question and pulls a stack of papers out of her
black bag. “I could have sent the lawyer with these papers, Jimmy,
but I wanted to see you one last time.” She smiles. “You look so
small in here.”
“Mindy, I’m sorry.”
“I hope you’ve made friends,” she says, her eyes twinkling. “Close
friends.”
I don’t offer up any excuses or try to explain because there’s not
much I can say now, is there? Mindy leaves the divorce papers on
her side of the glass. The guard comes to get me.
The window in the corridor looks out on the jail’s parking lot and
I ask the guard if I can watch my wife drive away. He shrugs and
says, “Why not?”
I stand at the window and in a few minutes I see Mindy leave the 
building and walk across the street to the parking lot. She gets into
her car and as she backs out of the parking space I see someone in
the passenger seat. The lot is in the shadow of the jail and as the
car pulls toward me, I see the black hair, and the pale arm on the
door’s sill. The car turns left and Christina looks up. Her face comes
into sunlight and I see her smile and she looks happy, genuinely
happy. The car pulls into traffic and I feel the guard’s hand on my
arm. He says, “Let’s go, Jimmy. Your time’s up.”