"Oh, yeah?" The girl's eyes showed a little interest. "Which one?"
A cold spear went through Mary's heart. She felt her smile slip a notch. "In Norcross," she said, which was a lie. She worked at the location on Blessingham Road, about six miles away.
"I just got this job," the cashier said, "but the pay ain't nothin'. You do the hirin' and all?"
"No." The acne might be makeup, Mary thought. The girl might not be as young or as dumb as she looked. "The manager does that." Her hand slid partway into her purse, and she could feel the chill of the pistol's metal with her fingertips.
"I don't like just standin' around. I like to be movin'. You need any help over there?"
"No. We've got all the help we need."
The girl shrugged. "Well, maybe I'll come in and fill out an application anyway. You get free burgers there, don't you?"
Mary sensed it. Someone coming up behind her. She heard a soft noise, like a gun coming out of an oiled leather holster, and her breath snagged.
She whirled around, her hand on the pistol's grip down in her purse, and she was a second away from drawing it when the red-haired young mother stopped her cart with the baby in it. The infant was still sucking wetly on the pacifier, eyes roaming back and forth.
"You okay?" the cashier asked. "Lady?"
The smile had left Mary Terror's face. For a small space of time the young mother caught a glimpse of something that made her pull the cart back and instinctively put her hand on her infant's chest in a protective gesture. What was standing before her she couldn't exactly say, because the sight was gone too soon, but she was left with the memory of the big woman's teeth clenched together and a pair of slitted eyes as green as a cat's. For those few stretching seconds the woman seemed to tower over her, and something cold came out of the big woman's skin like winter's mist.
Then it was over, as fast as a fingersnap. The clenched teeth and the slitted eyes were gone, and Mary Terror's face was bland and soft.
"Lady?" the cashier said.
"Such a pretty baby," Mary told the young mother, who didn't yet recognize what she was feeling as fear. Mary's gaze quickly scanned the area around the checkouts. She had to get out of there, and quickly. "I'm fine," she said to the cashier. "Am I ready?"
"Yeah. One sec and I'll get you sacked." The groceries went into two sacks. This was the dangerous time, Mary was thinking. If they were going to come after her, it would be when she had the groceries in her arms. She put away her license and hooked her purse over her shoulder. She left it unzipped, so she could get at the pistol in a hurry.
"My name's Toni," the cashier said. "Maybe I'll come in and fill out an application."
If she ever saw this girl again, Mary thought, she would kill her. From now on she would go to the Food Giant across the highway. She took the sacks in her arms and headed for the exit. A man in a camouflage jacket, the kind deer hunters wore, was walking across the parking lot in the nasty rain. Mary watched him carefully as she hurried to her pickup truck, but he didn't even glance at her. She put the groceries on the floorboard on the passenger side, next to the package from Art & Larry's Toys. Underneath the dashboard was a sawed-off shotgun secured by metal clips. She got behind the wheel, locked both doors, started the engine, and drove to her apartment by a circuitous route. All the time her hands were gripped hard on the steering wheel, her eyes ticking back and forth from the rearview mirror, and she hissed between gritted teeth: "Shit! Shit! Screwed up! Goddamn screwed up!" A light sheen of sweat was on her face. She took long, deep breaths. "Hold on. Take it easy, take it easy. Nobody knows you. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody knows you." She repeated it like a mantra, all the way to the red brick apartment building that had a trailer park on one side and a machine shop where truck engines were repaired on the other.
As Mary guided her pickup into her parking space, she saw a grizzled face peering out a window. It was the old man in the apartment next to hers. Shecklett was in his late sixties, and he rarely came out except to gather up the aluminum cans from the highway. He coughed a lot at night, too. She'd checked through the trash he'd brought out to the dumpster one night, and found an empty bottle of J. W. Dant bourbon, TV dinner trays, a Cavalier magazine with some of the ads clipped out, and pieces of a letter she'd taped together under a strong light. It was from a woman named Paula, and Mary remembered some of it: I really would like to come visit. Would that be okay? Bill says it's fine with him. We were talking, and we can't understand why you don't come out and be with us. Ought to be ashamed, living the way you do with all that money you've saved from the store. Don't pretend you didn't. I know, Mom told me, so there. Anyway, Kevin asks about his grandpap every single day.
