“Howdy,” I said. All sorts of things came to me to say. Like: Don’t hurt her. Let her go. Leave us be. But I knew none of them were worth saying. I also sensed that any sign of weakness or pleading would merely put fuel on the fire. I started to get up. Cobra Man put a foot in my back and pushed me back to my kneeling position.
“I like you there,” he said. “You hit a little too hard not to be there.”
“This woman,” Fat Boy said. “This wife. Man, you got some good taste in women.” He moved the silencer along her vagina, into her pubic hair, and back again. “She’s got some kind of cunt on her. Me and Snake here, we’d like to use it a little. We was wondering if you’d give us permission.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What say, Mr. Movie Man?” Cobra Man, or rather Snake, said. “What’s the score? You gonna invite us for a little your wife’s pussy, huh?”
Fat Boy laughed. “That’s some question to lay on a guy, ain’t it? Hey, listen here. It’d be good, I know. Snake there, he’d like it if it wasn’t good. He’s fucked everything but a hot watermelon in the field, and he’d’ve done that had there been one warm enough for him.”
“Warm don’t matter,” Snake said. “I’d fuck ’em cold. I just ain’t had the time is all.”
“Hell,” Fat Boy said. “Ole Snake, he’s fucked chickens to death even. Haven’t you, Snake?”
“I’ve busted a few eggs in my time,” Snake said.
“Hell,” Fat Boy said. “He don’t have to fuck ’em to death. He can stink ’em to death. Ole Snake comes into a room, you don’t have to be facing him to know he’s there. But he can still sneak up on you, can’t he?”
I caught Beverly’s eyes and my soul went small and black. Her eyes told me she wanted me to do something. That’s what John Wayne would haveynelig done. That’s what any movie hero would have done. But I was Hank Small and I was a real man, not a hero. One wrong move and we were both dead. Then the children.
“I bet you’re puzzled all to shit,” Fat Boy said. “One day you’re living all right. Putting your meat in this.” He laid the automatic on Beverly’s belly and used his hand to rub her mound, eased his finger down and pushed inside her so hard she jerked.
“You sonofabitch,” I said. “Keep your goddamn hands off her.”
I had to let out with the stupid stuff after all, but I couldn’t help myself. I saw Fat Boy’s eyes light up like a pinball machine. He grinned at me.
Snake bent forward and jabbed me a short chopping blow with the knife hilt, right where the neck and the back bone connect. I felt a temporary surge of paralysis, then the feeling broke loose and my head fell forward to the floor. When I tried to lift my head, it was as if I were lifting a bowling ball. I raised up painfully, and looked.
Fat boy moved his hand, picked up the automatic and laid it in his lap. He held the baby oil bottle sideways and squirted a long stream of oil on Beverly’s navel.
“Yessss.” Fat boy said. “Right in there. Two points. I did one better than that earlier. Hit her direct on the left nipple from here ’fore you came up.”
He sat the bottle on the floor, twisted and reached across with his left hand and began rubbing the oil in slow circles on Beverly’s stomach. He looked at me while he did it. Tears streamed faster from Beverly’s eyes. She tried to squirm away from him. My shirt was wringing wet with sweat and my bowels felt loose. I felt as if my soul was almost too small to be measured.
Fat Boy smiled. He liked what he was doing. He turned sideways in his chair so he could do it better. He kept his right hand dry and on the automatic in his lap.
“You had it made,” he said, not looking at me, still rubbing Beverly with his left hand. “The good poke. Job that gave you a lot of time. Good money.”
He glanced around the room, out the window.
“Nice house,” he said. “Everything a man could want.”
“Children,” said Snake.
“Yeah, children,” Fat Boy said, looking at me. “Snake likes children. Don’t you Snake?”
“I love the little fucks,” Snake said. “Love ’em to death. Hey, Fat Boy. I know you’re having fun there, but I got a movie I wanta see. Comes on in an hour or so. I got to get you to go to the store too.”
