Scratch Fever

9

JON CAME TO.

He knew three things immediately: he was in the back seat of a car, on his side; it was dark, so it wasn’t morning yet, or anyway the sun wasn’t up; and his head ached so bad, his eyes hurt.

He sat up; it took some doing, but he sat up. His hands were behind him, and he could feel the cold steel of handcuffs; his legs were bound at the ankles with thick, heavily knotted rope, like the handiwork of a very ambitious, sadistic Boy Scout.

Or Girl Scout.

He looked out the window to the left. The dyke, Ron, black leather jacket, ducktail, and all, was standing in an arrogant slouch, listening to Julie talk.

Julie.

She was still wearing the white outfit, but the tinted glasses were gone, an affectation she presumably dropped during more private moments. She was gesturing as she spoke, and occasionally she would reach out and touch Ron’s face, casually.

The two of them were standing in the midst of a big open graveled area, a parking lot. This car Jon was in the back of was one of only two cars parked in it The other one was a low-slung sportscar, a Porsche, Jon thought, the color of which he couldn’t make out — something light pastel — and the owner had to be Julie.

Behind them was a building that appeared to be an old brick warehouse, but there was a neon sign, which wasn’t on, over a covered entryway, indicating it had been converted into something else. A restaurant or a club, maybe. He couldn’t tell, exactly; he couldn’t really see that well.

He tried to make out what they were saying, but it was muffled; they were a good twenty feet away. He pressed his ear to the glass of the car window and listened. He began to pick up some of the conversation.

“Just hold onto him for me,” Julie was saying.

“You want him to disappear forever, he can,” the dyke said.

“Not yet. In a day or two, maybe.”

“It don’t matter to me. I’d soon cut his throat as look at him.”

A sick feeling swept over Jon — not nausea: hopelessness. A physical sense of hopelessness.

Then he didn’t hear anything. He took his ear away from the glass and looked out the window, and Julie and the dyke were kissing. There was a full moon tonight, but it didn’t lend much romance to the scene, the way Jon saw it.

Then the big sandy-haired guy with glasses, the Incredible Hulk guy, came out of the warehouse, and Julie and Ron broke it up; Julie walked to meet the guy, and the dyke just stood there, hands on her butt, looking sullen. Julie and the guy talked for what seemed forever and was maybe five minutes.

How the fuck could she be alive, anyway?

He and Nolan had driven to Ft. Madison and seen the twisted, burnt wreckage of the car she’d been in. Or was supposed to have been in. Didn’t make sense.

But what did make sense, where Julie was concerned? The only thing you could count on was she’d use her looks to manipulate those around her. Like she had with that poor dead bastard Rigley, the Port City bank president.

She’d put him up to it They didn’t know it at first but it became obvious as soon as she came into it. Rigley could never have done it on his own.

Rigley had come into the Pier, about a year ago, and announced to Nolan that he recognized him as one of the men who had held his bank up two years before. Rigley then blackmailed Nolan, and Jon, into helping him rob his own bank, to cover up an embezzlement The robbery had gone off without a hitch, but when it came to making the split at Rigley’s cottage on the Cedar River, he and his beautician girlfriend, Julie, put a double-cross in motion.

But at the last minute, the banker panicked, and when Julie fired a shotgun meant for Nolan, Rigley got in front of the blast. Nolan dove for the girl, but she swung the now-empty shotgun around and whacked him in the head, and he went down.

Jon was under the dead banker. He pushed the corpse off and grabbed for the girl’s arm as she fled, but she caught him in the gut with the gunstock, and then again on the back of the neck, when he doubled over.

Moments later he came to, grabbed his .38 from off the floor, and went out after her.

Julie was in her yellow Mustang, the laundry bag of money sitting in back like a person.

He had her in his sights, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t shoot. Couldn’t kill her.

So he shot at her tires; maybe hit one.

Then she was gone.

And minutes later he and Nolan were pursuing her. There were only two ways she could go: back to Port City, which on the heels of the bank robbery was unlikely, or toward West Liberty, a little town near where she’d lived before moving into Rigley’s cottage.

On the outskirts of West Liberty, they saw it: the Mustang, with a flat tire, pulled over on the shoulder.

In front of it was a blue Ford that said WEST LIBERTY SHERIFF’S DEPT. on the side. Julie was in the back seat of the Ford. So was the sack of money.

The sheriff or deputy or whatever, a pudgy-faced guy with a weak chin, close-set eyes, five o’clock shadow, and a western-style hat, sat in front, getting ready to pull out on the highway, into town. He apparently had stopped Julie for driving recklessly in a car with a flat tire, and stumbled onto something a bit bigger.