As Mary pulled the handbrake up she saw Shecklett move away from the window, deeper into the darkness of his apartment. He watched her come and go as he watched the black woman upstairs and the young redneck couple on the other side of Mary's apartment. She would have wondered about the shine on his shoes if he hadn't been in the building long before Mary had moved in. Still, she didn't like being watched, being inspected and judged. When she decided it was time to leave, she might do something about Grandpap Shecklett.
Mary picked up the two sacks of groceries and took them inside. The apartment still smelled of burned plastic. The front room, paneled with pinewood, was neat and orderly; she never used it. A lava lamp cast a blue glow, the matter inside slowly coagulating and breaking apart. It made her think of semen searching for an egg. She laid the two sacks on the kitchen's countertop and flicked a dead roach off the scarred Formica. Then she went back out to get her new baby.
She heard the pickup's passenger door being opened before she reached the apartment's threshold. The door's hinges had a high, distinctive squeak. Her heart gave a violent kick, and she felt the blood swell in her face. Shecklett! He was rummaging in the truck! My baby! she thought, and she raced out the door with long, powerful strides.
Someone was leaning into the truck's passenger side. Mary grasped the door, slammed it against the offending body, and heard a wail of pain.
"Ow! Jesus Christ!" He came out of the truck, his eyes hazed with hurt, and his hand pressed against his side. "You tryin' to bust my fuckin' ribs?"
It was not Shecklett, though she was sure Shecklett was watching the drama from his window. It was Gordie Powers, who was twenty-five years old and had light brown hair that hung around his shoulders. He was as thin as a wish, his face long and gaunt, a stubble of beard on his cheeks and chin. He wore faded jeans and a flannel shirt under a battered black leather jacket decorated with metal studs. "Man!" he said. "You 'bout knocked the piss outta me!"
"I gave you a warning tap," she said. "What're you trying to steal?"
"Nothin'! I just drove up and saw you gettin' your groceries out! I thought I'd bring in the other sack for you!" He stepped away from the truck with a thin-lipped sneer. "That's what I get for bein' a Good Samaritan, huh?"
Mary glanced to the left and saw Gordie's silver Mazda sports car parked a few spaces away. She said, "Thanks anyway, but I'll get it." She picked up the package from the floorboard, and he saw the imprint ART & LARRY'S TOYS across the sack.
"What'cha gonna do?" Gordie asked. "Play games?"
Mary slammed the door and went into her apartment. Gordie followed, as she knew he would. He'd come to see her, after all. She'd placed an order last night, before Robby had been so bad. "Smells funny in here," Gordie commented as he closed the door and turned the latch. "You burn somethin'?"
"Yes. My dinner." Mary took the package into her bedroom and put it into the closet. Then, out of habit, she switched on the television set and turned it to the Cable News Network. Lynne Russell was on. Mary liked Lynne Russell because she looked like a big woman. The scene changed to a view of pig cars with their blue lights flashing, and a talking head saying something about somebody getting murdered. There was blood on a stretcher-sheet and the shape of a body. The images were hypnotic, a brutal pulse of life. Sometimes
Mary watched CNN for hours on end, unable and unwilling to do anything but lie in bed like a parasite feeding off the torment of other human beings. When she was flying high on LSD, the scenes became three-dimensional and pushed into the room, and that could really be a heavy trip.
She heard the rustle of a sack. Then his voice: "Hey, Ginger! How come you got all this baby food?"
An answer had come to her by the time she walked back into the kitchen. "A cat comes around sometimes. I've been feeding it."
"A cat? Likes baby food? Man, I hate cats. Gimme the creeps." Gordie's beady brown eyes were always moving, invading private spaces. They found the crust of melted plastic on one of the oven's burners, registered the fact, and moved on. "Got roaches," he noticed. He walked around the kitchen as Mary put the groceries away. Gordie stopped before one of the framed magazine pictures of a smiling infant. "You got a thing about babies, huh?"
