“I’d rather not, Mrs. Prescott.”
“I felt yours.”
Another right turn past a Presbyterian church. “Frankly, whenever I’ve touched a woman on the head, sooner or later, I go to bed with her, and I don’t think that would be a good idea for us.”
I glanced over to see how she took this. Many women don’t like it if you say you don’t want to go to bed with them, even if they don’t want to go to bed with you. Sure enough, her lower lip trembled.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“You don’t want to feel my head, you think I’m repulsive.”
“I want very much to feel your head, Mrs. Prescott, but your husband may be my father and your son just kicked me in the face. I don’t think feeling your head would be appropriate.”
Tears leaked. “I am a desperately unhappy woman and all I want is for you to feel my head.”
Ask anyone I’m related to and they’ll tell you my tragic flaw is the inability to say
“Now, tell me all the details,” she said.
I touched her about a second longer than I had to, and that made me feel guilty. Gilia might not understand.
“Which details?”
“The details about Skip and your mother. He said she was a whore.”
“Lydia is no whore. Skip and the guys raped her.”
“Oh, my God. You know, when we were freshmen in college, I think he date-raped me. I was never certain.”
“Can I go home now? Can’t you see I’ve been beat up?”
Katrina pouted. She was a woman who controlled men with her lower lip. “Not until you promise to tell me everything.”
“I promise—but only if you let me go.”
“Tomorrow.”
I drove back toward the Prescott-Saunders houses while she gave directions to some private club she belonged to where I was supposed to show up at eleven the next day. I didn’t pay much attention because I had no intention of showing up.
I stopped the car at the spot where I’d almost flattened her. Katrina opened the door but didn’t get out.
“If you don’t show up tomorrow, I’ll come to your house.”
“You don’t know where I live.”
“Don’t be silly. Skip has a private detective on retainer. By dark we’ll know every single detail of your life.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t stand me up now.” She kissed air and left.
It was almost dark when Katrina went her way, which meant Skip would soon know every single detail of my life. I wondered what that meant. I guess we’re all curious as to what a thorough investigation of ourselves would turn up. Would Skip hear about my interest in clitoral manipulation and general distaste for men, or would he receive a Dunn and Bradstreet on the health of Callahan Magic Carts? And which of these was me?
I hoped he didn’t try the plant-the-dope, call-the-cops trick. I’d long since traded in my amyl nitrate for beta carotene, but there would always be a certain fragrance of unresolved college karma wafting on the breeze, waiting for a chance to haunt.
As I drove home through the deepening dusk, the only thing I knew for certain was this had been the longest day in history. Between Gilia, Atalanta Williams, and Ryan’s fists, my body and brain were pulp on a stick. I swore never to look up my ancestors again. Shannon could deal with them from now on. She was young.
I parked the Dodge in front of the garage and, remembering threats, locked the doors. Shannon’s Mustang was nowhere in sight, which meant she was probably out being loose with the psych major. One more nail in my already hammered back. On the edge of the lawn, I bent forward with my hands on my knees, trying to ease the kidney pain, when a figure in black charged.
Moonlight glinted off the blade of a knife—just like in a book—and I yelled.
He stopped. Consider it a miracle.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Clark’s face was dead pale and wrinkled.
“Never hold a knife up high like that. Didn’t your father teach you anything.” I raised my left forearm to his right wrist. “Look how easily you can be stopped.” The boy seemed to be in a trance.
“Give me the knife.” Gently, I pried it from his frozen fingers. It was a serrated kitchen deal, the kind used to cut tomatoes. “Hold the knife at elbow level with the blade up. See, the victim can’t block without getting cut.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Not until you learn how to handle a knife. Here, you try.” I stuck the knife back into Clark’s hand, where it dangled uselessly.
“You have dishonored my father.”
“Actually, your father dishonored my mother.”
“My father has never committed an un-Christian act in his life. That’s what I hate about him.”
The kid had an incomprehensible viewpoint toward parents. I could relate to that.
“Billy can’t help who he is,” I said.
Clark passed the back of his hand over his face, then his eyes seemed to focus and he saw my condition. “Did I cut you?”
“The blood’s from another father’s son. Listen, you want to come inside? We could talk about this love-’em, hate-’em problem people get with moms and dads.”
I started limping toward the door, but Clark stayed put. He said, “She must have been a total sleaze.”
I stopped. “Lydia is not a sleaze. Not total, anyway.”
“Only a sleazy woman would seduce five boys at once.”
“She was fourteen and they raped her.”
At the word
“You were hiding behind the door, did you hear him deny it?”
“I’ll kill myself.” He held the knife across his wrist.
“You’ve been looking for an excuse all day.”
His eyes jerked toward me. “I’m not kidding. I am going to kill myself.”
“At least do it right. Don’t you read books?”
“I know more about suicide than anyone in my class.”
“Cut yourself that way and you’ll be two days bleeding to death.” I grabbed his wrist and twisted the knife ninety degrees. “Slice up the vein from the bottom to top. Lay it open and you’ll squirt like a stuck pig.”
I felt Clark’s wrist tighten, then he touched blade to blue vein. Nothing happened. I didn’t stop him and he didn’t go on.
His breath smelled of horehound drops. “You’re not taking me seriously, Mr. Callahan.”
“No, I’m not.” I released his wrist. “I’m sorry, Clark. I know I should but I’m too beat to humor a sad teenager. Come by in the morning and I’ll sincerely tell you why life is better than death. It is, you know. Took years, but I finally figured the thing out. Right now, I need sleep.”
“For my father’s honor, one of us has to die.”
“Can’t we forget the whole thing?”
He pointed the knife at me. “One of us has to die.”
My body was fast running out of gas. Even riding the bike a hundred miles had never worn me out this
