It felt like blood, the red stain on the knife I mean. I touched it and smeared it between my thumb and index finger and it felt very much like blood. I felt someone watching and I turned to find her standing at the kitchen door. "Grape juice," she said smiling. "Made it myself last night. Forgot to wash the knife," she said walking to the sink where I stood. She took the knife and rinsed it in the running tap, the hair above her temple covering her eyes from the sides. I was left to my thoughts. Nothing much had changed about her, well, except the necklace. She wasn't wearing it, I remember, right back from college days, she used to wear a weird necklace of a rope and a crystal pendant around her neck. It looked like an amulet. It was an amulet, I remember, she told me so the first night we'd spent together in the dark cozy room 104 of the boys quarters when she laid beside me. I held the crystal pendant, looked more like a poorly formed cyst, I peered at it. She asked me if I liked it. I said I did. She said it used to belong to her uncle, the one who raised her. He died. She inherited it. She'd never take it off. She never did back then. But now, she wasn't wearing it.
"We should eat," she said walking across the kitchen to put the knife away in the rack. She walked back to where I was still standing beside the sink and tugged at a button on my shirt to call me back to the present. "What are you thinking about?" She asked looking closely at my face. Her voice sounded loving.
"Nothing. We should eat," I said kindly gesturing her out the door first. As I stepped out the kitchen behind her, I took one last glance at the well arranged knives on the rack. Nothing was weird about the knives, only I had a feeling like my wife was right, I should have stayed home and massaged her feet instead of honouring the invitation of an old friend who wanted us to have dinner. Didn't tell my wife that that old friend was in my life once though, no, she didn't need to hear that. She was pregnant, tired, touchy and needed a massage on her feet almost every twelve hours.
At the table, Viola had fruit chunks for appetizer and rice for the meal. She put a chunk of water melon into her mouth and got up to turn on the fan. My eyes went from her skirt to the fruits. She still had that old sway in her walk that I remember. I loosened my tight belt to accommodate the meal. I took a few chunks of fruit and she was back at the table. "I remember you love having fruits like this," she said with a coy smile. "Does your wife know?" She asked.
"What?" I asked wondering if she meant to ask if my wife knew about my love for fruits or about me wandering around the edge of rekindling an old affair.
"That you're here."
"Oh. Told her I'd have dinner with an old friend," I said. She smiled, she seemed quite satisfied. I was too. We could talk. We could talk about anything, especially why she invited me over to her place with a poorly constructed email message. We hadn't talked in years. "So…" I said.
"So?"
"What's up with you?" I said shifting the empty plate before me to the right. "You got yourself a lovely place," I said looking around like I'd been doing since I stepped into the house. Her sitting room had really expensive sofa, infact, the TV set was the latest model.
She beamed. "Thank you Gary," she said looking around the living room herself. We were seated at the dinning section in the living room, it was small and yet fancy. "My husband, he loved all things fancy," she said. I felt shocked to my feet. I guess she saw it on my face, I never knew she was married. "He died," she added. I swallowed. No wonder she asked me over, she was a young lonely widow. She sat up and dished the rice. "What about you, how did you meet Meg?"
"Workplace. She came to deliver a parcel to my boss. We met."
"And you liked her instantly?"
"Yes," I lied. We actually made out bluntly and she had our first baby out of wedlock. Then we married. I wanted to be a good father.
"Wow. Typical you. Remember how we met?" She grinned.
"Yup, at a birthday party."
"Yup," she stared at me. I tried not to look in her eyes. I think I glanced at the wall clock and it was 6pm.
"What about you? I never heard from you since…"
"Yeah. I moved out of the state. I went into tourism, I traveled a lot I guess," she said hiding her eyes as she searched her plate for nothing in particular.
"And?"
"I married, but not for love."
"For money?"
"Don't judge me," she said looking up at me. There was so much pain in those eyes. I swallowed. I didn't ask her about her marriage anymore. We talked about college and about me. I told her about my daughter. She had that look in her eyes as I narrated how I wake my little girl up in the morning and get her ready for school. I take her to school and bring her back at noon. I want to be a good father. She'd smile and sip a glass of water as I talked. She wasn't eating, I don't know why, I was. She was listening. The fan was turning and making a strange whinning sound from the middle of the parlor on the ceiling.
I was done with the meal, it was twenty minutes past 6pm. We were still at the table. "Your necklace–that amulet, where is it?" I finally asked.
"Oh!" She chuckled touching her neck. "I got rid of it, it wasn't that special after all."
"What do you mean?"
"You know…"
"You bought better ones?" I interrupted.
"Hell no!" She said looking at me disappointedly. "I burnt it."
"What? Why?"
"It was too precious to lose," she said.
I didn't understand what she meant, but I wasn't going to ask. I picked up the magazine that had been on the table all the while. I flipped it and something caught my attention so I carefully read it. It was a fashion column–men's fashion.
"Are you happy Gary?" Viola suddenly asked me. I lowered the magazine from my face to look at her.
"Yes."
"Really? I mean, what if we can fix it?"
"Fix what?"
