'Hey, what's in the Stone?' A hand reached past her and grabbed up the magazine from the countertop.
Mary Terror whirled toward Gordie. She felt it come out of her like the seething magma from a volcano. She knew what it was, had lived with it for what seemed like all her life. She had loved it, suckled it, embraced it, and fed on it, and its name was Rage. Before she could stop herself, she placed a hand around Gordie's stalky throat and pressed a thumb into his windpipe, at the same time slamming him so hard against the wall that some of the pictures of the precious infants jumped off their nails and clattered to the floor.
'Gaak,' Gordie said, his face reddening, his eyes beginning to bulge from the sockets. 'Jesusgaaklemmegaaak…'
She didn't want to kill him. She needed him for what was ahead. Ten minutes ago she'd been a slug, its mind a glimmer with the bright wattage of LSD. Now the deep part of her that craved the smell of blood and gunpowder had awakened, and it was staring out at the world through heavy-lidded gray eyes. But she needed this young man for what he could bring her. She took the Stone from his hand and released his throat, leaving a red splotch of fingers on his pallid skin.
Gordie coughed and wheezed for a few seconds, backing out of the kitchen away from her. He was dressed except for his shoes, his shirttail hanging out. When he could get his voice again, he hollered, 'You're crazy! Fuckin' crazy! You tryin' to fuckin' kill me, bitch?'
'No.' That would have been easy enough, she thought. She felt sweat in her pores, and she knew she'd stepped very close to the edge. 'I'm sorry, Gordie. Really. I didn't mean to -'
'You almost choked me, lady! Shit!' He coughed again and rubbed his throat. 'You get your jollies outta shovin' people around?'
'I was reading,' she said. She tore the page out and gave him the rest of the magazine. 'Here. Keep it. Okay?'
Gordie hesitated, as if he feared the woman might gnaw his arm off if he reached for the Stone. Then he took it, and he said in a raspy voice, 'Okay. Man, you almost put your thumb through my fuckin' throat.'
'I'm sorry.' That was the last time she would apologize, but she managed a cool smile. 'We're still friends, right?'
'Yeah.' He nodded. 'Still friends, what the hell.'
Gordie had the brains of an engine block, Mary thought. That was all right; just so he started up when she turned his key. At the front door Mary looked into his eyes and said, 'I'd like to see you again, Gordie.'
'Sure. Next time you want a score, just gimme a call.'
'No.' She said it purposefully, and let her mouth linger around the word. 'That's not what I mean. I'd like you to come over and spend some time.'
'Oh. Uh… yeah, but… I've got a girlfriend.'
'You can bring her over, too,' Mary said, and she saw the greasy light shine in Gordie's eyes.
'I'll… uh… I'll be callin' you,' Gordie told her, and then he went to his Mazda in the nasty drizzle, got in, and pulled away. When the car was out of sight, Mary closed the door, locked it, and took a long, deep breath. She lit a cone of strawberry incense, put it in its burner, and stood with the blue coils of smoke rising past her face. She closed her eyes, thinking of Lord Jack, the Storm Front, the message in the Rolling Stone, and the eighteenth of February. She thought of guns and blue-uniformed pigs, pools of blood and walls of flame. She thought of the past, and how it wound like a sluggish river through the present into the future.
She would answer the summons. She would be there, at the weeping lady, on the appointed day and hour. There were lots of plans to be made, lots of strings to cut and bum. Gordie would help her get what she needed. The rest she would do by instinct and cunning. She went into the kitchen, got a pen from a drawer, and made a mark on the eighteenth square of February: a star, by which to fix her destination.
She was so happy she began to cry.
In the bedroom Mary lay on the bed with her back supported by pillows and her legs splayed. 'Push,' she told herself, and began breathing in harsh whuffs. 'Push! Push!' She pressed against her scarred belly with both hands. 'Push! Come on, push!' She strained, her face tortured in a rictus of concentrated pain. 'Oh God,' she breathed, her teeth gritted. 'Oh God oh God ohhhhhh…' She shivered and grunted, and then with a long cry and a spasm of her thigh muscles she reached under one of the pillows and slid the new baby out between her legs.
