From the Corner of His Eye Read Free

Woman watch.”
    “That’s the natural order of things.”
    Still grunting: “Man say is natural order. To woman, is just entertainment.”
    “Always happy to amuse, ma’am.”
    As Junior followed the balustrade, gingerly testing it, Naomi stayed behind him. “Be careful, Eenie.”
    The weathered railing cap was rough under his hand. He was more concerned about splinters than about falling. He remained at arm’s length from the edge of the platform, moving slowly, repeatedly shaking the railing, searching for loose or rotten pickets.
    In a couple minutes, they completed a full circuit of the platform, returning to the spot where Naomi had discovered the rotten wood. This was the only point of weakness in the railing.
    “Satisfied?” he asked. “Let’s go down.”
    “Sure, but let’s finish lunch first.” She had taken a bag of dried apricots from her backpack.
    “We ought to go down,” he pressed.
    Shaking two apricots from the bag into his hand: “I’m not done with this view. Don’t be a killjoy, Eenie. We know it’s safe now.”
    “Okay.” He surrendered. “But don’t lean on the railing even where we know it’s all right.”
    “You’d make someone a wonderful mother.”
    “Yeah, but I’d have trouble with the breast-feeding.”
    They circled the platform again, pausing every few steps to gaze at the spectacular panorama, and Junior’s tension quickly ebbed. Naomi’s company, as always, was tranquilizing.
    She fed him an apricot. He was reminded of their wedding reception, when they had fed slivers of cake to each other. Life with Naomi was a perpetual honeymoon.
    Eventually they returned yet again to the section of the railing that had almost collapsed under her hands.
    Junior shoved Naomi so hard that she was almost lifted off her feet. Her eyes flared wide, and a half-chewed wad of apricot fell from her gaping mouth. She crashed backward into the weak section of railing.
    For an instant, Junior thought the railing might hold, but the pickets splintered, the handrail cracked, and Naomi pitched backward off the view deck, in a clatter of rotting wood. She was so surprised that she didn’t begin to scream until she must have been a third of the way through her long fall.
    Junior didn’t hear her hit bottom, but the abrupt cessation of the scream confirmed impact.
    He had astonished himself. He hadn’t realized that he was capable of cold-blooded murder, especially on the spur of the moment, with no time to analyze the risks and the potential benefits of such a drastic act.
    After catching his breath and coming to grips with his amazing audacity, Junior moved along the platform, past the broken-away railing. From a secure position, he leaned out and peered down.
    She was so tiny, a pale spot on the dark grass and stone. On her back. One leg bent under her at an impossible angle. Right arm at her side, left arm flung out as if she were waving. A radiant nimbus of golden hair fanned around her head.
    He loved her so much that he couldn’t bear to look at her. He turned away from the railing, crossed the platform, and sat with his back against the wall of the lookout station.
    For a while, he wept uncontrollably. Losing Naomi, he had lost more than a wife, more than a friend and lover, more than a soul mate. He had lost a part of his own physical being: He was hollow inside, as though the very meat and bone at the core of him had been torn out and replaced by a void, black and cold. Horror and despair racked him, and he was tormented by thoughts of self-destruction.
    But then he felt better.
    Not good, but definitely better.
    Naomi had dropped the bag of dried apricots before she plummeted from the tower. He crawled to it, extracted a piece of fruit, and chewed slowly, savoring the morsel. Sweet.
    Eventually he squirmed on his belly to the gap in the railing, where he gazed straight down at his lost love far below. She was in precisely the same position as when he’d first looked.
    Of course,