Jordan Delreese asked his father Calbert to tie him to the cyclone fence in the backyard. Calbert smiled and turned on the TV. Let’s Make a Deal on the Game Show Network. Jordan said how that would be the best thing for all of us. Calbert told the contestant, a man in a hoop skirt and red baloney curls, to just take the cash and be happy with it. Cripes, he said, people don’t know when they have it good. Calbert sucked on a sour ball. The contestant went with whatever was behind Door #3. Greed, Calbert said. Jordan said, I have no way to control my stress. Jordan’s mother said she’d like to serve dessert out by the pool. Calbert said, Put on your sunscreen, Vernal. The contestant seemed delighted with his six-piece gray mica bedroom suite, complete with platform bed and Serta Perfect Sleeper mattress and box spring. Jordan said, That way I won’t fly way. Calbert said, What way? Tied to the fence with baling wire, Jordan said. And you’d better do it now.
While they ate, Jordan brought up the time his father had caught him masturbating into a tube sock while he was watching Bewitched. His mother said now what she had said then. About Onan spilling his seed. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore He slew him also. Calbert said he couldn’t remember what happened after he’d caught Jordan abusing himself, so Jordan reminded him. You took the TV cord off the old Motorola, plug and all, wet it, ran it through the sandbox, and put it in the freezer. Bringing back any memories, Dad? Then Mom filled a tub with ice-cold water and had me sit in it. Then you had me stand naked in the kitchen; you took out the cord and whipped me with it. I’ve still got the scars. Calbert said he wasn’t proud, but it had to be done. You were committing an abominable sin, son. You were no better than a viper. And look how you’ve turned out, Jordan. A success. A God-fearing, law-abiding man, a solid citizen, and a pillar of the community. You should thank me. Jordan poured his parents two glasses of sweet iced tea and proposed a toast to discipline. Calbert said, You might want to try a little tough love with your own kids, Jordan. That grandson of mine has a sassy mouth on him.
Jordan finished his gingerbread and then his mother’s gingerbread and his father’s. He talked while his parents nodded off. He’d dissolved six Ambien in their tea. Worked like a dream. He told them about how if you wanted to get away with killing someone, you should kill them in a pool. Not that he was trying to get away with anything, you understand. Too late for that. Drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion, he said. It cannot be proven in an autopsy, cannot be disproved. He told them about the actor who drives a spaceship through the universe, how he drowned his wife in Beverley Hills, and everyone knows he did, but they can’t prove it. You could see this guy any week on his new TV show, and he behaves like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. That’s acting.
Jordan slapped his mother awake. He told her what he’d done this morning. Vernal blinked, looked at Calbert with his face in the bowl, and laughed. This is the strangest dream, she said. He told her how he’d carved Caroldean’s throat with a serrated kitchen knife, how it felt like slicing through a mango when he hit the larynx. Oh dear, Vernal said. Whee! Jordan reached out his foot and rested it on the seat of Calbert’s chair. He kicked the chair over. Calbert hit his head on the concrete skirt of the pool. A floret of blood bloomed on his teal Marlins cap. Jordan stripped his parents to their undies and slid them into the pool. He sat under the umbrella and watched, saw those brief spasms when the water first hit the lungs, and then the flutter as the body fought for air. He watched them float, knock against each other, sink to the bottom of the pool. He knew it would take a couple of days for the bodies to bloat with gas and rise again. He knew they’d be discovered long before that. He fetched his dad’s Sony Handycam, sat at the edge of the pool, and taped the bodies, looking like the last two pickled eggs in a jar. Then he turned the camcorder on himself and told his story.
Jordan explained how he had a crew in his office tearing up the place. So could we meet at your place? he said. That way he could take some measurements, note the color scheme, kill two birds with one stone. I gave him my address. That’s over by the Fetish Box, isn’t it? Yes, it is. Twenty minutes.
He said, “Determination is often the first chapter in the book of excellence.”
“Excuse me?”
“Maybe the photo’s of a long-distance runner on her last leg, gritting it out to the finish line.”
“Do you have one for honesty?”
“I can give you serenity.”
“I wish you could.”
“Will truth do?”
“Close enough.”
“Okay. An old man, red jacket, floppy cap, walks through the autumn woods in New England. Glorious colors. Clear, crisp. We can see the steam of his breath. His head’s down. Below that the word truth — all caps — and below that, Purity is born of virtue.”
Jordan Delreese knocked shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits on my office door, pushed the door open with his shoulder, and poked his grinning face into the room. He held his BlackBerry to his ear, rolled his eyes, smiled at me, and told whomever he was speaking with or pretending to speak with that he’d get back to them with the figures a.s.a.p. He scratched his nose. Okeedoke. He nodded. Ciao!
He holstered the BlackBerry, clapped his hands, and stepped toward the desk where I sat. He said, “I pictured you bald, slight, with maybe a pitiful little mustache. Funny how a voice can fool you.” He admired my autographed Marlins baseball, gripped it like he was pitching a curve. “Well, here we are, Mr. Melville.”
“Call me Wylie. All my friends do.”
“I pegged you for a sociable guy.”
“Except Carlos. He calls me Coyote.”
“And you call him The Jackal, I suppose.”
“Have a seat, Mr. Delreese.”
He pointed to the wall above the sofa. “We’ll hang it there.” He put his fists on his hips, swivelled and looked left, then right, looked at me, and shrugged. “No photos of the wife and kiddies.”
“No wife and kiddies, I’m afraid.”
“Fag?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you a fag?”
“That’s an inappropriate question, Mr. Delreese.”
“If you say so.”
“But a revealing one.”
He sat, crossed his legs, folded his hands behind his head, smiled, and I knew that he knew that I knew. “No kids.” He clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Fruitless.” He raised an eyebrow, stuck out his lower lip, and cocked his head. “No regrets, Coyote?”
“Plenty.”
He picked up the photo of Dad and me squinting into the sun at the News Café. “They fuck you up, don’t they?”
“Who?”
“Your mom and dad.”
“They did their best.”
He smiled and aligned my Post-it note dispenser with my saucer of paper clips. Ordering his thoughts. He turned my little ceramic flamingo so she was facing me. He leaned back in his chair. I leaned back in mine.