She had the bed set up in her bedroom, the old bed stored away. She had a collection of long silk scarves. She had the box of Warfarin that she shook each night, as if it were a tambourine keeping time to the music in her head. She had cupped her hand and poured about a fourth of a cup of the poison into a tall glass of whiskey. It dissolved in a day, turning the alcohol slightly cloudy. She poured a small amount into a bowl and set it outdoors, behind the mansion. In two days she found three birds and a mangy old dog dead near the bowl. Blood had dripped from their eye sockets and from the muzzle and ears of the dog. She buried the animals quickly before Charlene saw them. God, she hadn't meant to kill a dog. She felt awful for days afterward.
Charlene spent more time indoors lately, petting and babying the black kitten. She named it Blackie, the sort of name a kid would choose. She carried it for a while in the pocket of her old gray sweater. She let it sleep with her. She had found something to devote herself to besides the housework and cooking for Shadow.
The man told her he was “connected,” and he said it in that proud voice people use when speaking of being a member of a respected organization. She didn't care and wasn't impressed. He could be “connected” to the President of the United States and he'd still be a target for what she had in mind for him. He was the sleazeball of the earth. He was the Black Hole of Calcutta. The Ruination of society. The Bringer of fear and humiliation. She knew him without knowing him. She had known him forever.
But she said, when he told her his little secret, acting impressed, “Oh, really?”
He sat next to her in the passenger seat of the Toyota, his body too large for the small cramped seats. He had to let the seat back as far as it would go and he still looked like a vulture in a canary's birdcage, craning its neck to find a way out. He had the window rolled down, one big elbow sticking out in the wind.
She had him drive his own car, follow her to the parking lot of a Burger King. When she parked he came over to her window. She shut off the engine and asked if he'd get them coffee from inside, then they would sit in her car to drink it.
She wouldn't go inside with him for fear one of the night-shift employees might remember them together. They'd find his car parked in the lot one day. And ask about his disappearance. She must be very careful. She must be very smart. She would not spend time behind prison bars for ridding the earth of its evil men.
“Sure, baby, I'll get you coffee,” he said, thinking he was playing the gallant gentleman.
While sipping at the coffee she said, “I'll drive you to my place. I don't like the neighbors seeing strange cars parked in the drive at night.”
He said that was fine as long as she'd bring him back to his car.
After she was on the freeway, taking I-45 south, he wanted to know just where the hell she lived anyway. “We going to Jersey or something?” He thought he was funny, a real card.
“It's down in Seabrook.”
“Christ, that's a long way from my car. You sure you're gonna want to drive me all the way back? I could follow you and park down the block or something.”
“This is better. I'll get you back, don't worry.” Telling lies is just as easy as dancing them, she thought. You just opened your mouth and said whatever the other person wanted to hear. Easy.
He tried to fondle her on the drive home, but she slapped his hand so hard it stung her palm and then she laughed prettily. “You'll just have to wait,” she said. “Tell me more about what you do before we get there.”
While he talked, she concentrated on her driving and the good feeling she was getting from the dispassionate mood that held her in thrall. It occurred to her that she had not felt anything in a long time. Other than anger and fury, nothing. Friendship, yes, for Charlene, but she hadn't felt any real joy for more than two years, or even disappointment, sorrow, shame at taking off her clothes in front of men, guilt for killing the rapist, or any real fear she'd be caught.
It was as if she had been dropped into another world when Scott killed the children. She had fallen into the world of lonesome, of despair and heartache.
She couldn't think of that. She couldn't allow the memories to become too vivid or they'd kill her.
“What am I gonna get for my money?” he asked, breaking into her reverie.
She cleared her throat and took the exit for NASA Road One that would take her into Seabrook. “Whatever you want, sugar.”
She could almost hear his mind clicking over. If his thoughts had lips, they'd be smacking right now. She truly hated him.
“Do you have a wife, a family?” she asked.
“Divorced. No kids. I never liked goddamn brats running around the place.”
Perfect, she thought. Besides. Who would have him? Who could stand his great ugly hands on her body, his huge flabby lips crawling along her skin? And she was glad for his unborn children, glad they had been spared being saddled with him for a father.
When she drove down the circle drive, the headlights spread over the mansion's wide marble front steps.
“Whoa,” he said. “I didn't know you made that kind of money dancing.”
“I don't. We're house-sitting. Rent's free.”
“We?” Worried.
“My roommate and me. She keeps house, I work and make the money. Don't worry. She stays in her room. I told her you'd be coming over tonight.”
“Oh, well in that case. You don't think she'd want to join us?”
Shadow laughed at the thought. “No, I don't think so.”
She led him from the underground garage to the front of the house where the porch light shone yellow across the white marble. She did not want to get stuck with him on the dark spiral stairs leading into the back of the house.
She opened the door, then turned and locked it behind her. “Just a precaution,” she said.
He looked around and nodded. “Nice. This place must have twenty rooms.”
