Stench: blood and feces and urine.
Man, handsome man, blond handsome man.
Adam.
In one corner sat Adam's head.
His torso lay sprawled on the cold concrete floor, blood running from the shoulders into the drain.
Blood feces urine.
Adam's eyes watching him. i am peter tappley
Then: mother.
Then: execution.
Then: Arthur K. Halliwell.
Then: escape to Europe. Endless plastic surgery. Freedom.
Then: darkness… and deep within him… a voice: i am rick corday
Then: Adam explaining this to him.
How sometimes he (Peter) was Rick… and how sometimes he (Rick) was Peter.
Basement cold odors
Then: mother mothermothermothermother
MOTHER.
Peter Tappley (or Rick Marcy wasn't sure now which to call him) came out carrying the axe.
The axe dripped blood, the same blood that was all over Peter's hands and face.
The blood of his friend Adam.
She sat cowering on the mattress, trembling even more from her fear than from the cold.
He was going to cut off her head, too.
She closed her eyes.
Sure, she was nothing but a big fraidy cat but she just couldn't deal with it.
If he wanted to cut her head off, she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of watching him.
Oh no.
She was going to keep her eyes closed.
His soles squeaked on the concrete floor because they were soaked in blood.
Squeak squeak squeak.
Coming closer.
With his axe.
Then the squeaking grew fainter.
Fainter.
She opened her eyes.
All she could see was from the backs of his knees down to his bloody shoes.
He was going up the basement stairs.
Opening the door.
Closing the door.
He hadn't paid any attention to her whatsoever.
Hadn't even slowed down.
Just gone straight up the stairs.
With his axe.
She started crying. It was crazy, she knew. She should be trying to whoop and yelp her good fortune but probably because she'd been scared so hard for so long she had to cry it out of her system.
But it was a good cry.
A positive cry.
The kind of cry that
The basement door at the top of the stairs opened.
Then nothing.
She couldn't hear anybody.
She could just look up the shadowy steps and see that the door was open a little bit.
Who was up there?
Why wasn't he coming down?
A trouser leg appeared. Then another one.
It was Peter.
He started walking down the stairs, carrying his axe.
At this point that's all she could see the shoes, the trouser legs from the knees down, the axe.
The bloody bloody axe.
Then Peter came the rest of the way down the stairs and stood looking at her.
She had promised herself one and no more well, maybe two, but certainly not anymore than that. Well, an absolute stratospheric max of three…
So far, in twenty-five minutes, Jill Coffey had eaten four of her semi-homemade cookies and was contemplating a fifth when somebody knocked on the downstairs door.
Reporters.
These days, that was always her first thought whenever a knock sounded or the phone rang.
Reporters.
But then came the code three-pause-two-pause-one.
Mitch was here.
She felt as exuberant as a little girl going down the stairs, trying to imagine his surprise as she opened the door and he smelled the tangy odor of the semi-homemade cookies.
'Wow,' Mitch said. 'What smells so good?'
She let him in, glimpsing the chill dusk, the coral-color sky, the quarter-moon above the snow-covered rooftops, the chink-chink-chink of tire chains on a big city sand truck just now passing by.
She led him upstairs by the hand.
Halfway up, he said, 'Would you explain something to me?'
'What?'
'What exactly is a ''semi'-homemade cookie?'
She explained.
'God, they smell great.'
'Wait till you taste one. I added some chocolate chips. And there's also fresh coffee.'
'Is this a glimpse of married life with my future bride?'
'If I say yes, will that mean that we get married soon?'
He laughed. 'Very soon.'
She set a place for him at the table and made him sit down and take off his hat, which he sometimes forgot to do, and then she brought over the cookies and the coffee.
'These are fantastic,' he said after a sizeable bite.
She smiled. 'Well, I don't know if I'd go that far.'
'They are. Truly. If I didn't know the difference, I'd say these weren't 'semi'-homemade at all.' He laughed. 'Now, do I get the part in this commercial or don't I?'
'I've had four.'
'Really? Four?'
'Actually, five.'
'Five? You ate five cookies? I didn't know there was such a self-indulgent side to my future bride.'
