Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem (34 page)

“We need to get in there.” Raven kept pulling the cigarette out of her hatband, fondling it, smelling it, then putting it back.

“Would you just SMOKE that thing?” Melveena went back to her pacing. The gravel crunched under her feet like bones grinding in that old fairy tale, fee fie foe fum.

Raven took her knife out of her hiding place and began to flip it. “We need to go get her. Now.”

The knife flashed in the outdoor light, giving Melveena some small measure of comfort, though her grandmother’s gun was in her pocketbook, as usual. “All I asked her to do was use the bathroom, hide those rings, and get out. She knows we’re out here. What’s taking this long?”

Raven’s voice was all wrong. It was hoarse and scared and weak. “How do you even know she understands a word you say? She never says one word back. She could be stone deaf for all you know.” Raven flipped her knife, ashen-faced and shaking, so pale that her scar looked dark, like a fissure in her face.

Melveena spoke firmly, as if trying to convince herself of what she said. “I’m sure she knows what she’s doing. She’s been around.”

“She’s never been around a thing like Gator Rollins.” Raven’s knife sailed through the air and landed neatly at Melveena’s feet, scuffing the suede of her pump.

“Nice work, Raven. Why don’t you just slice off my toe while you’re at it.” She knelt and snatched it up. The metal was hot, like the metal pens held by her Bone Pile girls. Like Bonnie MacIver’s lipstick case. Like those cursed rings, all metal, all burning with association. She held Raven’s knife for a moment and closed her eyes. She opened her eyes and looked at her friend, understanding Raven for the first time.

She handed the knife back. “We’d better go in.”

Raven put a hand on her arm.

The door they’d been watching finally opened to release Gator, not Fossetta. They watched him as he walked out, climbed into his idling rig, pulled out of the parking lot.

Alone.

EVERY SINGLE MAN
around wanted this harlot with the crazy eyes. That sheriff would curl up and blow away when he found out. Even the Bone Pile men, with their strange, skinny, wild-eyed women that he personally would have
loved
to have a crack at, wanted a shot at this cow.

Who could figure that out?

He figured he’d play her a few songs, let her watch some TV, send her home soon. He had no intention of taking her. Just let her stay long enough to fool all those Bone Pile scavenger rats into thinking he’d had her. She was too big, too soft, too much. And she limped when she walked, like she was walking on gravel or had something in her shoe.

She sure took a long time in the bathroom, though.

He sat in the blue light of the motel TV, his hands on the neck of his guitar. And she came out, her face white as milk. She stood so close he could smell her stink. God, he hated the smell of women this age. This one had it all mixed up with the smell of something else, what was it, cookies, that’s what it was. What was it she wanted, standing there looking at him with those witch eyes? She just stood there. “No wonder men like you. Because you’re quiet. God should make more women like you, women without tongues.”

She stared at him.

He hated her. “Don’t you ever say a word, woman?” He reached out and ripped her dress down the front. She had on nothing underneath. And she didn’t startle in the slightest. “Lord girl, I had no idea you were so fat. I mean it. I had no idea.” He watched for a wince. She didn’t. It was almost like she was studying him, like she could see. “If you think I’ll have a sow like you, think again. The sight of you is enough to make me projectile vomit the length of a football field.” He wanted her to stand there and tremble in her naked shame. But she didn’t.

There was nothing in her eyes. Because she was looking at nothing.

He wanted to be clear of those witch eyes, one green, one brown, hanging in the air behind him, he knew those eyes were hanging just over his shoulder and if he looked in his rearview, he would see them, those calm eyes, watching him and knowing him and owning him forever, he’d closed those eyes with his fists and slammed that pink-lipped mouth as hard as he could with the back of his hand and knocked the spit out of her, literally, he’d knocked a drop of spittle from her mouth that shone like a trip wire as it snaked its way down her chin, her long, bare throat, he had his hands around that throat, and that drop of spit slid over those white teats with the pale pink nipples and falling into the white fat of her belly into the snatch of hair that hid it like leaves over a trap, but it was there, you could smell it, spreading out like a deep rut in a red mud road, a soft place where you spin and get stuck, you can’t get free of it, you’re like tires cutting into a mushy road, he fought his way out of it with all he had and left her there.

Broken on the floor.

He belonged to the road. The road.

It was time to pull out in that rig of midnight blue. Time to leave it all behind, like he always did. Time to pick up a load and hit the open road and get the away from that crazy place full of all those crazy women who were just as crazy as the crazy woman they named that place for.

The highway called, like the highway always called. On the highway, he could get away from the women. At home, his whole life was the accumulation. Enchanted by the parts he was allowed to see, their slim ankles, delicate wrists, the beautiful hollows of their thin necks. But these women were no more than vampires, clinging to him for all they were worth. His life was nothing more than all those women feeding on him.