Julie saw Nolan and Jon as they drove by, but didn’t alert the sheriff. Nolan and Jon drove back to Iowa City to sit it out.

That night, back at the antique shop, in the upstairs living quarters, they kept the radio on and the TV too, waiting for news of the West Liberty arrest. It never came.

“I think we been snookered,” Nolan said. “I think that West Liberty hick was in on it with her.”

“Nolan, that’s nuts,” Jon had said. “She couldn’t’ve planned ahead for a flat tire. She couldn’t’ve put something that complex together.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right.”

“So now what?”

“We keep waiting.”

The next morning it was on the news: on a narrow bridge on the highway outside Ft. Madison, a gas tanker truck struck a car, head on. There had been an explosion. The two men in the truck were killed, as was the woman driving the car. Several thousand dollars in burnt bills in Port City bank wrappers linked the young woman driving the car to yesterday’s Port City bank robbery. In the days to come, the woman, though burned beyond recognition, was identified as the dead bank president’s mistress. The cops put a scenario together for the robbery and its aftermath that did not, thankfully, include Nolan and Jon.

But Nolan had not been satisfied. He went to Ft. Madison and looked at the burnt wreckage of the Mustang.

“I think we been snookered,” he said again.

Again, Jon said, “You’re nuts. She was running, and it all caught up with her.”

“You mean God killed her?”

“Well...”

“He doesn’t have that good a sense of humor.”

There was one thing Nolan could still do, and Jon drove him, after a good month had passed, to West Liberty. The weak-chinned deputy sheriff — whose name was Creel — lived in a little white frame house a few blocks from the outskirts of town — a few blocks from where he stopped Julie’s Mustang. So at two in the morning one night, with Jon at his side, Nolan knocked on Creel’s door.

Creel answered in his pajamas. Nolan, wearing a ski mask, put a gun in Creel’s neck.

Within the house, a female voice from upstairs called, “Honey? Is something wrong?”

Nolan said softly, “Nothing’s wrong.”

Creel looked at Nolan wide-eyed, slack-jawed; he looked at Jon standing just behind Nolan, also in a ski mask, also with a gun.

“Nothing’s wrong, honey,” Creel called back. “Just some sheriffing!”

And Nolan walked the deputy around back and had him sit in a swing on a swing set. Creel had kids, apparently.

“Tell me about Julie,” Nolan said.

“What?”

“Tell me why you didn’t turn Julie and that money in last month.”

And Creel did something amazing: he started to cry. He sat in the swing and cried.

Then he talked.

“I was nuts about that cunt. She had a beauty shop in town. For two years I tried to make her. I usually don’t cheat around, but that cunt was s-o-o-o-o-o-o beautiful. And she laughed at me when I came onto her. Two years I tried making her.”

“Get to the point.”

“There’s not much to tell. I saw this car driving wild. Flat tire. Pulled it over and it was this Julie. She had a shotgun, but it was empty. And she had a bag of money. All that fuckin’ money. She said, ‘You hear about the Port City bank job this afternoon?’ I said yeah. She said, ‘This is the money. Hundreds of thousands here. Nobody knows I got it but you.’ Jesus, I said. She says, ‘You want to be rich and fuck me whenever you want?’ I didn’t say nothin’. She says, ‘Rich,’ and reaches for my dick. ‘Nobody’s home at my place,’ I says. My wife and the kids was at her mom’s in Des Moines, for Christmas. She says, ‘Drive us there, then. Now.’ And I did.”

Creel started laughing.

“We parked the Mustang in back here, in the garage, and took the bag of money in and plopped it on the kitchen table. She and I sat and played with the money and laughed. Then we went upstairs to the bedroom and, sweet Jesus, I fucked her. Three times, and it was... nothing like it, ever. We was in bed together, and I drifted off to sleep, thinking it was a dream, a crazy dream. I woke up a couple hours later, handcuffed to the bed. Alone in the house.”

Creel sat there, swinging.

“You believe she’s dead?” Nolan asked.

“If she isn’t, I’d like to kill her.” He laughed. “Or fuck her.” Then he just sat there blankly. Swinging.

“We never had this conversation,” Nolan said.

“Right,” Creel said.

And Nolan and Jon went back to Iowa City and forgot about it.

Now, a year later, Jon was in the back seat of a car, handcuffed like that dumb asshole Creel, while Julie and some dyke named Ron talked about whether or not to kill him.

Right now Julie was still talking to that sandy-haired guy. If only they’d go into that warehouse for a while, maybe he could do something...

