window crack.
She was supposed to be up in an hour, an hour when? She found the alarm clock beside the bed and it told her the time was well past five. No, she thought, putting the clock back down. Can’t be. Not possible. Then she remembered, she’d turned off the alarm as soon as Danny’d left. Dumb, she thought. Pissy and dumb.
She rose up on one elbow, rubbing the grit from her eyes. She tried to sit up but her body felt thick, the pain confused her. That was when the pretense fled and the panic set in.
If every fear she had ever known had suddenly assumed bodily form and crashed through the door that minute, she would not have run. She would have said: What took you?
This pain has got to go, she thought, it’s giving you the willies. Wind scraped the roof and windows. The rain had returned, pattering against the building.
She lowered her feet to the floor and tested her weight. Movement had a watery feel; she quivered, standing. Stumbling room to room, she checked the bathroom for painkillers, the kitchen for a bit more liquor, the front room for Danny, flicking the overhead lights on then off.
Feeling chilled, she stumbled to the window and closed it. The room pivoted and folded into shapes, she had to close her eyes finally to keep from falling. Braced by the window frame, she looked down toward the street and spotted in a shallow doorway a homeless man with stone-colored skin, propped on a cane and draped in a blanket, smoking a cigarette. The ash glowed bright red in the haze. A bed of damp newspaper and oily cardboard lay around his feet. As though sensing her watching him, the man’s face rose and he stared up at her window. The blanket fell away from around his head as their eyes locked. He had thin, haggard features, close-cut gray hair, deep-set piercing eyes of a pale blue color.
Good God, Shel thought. It’s Felix.
She gagged and her legs gave way beneath her. Catching herself against the wall, she clutched the window frame, checking the man’s features again, thinking, No. She stared long and hard, the man staring right back, his face brightened by the ash of his cigarette as he took a long drag, then obscured in a smoky plume as he exhaled. Shel waited him out, studying everything about him, the cock of his head, the size of his hands, the angle of his body as he leaned on his cane. She convinced herself she’d been wrong. It wasn’t Felix at all. Strangely, however, as the illusion drained away, the dread intensified. She pulled the blind and went front to check the door lock.
Where’s Danny? she thought. We have to talk about Felix.
She returned to his room and sat back down on the bed, tallying up the things she felt reasonably certain were true. First, the fact Frank had come back alone last night meant something had gone wrong. Very wrong. Second, the fact none of the Akers brothers in particular had come back with Frank suggested one or more of them was dead. Third, all that meant there would be hell to pay. And Felix wouldn’t take two minutes to decide who was going to pay it.
Sure, they’d track down Frank, and there was no two ways about it, he was running now. After three years of trying to get him to the next safe place, she thought, all you accomplished was helping him sign his own death warrant. What a pitiless waste. Maybe they’ll write that on your gravestone, dear. Because Frank won’t be the one they really want now. Not those boys. Once they’ve put their faith in a woman who’s fucked up, they can’t get back at her fast enough.
Felix had made it clear, he would find her. And not just her. That one little offhand remark he’d made: I’m not gonna worry about my manners. People’ll get hurt. She had to believe Felix knew about Danny. They’d tracked down her case file or her probation report or some damn thing, bribed some bent cop for it. If they hadn’t already, they would quick. And when they did they’d have her life story in their hands and if they couldn’t find her right off one way, they’d flush her out another. Come for Danny. Her mother in Texas. Eddy Igo, any number of people.
As though picking at a scab, she went to the window again, peeked out behind the blind and saw the crippled homeless man leaning in the doorway exactly where he had before. Go, she thought. Run.
But running was ludicrous. They’d last a couple weeks at best. She had two hundred dollars to her name and that was back at the house. Might as well be on Mars. Danny, from the look of his apartment, was worse off than her, and he was on probation regardless. Not only would Felix be hunting for them, the law would, too, and regardless of which one got there first, Felix would mete out revenge. She could be killed in custody easy as anywhere else. Hell, easier. Double that for Danny.
It’s not his price to pay, she thought. You can’t do this to him. Go back.
She turned from the window, ran to the toilet and vomited. Her head rang, the bile was clear and sour. She couldn’t tell if it was her fear or something wrong with her head that brought this on. As though it matters, she thought. She collapsed onto her haunch on the cold tile floor.
The situation had a certain storybook quality, she decided. The maiden who descends into Hell to beg back her soul from the Devil. If memory served, the story did not end well. The maiden gets screwed. And that, she supposed- to use Frank’s expression- is fitting and fair.
If they didn’t already have Frank in hand, they’d use her for bait. Picturing what was likely to follow, she felt sick with terror again and hoisted herself up, preparing to retch, but nothing came. The perfect posture, she thought, for realizing you have no choice. She felt in need of a prayer. In need of a saint who would listen to it. St. Dismal.
She rose, rinsed her face and mouth with cold water then staggered back down the hallway to the bedroom. She looked around one final time. Calling to mind the words on Abatangelo’s scapular, she told herself: Remember me. Remember me, Danny, because I love you. And that’s why I can’t stay. I can’t bring my nightmare here. I’ll take it back where it belongs.
She drove with one hand on the wheel, the other clutching her head, focusing on the road’s white lines. A dull throbbing tinged with nausea was interrupted by a flare of pain from behind one eye. She winced and struggled to keep a grip on the wheel. She wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but the headache was getting worse, and every time one of these flare-ups occurred, she felt dizzy and everything blurred.
To combat her growing fear she picked a song, the first that came to mind, a number she loved from the old days, Rickie Lee Jones: “We Belong Together.” She sang it to herself, over and over, the way a mother sings to a child in a storm.
You’re not gonna look back, she told herself, you’re not gonna whine and whimper, you’re gonna feel good about seeing Danny one last time, letting him know what he means to you, then do what needs to get done. You’re gonna face Felix, you’re gonna tell him the whole deal, you’re gonna get square with him or die. Tell him: You want revenge, here it is.
No need to go hunting, Felix. Leave Danny out of it. Leave everybody but me out of it. The deal was you and me. I keep Frank in the saddle, I live, he lives. At least for a while. Can’t say I know all the facts, but I’d be willing to bet “in the saddle” is a reach. So here I am. It ain’t marriage, Felix, granted, but it’s what I bring to the table. I may be a lot of things, but one thing I am not is some two-faced sob sister trying to squeeze pity out of a rock. I don’t try to crawl back over a bridge I just burned down. I don’t beg back my last chance. And if that means I’m stuck, well hey. I can dig it. I’m stuck.
She reached the ranch house an hour later, by which time the song lyrics and monologue had done the trick. She felt braced for the worst. And that inspired a state of mind that strangely calmed her.
She gained the doorway after a dizzying effort on the porch stairs. Rowena stood at the very center of the kitchen, cigarette in one hand, book of matches in the other, looking for all the world as though she’d been standing in exactly that spot for days. A smell like burnt gum lingered in the air. A tin can full of menthol butts rested on the stove. From further within the house the babble of Duval’s television leaked from beyond his bedroom door.
“What the fuck happened to you?” Rowena said as Shel entered the light. Her tone of voice suggested she actually meant to ask: Is it going to happen to me? Shel didn’t answer, but instead concerted her strength to work her way along the wall to the breakfast nook where she took a seat. Setting her head on the tabletop, she closed her eyes.
“Where’s Roy?” Rowena asked, her voice rising. “I been over to the house, walked the whole damn way and back, over a mile. Nobody there. Not Roy, not Lyle. I been back to the compound, three times since dark. Nobody
