Of course, today L.A. had softened me up ahead of time, offering me a swig of peppermint schnapps from a half-pint bottle while Gram was in the bathroom and before Dee and Diana arrived.
“Where’d you get it?” I said.
“The schnapps bunny. Try it.”
I took a taste before handing the flask back to L.A., not liking it much. She tipped it up and swallowed, then recapped it.
Dee and Diana were usually pretty bored when we played gin and always won or lost according to the fall of the cards instead of by skill or concentration. And you couldn’t really get them interested in competing with anybody, which pretty much ruled them out as spades partners too. But Diana was our scorer for everything because her head worked like a calculator, and Dee was our referee of choice because when he rendered a judgment it somehow settled the issue cleanly and conclusively, with no leftover doubt or malice.
“My deal,” I said. “So watch out.”
I was on a losing streak, big surprise. I grabbed the cards and started shuffling. When Dee went to put some music on Diana yawned and took a sip from her Dr Pepper, then got up and wandered over to the cabinet where Gram kept the crackers and chips.
“Simon & Garfunkel or Diana Ross?” said Dee.
“Three Dog Night,” I said, ignoring the look Dee shot me.
Diana found a bag of corn chips and came back munching. When she sat down at the table L.A. reached across, took a chip from the bag and gave it to Jazzy. Diana gave her another one, saying, “Here you go, Muttkin, have a party.”
As I dealt the cards the opening bars of “I Can’t Stop Loving You” by Ray Charles drifted in from the front room. When Dee came back into the kitchen Diana gave him a thumbs-up.
“Women and children take cover,” I said, squaring what was left of the deck and flipping the top card over to start a discard pile.
“You’re already down a million points,” said L.A. “You’re gonna be doing my dishes for a year.”
“Make him do your algebra this fall,” said Dee.
“Too easy.”
“Does he do hair?” wondered Diana.
“Hey,” I said. “Pick up your cards. I’m fixin’ to get hot here.”
“Saints preserve,” said L.A.
Dee looked at his hand and gave a little sigh that told me he had nothing to work with, but I could tell by the way L.A. sorted her hand that she’d locked up six cards on the deal. Diana ate another chip and glanced out the window, instantly grabbing my attention.
“What’d you see?” I said.
She shrugged. “Bird, maybe. I don’t know.”
L.A.’s eyes caught mine for a second, which caused Dee to stare curiously at me, and suddenly it was a moment. I got up and went to look out the window. It wasn’t quite dark yet and I could see down the driveway and across to the yard next door. There didn’t seem to be anything there. I went out the door and looked around, feeling the hair on the back of my neck stand up, but I still didn’t see anything. When I came back in I locked the door behind me, noticing that Jazzy was calm, her attention on where the next corn chip was going as Diana brought it out of the bag. I watched her for a while to be sure.
Okay, I finally decided, false alarm. I rechecked all the locks and went back to the table.
“Good that we’ve got a scout,” said Diana as I sat down.
L.A. glanced at me and I shook my head slightly. I picked up my hand. “Come on, play,” I said. Dee watched me for a second longer, then picked up his cards.
After two draws L.A. knocked again, this time for only three points. The situation was getting out of hand.
“Okay, here’s what,” I said to L.A. “Side bet: just you and me—first winner takes it.”
“What’re you putting up?” said L.A.
Diana glanced at her, then tossed a chip to Jazzy.
“My room, against kitchen detail until football starts,” I said.
L.A. looked at me, fully understanding the weight of my words. The room was mine by right of seniority and it was definitely the best one next to Gram’s, which actually had its own bathroom. Mine was at the front corner of the house and was a little bigger than L.A.’s, with an air conditioner in the window that worked most of the time. Hers was at the back, quite a bit farther from the hall bathroom.