The car he was in was an old souped-up Ford, with tuck’n’roll upholstery, four-on-the-floor, stereo speakers on the back ledge. He was locked in, of course, but maybe...

On the other side of the car, the one facing away from Julie and Ron and the Hulk, Jon bit the tip of the locking knob on the door. He pulled up his with teeth. It clicked.

He glanced over to see if the figures out in the parking lot had heard it. It had sounded incredibly loud to him. But they still stood there, Julie and the guy, talking, Ron doing her James Dean slouch.

With his back to the door, he used this cuffed hands to grasp the door handle. He pulled. The latch gave, but he didn’t open the door. He was still watching the people in the lot. To see if they’d heard the sound — which seemed to him to echo across the world like a shout in the Grand Canyon. But they didn’t seem to. Ron glanced over, but just momentarily.

He waited a minute or so.

Then he pushed the door open a bit, hoping the dome light wouldn’t go on. It didn’t. One small break. He edged it open and slipped down out of the car onto the gravel and eased the door shut.

On his belly, he looked under the car, toward Julie and the Hulk and Ron. He saw their legs; they hadn’t moved.

He looked off, in the opposite direction. Another twenty feet of parking lot, then trees. If he could make it to the trees, and perhaps hide, then eventually work the ropes off his ankles, and find a highway...

He crawled on his belly. The gravel was rough; it scraped him. He was only in T-shirt and jeans. His mouth, already tasting like an old gym sock, took in dust.

He could hear them talking. They hadn’t noticed him. Trees ahead, a few yards.

Then a voice. Ron’s.

“Hey!”

Feet ran on gravel.

He tried to get on his feet; maybe he could hop faster than he could crawl.

He never found out.

A foot was on his back, and then he heard Ron say, “You ain’t goin’ no place,” and she grabbed him by his bound ankles and dragged him, face down, back to her car.

10

HAROLD TOOK off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He was sitting behind the metal desk in the small paneled office at the rear of his and Julie’s club, the Paddlewheel. He was waiting for the phone to ring.

The Paddlewheel was a big place, an old converted warehouse near the banks of the Mississippi, in Gulf Port, Illinois; it contained a restaurant, several bars, several dance floors with stages, and a casino. But Harold’s office was small.

Harold, of course, was big, a big man who felt uncomfortable in his small office, physically uncomfortable, psychologically uncomfortable. This small office was just another unspoken insult in his life with Julie. But he loved her. He loved her. And if she didn’t love him back, well, she didn’t love anybody else, either. Except Julie, of course.

Julie had a large office upstairs, with a huge wood-topped desk, bulky old-fashioned safe, file cabinets, chairs, bar, television, stereo, a couch where she slept sometimes. Almost an apartment, and she did use it as a place to go, to stay, even overnight — when she wanted to get away from him for a while, Harold knew.

They lived together in a big white house with pillars, a near-mansion built ten years before by a wealthy farmer for a beloved wife who divorced him a year later. The place was several miles outside Gulf Port, in the midst of rich farmland that Julie now owned, one of several investments she’d made with the money they were earning from the Paddlewheel. It was a four-bedroom home that required a housekeeper to come in three times a week, filled with antiques Julie picked up (her only hobby); they slept in separate bedrooms, though he was allowed to join her in her bed for love-making a few times a week.

As for his small office on the basement level, she claimed it was a ploy of sorts; it was obviously necessary to keep considerable cash on hand for the casino and, she said, she wanted a certain amount beyond that in case the day came that they should need to leave in a hurry. So the big old safe in her office, in which a few thousand was kept, was a decoy; the safe containing over $100,000 was in the floor of Harold’s small office, a little vault in the corner, under the carpet.

It had been a long and disturbing evening. What it should have been was a pleasant night out — dinner at the Barn, followed by scouting the band there for possible fill-in at the Paddlewheel. But then this Jon kid turned up out of Julie’s past.

Julie had taken the money from that bank job and turned it into the Paddlewheel, from which had come land holdings and a sporting goods store in Burlington and... and Jon and Logan would want their share, now that they knew she was alive. Julie claimed they’d want even more — revenge, she said. But Harold didn’t really buy that. He knew Julie well enough to know that if there was one thing Julie loved besides Julie, it was money; that was the only fever in her, and she wouldn’t do the smart thing, the right thing, and call this Logan and the kid Jon in and admit her deceptions and cut them in for a share. No way in hell. She’d do anything but that. Harold knew that only too well. He knew only too well what Julie was capable of, for money.

