244

Warren

Within three days of Warren’s interment, Hope had eradicated almost every shred of evidence of his noxious presence in her life.

His clothing to the last repugnant sock had been hauled to the Good Will donation bin near Hy-Vee or chucked into the parking-lot dumpster. She’d gone to the bank and had his name taken off their accounts, ordered new checks bearing her name only, shredded the two boxes of unused checks that had survived his Royal Hind-ass, and filled the Rubbermaid bathroom basket with his pills, potions, lotions, salves, suppositories, and sundry grooming utensils, first dunking his triple-headed Norelco shaver into the toilet by its cord a few times for good measure.

The Viagra she pounded into powder with an upholstery hammer at the breakfast bar, tablet after tablet, all thirty-four of them, savoring the satisfying, saved-by-the-bell sensation that accompanied every blow.

But for all the catharsis Hope realized from this elaborately constructed deconstruction, there really was no getting even with Warren. He’d gotten through life unscathed by his own causticity; had lived his whole sixty-eight years as an irredeemable bastard oblivious to the loathing in his wake.

Bull-headed, bullshitting, wife-bullying Warren had held a worldview precisely like that of a rodeo Brahman. Because even if “ridden” the bull—as far as the bull is concerned—never loses. The cowboy always winds up on the turf, and the bull always leaves the arena the way Warren left this world: a smug, strutting, self-satisfied winner.

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