Dead Man's Hand

by Otto Penzler

  "Let's go." Daphne blew out two tapers and lifted the last one from the table, cupping the flame as she ushered Sharon and Piper out of the club room down the steps to the boat bays where drying varnish filled the air, then down a hall reeking with fresh paint.

  A flip of the light switch, and they saw the locker room with its sinks and toilets and back wall of shower stalls. She squeezed the flame from its wick before opening one of the stalls and leaning on the door.

  The stench made Sharon wince and shield her nose.

  Christina was slumped on the tiles in front of the toilet, all of that sparkling-champagne hair now dulled and matted with puked-up bits of salad and bile spattered down to her stomach. Her skirt rode up on her thighs, but for once it wasn't sexy. One of her flip-flops lay two feet away. It was hard to see if Christina's eyes were open, but Daphne was pretty sure they weren't because any conscious girl would have gotten up and left by now. The putrid fumes would have driven her off. Cornell's ring gleamed from her middle finger, a brass oval with a C in the middle. Cornell had been Sharon's boyfriend before Christina came to their school and stole him.

  Daphne poked Sharon in the belly. "Take the ring back." A few months ago, Sharon had loved the ring as she had loved Cornell. "You deserve it."

  "I can't," Sharon said, eyes wide. She took the gum out of her mouth and rolled it between her fingers. "I feel bad. I thought she just passed out. You said that, right, Piper? But Christina looks almost ... dead."

  True. Christina's skin did have a whale-belly sheen, bloated and metallic, which was odd since she'd always been the best looking at school, making all the girls jealous. In fact, she was too pretty, the cold kind of pretty guys want to take and girls want to eliminate. "What do you care? You wanted her to be punished for what she did." Daphne looked at her brother and shrugged. "That was the point of our game. Your problem with Christina is why we made her break in here in the first place, and if you say anything, we'll tell them you're to blame. You're the one who hated Christina. Everyone knows that."

  Sharon's forehead puckered as she stretched out her chewing gum and snapped it apart. "Are you sure she's okay?"

  Glaring, Daphne said, "Sure, I'm sure." Sharon had paid way too much for her hairdo. It looked more like hairballs than coiffure, but it wouldn't have helped to tell her. Sharon would always be a loser and there was no makeover for that. She decided to stay out of Sharon's hair.

  Piper ran his hand back and forth over his buzzed Mohawk. "Cornell won't want the skank if someone finds her half-naked on the library steps. Let's take her and leave her in her underwear. She'll never want to come back to this school. That's for sure." Piper chuckled. "We can pin a note on her jacket that says, Do Me."

  "Very poetic." Daphne said. "Okay. What do we do with the Grand Prize, then?"

  "She smells so bad." Sharon put her hand over her mouth. "I don't know."

  "You're supposed to be happy about this, Sharon. That's why we did this for you. Christina is your prize now. Maybe you need another shot. Hair of the dog to break up the bad taste?" Daphne groped for Sharon's and Piper's hands. "Shall we chant first? Blood on the moon, blood on the moon."

  "Stop." Sharon jerked away, bent down and put her ear to Christina's nostrils. "Is she even breathing?"

  "She was breathing fine before." Piper looked at Daphne and got down on his haunches so his shorts rose over his knees. Wrestling and sculling had chiseled his quads, but he looked more like a burglar than a jock, and the image was not a good choice since he'd been arrested for breaking and entering through the school nurse's bedroom window. "Want me to slap her? There's no way I'm giving her mouth-to-mouth."

  The color of Christina's hair reminded Daphne of the amber that ancient Greeks rubbed to generate electricity. If only they could find a defibrillator, they could jolt her back to life.

  "I don't like this, you guys." Sharon stood. "Someone should check her pulse."

  Daphne spotted a pair of polka-dotted panties by the toilet in the next stall that had to be Christina's. Kneeling in front of them, she tried to block Sharon's view and sneak them out of the bathroom before anyone else noticed, because if Sharon saw, she'd probably want to tell Cornell or something. Piper could go to jail. They could all go to jail.

  Her brother bent to grab Christina's wrist, feel for the pulse in her veins.

