Dead Extra. Sean Carswell

faced him, caught his brown eyes with her baby blues. “I ain’t your daughter-in-law anymore, palooka.”

      “You’re still carrying my last name, aren’t you?”

      Actually, Wilma had gone back to calling herself Greene instead of Chesley. Nothing against Jack. She’d just always been a Greene. Wearing his last name felt like wearing his underwear. It never really fit. She didn’t want to explain this to the old man. She didn’t owe him a damn thing. An old thug like him had no right looking down his busted-up nose at her. She said, “Find another seat before I start screaming rape, old man.”

      “You little fucking trollop.” The old man grabbed his briefcase and stood from his seat. “You dirty fucking whore. I hope you know that the State of California takes alcoholism very seriously. I hope you know that.”

      Wilma jerked her thumb toward the back of the car. “Tell your story walking.”

      Two hours later, after a little sleep but before the coffee, bath, or hamburger, Wilma got a knock on her bungalow door. It was the boys in white coats from Camarillo. No doubt as to who called and where she’d be going.

       JACK, 1946

      JACK SAT on a low wall in front of a rooming house on Newland Street. Wilma’s second-to-last moments were spent on the street in front of him. He unfolded Gertie’s account of Wilma’s death and let his eyes graze over the words again.

      A cowbell echoed through the bungalow. Someone had sprung the front door lock and forced himself inside. Wilma grabbed the edges of the tub. Panic poured in. What do I do? Hide or run? Hide or run? What do I do?

      For the past year, she’d been telling herself to move into a place with a back door. She hadn’t done it. The only way to walk out of this bungalow was through the front. She looked up at the bathroom window. It was too small for a full-grown human to crawl out. There was nothing in here to hide behind or under.

      Heavy heels clomped across the hardwood floor. One man. Letting himself in. Letting himself be known.

      The door to the bathroom led into the living room, in full view of whoever thumped his brogues on the floorboards. She could walk out and face him or stay in the tub and wait for him. She stood. Water rolled off her bare skin. The cool evening air pushed aside the residual warmth. Soap bubbles clung to goose bumps. She stepped out of the tub, letting the dripping water puddle underneath. She wrapped her wet hair into a towel and slid on a terry-cloth robe and scanned the bathroom again. Nothing to use as a weapon but a hairbrush. It was hardly worth wielding that.

      In a gamble, she left the robe untied.

      The heels clomped closer. Wilma turned off the bathroom light, gave her eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness, and stepped through the doorway.

      He stopped walking when he saw her and stood next to the loveseat. His hands were buried deep in his jacket pockets; his Homburg brim dipped low like it was shielding his eyes from a sun that had set an hour ago. With two quick steps and a dive, he could tackle her. Too close. Inside the bungalow was too close for him to be. But this ten-foot gap: way too close.

      Wilma slapped a half-smile on her face and twirled the loose, dripping end of a curly red lock. “Well,” with nothing else coming to her mind, she said, “this is a surprise.”

      He said nothing. His eyes presumably stayed locked on her. She couldn’t see them to say for sure. A little bit of the whites glistened in the moonlight that crept into the bungalow, but that was it. And, truth be told, Wilma wasn’t surprised. This wasn’t a surprise. It was inevitable he’d show up, sooner or later.

      Wasn’t it?

      It was.

      Wilma took a couple of slow steps away from the bathroom. This put the loveseat between her and the man. She needed time, an excuse, something to stall him until she could make a run for it. The only thing in front of her, the only thing she could be walking toward if she were acting casual, was the Victrola. She patted her towel turban and glanced over at the man. “I’ll play some music,” she said. The low brim of his Homburg swiveled to follow her steps. Something about this made her even more aware of the open front of her robe, of the white skin that caught glimmers of moonlight.

      As luck would have it, Wilma had been listening to her Chester Ellis record that morning. She didn’t want to bend down with her back to the man and seek out another side, so she stuck with the one she had. A risky move, playing Chester Ellis in a scene like this, but Wilma took it. She cranked the arm of the little Victrola, dropped the needle on the record, clicked off the latch, and let it play. Chester’s piano filled the room. The man didn’t flinch.

      He was screwing up his courage to kill her. She knew it. She could taste it like a stink drifting off him. It was too dark to tell if he had a gun in those jacket pockets or a sap or was just wearing a pair of gloves to keep from doing it with his bare hands. But it was there: the murderous vibe tangling with the notes of the Chester Ellis record.

      Wilma looped around a dusty chintz armchair, walking this time toward the man. He’d left the front door open. Wilma was slightly closer to it than he was. She eyed the kitchen behind the man. “You must want a drink. I have a new bottle of Vat 69 behind you there. I haven’t even cracked the seal.” She pointed at a cabinet directly behind the man. He turned to look. This felt like Wilma’s only chance. She raced out the front door.

      He took off after her.

      Her bare feet hit the gravel drive in front of her bungalow. Small rocks dug into her soft soles. With one hand, she gathered the lapels of her bathrobe and pulled them tight. Her other arm flopped as she ran. The towel on her head unraveled and fell at the end of the drive. Wilma turned right onto Newland Street and crossed maybe half the block before realizing that she had no idea where she was running to and nowhere to go.

      The man turned right at the end of the drive, also. He picked up the towel and twisted it into a rope.

      The wet night collapsed on the pair. Thick fog blurred the moon into a vague glow above them. A red interurban car rumbled past the nearby intersection of York and Figueroa.

      Wilma assessed her options again. This night just wasn’t getting any better. She needed a car or a friend or a gun or something. She needed shoes because her feet were already torn up and bloody. She needed clothes. She needed help. She needed Jack but he’d gone and got himself shot down in Germany a year ago. That was where the trouble started. If he just hadn’t gone to war. If he just hadn’t died there. If he had just come back like he was supposed to and lent her a hand now and then. Goddamn it.

      With no better ideas, she started screaming, “Jack,” again and again, ripping apart her vocal chords doing it. The screams bounced down the street and vibrated off stucco walls and got absorbed into nearby porches and potted plants. A small dog joined in, yapping as hard and loud as Wilma. This stopped the man. He and Wilma faced each other on the street, no more than twenty feet apart, Wilma screaming, “Help,” now instead of “Jack,” the man’s eyes darting from door to door, waiting for someone to intervene.

      The neighbors stayed inside, letting it all wash underneath the sounds of the Gas Company Evening Concert or the new episode of Boston Blackie. No one came outside to check.

      The man walked toward Wilma, twirling her towel. Water dripped from her hair onto her bathrobe. She gave the screams a rest and waited. When he got an arm’s length away, she feinted left. He lunged. She danced around him and sprinted another fifty yards down the street. The soles of her feet left small red drops with every step.

      When her breath would allow it, she screamed again. One neighbor slammed his window shut. Another screamed, “Pipe down out there.” The dog kept yapping.

      The man picked himself off the tar and turned back for Wilma. He made his dash. She made her fake. He fell and she sprinted. They paused for breath. He pounced again. She