“Cut it out,” said Norman.
“And there was this guy, too. A guy from work named Delvin.”
“Stan made you do a threesome?”
“No, he just watched. He sat there beside the bed and watched Delvin and me screwing. It was weird and sick, I guess. I just did it because he asked me to, because I was trying to make Stan happy. But I didn’t like it. And the more I think about it, the madder it makes me.”
“He just sat there and watched? What, like he was naked? Jerking off?”
“No, just there in his street clothes, watching.”
“Man, oh, man.”
“Stan has problems. Sexual dysfunctions.”
“Sure as hell sounds like it.”
“He can’t always get his thing hard. He could at first, but then it started wilting a lot. More and more as time went on.”
“Enough,” Norman said. “Both of you.”
“Stan’s a very bad man,” Jennifer said. “He studies crime day and night. He knows all about famous robberies and shoot-outs and court cases and all about the private lives of criminals. He’s very bad.”
“Book learning is what that sounds like,” Emma said.
“That’s bullshit, Jennifer. Books aren’t real life. Not even close. Until the guy’s wallowed around in muddy trenches with bullets whizzing over his head, he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. Till he’s pulled the trigger on another human being, seen the bullet blast away flesh and marrow, he’s just jerking himself off.”
“Stan knows things. He’s immersed himself in all kinds of evil shit.”
“But he didn’t come over to your house and try to rescue you, did he? We waited and he didn’t come. All that study, all that reading about crime, it didn’t give him the intestinal guts to come and save you even after you pled with him to come. He could hear your quivering voice on the phone, all frightened like you were, and he didn’t ride to your aid.”
“But he’s still bad,” Jennifer said. “He’s a very dangerous man.”
“Well, don’t you worry, pussy boots. Don’t worry about Stan. Me and Norman are badder. Much badder.”
The roach was on her right eyelid, antennae probing her long eyelashes.
“Emma?” Jennifer let go of a long sigh.
“Yes?”
“Thanks for not killing me.”
Emma gave the roach more slack as it climbed up the bridge of Jennifer’s nose and onto her forehead.
“You’re welcome, Jennifer. You’re very welcome.”
“Why’d you do it anyway? Why didn’t you just shoot me and walk away? You don’t need me. I’m just a burden.”
“I brought you along because you’re cute, Jen. ’Cause I like your smile.”
“No, I mean it. Why?”
“And because I needed somebody to talk to,” Emma said. “This guy, Norman Franks, in case you haven’t noticed, he doesn’t say much. He’s verbally constipated. Aren’t you, Norman? Plugged up, obstructed?”
Norman kept his eyes on his driving.
“A girl like me can manage only so long carrying on a one-sided conversation. And the fact is, Jen, you’re growing on me. These last eighteen hours, you’ve gotten cuter and cuter. I’m beginning to think you might be just the kind of special friend I need in this period of trepidation and disquietude.”
Jennifer considered that for a minute, the roach tracking up the part in her blond hair.
Then she reached over and found Emma’s hand and picked it up and gave it a warm squeeze.
“I really appreciate your not killing me. I’d do anything to thank you.”
Emma shot her a little wink.
“We don’t need men anyway. What’ve men ever done for us but cause us trouble? Am I right, Jen?”
“Trouble and more trouble,” Jen said. “Men are from Penis.”
“The hell with them,” Emma said. “Do we need their hairy, muscular help? No, we don’t. Do we need them watching over us, protecting us? Hell no. They could all turn into monks for all we care, huh, Jennifer?”
“Absolutely.”
Jennifer gave Emma’s hand another sly squeeze.
“I’m finished with them forever,” Jen said. “I feel better already.”
Norman pulled up to the gas pump and turned to Emma.
“Somebody’s following us.”
“What?”
“Over there, the Ford.”
A five-year-old Galaxy was at the pumps of a gas station across the road.
“Jesus Christ,” Jennifer said. “It’s him. That’s Stan.”
