HELLz BELLz (8 page)

“They’ll remember that fire-engine-red halter-top.”

“I’ll wear your shirt over it.”

“And I’ll go bare-chested?”

“Why not? Lot of guys do in this kind of heat.”

“Yeah, rednecks mostly.”

“You want to see if your wife’s all right, or not?”

“Of course I do.” Joe shrugged. “Okay. What the hell.”

“Let’s go.” She took his hand and pulled him toward the door.

They stepped out onto the sidewalk. The heat hit them like a blast from a blazing furnace. The church bell was still going strong. Sirens wailed in the distance. A sound like firecrackers popping rattled somewhere in the night.

“Was that gunfire?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I hope it was firecrackers.”

“Me too.” Still holding onto his hand, she guided him to the right. “Better go this way. We don’t want to take a chance on running into Gary again.”

“I doubt he’s still there. Unless he hit his head on the sidewalk when he fell. Christ, what if he’s still out cold? What if he’s in a coma or something?”

“That hard-headed son of a bitch? No way. He’s probably back at my apartment, nursing his wounded pride and scarfing down more suds and plotting his revenge.”

“You don’t think he’d be driving around, looking for us?”

“Nah. He can’t afford to get caught drinking and driving again. They’d yank his license for sure. That’s why he sent me for the beer in the first place. Lazy bastard.”

“He didn’t seem that worried while ago. Didn’t seem like a guy who thinks before he acts.”

She tucked his arm between her arm and the side of her torso as they rounded the corner. The soft mound of her breast pressed against his elbow. “Think positive,” she said. “All that worrying gets you nowhere. There’s such a thing as thinking
too
much.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

She patted the back of his hand with her free hand. “I’m right about a lot of things. I’m just usually wrong in my choice of men. Present company excepted.”

He tried to laugh. “You didn’t exactly choose me. More like fate threw us together.”

“Yeah, but I chose to
stay
with you. ’Cause you’re a nice guy. And I trust you.”

“Thanks.” He caught himself enjoying the feel of her breast on his arm and immediately felt guilty. He wondered: How can a man be so worried about his wife and at the same time enjoy copping a feel of a strange woman’s tit?
What kind of man does that? Are we all such primitive beasts?

Almost as if in answer to his silent question, a dapper man in white shoes, pressed khakis and a pale blue pullover shirt sprang from the mouth of a dark alley and swung a golf club at Joe’s head. The crazed golfer shouted a demented war cry as Joe threw up his free arm and warded off what would have been a blow to his head. The golf club bounced off Joe’s right forearm, and a jolt of pain ran like electricity up his arm to his shoulder. The dapper man regained control of his club and drew back for another strike. A bloodstained golf hat sat sideways on his head.

Suzie hopped-skipped toward the dapper man and kicked him, the toes of her shoes landing squarely between his legs. The man folded and dropped to his knees, then fell over on his side and curled into a fetal ball, alternately groaning and blowing his breath like a woman in natural childbirth.

Joe picked up the golf club and hurled it into the dark alley. He resisted the urge to kick the man’s teeth in.

“Jesus Christ, are you crazy?” Suzie shouted at the man on the sidewalk. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Out of his fucking mind,” Joe said, rubbing his aching arm. “You nailed him good.”

“Well, he scared me! Serves him right.”

“Come on,” he said, “let’s keep moving. Moving targets are harder to hit.”

They hurried on down the sidewalk. Suzie said, “What the hell’s wrong with everybody? Did terrorists slip something in the water supply? Jesus! Everybody’s fucking nuts!”

“I don’t know, but I’m starting to believe that damn bell really is making people crazy. Am I crazy for believing that?”

“If you are, I am too. But how come we’re not going bananas like them?” She thoughtfully pinched her lower lip. “I never kicked a man like that before. And you know what? I
liked
it. Maybe it
is
affecting me.”

“I wanted to kick his teeth in,” Joe confessed. “I wanted to kick him to death.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Maybe it affects everybody differently.”

“Maybe. Or maybe we’re not bananas yet because we couldn’t hear the bell over the jukebox in Bill’s.”

“But it doesn’t make sense. I mean, how could a bell ringing make people violent? It’s just not possible.”

