Pernicious (52 page)

         
“You sure? If you wait till the last minute, you’re going to get left.”

         
“I’ll be ready.”

         
She gave him a peck on the cheek. “Good. When we get back,” grabbing his crotch, “I’ll give it a good washing, dry it off, put it to sleep in a warm bed.”

         
A little later, ten minutes till nine, Perry announced to Neal that it was time to go. “Let’s take your car this time.”

         
“Fine with me. Let me check on Derrick before we go.”

         
“Hurry, we’re running late.”

         
While Neal was upstairs, she checked her purse, a large leather bag, bought especially for this occasion. Everything was in order. Neal came back, and they walked out to the driveway and got into the Hugo.

         
Neal started the car, turned it off and said, “Damn!”

         
“What?”

         
“I gotta use it.”

         
“Can it wait? We won’t be gone long. You can use it when we get there.”

         
He opened the door. “Naw, I better go now. When nature calls, I answer.”

         
“Goddammit, didn’t I tell you to take care of everything thirty minutes ago!”

         
“I didn’t have to use it then.” Neal smiled at her. “Baby, you don’t want me tooting and pooting all the way there, do you?”

         
“Hurry up!”

         
Neal got out, crossed to the front door and just stood there.

         
He knows damn well he doesn’t have a key!

         
Perry stepped out the Hugo. Pissed, she tried the wrong key three times before realizing it.

         
All the damn work I’ve put into this, and he wants to mess it up with a bowel movement!

         
After opening the door she followed Neal. In the hallway he picked up a magazine. She snatched it out of his hand. “You ain’t got time for that!”

         
Neal slammed the door in her face.

         
She tapped her feet in the hallway and then knocked on the door. “Any damn day now!”

         
“Slows…the progress when…you try…to rush it!”

         
Perry wanted to scream.
I oughta shoot through the fucking door!

         
Minutes later, Neal stepped out grinning, waving the air behind him. “I’m ready.”

         
Now it was five after nine. Precious minutes wasted.
 
The information she’d obtained on the Internet said the effects of the drug flunitrazepam peaked in two hours.

         
Almost two and a half hours had elapsed since Tasha had taken the drug.

         
Waterhead may have stalled long enough for Bumpy Face to regain her senses, go next door and ask for help.

         
They were riding in the Hugo, following a rising moon, its luminous white hue casting an ominous glow on the road ahead.

         
“Neal, could you speed up a little?”

         
“I’m doing the speed limit. What’s the big rush?”

         
“I’m worried about Tasha.”

         
“Which hospital is she in?” Neal asked, stopping at a red light.

         
“She didn’t say which.”

         
“What did she say caused her to go in the hospital?”

         
“She didn’t say, I didn’t ask.”

         
Neal turned to her, his brown eyes fixed, suspicious.
 
Perry turned her head, looking at the sign atop the restaurant, Say McIntosh’s Home Cooked Food.

         
She’d seen that look before: an intuitive, piercing glare, reading her mind, probing her soul; her prey suddenly realizing his fate.

         
Tyrone had stared at her the same way, so had Willie and Lester, especially Lester.

         
Knowing and doing something about it are two different things.

         
“When we find out where she’s at,” she said, “maybe we can pay her a visit.”

         
Neal returned his attention to the road. “It’s just strange, you know? All of it…so strange…” He let the words hang, inviting comment.

         
“What’s so strange about it?”

         
“The Tasha I know wouldn’t snap under pressure. Bend maybe, not snap. Tasha going crazy, I find it hard to believe. She dropped Derrick off with me
and
you. That really don’t make sense. She said Derrick staying with us wasn’t happening. ‘Over my dead body,’ what she told me.”

         
“When she tell you all that?”

         
Neal shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

         
“Neal, people snap all the time. I had a cousin, he joined the Marines, didn’t last one week in boot camp, came back a sissy with a mohawk. Tasha, you have to give her credit for doing the right thing.”

         
They rode in silence.

         
Neal said, “I’m not sure what the right thing is anymore.”

         
“I wonder if Derrick would like a basketball goal. We could build one next to the pool.”

         
“You know what he told me today?”