The tricky part was, L.A. could get weird about her room and her stuff, and you couldn’t always predict her reactions. There was her thing about pillows, for instance. Along with the one that Gram gave her when she came to live with us, she’d scrounged up several others around the house and even bought a few more at the five-and-dime one time when we’d had a really good bottle day. Even on hot nights she’d pile them around and over herself until you could just see her eyes, or sometimes none of her at all. A lot of nights she still did. Then after making up her bed in the morning she’d stack all the pillows just so, always knowing the exact way she left them, so that when she went in to go to bed that night she could tell if they’d been tampered with. Next to sneaking up behind her or touching her when she wasn’t looking, messing with L.A.’s pillows was the quickest way I knew to get in trouble with her.
She was skeptical about the bet. “You’re gonna cheat,” she said.
“Hell no,” I said. “Nothing but the luck of the draw. That and my demonic skill. Not chickenshit, are you?” I clucked a couple of times.
“Hah! Deal the cards.”
We played to gin this time, L.A. slapping her hand down when I still needed another keeper, and just like that I’d lost my room.
“Ho-hum,” said Diana, finishing off her Dr Pepper.
Dee gave a crooked little smile.
“Chinaman’s luck,” I said, folding my hand. “Hey, why don’t we do it all in one fool swoop right now? Move our stuff before Gram gets home and surprise her?”
But the way it worked out, Gram came home early. She caught Dee and me carrying L.A.’s fish tank with her six neon tetras down the hall past L.A. and Diana, who were coming the other way with my radio and the last of my shirts, the worried Jazzy hustling along right at L.A.’s heels. I’d left L.A. my second-best Louisville Slugger as a housewarming present, holding my breath until I was sure she didn’t see anything suspicious about this.
“Goodness,” Gram said. “Why are you imps burgling each other?”
“Biscuit gambled his room away,” said Diana helpfully.
We set the tank where L.A. wanted it and I came back to tell my story. I tried to keep my thoughts arranged correctly, for fear of Gram’s mind-reading.
“No big deal,” I said. “It’s really L.A.’s turn in the good room anyway. This way I can play my radio a little louder.”
Gram walked into the kitchen and turned the fire on under her teakettle, then looked at me over the top of her reading glasses. “Chivalry does begin at home, I suppose,” she said.
So that was okay.
But that night I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the morning of the day before. Jazzy had been at the vet’s to get her dewclaws removed and L.A. and I had gone with Gram to pick her up. Arriving home, I carried Jazzy up the walk and opened the door as L.A. parked the Buick. With her front paws wrapped in cotton and gauze, Jazzy had seemed kind of limp and discouraged all the way home, but at the door she started trembling and growling in my arms and finally threw back her head and let loose a miniature howl. When I set her down she scooted away on three legs, holding one front paw and then the other up as she rounded the camellia bush toward the garage.
“Now, what on earth can that be about?” Gram said as she came up behind me.
In a minute L.A. came around the camellia from the garage, carrying Jazzy in her arms. After I told L.A. what had happened we went inside and looked in all the rooms and closets without finding anything.
But later that day, while L.A. was at Diana’s house, I had seen Jazzy sniffing around the bottom of the window in L.A.’s bedroom, growling to herself. I looked all around the window myself without seeing
anything, then walked outside and around back to where L.A.’s room was. The grass under her window was kind of flattened down, and there were marks on the windowsill.
I sat down on the gas meter to think, my stomach unsteady and my hands shaking, trying to think as clearly as possible. My first idea was to get Gram to call Don Chamfort and arrange for police protection. But then what would happen? All I could visualize was a couple of TV-style cops sitting in their car day and night in the alley behind the house, drinking bad coffee out of paper cups and watching L.A.’s window. Then for a second my thoughts went off on a crazy jag, the way they sometimes did in times of stress, and I had a mental picture of the cops sitting there day after day like zombies, their hair getting shaggier and their beards growing out, or possibly abandoning their car for a tent in the back yard, sleeping with their guns clutched in their hands, maybe eventually reverting to the wild, holding out here forever like Jap soldiers in their island caves.
