“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 time?”
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 t
his, 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 pin-striped 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.”
“Could you get me the oil and vinegar, please?” Laura asked, and Doug reached up into the cupboard for her. She drizzled the salad and continued tossing it.
“Oh, this is ridiculous!” Doug shook his head and closed the book. “How does crap like this get printed?”
“It’s from a small press. Based in Chattanooga. I’ve never heard of them before.” She felt the baby move, a tiny movement, just a shift of weight.
“You’re not going to review this, are you?”
“I don’t know. I thought it might be different.”
“I’d like to see what your advertisers would think of that! This guy’s talking about an organized boycott of oil companies and major banks! ‘Economic re-education,’ he calls it.” He snorted with derision. “Right, tell me another one. Want a glass of wine with dinner?”
“No, I’d better not.”
“One won’t hurt. Come on.”
“No, really. You go ahead.”
Doug opened the refrigerator, took the half bottle of Stag’s Leap chablis out, and poured himself a gobletful. He swirled it around the glass, sipped at it, and then he got the salad plates down from their shelf. “So how was Carol today?”
“Fine. She filled me in on the latest trials and tribulations. The usual.”
“Did you see Tim Scanlon there? He was taking a client for lunch.”
“No, I didn’t see anybody. Oh…I saw Ann Abernathy. She was there with somebody from her office.”
“I wish I could take two-hour lunches.” His right hand continued to spin the wine around and around the glass. “We’re having a great year, but I’m telling you: Parker’s got to hire another associate. I swear to God, I’ve got so much work on my desk it’ll be August before I can get down to my blotter.” Doug reached out and placed his left hand against Laura’s belly. “How’s he doing?”
“Kicking. Carol says he ought to be a good soccer player.”
“I don’t doubt it.” His fingers touched here and there on her belly, seeking the infant’s shape. “Can you see me being a soccer daddy? Going around town to all the games with a little rug rat? And softball in the summer. That t-ball stuff, I mean. I swear, I never pictured myself sitting in the bleachers cheering a little kid on.” A frown worked itself onto Doug’s face. “What if he doesn’t like sports? What if he’s a computer nerd? Probably make more money that way, though. Come up with a computer that teaches itself, how about that?” His frown broke, and a smile flooded back. “Hey, I think I felt him move! Did you feel that?”
“At real close range,” Laura said, and she pressed Doug’s hand firmly against her belly so he could feel David twitching in the dark.
They ate dinner in the dining room, where a picture window looked toward the postage-stamp-size plot of woods in back. Laura lit candles, but Doug said he couldn’t see what he was eating and he turned the lights back on. The rain was still coming down outside, alternately hard and misty. They talked about the news of the day, how bad the traffic was getting on the freeways, and how the building spurt had to slow down sooner or later. Their conversation turned, as it usually did, toward Doug’s work. Laura noted that his voice got tighter. She approached the idea of a vacation again, sometime in the autumn, and Doug promised he’d think about it. She had long since realized that they were not living for today any longer; they were living for a mythical tomorrow, where Doug’s workload would be lighter and the pressures of the marketplace eased, their days relaxedly constructive and their nights a time of communion. She had also long since realized that it would never happen. Sometimes she had a nightmare in which they were both running on treadmills, with a machine that had teeth at their backs. They could not stop, could not slow down, or they would fall back into the teeth. It was a terrible dream because there was reality in it. Over the years she’d watched Doug climb from a junior position at his firm to a position of real responsibility. He was indispensable there. His term: indispensable. The work he brought home and the time he spent on the telephone proved it. They used to go out to dinner and the movies every weekend. They used to go dancing, and on vacations to places like the Bahamas and Aspen. Now they were lucky to get a day alone at home, and if they saw a movie it was on the VCR. The paychecks were more, yes: both his and hers had grown, but when did they have time to enjoy the fruits of their labors? She’d watched Doug age worrying about other people’s portfolios, about whether they had enough long-term investments, or that international politics would drive down the dollar. He lived on a tightrope of quick decisions, above a sea of fluctuations. The success of his career was based on the worth of paper, of lists of numbers that could change dramatically overnight. The success of her own career was based on knowing the right people, on cultivating the path through the gilded gates of Atlanta’s social set. But they had lost each other. They had lost the people they used to be, and that knowledge made Laura’s heart ache. Which in turn made her feel incredibly guilty, because she had all the material things anyone could possibly want while people starved in the streets of the city and lived beneath overpasses in cardboard boxes.