Norman opened the door and got out. He bent down to the open window. His head filled the whole space.
“Regular or high-test?”
TWENTY-THREE
Stan Rafferty pulled up to the full-service pumps at the Shell station across the road from the brightly lit Exxon plaza where the blue pool truck was gassing up.
He tapped on his horn, but nobody came out of the office. Red-and-green plastic flags rattled in the breeze. In the grass beside the building, there were half a dozen chickens pecking at the dirt where someone had sprinkled corn or seed or some shit. Probably a litter of pigs living in the rest room and a cow grazing back in the weedy shadows.
That’s the way it was in Florida. You got a mile outside of Miami, you might as well be in Fart Blossom, Georgia, or some little Alabama shithole. Every radio station for the last eighteen hours had been playing twangy you-done-me-wrong songs, or else some idiot preacher was throwing his thunderbolts out into the sinful darkness of radio land.
Stan backed the car up and ran over the air hose again, chiming the bell somewhere nearby. It took two more taps on his horn before a pale, red-haired three-hundred-pounder threw open the door of the fluorescent office and came lumbering over to Stan’s open window. Every step a seismic event.
The guy’s left cheek was bulging and a brown dribble showed in the corner of his mouth. Probably been inside the station all night gawking at the pinups in the new issue of Barnyard Monthly, Stan thought.
Stan took the last sip out of the quart of Colt 45 and dropped the bottle on the passenger floor. He’d drunk three quarts, had four more getting warm in the back seat. He’d bought them at the last gas stop. Painkillers for the damn ache in his leg. They were only halfway working.
The big redneck came up to Stan’s window, bent down to look him over, then said, “Don’t do no full service after seven P.M. Gotta pump it yourself.”
Stan looked at the dashboard digital clock.
“It’s only six-fifty.”
“’At’s not what my watch says. And my watch is what we go by around here.”
The big man was wearing a railroad cap and overalls and an orange T-shirt that was giving Stan an instant headache.
“Jesus Christ, man, I’ve got a broken leg,” Stan said, tapping on the white plaster. “I’m in a goddamn cast. Cut me a little slack, why don’t you?”
The big man stepped away from the window.
“Don’t be cussing me, mister. Rules is rules.”
The man started back to his office.
“Hey!” Stan yelled. “Hey, you porker. Look at me. Turn around, doofus, and look me in the fucking eye.”
With his back to Stan, the man halted, shot a thick dollop of tobacco juice into the weeds beside the pumps, and turned slowly. His mouth was set in a snarl, but when he saw the .38 pointing at him out the window, his face went slack.
“You know who I am, pig man?”
“Don’t reckon I do.”
“I’m Machine Gun Kelly is who I am. I’m Richard Loeb and Alferd Packer and Lee Harvey Oswald all rolled up in one. I’m Charles Starkweather and Frank Nitti and Joseph Michael Valachi.”
“You’re all those people, are you?”
“You bet your sweet ass I am. Them and more.”
“If you say so.”
“So fill it up, fat boy,” Stan said. “Regular unleaded.”
While the guy pumpe
d the gas, Stan kept one eye on him in the rearview mirror and the other eye on the blue pool truck across the highway. Jennifer and the dark girl had gotten out and gone off to the john together while the water buffalo who’d been driving the truck was filling the tank. Stan just got a glimpse of the two women together, but he didn’t like what he saw. Reading their body language, it didn’t look like Jennifer was a hostage at all. Way too friendly. A couple of girls out for a Sunday ride, kidding around, playful.
For close to six hundred miles now, Stan had been following them. Never saw anyone drive so slowly. A hundred times, he’d considered passing them by, speeding on ahead, getting to Seaside a few hours before they did. But things could go wrong with that. He could have car trouble. They could pass him, get there first. This way, at least he could keep them in sight, and maybe, if the opportunity arose, ambush them somewhere along the way.
He’d always hated that white Galaxy, but now he’d begun to appreciate the car because it was so damn bland, it was practically invisible. Even with no traffic to speak of for the last few hours, the three of them didn’t have a clue he was back there. Just another boxy white car.