  "Don't touch." Daphne blocked his arm with her foot. "You didn't touch her skin, did you?" She was grinding her teeth again. Her temples ached from her churning jaws.

  Her brother smiled with his eyes just like he had when they were kids and he'd lie, lie, lie to their nanny. He crossed his arms and said, "I didn't touch her."

  "You're such an idiot." Of course he had touched her. He'd taken off her panties! Daphne shook her head. "We have to change the whole game because of this. They can get prints off the skin."

  "I saw that on TV." Sharon sat on her haunches next to Daphne and looked at the blonde. "I think they use superglue." She pulled a mobile phone out of her purse. "I'll call for help. Maybe 911 can pump her stomach or something."

  Daphne snapped. "Put that goddamn thing away."

  "We can go to the pay phone if you're scared."

  "And tell them what?" Piper snorted. "We hazed her? You're crazy. They'll lock us up."

  Daphne took a brown paper towel from the dispenser and wiped Sharon's prints off the faucet. "We put muscle relaxants in her tequila. Do you want to spend the rest of your life watching your back in prison?"

  Sharon shook her head. "We can tell them she agreed to take the pills. We had too much to drink and she passed out in here, and that's when we called 911. She drank too much and took drugs. They can save her." She opened her phone. "Okay?"

  Daphne shook her head and held up the panties. "That would have worked if Piper hadn't spoiled everything." She glared at her brother. "Will they find DNA?"

  Sharon's face puckered. Her wiry locks shot in the air like antennae groping for signals, a sea anemone in shock therapy.

  "No." Piper took a step back. "I used a condom."

  Daphne scoffed. "What the hell were you thinking? If she wakes up now, shell tell for sure." She watched Christina's chest for movement, but it didn't rise or fall. No telling how long she'd been like that. They were in big trouble now.

  She pictured the police at the headmaster's office. Would they charge manslaughter or murder? Definitely rape—premeditated rape because Piper had slipped a Mickey into her booze at the beginning of the card game. They all had histories of violence and delinquency.

  Burdened with the onslaught of unwanted responsibility, Daphne pushed herself up from the floor and began to plan the next move. She turned to her brother. "Pick her up. She's not breathing."

  Sharon objected quickly. "No way! You're not supposed to move someone like that."

  Daphne didn't want to hurt her, but it would have felt good to bop Sharon in the head. "Listen, Sharon. Pull it together. Take a deep breath."

  "What if you killed her with those pills?"

  Daphne shook her head. "That's not what happened." Sophomores could be so dumb. "You're the one responsible here."

  Squeezing her fists into white knuckles Sharon said, "This is your fault, Daphne. You set all of this up. You're the Mistress of Poker and Shooter. It was your dumb game that got us into trouble."

  The fire of betrayal stung Daphne's cheeks as she glared. "Who do you think you are? You're new to this school, and you're just a sophomore." Daphne was the one who used people, not the other way around. She had rigged it all for Sharon with the trick card deck in order to gain power at school; but now, with Christina dead, Daphne had to revise the game. It was hers to play and preserve now that she acted as Mistress. Daphne held Sharon's gaze. "Remember the oath you took in blood?"

  Sharon looked away. Her pistachio eyes flicked around the space: at the ceiling, then the floor, anywhere it seemed but into Daphne's eyes. Finally, she fixed her eyes on the ring that gleamed on Christina's finger. "Do what's
best for the Circle? Restore harmony through the game?"

  Daphne looked at her brother. "Should we tell her?"

  "The first oath." Piper frowned. "You don't remember the blood vow?"

  Sharon opened her hand and answered. "Not a word outside the Circle." For a moment, she stared at the circle they'd inscribed in her palm to draw blood for the oath.

  "What you hear in the Circle, what you see in the Circle, must always stay in the Circle. To break the rules is to break the Circle and risk being silenced." The idiot had to be told again and again. "You're linked to us now. Forever."

  "Like Knights of the Round Table," added Piper. "Break the vow and you're cursed."

  Sharon said, "This is different. This is real."

  They weren't getting through. Daphne fought an impulse to kick Sharon in the stomach. She stabbed a finger into Sharon's chest. "Remember, this is all because of you, Sharon."

