Hot Blood: Tales of Erotic Horror

own car and they drove off in different directions.

David could not face his room. He hovered through the empty streets around his house for half an hour before his hands took over the wheel for themselves. He found himself in the parking lot of the Village Pizza Parlor. He drifted up next to Don's car and slipped inside, leaving the keys in the ignition.

Don was hunched to the wall, dialing the pay phone. David sidled over to a table in the corner and climbed onto the bench across from Craig Cobb, former star end for the Westside Bucks and Student Council football lobbyist.

'Hey, listen, Don told me about Bob and, hey, listen, I'm sorry.'

David nodded and shuffled his feet in the sawdust.

Craig's lip moved over the edge of the frosted root beer. He probably wanted to pump David for details, but must have dimly perceived the nature of the moment and chose instead to turn his thick neck and scrutinize the player piano in the corner, now mercifully silent.

Don returned to the table.

'My mother's going over to stay with Mrs. Witherson tonight,' he said, sliding in next to Craig. Then, meeting David's eyes for the first time in hours, 'Craig here tells me we ought to talk to Cathy Sparks.'

They looked at each other, saying, All right, we're in something now, and we're in it together, and we both know it, and Craig glanced from one to the other and sensed that they were in something together, and that it was about their best friend who was dead and no one knew why, and he said, 'R'lly. He went out with her, y'know.'

That was wrong. Bob hadn't been going with anybody last semester. If he had, they would have known. Still, the way Don's eyes were fixing him, David knew there was more to hear.

Craig repeated the story. 'No, see, it was just that weekend. Saturday.' Right, that was the last time they had seen Bob. He had been working on that damned Senior History paper. 'I was washing my car, right? And Robert pulls in next to me, the next stall, and starts rollin' up the windows and so I ask him, you know, 'Who're you takin' to the Senior Party?' An' he says he doesn't know yet, and so I say, 'Goin' to any good orgies tonight?' and he says, 'What d'you know about the new girl?' I guess, yeah, I think he said he gave her a ride home or something. I got the idea he was goin' over to see her that night. Like she asked him to come over or something. You know.'

The new girl. The one nobody had had time to get close to, coming in as she had the last month or six weeks of school. A junior. Nobody knew her. Something about her. Her skin was oiled, almost buttery, and her expression never changed. And her body. Dumpy — no, not exactly; it was just that she acted like she didn't care about how she looked most of the time; she wore things that covered her up, that had no shape. So you didn't try for her. Still, there was something about her. She was the kind of girl nobody ever tried for, but if somebody asked somebody if he'd ever gotten anything off her, you would stop what you were doing and listen real close for the answer.

'So maybe you'll want to talk to her. She's the last one to see him. I guess.' The football player, unmoving in his felt jacket, glanced nervously between them.

David stared at Don, and Don continued to stare back. Finally they rose together, scraping the bench noisily against the floor.

'Only thing is, she'll be pretty hard to find, prob'ly.'

'Why's that?' asked David.

'I heard she moved away soon as the school year was over.'

Later, driving home, taking the long way, thinking, David remembered the photographs. The way the body was mangled. Cut off almost at the waist. He tried, but this time he could not get it out of his mind.

So they did a little detective work the next day.

Bob's mother had not seen him after that Saturday morning, when he left for the library to work on his research paper. No one else had seen him after that, either. Except Craig. And maybe, just maybe, the girl.

So.

So the family name was in the phone book, but when they got there the apartment was up for rent. The manager said they had moved out the 12th, right after finals.

So they stopped by the school.

The Registrar's office was open for summer school and Mrs. Greenspun greeted them, two of her three favorite pupils, with a warmth undercut by a solicitous sadness of which she seemed afraid to speak. It was like walking into a room a second after someone has finished telling a particularly unpleasant story about you behind your back.

Yes, she had received a call, she said, a call asking that Cathy's grades be sent along to an out-of-town address.

'The young lady lives with her older sister, I take it,' confided Mrs. Greenspun.

David explained that he had loaned her a book which she had forgotten to return.

'Of course,' said Mrs. Greenspun maternally. And gave them the address.

It was in Sunland, a good hour-and-a-half away.

David volunteered his old Ford. They had to stop once for directions and twice for water and an additive that did not keep its promise to the rusty radiator. In the heat, between low, tanned hills that resembled elephants asleep or dead on their sides under the sun, Don put down the term paper. They had picked it up from Mr. Broadbent, Bob's history teacher, and had put off turning it over to his mother. They had said they were going to read it but had not, sharing a vague unease about parting with the folder.

It was only the preliminary draft, with a lot of the details yet to be put in, but it was an unbelievable story.

'He was really into something strange,' muttered Don, pulling moist hair away from the side of his face.

'I guess that means we can talk about it now.'

'I guess,' said Don. But his tone was flat and he kept watching the heat mirages rising up from the asphalt ahead.

'I've read something about it,' pressed David. 'It's pretty grim, isn't it.' A statement.

'It's got to be the most horrible story I've ever read. Or the most tragic. Depending on how you look at it,' said Don. 'Both,' he decided.

David felt subjects mixing. He was light in the head. He sucked on a bottle of Mountain Dew and tried to shift the conversation. 'What did that guy at the coroner's office mean, do you think?'

'You mean —»

'I mean about the 'other two.'' Suddenly David realized he had not changed the subject at all.

'Well, you remember Ronnie Ruiz and — what was the other one's name?'

David remembered, all right. Two others had disappeared, one a couple of weeks before Bob, the first a few weeks before that. A month or six weeks before the end of school. He had known what the attendant meant but had been carrying around a peculiar need to hear it confirmed. 'Patlian, I think. The younger one, Jimmy Patlian's brother. The junior. But I thought he ran off to join the Reserves.'

'I don't know. It must have been him. Give me a swig of that shit, will you? Hey, how can you drink this?'

'I know, I know, my teeth'll fall out,' said David, relieved to talk about something else. 'But we always had it around the house when I was a kid. I guess you can be raised to like a thing, just like your parents' parents probably gave them the taste. Hard to put down.'

'Sure, man, just keep telling yourself that until your stomach starts eating itself. Anyway, I know they found Ronnie Ruiz in some kind of traffic thing. Torn up pretty bad.'

'The guy didn't even have a car, did he?'

'I don't — no, now that you bring it up. But they found him by some road somewhere. Maybe he got hit. The way I remember it, no one could identify him for sure for quite a while. Shit, man.' He handed back the sweltering bottle. 'This is shit.'

'It's shit, all right,' said David. 'A whole lot of it.'