The Girls He Adored

80

“Max! Max, we have a contract.”

He climbed off her, breathing hard, and sat down, bare-assed and dripping, on a warm rock, in an oblong shaft of sunlight. “Therapy's over, Dr. Cogan.” He spat out a mouthful of blood. “We'll just have to muddle on as best we can without you.”

“Christopher,” she called hopelessly. “Christopher, I need to speak with you.”

Max pressed the back of his hand against his split lip until the bleeding slowed. “Don't worry about Christopher-I've promised him he'll get his turn with you if he behaves himself. Not for a few months, though-not until you're too disgusting for the poor sap to even imagine he's falling in love with you.”

“So it's been you all along?”

“Just since this morning.” He touched his lip again-still bleeding. The pain was interesting, but not overwhelming. “Let's go, Irene. I think it's time to introduce you to your new friends in the drying shed.”

“You go to hell.”

“I come from hell,” he replied, holding his lip.

From her bedroom window, Julia Miller watched Ulysses and the new one, the psychiatrist, crossing the meadow, both of them stark staring naked. The psychiatrist was stumbling forward, her arms crossed over her breasts; Ulysses was behind her, pinching his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger with one hand and shoving her ahead of him with the other when she faltered. It looked very much as if the honeymoon was over.

It also looked as if the new one had restored her hair to its original, strawberry blond color.

Good things come to she who waits, thought Miss Miller, leaving her bedroom for the first time that day. Ulysses would be needing his clippers. She decided to bring him one of his new guns, too. The big one.

A horizontal trapdoor, flush with the ground. A descent into a dark stairwell. Another door, vertical. A glaring, diffuse white light overhead, a stifling heat. Two women, emaciated as concentration camp survivors, each with a blanket around her shoulders, standing in the center of the room, their arms around each other's waists. The smaller one's skin was stretched tightly over her cheekbones, and her lips had drawn away from her teeth-a death's head surrounded by a nimbus of red-gold stubble. The larger one had a little more flesh on her, and her hair was longer. Same color, though, except for a touch of gray at the temples.

“Harvest time,” said Maxwell, shoving Irene toward them. “Clean her the fuck up.”

As Max locked the inner door, the hatch slid open above him. Miss Miller started down the steps with her sewing basket over her forearm. The soundproofed hatch closed automatically above her. Ignoring his nakedness, she handed him the basket containing his battery-powered Panasonic hair clippers, along with his new Glock.

“Miss Miller, you're a wonder.” Max's lower lip had stopped bleeding, but felt stiff-a crust had formed over the split. “I was just on my way up to fetch these.”

“I'm not optimistic about that new one's hair,” she said. “I'll try to make it work, but you know I prefer natural color. Which reminds me, Ulysses: did you notice the old one in there is turning gray?”

“I did. I was planning to take care of her tonight,” Max told her. It was the truth, too. Kinch was extremely disappointed at having been deprived first of Barbara, then Bernadette, and then, most cruelly, just as he was poised to strike, of Irene. And a disappointed Kinch was an angry Kinch, an unmanageable Kinch. Maxwell understood full well that he needed to throw the bloodthirsty alter a bone. And what better bone than Donna Hughes, the once desirable Texan, now only another mouth to feed?

“Oh, how lovely.” Miss Miller was genuinely pleased. And why not? — things were finally getting back to normal on Scorned Ridge after the disruption of Ulysses's protracted absence, followed by the presence of the meddling psychiatrist. “By the way, sweetheart, I was thinking of steaming some vegetables and rice for supper- how does that sound?”

“Slice up a couple of those hot sausages I bought yesterday, and you've got a deal.”

“ Have a deal,” she corrected, then turned and started back up the steps.

“About tonight,” Maxwell called up to her. “Did you want to watch?”

“Thank you for asking,” she said, pushing the button that caused the hatch to slide open again. “I'm a little fatigued from all this excitement. Let me see how I feel after a nice long nap.”

“Whatever you decide-it's up to you.”

“Of course it is, my sweetness and light. Of course it is.”