"What are you thinking?" Mort asked.
"That's just about the most beautiful thing I thinkI've ever seen," Lou said.
Mort looked at it, a coil of bright orange encased insidea clear glass bulb. Not only was it bright, but it cast heat down upon them,not enough to turn the sauna into an actual sauna, but it kept them warm."Yeah, it's pretty great," Mort said.
They sat back and waited silently. Eventually, a manshowed up. They heard noises outside the sauna door, and then it swung open.
The man was short, maybe 5'3", but he carriedhimself as if he were bigger. He had that look in his eye like he was thetoughest son of a bitch in the world, or at least he thought he was. In hisarm, he gripped an ice pick.
"Tell me about the woman," the man said.
"Are they alright?" Lou asked.
"I'm asking the questions here, boy. Now tell meabout the woman."
Mort didn't know what to do. Confrontations had neverbeen his thing. It's one of the reasons why he had run away as a kid. In theschoolyard, when he was younger, others would pick on him because they thoughthe was slow. Even though he was bigger than just about anyone at the damnschool, they had sought him out. His inability to handle confrontations madehim look weak, soft. In the end, they had pushed and pushed until he hadsnapped, and that meant his father had to come into to school to get him, andthat meant another whuppin' when he had got home. But they kept coming at himevery day anyway.
Now Mort watched Lou handle it, and he didn't back down;Mort didn't know if Lou even knew how to back down.
"Tell me what I want to know first," Lou said.
"Have it your way, playboy," the man said as hebacked out of the sauna, the ice pick in his hand. "But you may have justcost that woman her life."
He was about to slam the door shut, when Lou said,"Wait. What are you talking about?"
"Oh, so now you want to talk." The man bit theside of his lip, and Mort could see that he was trying to decide if he wasgoing to be an asshole or not. They were in luck. "I'm talking about that woundon her arm and those missing fingers."
Lou nodded.
"You got anything to say about it?"
"The scratch is from a dog. The fingers were blownoff by a bullet. She's fine."
"That true?" the man said, turning to Mort.
"Yeah. It's nothing," Mort said, feeling as ifhe was being interrogated.
The man nodded his head, as if he had made up his mind.Then he backed out of the sauna and closed the door. They heard the ice pickslide against the door as he locked it. He bounced his fist off the door a fewtimes, as if checking the security of it, and then his face disappeared fromthe tiny square window set in the door.
"You think they believe us?" Mort asked.
Lou didn't respond. That made Mort nervous. This wholeplace made him nervous. After a while, they just stared at the light bulb asthe time passed.
****
They sat in the pantry with a fortune around them. Itwasn't money. It was food. Cans, piled high as the eye could see. Everythingyou could ever want. Above, a single light bulb dangled on a chain, allowingthem to read all of the labels, allowing them to hang their stomachs with theireyes.
There was only room for one of them to sit at a time. Thepantry was deep, but it was narrow. Outside, the man with the FBI hat sat in achair. The last time Katie had tried the door, the man had pointed a rifle ather until she went back inside.
Now she sat looking at the labels on the food, readingnutritional information, checking out how many grams of sodium were in a can oftomato sauce. If only she had brought her can opener. But she didn't have it.They had taken everything from them as soon as they got out of the car.
Then they had been split up, the men went one way, whilethe women walked in front of the man with the FBI hat. Katie would bet her lifethat the hat was just some fake piece of junk that he had bought, probably at agas station convenience store. He didn't have the feel of a real lawman. Shehad been around plenty of them to be able to tell the difference. The man hadcurly brown hair that stuck out from under his hat, and his face had a quietconfidence that made him seem lax and overconfident.
When they pulled her out of the pantry and demanded toknow about her missing fingers and the wound on her arm, she had told them thetruth. Then they had thrown her back in the pantry with the others. A fewminutes later, the man came back, not the man in the FBI hat, but the man withthe alcoholic's face and the bull neck, the stubby little man who looked likehe would just as soon start a fight as look at you.
Katie saw a can with a pull tab on it. Curious, shelifted the can off the pantry shelf and held it in the light so that she couldsee what it was. Potted meat. What the hell was potted meat? She looked at thepull tab, and her stomach growled at her. She knew she would regret it, but shepulled the tab anyway. Inside, was a grayish pink spread, not unlike pâté, butshe knew it was nowhere near the quality of pâté.
The smell was strong, almost like a cured meat. Joan andClara stood and looked at her doubtfully.
"You're not going to eat that, are you?" Joanasked.
"Hey, food is food right?" she said. With nosilverware, she stuck her fingers in the meat. It spread nicely and she hookedher fingers and scooped some of the paste into her mouth. It had a vaguely gamyflavor hidden underneath more salt than any one person needed. Altogether, itwasn't bad, like ground up Vienna sausages. She tried
