Cini sighed. 'I'm having a hard time right now, Daddy, that's all.'
'Then for God's sake, Cini, when you're having a hard time, why don't you call us and tell us about it?' Pause. 'What're you eating?'
'A Good n' Plenty.'
He inflected it just as her mother had done. 'A Good n' Plenty?'
'A pink one.'
'Honey, Good n' Plentys aren't exactly what Dr Steiner had in mind when he put you on that maintenance diet after your accident.'
'I'm only eating one.'
'Scout's Honor?' God, that was so Daddy, asking Scout's Honor, the way he used to when she was eight.
'Two, then.'
'Two?'
'I've had three, Daddy. But I'm crumpling up the box and throwing the rest away. Can you hear me crumpling the box?' She put the Good n' Plenty box next to the receiver and started twisting and mashing it. 'Can you hear that?'
'I just don't want to see you start overeating again. You were so happy there for such a long time. And you looked so good.'
'I won't start again,' Cini said, feeling sorry for him. That was the weird thing, no matter how hard she tried she couldn't feel sorry for her mother. But Daddy she could feel sorry for all the time. 'I really won't, Daddy.'
'I'm taking you at your word, honey.'
'You should.'
'I want to put your mother on now and I want you to apologize to her.'
'I didn't do anything to apologize for, Daddy.'
But she could picture him. He'd be looking furtively at his wife and smiling, pretending that everything was just fine on the phone, pretending that Cini just couldn't wait to apologize and be all smiles again.
Cini smiled at this sad but endearing image of her father. 'All right, Dad. Put her on.'
She could hear her mother whispering protesting in the background. She didn't want to talk to Cini anymore than Cini wanted to talk to her. Finally, she took the phone. 'You know how it upsets your father when we argue.'
This was about as close as her mother would ever come to apologizing.
'I'm sorry, Mom. I'm just feeling down, I guess.'
'Any reason in particular? Is it Michael?'
'I think Michael and I are all through.'
'He didn't look like a very serious young man to me, Cini.'
'I know, Mom. You told me that many times.'
'And whatever's making you depressed, Good n' Plentys aren't going to help.'
'I know that, Mom.' She decided to tell a whopping big lie, one that would make them all feel better and get her mother off the phone very quickly. 'This talk has helped a lot.'
'It has?'
'Uh-huh.'
'So you're really going to throw those Good n' Plentys away?'
'Uh-huh.'
'And get back on that diet Dr Steiner put you on?'
'Uh-huh.'
'That makes me feel much better, Cini.'
'Me, too, Mom.'
'Your father and I love you very much.'
'I know you do.'
'Now you sleep tight.'
'And don't let the bedbugs bite. That's what you always used to say.'
'G'night, Cini.'
'G'night, Mom.'
Soon as she'd hung up the phone, Cini tore into the Good n' Plentys. Then she started on a pint of the Haagen Daz strawberry ice cream. She had a long way to go before she finished eating everything she'd bought earlier tonight.
CHAPTER 37
The drill is the most frightening of all his surgical instruments in appearance. Difficult to imagine how the human body, so delicate and vulnerable, could possibly withstand an assault with a 3/8?? Skil model running 110 volts with a bit that looks capable of ripping through steel.
The surgeon wraps his hand around the drill handle.
The drill is his favorite of all instruments.
And so he begins.
CHAPTER 38
Adam's new friend had gone to sleep in the bedroom. Adam came walking out, buttoning his shirt, ready to leave.
He looked out the window to the phone booth on the street below. He'd call Rick Corday from there. Rick had been pretty upset about finding that note from Adam's one-night stand in Miami. Rick was such a child. He could never seem to grasp that loving somebody was very different from merely sleeping with someone.
As he found his trench coat and let himself out the door, Adam also started wondering how things had gone tonight with Eric Brooks. Not exactly a good time for Rick to be upset, his mind wandering, or his need for violence to surge again.
Much as Adam felt superior to Ricksmarter, better organized, far more focused, certainly more mature and, let's face it, much better-lookinghis mate had one area of clear superiority: he loved violence far more than Adam ever would.
Adam and Rick had met in a gay bar in Chicago and then started hanging out. This was four years ago. One night several weeks into their relationship, Rick saw a young woman walking alone on a dark street and he said, 'You ever thought of killing anybody?'
'Sure. Who hasn't?'
'What if I told you that I've already killed somebody. In fact, several somebodies.'
Adam, who was driving, smiled. 'What if I told you that I'd killed a few people, too?'
'Really?'
'Really.'
'God, that's fantastic.'
Adam, ever the cynic, said, 'What if one of us is lying?'
'Huh?'
'What if I'm telling you the truth but you're lying?'
'That I didn't really kill people before?'
'Right. Then I'd be confessing to murderand you'd just be lying.'
'Sort of like Strangers on a Train.' Rick smiled. 'But I really have killed somebody.'
'So have I,' Adam said. 'But how're we going to prove it?'
