Two for One

by Robert Austin

Chaz Bonito stood on the balcony of the Honeymoon Suite at the Hotel du Bois, holding a glass of champagne and looking out over a wooded valley, and contemplated how he was going to kill his wife. This wasn’t a sudden impulse on his part: he had in fact been planning this for several months, and had several ideas, but had come to the conclusion that timing, inspiration and opportunity would have to come together for him to succeed. You can’t force a plan onto a situation if it doesn’t fit, he thought. For instance, he might ‘accidentally’ shoot her, if they were to go skeet-shooting, which was one of the leisure activities available tomorrow, but what if she wanted to go hiking instead? He couldn’t very well drag her to the shooting range against her will.

Besides, this was her honeymoon, too. The least he could do was be considerate of her desires, do what she wanted to do, and make these last few days of her life special. He looked back over his shoulder, into the room where his new wife was resting on the passion-rumpled bed. Tina Bonito (née Skipjack) had pulled a comforter over most of her slim body, and lay, peacefully and absentmindedly, thinking about killing her husband. 

“Honey,” Chaz said, “should we go down to the restaurant for supper?

Tina didn’t answer immediately. She was imagining Chaz stuffing his fat face at the table, food slopping down his chin and shirt, when suddenly, “Hurk! Huurrk!”: he begins choking on a piece of lobster—no, a chicken wing!—and she cries, helpless—she never learned the Heimlich maneuver! “Yes, dear,” she said, “that would be wonderful. Our lovemaking has left me raveenus!”

Chaz bit his tongue. Dammit woman, if you don’t know how to pronounce a word don’t use it!  “Fine. I’ll start getting dressed.” He came back into the room and stood at the closet with his back to the bed.

Tina watched as he disrobed. She counted three distinct rolls of blubber around his waist, and his butt sagged so much she couldn’t see the top of his thighs. Pig. In a perfect world, this would be the moment she would take the .22 pistol out of her purse and shoot him twice in the head. Just do it. But alas, it wasn’t a perfect world. People would ask questions. She would have to get rid of the body, and how was she supposed to move a sack of shit that big? She had a story planned for when he disappeared, but he had to actually disappear. If someone was going to find the body, it couldn’t have any bullet holes. 

The Bonitos were seated in a particular booth, selected and requested earlier by Chaz for its visual isolation from the rest of the restaurant. No chance of another guest glancing over at the wrong time and seeing him slip something into his wife’s drink. Chaz ordered Bloody Marys.

“I don’t know about you my love, but the fresh mountain air has done wonders for my appetite,” he said, as if his appetite had ever been in question.

“Oh yes, indupitably,” said Tina. “I’m so hungry I think we should order a plate of wings before we even look at the menu.”

“Ha ha, you read my mind, you little minx, you!” A waiter brought their drinks and set them on the table. “Thank you, good man. Darling, have you noticed that fantastic painting on the wall behind you?”

Tina turned and looked at the painting. Chaz smoothly took a small glass vial from his jacket and emptied it into Tina’s glass. The painting was crap: a poorly colored valley with too short perspective, letting an alien blue sky invade where the horizon should have been. It was exactly the sort of thing that tasteless cretin would like, she thought.

Tina picked up her drink and brought it to her lips. Chaz watched with eager anticipation.

Tina paused… “Is this…?” she sniffed the drink, “That smell… clam juice! Why those dirty Canadians, can’t even make a proper Bloody Mary!” Tina called the waiter over, and despite his profuse apologies and explanation that the bartender had simply made her a Bloody Caesar by mistake she proceeded to berate him and the female members of his family for twelve minutes. She only stopped because the tray of barbecued chicken wings arrived. “Fuck off and get me a gin and tonic, maple eater!” 

Chaz watched in silent disgust as the nasty woman he had married verbally abused the young waiter. To top it off, the waiter took away the poisoned drink. He was so upset that when the wings arrived he almost pushed the plate away. Almost.

“Shameful, the quality of staff they have here,” he said, trying to take her side. “And I thought this was supposed to be a five-star hotel!” He shrugged, picked up a wing and held it towards her. “A toast! To our families finally uniting after decades of mistrust and competition!”  Tina and Chaz had each inherited majority ownership of their respective family’s businesses. And soon both companies will be united under my control! they each thought.

