Bad People (38 page)

Luke had deliberately picked the day he knew she was meeting with her business manager to say was the day of the “funeral,” so she wouldn’t change her mind and want to go.

“No. Better you didn’t. Lot’s of emotions, you know.”

“I’m glad you went,” said Connie. “It’s important. Are you glad that you went?”

“Yes. I think it was important to them.”

“Them?”

“Her family and people.”

“Was it awkward?”

“No, it wasn’t awkward.”

“That’s good then. We need a couple big spoons,” she said, after standing with her empty plate for a few moments looking at the open white containers. She went back into the kitchen. She came back with spoons, jabbing them one by one randomly into some of the containers. “Everything smells so good,” she said, looking them over again. “So good.”

“Go,” he said. “Start.”

“Oh, right.” She took a shrimp, then a couple small spoonfuls of rice. Then she started looking again.

“The scallion pancakes,” he said.

“Oh right,” she said, seeming to notice them for the first time.

“Those are the ones you supposedly like.”

“Yeah,” she said absently. She put her plate down. “Luke,” she said, “this is the worst possible time for me to do this to you, to say this to you, but—”

The door buzzer rang.

“To say what. To
do
what.” What?

The buzzer rang again. “Oh Jesus Christ,” said Connie.

“What do you want to say?” Luke felt his blood starting to rise. Likely it was something innocuous bothering her, but it was almost as if she didn’t want to have dinner with him or want him there at all. Connie had a way of making little things overly dramatic, because it sounded if she were going to break up with him or something. But after all the time he had invested and still with nothing to show for it, that was impossible.

The buzzer came again.

“Hold on. Who is that at this time of night!” She went to the door, picked up the intercom receiver. She spoke into it, then listened. “No. Go home. Not tonight.” She listened. “Stay there,” she said. “I’m coming down.” She hung up the receiver and grabbed a cardigan from the row of hooks near the door.

“Who is that.”

She shook her head. “I’ll only be a moment.”

“Wait,” he said. “You were going to say something to me a moment ago.”

She looked at him, almost sadly, indulgently. “This will only be a minute. Please.” She opened the door and left it open behind her as she went out.

He waited. He watched the food congeal in the packages.

He started taking them to the sink.

He dumped the cartons in the sink. The food all sloshed together, filling the bottom of the basin and choking the drain. He turned the garbage disposal on and listened as it tried gurgling it all down. He ran the tap and the water line rose faster that the suffocating grinders could work.

The sink was nearly full when the disposal gave up. He heard a load click from it and then silence. Cheap. Poorly made, and now the kitchen stank of burned-out motor. It should have been able to have accommodated him, but it hadn’t.

He had time to do all this and yet Connie hadn’t come back upstairs yet.

Luke turned and went to her bedroom. He got into the bottom desk drawer and got her gun, and then he went into her file cabinet where the bullets were kept. He tore the plastic bag off the gun and put six bullets into the revolver’s chambers, and took a dozen more and put them, along with what was left of the plastic bag, in his pocket. He shoved the gun behind his belt. It felt cold on his tailbone. He didn’t know what he planned to do exactly. He went back into the living room, stood there. Connie still wasn’t back yet. She was making him angry.

He decided to go downstairs. He left his jacket behind, he could have taken it and put the gun into one of the long deep pockets, but it would have been unnatural for him to wear his coat into the lobby, because he wasn’t going anywhere. He could have left the gun for now, but he wanted to keep it with him.

He went downstairs. Connie’s back was to him. She was standing in the lobby doorframe, with it propped up against her, huddling against the cold. The person in front was smaller, almost hidden from view, until Connie turned her head at the sound of Luke’s footsteps. She half-smiled at him, as if in apology for keeping him so long.

In the instant of that half-smile Luke realized that he might have overreacted upstairs. However, as it turned out that was too late to fix.

Because when she turned her head she also revealed the face of the little man standing on the other side of the threshold: Barry.

Barry’s face twisted in a spasm the moment he saw Luke. He cried out in shock, then he paused for a moment, the way weak people do when they see something they don’t understand. He looked back at Connie with a questioning gaze. Luke waited to see what would happen. the Mind cautioned him: the lobby had cameras. Luke stared at Barry, willing him to calm down, to stop reacting, to be cool. Barry, however, would not allow the Mind in. Instead he turned and ran. “Barry!” shouted Connie, incredulous.

Luke stepped past her, stepping out into the open air. Barry was at the far end of the block, he had run in the same direction as where Luke had parked. He was probably parked down there too. The night air was invisible. Luke could hear and smell everything. The night was so clear.

“Luke!” shouted Connie. She still held the door open. She hadn’t taken her keys down with her, Luke had seen them still resting on the side table upstairs.

She called his name again. He didn’t look at back at her. First, he had to catch Barry before he talked to anyone, then deal with her. He had suspected Barry would see him with Connie one day, but he anticipated that day as being further down the road, after their wedding perhaps, or some time when Barry could do little about it. And he certainly hadn’t imagined that Barry would react like he had on seeing Luke. He wasn’t thinking. Barry should realize that anything he did to Luke would come back on him too.

Luke could have, and should have, killed Barry at his house, but he had expected to put all that behind him. And he should not have dumped all the food out upstairs and burned out the garbage disposal. The Mind had not warned him about those things. Why?

