moment. Had to be an omen, an omen of the very best kind.
Then: they were laughing their heads off. Why? A little hanky-panky. They were going to get naked and fuck each other’s brains out, after all, as he’d secretly hoped, all of them this time, and, for Christ sake, let it be right there in the big room, instead of sneaking off to the bedroom the way little sister and the college kid had last time, where Freedy couldn’t see, not even hear very well.
Freedy waited for the hanky-panky to begin. They took their sweet time. A little bit of talk, mostly silence and waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for the college kid to stop dragging his feet. That was it. Freedy got it now: as soon as the college kid said yes to whatever they wanted him to say yes to, the sisters would come across.
Say it, you asshole. To get those two to come across who wouldn’t say whatever it took? Yes was easy.
The college kid said it. Finally. And guess what? They didn’t come across. Women. Did the college kid know how to handle that, did he get pissed, slap them around? No. Instead they all had another drink, like the best of friends, then started blowing out the candles, climbing that rope ladder, clearing out. Next minute, they were gone, leaving nothing but the blackness, the smell of melting wax, the horrible singing. Nothing had happened, nothing at all. Was it just some sort of game, more college shit? What the fuck?
Maybe because of all these questions, all this confusion, Freedy got a little lost on his way out of the tunnels. He thought he was in F, headed for the subbasement of building 87, at the edge of the backside of the campus and therefore closest to home. Problem was, it took way too long. He finally flicked on his light to see where he was. Good thing: he was in Z, two steps-two goddamn steps-before the drop-off near building 13. He shone the light over the edge, illuminating the steel ladder bolted to the wall and the brick floor thirty feet below, at least, where some workie had broken his neck long ago.
Don’t think he was scared or anything like that. First, his instincts-he was a fuckin’ animal-had protected him, always would. Second, even if he fell, so what? Think he wouldn’t land on his feet, bounce right up? ’Course he would. He shut the light off immediately, just to show the kind of… started with p — predator! Yes! The kind of predator he was, like the wolf or the tiger.
Freedy climbed out of a ventilation hood behind the hockey rink. The snow had stopped falling but lay all over the place, on every roof and tree branch, and piled high on the ground. He hated snow. He hated the cold. A cold wind was blowing from the west, right in his face as he left the campus, started down the Hill. The west, where California was: explain why California was warm while the wind that came from it was cold. There was a lot of shit they didn’t know.
A million. A cool million. Freedy understood the expression now. A million made you cool, inside and out, simple as that. He pictured his corporate HQ, a blue tower, blue being the color of water, eight or nine stories high, with a gym on the roof, overlooking the ocean. And the name: he needed a name. Freedy’s Fine Pool Business. Freedy’s First-Rate Pools and Maintenance. What was that expression she used? First water. Freedy’s First Water Corporation. Nah. Then it hit him. Aqua — or was it agua? — meant water, didn’t it? The Aqua Group. The classiness of that Group part! Or maybe the Agua Group. Which sounded better? He tried them out loud, several times, as he passed the Glass Onion, crossed the tracks, entered the flats, turned onto the old street. Someone was having septic problems, often happened down by the river; he could smell their shit through all that snow.
Freedy went into the kitchen. A fuckin’ mess. Every dish dirty, hardened yellow batter caked to this and that, fridge door hanging open. Why should he close it? Had a pig for a mother. He sniffed once or twice: a pot-smoking pig. And the ants were out, ants in winter, which was pretty unusual.
He switched on the lights in his bedroom, tried to ignore the wall paintings-unicorns, toadstools, dopehead elves, the lion man, the poem with that planet spinning, out of fucking control. He was so busy ignoring things that at first he didn’t notice that the laptop, which he’d left on the bed, was gone.
That laptop was worth three hundred bucks. More important, much more important now, he wanted to have another look at what was on the screen. So where was it? Not there. Crash. Or there. Splatter. So where the fuck was it? Was it possible that someone had ripped him off? Ripped him off? A good way to die. Oh, to get his hands on whoever it was: a killing desire swelled rapidly inside him, like he would burst, and what was this? He had: blood was seeping out of his hand. Or maybe it was just a cut, by-product of the laptop search. Still, a mystical moment: everything did have meaning.
