The Shining Girls

  He rolls her over roughly, panting through his teeth and rams the tennis ball into her mouth before she can scream, splitting her lip and chipping a tooth. It compresses as it goes in, expands to force her jaw open. She chokes on the taste of rubber and dog spit and blood. She tries to push it out with her tongue only to encounter a shard of enamel from a broken tooth. She gags at this piece of her skull in her mouth. The vision in her left eye has gone hazy and purple. Her cheek bone, pushing up against the socket. But everything is contracting anyway.

  It’s hard to breathe around the ball. He’s wound the wire so tight around her hands, pinned beneath her, that they’ve gone numb. The edges are digging into her spine. She churns her shoulders, trying to get traction to wriggle away from him, sobbing. No destination in mind. Away, please God, just away. But he’s sitting on her thighs, clamping her down with his weight.

  ‘I’ve got a present for you. Two,’ he says. The tip of his tongue is sticking out from between his teeth. He’s making a high-pitched wheezing sound as he reaches into his coat.

  ‘Which would you like first?’ He holds out his hands to show her. A small shiny silver-and-black case. Or a folding knife with a wooden handle.

  ‘Can’t decide?’ He flicks the catch on the lighter, the flame springing up like a jack-in-the-box, and snaps it off again. ‘This: to remember me.’ Then he unhasps the blade of the folding knife. ‘This is just what needs to be done.’

  She tries to kick out, to dislodge him, screaming in fury against the ball. He lets her, watching her. Amused. Then he sets the lighter against her eye socket and digs the hard edge in against her broken cheekbone. Black spots bloom in her head, pain arcing through her jaw, down her spine.

  He pulls up her T-shirt, exposing her skin, winter-pale. He drags his hand across her stomach, his fingertips digging into her skin, clutching, greedy, leaving bruises. Then he punches the knife into her abdominal wall and twists and pulls it across in a jagged cut, following the trajectory of his hand. She bucks up against him, screaming into the ball.

  He laughs. ‘Easy there.’

  She is sobbing something incoherent. The words dont’t make sense in her head, let alone in her mouth. Don’t-please-don’t-don’t-you-fuckingdare-don’t-don’t-please-don’t..

  Their breathing is evenly matched, his excited wheezes, her rabbit inhalations. The blood is hotter than she would have ever imagined, like pissing yourself. Thicker. Maybe he is done. Maybe it’s over. He only wanted to hurt her a little. Show her who’s boss before – her mind blanks at the possibilities. She can’t bring herself to look at him. She’s too afraid of seeing his intention in his face. So she lies there, looking up at the pallid morning sun glancing through the leaves, listening to their breathing, hard and fast.

  But he’s not done yet. She groans and tries to twist away before the tip of the blade even touches her skin. He pats her shoulder, grinning savagely, his hair plastered down and sweaty from the exertion. ‘Scream louder, sweetheart,’ he says hoarsely. His breath smells like caramel. ‘Maybe someone will hear you.’

  He slides the knife home and twists it across. She screams as loudly as she can, the sound muffled by the ball, and instantly despises herself for obeying him. And then grateful that he let her. Which makes the shame worse. She can’t help it. Her body is a separate animal to her mind, which is a shameful, bargaining thing, willing to do anything to make it stop. Anything to live. Please, God. She closes her eyes, so she doesn’t have to see his look of concentration or the way he tugs at his pants.

  He yanks the knife down and then up in a pattern that seems predetermined. Like being here is, surely, trapped beneath him. Like this is the only place she has ever been. Under the sharp sear of the wounds, she can feel the blade catching on the fatty tissue. Like carving fucking sirloin. An abattoir smell of blood and shit. Please-please-please.

  There is a terrible noise, worse even than his breathing or the meaty tearing sound of the knife. She opens her eyes and turns her head to see Tokyo, shaking and twisting his head, like he’s having a fit. He’s snarling and growling through the wreck of his throat. His lips pulled back to reveal the red foam on his teeth. The whole log shakes with the movement. The wire saws into the branch it’s been looped around, bits of bark and lichen flaking away. Bright bubbles of blood bead his fur like an obscene necklace.

  ‘Don’t,’ she manages. It comes out ‘Ownt’.