"Yes," Mary said.
"How come you don't have a kid, then?"
Keep the secret, Mary thought. Gordie was a mouse nibbling at a crumb between a tiger's fangs. "Just never did."
"You know, it's funny, huh? Been doin' business with you… what, five or six months? And I don't know nothin' about you." He pulled a toothpick from the pocket of his shirt and probed at his small yellow teeth. "Don't even know where you're from."
"Hell," she said.
"Whoaaaaaa." He shook his hands in the air in mock fear. "Don't scare me, sister. No, I ain't shittin'. Where're you from?"
"You mean where was I born?"
"Yeah. You ain't from around here, 'cause there ain't no Georgia peaches in your accent."
She decided she'd tell him. Maybe it was because it had been a long time since she'd said it: "Richmond, Virginia."
"So how come you're here? How come you ain't in Virginia?"
Mary stacked the TV dinners and put them in the refrigerator's freezer. Her mind was interweaving fictions. "Marriage went bad a few years ago. My husband caught me with a younger dude. He was a jealous bastard. Said he'd cut me open and leave me bleeding in the woods where nobody could find me. He said if he didn't do it, he had friends who would. So I split, and I never looked back. I kept on driving. I've been here and there, but I guess I haven't found home yet."
"Cut you open?" Gordie grinned around his toothpick. "I don't believe it!"
Mary stared at him.
"I mean… you're a mighty big lady. Take a hell of a man to get you down, huh?"
She put the jars of baby food into the cupboard. Gordie made a sucking sound on his toothpick, like the infant with the pacifier. "Anything else you want to know?" She closed the cupboard and turned to face him.
"Yeah. Like… how old are you?"
"Too old for any more bull shit," she said. "Did you bring my order?"
"Right here next to my heart." Gordie reached into his jacket's inside pocket and brought out a cellophane bag that held a small square of waxed paper. "Thought you might like the design." He handed the bag to Mary, and she could see what was on the paper.
Four small yellow Smiley Faces, identical to the button she wore, were spaced equidistantly on the square.
"My friend's a real artiste," Gordie said. "He can do just about any kind of design. Client wanted little airplanes the other day. Another dude asked for an American flag. Costs extra with all them colors. Anyhow, my friend enjoys his work."
"Your friend does a good job." She held the paper up against the light. The Smiley Faces were yellow with lemon-flavored food coloring, and the tiny black dots of the eyes were cheap but potent acid brewed in a lab near Atlanta. She got her wallet out of her purse, and removed the Magnum automatic, too. She laid the pistol on the countertop as she counted out fifty dollars for her connection.
"Nice little piece," Gordie said. His fingers grazed the gun. "I sure as hell got you a good deal on it, too." His hand accepted the money, and the bills went into his jeans.
Mary had bought the Magnum from him back in September, two months after she'd been steered to Gordie by a bartender in a midtown lounge called the Purple People Eater. The.38 in her drawer and the sawed-off shotgun had been purchased from other connections in the last few years. Wherever she went, Mary made the effort to find somebody who could supply her with two of her passions: LSD and guns. She'd always had a love affair with guns: their smell and weight thrilled her, their beauty dark and brooding. "Feminist cock envy" was how he'd put it, way back when. Lord Jack, speaking from the gray mist of memory.
The LSD and the guns were links to her past, and without them life would be as hollow as her womb.
"Okay. So that does it, right?" Gordie removed the toothpick and slid it back into his pocket. "Until next timer
She nodded. Gordie started out of the kitchen, and Mary followed him with the acid-loaded Smiley Faces in her hand. When he left, she would give birth. The infant was in the closet in her bedroom, confined in a box. She would lick a Smiley Face and feed her new baby and watch the hateful world kill itself on CNN. Gordie was reaching toward the latch. Mary watched him move, as if in slow motion. She'd had so much LSD over the years that she could slow things down when she wanted to, could make them break into strobelike movements. Gordie's hand was on the latch, and he was about to open the door.