He sat rubbing his eyes, waiting for the phone to ring. It was almost two in the morning, and he was exhausted. He wanted to go to his room at the house and sleep. Just sleep.

But he had to wait till the phone rang.

Those two guys Julie had contacted, the ones her Chicago connection put her onto, should have called by now.

He didn’t like being part of this. He didn’t like being any part of killing. It wasn’t the first time she’d got him into being part of something that was directly opposed to everything he’d ever been taught, that he’d ever believed in. He didn’t understand it, how he could have come to believe in one thing, live for one thing: Julie. The few nights a week in her bed, doled out like a child’s allowance; the occasional tender look; those few times a week she’d squeeze his arm and smile, or touch his face. He lived for those. He didn’t believe any of them, but he wanted to. And he took what he could get.

And then there were those rare, real moments when she got blue and came to him for some emotional support. When she needed a man to lean on, and for a while, a short while, he’d be a man to her, and to himself.

The phone rang.

It was the long-distance operator with a collect call for anyone from Mr. Smith. Harold accepted the call.

A young, out-of-breath voice said, “This is Infante.”

“I was told I’d be speaking to a Sal,” Harold said.

“Well, you’re speaking to Infante!”

“I better speak to Sal.”

“You can’t! You can’t... he’s dead. Sally’s dead.”

Dead. So it was starting, Harold thought. It was starting again.

On the other end of the phone, Infante seemed to be sobbing.

“Are you all right, Infante?”

“I’m fine!” the young voice said with defiance.

“Where are you?”

“Some restaurant I’m at a restaurant. Denny’s.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Port City? I’m using a pay phone.”

“In a booth?”

“It’s a kind of stall.”

“Well, keep your voice down, then, Infante.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“What happened?”

“We had the guy’s girlfriend. We were waiting for him. But he came in and surprised us. He killed Sally. With a knife! With a goddamn knife!”

“Please. Why did you leave the Quad Cities?”

“I couldn’t stay! He knows who I am, this Logan or Nolan or whatever. He’d come after me.”

“Then you better go someplace where you have friends who can hide you.”

“I’m not hiding from that son-of-a-bitch! I want him. He killed Sally! Don’t you get it?”

“Look. Infante, is it? Go to your friends—”

“Sally was my friend. He was all I had! That fucker Nolan, I’m going to kill him!”

You better decide whether you’re going to kill him or run from him, Harold thought But he said, “What are your plans, then?”

“I’m coming to you.”

“Infante, I wouldn’t...”

“I don’t care what you’d do. I’m coming. You owe me money.”

“That’ll be taken care of...”

“It sure will. And you can put me up somewhere. While we wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For Nolan.”

Harold rubbed his eyes again.

“Yes,” he said into the phone, “I suppose you’re right He will be coming, won’t he?”

Harold gave Infante some directions and hung up the phone.

Harold rarely drank. It was a holdover from his football days; he’d taken training very seriously. And he still took vitamins, watched his diet, worked out at a spa. He was into his thirties, and most men of his physical type would have gone to fat by now. Not Harold.

But right now he felt like a drink. He’d have to go out to that parking lot, where Julie was dealing with that crazy lez, and tell her about Infante. Thinking about her with Ron gave him a sick feeling; thinking about what Infante had told him, and how Julie would react to it, made him feel sicker. He went to the bar just outside his office and unlocked the booze and mixed himself a Manhattan.

Despite his not drinking much, he could make a hell of a mixed drink. He’d been a bartender for three years, after all. That’s what he’d been doing when Julie came back into his life a century ago. Last year.

Of course he and Julie went back a lot farther than a year ago. She had been the high school cheerleader, the homecoming queen candidate, the local beauty contest winner, who had caught the eye of the local football hero — Harold. His eye wasn’t all she’d caught: on the eve of his freshman year at State, she announced she was pregnant.

No problem: he had scholarship money, and an extra job. And he loved her. Very, very much. So they married. They had a beautiful little girl, Lisa. They were happy. Or at least he was. Julie seemed moody, but it wasn’t a bad first year for a marriage. Then his grades got bad.

He hadn’t been in Vietnam long when he got the “Dear Harold” letter.

He didn’t see any action in ’Nam. He’d had two things going for him: bad eyes and the ability to type.

He was a clerk typist, in the rear area, and never heard a shell go off. It was an easy war for Harold.

Peace had been another matter. He was divorced from a woman he still loved. He was a football hero without a college degree and had few qualifications for anything outside of clerical work or a factory job. He ended up a bartender, in an all-night joint in Gulf Port, across the river from Burlington, where he’d gone to work in a college buddy’s office as a clerk. He’d thought about bettering himself. He’d considered going back to college and trying again; he’d considered going to a business school, for a two-year degree at least, to bolster his clerical credentials.

