To kill a friend

KHELYU REBANE



TO KILL A FRIEND                ïåðåâåëà Ìàðèÿ Ìèëëåð Ñòîóí


I’m not in a hurry. Why should I be? After all, the way I commit this crime (I don’t like this word but the word ‘murder’ suits me even less) might affect too many things. Would I finally be rich? Would Christina come back to me? And above all that – would I stay on the outside? Only a perfect crime makes sense.

Time is on my side. Alex keeps gaining weight and growing old. Martha increasingly seeks comfort in a bottle.
Anyhow, watching someone build a house supposedly for himself while it’s actually for me is an unparalleled luxury, which should last. I’ve been preparing for this for two years, and I have every reason to believe that their property is in my pocket. Who knows, maybe Alex would have a strike without my help.

As for Martha, she repeatedly gives me a slightly dazed, slightly shy glance. Sure enough, it only happens when Alex goes to the kitchen to fetch more booze (he keeps the alcohol away from Martha in the ceiling cabinets, under the illusion that it’s a safe hiding place, and gives it to her in strictly limited dosage). He has no clue about the drinks I make her when he’s away on business, and how we both nail him for his stinginess. That’s what Martha thinks – that he only allows her two shots because of his chariness. And I’m happy to march to her tune and pour her as much alcohol as she wants. And she wants the whole bottle. Then she wants me to go buy her another bottle. I don’t impose anything, I just fulfill her wishes.
The thing is how to get rid of Martha afterwards. I feel no merci for Alex. What’s he got that I haven’t got? He’s got everything in this life, for some reason. Even Martha.

She was such a hottie in her time. The only thing she’s managed to keep is her smile. And her voice. The voice doesn’t age. Oddly, I feel sorry for her. But once I remember Christina I forget about Martha. After all, Martha preferred Alex, even if I’m ten years his junior. She humiliated me by saying that Alex was all business while I was a world-class ditch.
What does she know about me anyway! For instance, I’ve been going to gym for a whole year; never skipped a single day. True, I have to splurge and go on tick, but I do it on the sly so that Alex wouldn’t suspect anything. I want to blend right into my future home. I want to knock Christina senseless.

