The Murder by Ethan Canter (recommended reading TXT) 📕

her cigarette out in the ashtray and pours herself another glass of wine.
In his jacket pocket he runs his fingers over the cold metal of the gun.
She rests herself against the bureau, an arm across her chest cradling the elbow of the other holding up the glass of wine, her lips pressed against it, her eyes looking at him, then the floor, then at the balcony doors, then back at him again.
“You used to understand me,” he says, looking at her, trying to recall how he once had wanted her.
“I’m not having this conversation,” she says, lowering her glass and gesturing with her hand for him to stop.
She was beautiful, he thinks – I remember I used to think she was beautiful. Has she changed so much? Was she always not beautiful? “How do these things change?” he says to himself.
“People change,” she says, re-crossing her arms.
“Do they?” he says.
“Yes,” she says. “People change – it’s what they do.” She takes a deep breath. “Look, you’re not going to make sense of it, alright? They’re emotions. You can’t control them, they just happen.”
He feels a sadness saturating him like a dull poison.
“You need to move on,” she says, walking to the balcony doors. “You need to get out, you need to see people,” sounding almost boastful, placing a cigarette between her lips. “You need to meet someone,” and she stresses the word meet with innuendo.
His brow tightens.
“And you need to lighten up,” she adds, forcing a smile.
His hand slides around the handle of the gun. “Did you learn all that from the television?” he says under his breath.
“What?”
“I said you should write for television,” he says in an offhand tone, letting go of the gun and walking towards the bureau.
“What does that mean?” she says, her eyes tight and following him across the room.
He places his untouched drink on the bureau and stares at it, his back to her. “I was just thinking,” he says, not turning around, “that you have so much advice it’s a shame to waste it all on me.”
She tilts her head back and stares at the ceiling. In a quiet tone she says, half to him, half to herself, “I don’t even know when to get along with you anymore.”
He clenches his jaw. Then suddenly he turns around, and in an upbeat tone, says, “You know what I think?”
She resists responding, resists even looking at him. She takes a sip of wine and stares out the balcony doors again.
“I think we should go on a vacation,” he says, moving across the room towards her.
“What?” she says in disbelief.
“I think we should go on a vacation,” he says again, coming up beside her. “Just the two of us. Alone. Together.”
“Have you lost your mind?” she says, exasperated, nearly laughing from the absurdity of the suggestion.
“But I’m serious,” he says.
She looks at him, confused, almost pityingly.
“I think it could be good for us,” he says.
“I think you should leave,” she says flatly, and starts to walk away.
“I’m serious. Listen,” he says, reaching at her shoulder.
She turns, aggressively pulling her arm away from him. “Don’t touch me,” she says sharply.
“You see,” he says gravely. “This is what I mean.”
“You need to leave,” she says, looking him sternly in the eyes.
“We’ve lost touch. We don’t understand each other anymore,” he says, his voice soft and lamentful.
“This conversation is finished,” she says. “And now I’m telling you to leave.”
“Don’t you remember how we used to be in love?” he says, his voice nearly a whisper, and his hand reaching up, gently, towards her face.
“I’m calling the police,” she says, backing away from him, towards the kitchen.
He looks at his hand – alone, shaking slightly, left in midair, having never reached its destination. He closes it into a fist, and shutting his eyes, tight, holds back the rush of sorrow coming up from his chest.
In the kitchen she has the phone to her ear.
“Put down the phone,” he says, walking towards her, the gun in his hand, at waist level, pointed at her.
For a moment she’s stunned, frozen.
The emergency operator picks up on the other end of the line and says something.
He grabs the phone and hangs it up.
He stands and stares at her in the silence. Light, from the under-counter lighting behind her, floods out around her. She doesn’t look scared – just confused, shocked, even disappointed. She swallows. He can tell she’s thinking of what to say. But he feels nothing. I feel nothing, he thinks – only, like a first kiss, I wish this moment could go on forever.
“This is crazy,” she says finally, trying to make her voice sound like the voice she thinks he remembers.
He smirks. Even her sincerity is insincere, he thinks.
She steps forward. He moves in front of her and motions with the gun for her to remain where she is.
“Oh for chrissake,” she says, pushing her hair back off her face. “I’m just getting my glass of wine.”
He doesn’t respond, just continues to stare at her, his face expressionless, his eyes blank, the gun at his waist aimed at her.
She steps back and rests against the counter again. She crosses her arms. She looks at his face. She looks into his eyes. She glances down at his hand wrapped around the gun. She looks up into his eyes again, his blank stare making her feel cold.
