THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction by LEE OLDS

to be unfriendly. Or did it? With two double X chromosome males, each of whom thinks he has something on the other, let’s just say a clash is bound to occur especially where a female’s involved. And right there might just be the entire story of man’s history on earth from beginning to end.
    “Female involved?” Said Hammond. “Don’t tell me Barney’d been chasing Sandy himself though it might sound like it if he takes such offense at Hartwig’s sudden monopoly.”
    “No … Matter of fact it was his own girl who was the problem, the alcoholic.” She, it seemed, could prompt that carpenter to do whatever she wanted. Wrap him around her little finger if it came to that. Just … just, in fact, by so much as looking at another man out there. I don’t know how many he’d challenged to fights because of this but … too many. One was too many for jealousy never got anyone anywhere though it strikes some people like a virus they find impossible to repel.
    “So, this man wasn’t after Sandy. Hartwig obviously wasn’t after the alcoholic, or Sarah, or whatever you called her, what…? It just must’ve been he didn’t want anyone criticizing anything he did.”
    “Not exactly true,” I stood up in alarm.
    According to Hartwig, Sarah was absolutely the most beautiful woman at the beach, or if you could believe him, anywhere you might come across a woman when searching for that quality. She was all, five foot eight or so, willowy of figure with big feet and small (but not too small) breasts, large blue eyes with high cheekbones and wavy auburn hair. She was supposed to be part Hawaiian. If so she got all the right proportions and even those didn’t tell the full story. Just to see her, evidently, was to want to sleep with her. Without even trying she had that allure to men that’s impossible to define. You can call it sex appeal, the expression of a ‘need to surrender’, whatever. Like the philosopher Moore’s naturalistic fallacy whatever you try to define anything as you always come up with something you’ve left out…
    “Christ, in that case if any of this is true, though she didn’t sound like it at first description, maybe the man had a real reason to be jealous. He’s not such a paranoid loser after all.”
    “No,” I said. “He’s all of that. Been married twice, failed to pay child support … And about her you judged her before you let me go far enough.”
    “Really?”
    “Really.”
    Sandy was certainly jealous of the beauty’s looks and ability to attract men even though she had little money but was on welfare because of the kid. And Sarah felt slighted since she knew how Sandy ridiculed her own boyfriend, claiming,
    “Only a tramp’d run around with such a loser.”
    Let’s just say there was plenty of enmity between the two women and recently their men’d had words, though no physical clash. In both cases there’d been a little saber rattling but their women had managed to pull the two men apart.
    Dances occurred on Friday and Saturday nights. At dusk, after watching the sunset when the fog allowed, various parties’d emerge from their houses and walk up to the Windjammer that had been built on a truncated dune several hundred yards off the beach when the entire area’d been nothing but dunes. The parking lot was hard sand but was used mostly by visitors from over the hill.
    It was a roaring night; the crowd had packed the place. Every seat at the bar was taken the tables on either side of the dance floor came to be occupied.
    “Guess what music was playing?” Hammond shrugged his shoulders.
    “Mexican, what else. Since they’ve apparently taken over our country I think it’s only fitting that we listen to their music. Don’t you?” Receiving no reply, I continued. “Or Cuban or something with a Latin beat is all I really know. And, believe me, it’s great to dance to. Better perhaps than any of our modern experiments . Old people like it for sure. It’s not so