Lieberman's Day Read Free Page A

Raymond, pointing his gun at the woman.
    â€œShe’ll …” David began.
    â€œThen you just give her your Eddie Bauer,” said Raymond. “Better yet: I give her my Eddie Bauer and take yours.”
    Carol was whimpering now as she pulled away from David and began to take off the fur.
    â€œNo,” said David.
    George stepped forward, pushed David back, and pulled the fur coat to his chest the instant Carol had taken it off. Soft, cool fur brushed gently against his cheek.
    â€œWe got no time for this,” said Raymond.
    David took a step toward his wife, lost his footing, and crashed into the front steps of the office-home of J.W.R. Ranpur. His knee hit wood with a chill thump and crack.
    Carol screamed. Without her fur, she looked pitiful, not cold, in a blue-and-white dress that hung on her like one of George’s mother’s shifts.
    â€œShit,” said George. “She gonna have a baby.”
    And then, as David pulled himself up from the steps, George heard the snap of a hammer against rock. Carol screamed again as David staggered back and sat spread-legged on the stairs.
    Cars rushed by. Lake waves battered the shore behind the house. George thought he heard the clang-boom of the rusting green Dumpster and then the sound of hammer and rock again. The man called David was sprawled on the steps now, his Eddie Bauer stained with black splotches, and George understood. Raymond had shot the man.
    George felt a rush of warm imagined air from the beach of his childhood and the pain of the hat’s tightness on his head. His eyes met Raymond’s, and George was afraid of what he saw.
    â€œLet’s go,” said Raymond. “George, you hear, let’s go.”
    George didn’t move. He turned to the woman, whose eyes were wide with terror. Her mouth was open and she couldn’t catch her breath. The way she looked at him. Oh, the way she looked. She would haunt him. He knew that. She would haunt them both.
    Raymond pulled at the big man’s sleeve.
    â€œLet’s go,” he commanded.
    George looked at the man sprawled on the steps and then at the crying woman in the blue dress, her head moving from side to side with fear in the winter chill. He could not live with that look.
    George was not fully aware of what he did next. His body, his arms, his hands did what they were commanded, but the orders came from something slithering beneath his skin in the blood red caverns of his skull.
    George fired at the accusing woman. His gun was bigger than Raymond’s, much bigger. He fired only once, but it sat the woman down, open-mouthed, surprised. She looked up, not at George who had shot her, but at Raymond, who turned suddenly on George, his gun leveled at the bigger man’s chest.
    â€œYou crazy bastard,” Raymond screamed. “The baby.” The two men stood over the bodies in the chill of Dr. Ranpur’s ice-covered yard, their weapons raised at each other’s chest for heartbeats upon heartbeats. And then Raymond pocketed his gun, looked at the woman, and took a step toward her, gun leveled in her direction. He let out a small, tortured cry as her bloody hands reached toward him and she spoke. Raymond turned and leaped over the black iron gate, almost losing his glasses. George didn’t want to look back, but he couldn’t stop himself. A light went on in the house, a light that seemed to drench the front yard. And George saw clearly what they had done. The man called David, looking bewildered, wisps of yellow-white hair quivering in the night wind, sat there, dead. The woman just sat looking up at him in her blue-and-white dress.
    Perhaps she screamed or spoke, but George could hear nothing but the senseless steel-drum sound of the winter night. Hugging the fur to his face, he pushed open the gate and ran after Raymond, who was a gray running ghost far ahead of him in the mist.

Six Minutes Past One A.M.
    A BRAHAM LIEBERMAN PLACED HIS