It had inspired him to retaliation. He’d spent years on the highway, finding and feeding on the young, the weak, the confused and rejected. He’d worshipped them with violence. To have and to crush. The joy had gone out of that sport when he’d torn the wings off a blackbird. He didn’t want any women. Women were a ladder he climbed to claim his reward, and in return he would pull them all along behind him. But he didn’t want a one of them.

The one thing he still wanted wouldn’t be all that difficult to get.

MELVEENA PUSHED OPEN
the motel room door. “Sweet Jesus.” She knelt like a supplicant beside that soft arrangement of white and gold lying shattered on the floor. She knew it was a time for decisive action but if she touched that white skin her hand might burn up with radiance. She reached out, anyway, as carefully as a fire-hypnotized child reaching toward a flame, and found the peach skin of Fossetta’s wrist. There was a pulse. “She’s alive.”

“Of course she’s alive.”

“Well how do you
know
that?”

“He ain’t stupid enough to kill somebody and then leave the body in his motel room.” Raven stepped over the woman on the floor with hardly a glance and went into the bathroom. “
Stupid!
” she called back over her shoulder.

“You hush.” Fossetta’s eyes opened, swam, fixed. “Fossetta? Honey, are you there?” Raven came out with a dry towel, vigorously polishing every smooth surface she could find. “Don’t forget the bathroom, all right?”

Such an angry, flat look. “Already done it. Of
course
.”

Melveena looked down. She watched for a nod, a word, anything, but Fossetta just stared. “Honey, your nose is broken.”

Raven knelt down. “I can fix that.”

“You most certainly will not fix it.”

“Just get out of my way.”

“No! That’s why God made plastic surgeons.”

Raven ignored her. “This won’t hurt as much as whatever he did to you.” Fossetta barely winced as Raven snapped it back in place. “There. Probably won’t even get a bump on it.” She looked up at Melveena. “STUPID.”

“I get your point.”

Melveena went into the bathroom. She returned with a cool towel wrapped around her hands. “I put the rest of the rings in there.”

“She didn’t even have all of ’em?”

“She had four, I had three. We didn’t know which one of us he’d take home.” Melveena knelt again. “Well, Fossetta,” she said as softly as she could, “It’s time to get you up.” It was a gentle, awkward dance, the clothed woman and the naked goddess, rising. “Why,” said Melveena, “you barely weigh a thing. Like lifting feathers. We’ll use this to keep the front of you covered.” She helped her put her arms through what was left of the slip. “You know, I’ve always loved the way you dress, Fossetta. You have some beautiful things.” Melveena patted and smoothed those disarranged curls. She dabbed away at the blood covering Fossetta’s bruised mouth with one of her balled-up white gloves. “You look fine.” Her voice was less calming when she spoke to Raven. “Did you get everything you might have touched?”

“I did. Let’s go.” She buffed both doorknobs on her way out.

They made their way across the parking lot to the Caddy, Raven holding the back of the torn slip closed like a hospital gown. They settled Fossetta in the front seat. Like arranging a feather bed, thought Melveena. Fossetta’s head leaned against the seat and a small sigh escaped her bruised lips.

“She’s probably going into shock.”

“I think she’s fine.” Melveena’s eyes glowed like headlights in the rearview. “Look at that moon. What a treat, a moon like that.” All through Ochre Water she kept up her steady stream of social conversation. “It’s just so lovely here at night this time of year. I should really make a point of taking more night drives. The dust is less intense, too.”

“Melveena. Please stop chatting her up. She ain’t never gonna answer you and it’s making me want to hit something and it might be you.” Raven lay her head back on the seat. Cold air flowed over her chin, up her nose, into her eyes.

Was she ready?

She’d spent years planning how to hurt men after it happened. Every man who came near, she sized him up, rehearsed it, planning in case it went south. She went looking for trouble. She’d found plenty. She’d broken teeth, that was like stomping on old dice. She’d dislocated an arm, with a pop like the sound of an old stick breaking across a thigh. She’d taken her revenge on an assortment of noses, noses that crunched under her fist like cardboard. But killing a man, that was a different thing. She still didn’t know if she could do it.

But maybe she didn’t need to. Maybe there was another way to get rid of him.

She didn’t believe in God anymore, if she ever had, but she sure as hell believed in the Devil. And she knew in her gut if she gave him what he wanted, it would get him away from her daughter. They passed through the lions at the gate, parked across the street from Fossetta’s.

Raven hopped deftly from the back of the moving car.

“Where are you going?”

“I need to get something.”

“Thanks for all your
help
,” Melveena hissed at her friend’s retreating back.

FOSSETTA LEANED JUST
a little heavier as Melveena walked her in the door and back to the bedroom, bumping the particleboard walls of the narrow hallway. Melveena removed the damaged slip and lay Fossetta down and settled the duvet, feathers over feathers. She looked around. “I’ll just tidy up a bit.” She tried to create some order, but to move one thing displaced another, a chain reaction, a Rube Goldberg anti-housekeeping contraption.