A Bad Day for Sorry

a backward glance.

That peck on the cheek—noisy, brief—Ollie used to kiss Stella like that, but only if there were other people around. She’d be standing with a group of women at the Knights of Columbus barbecue and he’d come over, flush with a few beers, bringing the conversation to a halt with his lurching, leering presence. The women would all watch as he winked broadly and kissed Stella. Sometimes he’d pat her butt, too. And then he’d wander off to find his buddies and another beer, and there would be this little silence before the conversation started up again, and even though it was a matter of seconds, it was excruciating, and Stella knew what they were all thinking.

That she was a saint to put up with Ollie Hardesty. And that somebody ought to stop him from doing what they all knew he did.

And then someone would mention that her niece was having surgery for a fibroid the size of a tennis ball, and Stella would stand quietly with the trace of the kiss burning an invisible scar on her cheek.

Stella felt a little sorry for Marie. It was going to be a tough drive, wherever she was going, probably up to the city, fifty or sixty miles with her arm screaming in pain. Maybe they’d get pulled over for not having a car seat —but what would that accomplish? If she and Chrissy didn’t walk out of this place, even if Tucker somehow escaped Funzi and his wife, he’d be headed straight for social services. Foster care. The start of a whole other kind of no- good life.

There were no two ways about it: she and Chrissy had to come out of this alive.

Funzi gestured at the women. “So Beez, what do you think of taking the ladies out for a boat ride?”

“Sure,” Beez said, but he still looked pretty crabby.

“Go get the keys, I think they’re still on the cooler out in the garage. Or maybe on the hook in the game room. Somewhere down there, anyway.”

Beez left the room.

“Here’s the thing, girls,” Funzi said, going to the corner of the room where he had thrown Stella’s holster. He picked up the scissors, examined them carefully, admiring the curve of the blades. Then he came over and sat next to Stella on the bed. “You ladies are the plus-size variety. That’s a problem. Beez and I are gonna have a hard time carrying a couple of heifers like yourselves out of here, so you’re going to have to cooperate.”

Stella glared at Funzi. He was enjoying this. Having fun at their expense. As if to confirm her suspicion, he pulled the hair away from her face, almost delicately, and put the tip of the scissors to the edge of the duct tape gag. Slowly, carefully, he worked the blade under the edge of the tape and cut through it. He was cutting into her skin, too, Stella was pretty sure, given the sharp pain she felt.

Once he got the cut started, he picked at a corner of the tape with his thumb and forefinger. He leaned in close to her face, and Stella could smell him: sweat and body odor and traces of some fruity aftershave.

There was a ripping sound and suddenly her face was a world of pain. Funzi had yanked the tape away in one furious motion, and it felt like it had taken a couple of her stitches out and opened up all her gashes again and stripped a few layers of skin as well. Her lip dribbled blood, no doubt split further than before. She gasped involuntarily and then worked her jaw back and forth, trying to get some sensation back into it.

“Not much of a looker, is she?” Funzi laughed, addressing Chrissy and pointing to Stella with the scissors. “They say she took out her husband. Poor guy, he probably wasn’t sticking it to her enough. That what got you so mad, Stella? Huh?”

He chuckled at his own humor, and Stella squeezed the rotary cutter hard, the handle sticky with her blood.

“But it’s kind of hard to blame him. I mean, even without the shit kicked out of you, it’s not like you’re gonna win the Miss World title, you know? Now you—” pointing at Chrissy with thumb and forefinger cocked, gun-style. “You got some potential. I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings, calling you a heifer. You see my wife? See how damn skinny she is? Man, she ain’t had anything decent to eat in years. Drives me bat-shit. I’m like, Marie, have a fucking French fry, for Christ’s sake.”

More mirth. Funzi was able to amuse himself pretty easily. “Yeah, but I like you. I do,” Funzi said softly, letting his gaze travel up and down Chrissy. “Nice and soft, probably feel pretty good to sink into, and you’d have plenty to hang onto, you know?”