But he gave that up after one of the two-week summer visits he had yearly with his daughter. She was being raised by Julie’s younger sister and her husband, an executive with a public relations firm in Minneapolis; she was very happy with them. They were her parents, for all intents and purposes. And while Lisa — who was thirteen now — loved her father, enjoyed their visits together, she made it clear she was happy where she was. And one thing Harold wouldn’t do was make his daughter unhappy.

There were only two things Harold wanted in life: his daughter, Lisa, who was lost to him, except in the “Uncle Daddy” sense, and his ex-wife, Julie, who had gone into business, with a beauty shop in a small Iowa town called West Liberty, and who wanted nothing to do with him — though she did call him on the phone now and then, when she was feeling low.

So Harold had settled into life-as-existence. He worked at menial jobs. The bartending gig was about the longest-term employment he’d had since the service. He took an odd pride in his ability to mix a good drink, any drink, and talked sports with customers till all hours. Harold did still get some pleasure out of watching sports on TV. That, and listening to old Beach Boys and Beatles albums from his high school days, was about all Harold had.

Till that afternoon last year when Julie showed up at the bar.

She had looked strange. And beautiful, of course. She was wearing a clingy blood-red sweater and slacks. She had a wild look, her eyes aglitter, her hair slightly disarrayed. An animal look. And there was good reason: she was on the run.

“Do you want me back?” she whispered. Just like that. Leaning across the bar. There were only a few customers in the place. Jody’s, like most Gulf Port establishments, was a night spot primarily. But she whispered.

“You know I do,” he said.

“Can you get somebody to relieve you here?”

“For a few minutes?”

“For until I say different.”

“I’ll make a call.” He did. “The relief guy will be here in twenty minutes. Can it wait till then?”

“Yes,” she said, and took a table near the bar.

The new girl, Doris, a blonde of about twenty-five with dark roots and a nice frame and a pleasant, pockmarked face, waited on Julie; Julie ordered coffee. While Doris was off getting it, Julie came to the bar.

“Who is she?”

“Just some transient gal.”

“Transient?”

“Divorcee. No kids. Got an ex-husband in Ohio she’s on the run from.”

“Why?”

“Cause he still loves her. Ever hear of that?”

“What did he do, beat her?”

“I guess.”

Julie nodded and went back to the table. Doris brought the coffee.

Julie said, “You’re new here, huh?”

Doris smiled, said, “Just collecting a few paychecks, honey. I’m on my way to California.”

“Oh. Relatives there?”

“No. My folks are gone and I was the only one. I got a couple of old boyfriends out there, though. That’s better than relatives.”

“Any time. How’s your paycheck collection coming along?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m on my way to Los Angeles. Just stopped here to look up my ex-husband. He’s that good-looking bartender over there.”

“Harold’s your ex? No kiddin’!”

She sat down.

“Say, I was mostly saving for my bus fare and such. If you can use a rider, somebody who can help you drive, I’ll turn in my apron and hop in your car.”

Julie smiled and extended a hand. “It’s a deal.”

Shortly before three o’clock that morning, Harold was in the Mustang, and Doris was behind the wheel. Harold, in the passenger’s seat, was steering, because Doris was unconscious. Julie had put Seconal in some coffee Doris drank a few hours before. Harold was off on the shoulder, waiting for Julie. There was some snow on the ground, but no ice on the highway. It was cold. Harold was sweating.

She came over the bridge, driving his old sky-blue Dodge Charger, the one he’d had since college, and she blinked her brights. That meant the truck was coming. He pulled the Mustang across the mouth of the narrow bridge, left it in park, got out and ran to hop in Julie’s waiting car. They were half a mile away when the small bridge behind them seemed to blow up, in a huge orange ball, as though a shell had hit it.

HE FINISHED the Manhattan and went out to her. It was chilly in the parking lot; there were no lights on out here, but the full moon provided some unreal-seeming illumination. She was standing with Ron, standing close. He pulled her away from Ron, who stood and watched them, that permanent, pouty snarl on her face.

He told Julie about the call from Infante.

They were talking about it when Ron noticed that kid, Jon, making a break for it, crawling away from her car toward the woods. The lez ran after the kid, dragged him back to the car, tossed him in.

Then Ron came back and said to Julie, “You oughta let me...”

“No,” Julie said. “Take him to your place and sit on him.”

Ron shrugged. “Okay,” she said, and sauntered off to her ’57 Ford and rumbled off.

