Nausea

by Kurtz, Ed

  “Stop calling me that. And stop whatever it is you think you’re doing. It’s fucked up and I don’t care why you’re doing it, just stop. Next time I find out you’ve put me on a job, you’ll be next on the list. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  The girl pushed herself up to a sitting position and smiled up at him.

  “You mean you’ll kill me, Harry?”

  “I don’t make threats.”

  “And how would you do it? Like you did Nathan? The wire around my throat, crushing my larynx, strangling me to death? Is that it, Harry?”

  Nick took a step back.

  He stared into her eyes, wide and almost shimmering. Her chest heaved with short, heavy breaths. He noticed her nipples were erect, the dark skin around them shriveled and straining outward. The chick was aroused, he decided.

  She was crazy.

  As a shithouse rat.

  And Nick was getting harder than a brick bat.

  Lorraine hooked her thumb in her waistband.

  Nick said, “Don’t.”

  “Kill me, Harry,” she mewled, tugging the sweats down over one hip. “Fuck me and see if you can do it. If you can kill a woman freshly screwed.”

  “Arrange another killing and I won’t have to fuck you, girly. I’ll crush your throat with my bare hands.”

  “That would only make me come so much harder, Harry,” she said.

  Nick groaned, shook his head. He went toward the back hall, stepping over her. Lorraine reached up and gently placed her hand on his crotch, slowly closing her fingers around the shape of him.

  Nick stopped.

  “Some weapon you’ve got there, killer,” she said.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to picture Nathan Cole’s cold blue face. Todd and Brent, dead together on their kitchen floor. But all he could see was the same thing he saw with his eyes wide open—a pretty woman, half-naked beneath him and well on her way to making the other half match. A probable psychotic, or something damned close, who found out she got off to all the killing and death that someone like Nick left in his wake. She wanted to pull those strings, be the power behind his power, the power over life and death. Maybe, he considered, she was playing God. Bumping off anyone and everyone she could think of because her need finally broke her mind. Whatever. Whyever. He asked himself the same question he’d been asking for as long as he’d been doing what he did: was there a such thing as a bad job? Or did a killer do what he was paid to do, whatever the client’s reason?

  Never ask why. That was always the answer.

  Never again.

  “What in the blue fuck is wrong with you, lady?”

  He remained stock-still. Grew in her grasp. Opened his eyes.

  Lorraine said, “Why don’t you come down here and find out?”

  * * *

  “I ought to be in the pen, too,” Hart said.

  “Shut up and drive.”

  “I deserve worse than that, even.”

  “I said stop it, Hart.”

  “I guess she does, too. Sylvia, I mean. My wife. It was her thing, that nightmare. But for Christ’s sake, I’m a grown man, aren’t I? I could have stopped it. I should have stopped it. I guess I figured she was the one with the training, the framed degrees on the fucking wall. She knew what she was doing, right?”

  “Turn left on McNeely.”

  The guy was starting to tear up, gently turning the wheel to go where Nick told him. For his part, Nick endeavored only to stay on task, and to get it done as quickly and painlessly as possible.

  He said, “There aren’t any more street signs after this. New development.”

  “All right.”

  “Just keep going straight all the way to the end. Then I’ll tell you what next.”

  “All right.”

  A few of the prefab houses right on the turnoff to McNeely were inhabited and lit up, but farther down they all had FOR SALE signs out front before they turned into bare wooden skeletons with dirt hills for yards and construction equipment scattered pell-mell. At the cul-de-sac that dead-ended McNeely a half circle of bulldozers obscured the wilderness beyond, soon to be flattened and developed, too.

  Hart slowed to a stop, the big, dusty back tire of a bulldozer illuminated by his headlights. A pair of yellow-green eyes glowed in the light, a hundred feet or so out, before darting off and vanishing.

  “See that coyote?” Hart asked.

  “We’ll stop here. Kill the engine.”