Alex, of all people, doesn’t just line up with this luxury mansion. And here they say that a home, just as a dog, always looks like its owner, that it’s some sort of an emanation of his inner world into the outside world. Bullshit! Alex is stupid and fat while the house is turning out exquisite just because its constructor-owner has the money to pay the designer. Would someone explain to me why idiots make great money nowadays? The answer is simple: The time of idiots has come.
Anyhow, this kindhearted idiot trusts me fully and completely. Trusting me has become a habit for him, just like having a fat pork loin for dinner. No, the idea of trusting people has never crossed my mind, just as eating pork loin that causes obesity and turns into cholesterol plagues in vessel walls. I don’t even trust Christina. Her, in particular. Christina is my obsession, my target, and maybe, she’s my curse. I’m crazy about Christina but when we marry (little does she know that we’ll get married, that I’ve planned out her life just like I’ve planned the death of Alex and Martha), I won’t deny myself any pleasures. I’ll have affairs.
However, Rex is smarter than his master. That dog hates my guts and intently gauges my every move as though I’m going to snag his master’s silver spoon. Relax, Rex, I play for the high stakes. But you’re also a goner, dog.
And another big question: What does Alex need money for? He can’t buy an elegant dress suit – there’s no such size. He doesn’t even have a mistress. Well, no wonder – he probably has a ‘mirror syndrome’. You know that joke, right? When a guy has such a big potbelly that the only way he can see his ‘thing’ is in a mirror.
Dressing up Martha is just as well as dressing up a cow. Anyhow, Martha’s got beautiful, sad, even if cow’s, eyes…
A couple times, Alex went on a diet. As it turns out, he does care when the balance pointer on his scales goes beyond two hundred sixty five. And each time, on the third day of his dieting, I’d appear in their threshold armed with his favorite kebabs marinated according to my signature recipe. I’d chant, “You go ahead and starve but Martha and I are having a good dinner,” and throw a mantel soiree at their place, in its finished part, that is.
“No way,” he’d always say emerging in the doorway of the mantel lounge and sniffing into the smell of the roasted kebab, “I’ll resume my diet tomorrow. Today I’m giving myself a break.” I know those ‘tomorrows’. When Alex slips up he has the will to start over again in a month at the earliest, or even in six months. Hence my spending is not too heavy. Kebabs, cream cakes, Finnish ice-cream… which Alex can wolf down two packs at a time. Besides, come to think of it, this is not spending; it’s more like an investment.
Alex is as crazy about construction as I’m obsessed with Christina. He has lots of customers, and they all instigate him. The thought that he kicks the bucket before he finished the house makes me panic slightly – I know that I won’t handle everything he started. He’s put up walls up to the third floor, which is penthouse, but he’s only finished a few rooms on the first floor. He hasn’t yet started finishing the basement where a sauna is planned, or the garage.
Well, of course, he doesn’t do the construction works himself, he conducts the house-builders but he’s always unsatisfied with them, and kicks out one team after another. Giving him his credit – he has a knack for drawings. I don’t know a thing about it. It’s hard for me to imagine how it would look life-size. And he says right away, “Yeah, it looks good on the drawing, but in fact, the corridor would be too narrow, and I’d be stumbling on this corner.” The bad news is that he’s routinely changing the drawings in the course of construction works, as he’s grasped by new ideas on how to improve the house. For the time being, the third floor will have a glass roof housing the greenhouse. A conservatory on the first floor seems not enough for him. Why does he need so much? They’re not going to multiply and replenish with Martha anyway. They don’t have children or nephews.
I don’t intend to cool him down as he’s doing this for me and Christina. But still, I asked him once, “Why do you and Martha need so much?”
He just couldn’t sit on his hands, was the answer. Besides, you see, he liked it.
“Isn’t it better to slink off to Mallorca, or the Seychelles, or the Maldives?  Given your resources?”
“I’m much more interested in constructing the Seychelles here, in Estonia,” he said without missing a beat. “You’ll see – I’ll do it. It’s hard for you to understand. You’re a man of pleasure. You’d rather spend your time in a bar, chat with your friends, have a drink, or a smoke. Kill time, that is.”
Kill was the only thing you got right, my friend. 
Yet the Seychelles talk wasn’t a total waste. Now Alex is harboring the idea of making a conservatory with palm trees in the south part of his home. Way to go! Martha’s such a great gardener that she desiccated even a cactus I’d given her for New Year’s. Who’s going to water and spray those palm trees? That I can handle - I’ve spent one summer in a garden company, looking for a better job. It’s impossible to imagine Alex with a spray can in hand. His cell phone is constantly ringing, Alex is always scolding at someone, yelling, “Couldn’t you check it in the store? How come they shoved you the wrong shade? Or should I go check out the color palette myself? Al right, I’ll go! Oh, so you can handle that? Really? I’m very happy for you!”
Martha frowns listening to his speeches. I’m sure deep inside she considers herself above Alex. Her favorite thing to do is fix herself a cup of coffee, light up a cigarette, and play solitaire, tucking away a shot of liquor amid the magazines on the coffee table or having emptied it into the coffee.
