Forty Words for Sorrow

46

ERIC WAS GETTING ON EDIE’S nerves. For several days he’d been completely serene, cheerful even. But now he was bossing her around all the time. First he wants her to make his dinner. Where the hell did that come from? Usually he couldn’t stand to have her watch him eat. Suddenly he wants sausages and mashed potatoes, and she has to hustle out to the supermarket through a sea of slush to get them, soaking her feet. Then he eats in the living room by himself while she and Gram eat in the kitchen. Two days previously she had written in her diary: I love Eric with a terrible passion, but I don’t like him. He’s mean and selfish and cruel and a bully. And I love him.

Now they were in the basement with Keith tied to that chair with the hole in it and the pot underneath. First thing she’d had to do was empty his damn pot. She hated coming down here now, it was like changing a litter box. Eric would never do it; he just complained until Edie took care of it. And she was feeling horrible to begin with, hollowed out inside, the way she did when the eczema came back. It was crawling over her face, up from underneath her jawline, her skin was cracked and red and weeping. When she had come out of the supermarket, some louts driving by had rolled down their windows to make barking noises at her.

She came back from the little bathroom just as Eric was explaining his reasoning to Keith. Eric seemed to take pleasure in this talking in front of the prisoner, but it was making her edgy.

“See, Prisoner, we don’t want to worry about bloodstains any more. You reach a certain point, you start to feel like you shouldn’t have to clean up after yourself, know what I mean?”

The prisoner, taped into immobility and silence, did not reply; he’d even given up making pleading eyes at them.

“I’ve found the perfect place to kill you, Prisoner. It’s a locked-up, bricked-up, fucked-up former pumphouse. How often do you think people go there? Once, twice every five years maybe?” Eric put his face six inches away from the prisoner, as if he would kiss him. “I’m talking to you, honey.”

The red-rimmed eyes shifted away, and Eric grabbed the prisoner’s chin, forcing him to look.

Edie held up the pad of paper. “You wanted to do the list, Eric.” Thinking, he’ll kill him right here if I don’t get us upstairs pretty quick.

“We were considering going back to the mine shaft, weren’t we, Edie. They’d never expect us to show up at the mine shaft again.”

“You’re not getting me on that ice,” Edie said. “It’s been above freezing three days in a row.” She pointed to the pad. “What about a tub of some sort? Catch the blood.”

“I’m not gonna lug a tub around, Edie. The whole point of going out to the fucking pumphouse is that we don’t have to worry about the mess. A table would be nice, though. Something a comfortable height. Right, Prisoner? Right. Prisoner number zero-zero-zero agrees.” Eric unfolded The Algonquin Lode and spread it out on the bed where the prisoner couldn’t help but see his own high school graduation picture along with the subhead: Search for Toronto Youth At a Standstill.

“Maybe a bag of lime,” Edie offered. “To obliterate his features after we kill him. Maybe even before we kill him.”

“Edie, you have such an interesting take on things. Don’t you just love that about her, Prisoner? The youth of Toronto agrees, Edie: you have a very interesting take on things.”