He leered suggestively, but Chrissy shot him a glance that Stella figured made it pretty clear what she thought of the idea. Good girl, she thought. Stay angry.

“You’re not her type,” Stella muttered through her bloody lips. “You ain’t anybody’s type, ’cept your own. Too bad you couldn’t just fuck yourself so you could be with someone who loves you back.”

Funzi’s eyebrows shot up, and then he was laughing, but his laughter had a hard, mean edge to it now.

“Now see, there’s that bitterness again. Woman, you are desperately in need of a good screwing, but I’m sorry, that’s just not going to happen. Maybe in your next life.”

The humorous tone was gone now. He had lost his patience; he was done playing with them, and Stella tensed, sensing the moment was near.

“You know,” he said, pointing at Chrissy again, “you ought to be thanking me. Your boy’s gonna have things you’d never have been able to give him. Private school, soccer and baseball, decent clothes, a car on his sixteenth birthday. And you know what?”

He leaned across Stella, getting as close to Chrissy’s face as he could, and it was clear that he was enjoying her pain, enjoying dishing out the cruelty.

“He won’t remember you,” he said, voice soft and silky. “Don’t fool yourself about that little episode a few minutes ago. This time next week he’ll be calling me Daddy.”

Stella found herself staring into his ear, a fleshy, large, knobby thing with hair on the inside. As she swung her arm from behind, up and over in an arc, she was able to make a detailed observation of Funzi’s ear hair—it was one of those moments that seems to stretch on forever, even though it lasted a mere fraction of a second. Evidently Funzi hadn’t done any personal grooming in a while, because the bristly black hairs were a quarter of an inch long, as though he was growing a wire brush inside his ear, and as Stella brought the rotary cutter down across his neck and blood came flying out of the severed artery in a spray whose volume surprised even Stella, Stella who’d brought forth the blood of a dozen men before, Stella who’d knocked the life blow by blow from her husband’s cruel eyes, the thought that went through her head in slow motion was that she might not be beautiful, but because of her, the world was going to be short one truly ugly son of a bitch.

Funzi jerked back, hands flying to his neck, blood pumping between his scrabbling fingers as he tried to scoop it back in. His eyes widened and his lips moved, and some of the blood splashed across Stella’s face and more of it landed on her shirt as she instinctively pulled away. There was blood on her lips, she sputtered as some of it got in her mouth, spat out the blood of the man who’d wanted to kill her, and she pulled her bound ankles in toward her body as far as she could and then kicked them hard and Funzi was shoved off the bed onto the floor, making choking sounds of horror all the way down.

From her peripheral vision Stella saw Beez burst into the room, watched his glance fly from her to Chrissy, who was struggling to get up off the bed, and Funzi on the floor in his bath of blood, twitching now, fingers extended out stiffly, eyes rolled back in his head.

Beez had his gun up and got off a shot before Stella could react, and Chrissy jerked back against the headboard. A neat hole blossomed red in her chest and then she started to tilt slowly to the side.

Stella dove off the bed on top of Funzi, reaching for the scissors that had fallen from his grasp onto the white carpet. Her fingers brushed against the blades as the sound of another shot exploded way too close. As she grasped the handles there was another shot and she felt a giant wallop in her left shoulder and thought holy shit he got me—but she palmed the scissors, rolling over onto her back on top of Funzi as Beez seemed to fly through the air toward her. She grabbed the handle with both her bloody hands and held the scissors in front of her.

For a fraction of a second she saw Beez’s eyes widen as he flew toward her, and then he crashed on top of her as the gun went off once more and the scissor handles jabbed hard into her sternum and knocked the wind out of her. Stella struggled against his weight, trying to figure out if that last shot had connected, but she was still moving, her shoulder burned but she was moving, she was kicking and clawing and holy mother she wanted to be out from under him, and then she was, crab-scuttling away on her one good arm and only then did she see that the scissors were sunk into his throat and blood was leaking out fast, Beez lying now halfway on top of his boss, on Funzi, the two of them going still and cold even as their blood continued to leak out.