         
She glanced at her watch, didn’t answer. It was a quarter after nine.

         
“He said you weren’t right. At first I thought Tasha had influenced his thinking. While I was lying beside him, watching him sleep, I realized how innocent he is, how he views people from a child’s perspective. In his eyes, how you behave is who you are. His judgment isn’t clouded by money, jewelry, expensive cars. You know what I’m saying?”

         
Perry said nothing.

         
“In the bathroom I started thinking: why can’t I be more like my son?” He chuckled to himself. “All my life I wanted to be rich, thought about it every day, fantasized about what I would do when I got the money, what I would buy, where I would go.”

         
Shaking his head: “You know what I fantasize about now?” He didn’t wait for her to respond. “Simple living. You know, bullshitting, acting a fool, having fun and not having to worry what someone thinks, or if I’m embarrassing somebody.”

         
If only he’d shut up, Perry thought, and concentrate on driving the damn car! She checked her watch again.
Shit!
Nine twenty.

         
Neal rolled down his window and tossed an unopened pack of Kools out. “Life ain’t all about money, Perry. It’s about people. Loving them, enjoying them, and they loving you back.” He cleared his throat and turned his full attention to her. “I don’t love you and you don’t love me. Hell, I don’t even know--”

         
“Watch where you’re going!” Perry shouted.

         
He looked and slammed on the breaks, almost rear-ending a van stopped at an orange light.

         
Neal sighed in relief before saying, “I don’t even know you. I don’t know you at all.”

         
“Would you
please
concentrate on driving!”
 

         
The man driving the van stuck a finger out the window when the light turned green.

         
Neal ignored him. “Tomorrow, Derrick and I are leaving.” He slid the Rolex off his wrist and laid it on the dash. “I never wore the ring or the bracelet. They’re on your dresser. I won’t be coming back.”

         
Perry gritted her teeth and nodded her head.

         
“Can I ask you something?” Neal said.

         
“Yes,” Perry grunted.

         
“Why did you marry me?”

         
Neal drove inside the Woodbridge Apartments complex.

         
“Because…because I saw in you what I’d assumed you saw in me.”

         
Neal stopped the Hugo in front of Tasha’s apartment and killed the engine. “And what was that?”

         
“I saw in you the opportunity to enhance my life, and surely you, at least I thought, saw the same in me.”

         
Neal looked puzzled.

         
Perry opened her door. “Neal, honey, let’s finish this discussion later, okay? Whatever you decide to do, regardless of how much it hurts me, I’ll go along with it. I’m tired, let’s get this over with.” She got out and started toward the door.

         
Neal followed, patting his pockets. “Now where did I put the key?”

         
Perry closed her eyes. If he’d lost the key, she would have to open the door, and then he would wonder where she’d gotten a key.
Fuck this!
She opened her bag.

         
Neal said, “You know what, this can wait.” Walking back to the Hugo: “Derrick and I will come here.” Getting in the driver’s seat: “There’s no need of getting his stuff and having to bring it back.”

         
Perry, a hand inside the bag, stepped to the Hugo, stooped and stared at Neal. “This can’t wait.”

         
“Why not?”

                                     
* * * * *

         
Tasha sat on her fingers, her back against the wall next to the door, breathing rapidly. Sweat poured down her face and dripped onto her blue pinstripe shirt and blue twill pants.

         
She’d tried to open the door by slipping her fingers underneath it and pulling, but it wouldn’t budge. Somehow she would have to stand up and turn the knob, that was the long and short of it.

         
Let’s do it, she told herself, and took several deep breaths. Her right leg wobbled and shook and slowly rose to a bent position…Next the left…She angled the tip of her loafers upward and dug both heels into the carpet.

         
Now the hard part
…She pushed off with her legs, both shaking like an antiquated washing machine, and seesawed her shoulder against the wall…buttocks lifted off her fingers. Her head rose a foot or so below the light switch…and then she collapsed to the floor.

         
A sharp pain shot though her fingers, up her arms, and coursed through her entire body. The pain told her to lay on the floor, rest a while, take a little nap and soothe her aching and tired body, then try it again.