sweaters, copies of Cavalier, Nugget, and National Geographic, handkerchiefs, a full bottle of J. W. Dant and one half killed, and other odds and ends of a solitary life but no money to speak of except for the errant few quarters, dimes, and pennies.
Mary Terror turned to face the old man, who had crushed himself up against the wall, and she said, 'Paula thinks you've saved a lot of money. Is it true or not?'
'What do you know about Paula? You've never even met my daughter!'
Mary went to the bedroom closet, opened it, and ransacked it as Shecklett kept asking her how she knew his daughter. Mary overthrew the mattress and then the entire bedframe, finding nothing but TV dinner trays and old newspapers under the bed. She bulldozed through the bathroom's medicine cabinet and tore into the kitchen cabinets, and when her search was over she realized she knew Shecklett a lot better than Paula did.
'There's no more, is there?' she asked, training the Colt on him.
'I said there wasn't! Jesus Christ, look what you did to my place!'
'Give me your wallet.'
Shecklett fished it from his pants and handed it over. There were no credit cards, and the wallet held a five and three ones. 'Listen,' Shecklett said as Mary pocketed the cash and tossed the wallet aside, 'you've got every cent now. Why don't you just get out?'
'Right. The faster I get out, the faster you can call the pigs, huh?'
Shecklett's gaze dropped to the gun. He looked up from it into Mary's face, then back to the gun again. His Adam's apple wobbled. 'I won't tell anybody,' he said.
'Take off your clothes,' Mary ordered.
'Huh?'
'Your clothes. Off.'
'My clothes? How come you want me to -'
She was on him before he could utter another word. The gun rose and fell, and the old man dropped to his knees with his jaw broken and three teeth loose. Moaning with pain, he began to take his clothes off. When he was finished, his bony white body nude, Mary said, 'Get up.' He did, his eyes deep-sunken and terrified. 'Into the bathroom,' she told him, and she followed him in. 'Get in the bathtub on your hands and knees.' He balked at this, and began to beg her to leave him alone, that he wouldn't tell anybody, wouldn't ever tell anybody. She pressed the gun's barrel against the staircase of his spine, and he got into the tub in the position she'd demanded.
'Head down. Don't look at me,' she said. Shecklett's skinny chest heaved, and he coughed violently for maybe a minute. She waited until his coughing was done, and then she slid the knife from her waistband.
'Swear I won't tell a soul.' His chest heaved again, this time in a sob. 'God, please don't hurt me. I never did anything to you. I won't tell anybody. I'll keep my mouth shut, I swear to -'
Mary picked up a washrag from the sink and jammed it into Shecklett's mouth. He gasped and gagged, and then Mary leaned over his naked body. She thrust the knife into one side of Shecklett's throat, her knuckles scraping the sandpaper of his skin. Before Shecklett could fully realize what she was doing, Mary cut his throat from ear to ear with the serrated blade, and crimson blood fountained into the air.
Shecklett tried to scream around the washrag. As the blood sprayed into the bathtub from his severed carotid artery, Shecklett grasped at his throat with his one hand and started to rise to his knees. Mary put her foot into the small of his back and jammed him down again. His body thrashed and writhed under Mary's strength, blood spewing into the tub as if released from a pulsing faucet. 'My name is Mary Terrell,' she told him as he bled and died. 'Soldier of the Storm Front. Freedom fighter for those without rights in the Mindfuck State, and executioner of the state's pigs.' He was trying to get up again, his knowledge of death affording him a last surge of power. She had to bear down hard on him, and his adrenaline flood ceased in a few seconds. He writhed at the bottom of the tub as if doing a breast stroke in his own gore. 'Defender of the just. Protector of the weak. Crusher of the Mindfuck mentality, and keeper of the faith.'
He had a lot of blood for a gaunt old dude.
