and he lit another one.
She said, “I’m glad you aren’t dead. Isn’t that stupid?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “You hate me. You got a right.”
“I ought to slash you,” he told her. “I ought to slash your nostrils. I ought to make you look like a witch, like the witch you are.”
“You ought to kill me,” she said hopelessly.
“Maybe I will.”
Her head sagged down toward her chest. Her voice was almost inaudible. “I keep taking pills,” she murmured. “Every night. If I don’t take the pills, I don’t sleep. I think about you.”
“And how I’m coming for you?”
“No, and how you’re dead. And I wish it was me.”
“Take too many pills,” he suggested.
“I can’t. I’m a coward.” She raised her head and looked at him again. “That’s why I did it, Parker,” she said. “I’m a coward. It was you dead, or me dead.”
“And Mal pays the rent.”
“I’m a coward,” she said.
“Yeah. I know about that.”
“I never gave him satisfaction, Parker. I never responded, no matter what he did.”
“That why he moved out?”
“I think so.”
He grinned, mirthlessly. “You can turn it on and off,” he said bitterly. “A bed machine. None of it means a thing.”
“Only with you, Parker.”
He spat out a word like a slap. She recoiled from it, shaking her head. “It’s the truth, Parker,” she said. “That’s why I need the pills. That’s why I didn’t quit this place and find some other guy. Mal keeps me going and he doesn’t ask anything I can’t give.”
The coffee was replacing the vodka. He laughed, slapping the table, and said, “Good thing the bastard wasn’t here, huh? I come barging in, he’d have two, three guys in the living room, huh? All the time, just in case.”
She nodded. “He never stayed here alone.”
“He’s worried, the bastard.” He nodded. He beat out a drumroll on the table edge with the first two fingers of each hand. “He thinks maybe I’ll come back from the grave,” he said. He laughed, and finished the drumroll with a rhythmic double crash of both hands on the table. “He’s right, huh? Yeah. Back from the grave.”
“What are you going to do, Parker?” she asked, and the quaver of fear had finally reached her voice.
“I’m going to drink his blood,” he said. “I’m going to chew up his heart and spit it into the gutter for the dogs to raise a leg at. I’m going to peel the skin off him and rip out his veins and hang him with them.” He sat in the chair, his fists clenching and unclenching, his eyes glaring at her. He snatched up the coffee cup and hurled it. It caromed off the refrigerator and shattered on the edge of the sink, then sprayed onto the floor.
She stared at him, mouth moving, but no sound coming out.
He looked at her, and his eyes hardened again to onyx. One side of his mouth grinned, and he said, “To you? You mean to you? What am I going to do to you?”
She didn’t move.
“I don’t know yet,” he said. His voice was high and hard, like it tightrope walker out on the rope, knowing his balance was never better. High and hard and sharp. “It depend on you. Where’s Mal?”
“Oh, Jesus,” she whispered.
“It depends on you,” he said again.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Parker. I swear on the Cross. I haven’t seen him for three months. I don’t even know if he’s in New York.”
“How do you get your payoff?”
“Messenger,” she said. “The first of every month. He brings me an envelope, with cash in it.”
“How much cash?”
“A thousand.”
He smacked the table with stiff fingers. “Twelve grand a year. Tax free. The setup pays well, Lynn. The Judas ewe.” He laughed harshly, like a knife slashing through canvas. “The Judas ewe,” he repeated. “Wiggling her tail down the chute.”
“I was afraid! They would have killed me, Parker. They would have hurt me and then they would have killed me.”
“Yeah. Who is this messenger?”
“It’s a different one each time. I don’t know any of them.”