“What is it you wanta see?” Fat Boy said. “Fucking Mothra?” He turned back to Beverly, running his oily fingers up her stomach until he reached her left breast. He took her breast in his hand and squeezed it gently. I felt as if my very heart were being pulled slowly out of me.
“Fat Boy,” Snake said, “he don’t appreciate science fiction. He don’t know that stuff comes to pass.”
“Mothra?” Fat Boy said. “Some sait='giant Jap bug? Get outta here. You see that fucking Mothra on the street, you give me a call, then I’ll like science fiction.”
“It could happen. All that radiator stuff and all.”
“Radiation, you dumb shit,” Fat Boy said.
“Whatever,” Snake said. “I want to see it. I know how you like to talk, but I want to see it. We know what we got to do here, so let’s get on and do it. ’Sides, it’s a double feature. Reptilicus comes on after. Know how hard that is to see that on the television?”
“Yeah, all right,” Fat Boy said. His hand rolled over Beverly’s breast and he pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and Beverly turned her head away and closed her eyes. Tears squeezed out from beneath her eyelids and tumbled over her cheeks and onto the mattress.
I could see the glaze of madness in Fat Boy’s eyes, and the lightning, as if on cue, throbbed along the blackness outside the window and gave the saliva on his lips an iridescent sheen.
He took his hand away from Beverly and bent and picked up the edge of the bed sheet and used it to wipe his hands. Behind me, Snake put his foot into the bend of my right knee just in case I might be thinking of getting up and jumping for the gun in Fat Boy’s lap.
Fat Boy finished wiping the oil off his left hand and turned in the chair to face me. He took a little cigar out of the pocket of his leisure suit and put it in his mouth and took out a lighter from the same pocket and lit the cigar. He put the lighter back and picked up the gun with his right hand and transferred it to his left and held it against his left knee. He reached out with his right hand and put it between Beverly’s legs and let it rest there. He puffed up a cloud of smoke and blew it out and around the cigar.
“I can shoot lefty,” he said. “Don’t think I can’t… Goddamn, Snake. You’re starting to look rough.”
“I’m cut up a little,” said Snake. “I don’t mind. Pain turns me on.”
“That’s a good thing,” Fat Boy said. “I hope ugly is all right too. And I ’specially hope that smell does something for you.”
“It’s not a bother to me,” Snake said.
“Bothers him enough he don’t do any of his own shopping,” Fat Boy said to me, as if he were telling a drinking buddy a simple fact. “And watch a movie with him, man, I got to set by an open door or have a fan going, or both.”
“It’s other people notices it,” Snake said. “I don’t mind.”
“Got a disease of some kind,” Fat boy said. “What he says, anyway. Glands are fucked up.”
“What’s him knowing my business got to do with anything?” Snake said.
“I like to talk,” Fat Boy said. “What’s him knowing something he won’t know long matter anyhow?” Fat Boy turned his attention back to me. “He puts on cologne to cover it up. He thinks. But it’s really bad then. Like shit with Old Spice on it, ain’t it, Snake?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Fat Boy,” Snake said.
“He don’t want me to fuck with him,” Fat Boy said, “and he can’t go nowhere with that smell or that damn snake on his head and he’s got to depend on me to get his groceries so he don’t get seen, and he tells me not to fuck with him. Not for me he’d be eating out of a garbage can or something, and he don’t want me to fuck with him. What is it you want, Snake? Huh?”
Snake took his foot off the back of my knee. I looked over my shoulder and saw him bring up his arm and look at his watch.
“I want we should go. That’s what I want. I don’t like to miss none of it. I like everything from the start.”
As I turned my head away from Snake, back toward Fat Boy, my sight went low and I saw a stain like mud on the top of Snake’s shoe. I knew it wasn’t mud. It was shit. Bill’s shit. It had dripped out of his pants legs and onto Snake’s shoes while Snake had held him, causing him to strangle more rapidly on the belt.