"Us," she said. She got up and walked around the table to me.
"Hold on," I got up and buckled my belt. "I'm married now Viola, it can't be like that. My daughter cannot have a father who keeps an affair," I walked past her and stopped a few feets away to think about it. The fact that I wanted to think about it made me know that I wanted it.
"It can't?" She asked in a defeated tone. I didn't want to turn and look at those eyes. There was silence in the room, only a glass clink, I still didn't turn. "You left me, I never did you shit!" She broke the silence in an angry tone.
"Viola, I…" I turned and she was all fury, a short gun in her right hand. I swallowed hard. "A gun?" I mused.
"Yes Gary, a gun. Two bullets. Two deaths. Like Romeo and Juliet, you and me. You will love me again in death."
"Are you crazy?" I asked puzzled. I could feel my heart beat skip a bit.
"I married because I wanted to forget you, but it didn't work. I started searching for you. I found you, married, happy without me." She sighed. "I lost my parents at age ten Gary, you knew that! Yet you scarred me even more. I lost my Uncle. I've lost so much."
"I'm sorry you feel this way Viola, but this is not how to make things better. Besides, you're rich now and…"
"I don't give a damn about money. I killed my husband because he was gonna leave me like you did, and I didn't even love him. Then I thought," she chuckled sinisterly, "why not kill Gary as well huh?" She laughed. "Good idea don't you think?" She pointed the gun at me. I could feel sweat forming around my neck.
"Please, hold on. Let's talk about this," I said as pictures of my daughter flashed before my eyes. How could I never see her grow up? And my unborn son, we'd never play football together. No. "Listen to me…" I said.
"Why should I do that?" She cut in. "You never came back for me!" She barked. She cocked the gun. My heart skipped again. My eyes went to the table and to the glass bowl with which I could incapacitate her. Then in a flick of a second I wondered again why she didn't eat her food, the food was great, really. "Don't even think of getting out of this one or else your daughter will get it," she suddenly said as she followed my eyes.
"What?" I stared unbelievably. Suddenly it occurred to me that she had called my wife's name earlier, Meg. How did she know her name? I thought about my daughter in that second and I stood still.
"You love her don't you?" She said referring to my daughter. "You don't want to lose her. But what if you do? I'm going to shoot you because I want to keep you, like my necklace, too precious to lose. You will forgive me when we meet on the other side. Just you and me," she went on.
"Viola," I called softly. She leaned back on the table and pulled the stiff trigger and I ducked. It didn't shoot. She pulled and pulled. She threw the gun to the wall and ran into the kitchen. All alone in the sitting room I looked at the front door, I should have run out the front door but I didn't. I ran after Viola. In the kitchen she had grabbed a knife, the same knife that had blood on it, I mean, grape juice. She turned and saw me. Her hand stopped halfway in the air with the knife. My eyes were pleading. She hated me but could not stop loving me. She hugged me. She cried. "I'm sorry," I said. Someone barged into the kitchen. The police.
"Freeze!" They held the gun at us. "Put the knife down Viola!" The officer ordered. Viola grabbed me by the collar and held the knife to my throat. "Drop the knife or I'll shot!" The officer said.
"You fool, you played me!" Viola yelled.
"I don't know what's going on, I swear! What's going on?" I said raising my hands above my head. I was shaking now. She pushed me away violently and backed away towards the kitchen counter. She looked from the officers to me and then to the knife in her hand. She buried the knife deep in her belly and groaned in pain as she staggered backward to lean on the counter.
"My God!" The officers shouted. "Call the ambulance! Call the ambulance!" One of the officers shouted running out of the kitchen, through the living room to the undercover car packed outside the house. I ran to catch her body as she fell to the ground. She looked me in the eyes and held the gaze. I laid her down slowly. The kitchen floor was all red with grape juice, sorry, I meant, her blood. Why did she kill herself instead of me? The officer returned with a medical kit and a stretcher to find she was already gone. I closed her eyes, I wished I had told her that I still loved her, maybe she wouldn't have killed herself. I went to the sink and washed my hands that were fully stained with blood, it felt like the grape juice that was on the knife earlier. I returned to the dinning table soberly, I sat and flipped through the magazine. A sheet of paper fell out from the pages, a doctor's report–Viola had blood cancer, she was going to die anyway–her blood was the grape juice. The fan kept turning and making that whining noise. The time was eight minutes to 7pm.
The officer came to me as they evacuated the body from the house, he took the doctor's report from me and handcuffed me. I would have to go with them to the police station. "Why were you officers here?" I asked curiously.
"Viola is a suspect to the murder of her late husband. We have been on the case for some time now."
"Am I a suspect now too?"
"Time will tell," he replied leading me away from the table. I looked back, the cold food on Viola's plate was still there. I wondered what would happen to it. My wife was right, I never should have honoured the invitation.
"How did she do it?" I asked the officer.
"Do what?"
"Kill her husband."
"Oh," he said, "he died from food poisoning." I froze. I felt a sharp pain in my belly. I felt dizzy, I leaned against the front door. My heart was hurting terribly. I slumped.
DoubleSpeak 