The Next Name
Brooklyn, New York
All day long Tom tore up carpet, cutting it into small pieces and stuffing those pieces into plastic garbage bags. He thought he’d taken care of this on day one, but then he found a spot of blood, so now everything had to go. Anyplace there’d been blood, he stripped it to the bare floor, had Lisa scrub everything with bleach several times, then, when she finished, he watched as she scrubbed herself. No matter how many times he told her, she never did it enough so he had to do it himself.
“Stop, Tom. It hurts.”
“I’ll stop when you’re clean. You need to be clean if you’re going to work tomorrow.” He said it before he realized the implications, then thought about how to ensure she kept quiet. Until now he’d relied on her fear for Buster and herself, but on
