Mr. Murder

a couple of knuckles. An elliptical shard is embedded in the meat of his palm.
        Although he is still angry, he is gradually regaining control of himself. Violence sometimes soothes.
        He swivels the chair away from the computer to face the opposite side of the U-shaped work area, where he leans forward to examine his wounds in the light of the stained-glass lamp. The glass thorns in his flesh sparkle like jewels.
        He is experiencing only mild pain, and he knows it will soon pass. He is tough and resilient, he enjoys splendid recuperative powers.
        Some of the fragments of the screen have not pierced his hand deeply, and he is able to pry them out with his fingernails. But others are firmly wedged in the flesh.
        He pushes the chair away from the desk, gets to his feet, and heads for the master bathroom. He will need tweezers to extract the more stubborn splinters.
        Although he bled freely at first, already the flow is subsiding.
        Nevertheless he holds his arm in the air, his hand straight up, so the blood will trickle down his wrist and under the sleeve of his shirt rather than drip on the carpet.
        After he has plucked out the glass, perhaps he will telephone Paige at work again.
        He was so excited when he found her office number on the Rolodex in his study, and he was thrilled to speak with her. She sounded intelligent, self-assured, gentle. Her voice had a slightly throaty timbre that he found sexy.
        It will be a wonderful bonus if she is sexy. Tonight, they will share a bed. He will take her more than once. Recalling the face in the photograph and the husky voice on the phone, he is confident that she will satisfy his needs as they have never been satisfied before, that she will not leave him unfulfilled and frustrated as have so many other women.
        He hopes she matches or exceeds his expectations. He hopes there will be no reason to hurt her.
        In the master bathroom, he locates a pair of tweezers in the drawer where Paige keeps her makeup, cuticle scissors, nail files, emery boards, and other grooming aids.
        At the sink, he holds his hand over the basin. Although he has already stopped bleeding, the flow starts again at each point from which he works loose a piece of glass. He turns on the hot water so the dripping blood will be sluiced down the drain.
        Maybe tonight, after sex, he will talk with Paige about his writer's block. If he has been blocked before, she might remember what steps he took on other occasions to break the creative impasse. Indeed, he is sure she will know the solution.
        Pleasantly surprised and with a sense of relief, he realizes that he no longer has to deal with his problems alone. As a married man, he has a devoted partner with whom to share the many troubles of the day.
        Raising his head, looking at his reflection in the mirror behind the sink, he grins and says, "I have a wife now."
        He notices a spot of blood on his right cheek, another on the side of his nose.
        Laughing softly, he says, "You're such a slob, Marty. You've got to clean up your act. You have a wife now. Wives like their husbands to be neat."
        He returns his attention to his hand and, with the tweezers, picks at the last of the prickling glass.
        In an increasingly good mood, he laughs again and says, "Gonna have to go out and buy a new computer monitor first thing tomorrow."
        He shakes his head, amazed by his own childish behavior.
        "You're something else, Marty," he says. "But I guess writers are supposed to be temperamental, huh?"
        After easing the final splinter of glass from the web between two fingers, he puts down the tweezers and holds his wounded hand under the hot water.
        "Can't carry on like this any more. Not any more. You'll scare the be-jesus out of little Emily and Charlotte."
        He looks in the mirror again, shakes his head, grinning. "You nut," he says to himself, as if speaking with affection to a friend whose foibles he finds charming. "What a nut."
        Life is good.
        .. , The leaden sky settled lower under its own weight. According to a radio report, rain would fall by dusk, ensuring rush-hour commuter jam-ups that would make Hell preferable to the San Diego Freeway.
        Marty should have gone directly home from Guthridge's office.
        He was close to finishing his current novel, and in the