“You’re full up,” the porker called.
Stan looked over at the pump, then pulled out his wallet and counted out seventeen dollars and held them out to the man, but the big guy eyed the money suspiciously and backed away.
“Take it,” Stan said. “This isn’t a fucking holdup.”
“It’s not?”
“No, you idiot. I just wanted full service. That’s all.”
“We don’t do no full service after seven P.M.,” the porker said.
“Yeah, so I heard.”
Stan waggled the money at the man until he leaned over and snatched it out of Stan’s grasp.
By then, the pool-service truck was pulling out of the Exxon plaza and cranking back up the highway.
“Before I go,” Stan said, and showed him the gun again, “I want you to swallow that plug.”
“Say what?”
“That chewing tobacco, swallow it.” Stan sighted on the man’s broad, smooth forehead. “The whole damn mess, gulp it right on down.”
Stan thumbed the hammer back.
“Shit,” the man said. “It’s too got-damn big to swallow.”
“No cussing. Just swallow it down, you oinker. The whole thing. Hurry up. I gotta go. Do it or I’ll shoot your measly pecker off.”
With his eyes on the gun, the porker craned his neck and took a quick breath, then choked down the wad.
“That stuff’ll kill you, boy, if you aren’t careful. Give you mouth cancer and kill you deader than a bullet through the heart.”
Stan uncocked the pistol, put the car in gear, and rolled onto the highway.
When he looked back, the porker was bent over the grass, vomiting, and a couple of the chickens were scurrying over to feed.
Stan kept the pickup’s taillights in sight as they cut north through the dark Florida night. Mile after mile spooling out in front of him. He left the radio off for a while. Went inside his head, snuffling around, looking for something to amuse himself with for the next few miles.
Long ago, he’d used up the five women he’d had sex with. Having trouble falling asleep or sitting in the dentist’s office, sick of reading magazines, a thousand times he’d gone over and over every single moment he could recall with those five females, every act, every part of their bodies he could still remember. Size and shape of their nipples, the coarseness of their pubic hair. Their smell, tightness. Everything.
Of course, it wasn’t much of a list. Subtract Jennifer and Alexandra, there were only those two cheerleaders back in the eleventh grade who’d given him a few blow jobs and spread their legs for a couple of listless fucks on the back seat of his yellow Dodge Dart.
And then there was his sister, Margie.
Just that once with her, and only because she’d wanted him to do it, so she’d know what it was like, to have the experience before she died. She was definitely going to die, everybody knew that. The doctors, their parents, everyone knew. And Margie told Stan she didn’t want to curl up in her grave without ever knowing the pleasures of a man inside her flesh.
Despite all Stan’s attempts at interesting his football buddies in Margie, none of them showed the least willingness. So finally, he agreed to it.
One night when their parents were at a party, he’d gone into her bedroom, switched off the lights, and slipped in beside her. He touched her small pink nipples; he sucked on them for a while, then showed her how to touch him. She’d been very eager to try everything he knew, which wasn’t a hell of a lot. But when he rolled off her and lay on the sheets beside her, she began to weep. She sobbed and sobbed and wouldn’t stop no matter what he said or did.
He dressed and left the room, made himself a sandwich and ate it, had some milk, watched a few minutes of TV, and when he went back, she was still crying. So he hit her. Not hard. A slap on the face to wake her. ’Cause he’d seen it in a movie, a man breaking through the hysteria of his girlfriend. Just a slap.
It worked. Margie stopped bawling and looked at Stan.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have done it. It’s unnatural.”
“That’s not why I’m crying, Stan.”
“It’s not?”
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“Is it because you’re going to die and you’re not going to be able to enjoy sex anymore?”
“That’s not it, either,” she said.
“No?”
“I’m crying because my first and only sexual experience was with someone so incredibly clumsy.”
