Pernicious (50 page)

         
Perry laughed again. “At least you’re honest. I can’t see us becoming bosom buddies. Maybe we can rise above hating each other’s guts. Like I said over the phone, we have a lot in common. You, like me, don’t suffer fools.”

         
“I don’t hate your guts, Perry.”

         
“Oh, really? You just hate my heart beats rhythmically.”

         
“No, I don’t hate you. I hate that my son…This thing between you and me, this personal vendetta of yours, my family should have never been brought into it. That’s what I hate. That’s why my nerves are shot.”

         
Perry bit her bottom lip. “You may not believe this, I love Neal. Yes, I’ve said nasty things about him, but I do love him.”
No, you don’t!
“I didn’t marry him for the hell of it, or to get back at you. Let me put it this way: I met him and fell in love, and at the same time I was kinda angry with you, who happened to be his ex.”

         
“What a coincidence?”

         
The man reappeared and placed two glasses filled with coke on the table.

         
“Your order will be right up,” he said before leaving.

         
Perry put a straw into the glass and took a long sip, closing her eyes and moaning, as if this were the most sumptuous drink she’d had in a long time.

         
“Ah,” she said. “That hit’s the spot. Back to what I was saying…What was I saying? Oh, yes.” She paused, nibbled on a cuticle. “This is kinda hard for me to say. I…”

         
Tasha opened the paper straw, tossed the paper toward the far end of the table and took a sip. The coke tasted flat, very flat.

         
“I was wrong,” Perry said. “I realized that today when I saw Neal and Derrick out by the pool. You know, my daughter’s been gone a long time. Mostly it’s my fault. I should’ve never signed the papers giving my mother custody. Until today, I’d blocked all thoughts of her out my mind.
  
“Seeing Neal and Derrick together made me realize what I was doing was wrong. Very wrong! Nothing should come between a mother and her child.”

         
Perry sighed and shook her head. “Maybe I’m the one who should be seeing a head shrink, excuse me, doctor. I just don’t know why I do the things I do. Will you forgive me? Please!”

         
Tasha coughed and took a long sip of coke. It tasted flatter with each sip.

         
She’s gotta be kidding me. All the crap she’s pulled and suddenly she sees the error of her evil ways? No way in hell!

         
“Well,” Perry said, “can you forgive me?”

         
Tasha started to speak, and checked it. She had no intention of answering the question, but had almost asked about Willie Davis. Did she feel any remorse after killing him? What about Lester Perkins? Tyrone Banks?

         
The man brought a plate of catfish to the table and placed it before Perry. She picked up a piece.

         
“You don’t have to answer,” she said, and dropped the fish onto the plate. “In due time all of this will be behind us, I’m sure of that. You want to try a piece of this fish?”

         
“No,” Tasha said, and heard the slur in her voice.

         
Her tongue, it felt funny, as if it were glued to the bottom of her mouth. Her stomach growled, though she’d eaten earlier, half a cheese sandwich. Buckwheat Zydeco sang louder from the jukebox. She then noticed that her vision was blurry, as if she were looking through bifocals, everything fuzzy around the edges.

         
Oh God! I hope this woman hasn’t poisoned me!

         
Perry chatted away, her demeanor unchanged.

         
A few minutes later, Tasha felt tired, exhausted, sleepy.

         
“I told my mother what Burt was doing,” Perry was saying, “and guess what she did? She got an extension cord and beat me bloody. I still have the scars on my back. She knew I wasn’t lying on him. She couldn’t accept the fact her man was a degenerate pervert. Bitch took it out on me. I wasn’t fifteen years old.”

         
Tasha, wondering what in the world she’s talking about, rested her head on the back of the seat and fought to keep her eyes open.

         
Perry continued, talking more to herself than to Tasha:
       
“Man waves his dick at your daughter while you’re pretending to be asleep, your daughter does the right thing and tell you about it, then you beat the snot out of her with an extension cord. Only a silly bitch does that. What he didn’t know, what she didn’t know, I kept a butcher knife under my pillow. If he’d so much as laid a finger on me, I would have cut him a new asshole. I swear to God I would have!

         
“If she’d come in there while I was slicing and dicing his ass, talking about leave him alone, I would have…” Perry stopped, looked at Tasha and smiled. “You think I’m a little crazy, don’t you?”

         
Tasha opened her mouth to say, “I think you’re a lot of crazy,” but no words came out.

         
This frightened her.

         
Something’s wrong!
She tried to speak again…and couldn’t muster a syllable. Then she noticed the catfish on Perry’s plate. Not a single piece eaten!