  Sharon's tears splashed on the tile as she crumpled and sobbed, her stomach jiggling over her jeans so that the fat smothered the gem in her navel. Not only did she need a brain transplant, but she could have used lipo, too. Extreme makeover. All the way. "How old are you? Sixteen?"

  Looking up briefly, Sharon sobbed and sniffed. "Yeah."

  Maybe she was retarded.

  She was worse than pathetic. Sharon's hysteria brought out something abysmal in Daphne, and though she knew it was wrong to want to kick the initiate in the face as she lay crying at her feet, Sharon's weakness catalyzed the predator in Daphne. It filled her with energy, and she liked the power of it.

  In the long rectangular mirror, Daphne caught a glimpse of herself: a scary banshee with ratty burgundy hair and bloodshot eyes. Normally she looked like the princess in the Star Wars movies, but she had drunk off her lipstick and the eyeliner had smeared around her sockets. She was turning into Sharon, for God's sake. Quickly, she splashed water on her face and wiped the smudges away with toilet paper.

  "Ugh!" Piper heaved Christina's body like fresh-killed game across his shoulders: ankles to one side, wrists dangling on the other.

  Daphne threw the tissue into the toilet and flushed. "Down to Sharon's boat." Daphne nodded and scanned the bathroom for evidence. "Can you manage the steps?"

  "Yeah. She's light as a feather."

  "Good." Daphne wiped the sink with pink dispenser soap, then the toilet and the doors. "Check outside, Sharon."

  Sharon hugged herself and rocked back and forth on the floor. "It's all my fault. I just wanted Cornell so much."

  "I know. Go to the door and look outside. Make sure no one's coming." No response. Sharon didn't even move. Daphne thought she and Piper couldn't have been that dumb as sophomores. There was no way everyone was created equal. Sharon was getting on Daphne's last nerve. "What is wrong with you? Do you want to go to jail? Get up and move!"

  Finally Daphne sighed. "All right. Don't get up. I'll check outside myself." She walked to the window and peeked out the blinds. Every second that drew closer to dawn upped the ante of getting caught. Across the lawn near the woods by the headmaster's cottage, an owl hooted, but the lights were still out. The mist was the only thing moving on campus. At the foot of the cliffs in the labyrinth, the fog had broken into phantoms that meandered through the boxwood as darkness fled. "Okay." Daphne looked down at Sharon. "Let's go."

  Piper led the girls out of the bathroom and down a hall, past a phalanx of trophies, novelties, and awards, where Daphne's father smiled from a glossy 8 x 10. Once captain of the sculling team, their father had donated the boathouse to the school. Seeing his face unhinged Daphne, opening a door to the past that she had long trussed shut. She could almost feel those damn veneers popping off.

  "Bet he'd return our calls if he could see us now, Daf." Piper chuckled.

  "Why now? To say he's proud of how we picked up his amazing poker skills?" She spat at his glazed eyes. "No way he'd bail us out of jail. He never even loved us."

  Piper sighed. "He's a fraud. Forget the jerk," he said. "We're in control. It's our turn to change the world." Their childhood days were definitely over.

  Daphne nodded and followed him back to the lobby and the poker table, where she stopped to stuff the candles into her backpack with the shot glasses and the ashtray. After she downed the last of the tequila, she put the empty bottle in with the clinking shot glasses.

  Suddenly, she couldn't breathe in all that darkness. Her knees felt like Silly Putty. Above, the blackness seemed to shift and the beams stretched like guillotines, four deep, about to fall on her neck.

  The next thing she saw was Piper looking down, shaking her shoulders. "What was that? I think you fainted."

  She tried to focus. "I'm okay."

  Piper smiled and offered his hand. "'0 the cunning wiles that creep / In thy little heart asleep!'"

  Taking his hand, Daphne finished the stanza: "'When thy little heart doth wake, / Then the dreadful night shall break.' William Blake." Dusting her skirt with her hands, she said, "Pick her up. Time to blow this rat hole."

  Under a thin film of dusk, the three climbed down the boathouse stairs to the dock to untie Sharon's boat. Piper went first, taking the stairs one by one with Christina's body slung over his shoulder, an ankle in his grip as he breathed what looked like smoke. The stench of Christina's hair stained the air but the chill revitalized them as it blew off the water.

