The Cormorant (33 page)

Miriam licks her lips. Starts removing the requested items one by one. Unlace the boots. Pull out the knife – still rusty with her blood. Fish her aviators out of her pocket – not sure why he wants those. Maybe he thinks she’ll break a lens and use it to cut his throat. (She makes a mental note at that. Attacking people with nearby objects is becoming a fast favorite.)

Finally, the phone.

As she goes to hand that over, it rings.

“That’s him,” Freckles says.

Miriam answers it. She doesn’t say anything.

“You’re going along with this easier than I thought,” he says. “It’s like you don’t want to play anymore.”

“I don’t. I want to finish this.”

“You’re pushing it all the way. I respect that. Cutting right to the end. Realizing that you have no power here is admirable. Brave, even. When I was a kid my mother used to take me to these air shows, and I loved it when the stunt pilots would dive toward the ground–”

“Spare me the fucking storytelling and get on with it. You want me on that boat. I want to be on that boat. Tell me how.”

He laughs. “What if I told you no?”

“You won’t.”

“I don’t like your attitude anymore.”

Then he hangs up.

“Shit!” Miriam yells, and eyes turn toward her. She hits redial on the phone, and it rings and rings.
He’s just fucking with me. He’ll call back. He needs this just as much as I do
.

Freckles just stands there. Miriam didn’t even notice the girl shoving a piece of gum in her mouth. The gum crackles and pops. She blows a big cartoony-balloony bubble. Miriam pops it with a spear-thrust of her pinkie.

“Hey!” the girl protests.

“Fuck it,” Miriam says. “He calls back, tell him I’m done. Tell him he wants to kill my mother, he’s going to have to do it without me. Tell him that I don’t even
like
her. Fuck fate. Fuck the river! And fuck you, too, you vapid little malignancy.” She flips the phone toward the girl, who barely manages to juggle-catch it.

Then Miriam turns and walks.

She heads to the highway.

The sun sets.

Evening bleeds.

She walks.

FIFTY-NINE

AT LENGTH DID CROSS AN ALBATROSS

Midnight: Miriam’s hour.

After the RV park, Miriam walked south, past Bahia Honda beach, past the bend toward Pine Key, where she found the glowing lights of the tiki bar sitting outside yet another marina – the narrow masts of dozens of boats sitting out there like the wooden crosses of old, poor graveyards. She really wondered what it meant. Had she broken the yoke of fate? Or was she just slowing her descent – the stunt plane that Ashley was talking about still heading toward the hard and unforgiving earth, this time at a gentler (if still deadly) decline?

Now she sits barefoot at the tiki bar, thinking she really should have gotten her shoes and her knife back.

The bartender – a flabby black guy with man-tits poking their peaks against the inside of a hot pink T-shirt – asks her what she wants, and she says she doesn’t care, doesn’t care at all, but
make it big
and
set it on fire
.

She waits. Looks around. Fish nets hang from the ceiling with a bunch of one-dollar bills caught like little minnows. A few old salts mill around the back. A pair of girls sip from one giant fishbowl – which looks like it’s full of Windex – quietly in the corner.

He brings her something called an Ancient Mariner. It’s in a tiki glass – big ceramic mug looks like an angry Hawaiian god with a mouth made of lightning and eyes like church windows.

The bartender clicks a long-necked lighter.

The drink combusts.

Flame ripples. Blue blazes.

She blows it out and takes a sip. Rum and allspice and citrus and it’s smooth and warm and would usually be good but beyond the heat it tastes like ash and vinegar in her mouth.

Mostly, she just lets it sit there. She idly smears streaks in the condensation collecting on the tiki’s face. Her sunburn hurts. Her leg hurts – where someone tried to saw it off, where another someone stuck her with her own knife. Her back hurts – where she probably has a bruise the size of a trashcan lid. Pain everywhere. Face. Ankle. Chest. Neck. Mind. Soul.