Mary sat on the edge of the tub and watched him die. There was something about him that made her think of a baby swimming through a sea of blood and mother's fluid to reach the light. He died not with a shudder or a moan or a final desperate thrashing; he simply got weaker and weaker, until the weakness killed him. And there he lay in the tub with his life going down the drain, his eyes open, and his skin the color of a fish Mary had once seen washed up and swollen-bellied on a gray beach.
Mary stood up. She slashed the mattress open in the bedroom, just to make sure no money was hidden inside. Cotton wadding puffed out, and it served to clean the blade. Then she left Shecklett's apartment and closed the door behind her, richer by five hundred fifty-one dollars and some change.
The uniform was ready. She took a shower with God cranked up on the speakers, the bass pounding at the walls like an eager fist. Before the day was done, she would be a mother. She scrubbed spatters of blood from her hands, and she smiled in her veil of steam.
6: Big Hands
On Saturday morning just after eleven o'clock, Doug stood at the window of Room 21. He watched the clouds move in the pewter sky, and he thought about the question Laura had just asked him.
How long has the affair been going on?
Of course she knew. He'd seen yesterday that she knew; it was in her eyes when he'd told her he hadn't been able to get away from work until long after midnight Friday morning. Her eyes had looked right through him, as if he were no longer truly there. 'I don't want to hear it,' she'd said, and she'd lapsed into silence. Every time he spoke to her, he was met with the same wall of words: 'I don't want to hear it.' He'd known she'd be upset because he wasn't there at David's birth, and that fact gnawed at his guts like little piranhas that meant to devour him to the bones, but then he realized there was more to it. Laura knew. Somehow, she knew. How much she knew he wasn't sure, but just knowing was bad enough. All day yesterday and all night last night it had been either 'I don't want to hear it' or cold silence. Laura's mother, who'd come to Atlanta yesterday with Laura's father to see their grandson, had asked him what was wrong with Laura, that she didn't want to talk, that all she wanted to do was hold the baby and croon to David. He hadn't been able to say because he didn't know. Now he did, and he watched the pewter sky and wished he could think of something to say.
'The truth,' Laura said, reading his mind in the stiff reluctance of his body. 'That's what I want.'
'An affair?' He turned from the window, a salesman's smile plastered to his mouth. 'Laura, come on! I can't believe you -' He stopped speaking because his son was down the hall in the maternity window, and he couldn't carry off the lie.
'How long?' she prodded. Her face was wan and pale, her eyes tired. She felt light of body and leaden of spirit. 'A month? Two months? Doug, I'd like to hear it.'
He was silent. His mind was searching for cracks like a mouse who hears a footstep in the dark.
'She lives at the Hillandale Apartments,' Laura went on. 'Apartment 5-E. I followed you there on Thursday night.'
Doug's mouth opened. Hung open. A small gasp escaped his chest. She saw the color bloom in his cheeks. 'You… followed me? You actually… my God, you actually followed me?' He shook his head incredulously. 'Jesus! I can't believe this! You followed me like… like I was some kind of… common criminal or something?'
'STOP IT, DOUG!' The thunder crashed out of her before she could contain it. She was not a yeller – far from it – but the anger sprang forth seemingly from every pore in her body like scalding steam. 'Stop the lies, all right? Just stop lying, right now!'
'Keep your voice down, will you?'
'Hell, no, I won't keep my voice down!' The expression of shocked outrage on Doug's face was like kerosene on her charcoals. The flames leapt high, out of her control. 'I know you've got a girlfriend, Doug! I found the two tickets! I found out Eric was in Charleston the night he was supposed to have called you to the office! Someone called me and told me what her address was! You'd better believe I followed you, and by God I was hoping you wouldn't go to her, but there you were! Right there! How was the beer, Doug?' She felt her mouth contort in a bitter twist. 'Did you two enjoy the six-pack? My water broke right there in the parking lot, while you were walking to her door! While our son – my son – was being born, you were shacked up with a stranger across town! Was it