Tina picked up a wing, tapped it against his, then took a small bite. She waited and watched as Chaz’s wing disappeared in his mouth. “Hey, what do you call a black senator? … A n____!” 

Chaz guffawed, coughed twice, and a spot of barbecue sauce flew from his mouth. But he kept chewing. One of Chaz’s more obnoxious qualities was his political correctness, in the sense that although he was deeply racist, he publicly pretended he wasn’t. He didn’t hide his true feelings from his wife, however, and she had learned that there was little he loved more than racist jokes.

On her fifth joke Chaz slammed his palm against the table, let out a single “Haw!”, then began to choke. “Hurk! Huurrk!” He clutched at his throat.

“Oh no. Is something wrong. Are you okay. I don’t know what to do,” Tina said.

Chaz stood up, leaned one hand on the table and pounded his chest with the other. It wasn’t helping. His face was turning red. Suddenly, a waiter ran up, positioned himself behind Chaz, wrapped his arms around his bulk and pulled his fists into Chaz’s gut. One, two, three times and the chicken wing came flying out.

Chaz breathed deeply. “Oh my… that was a close one!” He picked up another wing and took a bite. “We’ll have to tip this young man well. This surely makes up for that fishy Bloody Mary!”

Tina gritted her teeth. “Yes. Thank God he was here.”

“Dearest, I have a special surprise for you!” Chaz said.

“And I have one for you!”

“Me first, my love.” Chaz removed a small waxed paper envelope from his wallet. “I bought you some cocaine!” 

Tina’s eyes lit up. She had had a difficult time with drugs when she was younger, but as an adult had managed to relegate them to the category of a special treat. What could be more special than her honeymoon? Chaz brought a small mirror from the bathroom and scraped several lines out for his wife’s pleasure. She snorted them with the enthusiasm of a stockbroker on his lunch break.

“Oh darling this was so thoughtful of you I love you so much and we’re going to be so happy together and I think maybe tomorrow we should go hiking. Yes! Hiking, around the nature trail that I read about on the hotel website before we booked this room, do you remember, when we were trying to figure out where to go for our honeymoon, and wow, here we are now, married, together, on our honeymoon and this is so great and I want to go for a walk in the fresh air with the trees and animals and I think there’s a river running through the bottom of the valley and maybe we could go swimming but it might be too cold and… ” Tina paused to do another line. Her mind was racing even faster than she was talking and she stood up to feel her legs under her. She felt great and she would like to go for a walk right now, with her husband, and this would be the perfect time to kill him, she thought. She went over to check her purse and yes, the gun was still in it! They could go for a walk down to the river, she could shoot him, push his body in the river, come back, do some more cocaine, then go down to the bar to celebrate! 

While Tina paced the room talking to herself Chaz took a second small envelope out of his pocket. This one contained cocaine cut with rat poison. He casually dumped it on the mirror and began cutting it into lines. “I think an evening walk is a lovely idea, dearest, but come do another line first.”

Tina quickly stepped back towards Chaz and the mirror. “Don’t you think it’s weird that both our companies never got along before I mean we have so much in common like we both sell canned mackerel and sure we compete against each other for fish and sales and stuff but if we had worked together we could have agreed on prices like a trust and with economies of scale we could have saved money on standardized equipment and joint advertising and I wouldn’t be here now trying to k– ” Tina had a moment of clarity, caught herself before she said too much, and coughed. “Cuddle with my new husband. I think I need a drink, my throat’s dry.”

A bottle of champagne was chilling in a bucket of ice near the bed. Tina grabbed it and began twisting the cork. “I think we should drink some champagne and then go for a walk, yes, a walk under the stars, that would be so romantic, and we could maybe find…”—she twisted some more —“gosh, maybe find that”—she twisted the cork the other way—“walking bridge, the swinging rope bridge I told you about” – Tina thought for a second about the bridge, swinging fifty feet above the river, then grunted and twisted the cork again.

