The Husband

shadow.
    They are careful.
    "Have you been to Rio Lucio, New Mexico?" he asks.
    "No. Not there, either."
    "In Rio Lucio, there is a small stucco house painted blue with yellow trim. Why don't you eat your chocolate?"
    "I'm saving it for later."
    "Who knows how much time any of us has?" he asks. "Enjoy it now I like to watch you eat."
    Reluctantly, she peels the wrapper off the candy bar.
    "A saintly woman named Ermina Lavato lives in the blue-and-yellow stucco house in Rio Lucio. She is seventy-two."
    He believes that statements like this constitute conversation. His pauses suggest that obvious rejoinders are available to Holly.
    After swallowing chocolate, she says, "Is Ermina a relative?"
    "No. She's of Hispanic origin. She makes exquisite chicken fajitas in a kitchen that looks like it came from the 1920s."
    "I'm not much of a cook," Holly says inanely.
    His gaze is riveted on her mouth, and she takes a bite from the Mr. Goodbar with the feeling that she's engaged in an obscene act.
    "Ermina is very poor. The house is small but very beautiful. Each room is painted a different soothing color."
    As he stares at her mouth, she returns the scrutiny, to the extent his mask allows. His teeth are yellow. The incisors are sharp, the canines unusually pointed.
    "Her bedroom walls hold forty-two images of the Holy Mother."
    His lips look as if they are perpetually chapped. Sometimes he chews at the loose shreds of skin when he isn't talking.
    "In the living room are thirty-nine images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by thorns."
    The cracks in his lips glisten as if they might start seeping.
    "In Ermina Lavato's backyard, I buried a treasure."
    "As a gift for her?" Holly asks.
    "No. She would not approve of what I buried. Drink your Pepsi."
    She does not want to drink from a can he handled. She opens it anyway, and takes a sip.
    "Do you know Penasco, New Mexico?"
    "I haven't traveled much in New Mexico."
    He is silent for a moment, and the wind howls into his silence, and his gaze drops to her throat as she swallows Pepsi. Then: "My life changed in Penasco."
    "I thought that was Chamisal."
    "My life has changed often in New Mexico. It's a place of change and great mystery."
    Having thought of a use for the Pepsi can, Holly sets it aside with the hope he will allow her to keep it if she hasn't finished the cola by the time he leaves.
    "You would enjoy Chamisal, Penasco, Rodarte, so many beautiful and mysterious places."
    She considers her words before she speaks. "Let's hope I live to see them."
    He meets her stare directly. His eyes are the blue of a somber sky that suggests an impending storm even in the absence of clouds.
    In a voice still softer than usual, not in a whisper but with a quiet tenderness, he says, "May I speak to you in confidence?"
    If he touches her, she will scream until she wakes the others.
    Interpreting her expression as consent, he says, "There were five of us, and now just three."
    This is not what she has expected. She holds his gaze though it disturbs her.
    "To improve the split from five ways to four, we killed Jason."
    She cringes inwardly at the revelation of a name. She doesn't want to know names or see faces.
    "Now Johnny Knox has disappeared," he says. "Johnny was running surveillance, hasn't called in. The three of us—we didn't agree to improve the split from four. The issue was never raised."
    Mitch, she thinks at once.
    Outside, the tenor of the wind changes. Ceasing to shriek, it rushes with a great shush, counseling Holly in the wisdom of silence.
    "The other two were out on errands yesterday," he continues, "separately, at different times. Either could have killed Johnny."
    To reward him for these revelations, she eats more chocolate.
    Watching her mouth once more, he says, "Maybe they decided on a two-way split. Or one of them may want to have it all."
    Not wishing to appear to sow discord, she says, "They wouldn't do that."
    "They might," he says. "Do you know Vallecito, New Mexico?"
    Licking chocolate from her lips, Holly says, "No."
    "Austere," he says. "So many of these places are austere but so beautiful. My life changed in Vallecito."
    "How did it change?"
    Instead of answering, he says, "You should see Las Trampas, New Mexico, in the snow. A scattering of humble buildings, white fields, low hills dark with chaparral, and the sky as white as the fields."
    "You're something of a poet," she says, and half means it.
    "They have no casinos in Las Vegas, New Mexico. They have