quietly. Peter had wanted to make an early dinner for Amanda and David that afternoon,
in celebration of their leaving for Hawaii. He had asked Amanda for a bottle of olive oil and a bunch of garlic and some slipper
lobster tails along with a few other odds and ends—stuff that he couldn’t buy at local stores. She was going to be passing
a gourmet sort of market on the way out with Peggy, so he had left it up to her. She hadn’t brought any of it.
After all the yelling, Peter had gone after it himself, driving all the way out to east Orange when he would have saved time
just driving down into El Toro or across the canyon into Coto de Caza. He could have made spaghetti, for God’s sake, hamburgers.
Somehow, though, he had wanted to
show
her. He didn’t know exactly what that meant now.
When he had gotten back, something like an hour and a half later, Amanda and David were gone. Amanda hadthreatened that before he left. She had told him that Peggy would gladly give them a ride home. Peggy was only working a four-hour
shift at the Trabuco Oaks Steak House. Amanda and David could walk across the ridge and down into the Oaks in about forty
minutes, not much longer than the time that it took to drive there on the dirt road. Peter had taken off for the more distant
market anyway, despite Amanda’s warning.
Because
of Amanda’s warning. When he got back they were gone.
“So why did you call?” Peggy asked.
“What?”
“Why did you call? Just to talk?”
“No real reason,” Peter said. “I’m just trying to keep on top of it all. You know. I can’t give it up just like that.”
“It isn’t easy, is it?”
“Not much, no,” Peter said.
“It’s not easy on Amanda, either, you know. I’m sorry about screwing up your dinner, though.”
“I screwed it up,” Peter said. “Just another mistake.”
“Keep in touch,” she said.
“Sure.” He hung up and sat for a moment thinking, his throat and stomach hollow. He had no real way of knowing that Amanda
and David had ever left the canyon on that windy Sunday afternoon a week ago. He had taken it for granted that they had, and
the next day he had driven cheerfully off to Santa Barbara. If he set out right now to make a list of the things he had taken
for granted in his life, he’d go broke buying paper.
9
R ATS IN THE WELL WOULD MAKE A CKROYD A SICK MAN , but a dead cat in the well would make him something worse, especially when he found out it was his own cat.
Upending the bag, Pomeroy dropped the three rats beside the trail, then shoved the empty bag into his back pocket and started
to climb back down, anxious not to move too fast and scare the cat. Then he stopped, thought again, and went back up after
one of the two freshly dead rats, which he picked up by the tail, nearly gagging at the rubbery feel of the rat tail pressed
between his fingers.
He went back down, smiling in the cat’s direction, holding the rat visible. The cat watched him, its tail flicking back and
forth now. Pomeroy took the bag out of his back pocket with his free hand, although he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
He had killed small animals before by putting them into a plastic bag, then shoving the mouth of the bag over the exhaust
pipe of a car. The carbon monoxide put them right out. It was very humane.
A live cat would tear the bag to shreds, though. He looked around for something to hit it with. He didn’t like the idea of
the animal suffering. There was nothing close by, and he didn’t want to go looking for something. The cat would get away.
He decided just to grab it by the tail and slam it into the wall of the house. That would stun it long enough for him to get
it up the hill and drown it in the water tank. The cat wouldn’t suffer at all that way.
Pomeroy spoke to it, dropping the bag and flexing the fingers of his right hand. He laid the rat carefully on the wooden porch,
and the cat batted at it with its paw, as if it wanted the
Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
Etgar Keret, Ramsey Campbell, Hanif Kureishi, Christopher Priest, Jane Rogers, A.S. Byatt, Matthew Holness, Adam Marek
Saxon Andrew, Derek Chido