  At the end of the dock where Sharon's boat waited, Piper stopped and sighed.

  When he dropped his burden, the body landed in the boat with a thud, rocking it, making circles in the water that slapped back again and again.

  On the surface of the river, the moon sparked in zigzags that looked like a polygraph test or maybe a heart monitor in ICU. A fish flew out of the water in a flash of silver light.

  Without a word, Sharon untied the knot and tossed in the rope. Staring at the coil, she followed Piper, grabbing the side of the boat for balance until she took the seat across from him.

  Daphne stepped in last, lifting her skirt to avoid the corpse. She couldn't stop looking at it, all that hair moving in a Cuervo-colored puddle. Christina's half-open lids made her seem like a ghost, beckoning from the underworld, as if she could be revived. Arms crossed, Daphne braced herself against the lonesome chill. They had each taken blood vows to one another, but she'd never felt so alone. "Don't start the engine," she whispered. Her temples felt like skinless nerves. She realized her palms were sweating. "Too noisy." The words played again in her skull, taking on lives of their own.

  Sharon looked terrified. "What if someone comes?" She pushed off, dipping the boat to the side so that wavelets slapped back. The puddle in the boat curled Christina's hair around Daphne's toe. "Do you two have a plan?"

  "Yeah." Piper grabbed the oar and plunged it, leaning toward the water as he stroked to propel them upriver. The air felt cooler as they moved into it. "Where to, Daf?"

  Intuitively, she knew. Something primal had ignited in her soul, a sixth sense, and she projected herself up to look down on the boat as if she were in some higher realm, a realm of all-knowing where she could see the shimmer of fish swimming by, the currents in the water, and the people in the village waking in their beds. "We'll lodge her body up the river by the Appalachian Trail mouth. Under the tree in the water."

  When they arrived at the trailhead, Piper put the oar in the boat. He dug a Zippo lighter out of his jeans, cupped the flame around a cigarette, and sucked before spewing smoke into the stench of alcohol-drenched vomit. With the cigarette hanging from his lips, he reached down and lifted the corpse with one hand, but the head slipped and smacked against the side of the boat.

  Christina seemed to be watching through her lashes.

  "Jesus!" Sharon whispered with force. "What are you doing?"

  He shrugged and fumbled with the body again and finally, when he flipped it over the side, both girls flinched. Needles of icy water splashed up as Christina's head dipped under the surface.

  Piper put a leg over and eased himsel
f down, grimacing. The girls stared at the patient, rising corpse.

  The eyelids had fully opened, revealing lichen green irises like the stained rose borders of the campus chapel doors. Why hadn't her parents baptized her? Then she would have been forgiven.

  "We're going to hell for this," Sharon said. "We could at least tell someone she drowned so they'll give her the proper burial."

  Daphne grimaced. "It's too late."

  Sharon opened her mouth and closed it, staring at the ripples of water by the boat.

  Chest deep, Piper grabbed Christina's ankle. "Don't freak out. The animals and the water will take care of my prints." He waded the body through the river to the massive trunk that had been split by lightning and sunk years ago, then lodged the corpse underwater.

  Daphne lit a cigarette, gave it to Sharon and lit another for herself to smoke while she watched her brother wade to shore and back, anchoring the body with stones. Puffing while they waited, they exhaled rings that bloomed into halos that floated up to heaven. Daphne prayed there was no God.

  When her brother finally came back, he splashed his sister and quoted Edgar Allan Poe: '"Resignedly beneath the sky / The melancholy waters lie.'" The boat rocked as he climbed in and, like a dog, shook off spray.

  "Watch it!" Sharon flicked her cigarette at his arm and watched it bounce off his bicep to the river.

  Piper scooped fistfuls of water and splashed her in the face.

  "Asshole." Sharon wiped her cheeks with her shirt hem. "It's getting light, you guys. I have to be back before my mom wakes up. What time is it?"

  "'Had we but world enough, and time.'" Piper looked at his diving watch. '"This coyness, Lady, were no crime.' Andrew Marvell."

  Daphne rolled her eyes. Her head throbbed and burned. "It's almost five. Row the boat to Sharon's house, Piper. We'll walk back after we drop her off."