She goes to take another drink but then sets the tiki down instead.

Because someone sits down next to her.

She knows who it is.

Ashley asks, “You gonna drink that drink–”

She finishes it for him. “
Or is this just foreplay
. I know you love the classics but seriously, get a new line. It’s tired.
I’m
tired.”

“I need you on that boat,” he says. His voice is like a piece of wood cut against the grain with a dull saw. Splintered and bristly. “I need to show you.” He licks his lips. “I need to make you hurt.”

“You’ve already made me hurt. Isn’t that enough?”

He doesn’t say anything but the answer is clear:
no.

Ashley showing up is not a surprise.

What he does next is.

He sighs. “I knew you’d say no. That’s the thing. That’s my curse. I called it a gift but sometimes it really is a curse because I
know
what people are going to do before they do it and that–” Here his voice gets low and growly, and he speaks through gritted teeth. “
And that burns me
. I wish I didn’t have to make people do things. I’d like to be surprised for once.”

He drops a little snack baggy on the bar top.

Two round, wrinkly skin-colored orbs sit within the plastic.

Miriam feels her guts lurch.

No.

“Those are Evelyn’s toes,” Ashley says. “Just her pinky toes. I thought it better to start there. I’m going to whittle her away if you don’t come with me. I’ve got these two toes. Then I’ll take the rest. Then more of the leg. To the knee. Above the knee. Mid-thigh. To the hip. Then I’ll start on the other leg. Then the fingers, hands, arms, to the face. Ears, nose–”

Miriam moves fast.

She palms the tiki glass and smashes it against his head.

Or tries to.

Even as she’s grabbing the glass, he’s kicking out with his fake leg. The stool beneath her goes out from under her and she falls.

The tiki glass drops from her hand.

Ashley catches it.

And smashes it against her head just as she tries to stand.

She reaches out for the stool, tries to pull herself up. People are yelling. Ashley is laughing – a loud, theatrical laugh. Then he’s got a pistol in his hand and the air is full of gunshots and screaming. Miriam holds her ears, tries to scramble to the door, but his hand grabs the back of her head and lifts it up. He thrusts the gun under her chin.

“No more of this,” he growls. “You come with me, or your mother will be delivered to you in slivers of lunchmeat.”

He drops her hair.

Then hobbles toward the door.

On his way out, one of the girls crawls over the body of her dead friend. She cowers as he passes. He puts a round through the top of her skull. Her brains evacuate through a lower jaw that is no longer there.

Then he’s gone.

Miriam stifles a sob. Then she crawls to a stand.

And follows him out the door.

SIXTY

THERE PASSED A WEARY TIME

Ashley sets up a chair for her inside the boat’s cabin. Then he sits across from her on a small captain’s stool.

Behind him, flies orbit the bodies of the boat’s original owners. A couple Ashley introduces as “Bob Taylor and his mistress, Carla Pilotti.” They lie, supine, bodies cocked halfway down the steps toward the below-deck cabin, a black puckered crater in the center of each forehead.

Ashley swats at any flies that come near him.

The flies must irritate him. Every swat comes with a frustrated growl and a narrow-eyed wince.

The inside of the cabin is destroyed. As if by axe or hammer. The console is mostly shattered. The windows, boarded up.

“Your mother’s below deck,” he says. “Resting. You ought to rest, too–”

“Mom!” she cries out, but he grabs her face and squeezes hard enough to shut her up.

“
No
,” he says. “No speaking to her. Your time with her is done. She’s unconscious anyway and gagged so that she cannot speak to you. Don’t make me gag you, too.” He again relaxes. “Tomorrow is a very big day.”

“It is.”
Tomorrow’s the day I kill you.
But she doesn’t know how. And she’s not even sure she believes it anymore. Every move she makes, he knows it. Big and small.

