Absolute Zero

his dead fingers.

Ha-ha.

Hank, alone now, worked a venomous edge, lashed on by the silent fulminations of Sean Hannity. Then he steadied his eyes, looked beyond the TV, and fixed on the blackness out the windows.

He wondered how many more times he would see the sun rise over the Wisconsin river bluffs. He felt no rancor for Broker. He pitied the man his innocent lust because he could not attribute innocence or spontaneity to Jolene.

What’s she up to?

Hank focused the fury he felt on his body mass. The body was mostly water, wasn’t it? And water conducted electricity. His thoughts became electric swimmers, thrashing toward the first and second fingers of his right hand.

Just before the indifferent sun heaved up, the dead flesh of his index finger moved a fraction of an inch.

Thank you, Earl.

Thank you, Allen.

Thinking about killing you is the only thing keeping me alive.

Chapter Thirty-three

Jolene slept through the alarm and missed turning Hank three times. Now, as a thin spoke of sunlight eased between the drapes, she stretched out on the king-size bed, lazing in and out of the first good night’s sleep she’d had since. .

She sat up and hugged herself, and she could feel the memory of Phil Broker’s body still imprinted in her arms. Another comic-book hero, like Hank. Briefly she fantasized that he would put Earl Garf back in his place, back in her past. And then. .

“THE DOW JONES CLOSED DOWN FOUR HUNDRED POINTS IN REACTION TO A SHARP RISE IN OIL PRICES. .”

The burst of frenzied audio catapulted her upright in bed. Jangled, she stared at the door to Hank’s studio, muttering “Earl” under her breath. Had to be. Playing his TV games with Hank. Not even taking time to pull on her robe, she scrambled off the bed and stalked into the next room.

“. . AGREE THAT ONLY EXTERNAL FORCES CAN THROW OFF MARKET FORECASTS. .”

“Goddammit, Earl,” Jolene yelled.

Huh?

The raucous blare and the driving musical background vanished the moment she entered the room. And there was no Earl in sight. Just Hank, propped on his side in bed, staring right at her with Ambush curled in the curve of his lap and the TV remote where Earl had left it, jammed in his fingers as a joke.

Jolene. Naked.

Even with the short hair, she was a serious meditation on original sin.

Hi, honey.

And in his head he was playing “Thus Spake Zarathustra” from 2001, like when the ape figured out he could use the tapir bone as a weapon, because Hank was using his index finger to traverse the buttons of the TV remote a big half-inch and touch the mute control. The set sizzled on at max volume. A hyper-verbal group of Fox talking heads were in full cry, puzzling over lurching stock prices, unrest in the Middle East, and terrorist attacks on a U.S. barracks in the Gulf.

Smug Yuppie pukes having their adventures in capitalism; they really thought life was a fucking Mercedes ad. Too bad. Globalization wasn’t running like a smooth computer program guaranteed to enhance their portfolios. Hank coldly wished them several million tough, bitter, third-world peasants armed with AK- 47’s.

Back to Jolene. He switched off the set.

Jolene said, “Wait a minute.” She peered at the motionless figure on the bed. She took a few cautious steps forward.

Hank’s eyes did not depart on their usual loopy circuit; instead, they remained fixed, burning, on her. They were riveted in a way that made her aware of her nakedness, so intense was the stare that she began to feel the sweat drip cold in her armpits and dribble down her rib cage. It smelled like the fear of men she’d learned in puberty.

Pissed, hungry eyes, looking right at her.

Tap.

The TV came alive again in a shout of static.

Jolene screamed and ran from the room.

* * *

Allen had expected more than this for fifty bucks.

It was his first private tango lesson and he assumed there would be a little flavor of the slums of Buenos Aires-dark hair, cleavage, at least black tights and posters on the wall. Something sexy, like the dance itself. He found himself standing in a spotless Scandinavian kitchen. The windowsills were lined with cactuses, and beyond the prickly pear, Allen had a view of an exhausted gray sky, shredding birch trees, and a smudge of White Bear Lake lying flat as a dirty mirror.

The instructor, Trudi, was a well-preserved, petite matron in her sixties whose perfectly coiffed white head barely cleared his shoulder. She wore a white sweater and gray slacks and looked more like a senior Lutheran angel than an aficionado of a steamy dance that originated in Argentine whorehouses. Her only concession to the dance was pointed black dance shoes. Allen was in his stocking feet. He got her number from a Timberry adult-education brochure. In this, his first stab at self-improvement, he didn’t want other people watching, as in a studio class. He’d wanted anonymity.

He watched Trudi move her kitchen table against the wall to make her dinette into a dance floor.

Her husband sat in the den just down the hall with the door ajar. He was watching the History Channel and so, instead of pulsating Latin music, Allen heard the rumble of massed Soviet artillery spelling doom for von Paulus’s encircled Sixth Army in Stalingrad.

Okay. Allen resigned himself to it. He had to start somewhere.

“The Argentine tango begins in the center with a stable upper-body frame,” Trudi said. She touched his sternum. “This is your center.”

So far so good. Still no music.

“We’ll start with side-to-side steps.” They faced each other, holding hands. “Move your center over your left foot, move only about six inches.”

Allen shifted to the left.

Trudi frowned. “You’re too tight. You’re pumping your shoulders, your upper body must remain relaxed and upright. It’s all in the legs.” They tried again. He moved left and then right, and this time Trudi floated with him. “Better. In tango, the man must lead and the woman must follow, and the man must lead from the center.”

That was more like it. But what he had in mind were the lunges and dips he’d seen Al Pacino execute in Scent of a Woman. And where’s the music?

Allen chose the tango because it was a male-controlled, choreographed seduction and therefore conformed to an elaborate fantasy that featured Jolene Sommer.

“Again,” Trudi said.

Allen stepped to the side and lost his balance.

“Patience,” Trudi said.

Allen winced gamely. He was a long way from Al Pacino. Still. He couldn’t resist asking, “How long before we get to, you know?” He leaned forward and circled his arms around an imaginary woman.

Trudi smiled. “That might take a while. Let’s try some silver boxes.”