Maybe he swaggered at the gym. Inside Carol’s house he moved uncertainly and had to be reassured. So she guided him from the solarium into the house proper.
When they reemerged, he’d been outfitted with a robe identical to Carol’s, which he wore with the shuffling self-consciousness of a seven-year-old playing a wise man in a church Christmas pageant.
Carol poured a glass of wine, which he held awkwardly: clearly, he’d prefer a beer or a can of Mountain Dew.
He sipped the wine as Carol assembled her gear. Drawing pad, a short stepladder. A tackle box. She placed the stepladder among the philodendrons and dwarf pines. Teacherlike, she took the wineglass from his hand and led him to the ladder.
Carol had him sit and arranged him, positioning a knee here, a shoulder there. The boy quivered at her every touch. A loop of Carol’s hair fell over his throat; the silk robe grazed his skin. She eased the robe from his shoulders and let it fall around his belly so the tight curls of blond pubic hair peeked in the hard wedge of his lap.
When Carol returned to her couch and picked up her charcoal, her own robe had worked open, revealing a glimpse of inner thigh, a shadow of stomach muscles. Carol obviously stayed in shape. But not a gym type.
Yoga maybe.
Then, for half an hour, Carol sketched, occasionally asking if the boy needed a break to stretch. Angel was the one who needed the break, for crying out loud-her hamstrings were starting to cramp from squatting in the shed.
By the time Carol finished up her sketch, her robe concealed little, and slowly the boy’s robe was sliding deeper down around his hips. His chest now glistened with sweat. More and more, he appeared to be holding his breath.
Waiting for it.
Carol moved forward with a towel and gently wiped the sweat from his chest and shoulders and upper arms. When she leaned over him, Angel imagined her tidy breasts grazing, touching.
In a minimal gesture of intimacy, the boy reached out awkwardly, to caress her hair, but she stiffly steered the hand away. Insisting on having all the control here. In a deliberate movement, she straightened the sweat towel and folded it and made a pad for her knees. Then she kneeled before him, her back to Angel, who saw the robe start to slip down her shoulders, down her back. Her skin was pale, startlingly so; she must avoid the sun. SPF 40.
Carol was now naked from the waist up. As her head dipped forward, Angel wasn’t immune to the lust of the eye. She opened the door wider and squinted, straining to see the boy’s expression.
Too far for fine detail. She should have binoculars. Opera glasses maybe. His eyes must be arias as he grabbed Carol’s head in both hands for balance.
Abruptly, Carol raised up and removed his hands.
“Don’t touch,” she said distinctly. The words clinked in the night like two dropped coins.
Obediently, the boy’s hands groped at his side, treading air, as Carol resumed the ritual.
And it went on forever, and Angel’s thighs were burning, and she had to stretch out her left leg and flex her foot, which was full of sawdust and stinging needles. C’mon, c’mon, she exhorted her foot.
And you, she exhorted the boy, you c’mon.
When he finally did, it was shocking. Foreshadowing, because as Carol lurched her whole body forward to accept it, she flung out her arms straight to either side. Angel couldn’t resist opening the door wider to get a better look. She had seen this move before, in a movie about Anne Boleyn, who, kneeling before the headsman, adopted this absurd posture when she bent forward to lay her throat upon the block.
Angel’s eyes strained, involved in the mindless animal glee smeared all over the boy’s face.
When it was over, the boy dressed quickly, clumsily, uncertain if he should express some affection, a hug, a good-bye kiss. Expertly, Carol fended him off. She turned away as if a kiss would be distasteful. Flushed and vaguely smiling, with his eyes still pinwheeling, the boy was steered past Angel’s hiding place, back toward the gate, and ushered out.
Carol returned to the solarium, trailing her fingers on the leaves, until she settled back on the couch, poked around in the incense urn until she found the roach.
Angel. Up and moving now. Soundless. Invisible. Crossing the grass, coming out of the inky night.
Carol stretched out, puffed, and raised her eyes toward her glassy ceiling. Angel was close enough to hear the pleasurable hiss of Carol’s inhalation, drawing sharply on the dope:
Angel coming in closer.
Angel thrust open the screen door and stalked into the solarium, a little awkward, the sleep needles not all the way out of her left foot. Her right hand hung close to her side, the green plastic silencer held back, out of sight behind her thigh.
When Carol opened her eyes, she saw Angel coming straight toward her, knocking aside the leaves of the ming aralia, kicking over the stepladder. Still frozen in shock, she did not comprehend; Angel’s wraithlike expression, the extended left hand, the accusing finger.
“What the. .?” Carol started to rise. She looked reflexively across the coffee table, toward the cordless phone.
“I saw you with that underage boy,” Angel said. “And you a teacher. What do you suppose his mother will say?” Angel picked the words carefully for effect. They worked; Carol was momentarily stayed, subdued.
“Who are you?” she said, her voice looking for traction between fight and flight. Carol swallowed, tried her voice. It cracked. She tried again, found it this time, and said, “What’s that in your hand?”
“Take it,” Angel said. She tossed the silver chain and the medallion into Carol’s lap.
“What the fuck?” Carol groped at the medallion.
“Wipe your chin,” Angel said, disgusted.
Carol winced, ran the sleeve of her robe across her jaw. Down deep on a preconscious level, her brain just now sensed how total and black Angel’s shadow was, that it was a pit into which she was meant to disappear. The first hard tremble hit her. “Why are you. . wearing. . gloves?”
“Shut up and listen. I won’t tell anybody what you’ve done if you pray with me. Now first, kiss the medal.”
“You’re nuts.” Carol. Stronger now.
“Do it.” Angel. Stronger.
“And then what? You’ll leave me alone?” Carol slowly raised the trinket to her shuddering lips.
Angel’s right hand came up and pointed the silenced pistol. “Now put it in your mouth.”
Carol’s voice cracked again. “Please, can we work this out a little?”
“IN YOUR MOUTH!”
Angel moved forward and shoved the silencer against Carol’s forehead. With the gloved fingers of her left hand, she roughly jammed the medal into Carol’s mouth. Carol gagged, and through the latex Angel felt the warm interior: the gums, the corrugated pinkness on top against her knuckle, the-
Quickly, Angel withdrew her hand. Just as quickly Carol spit the medal out onto the floor.
“I should make you wash out your mouth with soap, that’s what I should do,” Angel said.
Instead she aimed right between Carol Lennon’s eyes.
Seeing the pistol bore in, Carol went limp as if overcome by shock and resignation. In that instant, Angel relaxed, took a breath. .
But Carol uncoiled like a spring, kicking wildly at the gun hand, and screamed, “HELP, SOMEBODY, HELP!”
Angel froze for an instant. In that pause, Carol windmilled both fists, knocking the gun hand askew.
Angel pulled the gun back in line with Carol’s face-feral now, teeth bared, a grimace wrinkling her brow and cheeks like war paint-and jerked the trigger.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
The angry face spun away as a loud pain punctured Angel’s ears. The three shots sounded like bombs going off. Then Angel got it.