He went into the hall. Next door was the bathroom, next door to that her bedroom. He knocked. No answer. No light shone under the door, but he could hear music, tinny and faint, the way it sounded leaking from headphones, and he could smell pot, stronger than in the kitchen. He opened the door.
Lights out. A good thing: darkness hid the paintings on her walls, paintings he hadn’t seen in years, and never wanted to again. One of them was the picture of his birth, based on that photo she had. A circle of women, all naked, although it couldn’t have been that way in real life, all naked like witches with their unshaved legs and armpits, and in the middle her with her legs spread, and one of the witches holding him up, bawling and red.
His eyes adjusted to the weak light penetrating the shade from the street lamp. She lay in bed, eyes closed, singing along to the music in the headphones, singing that came and went, more like muttering, but he identified it: “Winterlude,” fucking Bob Dylan song he hated. Every winter, from the first flake till the last melting patch in the trees, “Winterlude.” He thought of ripping the headphone jack out of the machine, was seriously considering it, when he noticed the green light flashing under her bed. He bent down-so close he could smell her breath, but there was no chance of her hearing him, not with Bob Dylan in her ears-and retrieved the laptop.
Freedy took the laptop to his room, opened it, pressed the on button. Words popped up on the screen, but nothing about Leo Uzig: snow falls like velvet down
More of her poetry shit. Were all poets ignorant? Down, for example: everyone knew it was made from goose or duck feathers, not velvet. He hit various keys, combinations of keys, trying to make the poetry go away, trying to find out what the computer knew about Leo Uzig. For example, he typed Leo Uzig, spelling both names several ways since he couldn’t remember exactly what he’d glimpsed on the screen that first time, then hitting control; or hitting control first and then the names. But he couldn’t even make the poetry disappear. He closed the thing, not hard, but hard enough to send a message.
Why should he be a computer expert? Soon, very soon, he’d be hiring them. On the other hand, he needed one now. What about Ronnie? It was possible.
Freedy walked over to Ronnie’s, less than a mile away, its yard backing onto the river. The river showed through the gaps between the low shadows of the unlit houses, frozen whiteness under a black sky. Late, probably very late, but Freedy wasn’t the least bit tired; full of energy, in fact. The whole town sacked out except for him: showed how much stronger he was, stronger than the whole town. They’d all faded, collapsed, passed out, while he still patrolled the streets.
Ronnie’s place was dark like the others. Not much of a place, but because of the slope down to the river it had that basement, with sliders around the back, unlike most of the places in the flats, the land being so goddamn wet. That was where Freedy went, around to the back: Ronnie wasn’t the type who’d remember to lock the sliders.
But he had. That Ronnie. The thing with sliders, though, Freedy thought, as he got his hand on the frame and bent his knees a little, the thing with sliders was Pop. Scrape. In he went. That Ronnie. Would he even remember Ronnie in a year or two? He tried to imagine himself sitting in his blue HQ, Agua Group, and remembering Ronnie, a Portagee with that hairy thing growing under his lower lip. No way.
Freedy avoided the bench press, a low shadow in the darkness, heard drip-dripping close by, went upstairs to the kitchen. The house was quiet, the only sound the fridge humming away. Hey! He was hungry. Freedy opened the fridge, found a tub of KFC, polished off a drumstick and a wing-bones and all when it came to the wing, just a small one.
Fueled up, he walked down the hall to Ronnie’s bedroom, laptop in hand. Door closed: he opened it, real silent, first turning the knob all the way. In the darkness, he could make out Ronnie’s head, a dark circle on the less dark rectangle of the pillow. The surprise was the second dark circle on the pillow next to Ronnie’s.
Freedy, gliding softly over to the side of the bed with that second sleeper, remembered the cigar smoker in the Santa Monica barnothing surprises me anymore- remembered that was supposed to be his attitude too. But still, he was only human. Careful, gentle, he got hold of a corner of the bedcovers, pulled them back, real slow.
A girl. Asleep on her side, facing Ronnie, and: her hand wrapped around his limp dick. A girl with a big butt, light enough to see that, a big butt that reminded him of Cheryl Ann. In a flash he figured it out. This was the
