The Best of Sisters in Crime (11 page)

“Stop groveling,”
she said. “There’s no point. Or do you still think we’re here because I
yearn
for you?” She laughed harshly but with
real amusement.

He was freezing.
His hands trembled uncontrollably, even while they lay in place.

She waved her
arms at her imaginary audience, somewhere outside the windows. “The game is
over, folks. Over,” she said. Then she turned back to Harry. “You thought you
caught a dream tonight, didn’t you?” she said. “Maybe I’d make up for everybody
else’s indifference, would see past the sad slick of failure you wear like
skin, past your deadend job, your saggy gut, your stupid life, your smell of
loneliness. You wanted me to find the real you—the special person inside, didn’t
you?”

Her voice was
low and cool, only distantly interested in him, as if he were a specimen. He
wished she would scream, maybe blot out the deafening sound of his own pulse.

“I understand it
all, Harry,” she said, “because that’s what I wanted, what I believed, too, the
night you asked me to your party. And get this: Neither of us—not me years ago,
not you tonight—understood one damn thing that was going on.”

His head ached
as if she’d physically beaten him.

“I found out
accidentally,” she said. “You’re going to find out very deliberately. That’s
the only difference.” She walked away. “Pig party,” she said. “Where all you
perfect, self-important fraternity jackasses could observe and be amused by a
freak show of imperfect but oblivious females. How sidesplitting of us to think
we were actual dates, actual lovable, desirable humans! What fun it must have
been to wink and poke each other in the ribs, award the man who’d found the
absolute worst, laugh through the night about us. It’s quite an experience,
Harry, finding out you’re a laughing matter. Changes a person forever.”

He had to get
the hell out of here, but his limbs were boneless, he couldn’t stand.

“Of course, it was
also a learning experience,” she said. “A chance to grow. For years now I’ve
wanted you to share it, have the same chance, but I don’t belong to a
fraternity, and besides, I’d like to think there aren’t any more pig parties.
So I had to find a way to return the favor personally.” She came very close,
kneeled in front of him.

A wave of nausea
engulfed him. He swallowed hard and struggled to get to his feet.

“You’re not
going anywhere!” she snapped, pushing him back in place with one hand. “Do you
really think it’s the wine, or a few peppers making you feel so rotten? Aren’t
you worried?”

His burning eyes
opened wide. “Poison?” he gasped.

She smiled. “It’s
a possibility, isn’t it? I’ve had years to prepare for tonight. But why be
concerned? This is a party, Harry. Your very own pig party. In fact, my dear,
you
are
the party—the pig’s party.”

He nearly wept
from the sawtooth edge of screams slicing the edges of his mind.

“The pigs behind
the house, remember? Poor babies, they can’t enjoy the miracles of cosmetic
surgery. They’re stuck as pigs forever, so surely they’re entitled to a little
piggy treat now and then. You’ll give them such pleasure!”

“Hhhhh?”

“How?” Her voice
traveled from a great distance and echoed through him, down to his fingertips.

“They eat almost
anything, of course. But you—you’ll be the best dish they ever had. Of course,
we won’t let them have all of you, will we? Nobody’s ever had that. We’ll do it
bit by bit. Start with gourmet tidbits. The, uh, choice cuts, shall we say? The
sought-after, prized, yummy parts.”

Tears dribbled
from his eyes.

“You know what
they call pig food? Slops, Harry. How appropriate.”

He heard
dreadful, guttural sounds.

“Be still,” she
said. “And your nose is running. How disgusting.”

He was small and
lost and terrified, poisoned and paralyzed on a velvet sofa, about to be
butchered, to have pigs eat his—pigs swallow his—

He summoned all
of his strength, determined to get free. But his knees buckled and he dropped
to the floor. “Please,” he said between sobs, “was so long ago . . .”

“Not long
enough,” she said. “I realized that two weeks ago, when I saw you downtown. My
jolt of pain wasn’t old or faded. Some things are forever. You killed a part of
me that night. However plain or fat or shy I was, I had an innocent pride and
dignity, and you took it away. You turned me into a pig.”

He howled at the
top of his lungs.

“Hush. Nobody
can hear,” she reminded him. “Nobody knows you’re here. For that matter, nobody
knows
I’m
here. This isn’t my
house—it’s a friend’s, and he’s away. So is the caretaker.” She walked around
him. “And for the record, my married name isn’t Leigh Endicott. Anyway, we’re
both going to simply disappear from here. But you’ll do it bit by bit.” She
paused in an exaggerated pose of thought. “Or should we say bite by bite?” she
asked with a grin.

He crawled,
crying. An inch. No more.

“Why struggle
so?” she said. “You are, quite literally, dead meat. On the other hand, you’re
about to be reborn, to give of yourself at last, to become whole—swine, inside
and out.”

The door was
impossibly far away. He sprawled, numb and exhausted, gasping as the dark
closed in. He could feel himself begin to die at the edges. His fingers were
already gone, and his feet.

Through static
and splutters and whirs in his brain, he heard her move around, run water, open
cabinets.

“All clean now,”
she said. “Not a trace.” She leaned down and pulled up one of his eyelids. “Tsk,
tsk,” she said. “Look what’s become of the big bad wolf.”

He dissolved
into a shapeless, quivering stain on the floor. All his mind could see was a
pig, heavy and bloated, pushing its hideous, hairy snout into its trough, into
the slops, grunting with pleasure as it ate . . . him.

Glass broke, a
door slammed, but all Harry heard was a fat sow’s squeal of pleasure as it
chewed and smacked and swallowed . . . him.

He felt a hand
on his shoulder. He gasped, ran his own hands over his body once, then twice.
Everything was there. He was intact and whole! He burst into tears.