  “Guess they just keep getting pushed farther and farther out.”

  “Shut up and get out.”

  Chastised, Hart raised his brow and opened the door. Nick tapped him on the shoulder and held out his palm. Hart deposited the keys in them.

  “Let me ask you something,” he said, rounding the front of the car.

  Nick met him there and said, “No. I told you to be quiet.”

  “Look, kid—you’re here to kill me. We’re both on the same page with that. So you can’t exactly scare me at this point, okay?”

  Mulling that over, Nick patted himself down until he found his smokes, extracted one and lighted it. He smoked in silence, standing in the yellow light of the car’s headlamps, for several long minutes, taking in the cool night air and listening to the animals howling and yelping in the far distance. Somewhere in the back of his brain, “Love Hurts” still played, and it sounded like it was playing in a metal tunnel, a thousand yards away.

  “What is it, then?” he asked at length. “For Christ’s sake, I don’t like this any more than you do. I swear to fuck I don’t. They got my balls in a vise, Hart. I fucked up, and now you have to pay for it. I could let you run right out there, out into the desert, whatever—but you know what? They’d kill me and they’d still fucking kill you. Do you get that, man? Do you understand this is the lesser of two evils, in a way? You get it either way is what I’m telling you. You don’t get to live, and that’s not up to me. Goddamnit, that’s not up to me.”

  Hart relaxed his shoulders and leaned up against the hood.

  “What’d you do?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Hey, if you’re the guy has to do it, and I want to know why, that makes it my business.”

  “You don’t get to decide that.”

  “Sure,” Hart said. “You’re the one with the gun.”

  Nick snorted.

  “I’ve never touched a gun in my whole damn life.”

  “Which is, what? Twenty-one, twenty-two years?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “I’m good at that. Ought to have worked in a carnival.”

  “Good for you.”

  Hart scratched his beard and took the specs off his face to clean them with the hem of his shirt.

  “What’s your handle anyway, kid?” he asked.

  “We’re not going to be friends.”

  “You’re about to do something I’d consider more intimate than anything I ever did with my wife. I’ve been with a dozen women over the course of my years, but what you’re going to do? You only get that experience the once. You’ll be my first and only, my man. Love of my death.”

  “Oh, fuck off.”

  “Tell me your name.”

  “You’re trashed.”

  “Maybe I am. I’d still like to know the name of the last human being I’ll ever see or talk to.”

  “It’s Hieronymus.”

  “As in Bosch? The painter?”

  “If you like.”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  “Let’s take a walk, Hart.”

  Nick pointed past the bulldozers, into the empty night. Hart squinted at the darkness and pushed his glasses back onto his face.

  “Going to let the coyotes get me?”

  “What the hell do you care? You’ll be dead.”

  “Fair point, kid. Go back to nature, and like that. I’ve always recycled. Sure, why not?”

  “Come on, then.”

  “With no gun?”

  “Peop
le got killed before guns. Come on.”

  “You always know the right things to say, Hieronymus.”

  Hart winked. Nick gave him a shove toward the gap between dozers.

  * * *

  While she gripped the edge of the counter with whitening fingers, Nick pushed into her from behind and vaguely wondered if the house even belonged to her. Maybe, he considered without losing the rhythm, it was Cole’s. Maybe that’s why she was holding on to the body in the bedroom. And maybe that was what she was thinking about now, groaning low with her eyes gently shut, that a man Nick murdered was moldering back there, down the hall, while the killer himself fucked her, almost helplessly.

  He didn’t quite register the fact that his hands had moved up to her neck until he tightened his grasp, feeling the fragile contours of her throat laid bare to his power. It was only as much power as she’d granted him, and he knew that. But still, it felt tremendous.

  “Do it,” Lorraine suddenly squeaked. Nick kept on as he had been. “Do it. Kill for me, Nick.”