The cork popped and shot out across the room, followed by a fountain of sweet, bubbly wine, that landed on Chaz’s head, his shirt, his pants, but mostly on the mirror.

“Fuck!” they shouted simultaneously.

“Oh no, shoot!” Tina knelt down to try to rescue the cocaine, but it had all washed off the mirror and disappeared into the carpet. 

Chaz grimaced, angry about the loss of the poisoned drug, which had been his favorite option for getting rid of Tina, the method least likely to raise suspicion. Now I have to move on to Plan C, you sloppy, clumsy, dope fiend bitch! After a moment, Chaz found words that managed to hide his feelings: “Ah… a shame, but accidents, you know, they do happen. Let me have that bottle.” 

Tina handed Chaz the champagne. He desired nothing more than to smash it over her tiny blonde head, but restraint and self-control were among his personal strengths. He took a long swig off the bottle. “I don’t think I’m feeling up to a walk tonight, I’m afraid.” Chaz was physically tired and emotionally exhausted. He was not by nature a cold-blooded killer. He was a cold-hearted businessman. This wasn’t a personal decision. He did personally detest much about Tina, but he secretly detested most of the people he knew, and the pleasures of the flesh mostly offset his negative feelings. No: at the end of the day, he wanted to kill her because he was focused on the bottom line. He was a committed Capitalist, and emotion was simply not a sufficient reason to overlook the economic benefits of her sudden death.

Tina also was feeling the emotional toll of planning her first murder. That was one thing that her research—reading dozens of true-crime novels—hadn’t prepared her for. She hadn’t expected how difficult it was watching for that one moment, a sudden opportunity to pull the trigger or push him at a cliff’s edge and get away with it. Not a minute too soon, when someone might knock on the door, or a second too late, when her husband might turn and ask her one of his famously stupid questions. One never knew for sure, there was always risk involved. The uncertainty caused stress, and the stress combined with the narcotics had effectively short-wired her brain. No, there wasn’t going to be any nature walk, or anything else tonight. She gazed at the back of his head as he undressed in front of the closet. She could reach her purse and the gun inside of it, if she wanted to, but… then what? Her plot would have to be put on hold, she wasn’t even in a state to think about it anymore, let alone act.

Chaz lay back on the bed. “Maybe instead we should just … go to bed.” He flung open his robe, revealing in full his corpulence and penis.

Tina looked at her husband’s body. It was truly revolting. What had she gotten herself into? And yet, she had married him. She had known all along, from when she first came up with her plan for a hostile takeover of Bonito Inc., that there would be a lot of loveless fucking involved. Now, with the finish line in sight, she certainly couldn’t let her true feelings show. She had to keep up the act. Tina picked up the champagne bottle and took a long drink. Besides, she thought, love or no love, this was her honeymoon, and she was filled with cocaine and alcohol.

“Mr. Bonito, I like the way you think,” she said, then jumped onto the bed.

The Bonitos woke up, fooled around, then went down to the hotel restaurant to have breakfast. Neither of them gave any thought to their respective schemes until they had each gotten a real Bloody Mary and some coffee into their stomachs. As they were waiting for their pancakes, however, Chaz’s mind went to work. 

Cliffs. That was what he had to focus on. When he had been researching honeymoon locations, one fact about this hotel had stood out: every couple of years someone would fall to their death from the cliffside hiking trails. All it would take would be one little bump, and it would be done. A great tragedy, but nothing suspicious. He had been very careful in showing public affection throughout their engagement. No one doubted that this was a love match, he was certain, and no one would seriously question a plausible accident. He still would have preferred the postmortem headlines to read, “Heiress Dies After Brief Illness” or “Herring Tycoon Overdoses On Honeymoon”, but “Newlywed Falls Off Cliff” was acceptable. Accidents happen, and he had watched hours of videos on the internet of people grieving after tragic losses. He could pull it off.