  He thinks she’s talking to him. ‘It’s not my fault, sweetheart,’ he says. ‘It’s yours. You shouldn’t shine. You shouldn’t make me do this.’ He moves the knife to her neck. He doesn’t see Tokyo yank himself free until the dog is right on top of him. The dog launches itself at him, clamping his teeth into his arm through the coat. The blade jerks across her throat, too shallow, only nicking the carotid, before he drops it.

  The man howls in fury and tries to shake the animal off, but Tokyo’s jaws are locked tight. The weight drags him down. He feels around for the knife with his other hand. Kirby tries to roll over it. She’s too slow and uncoordinated. He grabs it out from under her and then Tokyo gives a long rasping sigh and he’s prying her dog away from his arm, yanking at the knife stuck in his neck.

  Any fight she had left goes out of her. She closes her eyes and tries to play dead, the act belied by the tears running down her cheeks.

  He crawls over to her, cradling his arm. ‘You’re not fooling me,’ he says. He pokes his finger diagnostically into the wound in her throat and she screams again, blood pulsing out.

  ‘You’ll bleed out quick enough.’

  He reaches into her mouth and yanks the tennis ball out, squashing it between his fingers. She bites him as hard as she can, grinding her teeth into his thumb. More blood in her mouth, but it’s his this time. He punches her in the face and she blacks out for a moment.

  It’s a shock coming back. The pain slams down as soon as she opens her eyes, like Wile E. Coyote’s anvil on her head. She starts weeping. The fucker is limping away, holding his crutch loosely in one hand. He stops, his back to her, digging in his pocket. ‘Almost forgot,’ he says. He tosses the lighter at her. It lands in the grass near her head.

  Kirby lies there, waiting to die. For the pain to stop. But she doesn’t and it doesn’t, and then she hears Tokyo give a little grunt, like he’s not dead either, and she starts getting seriously pissed off. Fuck him.

  She shifts her weight onto her hip and swivels her wrists experimentally, reawakening the nerves that blast her brain with a shrieking morse code. He’s been sloppy. It’s a short-term measure, to hold her, not keep her, especially with her weight off. Her fingers are too numb to work properly, but the blood makes it easier. WD40 for bondage, she thinks and laughs, bitterly, surprising herself.

  Fuck this.

  She painstakingly works one hand free and then passes out when she tries to sit up. It takes her four minutes to get up onto her knees. She knows because she counts the seconds. It’s the only way she can force herself to stay conscious. She wraps her jacket round her waist to try to staunch the blood. She can’t tie it. Her hands are shaking too much, her fine motor skills shot. So she tucks it into the back of her jeans as best she can.

  She kneels next to Tokyo, who rolls his eyes at her and tries to wag his tail. She lifts him up, levering him onto her forearms and then hefting him up to her chest. And almost drops him.

  She staggers towards the path and the sound of the waves, her dog in her arms. His tail thuds weakly against her thigh. ‘It’s okay, boy, we’re nearly there,’ she says. Her throat makes a horrible garling sound when she speaks. Blood pulses down her neck, soaking into her T-shirt. Gravity feels terrible. Increased a millionfold. Not the weight of her dog, his fur matted with blood. The weight of the world. She feels something come loose from her middle, hot and slippery. She can’t think about it.

  ‘Nearly there. Nearly there.’

  The trees open out onto a cement path that leads to the pier. The fisherman is still there. ‘Help,’ she ras
ps, but too soft for him to hear.

  ‘HELP ME,’ she screams and the fisherman turns and gapes, misfiring the sinker from the pipe so that the red ball bounces off the cement between the husks of discarded shad. ‘What in hell?’ He drops his rod and yanks a wooden baton from the cart. He runs towards her, brandishing it above his head. ‘Who did this to you? Where is he? Help! Somebody! Ambulance! Police!’

  She buries her face in Tokyo’s fur. She realizes he’s not wagging his tail. Hasn’t been this whole time.

  It was physics. The jolt of every step. Equal and opposite reaction.

  The knife is still sticking out the side of his neck. It’s so deeply wedged in his vertebrae, the vet will have to remove it surgically, rendering it almost unusable for forensics. It’s what saved her from the man pulling it out and finishing the job.

