assumed that because she was amenable she was weak. Why did everyone always have to try to get one over on her? She was filled to overflowing with impotent rage and suddenly Jack’s taunt about the video recalled itself to her mind. In the next instant something peculiar happened. It seemed to Pansy that everything suddenly stopped. It lasted only a second or two, but it definitely stopped, leaving the hairs on the back of her neck tingling with life. The silence of it startled her. Afterward she might have thought she had imagined it, except that Pansy was certain that something had shifted in the interim. She struggled to pinpoint what happened.
Driving home, Pansy slowly realized that she was now looking in at herself from the outside, as well as out of herself from the inside, both at the same time. It was as if she was seeing her life from two different perspectives. She was suddenly filled with a strange calm as her thoughts began to collect themselves, seemingly of their own accord. All at once she perceived that she had other choices, choices that were already formulating into plans inside her mind. By the time she arrived home she was at ease with her thoughts.
Tom had once again arrived home before her. As on the previous night, he was talking to someone on the telephone in his study. She felt an odd sense of déjà vu that clashed momentarily with the parallel minds that were at war within her consciousness. The sound of Tom’s voice, which usually caused her skin to prickle and twinge was tonight not nearly so bothersome, perhaps due to her preoccupation. She stepped into the doorway of his office and looked inside. A little rush of adrenaline trickled through her when she saw him, and she realized this was a result of the plans that were formulating in her mind.
“How’s the case coming?” she asked him, smiling in secret and snuggling more cozily within her blanket of loathing. Her voice sounded a tad shrill in her state of overexcitedness. She felt strangely disconnected to everything around her as she tentatively sampled the role her parallel mind was creating.
“I’m getting nowhere,” Tom complained with a sigh, scarcely noticing her. “If there isn’t a break in the case soon, that son of a bitch is going to walk.”
“Hmm,” she said, trying to keep the joy out of her voice. “That’s too bad.” She was aware of a sense of being slightly off-kilter, but she was too excited about the drama that was—or was not—unfolding—she was becoming more and more unclear about which of these it was—and the things she would—or would not—do. Even so, to simply play along, for the time being, with these contemplations as they evolved within her consciousness and its parallel minds filled her with giddy excitement. She fairly skipped up the stairs and into their bedroom, where she went directly to her husband’s secret hiding place and reverently pulled out his handgun. The icy steel of the gun, rather than bringing her abruptly to her senses, actually intensified the sense of unreality that was all around her. An alarm did sound in the farther-back reaches of her consciousness, but the madness that had consumed her was stronger, and it seemed to gain strength from the certainty of cold, heavy metal in her hands. A hysterical laugh welled up in her throat as she felt another surge of adrenaline run through her. This isn’t really happening, she thought.
Even so, Pansy flipped the cylinder and checked to see if there were bullets inside. There were. Next she noticed the silencer in the gun case and was surprised by how easy it was to attach it to the gun. She pulled out an overnight bag that she kept under the bed, and placed the gun inside it, along with a pair of Tom’s shoes and various articles of his clothing. When the overnight bag was stocked with these things she slid it back under the bed and waited.
“I think I’m going to go downstairs and read for a while,” she told Tom several hours later. They were lying side by side in their bed. Tom was nearly asleep but Pansy was wide awake.
“Sure,” he mumbled from beneath the covers. Pansy quietly slid the overnight bag out from under the bed and took it downstairs with her.
Less than thirty minutes later, she found herself staring thoughtfully at Jack’s house from the inside of Tom’s idling four-wheel drive. She knew for certain now that Jack had made those morning visits to her coffee shop solely for the purpose of seeking her out, for in examining his file on Tom’s desk she discovered that he lived and worked all the way across town, with too many coffee shops in between them to count.
An excess of adrenaline was soaring through Pansy’s bloodstream, giving her an almost supernatural sense of self. She barely noticed any discomfort or awkwardness as she went through the motions like a person in a dream, although everything all around her seemed foreign and unnatural. She had put Tom’s shirt and pants on right over her clothing, and stuffed her feet into his shoes with her own shoes still on. She drove Tom’s car without altering a single thing, not even adjusting the seat, making it so she had to sit on the very edge of it in order to reach the pedals. She performed all of these activities at the direction of her parallel mind, like an actor playing out a role in which the director has every last detail planned out, and she did all this without being fully cognizant of where it all was leading and without knowing if she would actually carry it through to the end.
Pansy pulled Tom’s cap down low on her forehead as she quietly stepped out of his car. In spite of the layers of ill-fitting clothing, she moved as stealthily as a spider across the street and toward Jack’s house. It was dark inside except for a dim light coming from one of the windows. Pansy walked instinctively toward the darkest side of the house, approaching it as if she had been there before. She strode cautiously along that side of it and then around the corner, careful to make her steps consistent and natural. She peered into the windows as she went. When she came upon the back door she reached out a gloved hand, prepared to attempt the lock with a master key she took from Tom’s police key chain, but when she grasped the doorknob and turned, it was already unlocked. She smiled, realizing suddenly that Jack would not bother locking his doors, his reasoning likely being that if someone was determined to get in, they would do so. And, of course, he was perfectly right.
Pansy closed the door soundlessly behind her. She could hear television voices in the near distance. She pulled Tom’s gun out from the waistband of her pants and flipped off the safety switch as she tiptoed through Jack’s house, keeping the gun semi hidden at her side. The adrenaline flooding her system left no room for other emotions, except a lingering sense of unreality for everything around her. She looked around the dark rooms with mild interest as she moved onward, wondering absently what would happen next. She moved in the direction of the sounds coming from the television.
He was asleep. Pansy could see that immediately from the way he was slumped in his chair, even though he was facing away from her. She approached him slowly, expecting him to jump out at her in the next instant. But Jack didn’t move, not even when she stood directly in front of him, staring at him. From deep within her she could feel stirrings of desire, but that was in her other mind. She waited for him to sense her presence and wake up, but he did not.
“Jack,” she whispered at last. When this failed to rouse him she repeated it louder. “Jack!” There was a ringing in her ears. She kept the gun hidden at her side, although she now wished she did not have it. It seemed terribly heavy and burdensome all of a sudden.
Jack jerked awake at the sound of her voice. “Wha…Pansy?” He looked surprised, but not annoyed to see her. He stared at her in wonder. “What are you doing here, Pansy?” His voice was husky from sleep, and Pansy felt another wave of desire. His waking eyes were now taking in the strange clothes and oversize shoes. His expression went from wonder to uncertainty and he started to get up, but Pansy brought the gun from her side and pointed it at him.
Jack actually laughed; a spontaneous burst that lasted only a split second. “Pansy?” His voice was high with disbelief, but the smile was slowly fading from his face. “Is this a joke?”
“You mean, am I teasing you?” she asked with meaning. He didn’t have