“It has a lot. We don't use them all, of course.” She went up the curving staircase and listened for him to follow. She moved down the hall to her bedroom door and opened it. “Here's where it all happens.” She held the door open for him to enter first.
He turned abruptly and pushed her against the door, pinning her back against the frame.
She pushed against his chest with both hands. “Hey! This won't cut it, friend. I have ways and I have ways.” Her heart pumped hard. She feared he'd hurt her again, hurt her before she could get the game underfoot, before she could protect herself.
He laughed, obviously amused by her secretiveness. “Sure, baby, it's your show.”
He sidled into the room. “That old bed gonna hold us?”
She motioned for him to try it while she closed the door. He flopped backwards onto the bed, arms flung out at his sides. The mattress bounced, but the heavy wrought-iron frame held steady.
“I've been waiting for this a while.” He propped himself up onto his side to watch her move about the room, put away her gym bag in the closet, slip out of her shoes. “You sure know how to tease a man.”
“You haven't seen anything yet. Do you like games?” She looked at him seductively from below long black lashes. It was a look the men at the club loved. Promises—everything was a promise and a tease, an out-and-out lie, a fraud.
“Sure, who doesn't?”
“Little bondage? Little fun?” She took off the short bolero jacket that left her arms naked. She wore a black bustier, lace cups, low back.
He stood up and began taking off his jacket. “I get to tie you down?”
“No, honey, I get to tie you down. But slowly. One thing at a time. You'll see.”
He shucked off his clothes like a teenager with a willing date. She avoided looking at him while she slipped off the tight electric-blue Spandex pants. She lovingly stroked the crystal decanter and two glasses sitting in the tray on her dresser, her finger outlining the rim of one glass to hear it sing. When the bed creaked with his weight she turned to him, smile frozen in place, ready for th
e game to commence.
Eighteen
“You see a dancer, someone like me, in a club. You like what you see so you try to make a date. If the dancer—she's not me—says she's not interested, what do you do?”
He laughed wildly, spluttering and giggling, having the time of his life. He was already on his way to death. He had failed her test. He had not answered her questions the way he should have. And this was the last one, the trick one, but it didn't matter. For each question he answered the wrong way, she had tied down an arm or a leg until he was fully incapable of moving from the bed. He now lay spread-eagled, naked, vulnerable, arms and legs bound to the heavy iron.
He was a hairy man with a bloated midsection, legs too small for his torso. He looked like a fat trophy brought home from a safari, some wild unknown animal out of a jungle. To her he was an ugly creature, but it was the ugliness inside him, the evil there, that needed to be destroyed. He could have looked like Quasimodo and that was no sin. It was the heart that had rotted away inside that made him worthless.
She could smell him and it made the back of her throat periodically catch so she couldn't swallow. He had a musk scent so strong that he might have been a rutting cat.
“Hell, I go after her anyway, just like I done you.”
“What if she really doesn't like you?”
“You don't like me? I gave you lots of money.” He moistened his lips, unsure now.
“I didn't say me. I said, what if she doesn't like you? And you keep after her. That sound right to you?”
“Hey, this game over yet? I could use some head, you know? My goddamn pecker is about to fall off from waiting.” He laughed again, but this time his mirth was short-lived and forced.
“This is the last question. You've liked it so far, haven't you?” She ran her nails up the inside of his leg, but pulled her hand back before reaching the dark region of his groin.
With her gaze fastened on him, she felt her mind slip. Just a notch. The way a bicycle chain will slip and catch again. Inside her head she felt it: click. And found herself thinking about her children. Gabriel and Stevie. Their laughing faces. The way they smelled when she pressed her face into the crevices of their chubby little boy necks. Then: click. Her mind came back to her, the daydream over.
She blinked, knowing she had gone away. That's what had happened, she'd gone away. Only for a few seconds, but it frightened her nevertheless.
Her victim shivered and closed his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, it's been fun. This erotic shit is great for a while, but let's get the main act on the road, okay? We ain't got all night.”
“Oh, but we do. All night long.” She glanced at the windows on the far wall, relieved to see it was still dark. “So what if she doesn't like you. You know that. You sense it. What do you do?”
“Oh fuck, I don't know. I pay for something, it ought to be mine. She don't like me, what do I care? I ain't asking her to fucking marry me.”
She stood, completely naked now, and glided to the dressing table where the decanter waited. She saw from the corner of her eye that he was straining to keep his head up, keeping her in view. “You asked for a drink before. I'll get you one now.”
“Just a few sips. Then you straddle me and ride for the border, whatta you say?”
She brought the glass to the bedside. She sat beside him and slipped one hand beneath his neck to raise his head. He had been tied down for the best part of an hour. He was thirsty, his lust driving him wild, while she teased and played her game.
He drank down the entire highball glass of whiskey and Warfarin before he started coughing. She moved away from him with the empty glass. Then she returned, bringing the chair from her dressing table. She positioned it beside the bed—but at a little distance—sat down, crossed her legs. She smiled beatifically.
“Goddamn! That whiskey tastes like shit. You need to pay more and get better booze.”