Yet now the Mind was with him in full force again. Luke walked down the sidewalk as if on a layer of air. Ahead he heard Barry find his car, and he heard the motor start.

Luke got to the Datsun, got in. Barry had already driven off, but he would be going home to his house anyway. He had nowhere else. There, Luke would finish him, with Connie’s gun. Then he would go back and deal with Connie herself.

He had been muddled, this was not the time and not the way he had expected everything to end, but every season of his life came to an end eventually, and he moved on the a new life, and he moved on stronger.

The Mind had given him the gun, because the Mind already knew what was going to happen, how this season of Luke’s life would close. And how his next life would begin.

It was good.

Chapter 42: S/D, Ardiss

“Luke?” said S/D. “What do you mean?” He had told her his whole thing, had bared his soul to her, and she brought up Luke.

“He’s your friend, right.”

“My Mom’s boyfriend. How do you know him?”

“He’s not your Mom’s boyfriend,” said Ardiss evenly.

“And why is he telling you anything about me?” He gestured around. “About any of this? Why is that any of his business?”

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” she told him. “You’re right, it isn’t any of his business.”

The kitchen was empty. S/D ran out toward the garage on some impulse and flung the door open. Too dark in there to see. He left the door open and then went out the back, into the moonlight, to stare at the swimming pool and its low fill of brackish water. Why was there water in it at all. What asshole had tried to refill that pool? And with winter coming.

She followed him.

“S/D, what’s going on with you?”

“With me? Why don’t you tell me what going on
altogether
?”

“Luke’s a friend,” she said. “He comes into the shop a lot. He didn’t tell you that? I thought he would tell you that. He gave you the card, right?”

“So?”

“So where do you think he got that? From me. He told me he was giving it to a friend. That friend was you.”

“You never mentioned any of this until now.”

“I didn’t know,” she said, and probably realizing that that didn’t make any sense, she added, “At the time I didn’t know anything was going to happen. I thought you were a nice guy, I guess. A nice cute guy.” She put her hand on hi shoulder.

He resisted turning around.

“Come on, look at me, won’t you? Don’t be mad.”

“I have a right to be. Don’t tell me what to be.”

She moved her hand, and then encircled him with her arms from behind. She lay her head against her back. He stared down at the ground. A rusty shovel lay there, incongruously.

“I’ve ruined everything haven’t I,” said Ardiss.

“Why did you say Luke isn’t my Mom’s boyfriend?”

“Because he isn’t.”

“Why not? Why wouldn’t he be?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it. Why are you asking so many questions? Don’t ask any more questions.”

“If he’s with her, then
why
is he with her?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know more than you’re telling.” S/D turned and looked at her. “Why is he with her?”

“Don’t make that face. Don’t get all angry with me. It’s none of your business anyway.”

None of
his
business. Then he knew.

“Oh, fuck you both. I’m going to kill that guy.”

“You don’t want to mess with Luke,” said Ardiss, there was a glare in her eye. A glint of something and it wasn’t fear, it wasn’t a threat, it was a dare.

“Yeah, you wish,” he said.

“Take me home. This is bullshit.”

“I’m not ready to leave yet.”

“It’s all about you?” said Ardiss.

“Maybe.”

“I guess that’s a family trait.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Figure it out.”

“You don’t know my family.”

“I know what I know. I know a lot more than you think I do. I know a lot more than
he
thinks I do. I could blow this shit up if I decided to.”

Blow what shit up?
S/D stepped away from her, back to the end of the pool. “Do it,” he said. “Blow something up.”

“I
will
!”

“Do it.”

“
I will!
”

She stood there with her arms folded. He pulled out his cell phone.

“Who are you calling?” she demanded.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. He was going to call his house and tell his Mom to put Luke on the phone if he was there. He was going to tell Luke that he was with Ardiss and see what happened. Blow his shit up.

“Who are you calling? Don’t call anyone!”

“Then tell me what you’re talking about!”

“You think all this happened by itself? That it happened by accident?”

“All what? All
what
that happened?”

“Everything. You’re life. It’s all stuff that happens, and you can’t change it.”

“I don’t want to change anything.”

“Then put your phone away and lets get out of here. Let’s just leave this place, and forget it. It’s creeping me out being here.”

Why
did
he bring her here? He didn’t know.

There was a rustling in the untrimmed hedges against the back fence.

“Holy! What is that?” shouted Ardiss.

S/D thought it was too big for a cat, that it must be a raccoon. A pair of glassy eyes shined out in the moonlight.

“Jesus!” shouted Ardiss. “Its eyes!”

“Shh! You’re scaring it.”

“Scaring it!”

“Quiet!”

The animal stepped out into the moonlight. Then another one did too.

“What are those?” said Ardiss.

The two animals were feline, too large for house cats, and both were adults. “Bobcats,” said S/D.

“Jesus Christ,” said Ardiss. She leaned down and seized the rusty shovel with two hands.

The bobcats hisses, and recoiled.

“Don’t do that!” said S/D.

She looked at him and then made a move like she was going to drop the shovel.

“Don’t do that either,” he whispered. “Just back up into the house. Slowly. They are probably hungry, but they are scared. Back away, slow now.”