Part 17 (1/2)

”What do you mean, 'Who cares?' I care!” This was starting to p.i.s.s him off. ”I mean, leaving's one thing, but I can't just cut and run without a dime in my pocket! How are we gonna pay for gas? Hotel? Meals?” He speared the last of the meat off his plate, scarfed it down. ”I mean, we do plan on eating, right?”

Nora bristled with tension. ”Why do you worry about s.h.i.+t like that?” she asked. ”Money's never been a problem for me-”

”Yeah, well, money's always been a problem for me!” Syd cut in, definitely annoyed himself now. ”I've had to work for every f.u.c.king cent I ever got! And I think about things like that because it's my nature to think about things like that!”

There was an electric beat of silence as they faced off. Syd made a conscious effort to pin back the tension in his voice, the sudden flaring rage he felt.

But the fact of the matter was that he was p.i.s.sed. And he was not gonna be whipped into submission by this woman, no matter how much he loved her. She could see it in his eyes. She could hear it in his voice. But rather than flipping her out, it was visibly getting her off. There was a carnivore's curl to her fierce little smile, and he had her complete attention.

And Syd realized that this was a woman who liked to play hardball; that was what made her such a contrary b.i.t.c.h. She was no fawning little batty-eyed baby girl, waiting for daddy to spank her when she was bad. He got the feeling, in that moment, that he was finally earning her respect.

Syd stood abruptly, moved toward her. Nora held her ground. Her eyes never left his. He caught her by the sink, wrapped his arms around her.

”Listen,” he said. ”Last night you said you wanted my strength. You wanted someone to take care of you.” He pulled her close, drew her tight. ”Well, this is part of my strength. I gotta take care of myself. If I can't do that, then I can't take care of you.

”And then I'm no f.u.c.king good to either one of us.”

He held her, leveling her with his gaze. Nora met it with equal fervor. There was one long elastic moment, where everything hung in the balance.

Then she embraced him, and he felt a wave of raw emotion pour out of her as a low, throaty moan escaped her lips.

”On the table. Now.”

And he gave himself over to the urge, the insatiable sensation, picking her up and spinning her around in his arms, then lifting her up to set her on the table. Her hands swept back as her legs wrapped around him, drawing him in. This time, the sound of breaking dishes didn't bother him a bit. Her hands found his zipper and tugged it down to free him even as his hands unb.u.t.toned her s.h.i.+rt, exposed her nakedness.

They made love savagely, the table bucking and groaning beneath them.

And this time, when she told him to bite her, he did.

It was the best.

22.

By the time Syd arrived at the mill, it was ten twenty-six. Not so great from a job-security standpoint, but he was no longer thinking longevity. He parked and s.h.a.gged it up to the foreman's trailer, taking his sweet time to do so.

There was no line, of course, and hadn't been for four hours; the distant sound of clanging echoed through the plant, bespeaking men already well into doing their job. He got a weird pang of nostalgia, listening to it: the kind of feeling you get when you know you're doing something for what is probably the very last time. Even the dust kicking up around his heels had a flavor that he found himself noting and filing: an experience captured, a memory preserved.

Beau Harrell, on the other hand, was not a nostalgia-inducing experience. Syd could smell him from twenty feet outside the door, and one thing was for certain: the sooner their lives were no longer intertwined, the better.

He was seated, squat and sweating, behind his desk when Syd walked in. In person, Beau was even less impressive than he was in theory: an ugly little toad-man, Horatio Alger gone horribly wrong. He was a self-styled wheeler-dealer and post-Reagan robber baron; but despite his fancy German car and Armani suit, he still managed to carry his success with the cheesy elan of a trailer park tyrant, a big mean fish in a small and stagnant pond.

His bald head caught the reflection of the bare light bulb in the center of the ceiling. He had put on weight, squeezing his seams like an overripe kielbasa. Looking at him, Syd couldn't help thinking of Jon Polito in Miller's Crossing, minus the ethnic slant and esoteric ethical contemplations: running tings, ya gotta know, it's a lot tougher den you'd tink. He had a ton of paperwork spread out before him, as usual-the man was nothing if not ambitious-and as he looked up, his expression s.h.i.+fted abruptly from apelike grin to rabid foam-at-the-mouth exasperation. He tended to stammer when upset.

”Jarrett!” Harrell bellowed. ”You're four f.u.c.kin' hours late! You better have one huh-h.e.l.l of an explanation, I can tell you that!”

Syd noted the drying-up of Neanderthal laughter, cast a glance off to the little sofa to his right. It was Beany and Cecil, Bobo's toady and pit bull, respectively. Beany was Bennie Holtzapple, a wormy little p.i.s.sant in a black leather Members Only jacket and a turtleneck, and he was blessed with a knack for agreeing with whatever Bobo said. Cecil was Cecil Karwicki, and he was built like an industrial freezer. He wore a navy cashmere overcoat over jeans and a snow-white designer sweats.h.i.+rt, and his feet sported pointy black sharkskin boots that looked made for kicking. His feet, like his hands and every other part of him, were enormous. He had the total mental wattage of a refrigerator bulb, and he did exactly as he was told.