“You’re giving me a cactus?” she asked with a sly grin, accepting my present (picture the smile of a panda-eyed hippopotamus craving to secretly take the edge off). “It’s cute, but they say that sharp gifts can lead to aggravation.”
Doesn’t get sharper than that, I think, smiling at Martha. Surely, death is a thrill.
Alex is leaving, fearing that at some construction site someone might color something in the wrong color. And I produce a bottle of Cointreau, and together with Martha we make ourselves comfortable at the table by the fireside.   
“Do you want me to tell your fortune?” she asks, cheered up by the first drink. “Do you have a dream?”
“Yes, Martha, I do,” I say as I look her straight in the eye as sadly and mysteriously as I can.
She blushes and casts down her eyes. And then, that damn dog Rex emerges, curls up by her feet and starts unkindly watching my every move.
“Martha, you have a courtyard, it won’t kill the dog to live there. I understand it when people keep dogs in an apartment, there’s just no getting around that, but you guys have a huge home…”
“I wish Alex finished it sooner,” Martha sighs. “We keep building and building it, and I so want to just start living in it… Rexie, out! Go outside, the sun’s shining, the birds are singing…”
I wonder what she means by that ‘start living’. What could possibly change in her life once the home is finished? She’d be playing solitaire just the same, except in a spacious room on the second floor – in her bedroom where, by the way, there’d also be a fireplace…She’d just relocate her obese body to the second floor. That is, that’s how it would have been if my plans weren’t involved. What is she expecting, anyway?
As for me, everything will change. There’ll be no Alex. I’ll marry Martha. Whiskey liver is a fleeting thing, especially if you act like she does. I’m her heir-to-be. Then, I’ll marry Christina… That’s my solitaire.
“Rex, out!” I say a shade more rudely that intended.
The dog snarls, slightly baring his teeth, but knowing that his owner is on my side, withdraws into the kitchen, wiggling his tail with disdain.
I follow him and show him outside. “You’re also a goner, dog,” I whisper to him spitefully.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, but please don’t be offended,” Martha says when I’m back. “What’s going on between you and Christina? You hardly mention her lately. Sorry if that’s a rude question…”
“You know what, Martha, I came to realize that I don’t like skinny women.”
And I look at her significantly, making her blush slightly.
But at that very moment, Christina’s snaky image appears before my eyes – from her unnaturally long, claw-like acrylic nails and her wasp waist clad in a striped pant suit, to her trendy joker pointy-toe pumps – the craze of the day, which by far not every woman would consider wearing. Christina works as a real estate agent and she communicates with very bankable guys; she thinks that being rich is common practice, and she doesn’t grasp how I wasn’t capable of making as much money as her clients do. 
“You stopped loving her?” Martha asks. “And here I thought you were literally crazy about her. That doesn’t just go away. Ever.”
At that moment, I want to crush my head against her chest and let the tears flow. She understands me so perfectly!
Martha goes on, undeterred, “When I looked at her jaunty red claws, I felt kinda creepy. She’s all edgy, like a bee. I’m sure you’ll find yourself a good wife.”
No, Martha is not as bright as I’ve given her credit for.
“I hope so,” I reply and sigh heavily, looking her in the eye with unlimited tenderness. “The thing is where can I find another one like you?”
Martha’s face is flaming. I can see she is pleased.
Time passes. Once again, the city is clad in Christmas decorations, and once again, I need to go holiday shopping.
Perhaps, Alex has been affected by my never-ending scorns, that it’s a house of the Big Turtle or a house that’ll never be complete, just like Tallinn itself. But during this year, Alex has unexpectedly finished all rooms including penthouse; now everything, I think, was done.
I don’t ask him how much he weights now. I know good and well that he’s buying clothes two sizes bigger than before. He can’t tie his shoelaces himself, Martha does it for him. Sometimes, I do too.
“It’s good,” I say, taking a seat at the holiday table, “when everything is proceeding according to a plan.”
The fire is burning in the chimney.
“To us and to success,” I toast, pouring cognac into Martha’s glass.
What’s wrong? For once, she doesn’t respond to a toast.
“I’m not drinking,” she says contritely.
“It’s your favorite Hennessey. Martha, what’s the deal?”
“Well, you see, the house is complete. I must say, I even lost hope at some point. And now that it’s finally done, I decided I should watch myself with alcohol. Our dream has come true – Alex and I are going to have children.
I was so stunned I even choked on my cognac.
“We went to an orphanage. We were allowed to adopt two kids – a brother and a sister.”
“Are you out of your minds? An orphanage? They only have disturbed kids there!”
“You know, well, Alex and I are also disturbed in a sense,” Martha laughs. “Anyway, they’ll feel better here with us than there. The paperwork is done. The kids are moving in right on New Year’s. They’re big – the girl is seven, and the boy is eight. We’ll take good care of them. We’ll also teach them to be considerate. I think Alex could use their help when tying his shoelaces.” She winks at me.
I’m struck numb. They’ve just killed me.
Me, their best friend.