He wheels the stool through a dried puddle of blood – the blood of Bob, or Carla, or her own mother, she doesn’t know – and heads to the console, where he starts the boat. The engine growls. Beneath them, a propeller churns the dark, glassy waters and they begin to
slide away
from the marina, from the shore, from the land Miriam knows and trusts.

His back is to her.

While he’s facing away, she begins to look for a weapon.

She looks for something – anything – to use against him. A screwdriver. A piece of window glass. A long splinter. Nothing.

Goddamnit
.

She’ll use her hands. Her feet. Her
teeth
.

No. Then she sees it.

The leg. The prosthetic leg.
I’m going to beat you to death with your own leg, you motherfucker
.

But even as that thought lands, even as she plans her first strike–

He turns his head toward her. The front of him is facing forward, his elbow casually resting on the wheel like he’s out here ready for a fun day of fishing with his half-dead family. He rests his chin on his own shoulder and makes a pouty face. “You’re thinking of hurting me, Miriam. And while I guess it’s understandable, it damn sure isn’t very nice.”

“I… I wasn’t.”

That wolfish grin. “You were. They told me you were. I saw the words drift across the wheel as I turned it. A warning from my friends.”

“Is that what they are? Your friends?”

“They’ve done me a lot of good. Given me a lot of purpose. They’re my bosses. My masters. My parents. But they’re also my friends. Because they take care of me. Like good friends should.”

“I took care of you that day in the SUV. With Ingersoll. I got you free. They would’ve cut more of you away. I did you a
favor
that day.”

“You should have
never left me
.” He clearly doesn’t want to talk about that because all he says next is, “You’re welcome to try to hurt me again but it will only bring you more pain. It’s like that old Pee-Wee Herman playground taunt:
I’m rubber and you’re glue
. Whatever you do to me bounces off and sticks to you. And right now I bet you’re in a lot of pain. You look like shit, if I’m being honest.”

A lone, betraying tear crawls down her cheek. She swiftly wipes it away with the back of her hand and tries to scowl past it.

They stare at each other like that, not saying a thing. Him smirking. Her glowering, hoping she can hold back her tears – hoping she can figure out how to kill him with just her look.

Eventually, he winks and turns back to piloting the boat.

He steers it out into open water.

The fishing boat chugs along.

Outside, the squawks of gulls. The occasional
thump
above their heads. He looks up. “Fisher birds like gulls and gannets. They follow after boats. Looking for bait. Looking for the catch. We’re all just looking for the catch, I guess, right?” He shrugs. “It’s good you’re giving up,” he says. “Giving in. This thing you do has just brought you a lot of suck, hasn’t it? A big old misery sandwich.” He swats at his neck. “God. These
fucking
flies. I should’ve sprayed or something.”

Guess you’re not so psychic after all
.

“I just want to say, it’s nice to be with you again.” He suddenly wheels the stool back around to face her. “You know, I was a real fuck-up, and I never actually managed to apologize to you. When we met I was a… I was a man without a purpose. I think that’s what weakens us as people, when we drift through life without any kind of
meaning
. Idle hands, am I right? I was just some shitty two-bit con artist who thought he was the craftiest little trilobite the ocean floor ever did see. But real fish swam above my head. Sharks and barracuda. I had no idea. Then I saw you down there with me and I drew you in – I thought, Jesus, here’s a girl just like me, somebody smart but without
purpose
– so I did what I always did. I was a user. I used you like I used everybody. Then I starting using drugs and…” He whistles. “Ugly times. But us meeting was powerful. It was like… it was volcanic.
Boom
. Shook both of us up. Showed us both the way, but to fix something you have to break it first, so we had to lose things before we could begin.” He snaps his fingers. “It’s like losing your virginity. Right? Girl busts that cherry–” He thrusts his finger into his mouth and makes a cork-popping sound. “And there’s pain and blood but then a kind of clarity. And eventually, even pleasure. I have my clarity. And this is my pleasure. But when we met each other I didn’t have those things and so I am very, very sorry.”