Locked Doors by Blake Crouch Page B

all over the news,” he said.
    She walked past him and turned left into the hallway, still lined with unopened boxes.
    “Don’t you wanna talk, sweetpie ?” he called after her.
    When she reached their bedroom she set her purse on the dresser and sat down on the edge of the giant waterbed, only slightly smaller than the dimensions of the bedroom.  
    Her eyes closed.   She could’ve fallen asleep sitting up.  
    When she opened them Max was kneeling beneath her.   He slipped off her heels, massaged her feet.   Then he unbuttoned her lavender jacket, grabbed it by the cuffs, and said, “Hold your arms out.”   Vi closed her eyes, held out her arms.   Max tossed her jacket into the corner and while he undid the buttons on her blouse she drifted off.   He told her to hold her arms out again, then to stand up.   Max unzipped and unclipped her skirt.   It dropped to the floor.   He worked her hose down her legs and pulled them off her small feet.   From his shirt drawer Max took a soft gray Mooresville Cross-Country T-shirt.   Then he unhooked his wife’s bra and slung it across the room onto the accumulating heap of clothes.  
    “Arms up.”  
    He slipped the T-shirt over her head.   Then he turned back the comforter and helped guide her legs underneath the covers.   Two days without shaving had turned them imperceptibly rough like ultra fine grit sandpaper.
    “Thirsty, angel?   Need anything?”
    “No,” she whispered, nearly gone.
    “Why won’t you talk to me?”
    “Cause I’m so tired I can’t even think, Max.   Stop it.”
    Max sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair while she fell asleep.
     
    When Vi awoke it was dark again.   Her eyes focused on the wooden cross hanging on the wall beside the doorway.   It was the only adornment they’d put up since moving into the house last week.   Her father had carved it from an oak branch and presented it to her three Christmases ago.       
    She heard Max in the kitchen.   Pots clanged and the sweet warmth of baking bread flowed into the bedroom from the hallway.  
    Vi climbed out of bed and walked into the tiny adjoining bathroom.   She stripped her shirt and panties and started the shower.   She sat down in the bathtub, letting the water rain down upon her head and diverge into hot rivulets that descended the contours of her body.  
    Mindlessly she watched the water swirl into the drain and she did not rise until the shower had begun to cool.             
     
    Max was lying in bed when she emerged from the bathroom, towel-wrapped, her skin still steaming.   Normally she’d have asked him to leave the room while she changed.   The week before their wedding, Vi’s mother had advised her never to dress in front of her husband.   Too many free peeks and Max would take for granted the beauty of his bride.  
    Vi dropped her towel and donned a pair of royal blue sweatpants and an undershirt she’d owned since high school.
    “I made dinner,” Max said while Vi towel-dried her hair.   “I made the Irish soda bread you like.”
    That was a first.
    Vi threw the towel into the bathroom and climbed onto the bed.   She lay flat on her back beside Max without touching him.   He still wore his navy sweat suit from cross-country practice and smelled of running outdoors in the cold, his plentiful curlyblack hair in a sweaty tangle.
    Max sat up and said, “I’ll bring your dinner back here.”
    “Just lay with me.”
    Max laid back down.   They didn’t move or speak for awhile.
    “I talked to this little girl,” Vi said finally, staring into the ceiling.   She spoke at hardly more than a whisper.   “Thirteen years old.   Name’s Jenna.   Wants to be an Olympic swimmer.   Four days ago, in the middle of the night, Jenna watched a man with long black hair beat her mother unconscious.   That man had just come from the next door neighbors where he’d broken the necks of two little boys and murdered their