  “Shit, yes,” he grunted, surprised to hear his own words. His mind was too hazy to parse them. His grip tightened still more, his hips pumping faster, like a freshly greased and gassed machine.

  His spine went rigid and he pushed in, held himself there, trembling and feeling the sweat that had beaded his brow spill down his face in salty rivulets.

  “Kill them, Nick,” Lorraine purred. “Kill them all.”

  Climaxing, he let his body fall onto hers, collapsing her against the sharp corner of the counter and pressing down with most of his weight. She was crying by then, spasming all over as he strained to catch his breath, though when he moved to look at her, he saw that she was, in fact, laughing.

  “What’s so damn funny?” he asked, shuffling back a few paces, his feet restrained by the trousers at his ankles.

  “You tell me, Harry,” she said, straightening up. She made no move for the top and sweats piled on the floor beside her.

  “Oh,” said Nick, his eyes drifting down to her pale pink toenails. “Oh, fuck.”

  “Whoopsie,” said Lorraine, smiling sweetly.

  * * *

  “It’s really not such a bad trade,” Hart said, stepping carefully as the streetlights receded behind them. “As far as this sort of thing goes, anyway. Listen, I deserve this. I really do. Whether you know the details or not, I don’t want you to lose any sleep over this, kid.”

  “Quit calling me kid.”

  “I’m not calling you Hieronymus.”

  “Fine, then. Fuck it. Call me Nick.”

  “That one real this time?”

  Nick didn’t answer. He just narrowed his eyes and tried to let the meager moonlight guide his way.

  Somewhere, not too far ahead, there was a deep ravine Nick recalled from long-ago days, pedaling dirt bikes and hiding out where he could smoke cigarettes and choke down his father’s cheap supermarket gin. Days when he was just learning to hustle. Days when he’d never have dreamed of doing anything like what he was about to do.

  “Are we there yet?” Hart said.

  Nick didn’t answer.

  * * *

  “What happened to Harry?” he asked, fastening his belt and keeping a close, unblinking eye on the smirking girl.

  “Doesn’t suit you,” she said.

  Nick frowned. He felt tired, more than just post-orgasm tired. A foggy-headed sort of tired he had to fight tooth and claw. He inhaled deeply, longed for a smoke. His pack was back in the Benz.

  “What do you know?” he asked.

  Her smirk broadened into a toothy grin. She arched her back, nude and catlike, before padding lightly on the balls of her bare feet, around the counter to the fridge.

  “Something to drink?” she chirped, pulling out a jug of iced tea. “It’s not sweet, but there’s sugar, sugar.”

  “I don’t want a drink, lady. I want to know what the hell is going on.”

  “It’s lady, now? I’d have thought we’d be less formal after you fucked me, not more.”

  She stood up on her toes and reached high for a glass in the cupboard.

  “Why’d you have Cole taken out? Why Todd and…”

  “Brent,” Lorraine said, pouring the tea. “Todd and Brent. Fucking adorable couple.”

  “Adorable.”

  “You’d have sworn they’d been together a hundred years. I mean, perfect for each other, you know? Just perfect.”

  She tipped the glass to her lips and drank greedily, chugging down half the contents. Nick stared.

  “They’re dead, Lorraine. Both of them. I killed them because you made a call.”

  “Yeah,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I know. Christ, I was thirsty.”

  “Friends of yours?”

  “They were,” she said, nodding.

  “And Cole?”

  “Guy I fucked sometimes.”

  “This your place?” he asked, glancing around. For the first time he registered how antiseptic everything looked, how awkwardly minimal. Like a catalogue home, or a showroom. Even the cookware stacked behind her looked unused, fresh from some warehouse or discount megastore.

  “More or less,” said Lorraine. “I live here.”

  “It’s not cheap. I’m low-end, all things considered. But you still got to shell out a pile, you want somebody gone. Much less a passel of 'em.”