“You’re not going to kill that boy, are you?” Harold asked Julie.

“No.”

“You mean Ron’ll do it for you.”

“I need him alive at the moment. Till we find out what Logan’s up to.”

“He’ll come here. He’s probably on his way right now.”

“I can handle him.”

“I don’t think so. He sounds like one man you can’t handle.”

“We’ll put this Infante to use.”

“He doesn’t sound like much. Some poor sappy kid. I’m afraid his partner was the smart one.”

“He’s the dead one now.”

“True. Very true.”

“Well, Harold. There’s always you.”

“I won’t kill for you, Julie.”

“Right,” she said. She put her arm in his. “Let’s lock up and go home. We can talk about it.”

11

COOL CLOTH touched his face. It was soothing. Jon opened his eyes.

And looked into Ron’s face.

For a moment the face looked almost human: the pouty mouth, the close-set eyes, were in a sort of repose, the nastiness set aside. Then she saw that he was awake and, with just a subtle shift, the features turned ugly again.

She stopped dabbing his face with the damp washrag; she pulled back.

“Don’t stop,” Jon said. “Feels good.”

“You got bunged up,” she said. Her tone was strangely apologetic. And almost a whisper. “I was cleaning off the dirt.”

His face did hurt; even without touching it, he could feel the raw patches.

“Go ahead,” he said. “That felt good, what you were doing.”

She shrugged, with her shoulders and mouth both, and started touching his face again. Her touch was gentle. Which struck Jon as weird.

“I... I don’t remember passing out,” he said.

“You hit your head,” she said.

“When?”

“When I tossed you in back of my car, after you tried to crawl off. You hit your head on the door. You got a bump.”

He tried to feel his head, and his hand jerked, like a dog on a leash. He glanced over and saw that the hand was cuffed to the headboard of an old brass bed. His left hand was free, however, and he touched the bump on his head; it was sore, but it wasn’t a big bump. On the side of his head, though, where she’d hit him with the gun barrel earlier, there was a real goose egg.

“You don’t got a concussion or nothing,” she said.

He was beginning to get his bearings. He was on his back, on the bed; his right hand was cuffed, and his left leg was, too, by the ankle. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, tending him. The room was dim: the only light on was a shaded lamp on the nightstand. This appeared to be a room in an older home. There was yellow floral wallpaper, faded, and paint was coming off the ceiling in spots, from water damage. Opposite the foot of the bed was an old dresser with mirror; on top of the dresser was a row of trophies of some sort. There was a door to the right; a window over to the left. It was an average-size bedroom. Nothing remarkable about it.

Except maybe for the pictures. The mirror over the dresser was covered with them, pin-ups taped to it, but not of girls: Elvis Presley, James Dean, Eddie Cochran; fifties teen faves, mostly dead. Some of the pictures were faded pages clipped from old magazines, the Scotch tape yellowed and dried; others looked more recent. It was a mirror you couldn’t look into. But the faces on it looked back at you, peeking over the row of trophies.

She yanked the cloth away from his raw face. “What are you lookin’ at?”

“Just the pictures. On the mirror.”

“What about ’em?”

“Nothing. They’re fine. They’re fine.”

Her face lost some of its nastiness, and she said, “You name’s Jon, huh?”

“Right. And you’re Ron.”

“Yeah. Sounds like a poem, don’t it? Jon and Ron.” She laughed.

He found a little smile for her somewhere and forced something out of him that he hoped sounded like a laugh. God, this dyke is nuts, he thought.

“I’m, you know... sorry about this,” she said. Sullenly.

“Sorry?”

She dragged it out of herself. “I... got nothing against you, really.”

“You don’t?”

“I used to come listen to you. Your band. You guys were good.”

“Thanks.”

“You played too much sixties. I like fifties.”

“Uh, well, there’s lots of requests for sixties stuff these days. But I like fifties music myself.”

She smiled; the sullenness was gone. “I know. I heard you do ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’.’ Anybody that can do Jerry Lee that good is okay by me.”

“I’m... glad you liked it.”

“Look, I know I probably made a... bad impression that time, few months ago, when I got on your case for being with Darlene. I know it’s not your fault. Darlene, she’s always hitting on people.”

He tried to think of something to say to that, but couldn’t. He was trying to stay low key and calm, trying not to scream at her. She seemed relatively calm herself at the moment, and he had a feeling that keeping her that way might be to his benefit.

“Are you hungry?” she asked suddenly.

“I... hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Well, are you?” Nastier.

“Sure. Sure. If it... wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“Naw! Not at all. How ’bout a ham sandwich and a beer?”