The phone rings.
She jumps.
It continues to ring.
She looks at it, then at him, then back at the phone, and then at him again. “It’s the police,” she says.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t respond.
“If I don’t answer it they’ll suspect something,” she says.
The phone stops ringing. But then it suddenly starts again.
“If I don’t answer it they’ll send someone here,” she says threateningly.
He steps to his left and rips the phone from the wall.
“Now they’ll definitely send someone,” she says. “They can tell when a phone’s been unplugged, you know.”
He looks at the floor. Then raising his eyes back up to hers, says, slowly, “Why did you change?”
“There’s another phone in the bedroom,” she says, ignoring his baiting question. “I can call them from there, tell them everything’s fine, tell them they don’t need to send anyone.”
“Why would you want to do that?” he asks.
“Because I don’t want to see you get arrested, okay,” she says, irritated that she’s been forced to make the admission.
He smiles – it’s that struggle of hers again, he thinks.
“What? Are you in trouble with the police?” she says, misunderstanding his smile. “Is that what this is about? Did you do something – my God!” she says suddenly, looking at the gun in his hand. “Did you–”
He doesn’t need to look into her eyes to feel the sudden change in her – but he does anyway. It were as though she were gone and now some actress is standing across from him, playing her part. He feels suddenly cold, and disoriented. The kitchen looks strange and unfamiliar, though he knows he’s been in it a hundred times or more. And for a second, like light passing through the room, he sees her beautiful – her flowing hair, her soft skin, her eyes always on the verge of laughter. And then it’s gone again.
“Why did you change?” he says, almost pleadingly.
“The police will be here any minute,” she says, trying to distract him. “If you leave now you–”
“I don’t care about the police,” he shouts. “I want to know why you changed. Tell me why you changed,” he demands, waving the gun at her.
“I don’t know,” she shouts back.
“You’re lying,” he screams. “You’re lying. Why are you lying to me?” His voice is distraught. He grabs his head with both hands, anguish contorting his face, his mind arguing with itself.
In that split second – his eyes closed, his attention distracted away from her – she runs for the door.
In the hall he slams the door shut with the weight of his body and throws her up against the wall.
“Why did you change?” he demands.
She pushes him and tries to run down the hall.
He catches her by the arm and spins her around.
She raises her hand and hits him hard across the face.
He pins her shoulders against the wall and demands “Tell me why you changed.”
She tries to bring her knee up between his legs, but fails, ineffectually kneeing him in the thigh.
He pushes the gun into her belly. “Tell me why you changed,” he says slowly, his eyes full of rage and sadness.
“I don’t know,” she says through clenched teeth.
“You don’t know?” he says, pushing the gun harder into her.
“You’re hurting me,” she says, trying to squirm free.
“You don’t know what hurt is,” he says, his voice suddenly subdued, and a strange, faraway look glazing over his eyes.
All at once he lets go his hold on her. He searches her eyes for something he can’t find. He looks down at the floor. His arms hang at his sides.
Ever so slowly she begins to slink away along the wall.
“I know why,” he whispers, half to himself.
She glances to her right, judging the distance to the door.
Without warning he punches her hard in the belly, just below the ribs.
She falls to the floor, choking for air, unable to move, unable to make a sound – winded.
Kneeling beside her he softly pets her hair, a distorted whimper pulling at his lips.
“I know why,” he whispers to her.
Violently trying to take in a breath she searches him with her eyes – fear finally showing on her face.
Gently he places the gun in her hand and slides her finger around the trigger. He smiles, almost lovingly, and still kneeling turns his back to her. With his hand wrapped around hers he lifts the gun and presses it into the small of his back. He slides his finger over hers and squeezes.
The sound of the gun is deafening. The bullet rips through him and lodges into the wall with a spray of blood. He feels a burning sensation, then a sudden surge of pain rippling outward from the wound, sending his whole body into spasms. He lets go of her hand and falls forward. Every movement, every motion is agony, like a piece of glass turning and twisting in his side.
She starts taking in tiny gasps of air.
He makes it to his feet and leans against the wall. He looks down at her.
Twitching, her eyes look up at him, terrorized.
He smiles, then clenches his jaw and drags himself towards the door.
He dislodges the newspaper from the elevator. Down the corridor an apartment door opens and a middle-aged man in pajamas pokes his head out. Getting into the elevator he looks at the man and says, “Call the police. I’ve been shot.”