She nodded. Smiled.
“I can't get this awful taste outta my mouth. Christ.” His throat worked while he swallowed and swallowed. “You don't have something in the house better than that stuff, something to chase it with?”
“No.” She waited.
“Why you sitting there looking at me? Look now what you've done. My hard-on is dying and, if you want to know, these scarves are cutting off the blood in my hands and feet. How ‘bout you untie me so we can fuck for real? I'm not all that hot into this bondage stuff.”
“You treat women like slaves. That's bondage.”
A flicker crossed his eyes. He winced and tried to pull his legs free. “Look, I'm getting pissed, okay? Enough's enough. Now let me loose. I don't think this is funny anymore.”
An involuntary moan escaped him. He tried to jerk his hands from the bed. The scarves held fast, tightening more around his wrists. “I feel sick. My stomach . . . my stomach's . . .”
“Hurting?” she asked. She leaned forward a little to look him in the eyes. “Is there pain yet? I'd be interested to know what it feels like.”
“Listen, you bitch, I don't know what kind of game you're up to, but I don't like it! I ought to get up from here and beat the living hell outta you.”
“You're dying,” she said coolly. She was surprised how calm she sounded, how detached she felt. “What are you talking about?”
“You won't beat the hell out of me or any other woman again. You won't hound them, use them, abuse them, or screw them. Not anymore.”
“You know who I am? You know who my friends are?”
“I couldn't care less.”
He pulled his head to his chest. He blanched. He began to gag. White rings of flesh stole around his eyes and sweat seemed to magically appear on his forehead.
“You'll probably vomit some of it up.”
His eyes were popping from their fleshy shells. He was sweating profusely now so that the musky smell of him filled the room. He murmured, “You're not lying. That whiskey . . . poison . . . you've poisoned me . . .”
“Absolutely,” she said. “A pretty nasty poison too. The dog it killed, it made him bleed from the eyes. I don't know if that was before or after it killed him, but either way, it's not pretty.”
He started to scream, but she had an extra scarf ready. She stuffed it in his mouth and sat in the chair again to wait for the end of the show.
~*~
It was not pretty. It was sick-making. She suspected his stomach hemorrhaged first, filling his abdomen with blood. She had made a special effort to consult a book on poisons in the local library. She knew more of what to expect than she had let him know.
He vomited some of it up. Then, as he thrashed about, his nose bled, his ears, then his eyes. Finally, while he still breathed, the frothy blood bubbling in his nostrils, he bled from the penis and rectum. It made a mess on her sheets. Luckily she had known, thanks to her research, to cover the mattress with a plastic liner.
Funny, but she hadn't thought out the emotional ramifications of murder. What it would feel like to sit idly by while someone died. It didn't surprise her, though, that she was not moved. Even the stray dog she'd accidentally poisoned deserved life more than the man thrashing and gagging and bleeding on her bed.
Several times during his death throes her mind slipped again. In and out of a groove. She didn't know when she'd “go away” or when she'd return. Click. Click. The bicycle chain ratcheting round and round the teeth of the gear, clicking in, clicking out.
Flashes of the past came and went, some so fast she couldn't catch them. Right before her eyes raced various visions, or perhaps they were hallucinations, she didn't know exactly what they were or what was happening. First she saw her children, whom she mourned deeply each time they appeared. And then her dead husband with his perplexed look, standing before her, arms at his sides, the gun in one of his hands. He was whole again, his brain not yet splattered across the room from the gun blast. “I have to do this,” he said plaintively. “It's the only way.”
“Do what?” she cried, stricken with
a fear so deep it paralyzed her.
He stood over the boys in the den, the gun in his hand. Stevie thought it a toy and reached for it. She thought Gabe said something, but she didn't hear what it was. Daddy something. Daddy don't?
“It's the only way out,” he repeated. Then she came unglued and reached toward him, her body taking her across the room to stop him. Dear God, let her reach him before he did it.
But he pointed the gun at Gabriel and he pulled the trigger. She didn't see . . . it was so fast . . . but she saw him . . . pointing the gun at Stevie . . . who screamed . . . And she was at him, on him, in fact, clawing at him with insanity replacing all normal thoughts. But he had the gun, still smoking and hot, in his mouth, and she leaned away, hoping he would, hoping he wouldn't, hoping she was dreaming a nightmare, that it wasn't real, it couldn't possibly be . . . real.
Faster and faster the images came, wavered, disappeared. Click, click, clickclickclick.
After the poison had done its job and the man on the bed stopped breathing she came back to herself. She blinked and came to know how rigid she'd been holding herself in the chair. The muscles of her shoulders hurt, her buttocks were numb, and it felt as if her hands had turned to slabs of frosty meat.
She worked her arms and stood up, feeling behind her to massage the globes of flesh she had been sitting upon. It dawned on her she had not thought anything out beyond her victim's death. She had arranged every detail from the decanter to the scarves, but she had not thought about how to remove a man from her bed—a man who must weigh quite a bit over two hundred pounds.
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