Part 6 (1/2)

But the voices helped. They strengthened his resolve, refined his purpose.

Not that his purpose had ever faltered. Not that he had ever, even for a moment, doubted the necessity, the urgency, of his mission.

No, but by their presence the voices added strength to a strength that was already incalculable.

Where? Where is the wh.o.r.e?

It was near now, the creature destined for him: he knew this. Already he had seen others of its kind, only a few feet from the sidewalk, leaning out the windows of their squalid shacks, their slack faces feigning desire, their flaccid b.r.e.a.s.t.s draped like rotting fruit between the open folds of their gowns.

Perfect. The night was perfect. Only a few souls stumbled through the streets, and these were debased, furtive beings so blinded by their own sordid l.u.s.ts that he would be invisible.

Oh, it was delicious, was it not? Could anything, could even the ritual itself, the joining, the union, could even that be sweeter than this triumph of secrecy? To walk as softly as a shadow among them, unknown, unsuspected- The wh.o.r.e!

Yes, yes. Yes.

This one!

This one, yes, was perfect.

Its face grotesquely powdered and painted, it leaned toward him from its window, its fat red mouth twisted in a leer. A small oil lamp on the sill beside it cast a trembling yellow light that seemed to set the creature's bright red hair aflame.

”Only three dollars,” it said, its voice tattered from a lifetime of debauch. ”Ten dollars gets you all night.”

He glanced up and down the street. No one watching.

Dare he do it?

Always, before, in the alleyways, in the dim sidewalk alcoves rank with the fumes of rotten garbage, he had found union quickly, performed the ritual as swiftly as possible. Detection loomed in every pa.s.sing moment, in every approaching footfall. He had never been allowed-he had never permitted himself-to prolong it. To bring it to a level of perfection, of artistry, about which, he now suddenly understood, he had always dreamed.

Time, then, would become irrelevant. There would be no limits, no boundaries at all. Except those which in the process he set, or discovered, for himself.

The slow unhurried opening of flesh into blossoms of scarlet; the slow unhurried sc.r.a.pe of knife against pink bone, The prospect made him breathless, dizzy.

But dare he do it?

Do it. Do it. Take this one.

Yes.

Yes.

He stepped to the entrance and knocked. The pinewood door, thin and shabby, rattled in its frame.

THAT WEDNESDAY MORNING, as usual, Grigsby woke up and wished he was dead.

It was dawn. Even with the curtains drawn, the light a blurred uncertain gray, he knew it was dawn. Since Clara left, no matter how much he drank the night before, no matter how early or how late he went to bed, he always awoke at dawn. It was as though some pain-loving, pain-seeking part of him insisted on his being present at sunrise, so he could suffer through every single long aching moment of daylight.

His lips were parched and cracked; overnight his tongue and teeth had produced a fine thick crop of moss. His lungs were clotted with phlegm-it had been their rattle, as they lurched for breath, that snapped him awake, hurled him back from oblivion into a world, and a life, and a bed, in which he had virtually no interest.

Stale fumes of cheap perfume made the air seem like some dense substance too thick to sustain life, certainly too thick to breathe. The smell was sickly sweet, spiky with the sharp, sour-oatmeal tang of dried sweat. The sweat might be his, it sometimes was, but who belonged to the perfume?

He turned his head to the left-slowly, cautiously, so that it wouldn't split down the middle.

Above the brown woolen blanket poked a bundle of blond hair, showing an inch or so of gray roots on either side of a ragged part.

For an empty moment he had no idea whose head it was.

And then, his heart dipping in his chest, he realized.

Brenda.

Jesus.

Had he really been drunk enough to f.u.c.k Brenda again?

At the thought of drink, or maybe at the thought of f.u.c.king Brenda, his stomach reeled; hot bile foamed at the back of his throat. He swallowed it down, tossed aside the blanket, and slowly pulled his big weary frame upright. Carefully, he swung his legs off the mattress. Bones creaked loudly in his left knee-his body reminding him, once again, that it was turning into stone.

He was wearing his union suit, so maybe he hadn't actually f.u.c.ked Brenda after all.

He was exhausted. Sleep no longer comforted; it left him more weary than a day in the saddle.

His stomach heaved again.

He stood, swayed slightly, and then staggered from the bedroom that he and Clara had shared for four years, tottered down the hallway where Clara had sometimes sung softly to herself as she pa.s.sed through on her errands, where the children had run and played and hooted. Bits of grit clung to the cold soles of his feet. He stumbled into the bathroom that Clara had kept spotlessly clean-this had been one of the first houses in the neighborhood with indoor plumbing-and he hobbled over to the toilet.

The curtains were open; gray light seeped into the room. In the toilet, circling the bowl at the waterline, was a ragged ring of brown fur. The moment he saw it, his stomach erupted.

He felt flimsy, fragile, made of sticks and string and rice paper. His skin itched, not on the surface, but below it, as though the hair on his body was growing backward. His shoulders were slumped, his head was bowed as he sat on the rim of the bathtub and stared down at the tile floor. Yellow splotches at the base of the toilet bowl. Small spidery coils of gray hair scattered about.

Clara had been so d.a.m.n proud of that floor-it was crazy, the way she'd carried on. Real tile, she'd grinned proudly, her big brown eyes wide and excited, her face slightly flushed.

As though it was silver or gold.

Maybe he should rip it out and send it off to her. They'd paid for it with money from her inheritance. It really belonged to her.

He could box it up, freight it by train to San Francisco. With a note. Here, Clara, take the f.u.c.king floor, you've got everything else, you might as well have this too.

He didn't want the f.u.c.king thing.

When you came right down to it, he didn't want the f.u.c.king house.

He should've moved out. At the beginning, as soon as she left. (She wasn't coming back, not ever-it was time to face it.) Should've sold the place, got himself a room at one of the hotels. Fresh linen. Maid service. (And some of the maids, he knew, had a pretty broad-minded notion of service.) A good restaurant downstairs, tablecloths, smiling waiters who served up fried eggs and crisp bacon in the morning.

His stomach twisted.

He stood, opened the medicine cabinet with a trembling hand, groped past the cough elixir (unused, untouched since the children left), and plucked out the pint of bonded bourbon.

He uncorked the bottle, raised it to his mouth, took a swallow, felt the whiskey scald its way down his throat. As the warmth went glowing out along the old familiar pathways, his stomach gurgled and cooed like a baby at the breast.

He looked at himself in the mirror.