  “Ha,” she grunted. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  She killed off the tea and walked—half dancing—back round to where Nick stood, surveying her like a piece of challenging abstract art. He sidestepped, avoiding her path. A little closer to the hallway leading to the bedroom. A faint, raw odor caught his nostrils. Coppery, but also rotten-sweet. Hanging stagnant just underneath the tangy smell of sex that lingered in the kitchen air. He knew what it was. He started breathing through his mouth.

  “How’d you know my name?” he asked, moving away again, feeling for the garrote in his pocket.

  “Good guesser?”

  She winked. Nick squinted one eye and bunched his mouth into a grimace.

  “You don’t like to be teased, do you, Nick?” She waggled a finger at him and pronounced his name like a curse word.

  “I don’t like complications,” he said.

  Lorraine giggled. She licked her teeth, watching his hand in the pocket, knowing what was there.

  I’m a sociopath, Nick thought, clearly and with direct intent for the first time in a long time. This one’s a psychotic. Peas in a pod, but different.

  “I’m not done yet, you know,” she taunted him.

  “Yes,” he said, “you are.”

  His hand came free again, the wire coiled in his fist.

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  “I don’t need your help,” he said, taking one end in his free hands and stretching the wire until it was nearly taut. The kitchen light cast a dull glare on the well-used metal. Lorraine seemed hypnotized by it. Almost charmed.

  “Why do you get sick?” she said quietly. “Why do you vomit, Nick?”

  Nick froze momentarily.

  Sociopath, he thought again. Recalling the first time the term was applied to him. He’d seen checklists, in library books and, later, online. It fit. Someone like him, he’d have to be. An old new wave song he used to like—Oingo Boingo, was it?—sprung to mind all the time. No emotion, no emotion. Only part he could ever remember.

  “Be quiet,” he said.

  “Did you always?” she went on, unfazed. “Was it always so hard for you? I can’t believe that. You’d have stopped. This is new.”

  “It never turned me on,” he said. “I’ll tell you that much.”

  “I can’t imagine how it couldn’t. Tell me, Nick—can you feel the life go out of them? I mean, like, in a spiritual sense? Not just that they stop flopping around or whatever, but, I dunno—their souls, maybe?”

  “There’s no souls.”

  “I think I’d feel something. An essence.”
<
br />   “Then why don’t you go bump somebody off instead of paying somebody else to do it?”

  “I will when you teach me how.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “I saw this thing on TV once,” Lorraine said, spinning on her heel and gliding back into the living room, “they were talking about this tribe in South America. They’d actually eat their own dead, but they also ate people they killed in battle. What’s interesting about it is the different reasons, because it was a totally different thing if whoever they were eating was part of the group or an enemy.”

  Nick loosened his grasp on the garrote and followed her, keeping her in his line of sight.

  “If it was a fellow tribesman,” she went on, “there was a ceremony, and the immediate family wouldn’t do it, but the rest of the tribe would eat parts of the body to keep the dead person in the tribe, in their little circle, y’know? Otherwise they might have to wander the rainforest alone, but this way they could stay inside, and also strengthen whoever ate from the corpse.”

  “Lovely,” Nick said, sneering.

  “But,” Lorraine continued, “an enemy was a different story.”

  She raised her arms above her head, stretching so that her breasts rose several inches and her ribs showed through her skin.

  “Whoever actually killed an enemy wasn’t allowed to eat them. Most everybody else could—not kids, but most everybody else.”

  A small but perceptible shudder worked its way from the small of Nick’s back to the base of his neck. For a moment he thought he could still smell the corpse in the back room, and he fought against his mind to keep from seeing images of chunks taken out of Nathan Cole, man steaks to suit a psychotic girl’s grim appetites.

  His guts roiled. He was well past blaming anything else. It was already making him sick, but this…

  This was beyond the pale.

  “You’re sick,” he spat. He drew nearer to her.

  “You got to let me finish, Nick. I’m getting to a point here, jack.”