But I didn’t think police protection was going to help us at all, in spite of my confidence in Don. Most likely a couple of cops would come, look at the grass and at what I’d seen on the windowsill, scribble a line or two in their notebooks, tell us to be careful, tip their hats and leave, and that would be the end of it.
And the other possibilities I thought of were even worse: some social worker deciding L.A. should be in foster care where she would be safer, maybe even both of us having to go. Or Gram, old as she was, taking some kind of spell from all the worry and dying.
Then, without a single good idea to show for my efforts, I’d stood up and gone back to look at the marks on the sill of L.A.’s window again—a neat half circle of deep indentations in the painted wood. As I stared at them I could feel my heartbeat shaking my body. No matter how much I wanted to find one, there was no harmless explanation for what I was seeing, no way around what the marks were and what they meant.
They were the imprints of human teeth.
4 | Hot Licks
Echoing space and cold, dead air surrounding me, my skin crawling with desperate horror. The naked girl who has kept watch by my bedside so many nights, her hands bound behind her back and a cord knotted around her neck, stands on a wooden box in the glare of a swinging bare lightbulb, shaking her head and crying, No-no-please-no. Blood trickles down from where her nipples should be. There is a blinding flash from a camera and the sound of a man’s laughter. The box is kicked away and the cord tightens, instantly silencing the girl’s voice. Suddenly I see that she is L.A. Urine flows down between her legs, drips from her feet and patters onto the concrete floor. I can’t move, can’t do anything to help her. I can’t watch either, and I try to turn away but somehow the image stays in front of my face.
A cut of meat, still blood-wet and hot from the carcass, brushes against my mouth. L.A. struggles silently as she hangs twisting in the air, her eyes wide and wild, but my arms and legs still refuse to move. There is another flash. The meat slides up over my nose with a wet smacking sound, smelling like a dog’s breath—
I opened my eyes and saw Jazzy’s face three inches in front of mine, her whiskers quivering. Hubert Ferkin was holding her, aiming her at me, and when he saw I was awake he put her down and sat on the arm of the couch.
“Here comes them baby blues,” he said. Jazzy, who had never much liked Hubert, hustled back to her box.
“Jesus!” I gasped. I sat up. My T-shirt was wet and my heart was banging.
“Man, you are one rowdy sleeper,” said Hubert. “Shoulda seen yourself thrashing and groaning down there.”
I shook my head hard and stood up, wanting to be all the way out of the dream. With Hubert behind me, I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water.
“Hey, man,” Hubert said. “I heard you gave up your room.”
“Who told you that?”
“Heard it around. What’s the deal?”
“No deal,” I said. “I lost it in a card game.”
He looked at me in disbelief. “You’re weird, man.”
I didn’t say anything, just grabbed a glass from the cabinet and filled it from the tap.
Hubert had never had much of an attention span. He lost interest in my room. “I’m going over to the Jukebox for a set of strings,” he said. “Wanta go?”
“Sure, why not?” I said. Gram and L.A. had left early to go shopping and then to visit Dr. Kepler, leaving me on my own for at least a couple of hours. I didn’t want to stay in the house. I might go to sleep again.
I drank half the glass of water at the sink, then bent down and poured the rest over my head. I toweled myself off with a dishcloth, carried it into the laundry room and tossed it into the hamper. I peeled off my sweaty T-shirt and tossed it too, then found a clean one in the laundry basket by the washer and pulled it on.
By now feeling a little more together, I said, “Let’s go.”
Hubert was never anything but ready, and a couple of seconds later we were out the door. As we walked along he hocked up a goober and blew it away, the gob of spit spinning through the air like a little white dumbbell. Then he got a round Copenhagen can from his back pocket, where it had worn a pale circle in the denim, tucked a pinch behind his lip and threw his head back to clear the hair from his eyes.