“That’d be... great.”

“No problem,” she said, smiling, rising. She sauntered over toward the door and out.

What a fucking fruitcake! he thought, and began to take toll of his situation. He took a look at the headboard of the bed. He was cuffed to one of its brass posts; there didn’t seem to be any way to slide the cuff off the thing. And he certainly couldn’t pull his wrist through the cuff.

He was able to get into a sitting position, but he could stay that way only by supporting himself with his free hand. It allowed him to see that his ankle (his shoes were off; he could see them over on the floor, by the dresser) was cuffed to the brass end rail of the bed.

For having an arm and a leg free, he was pretty goddamn helpless.

If he didn’t feel so weak, he could try to overpower her; maybe knock her out with a punch when she got close, or kick her in the head or something. But then what?

Then she was there with the sandwich and beer, a Coors.

She’d taken off the leather jacket; she was in T-shirt and jeans now, her smallish breasts poking at her T-shirt in a reminder that she was female.

She handed him the sandwich and a paper napkin and said, “I put hot mustard on it.”

“I like hot mustard.”

“You got beer to wash it down with.” She put the beer on the nightstand, since he didn’t have a hand handy to take it.

He ate the sandwich. He was starving. He didn’t realize it till he got the food in front of him, but he was starving.

She was smiling as she watched him eat. And not at all in a sinister way. The dimness of the room, with its single source of light, threw shadows on her and everything else, but the effect was softening.

When he was finished, she said, “Use another beer to wash that down better?”

“Uh. Sure. That’d be great.”

This time she left the door open as she went, and he could see her going out into the hall and taking a right down some stairs; he could hear her feet on the stairs, and then again, a couple minutes later, coming back up.

She gave him a second Coors; she’d brought a beer for herself, too, but in a glass. She had an empty coffee can under her arm and set it on the floor by the bed.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“You can’t buy beer, you can only rent it,” she said.

“Oh.”

“Can you reach it there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“With your hand, stupid.”

He reached over with his left hand and could feel the lip of the can.

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

She sat on the edge of the bed again.

“How old are you?” she asked him.

“Twenty-one,” he said.

“How old you think I am?”

Thirty.

“Twenty,” he said.

“Twenty-five,” she grinned, with a slight foam mustache.

Thirty.

“Fooled me,” Jon said.

“I live right,” she explained.

“Uh, Ron?”

“Yeah?”

“Why am I here?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Well. You did bring me here.”

“Yeah. So?”

“Well, why’d you do it? Why am I tied up like this?”

“That’s between you and Julie.”

“Julie.”

“Yeah. I’m only doing this ’cause she asked me to. I don’t get no pleasure out of it.”

“You don’t.”

“Fuck, no. You’re a nice kid. You sing good. I like you.”

“You do.”

She smiled again — a real smile, with some gums showing, and disarming, in a weird fucking way. “Yeah. I don’t always like guys, you know.”

“You don’t?”

“Nope. But I don’t always like girls, either.” She touched his leg.

He couldn’t think of anything to say.

“You thought I was queer, didn’t you?” she said.

“Oh. I don’t know.”

“I like girls. I like guys, too, sometimes. I don’t know. Sometimes, it’s... well, it’s easier for me with girls.”

“Is it easy with Julie?”

He’d crossed some line he shouldn’t have. She pulled her hand away from his leg, and the nasty look returned. “Don’t get cute, prick,” she said.

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“You just better stay on my good side.”

“Hey, I’m not here because I asked to be, you know.”

“Yeah. I know. You got a better temper about it than I would, I guess.”

“Do you work for Julie?”

“I do stuff for her. I’m kind of a night watchman at the Paddlewheel. Most of Gulf Port is all-night places, but Julie closes up at two. So I keep an eye on the place most nights.”

“Not tonight.”

“No. Tonight I’m keeping an eye on you.”

“I see.”

“If Julie wants me to sit on you, she’s got her reasons. It’s between the two of you. I got nothin’ to do with it.”

“How much do you know about her?”

Ron smiled. “I know her pretty well.”

“She tried to kill me once. With a shotgun.”

“Sure,” she said, sipping her glass of Coors.

“We were in on a bank job together, and she tried to kill my partner and me.”

“You? A bank robber? Don’t make me choke.”

“She took the money. Where do you think she got the money for the Paddlewheel, you dumb cunt? Then I saw her at the Barn, tonight, and she figures I’ll tell my partner about her, and she’s afraid he’ll come after her.”

That stopped Ron. For some reason — Jon’s near-hysteria, perhaps — it had rung true to her.