Across the table Tina was anxious and uncomfortable. Her nerves were still unsettled from last night, and the continued stress of having to constantly watch for the right moment wasn’t making things any easier. It could have been easier... she’d had one idea in particular that she’d liked: have someone else do it. That would have been ideal, but from her research hiring a hitman has never yet worked. It was almost always the heroine’s undoing. In fact, from her reading she was beginning to suspect that the police spent so much time pretending to be killers for hire—it literally happened in every book, someone would try to hire a hitman who would turn out to be an undercover cop—that it was a wonder they had time to do anything else. 

No, the better approach was to use a lover. Find some dumb young stud, convince him that if he killed her husband they could share the inheritance, then kill him before he could rat her out to the cops. Her idea was to have what she believed the French called a manager twa, after which her lover would kill Chaz. Then she would shoot him, and have the perfect alibi. Yes Officers, Chaz had always had this fantasy, to be with another man, and I agreed to do it just this once, but then the man he found tried to rob us! He killed my husband, and if I hadn’t gotten to Chaz’s gun in time, he would have killed me, too! 

Tina’s eyes scanned the room for potential candidates while she imagined details of the hypothetical crime. All the men she saw were weak, ugly and even less attractive than the one she had married. Life wasn’t fair. “Darling,” Chaz said, interrupting her fantasy, “I see the weather is supposed to be excellent. Shall we go for a hike today? I do want to see the cliff trail. They say it’s to die for!” Chaz pushed a boiled egg into his mouth as soon as he finished his sentence.

“The cliff trail, now that’s the one we have to cross the rope bridge to get to isn’t it?” Tina didn’t pause for him to answer, out of fear that he would open his eggy yap and do just that. “I’d like to see that, I think that would be interesting. Say, I should already know this, but can you swim?”

“Swim, me? Goodness, no! Water is for fish and washing dishes, I always say. Facetiously, of course, ha ha!” Chaz laughed needlessly at his own joke, sending flecks of egg across the table.

“Yes. Ha ha, fish and washing dishes, that’s a good one,” Tina agreed, as she wondered if the bridge was made from cuttable rope.

“Are you sure we’re in Canada, dearest?” Chaz asked. “Because this bridge looks like it was made by Mexicans.” He took one step onto the bridge and paused, uncertain whether he could trust it to hold his weight.

“Oh, it looks fine,” said Tina. The bridge did in fact look fine, to her disappointment. Despite being regularly referred to as a rope bridge, it was in fact made from strong steel cables and two inch thick solid wood planks. Completely uncuttable. Furthermore, the bridge was held together with chunky galvanized steel bolts. She tested a couple of the nuts on the off chance they were just finger tight, but no. Dammit, this bridge does look like it was built by Mexicans, she thought. (Tina Bonito was as racist as her husband, but in a different way. In her mind “built by Mexicans” was a good thing, because they were born laborers. Who else would you want to build a bridge? Negroes?) 

“Just walk across darling, then I’ll follow. I’m not sure it was built for two people at once.” Tina watched as Chaz crept forward onto the bridge. It barely swayed. She sighed. It could probably hold an elephant. There was no way Chaz would make things easy on her and just fall off. Unless… 

Tina looked at the ground and saw a good sized rock. She looked around—there was no one nearby to see her. She recognized the opportunity she had been waiting for, picked up the rock and threw it at Chaz’s head.

Unfortunately for Tina, who had little experience throwing rocks at people, the rock was much heavier than she had expected. It barely made it past the edge of the cliff before plummeting into the ravine below. It made a crashing sound as it broke through the tree branches below and hit the ground.

“What was that?” cried Chaz. 

“I don’t know, dear. Probably just moose or a beaver walking through the trees below us.”

Chaz made it to the other side. He turned to watch his wife, who was just starting to cross the bridge. He too had been disappointed to learn that the rope bridge wasn’t made of rope. He had a good sharp knife folded in his pocket, but it wouldn’t do him any good. He watched Tina crossing and considered his options. He couldn’t stab her. Too messy. He couldn’t throw her off. She would definitely fight back and probably scratch him or tear his clothes, rendering his tragic accident story incredible. And the bridge was too steady for her to fall off on her own. Unless…

Chaz saw an opportunity and seized it. He ran back onto the bridge with high, bouncy steps, sending violent waves up the bridge towards Tina. “Whoa!” Tina cried, grabbing at the cables that served as handrails. “Stop!” The bridge was swaying too much, she was suddenly terrified of falling off it. “Chaz, stop!”