“Damn drunk.
Probably a junkie,” a voice said. “Breaks in to use the place as a toilet.
Jesus.” Harry was pulled to his feet by men with badges. Police.

“Listen, I—” he
began. His head hurt.

“You have the
right to remain silent,” the taller man began. He droned through his memorized
piece. Harry couldn’t believe it. They searched him and looked disappointed
when they found nothing. “Passed out before you could take anything,” the tall
man said.

“But I wasn’t—”
They weren’t interested. He told them about Leigh. They ignored him. He found
out that an anonymous caller—female—had alerted the police to a prowler on the
farm. He told them they had it all wrong, that it was her, Leigh. Somebody who’d
picked him up, taken him here, drugged him, smashed the window so it’d look
like he’d broken in, and called them, setting him up. He explained it to them,
to the lawyer they appointed, to the psychiatrist, to the technician who
analyzed the drugs in his bloodstream— street drugs they were, nothing fancy or
traceable, damn the woman. He explained it to the judge. Nobody listened or
believed or cared.

He stopped
explaining. He endured the small jail until they released him. He paid for the
broken window and the soiled rug. Paid the fine for trespassing, for breaking
and entering. Paid through the nose for a taxi back to the city and his
apartment.

In his mailbox,
the only personal mail was a heart-shaped card with a picture of two enormous
pigs nuzzling each other. He burned it.

From that day
on, Harry Towers’s stoop became more pronounced. He no longer combed his hair
over his bald spot or sucked in his stomach. He stayed home nights, watching
television alone.

And he never ate
bacon or pork chops or ham steaks, for they, along with many other former
delights, tasted like ashes in his mouth.

Back to table of
contents

When
Pious Deception
introduced Kiernan O’Shaugnessy, a
former forensic pathologist, Susan Dunlap became the first woman to write three
series featuring each of the major types of detective—a private investigator
(Kiernan), a police officer (Jill Smith), and an amateur detective (Veejay
Haskell, utility meter reader). Kiernan, who will make her fourth appearance in
No Immunity,
enjoys her material comforts—her
San Diego beach house is maintained by a former football player. Berkeley
detective Jill Smith, featured in eleven novels including
Cop-Out,
is noted for keen wit, compassion, integrity, and a love of chocolate.

In “The Celestial Buffet,”
winner of an Anthony award, offerings of unearthly delight continue to entice
the narrator, who doesn’t intend to be limited to just desserts.

I hadn’t stepped onto the
celestial escalator with
the escort of two
white-suited angels like I had seen in the 1940s movies, but I did have the
sense that I had risen up. I was very aware of the whole process, which is
rather surprising considering what a shock my death was. I hadn’t been sick, or
taken foolish chances. I certainly didn’t plan on dying—not ever, really—but in
any case not so soon.

I looked down
from somewhere near the ceiling and saw my body lying on the floor. I should
have been horrified, overwhelmed by grief, more grief than I’d felt at the
sight of any other body, but I really felt only a mild curiosity. My
forty-year-old body was still clad in a turquoise running suit. It was, as it
had been for most of its adult life, just a bit pear-shaped around the
derriere. It could have stood to lose five pounds (well, too late now). It was
lying on the living room floor, its head about six inches from the coffee
table, the stool overturned by its feet. How many times had Raymond told me not
to stand on that stool to change the light bulb? If he had seen me holding the
last, luscious bite of a Hershey bar in my left hand he would have said, “One
of these days, you’ll fall and kill yourself.” And, of course, he would have
been right. Now, I recalled wavering on that rickety stool, knowing I should
reach up and grab onto the light fixture, hesitating, unwilling to drop the
chocolate. It was still there, in my hand, clutched in a cadaverous spasm. How
humiliating! I could almost hear Raymond’s knowing cackle. At least that
infuriating cackle was not the last sound I’d heard in life. If I had felt
anything at all for that body on the floor I would have hoped Raymond wouldn’t
tell anyone how it died.

But the body and
the possibility of its being ridiculed didn’t hold my attention for long. I
left it there on the floor and rose up. Exactly how I rose is unclear. I didn’t
take a white escalator, or a shimmering elevator, or any more sophisticated
conveyance; I just had the sense of ascending till I reached a sort of landing.

I can no more
describe the landing than I can the means of reaching it. There were no clear
walls or floor, no drapes, no sliding gossamer doors, no pearly gates or
streets paved with gold. Nothing so obvious. Just a sense, a knowing that this
was the antechamber, the place of judgment. I stood, holding my breath (so to
speak). Somewhere in the Bible it speaks of the moment of judgment when the
words each of us has whispered in private will be broadcast aloud. A distinctly
uncomfortable thought. I had rather hoped that if that had to happen it would
be at a mass event with a lot of babble and confusion, and everyone else as
embarrassed at his own unmasking as I was. But here I was, alone, surrounded by
silence. I waited (what choice had I?) but no public-address system came on. So
the celestial loudspeaker, at least, was a myth.

But even with
that out of the way, I still knew (knew, rather than was told, for it was
apparent to me now that communication in this place was not verbal or written—
things simply were known) that there was a heaven and, God forbid, a hell, and
this was the last neutral ground between the two. In a short time I would know
which I was to reside in. Forever.

But I had led a
decent life. There was no reason to worry. I had worked hard . . . well, hard
enough. I’d voted, even in off-year elections. I’d spent Christmas every other
year with my parents when they were alive. (Weren’t my parents supposed to be
here to meet me? Surely their absence wasn’t because they were not in heaven?
No. More likely, the greetings by all those who had gone on before was another
myth.) I realized that my conception of this place was as ephemeral as the room
itself. I hadn’t given it more than the most cursory of thoughts, being sure
that, at worst, I had years to form an idea of it. So what expectations I did
have came mostly from Sunday school, and of course, forties movies.