Everybody wondered why I hung around with Hubert, who was as off-the-wall and unpredictable as L.A. but with almost no redeeming features. I knew having him with me didn’t do much for my social standing, but we did have a few things in common. For example, he wasn’t too welcome at his mom’s house either, his stepfather being a drunk who kicked the living shit out of him for no known reason at least twice a month, the difference being that he had nowhere else to go. This had made him a little mean and caused him to talk like he didn’t care much one way or the other about anything or anybody. Which, on my bad days, I admit made a certain kind of sense to me.
But I knew with Hubert the attitude was mostly smoke because of the way he acted at our house, where he was always polite and agreeable and helpful and well-behaved enough to give you diabetes. In fact you could tell he kind of wished he lived there with us, even though he had to know it would mean doing chores and always getting his homework in and giving up his freedom to run the streets at all hours even on school nights.
Not that he didn’t have his tough side. At school, and everywhere else besides Gram’s, he got into a lot more fights and trouble than the average kid. And he was extra dangerous in a fight because he tended to attack without warning and didn’t know when to quit, a little like L.A. I’d once seen him cross the street after somebody he thought gave him the finger, a boy almost twice his size. Hubert broke his nose and a couple of his teeth and wouldn’t stop punching until I dragged him off the guy, who was whimpering and trying to curl himself into a ball on the sidewalk.
But Hubert was one of those people who seem to have quite a bit of information, even if it tended to be kind of narrowly concentrated, and fairly often I asked him about various stuff I didn’t understand. I don’t mean he was book-smart or anything, because a lot of academic things I considered obvious were complete mysteries to him, like algebra, for instance. But he read a lot, if you count magazines, and he had hundreds of them. One rainy day he lifted up his mattress and got out his special collection, which included bunches of true-crime periodicals depicting women with a lot of lipstick on getting murdered in their underwear. The articles had titles like “Coed Bloodbath” and “Lovers’ Lane Horror.” Then there were his naturist journals, with photographs of adults, old people and kids of all ages doing regular things, running around, playing volleyball or just sitting in lawn chairs looking completely normal except for being naked. You knew which magazines and which pages were Hubert’s favorites from the wear and tear on them. He’d look at a picture he liked and say something like, “Ooh, sweet mama!” or maybe just grab his crotch and moan.
Hubert told a lot of stories about wild things he’d done with girls, but they were never girls I knew and you could never connect th
e stories to any particular time or place. I don’t know why, but I got the feeling Hubert was more obsessed with girls than most guys just because he wasn’t very good with them in real life, and when you got right down to it I didn’t think he even really liked them all that much. But in spite of this kind of stuff, and as over-the-fence as he could be in some ways, he was my consultant for certain things I couldn’t ask L.A. about.
Speaking of L.A., Hubert was hopelessly hung up on her, and I really think he’d have let an alligator eat his foot just to get in good with her. He’d talk constantly to me about how fine she was and how much he’d like to get together with her, like maybe I could help his case with her. Or would if I could. It was disgusting, like having a two-legged dog around, wagging his tail and grinning all the time. He always wanted to watch whatever she was watching on TV or go wherever she wanted to go or eat whatever she wanted to eat, which was practically nothing. He even smiled and complimented Gram’s cooking, which actually was pretty superior but tended to feature a lot less frying and a lot more vegetables than Hubert was used to.
“The only things he seems to understand as food are salt, grease and ketchup,” Gram had once said.
But that wasn’t the worst thing about him by a long shot.
“Oh, man,” he said once when it was just the two of us and the subject of L.A. came up. He moaned and held his crotch, saying, “I just gotta do her.”
Somehow this caused me to become aware of the blood pulsing in my hands and booming in my head. I said, “Get off it, asshole. You’re not her type.” I looked at him. “And don’t talk that shit to me.”
I didn’t know what L.A.’s type was or what I was feeling exactly, but when Hubert looked at me to see if I was serious, whatever he saw was enough to shut him up once and for all about doing L.A.