The Lesson of Her Death

you’re like—”
    “So what? You saw the way the Honons mowed down the Valanies. They just like went in with the xasers and totally mowed them down. The women and the kids, everyone.”
    “That’s a movie.”
    Phathar repeated patiently, “I didn’t like kill her.”
    “Did you find the knife?”
    “I might have if I hadn’t been alone.”
    “I couldn’t make it. I told you. Maybe you didn’t lose it.”
    “I lost it.”
    Jano said, “Man, we’ve got to get rid of everything.”
    “I told you, I put a destructor on the files. It’s great. Here look.” Phathar walked to a locked metal file cabinet. He unlocked it and pulled a drawer open. Inside were stacks of charts and drawings and files. Resting on top of them was a coil from a space heater. “Look, this is a lock switch that I got from
Popular Mechanics
. It’s great. If you open the cabinet without shutting off the switch …” He reached inside the cabinet and pointed to two pieces of wood wound with wires pressing against each other, like a large clothespin. “… Somebody opens the drawer and it closes the circuit. The coil gets red hot in like seconds and torches everything.”
    “Totally excellent,” Jano said with admiration. “What if it burns the house down?”
    Phathar did not respond. Through the closed door, they heard Philip’s father singing some old song, “Strangers in the Night.”
    Jano looked in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. “What’s that?” He picked up the brown purse, smeared with mud.
    Phathar froze. He was in a delicate position. This was his only friend in high school; he couldn’t do what he wanted to—which was to scream to him to put it back. He said simply, “It’s hers.”
    Jano clicked it open. “The girl’s? The second one! You
did
do it!”
    Phathar reached out and closed it. “Would you just chill? I saw her but—”
    “I don’t see why you’re denying it, man.”
    “—I
didn’t
kill her.”
    “Why’d you keep it?”
    “I don’t know.” Phathar in fact had wondered that a number of times. “It smells nice.”
    “You get over with her too?” Jano had stopped looking shocked and was curious.
    “Are you deaf? Like are you totally deaf?”
    “Come on, Phathar, I tell you everything. What was it like?”
    “You’re a fucking hatter. I followed her for a while but then I took off. There was some dude wandering around.”
    “Who?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “They found her in the pond. Yuck. If you did it with her your dick’ll probably fall off, with that water. What’s in the purse?”
    “I don’t know. I didn’t open it.” Phathar stood up and took the purse away from his friend. He put it in the file cabinet and laid another heater coil on top of it. He closed the drawer.
    “I don’t think that’s a good place for it,” Jano said.
    “How come?”
    “Even with the destructor it’d take a while for the leather to catch fire.”
    Phathar decided this might be true. He retrieved the purse. He held it out to Jano. “You take it. Throw it someplace.”
    “No way. I don’t want to get caught with it. Why don’t you burn it?”
    “I can’t. My dad’d whack me again. Maybe I’ll hide it under the porch and some night when he’s playing cards I’ll burn it.”
    The terrible, glass-splintering crash came from the living room. The boys each stared at the dirt-smeared wall through which the sound had come. Philip dropped the purse into the empty popcorn bag and wadded it, along with some trash, into a green plastic garbage bag, which sat in the corner of his room. They stepped into the hall.
    Philip’s mother was on the floor, on all fours, her knees spread out, skirt up to her trim waist. The eyes in her pretty face were nearly closed and her head lolled as the muscles in her smooth arms tried to keep her shoulders from dropping to the ground. Mr. Halpern stood above her, his hands gripping the stained orange blouse, saying desperately, “It’ll be all right, it’ll be all right. No, no, it’ll be all right.”
    And she was repeating louder and in a shrill soprano, “Lemmealone, lemmealone!” In her hand was a white wad of cloth. On the stained carpet was a fresher stain of vomit. The smell of sour gin was thick in the air. Philip started to cry.
    “Mrs. Halpern,” Jano whispered.
    Philip’s father looked up. “Get the fuck out of here, both of you.”
    Jano said, “But she’s sick.”
    Whimpering, Philip said, “She’s not