"That's Just The Business I'm In."
She still didn’t understand what was happening.
Everything had been fine, completely ordinary day. Blue sky, some clouds. A little warm for the fall but it was pleasant. She’d left the windows open in the kitchen for a breeze while she worked. It was a nice day, ordinary.
The doorbell rang and she’d let him get it - would it have been different if she’d answered? - She’d had dinner to make, potatoes on the stove. She was busy. He understood. He answered the door.
She hadn’t even been paying attention, really. There’d been talk, though you’d expect that. The front door was far enough form where she stood at the stove that she only just couldn’t make the words out. Their voices weren’t loud enough anyway.
What was loud enough was the shot.
In that instant she knew. He was dead, she would soon be after. But what about the potatoes?
The brain works in odd ways.
Whoever was at the other side of the gun still didn’t know she was here. She hadn’t screamed, hadn’t dropped or broken anything. Hadn’t moved a single muscle even. Just stood there, frozen. She could climb out the window, she could get away, tell someone. The police.
But really? What was the point?
So maybe it was with a little more intent than she would’ve admitted to that her feet dragged her to the front door. Because she knew, but she didn’t know. She’d heard, but she still had yet to see.
And once she’d seen? What point was there in running?
And then she did see.
There was so much blood, the wall, the floor, some on the ceiling, over on the lampshade. The rug was certainly ruined. It was already spreading to her feet. She stepped into it further, sunk to her knees. There goes the dress too, then.
The man at the door - not the one on the ground - seemed a little surprised at her presence. Surprised, but not disturbed. So this was it. She still asked him why.
She’d cradled his head - the one on the floor - in her lap, only realizing she was crying when clear spots of tears began to streak through the red from the bullet wound on his forhead.
Why? Was there some other life entirely she’d never known about? Who even was this man? And the face she was looking down into? Who was he? The eyes stared back at her, through her, cold and unanswering. Dead.
So she looked up at the live ones instead. They may’ve even been colder. Though he did answer her, if not very satisfactorily. There was a shrug, the click of the safety, “That’s just the business I’m in.”
A few houses away, a man jolted from his mid afternoon nap. Funny. He could’ve sworn he’d heard a shot. Though it was probably nothing more than a dream. He shook his head, lifting himself out of his chair and taking his mug of now cold coffee over to the sink, letting it wash down the drain as a smooth black car drove down the street below. A cloud passed over the sun for a moment, and then the car turned the corner, and the man at the sink turned away.