Chaz was getting closer to his wife. He could see she was on the verge of losing her balance, a strong bump would knock her off. He got closer…

“Chaz!” Tina was ready to panic when Chaz reached her and threw his arms around her. 

“Don’t worry darling, you’re safe!” At the last second he had seen another couple come out of the woods at the beginning of the bridge. Witnesses! His least favorite type of people. He could tell Tina was terrified by how tightly she held on to him, so he thought quickly. “Oh no, did the bridge moving scare you? I had this just wonderful idea that we could take a picture together in the middle of the bridge, so I was rushing out to meet you before you got too far!”

A dumb excuse, but now that it had been spoken aloud he had to commit to it. He pulled out his phone and tried to figure out how to take a selfie.

“I could take that picture for you.” A woman’s voice. Chaz and Tina looked up. The couple Chaz had spotted approaching the bridge was now on it, getting near them. They were a brown-skinned, vaguely-ethnic couple. Clearly from a country where people didn’t have the sense to wait until a rope bridge was empty before crossing it.

“Oh, no,” said Chaz, “that’s not necessary…”

“What the hell are you doing?” Tina shouted. “This isn’t a four-person bridge! Go back and wait your turn!”

She continued to yell and swear until the couple, who were also newlyweds from America, walked back to the beginning of the bridge in confusion. Satisfied, Tina took Chaz’s camera in one hand, and, holding onto Chaz with the other, took a picture of the two of them on the bridge. 

Chaz and Tina took their time looking at the picture, then took several more until they had one that looked the way they wanted it to: a young couple, perfectly in love on their honeymoon. 

After the excitement on the bridge Chaz and Tina began the slow hike along the cliffs. Chaz knew from the brochures that this region was considered a “temperate rainforest”, a stupid term that apparently meant wet-with-too-many-trees. He wasn’t at all happy. His feet already hurt, his wife was still alive, and the sheer scale and vitality of the forest irritated him. The trees, with their grace, strength and beauty, seemed to be mocking him. If I had a chainsaw, I’d show you who’s boss, he thought. But he couldn’t let himself think about that right now. He’d waited long enough. It was time to do what he’d come here to do.

“Tina, darling, this spot, it’s so lovely. Let me take a picture of you standing at the edge of the cliff.”

Tina glanced over the edge of the cliff. There was a sheer drop, perhaps a hundred feet, to a pile of jagged boulders below. It was the perfect spot. “Oh my, darling. Yes, this background is to die for. But how about you let me take your picture first.”

Chaz grew suspicious. He knew what he looked like: no one wanted a picture of him. “Ah, dearest, but I already have my camera out.” He did not, but immediately pulled it out, at the exact same moment that Tina pulled hers out.

“Me too.” Tina waved her camera at him.

Neither of them moved.

Tina took a step away from the cliff. “I’m scared of heights,” she said.

“But it’s just one picture.” Chaz took a step towards her.

“One’s too many. I’d rather not.”

Chaz grit his teeth. “Then let’s take a picture together. You’ve nothing to fear if you hold on to me.”

Tina sensed a moment. Carpe diem, she thought. “Okay.”

Chaz and Tina stood side by side, arms around each other at the edge of the cliff, each holding a camera in their free hand. “On the count of three, my love,” said Chaz.

“One.” Chaz’s hand moved up Tina’s side to her shoulder.

“Two.” Chaz’s hand moved closer to her collar.

“Three!” Chaz pulled back on Tina’s shirt, throwing her off balance.

Tina wobbled for a second. Just long enough to tighten her grip on Chaz’s belt.

Then they fell, screaming the whole way down till their bodies broke on the rocks below.

The papers that reported on the tragic deaths of Chaz and Tina Bonito disagreed on many of the facts, such as what the couple had done earlier that day, and how they ended up on that cliff at that moment, and why they slipped. But they all agreed on one thing: that the way the Bonitos fell together, and died in each other’s arms, was the most romantic thing that any of them had ever seen.