stands too long before a mirror and the images shift toward the unrecognizable, the ultimate horror of simple things.
She jumped up, ran to the window, the skin on her face tightened against the bone like a cat's ears gone flat, she glared out at the darkness, defying the night, the machinery of its desire.
"What?" shouted Mister CD, swiveling startled between window and door. "What?"
"Did you hear something?"
"What?" He joined her at the window to listen. They heard only the reassuring sound of crickets, patiently sawing their way through prison bars.
"Stay here." He retrieved the .44 from under the mattress and, fashionably armed and as dangerous as a full magazine could render him, stole through the darkened house as through an enemy wood. At the entrance to the living room he stopped, waited. When he dared to venture a peek around the corner, the deep moonlit vista framed by the front window was astonishingly vacant: no one at the door, no one in the bushes, no one on the street. He remained in place, however, eyeing the suspicious oak planted conveniently in the dead center of the lawn. Either the trunk was moving on its own or there was somebody incorrect lurking behind it. He watched for more than an hour. Unconsciously massaging the soft flesh below his left nipple. Breath whistling audibly through the upper reaches of his nose. Until silver grass dissolved into a storewide russet expanse of industrial carpet ruined by incompetent vacuum cleaning, the inability of part-time adolescent help to comprehend the simplest order, "Up and down, Denise, and back and forth, see, like mowing the infield," not these haphazard clusters of short stabbing strokes scattered like angry doodles about the floor, the radius of each mark limited to the full extension of her lazy arm from rooted-to-the-center feet, god, he hated walking in in the morning on such a sorry spectacle, worth a good ten-point hike in blood pressure. Gradually, he became aware of the gun in his hand and the quiet carpetless scene in his eyes and he whirled abruptly and retreated toward the inviting glow of the bedroom.
"All clear, lobo, blew 'em the fuck away." But there was nobody there to congratulate him.
He found her, obviously enough, in the bathroom after an inexplicable tour of the complete house, a pause to reconfirm the oak tree's position, and a tense period in the garage anticipating the momentary impact of rounds large enough to be fired from the handle end of a lawnmower. So his sensory apparatus was already making strange noises when he pushed back the battered bathroom door on this not entirely unpredictable scene: Latisha seated in, if not wedged into, the cheap sink, her added weight beginning to separate pipes and basin from the buckling wall as she calmly flipped lighted matches, one by one, from a book stamped AIR-LANE MOTEL, PULASKI, TENN. , into the lime-stained pink tub.
He went insane. He didn't know what he was screaming.
"I'm bored," she explained. She was actually playing a private game of he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not, thinking of a boy whose face she would never forget but whose name she unfortunately had, though he wasn't necessarily the one the matchbook oracle was being questioned about.
Mister CD was beginning to form coherent sentences. "Do you have any idea what happens when a shower curtain goes up?"
She tossed another match. "What do you care? Probably it's not even yours."
"Quicker than paper. Hotter, too. Big black smelly smoke loaded with cancer. The house'd be full of it in forty-five seconds."
"Yeah?" She tore out the last match. He loved her, whaddya know. Whoever he was. "Does it get you high? Can we get off on it?"
He yanked her bodily out of the sink, hustled her down the hall and into the bedroom, where he threw her onto the mattress. A rolled-up newspaper he retrieved off the floor served as a makeshift swagger stick as he paraded before her, ranting, blustering, slapping his thigh, a major performance
She jumped up, ran to the window, the skin on her face tightened against the bone like a cat's ears gone flat, she glared out at the darkness, defying the night, the machinery of its desire.
"What?" shouted Mister CD, swiveling startled between window and door. "What?"
"Did you hear something?"
"What?" He joined her at the window to listen. They heard only the reassuring sound of crickets, patiently sawing their way through prison bars.
"Stay here." He retrieved the .44 from under the mattress and, fashionably armed and as dangerous as a full magazine could render him, stole through the darkened house as through an enemy wood. At the entrance to the living room he stopped, waited. When he dared to venture a peek around the corner, the deep moonlit vista framed by the front window was astonishingly vacant: no one at the door, no one in the bushes, no one on the street. He remained in place, however, eyeing the suspicious oak planted conveniently in the dead center of the lawn. Either the trunk was moving on its own or there was somebody incorrect lurking behind it. He watched for more than an hour. Unconsciously massaging the soft flesh below his left nipple. Breath whistling audibly through the upper reaches of his nose. Until silver grass dissolved into a storewide russet expanse of industrial carpet ruined by incompetent vacuum cleaning, the inability of part-time adolescent help to comprehend the simplest order, "Up and down, Denise, and back and forth, see, like mowing the infield," not these haphazard clusters of short stabbing strokes scattered like angry doodles about the floor, the radius of each mark limited to the full extension of her lazy arm from rooted-to-the-center feet, god, he hated walking in in the morning on such a sorry spectacle, worth a good ten-point hike in blood pressure. Gradually, he became aware of the gun in his hand and the quiet carpetless scene in his eyes and he whirled abruptly and retreated toward the inviting glow of the bedroom.
"All clear, lobo, blew 'em the fuck away." But there was nobody there to congratulate him.
He found her, obviously enough, in the bathroom after an inexplicable tour of the complete house, a pause to reconfirm the oak tree's position, and a tense period in the garage anticipating the momentary impact of rounds large enough to be fired from the handle end of a lawnmower. So his sensory apparatus was already making strange noises when he pushed back the battered bathroom door on this not entirely unpredictable scene: Latisha seated in, if not wedged into, the cheap sink, her added weight beginning to separate pipes and basin from the buckling wall as she calmly flipped lighted matches, one by one, from a book stamped AIR-LANE MOTEL, PULASKI, TENN. , into the lime-stained pink tub.
He went insane. He didn't know what he was screaming.
"I'm bored," she explained. She was actually playing a private game of he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not, thinking of a boy whose face she would never forget but whose name she unfortunately had, though he wasn't necessarily the one the matchbook oracle was being questioned about.
Mister CD was beginning to form coherent sentences. "Do you have any idea what happens when a shower curtain goes up?"
She tossed another match. "What do you care? Probably it's not even yours."
"Quicker than paper. Hotter, too. Big black smelly smoke loaded with cancer. The house'd be full of it in forty-five seconds."
"Yeah?" She tore out the last match. He loved her, whaddya know. Whoever he was. "Does it get you high? Can we get off on it?"
He yanked her bodily out of the sink, hustled her down the hall and into the bedroom, where he threw her onto the mattress. A rolled-up newspaper he retrieved off the floor served as a makeshift swagger stick as he paraded before her, ranting, blustering, slapping his thigh, a major performance
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