SIXTY
Eddie jabbed the hypodermic needle into his thigh, let out a moan, then pushed the morphine into his leg. The right side of his body was throbbing from head to toe. He checked his watch, calculating that it would take ten to twenty minutes before the pain slipped away.
As he got up off the seat of the john, his image raked across the bathroom mirror and he set the needle down. His face looked like an etching in cuts and scratches. When the kid with gusto fired the shotgun into the car, glass sprayed forward and bounced off the windshield into his face. He’d had enough sense to cover his eyes. He hadn’t been blinded. Still, the experience and pain that went with it was harrowing enough to spawn a series of nightmares. Last night he dreamed he was a beekeeper without a mask. As he collected honey from the nest on orders from his mother, the bees swarmed his face and began stinging him. There were hundreds of them. Thousands of them, clinging to his face in a mask three inches thick. He woke up in a cold sweat, gasping for air and swatting at the insects until he remembered the shattered glass. It was the shards of glass that had disfigured him. The kid with gusto who had transformed his appearance and made him stand out.
He stepped into the bedroom and opened the closet door. As he got dressed, he could hear Rosemary start up again from the basement. He thought she might be hungry. But maybe it was more than that. Since he’d seen the angel painting in the barn, he hadn’t been able to look at Rosemary or get any work done. There was the chance he’d made a horrible mistake with his painting, wasted the entire fucking year on the wrong fucking face. How could he break through and become famous when he’d painted the wrong type of woman? Rosemary wasn’t an angel. None of them had been. Eddie shook it off. He’d deal with it when the pain went away. Try to look at his painting from a fresh perspective and decide if his life was ruined or not.
He walked downstairs into the kitchen, opened the door to the pantry and reached for another can of Chef Boyardee ravioli. Then he descended the stairs into the basement, entering the workroom and listening to his model rant and rave. He unlocked the bathroom door and switched on the light. She was sprawled out on the concrete floor, staring back at him with wild eyes. The house dress he’d given her was partially open and made her look like a whore. She was beginning to smell and needed a shower as well.
“Here,” he said, offering her the ravioli.
“I’m tired of eating out of cans,” she said. “I hate ravioli.”
Eddie looked at the two cans on the floor and realized she hadn’t finished either one of them.
“People are starving, you know. When someone offers you food, you should be more grateful and not waste it.”
“Fuck you,” she said. “And fuck your stupid painting.”
She stood up on her bare feet. She was grinding her teeth and moving closer with her hands behind her back. Eddie had lost count and didn’t see it coming-a third can of Chef Boyardee beef ravioli flying through the air. Rosemary swung it forward and crashed it over his forehead. The blow knocked him against the doorjamb. He felt her pushing him aside, and saw her streak by and bolt out the door.
She wasn’t an angel. She was an ungrateful bitch.
He tried to shake the dizziness away and sprinted forward, catching up with her on the stairs. He was right behind her, grabbing at the dress with his fingers and pawing at her legs. Rosemary burst into the kitchen, swung the door back and forth, banging him on the head again. Then she yelped and fled away. Eddie chased her into the living room, pulling her off the front door as she fumbled with the locks. She was squirming in his arms, twisting out of his hands, driving her elbows into his stomach and searching for his balls. When she pulled away and raced up the steps to the second floor, Eddie decided he’d had it. He climbed the stairs, slower this time because of the pain in his leg. The wound had opened again. He could see the bloodstain blooming all over his clean pants. And then he heard her shriek.
He followed the sound up to the attic, felt the cold air tumbling down at him as he hobbled up the narrow steps.
Rosemary had found Mrs. Yap.
Curiously, his landlady’s frozen body was no longer in the trunk. The lid was open and she’d managed to crawl halfway out. Eddie had taken her for dead two hours before he dragged her upstairs.
The windows were open, keeping the room chilled down like a walk-in freezer. Rosemary had stopped screaming. She was staring at the corpse in disbelief and trying to catch her breath. Mrs. Yap appeared more than cold. Ice crystals had formed around her mouth and eyes, and it didn’t look as if she’d found any peace on her journey to the other side.
Eddie helped Rosemary up and led her downstairs. Closing the door behind them, he tried to think about what to do. She didn’t pull away. Not even once. Instead, she held herself in her arms and quietly wept. It occurred to him that this might be the right time for another trip on the love train. Rosemary looked like she needed it. And Eddie thought he could probably use the break, too.
As they entered the kitchen, he sat her down at the table and opened the drawer for his stash. He shook two pills out and dumped them into the mortar, then thought it over and added two more. Working the pestle into the marble cup, he pulverized the pills until they were a fine dust. Every so often, he turned back to check on Rosemary. She wasn’t even watching. Her eyes were pinned to the ground and looked dull.
He opened the refrigerator and found the orange juice. But as he reached into the cabinet for two glasses, he lost his balance and grabbed hold of the counter. Something was happening deep inside him. It felt like a slow wave rolling through his head. Maybe even an earthquake. After a moment, Eddie realized it was the morphine. The wave seemed to pass, along with the pain, and he stared at the
He emptied the ground up pills into a single glass, filled it with orange juice, and gave the mix a good stir. Then he handed to her.
Rosemary’s eyes rose from the floor.
“Drink it,” he said. “You’ll feel better. Then I’ll fix you something to eat.”
“You’re really ugly, you know that.”
Eddie smiled, feeling the wounds on his face and thinking himself a phantom.
Then she took the glass, finishing it off in three quick gulps. Rosemary must have been thirsty. Twenty minutes later, she smiled. It was the first smile he’d seen from her in two days.
SIXTY-ONE
Vega pulled into the lot at the roundhouse, cruising past the row of black-and-whites until they found Teddy’s beat-up Corolla. Ellwood must have been waiting for them outside the lobby. Before Vega could get the keys out of the ignition, his partner snapped open the back door and slid in beside Teddy with his fuse burning.
“What took you so long?” Ellwood asked.
“They said they didn’t know where their son was,” Vega said. “We had to wait for their attorney to show up before they could tell us how much they wanted to help.”
Ellwood glanced at Powell, then back to his partner. “Andrews is protecting them. They’ve got him in their pocket.”
Vega turned, but didn’t say anything.
“He’s at their house,” Ellwood said. “They must’ve called him as soon as you left.”
“How do you know that?” Teddy asked.
“He checked a car out on his own. A car without a driver. But the fool wrote down the address when he left the office and logged out.”
Powell turned away. Teddy could tell she’d been hoping it might not be true. After all, she’d worked with Andrews and had known him for a long time. The truth had to be rippling through her memory of the man-who she thought he’d been and what he really was.
