Red Dot

The notion was an improbable one.

She left the curtains open, even though she had the lights on. It was evening, the sky was darkening. Having the curtains open with the lights on went against the grain.

He could see her moving around in the living room, her net curtains no defence from prying eyes with the lights on and the curtains open. It was almost like being at a peep show.

He had the curtains open, but he didn’t have the lights on. That would be foolish, and he almost marched straight across the street to tell her so. But that would be more foolish.

The notion was ridiculous.

She had sat down on the sofa now, and all he could see was the very top of her head, with its dark brown hair. He had spoken to her once, in the street, and the sun had made her hair glow bronze. He didn’t usually like brunettes.

Inside the house, in the brightly lit room with its curtains flung open to the world, she was talking on the phone.

She was listening and talking.

It was madness to think that this plan would work. They had no evidence. There was no cause to think that he would fall into the trap.

They needed him to fall into the trap.

She leaned forward as she listened to what was being said to her over the phone. She leaned forward to type something into the search engine on her laptop. She leaned forward in obedience to the instruction she had just been given.

She was thinking about something else, all the time that this half baked plan was being put into action. She was thinking about another house, and another room. There were no curtains where her mind was wandering. The lights were dim and the garden filled with trees that strove to keep the daylight out of the rooms. No need for curtains, no need for blinds. The neighbours might want to look, but there was no opportunity.

That was the house she wanted to be inside, trying to understand the man who chose to live that way. When she’d been growing up, when there had been five in that house, and there had been curtains and no trees and daylight at the appropriate times and lights at the appropriate times, the curtains would have been drawn when the lights went on.

She picked up the nail clippers and trimmed her nails. It didn’t do to let them grow too long. She spent all of her time worrying about breaking one, once they reached a certain length. So she kept them neat and square.

When this job was over, and everything tidied up, she was going to go back to that house. She was going to sit down with him in the kitchen and drink, and she would ask him all the questions she never had before, so that she wouldn’t wake up one day and realise that it was too late.

There was a crackle of static from the garden.

None of this made sense.

In the house across the street, he was thinking the same thing. It didn’t make sense to him for her to have her lights on and the curtains open. He was becoming agitated. He didn’t like to be agitated. He wished she would just close the curtains, and then he wouldn’t have to look. He wouldn’t have to be agitated. He could feel the pressure rising in his head. He could feel the blood pounding through his arteries, the swell of it at his temples.

He could see her occasionally leaning forward on the sofa. She was looking at her hands. It made him look down at his own. When he looked back up, a red dot was trained on the centre of his forehead. He couldn’t feel it. He didn’t know that it was there.

She glanced across the road, out of the window, into his living room. She couldn’t see anything but darkness and a red dot. She understood what that meant. Although, understood was a strange choice of word. She didn’t understand what any of this was about, but she accepted that this was the way things had to be.

She saw that kitchen in her mind. The plates never used so they would never have to be washed up. Food eaten from pieces of paper towel. Disposable. Transient. A life that had been put on hold for more years than she cared to think about.

She kept her eyes fixed on the red dot and she knew that it would be positioned in the centre of his forehead. She knew that she mustn’t move now. Anything that fouled up the operation would be like a red dot in the middle of her own forehead.

The crack was barely audible. The bullet had been chosen well, passing through the window pane as though the glass were nothing more than a sheet of water. She imagined that the result was instantaneous. Death in all its colours, combining together to form white light. And then the absence of colour crashing down into black.

She would go to the other house tomorrow. She would sit at the kitchen table and listen to him talk, asking him the questions she never had before. It would be different this time.

The notion was a sweet one, but unlikely.

It was never anything other than what it was.

“Job well done” came the voice over the radio, the preceding burst of static alerting her to the incoming message. “Stand down.”

She closed her eyes. In a moment, she would get up and close the curtains. In a moment she would choose to change her life.

She picked up the phone and dialled a number.

“Dad?” she said. “How are you fixed if I call round tomorrow?”

A burst of static across the years. A huge hand that used to drown hers as a child.

The notion was an improbable one.

© J R Hargreaves 2006