He was a beautiful, healthy boy. Jack, she would call him. Sweet, sweet Jackie. He made a few mewling cries, but he was a good boy and he would not disturb her sleep. Mary held him close and rocked him, her face and breasts damp with sweat. 'Such a pretty baby,' she crooned, her smile radiant. 'Oh such a pretty pretty baby.' She offered a finger, as she had done to the infant in the shopping cart at the supermarket. She was disappointed that he didn't grasp her finger, because she longed for the warmth of a touch. Well, Jackie would learn. She cradled him in her arms and rested her head against the pillows. He hardly moved at all, just lay there against her, and she could feel his heart beating like a soft little drum. She went to sleep with Lord Jack's face in her mind. He was smiling, his teeth as white as a tiger's, and he was calling her home.
5: Perpetrator Down
When Laura got home from the Burt Reynolds movie, she found a message on the machine.
Beep. 'Laura, hi. Listen, the work's taking longer than we thought. I'll be in around midnight, but don't wait up. I'm sorry about this. I'll take you to dinner tomorrow night, okay? Your choice. Back to the salt mines.' Click.
He didn't say I love you, Laura thought.
A wave of incredible sadness threatened to break over her, she could feel its weight poised above her head. Where had he called from? Surely not the office. Someone's apartment, maybe. Eric was in Charleston. Doug had lied about that, and what else was he lying about?
He had not said I love you, she thought, because there was another woman with him.
She started to call his office, but she put down the phone. What was the point of it? What was the point of any of it? She wandered the house, not quite sure of her destination. She wound through the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and the bedroom, her eyes taking note of their possessions: hunting prints on the walls, here a Waterford crystal vase, there an armchair from Colonial Williamsburg, a bowl of glass apples, a bookcase filled with Literary Guild best sellers neither of them had bothered to read. She opened both their closets, looked at his Brooks Brothers suits and his power ties, looked at her own designer dresses and her variety of expensive shoes. She retreated from there and walked into the nursery.
The crib was ready. The walls were light blue, and a Buckhead artist had painted tiny, brightly colored balloons around the room just below the ceiling. The room still smelled faintly of fresh paint. A mobile of plastic fish hung above the crib, ready to be tossed and jangled.
Doug was with another woman.
Laura found herself back in the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror under an unkind light. She released the gold clasp that pinned her hair and let it fall free around her shoulders in a chestnut cascade. Her eyes stared at her eyes, light blue as the sky of April. Tiny wrinkles were creeping in around them, foretellers of the future. They were the briefest impressions of crow's feet now, but later they would become the tracks of hawks. Dark circles there, too; she needed more sleep than she was getting. If she looked hard enough, she would find too many strands of gray in her hair. She was nearing forty, the black-balloon year. She was already six years past that age you weren't supposed to trust anybody over. She regarded her face: sharp nose and firm chin, thick dark eyebrows and a high forehead. She wished she had the etched cheekbones of a model instead of chipmunk cheeks grown plumper with baby fluids, but those had always been so. She had never been an awe-inspiring beauty, and in fact she had been homely – a quaint word – until her sixteenth year. Not many dates, but many books had filled her time. Dreams of travel, and of the crusading reporter. She was very attractive with makeup, but her features took on a harder quality without the paints and powders. It was in her eyes, especially, when she didn't have on liner and eyeshadow: a chilly brooding, the light blue the color of packed ice instead of springtime. They were the eyes of someone who senses time being lost, time going into the dark hole of the past like Alice after her white rabbit.
She wondered what the girl looked like. She wondered what her voice sounded like when she spoke Doug's name.
Sitting in the theater with a big tub of buttered popcorn on her lap, Laura had realized there were things she