“Yeah? Well, why don’t you go explain that to your golfer friend? And that psycho cop.”

“God, now I’m
really
worried about Sara. What if some psycho broke in and—”

“Calm down,” she said. “You have to keep a cool head so you can handle whatever we might find at your house. Okay?”

He saw that she was looking warily at him. “Yeah. You’re right, you’re right. But Jesus…”

“Yeah. I know.”

A muffled boom startled them. They both jumped. They picked up their already fast pace.

“What
was
that?” she asked.

“Explosion. Something blew up, somewhere. Something big.”

“Shit, now I’m scared. We’ve got to get off the streets. What if some whacko decides to do a little drive-by shooting?” She glanced anxiously over her shoulder. “Maybe we should stuff our ears so we can’t hear that bell so good.”

“Good idea.” He pulled the pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, withdrew two cigarettes and broke off the filter tips. He threw away the tobacco ends and gave the two filter tips to Suzie. She stuck one in each ear. Joe broke off two more and stuffed them in his ears. “Used to do this at rock concerts whenever I was close to the stage. I’d probably be deaf if I hadn’t.”

“Neat trick. I can still hear it, but it’s not as loud. Maybe it’ll keep us sane.”

They rounded another corner and the Jiffy-Quick Mini-Mart came into view. Joe’s Toyota was right where he’d left it: directly in front of the convenience store. The police cruiser was still parked next to his car, its rack of lights still flashing, and the unmarked detective’s sedan was also still there. There was no ambulance, so Joe figured that it had already come and taken away the injured Rat Face—unless the cops were still torturing him or letting him die of his gunshot wound. “That’s my Toyota,” he pointed out.

They stopped in front of a flower shop. Joe unbuttoned his white shirt, pulled it off and handed it to Suzie. “God, this feels weird,” he said.

“Hey, don’t sweat it,” she said, eyeing his torso. “You look good without a shirt.”

“Thanks. I’ll bet you do too.”
Shit, why did I say that?

She smiled, showing an even set of teeth. He glimpsed something animalistic in her face as she slipped into his shirt. “Maybe you’ll get a chance to find out,” she said.

Even with his ears stuffed with cigarette filters, he knew he hadn’t mistaken the sly sexuality in her voice. Smoky and as sultry as the sweltering night, her voice was. Dripping raw passion.

The bell,
he thought.
The bell’s doing this to us. Kindling our passions and freeing our darker impulses. If I lose my self-restraint—

“Give me your keys,” she said as she held out her hand.

Something in her eyes told him that she was asking for much more than his car keys, and he hesitated.

“Come on, don’t be a wuss,” she taunted. “Hand ’em over.”

He fumbled in his pants pocket for the keys, then dropped them in her hand. They landed with a soft jingle. She tossed them in the air and caught them in the manner of one flipping a coin. On its surface, it was a trivial gesture, yet it seemed to Joe to be full of apocryphal significance, and he felt that he was giving away something of himself. Things were spinning out of his control.

“Okay,” she said, “you wait over there in front of Zelda’s Gift Shop and I’ll zip over and pick you up.”

“What if the cops see you and give chase?”

“They won’t. Think positive. We can do this. No big deal.”

“I hope to God you’re right.”

She stood on tiptoes, angled her head upward and kissed his lips. “For luck,” she said with a wan smile.

“Yeah,” he whispered, resisting an impulse to grab her and crush her to his body so he could feel her breasts and belly against him.

She turned away and walked at a brisk pace toward his car. Feeling self-conscious about being shirtless on a city street, he folded his arms across his chest and walked toward the gift shop, glancing back at Suzie every few seconds. His size-16 shirt was way too big for her. The shirttail hung below her shorts and gave the impression that she might be naked beneath the shirt. Joe caught himself picturing her naked and banished the image from his mind—or tried to. His penis twisted against his shorts. He stuck fingers in his ears to push the cigarette filters deeper into his ear canals. If the relentless ringing of the church bell was fueling his lust, the filters weren’t doing much good. Then again, maybe they were. Maybe without them he’d be feeling murderous rage. Better lust than rage, he decided.

