“I came here,” Morris said. “The phone number got me the address. I figured Parker ought to know what was going on, and maybe I’d run into the grandson around here someplace.”
“Well, he hasn’t showed up yet,” Jessup said. “Maybe because Parker isn’t here, or because he saw Mrs. Willis had friends with her.”
“To protect her,” Manny said. The words had a curious leaden quality to them, as though he didn’t understand English but was reading a prepared speech written down phonetically.
Jessup said, “What’s the grandson’s name?”
“Berridge, like his grandfather.” Morris grinned at him and said, “Your name’s Jessup.”
“That’s right.”
Morris turned his head and looked at Manny. “And your name’s Manny. That’s your first name, isn’t it?”
What happened next was very fast and very confusing. Morris’ hands moved and there was a quick glimpse of a gun coming out from under the sheepskin jacket, but at the same time Jessup flung his plate of food into Morris’ face, and Manny grabbed up the steak knife they’d been cutting the Italian bread with and lunged forward to jab it into Morris’ left side just above his belt.
Then everyone was standing, and Morris’ and Claire’s chairs had tipped over backward. The gun was no longer in Morris’ hand, which now was clutched around the wooden handle of the steak knife; his other hand was wiping frantically at the food smeared on his face, trying to get it out of his eyes.
Claire was backing away, her mouth open wide, grimacing with the pressure of trying not to scream. Jessup had gone down on one knee for the gun, but Manny had grabbed up his fork and was poking it at the food on Morris’ face and then into his own mouth, at Morris’ face and into his mouth, fast hard movements, and at the same time laughing and shouting, “Look! I’m eating! Look at this! I’m eating!” Morris was trying to keep away from the fork, and not fall over the chair lying down behind him, and get the food—it must be stinging him—out of his eyes, and do something about the knife in his side, and stay alive, and none of it was going to happen.
Jessup came up with the gun, and Morris went crashing backward over the chair, and Manny yelled with laughter and lunged after him, and Claire turned and ran full-tilt for the bedroom.
“Come out of there, honey,” Jessup called, and tapped on the bedroom door.
The last five minutes had been full of pointless frantic activity. She’d run in here and locked the door and pulled the dresser over in front of it to block it. And then there was the door to the bathroom—they could get into the bathroom from the kitchen, and then through this other door into here—and she jammed a chair-back under the door handle of that. And there was the glass door to the porch and the outside. And flanking it were windows.
Parker had been right. There was no way to lock yourself safely into this house. Too many doors, too many windows.
And now, too late, she realized she should have left the house at once, when she’d run in here. She should have kept on going, through the bedroom and out the door to the porch and across the yard and away from here.
There’d been a scream, just one, very hoarse, less than a minute after she’d come in here, while she was still barricading the first door, but there hadn’t been another sound since then. Where were they now, what were they doing?
It was too late to run now. She’d been mindless and frantic when she’d run into this room, and because of that she’d thrown away her chance, while they were both concerned with Morris.
But why hadn’t they come after her? She turned and stared hard at the windows, half-expecting to see Manny’s moon face grinning at her there, but the porch was empty.
Was there still time? Or were they playing cat and mouse with her, making believe they weren’t thinking about her, waiting for her to make the jump and try to get away? That would be like them, that would be their style. ? Let her think she still had a chance, and then do something really awful to her.
Once before, since the start of her involvement with Parker, people from his world had intruded into hers, bringing discomfort and danger with them, but that time the people involved had been rational and businesslike. They’d wanted Parker to do something, he hadn’t wanted to do it, they’d tried to use her for leverage against him. She had been afraid, but not the way she was afraid now, because that time she’d been dealing with sane human beings who wouldn’t do anything pointless. But Jessup and Manny weren’t sane, and they were barely human beings. It was as she’d thought before, like having a mountain lion loose in the house; no way to talk to him, no way to guess what he’ll do next, no way to reason with or about him at all.
She stood blinking and immobile in the middle of the bedroom, the two doors barricaded, the third door and the windows still unblocked, and for a minute she was incapable of any kind of movement at all. And then Jessup called, and tapped on the hall door, and she .took a fast aimless step to nowhere.
The porch door. Out, or block it? How barricade a glass door? How barricade the windows flanking it?
Jessup, sounding bored and irritable, called a second time, “Don’t make it tough on yourself, honey. Open the door and come out.”
What if she were to hide? What if she hid, and led them to believe she already bad escaped from the house?
But where? Where, in this small and simple bedroom? The closet, no good. Behind the drapes, no good. Under the bed, no good.
Under the bed.
The doorknob rattled. Jessup called, “I hate physical labor, bitch! You better open this door!”
Was it still there? She dropped to her knees and looked wildly under the bed, and the rifle was lying there where she’d left it, slender, long. She started to reach for it, and then suddenly became aware of the light in the room and the darkness outside, and how this room was now like a stage set. And was there an audience, outside the windows, in the darkness on the porch?
To have Jessup hammer and threaten at the hall door, and Manny waiting and grinning outside on the porch, hoping she would try to make a run for it—that was their style.