  No please, but she’s crying too hard to say it.

  Dan

  24 JULY 1992

  It’s absurdly hot inside Dreamerz. And loud. Dan hates the music before the band has even started. What kind of a name is Naked Raygun? And when did looking dirty on purpose become a thing? Scruffy guys with weird facial hair and black T-shirts mill around the stage endlessly before the actual band comes on, ironically more neatly dressed, fiddling with guitars and plugs and pedals. Also endlessly.

  His shoes keep sticking. It’s a spilled-drink-cigarette-stump type of floor. Better than the upstairs balcony, which is paved with actual headstones like the bathroom is wallpapered with photocopied flyers. The weirdest one is for a play, featuring a woman in a gas mask and heels. The boys on the stage look positively mainstream in comparison.

  He has no idea what he’s doing here. He only came because Kirby asked him, because she thought it might be awkward seeing Fred. And, boy, is it ever. First love, she told him. Which made him sound even less like someone Dan would want to meet.

  Fred is so very, very young. And stupid. Childhood sweethearts should not come back, especially from film school. Especially if that’s all they’re going to talk about. Movies he’s never heard of. He’s not an uncultured lunk, whatever his ex-wife might think. But the kids have moved on from talking art-house to totally obscure experimental shit. It’s worse because Fred keeps trying to involve him in the conversation, like the good guy he is, which still, please note, does not make him worthy of her.

  ‘Do you know Rémy Belvaux’s work, Dan?’ Fred says. His hair is shaved so short it’s not much more than dark fuzz over his skull. The look is finished with a goatee and one of those annoying piercings under his lip that looks like a giant metal zit. Dan has to restrain himself from leaning forward to try and pop it. ‘No budget, he’s stuck in Belgium. But his work is so self-aware. It’s so real. He really lives it.’

  Dan thinks about living his work by applying a baseball bat to someone’s face, just for example.

  It’s a blessing when the band starts up, rendering conversation, and the momentum towards him murdering Fred, impossible. Mr First Love whoops in demented enthusiasm and hands off his beer to Dan, shoving through the crowd towards the front of the stage.

  Kirby leans in and shouts in his ear. Something-something-venge, he hears.

  ‘WHAT?’ he yells back. He’s holding his lemonade like a crucifix. (Of course, the bar doesn’t sell low-alcohol.)

  Kirby presses her thumb down over the little knob of cartilage above Dan’s ear canal and shouts again: ‘Think of it as revenge for all the games you’ve dragged me to.’

  ‘THAT’S WORK!’

  ‘So’s this.’ Kirby grins happily, because somehow she has managed to convince Jim in the lifestyle section of the Sun-Times to try her out on a gig review. Dan glowers. He should be happy for her that she’s getting to write about something she’s actually interested in. The reality is that he’s jealous. Not that way, that would be ridiculous. But he’s got used to having her around. If she starts writing for lifestyle, she won’t be on the other end of the phone line when he’s halfway across the country at an away game, giving him the scoop on a rumored injury or a batting record, never mind sitting on his couch with her feet curled under her, watching old videotapes of classic games and throwing in basketball or ice hockey terms just to annoy him.

  His buddy Kevin was teasing him about her the other day. ‘You gotta thing for this girl?’

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I feel sorry for her. It’s more protective, you know. Paternal.’

  ‘Ah. You want to rescue her.’

  Dan snorted into his drink. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you met her.’

  But that doesn’t explain why her face flashes through his head when he is taking out his frustrations in his lonely double bed, imagining a consortium of naked women, which makes him feel so guilty and confused that he has to stop. And then resume, feeling shifty and awful, but thinking about what it would be like to kiss her and hold her tucked against his chest with his arm around her and her breasts against him and stick his tongue … Jesus.

  ‘You should probably just fuck her and get it out of your system,’ Kevin said, philosophically.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ Dan replied.

  But this is work. She’s on assignment, which means it’s not a date with Fred. It just so happens that the smug little prick is in town, and this is the most convenient night for her to see him. And he can take comfort in that. Assuming he survives the aural assault of the band.