         
This heifer
has
poisoned me!

         
Tasha tried to lift her hand, to summon someone over, and it felt weighted…She couldn’t raise it above the table.

         
“Are you okay?” Perry asked. “You don’t look so good. You look kinda dehydrated. Drink some more coke.”

         
The coke, Tasha thought.
She spiked the coke!

         
When?

         
She’d never taken her eyes off her.
She and the weasel-looking man were in cahoots!
Tasha sought him out without moving her head…There he was, standing behind the counter, rubbing his scraggily goatee, as if everything were business as usual.

         
Perry waved at him. “You ready to go?” she asked Tasha.

         
The man strolled over and again Tasha tried to speak.

         
“What’s the matter with her?” he asked Perry.

         
Perry gave him forty dollars and said, “She had too much too fast too early. Keep the change.”

         
The man gave Tasha a disgusted look before returning to the counter.

         
“I’m taking you home,” Perry said. “When you feel better you can come back and get your car.”

         
Tasha, eyes half closed, shook her head.

         
“Yes, I am taking you home,” Perry said. Then she leaned closer and whispered: “We’re going to walk out the door together, without a commotion, you and I. You can lean on me if you need to. However, you’re going to make a serious effort to walk on your own.

         
“Yes, you’re going to make one helluva effort. If you don’t--hear me good!--if you don’t, I’ll leave you here, leave you to explain why you’re sitting here looking stupid. Then I’ll go home and do something really bad to that big-headed boy of yours.”

         
Tasha groaned. She looked at the butter knife and fork wrapped tightly in a napkin next to Perry’s plate. She tried to grab it and only succeeded in placing her hand on the table.

         
“In your dreams!” Perry said.

         
Tears rolled down Tasha’s face. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She’d known this was a trap, and still had walked smack into it.

         
“Let’s go!” Perry said, standing over her. “Now!”

         
When Tasha didn’t move, Perry grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up.
 

         
Standing made her more dizzier, and she was certain she would throw up.

         
Perry flung Tasha’s left arm around her shoulder, held it in place with one hand, grabbed Tasha’s side with the other, and started for the door, Tasha’s loafers sliding across the floor.

         
“You’re not fucking helping!” Perry whispered.

         
A man sitting with two women jumped up and opened the door for them. “You need some help?” he asked.

         
“No,” Perry said. “I think we can make it.”

         
Outside, the sun was setting, yet still bright enough to hurt Tasha’s eyes.

         
Descending the three steps, Tasha tripped and fell, and Perry caught her just before she hit the ground.

         
Grunting and panting, Perry escorted her across the gravel parking lot to the Cadillac.

         
She balanced Tasha upright with one hand while opening the passenger door, then pushed her in and righted her in the seat. Perry got behind the wheel and sat there for a minute catching her breath.

         
Who would take care of Derrick? Tasha wondered, struggling to remain conscious. She wished she’d taken him to her mother’s, or to Neal’s parents.

         
This woman, this monster, with my son!

         
Lord knows she should not have allowed that.

         
She had to do something.
Think! Think of something!
 
Jesus, I can’t even keep my eyes open!

         
Perry started the Cadillac and drove away. She steered onto Interstate 30, and Tasha noticed the speedometer at eighty.

         
Perry laughed and said, “Well, Bumpy Face, let this be a lesson to you. There’s two kinds of people in this world: people you fuck with and people you leave the fuck alone! You shouldna’ve fucked with
me
!”

         
Tasha thought about the old man in the wheelchair. He’d suffered a stroke and sat there unable to alert anyone,
and he’d hung on
. He fought back.

         
Dammit, he fought back!

         
Cars and trucks flew by in her periphery, and the air conditioner vent with a cheap air freshener tied to it blew a strawberry scent into her nostrils, making her feel even more sicker.

         
“My uncle Henry,” Perry said, “on my daddy’s side, he’s dead now. Everybody said he and I were just alike. I wish I could have met him. Uncle Henry was deaf and dumb, couldn’t hear or say shit. He was nice a man, though, would give you the shirt off his back if he thought you needed it. I’m like that too. A little bit.

         
“Anyway, people teased Uncle Henry all the time, just for the hell of it. They’d call him names. It didn’t really matter ‘cause he couldn’t hear. They’d make faces at him and all kinda shit. Uncle Henry just shook it off. He’d have a group of people following him home, talking about him, mocking him, and he’d just keep on walking like nothing’s wrong.