A-Sides
Page 26
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“Where did you go last night,” Joyce asked me the next morning. Her hair was untidy in a sexy sort of way and she wore her flowered housecoat with the print flowers on it, what she called her China Whore robe. She rearranged frying, link sausages in a pan.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I lied, “so I went out and had a couple of beers.” What could I tell her? That I changed into a wolf and ripped a woman’s throat out? Now, I ask you, could I tell her that? Strangely enough, I felt nothing for the woman I had killed. Who was she to me? And another strange thing was that my mind seemed to accept that I had changed into a wolf and killed. It didn’t bother me at all. Still, I would keep a close eye on the news. An animal attack that resulted in the death of a human being was just bound to be turn up on the police blotter.
I had come home and cleaned myself up, transforming back to human about the time I made it to my front yard, creeping the last few yards with my hands over my nuts in case anybody was looking. Feature that. I’m covered in the blood of a woman I’ve just murdered, and I’m worried about the neighbors seeing my big white ass just a-shining in the moonlight. It was a good thing I made it back. I had left my clothes all over the bathroom floor, and Joyce was kind of OCD about that kind of thing.
“Joey woke me up last night,” Joyce informed me, sitting down at the table. “Laughing his head off at something. That’s how I knew you weren’t home. I couldn’t find you anywhere in the house. And you left your clothes all over the bathroom floor.”
So I hadn’t gotten away with it.
“Sorry,” I said.
Joyce’s OCD was understandable. She wasn’t really agoraphobic, but she didn’t go out any more than she had to. She was actually a little mousy, one of those women who had been badly used so often that all those little hurts finally show up on their faces. She had a nice little home business, stuffing envelopes with free samples and coupons and shit. It didn’t pay much, but it made her feel useful and it let her stay home. Before we were married, she had told me about various little abuses and upsets. In a weak moment, she had confided that she had once been brutally attacked, though she never went so far as to claim she was raped. She never gave me a name, but even as far back as the first time I changed, an idea started forming.
“How many eggs do you want?”
“Just a couple. I’m not…. I’m not very hungry.”
She looked at me curiously. “Do you have a hangover, or are you in a chocolate coma?”
“Honest,” I said playfully. “All I had was a couple of beers.”
Joyce broke a couple of eggs into a cup and began whipping them. She pulled a few bottles of spices from her Voodoo Spice Rack and sprinkled them into the eggs. Remember I told you that she had put me on a “Primal” diet? It’s a high fat, low carb diet and the flavor you don’t get from the carbs has to be made up with all manner of spices. Most of them I didn’t know, things like cardamom and coriander. What the hell was a coriander? I had once asked her about something called “turmeric”. Who would use something called “turmeric” in anything?
“I wish you had told me you were going out. After Joey woke up, I started to get scared.”
I looked up quickly, but Joyce didn’t notice. She was busy with the eggs.
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. I just had the scariest feeling that I woke up just in time to keep something from happening to Joey. And I couldn’t find you, so I just... got scared. I’m not…. I’m not a strong person, you know.” She pulled her lips up in a tiny smile.
That made me feel like shit.
“I know. I should have told you.” On not quite a whim, I asked her why she had never told me who attacked her.
“Why would you bring that up now?”
“It’s not good to see you live like this. Afraid. What if... what if,” I asked hesitantly, “there was something I could do about it?”
She looked at me calmly, a measured pain in her eyes. “It was a long time ago,” she said simply. “Just let me deal with it in my own way.”
I let it go for now. I still didn’t know what I was dealing with.
“You should let me worry about you,” Joyce said. “You need to start taking better care of yourself. You seem to be changing right in front of me. All that junk you eat, it can’t be good for you. Who knows what it’s doing to your insides?”
I grunted and sat down to my hateful, flavorless eggs with no toast or ‘taters. When I finished, I kissed Joyce good bye and left her to tend to Joey and stuff her envelopes while I went to work.