Cecil held, in his beefy mitts, a dog-eared copy of Big b.u.t.t magazine. Suddenly, Syd understood completely: it wasn't just that he was late, but that he'd interrupted something important. An honest-to-G.o.d enormous mudflap stared at him from the glossy back cover, beneath the slogan MORE b.u.t.tS FOR YOUR BUCKS!!! Syd couldn't help but crack a smile of his own.

”What's so, what's so f.u.c.kin' funny?” Beau demanded to know.

”Umm . . .” Syd shrugged, grinning. ”Big b.u.t.t magazine, I guess.”

”Don't get f.u.c.kin' suh-smart with me!” Bobo was practically apoplectic. ”You, you got some explainin' to do!”

Syd tried to wipe the smile off his face, couldn't quite bring himself to. The reek of Brut and pheromones was unpleasantly thick in the room. He was not a welcome addition to their sweaty, leering inner circle. They wanted their Big b.u.t.t all to themselves.

Jesus. Syd started to laugh. He got a sudden vivid flash of Nora, juxtaposed it against the fumes off this squalid Cro-Mag b.o.n.e.r session. He could practically taste the rancid low-rent locker room tang, cheap and stomach-churning, redolent of the fragrance of heedless j.i.z. and macho posturing.

”JARRETT!” Bobo was standing semi-upright now, leaning hard into his desk, a.s.serting his authority. He looked like a flabby, shaved baboon. His face was red. His jowls jiggled over his too-tight collar. He had the kind of washed-out pale blue eyes that come from thirty years of Johnny Walker on the rocks. ”WHAT'S SO f.u.c.kIN' FUNNY?!”

And there was something in the way he did it-some trigger buried in the tone of his voice, the smell of his sweat, the look on his face-that reached out and spoke directly to the new Syd: the one now awakening under his skin. It was like opening a single can of Alpo in a kennel full of starving dogs. It was like giving him Vaughn Restal to tear through all over again. Suddenly, everything about Beau Harrell consumed him with the urge to kill.

And it was all he could do to restrain himself.

Because as he looked in those eyes, all he could think was this man is a joke. He didn't deserve the power he had over other people's lives. He didn't deserve to live at all. In a sane universe, miserable creatures like him would be lucky to make it through the day without being dragged down, torn apart, and eaten alive. They would live in holes and count their blessings, afraid to go out by day or night.

It would be-by any standard-a substantially better world.

Part of him felt obliged to act on that understanding. Or maybe he was overexplaining it to himself. Maybe it was more a matter of imagining how enjoyable it would be to watch Bobo's throat peel open, the esophagus bared, then enjoy the whistling windpipe spritz as his trachea shredded.

Either way, suddenly Bobo's face didn't radiate quite the same level of self-righteous psychopathology. The eyes were still bulging, but their motivation had changed. Fear had replaced the bullying bl.u.s.ter.

There was a noise, very faint, off to his right. Syd turned. Cecil had closed the magazine. It lay very flat and still in his hands. It was clear that he was following all the changes in the room as well. At the next whiff of escalation, Cecil would stand. And then there would be violence. It was as simple as that.

Syd could feel his hackles rise. Cecil was easily six-four, two hundred and twenty pounds. His approach was purely business. He was rumored to have killed. Syd looked at him now, knew it to be true. But he also knew something else.

You're scared. It was a gut knowledge, an animal certainty. He stared calmly into Cecil's eyes, waited for the information to impact. It only took a second. They widened, then narrowed to slits. It was fear, alright, but mixed with an underlying thread of confusion. Like he didn't quite know why. Syd s.h.i.+fted his weight forward, ever so slightly. Cecil s.h.i.+fted back in his chair, maintaining the distance between them.

In that moment, all four of them were stripped to their primal essence: four mammals in a box too small, poised on the brink of primacy war. Even Beany had tuned in to the b.e.s.t.i.a.l frequency. It was a moment of astounding clarity. Syd savored it-the power and strangeness-holding his gaze hard on Cecil's for one more second.

And then, all at once, he let it drop.

And it was like throttling down on an industrial turbine, pulling back the reins on a runaway horse: not so much a loss of power as a conscious suspension of its exercise. It would be back, anytime he wanted. It would be there forever.

Syd looked back at Beau Harrell, who evidently was seeing him now in a whole new light: not so much with respect as with dread. It was, to Syd's mind, a substantial improvement. He smiled.

”I just came in to say I quit,” he said at last, surprising everyone, himself included. ”And I'd like my paycheck. Now.”

His tone was perfectly level, menacingly matter-of-fact. It was not phrased as a request, nor was it received as one. Bobo looked like someone had just dropped an anvil on his head.

”Payday's not until Friday,” he said. ”You know that.”