Stan just stood there and looked at his sister. He stared at her withered legs, her frail naked body on the sheets. All these years later, he could still picture the moment perfectly, remember exactly how he felt. The room turned to white fire. He heard pops behind his eyes, little crackling explosions, as if his brain were disintegrating.
Stan wanted to murder her right then, right there. He wanted to put his hands around her throat and break everything his fingers could find. All the little bones, vessels, and veins. He wanted to squeeze the breath from her, watch her eyes roll back.
That was the moment he first knew he had an evil heart. When he understood that reading about crime was more than a hobby. He’d been drawn to it because he was inherently corrupt. Crime was his true religion. It was what he had instead of praying to God and singing hymns. Reading about all those twisted perverts from the past, the gunslingers and bootleggers and kidnappers, was for Stan as inspirational as a normal person reading about saints and holy men.
That night, staring down at his sneering sister, he’d realized with sudden and absolute knowledge that there was no crime, no sin under the sun he wasn’t willing to commit.
“He still back there?” Emma asked.
“Yeah,” said Norman. “Still there.”
“Has he been back there the whole time?”
“Yeah.”
“Ever since Miami? Eighteen hours he’s been back there?”
“That’s right.”
“Jesus, Norman, and you just now got around to mentioning it.”
Emma stared out her window at the dark, boring landscape. Pine forests and scrubland.
“Well, hell, Jennifer, I guess your boyfriend must like you after all. At least he likes you enough to tag along for six hundred miles anyway. Or maybe he wants to kill you. Keep you from turning him in, testifying against him. Maybe it’s not love at all.”
“Why don’t you try to shake him, Emma? It wouldn’t be that hard.”
“What kind of car is that he’s driving?”
“A Ford.”
“Does it have air conditioning?”
Jennifer said yes, it had air.
“Well, goddamn. You mean to tell me while we’ve been suffering up here in the heat, eighteen goddamn hours, and he’s back there with cold air blowing in his face
? Doesn’t that make you mad, Jennifer? The selfishness of it? The stark injustice?”
“I guess so.”
“Well, it should. It makes me mad. And I’m sure it makes Norman mad. Doesn’t it, Norman? You’re angry at how selfish old lover boy is being, aren’t you?”
“Whatever you say, Emma.”
Jennifer was quiet for a mile or two; then she reached over in the dark and found Emma’s hand and gave it another secret squeeze.
“You like my hair, Emma? The cut, I mean? It’s new. I did it special for Stan. We were going to Santa Fe or Taos, one of those places, and buy an adobe hut, live close to the land, in harmony with nature and the universal cycles. So I told Sheri, my hairdresser, what the hell, she should just cut off a whole bunch, give me a fresh look for our new start in life. And then Stan, he looked at me and didn’t even notice. He didn’t say a kind word about it or anything.”
“Men,” Emma said.
“Yeah,” said Jennifer. “If they didn’t have penises, they wouldn’t know their fronts from their backs.”
Emma chuckled.
“Hey, Norman. This girl’s funny. And smart, too. Don’t you think?”
Norman stared out at the dark highway and said nothing.
“Pull over, Norman. Right here, pull onto the shoulder and turn off your lights. Let’s see what lover boy does.”
Norman slowed the truck and wheeled them onto the shoulder.
Emma swiveled around and stared back into the dark. The white Ford was fifty yards back, parked along the shoulder with its lights off.
“Come on, Jennifer. Get out.”
“What?”
“We’re going back and say hi to lover boy. See how tough he really is.”
Stan didn’t see them coming till they appeared out of the gloom ten feet in front of the Galaxy.
“Holy shit!”
He switched on the headlights, punched the brights, but they didn’t even flinch, just kept walking. A small blond woman with whitish eyes and Jennifer, walking with that sexy sway she had. Both of them carrying automatic weapons.
Stan lunged for Lawton’s .38 on the passenger seat, but he knocked the fucking thing on the floorboard and had to unlock himself from his seat belt before he could squirm over and get it.
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