the Devil's work,' 'Becka said.
Joe, who was a good poker player, bridled. 'then it was the
Devil's work that bought you your hair dryer and that garnet ring you
like so well,' he said. 'better take 'em back for refunds and give the
money to the Salvation Army. Wait, I think I got the receipts in my
den.'
She allowed as how Joe could turn the 3-D picture of Jesus
around to face the wall on the one Thursday night a month that he
had his dirty-talking, beer-swilling friends in to play poker ... but
that was all.
And now she knew the real reason he wanted to get rid of that
picture. He must have had an idea all along that that picture was a
magic picture. Oh ... she supposed sacred was a better word, magic
was for pagans headhunters and Catholics and people like that
but the came almost to one and the same, didn't they? All along Joe
must have sensed that picture was special, that it would be the means
by which his sin would be found out.
Oh, she supposed she must have had some idea of what all his
recent preoccupation had meant, must have known there was a reason
why he was never after her at night anymore. But the truth was, that
had been a relief sex was just as her mother had told her it would
be, nasty and brutish, sometimes painful and always humiliating.
Had she also smelled perfume on his collar from time to time? If so,
she had ignored that, too, and she might have gone on ignoring it
indefinitely if the picture of Jesus on the Sony hadn't begun to speak
on July 7th. She realized now that she had ignored a third factor, as
well; at about the same time the pawings had stopped the perfume
smells had begun, old Charlie Estabrooke had retired and a woman
named Nancy Voss had come up from the Falmouth post office to
take his place. She guessed that the Voss woman (whom, 'Becka had
now come to think of simply as The Hussy) was perhaps five years
older than her and Joe, which would make her around fifty, but she
was a trim, well-kept and handsome fifty. 'Becka herself had put on a
little weight during her marriage, going from one hundred and
twenty-six to a hundred and ninety-three, most of that since Byron,
their only chick and child, had flown from the nest.
She could have gone on ignoring it, and perhaps what would
even have been for the best. If The Hussey really enjoyed the
animalism of sexual congress, with its gruntings and thrustings and
that final squirt of sticky stuff that smelled faintly like codfish and
looked like cheap dish detergent, then it only proved that The Hussy
was little more than an animal herself and of course it freed 'Becka
of a tiresome, if ever more occasional, obligation. But when the
picture of Jesus spoke up, telling her exactly what was going on, it
became impossible to ignore. She knew that something would have to
be done.
The picture first spoke at just past three in the afternoon on
Thursday. This was eight days after shooting herself in the head and
about four days after her resolution to forget it was a hole and not
just a mark had begun to take effect. 'Becka was coming back into
