She Wakes by Jack Ketchum Page A

said. She swept the cats with her gaze and then fixed upon the girl, who met and held her eyes.
        “A little. Perhaps just a little.”
        There was just enough reserve in her voice so that Lelia knew the girl had heard her, had heard subtext as well as text and was resolved to tough it out. All right. Dare me, she thought.
        “That’s a shame,” she said.
        And hugged her rage like a lover.
        

BILLIE
        
        They had moved from cats to accidents to murder. Their conversation had. In this case it was not an inappropriate progression.
        Billie thought that Dodgson was handsome and rather nice too and might have been wholly glad that Danny’d found her on the beach and introduced her to his friend were he not so obviously a previously claimed territory. But of course he was and that was that. She had no intention of moving in on someone else’s man. It was not her style at all.
        She wished someone would tell that to Lelia.
         If looks could kill… she thought.
        But she also had to wonder why he was there with her. The woman was beautiful, certainly. But such possessiveness! Such high-handedness! The woman had been jealous as a cat the moment she sat down.
        He didn’t seem the sort to put up with it.
        And perhaps he wasn’t.
        Their talk had taken a fairly unpleasant turn at the moment and Dodgson was looking at her with less than indulgence.
        “Manson didn’t kill anyone,” Lelia was saying. “All he did was move others to kill. And that’s their problem, isn’t it? Their weakness?”
        “Weakness isn’t the point,” said Michelle. “Responsibility is. If I am a general and I lose the battle, this is my responsibility, correct? Not only the soldiers’.”
        “Yes. But Charles Manson isn’t a general. He’s a private citizen the same as you and I. If I tell you, or Danny tells you, to jump out a window, do you jump?”
        “Of course not.”
        “Of course not. Because he holds no power over you. He’s not a god, he’s not a general, he’s a man. He holds no authority at all.”
        “Authority can be delegated.”
        “Who’d accept authority from Charlie fucking Manson?” Danny said. “Some asshole desert rat with dirty hair and a couple old Beatles records.”
        “They did,” said Michelle.
        Lelia settled back in her chair and looked at Dodgson, spoke directly to him. “He had very good eyes.” she said dreamily. “Very sexy, I thought. I might have considered him.”
        For a moment everybody just sat there.
        “Oh, right,” said Danny. “Good point there. I kinda like Nixon’s chin but then I’m a pervert.”
        The German girls laughed.
        
***
        
        But it was meant as a goad to Dodgson and it was clear to Billie that he got the message, because the silence lengthened while they just stared at one another and Michelle moved some food around on her plate in an embarrassed kind of way and then he said “Excuse me” and quietly left the table, walking toward the WC.
        She liked his control.
        Lelia and the others turned to their dinners in silence as she watched him walk away.
        It was really too bad, she thought, that she was leaving tomorrow. Because while it was a rule of hers not to move on another woman’s man she had no such scruples governing her behavior once a relationship was over. She couldn’t see this lasting much longer between them.
         Forget it, she thought. You are a waitress in a pub on a two-week vacation-no-you are a painter, aspiring to that anyway on a two-week vacation and the point is to study and paint what you see. He on the other hand is a published novelist and she is probably a model, and who knows how such people think. For all you know it will get uglier before it’s over, much uglier and you don’t need to be around to see