“What’ll he do, this guy?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Now that she’s kidnapped me, I don’t know what he’s liable to do.”

“Kidnapped. Who’s kidnapped?”

“I’m handcuffed to the goddamn bed, lady. What the fuck do you think this is?”

Ron got up, walked around.

“Julie said sit on you,” she said. “I’m doing what she asked me to and that’s all.”

“I heard you. And I heard you say back at that parking lot you’d as soon kill me as look at me.”

Ron turned and looked at him, and there was an expression on her face that could only be described as a mixture of pain and embarrassment. She came over and sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the washrag from the nightstand and touched a couple places on his face again. Then she put the washrag down and said, “That was just bullshit.”

“Was it.”

“I’m sorry about your face getting bunged up, and your head. I hit you with the gun pretty hard. I...”

She lowered her head.

“I show off sometimes,” she said. “When somebody like Darlene’s around... or somebody like Julie, especially Julie... I show off. I get tough. Act tough. Talk tough. Overdo it. Don’t ask me why.”

Why is she telling me this? Jon wondered.

“She’s going to ask you to kill me,” Jon said.

“Naw. It’ll never happen.”

“You’ve done things for her before.”

“I roughed some people up for her before. Big deal.”

“You kidnapped me tonight for her.”

“Kidnapped! Nobody’s been kidnapped.”

“Ron. Let me go, before you get in this any deeper.”

“Yeah, and you’d go to the cops.”

“I can’t go to the cops.”

“Why, ’cause you’re a bank robber? You’re funny.”

“Ron, Julie’s going to call your bluff. She’s going to ask you to kill me. Are you up to that?”

Ron thought about that.

“I’m tired of talkin’,” she said, rising. “You get some sleep.”

She switched off the lamp and left the room.

For about an hour, Jon worked at the cuffs, tried to see if the headboard of the bed could be unscrewed or otherwise come loose from the bed itself.

Then sun was coming in the window, and Ron was coming in the door. She was still wearing jeans and T-shirt and had a plate of eggs and ham in one hand and orange juice in the other.

“Did you sleep?” she asked.

“I guess,” Jon said, not sure.

“If I give you this stuff, will you be good?”

“I won’t try anything,” he said.

“All right,” she said, and gave him the food. She stood over by the dresser and leaned against it while he ate. She fingered one of the trophies on the dresser.

“This was my brother’s room,” she said. Out of nowhere.

“Really? Where is he now?”

“Dead.”

“Uh. I’m sorry.”

“Stock car accident. That’s what the trophies are.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“He was about your age when he cracked up.”

“Really? When was this?”

“Fifteen years ago, June.”

“You must’ve loved him.”

“Yeah. I thought a lot of him. He was what kept this place going.”

“Oh?”

“I had three little sisters. My mom and dad drank, and Billy... my brother... he was tough. If Dad tried to hit one of us, he’d belt him. From about thirteen on he could beat the crap outa my old man.”

“No kidding.”

“When Billy got killed, I... kind of took over. Stepped in. Otherwise my old man would’ve started in on us again. Boy, did it shock the shit out of him.”

“What did?”

She laughed. “When he found out his little girl could beat the crap out of him too. He only stuck around about a year after that.”

“Where’s the rest of the family now?”

“Mom’s dead. Bad liver. The girls are all married. One of ’em just this last summer. Too young: sixteen. I didn’t raise her right, maybe. Pregnant. Oh well. Maybe she’ll be happy.”

In the distance, bells were sounding.

“It’s Sunday,” she said. “I’m gonna be gone a while. Think you can get along without me?”

“Do I have a choice? Where are you going?”

“Mass, stupid,” she said.

She went out, shutting the door this time.

“Light a candle for me,” Jon said.

James Dean and company stared at him while he struggled with the cuffs and the headboard. About fifteen minutes later, he heard her go out; he wondered what she looked like dressed for church. Then he got back to his struggling. And got nowhere. He fell asleep after a while.

He woke and it was dark in the room. It wasn’t night: the shades were drawn. A little light crawled in under the shade and from around the edges, but the nightstand lamp was off, and there was no other light in the room.

She was standing near the bed. She wasn’t wearing anything. Her body wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad; she had a square-ish frame with modest breasts, but there was no fat on her. It was a supple, vaguely muscular body. She had a tattoo of a black rose near her right hipbone, just above her pubic thatch. Her pouty face didn’t look pretty, exactly, but she wasn’t ugly.

He didn’t say anything as she undid his pants.

“No man ever made me come,” she said. “Do you think you can, Jon?”

“I’ll try,” Jon managed.

She sat on him