  Dan eyes a plate of nachos being carried over to a table by an adorable red-headed waitress with tattoos up both arms and a lot of piercings.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ Kirby says, doing the ear trick again. Tragus, it suddenly comes to him, like a crossword clue, that’s what that little bit of cartilage is called. ‘They’re not known for their food.’

  ‘How do you know I wasn’t checking out the waitress?’ He shouts back.

  ‘I know. She has more piercings than a stapler convention.’

  ‘You’re right, that doesn’t do it for me!’ He realizes he hasn’t had sex in – he does the arithmetic – fourteen months. A blind date with a restaurant manager called Abby that went well. At least, he thought so, but she didn’t return his calls afterwards. He’s done a post-mortem on the experience a thousand times, trying to figure out what he did wrong. Analyzing every word because the sex was good. He may have talked too much about Beatriz. Maybe it was too soon after his divorce. Wishful thinking to put himself out there. You’d think all the travelling would give him plenty of opportunity, but it turns out women like to be wooed, and being single is harder than he remembers.

  He still drives past Bea’s house sometimes. She’s in the phonebook, it’s not exactly a crime to have looked her up, even if he can’t bring himself to press dial after tapping the numbers into his cordless phone he can’t even count how many times.

  He’s been trying, he really has. And maybe she’d be proud of him, out, at a club, listening to a band, drinking lemonade with a twenty-threeyear-old attempted murder victim and her childhood sweetheart.

  It would be something they could talk about. God knows they ran out of things to talk about. His fault, he knows. It was an exorcism for him, compulsively sharing the stuff that Harrison wouldn’t let him print. The grisliest details – and worse, the saddest. The lost causes, the cases that never got solved or went nowhere, the kids with drug-addict single moms who tried to stay in school but ended up on the corners, because honestly, where else were they supposed to go? But how many horrible crimes can any one person stand to hear about? It was a mistake, he realizes now. All a terrible cliché. You don’t share that shit. Let alone drag your loved ones into it. He should never have told her that some of the threats were aimed at her. He shouldn’t have told her he’d bought a gun, just in case. That’s what really freaked her out.

  He should have gone for proper therapy (yeah, right). He should have tried listening for once. Maybe he would have really heard her about Roger, the carpenter, who was making them a new TV cabinet. ‘You’d think he was Jesus, the way you
go on about him,’ he’d said at the time. Well, he worked miracles all right. Made her disappear right out of Dan’s life. Got her pregnant at forty-six. Which means it was Dan’s problem all along. His swimmers didn’t have the mettle. But he thought she’d given up on the idea years ago.

  Maybe it would have been different if they’d gone out more. He could have brought her here to Club Dreamerz. (God, that ‘z’ drives him crazy.) Or maybe not here, exactly, but somewhere nice. Blues at the Green Mill. Or walks along the lakefront, picnics in the park, hell, they should have taken the Orient Express across Russia. Something romantic and adventurous instead of getting stuck in the everyday.

  ‘What do you think?’ Kirby yells into his ear. She’s bouncing on the spot, like a demented bunny on a pogo stick, in time to the beat, if the noise emanating from the stage could be said to have a beat.

  ‘Yeah!’ he shouts back. In front of them, a group of people are literally pinballing off each other.

  ‘Is that a good yeah or a bad yeah?’

  ‘I’ll let you know when I can make out the lyrics!’ Which is not likely to be anytime soon.

  She gives him a thumbs-up and throws herself into the mosh. Occasionally her crazy hair or Fred’s zero buzzcut surfaces above the crowd.

  He watches, sipping his lemonade, which had too much ice in it to start with, and is now a diluted, flat and only vaguely lemony water.

  After the band has played forty-five minutes and an encore, the two emerge, sweaty and grinning, and – Dan’s heart sinks – holding hands.

  ‘Still want to eat?’ Kirby says, helping herself to what’s left in his glass, mostly melted ice.

  They end up at El Taco Chino along with the last dregs from other clubs and bars, eating some of the best Mexican food he’s ever had.

  ‘Hey, you know what, Kirbs,’ Fred says, as if the thought just popped into his head. ‘You should make a documentary. About what happened to you. And you and your mom. I could help you with it. Borrow some of NYU’s equipment, maybe move back here for a couple of months. It’d be fun.’