He stopped in front of Zelda’s, turned and watched Suzie climb into his car. The engine started and the headlights came on, as did the back-up lights when she shifted into reverse. Then the brake lights flashed red when she hit the brakes to avoid backing into the Lexus barreling down the street, chased by an old battered Ford with one working headlight.

The Lexus and the chase car both careened around the corner and disappeared from sight. Gunshots rang out somewhere close-by. The city was rapidly descending into anarchy, so what, Joe wondered, were the cops doing in the convenience store while all hell was breaking loose out here? Had they gone nuts and killed off each other?
Fuck ’em. Who cares, so long as they don’t
mess with us?

The Toyota sped toward him, then swerved to the curb, and Joe yanked open the door and jumped in.

“Told ya,” Suzie said. A cigarette was clamped between her teeth, its smoke curling about her head like broken tendrils of fog. “Piece of cake. There’s so many signs and shit on those windows they couldn’t’ve seen me anyway.”

She gunned the engine and the car leapt forward and zoomed down the street.

Joe looked back to see if the cops were coming after them. They weren’t.

“Which way?” she asked as she switched on the air-conditioner and cranked the fan full-blast.

“Know where Old Boston Road runs into Rosewood Lane?”

“Yeah?” She flicked ashes at the ashtray.

“Turn right there at the Photo-Mat. My house is about two miles from there.”

“Gotcha.”

She slowed down to bypass a two-car accident blocking the right lane. As they drove past, they saw a fat, bald man smash the windshield of one of the wrecked cars with a ball bat. A skinny woman inside the attacked vehicle raised her arms to ward off the shower of broken glass, then slipped out the passenger door and darted down the middle of the street. Suzie blew the horn and accelerated past the running woman.

“Wait!” Joe shouted. “We should stop and help her.”

“No way. She’s probably as crazy as he is. We can’t trust anybody now. Certainly not strangers.”

He turned to see the woman disappear behind a row of trees lining the street.

“That fat guy’ll never catch her anyway,” Suzie said.

“Guess you’re right. Jesus. I can’t believe all this shit.”

“Seeing is believing.”

Joe wondered how Suzie could be so accepting of the extraordinary events of the night. She seemed cool and collected and in her element, while he was close to freaking out. And worried half-out of his mind about Sara. Probably, that was it: if he didn’t have a wife to worry about, he might be as cool as his young, sexy companion. Marriage was like that. It settled you down, tamed you, and made you less adaptable to changes. A married man had all the freedom of a potted plant, he thought. And a hell of a lot to lose. He couldn’t just worry about himself—he had to worry about and protect his better half. For a brief moment, he resented Sara and being tied down by marriage. He wished he didn’t have to go home to find out what was wrong. He didn’t want to know. He was
afraid
to find out. What if he found her butchered on the floor? Dismembered in pools of her own blood. “Jesus…”

“What?” Suzie asked.

“Nothing. I just…I’m afraid of what we may find at home.”

“Hey, don’t worry. It’s probably just something simple like the phone’s not working right. Don’t imagine the worst.”

“If she
is
all right, we’re getting the hell out of town till all this shit is over. You should come too.”

“You don’t think she would mind? I mean, I don’t wanna have to fight off a jealous wife. Not tonight.”

“No, she—”

“She could be like all these other psychos, if she’s been hearing that bell. We have to be careful, ya know?”

“Christ, I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“You got any weapons in the house? Guns?”

“A pistol. It’s in the bedroom. Since we don’t have kids, I thought it would be a good thing to have around. For home defense.”

“Your wife know where it is?”

“Yeah. And she knows how to use it.”

“Great. I’ll wait outside while you go in and check things out. No point in both of us getting shot.”

“That’s what you call positive thinking?”

“I’m just saying…”

“That’s it there,” Joe said as he pointed out his modest two-story house.

Suzie turned into the driveway and stopped the car. She kept the motor running. “Nice house,” she observed. “I’ll wait right here. If thing’s aren’t right, get the hell outta there and we’ll hit the road.”

He nodded grimly. “I’ll signal you if everything’s okay, then you can come on in.”

“Okay.” She put her hand on his thigh. “Be careful, Joe. I don’t know if I can get through this night by myself.”

“I will. Sit tight. And turn off the headlights.”

She killed the lights as he got out of the car. She squirmed out of his shirt and gave it to him.