Читать книгу The Tiny Wife - Andrew Kaufman, Serafima Gettys - Страница 8

Chapter 3

hree days after the robbery, and merely minutes after we’d finally gotten Jasper to sleep, our phone rang. It was our home line, which we usually let go to voicemail, but Stacey raced to answer it. Later she would explain that it had sounded urgent – an alarm, not just a ring.

The caller was Detective William Phillips, who had stood ninth in line and had given the robber a large antique key. Detective Phillips asked if anything peculiar was happening in her life, anything new and, perhaps, inexplicable. She asked him to elaborate. The detective told her that in the last twenty-four hours he had received confessions from two different husbands, claiming to have murdered their wives. He went on to explain that both of these cases involved someone who’d been inside Branch #117 at the time of its robbery.

Stacey asked for still more detail. Detective Phillips related the following stories.

Two mornings after the robbery, Daniel James, who had stood fifth in line and had given the thief a photograph of his wife’s parents’ wedding was tying his shoes when the lace in his right shoe broke. He put on his other pair of dark shoes and the lace in the left shoe broke. He changed into his light suit but, when tightening the lace on his right brown shoe, it, too, broke. He looked at the lace in his hand. He looked at the laces on the floor. ‘I have to leave you,’ he said to his wife, but she was already gone.

That same day Jenna Jacob woke to discover that she was made of candy, an event she remained unaware of until she was in the shower and looked down and saw a white film swirling to the drain.

Shocked and disbelieving, Jenna turned off the tap and wiped the steam from the mirror. Her skin was made of white sugar with mint speckles. Her hair was licorice. Her eyes were caramels. The longer she stared at her reflection, the less strange this candied version of herself became. She wrapped a scarf around her licorice hair, put sunglasses over her caramel eyes, and went downstairs. Her sons, aged ten and thirteen, barely noticed.

When her kids wouldn’t eat their breakfast, she rubbed her hands together over their cereal bowls, dusting their Shreddies with sugar. When they wouldn’t get dressed and into the car, she broke off her pinkie fingers and used them as bribes. When she dropped them off at school, they were unusually eager to kiss her goodbye.

Jenna returned home, called in sick, and spent the day watching television. Just after nine, her husband came home.

‘Sorry I’m so late,’ he said. ‘It’s the Meyer’s account again. Why’s it so dark in here? Is there anything to eat?’

Jenna patted the cushion beside her. Her husband sat down. He kissed her candied lips. He kissed her neck and her arms and her face. They went upstairs. He kissed every part of her body.

‘I could eat you up,’ he said, and, lost in passion, he did.

‘Are you joking with me?’ I heard my wife ask.

‘Unfortunately, I’m not. I’ve found several other cases. One in Halifax, three in the southern United States, also in Lille, France, Barcelona, and Winnipeg. It’s the same m.o. – purple hat, emotionally significant object, the whole thing. You are in danger.’

‘Am I?’

‘There will be a meeting of all the survivors, everyone who was inside Branch #117, this Monday at 7.15 at St Matthew’s United Church. I can’t stress enough how important it is that you attend.’

‘Well, thank you for your call,’ my wife said. She hung up, but her hand remained on the phone.