She had lied to Carol today. When she’d said she wasn’t having a baby for the reason of bringing Doug closer to her, it was a lie. Maybe it would happen. Maybe both of them would ease up, and find their way back to what used to be. The baby could do it. Having someone who was part of them could do it, and they’d find what was real again.
“I’m thinking of buying the gun tomorrow,” Doug suddenly said.
The gun. They’d been talking about this for the last couple of weeks, ever since a house two blocks down the street was broken into when the family was at home asleep. In the past few months, Atlanta’s crime wave had been washing closer and closer to their front door. Laura was against having a gun in the house, but burglaries were on the rise in Buckhead and sometimes when Doug was gone at night she felt frighteningly vulnerable even with the alarm system.
“I think I’d better go ahead and do it, with the baby on the way,” he continued as he picked at the casserole. “It won’t be a big gun. Not a Magnum or anything.” He gave a quick, nervous smile, because guns made him jumpy. “Maybe a little automatic or something. We can keep it in a drawer next to the bed.”
“I don’t know. I really hate the idea of buying a gun.”
“I thought maybe we could take a class in gun safety. That way you’d feel better, and I would, too. I guess the gun shops or the police department teach a class.”
“Great,” she said with a little cynicism. “We can schedule gun class right after our prenatal class.”
“I know having a gun around the house bothers you, and I feel the same way. But we’ve got to face reality: this is a dangerous city. Like it or not, we ought to have a gun to protect David with.” He nodded, the issue settled. “Tomorrow. I’ll go buy a gun tomor—”
The telephone rang. Doug had turned the answering machine off, and in his haste to get up and race to the phone in the kitchen he overturned his salad plate and spilled some of the oil a
nd vinegar dressing on the front of his pinstriped pants. “Hello?” he said. “Yes, right here.” Laura followed him into the kitchen, and she said, “Take off your pants.”
“What?” Doug covered the mouthpiece. “Huh?”
“Your pants. Take them off. The oil’ll set in if I don’t put something on it.”
“Okay.” He unzipped them, unhooked the braces, and let his pants fall to his ankles. He was wearing argyle socks with his wingtips. “I’m listening,” he said to the caller. “Uh-huh. Yeah.” His voice was tight. He took off his shoes and then his pants and gave them to Laura. She went to the sink, ran the cold water, and rubbed some on the oil spots. The dry cleaner would have to repair the damage, but at least the oil wouldn’t leave a permanent stain if she applied a little first-aid. “Tonight?” she heard Doug say incredulously. “No way! The paperwork isn’t due until next week!”
Oh no, she thought. Her heart sank. It was the office, her constant rival. So much for Doug’s night at home. Damn it, couldn’t they leave him alone long enough for—
“I can’t come in,” Doug said. “No. Positively not.” A pause. Then: “I’m at home having dinner, Eric. Cut me some slack, okay?”
Eric Parker. Doug’s superior at Merrill Lynch. This was a bad sign.
“Yeah. All right.” She saw his shoulders slump. “All right, just give me—” He glanced at the wall clock. “Thirty minutes. See you there.” He hung up, let out a long breath, and turned toward her. “Well, that was Eric.”
There was nothing she could say. Many nights he got telephone calls that stole him away from home. Like the rise of burglaries, that, too, was on the increase. “Damn,” he said quietly. “It’s something that has to be taken care of tonight. I’ll try to be back by—” Another glance at his enemy the clock. “Two hours. Three at the most.”
That meant four, Laura thought. She looked down at his less-than-muscular legs. “Better find another pair of pants, then. I’ll take care of these.”
Doug walked back to the master bedroom while Laura took the oil-spattered pants to the laundry room off the kitchen. She rubbed a little Gain on the spots and left Doug’s pants on the dryer. Then she went to the dining room to finish her dinner, and in another moment Doug returned wearing khakis, a light blue shirt, and a gray Polo sweater. He sat down and wolfed his casserole. “I’m sorry about this,” he said as he helped Laura carry the dishes into the kitchen. “I’ll make it as quick as I can. Okay?”