He was a skinny little bastard. A dope dealer and gun smuggler. But he was a human being, and Mary suddenly realized that she wanted to be touched by human hands.
"Wait," she said.
Gordie stopped, the latch almost thrown.
"You got plans?" Mary asked. She was ready for rejection, ready to curl back into her armored shell.
Gordie paused. He frowned. "Plans? Like plans for what?"
"Like plans to eat. Do you have anywhere to go?"
"I'm gonna pick up my girlfriend in a couple of hours." He checked his Swatch. "Give or take."
Mary held the Smiley Faces in front of his nose. "You want a taste?"
Gordie's eyes ticked from the offering to Mary and back again. "I don't know," he said. He'd caught an unspoken invitation — not for the LSD, but for something else. Maybe it was the way she crowded his space, or maybe it was the slight tilt of her head toward the bedroom. Whatever it was, Gordie knew the language. He had to think about this for a minute; she was a client, and it was bad business to screw clients. She wasn't a raging beauty, and she was old. Over thirty, for sure. But he'd never sacked a six-foot-tall woman before, and he wondered what it would be like to swim in that swamp of flesh. She looked like she had a nice pair, too. Her face could be pretty if she wore makeup. Still… there was something mighty strange about her, with all these baby pictures on the walls and —
Hell! Gordie thought. Why not? He'd screw a tree if it had a knothole big enough.
"Yeah," he said, his grin beginning to spread. "I guess I would."
"That's good." Mary reached past him, and double-locked the door with its chain. Gordie smelled the aroma of hamburgers in her hair. When she looked at him again, her face was very close and her eyes were a shade between green and gray. "I'll make dinner, and then we'll trip out. You like minestrone soup and ham sandwiches?"
"Sure." He shrugged. "Whatever." Trip out, she'd said. That was an ancient expression. He heard it in old movies on TV about the sixties and hippies and shit like that. He watched her as she went into the kitchen, and in another moment he heard her run water into a pot.
"Come in and talk to me," Mary said.
Gordie glanced at the latch and the doorchain. Still can go if you want to. That big woman'll grind you down to white jelly if you don't watch out. He stared at the lava lamp, his face daubed blue.
"Gordie?" Her voice was soft, as if she were speaking to a baby.
"Yeah, okay. You got any beer?" He took off his leather jacket, threw it on the checkered sofa in the living room, and went into the kitchen where Mary Terror was making soup and sandwiches for two.
3
The Moment of Truth
"WHAT IS THIS JUNK?"
/> "What junk?"
"Here. Burn This Book. Have you been reading this?"
Doug walked into the kitchen where Laura had just slid the Oriental beef-and-onions casserole into the microwave. He leaned against the white counter and read from the book: " 'Like any disease, the credit card malady must be attacked with cleansing medicine. The first spoonful is a personal one: take a pair of scissors and destroy your cards. All of them. This minute. Resist the pleas of those who would have you do otherwise. Big Brother Business is watching, and you can use this opportunity to spit in his eye.'" Doug scowled and looked up. "Is this a joke, or is this Treggs guy a Communist?"
"Neither one." She closed the microwave's door and set the timer. "He was an activist in the sixties, and I think he's searching for a cause."
"Some cause! My God, if people really did this, the economy would collapse!"
"People do use their credit cards too much." She moved past Doug to the salad bowl on the countertop and began to mix the salad. "We certainly do, at least."
"Well, the whole country's heading toward being a cashless society. The sociologists have been predicting it for years." Doug paged through the book. He was a tall, slim man with sandy-brown hair and brown eyes, his face handsome but beginning to show the pressure of his work in lines and sags. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, suspenders — braces, they were called these days — with his pinstriped suits, and he had six different power ties on the rack in his closet. He was two years older than Laura, he wore a diamond pinky ring and his monogram on his shirts, he had a gold-tipped fountain pen, smoked an occasional Dunhill Montecruz cigar, and in the last year he'd begun to bite his fingernails. "We don't use our cards more than most people," he said. "Anyway, our credit's great and that's what it's all about."