The Listener

by Robert R. McCammon

  “Can’t sleep?” he asked.

  “Smoky as hell in here,” she answered. “Smell it in the hall.”

  “I needed a cigarette.”

  “Need a drink too? Got a few swigs left.”

  He nodded. “Sure, I can use a drink.”

  “Who but a fool would ever turn one down?” Ginger asked, and as she retrieved the flask and unscrewed the cap Pearly knew exactly why she had come to his room, and that she was priming the pump. It was a mechanism that didn’t need much priming, if any at all, because even though he had the memory of the killing shot echoing in his brain his body was deaf to the murmurs of the past, and with the woman here in her filmy gown and offering herself to him nothing much mattered anymore about the passing death of a senile con man.

  He took the flask from her fingers and drank. She reached out, covered his hand with her own; he gave the flask up, she drank and stared into his eyes and gave a crooked little smile and said, “What’s on your mind?”

  He shrugged. He was sure she knew, but he wasn’t going to give it up without a little coy dancing. “Just thinkin’,” he said.

  “Wastin’ time, just thinkin’,” she told him.

  Then she was on him, not like a cat upon a mouse but more like a tidal wave upon an unguarded shore; he thought that if she could’ve plunged through his skin into his very heart, arteries and nerves she might have done so. Even with the barrier of flesh between them he was overcome for a few seconds by the tremendous heat and passion of her energy, her hands latched to his body, her mouth suctioned to his and her tongue lashing his own. Her tidal wave, which seemed more lava than water, flowed into and through him and carried them both onto the bed where clothing was unbuttoned and unsnapped, opened and discarded as if she also were mistress to the whirlwinds. Beneath them the bedsprings yowled like Cab Calloway’s horn section on nose candy. It seemed to Pearly that the noise was loud enough not only to wake up the Nevins and all of sleeping Stonefield but also to stir Samuel Petrie Blankenship from his eternal grave.

  There was no gentleness in her mouth upon him, and no gentleness either in the way she pressed herself upon his mouth. Instantly she seemed to break a sweat. Her aroma of burned-up roses became more of an acrid bonfire. It was all Pearly could do to keep from ending their escapade with a premature explosion, and then in the midst of their contortions and exertions Ginger came up for air and said breathlessly, “Wait…wait…”

  She got up off him and lunged for her purse on the dresser.

  From it she withdrew the ugly little .38 revolver.

  Pearly watched, transfixed, as Ginger also took from her purse a cartridge box. She removed one bullet, put it into the cylinder, spun the cylinder and cocked the pistol. Then she came back to the bed in nearly a leap, her face shiny with perspiration and her eyes ashine with need.

  “Hold it,” he said in a croak. “What’re you—”

  “Take it.” She pressed the gun upon his right hand. “Come on! Put it to my head and fuck me!”

  “What?”

  She grabbed a handful of his hair and got astride him. With her other hand she gripped his right wrist and guided the revolver to the side of her head. “I said fuck me! Right now!”

  “I can’t—”

  “Put your finger on the trigger! Do it! Hurry!” She sounded near crying out in her desperation.

  Pearly obeyed before she could force his finger on the trigger and maybe make the gun go off, because even as she was telling him to do it she was trying to work his hand into the proper form. Then she was holding his gunhand with the barrel at her left temple and she was pounding herself up and down on him like a battering ram, and by all reason and sense his flagpole should have withered and melted away but he was whipped up in this crazy frenzy too. Knowing he was screwing her in a mad game of Russian Roulette—that he was inside a woman whose head might be blown away by any errant twitch of inflamed nerves to his index finger—made him harder, and the sensation of death being so close was an unexpected thrill. He’d never experienced anything like this; the most off-beat sex he’d ever had had been with a prostitute in a Houston whorehouse who’d insisted on chewing Tootsie Rolls while she sucked him to orgasm. But a loaded pistol to the head, and maybe one jerk of his finger to send the bullet into her brain?

  This was a new one on him, and one that fired him up as nothing had ever fired him before.

  And for sure the woman was fired up too. Any more fire and Pearly thought her hair would burst into flame. She was crashing down on him with fevered abandon, the bedsprings were shrieking and the pistol’s black grip was slippery in his damp hand. A convulsion of the trigger finger, and there was one chance in six that the brains of Ginger LaFrance would be spattered across the wall; and that, Pearly realized in this frenzied blur, was the meat of the matter and what was driving the woman to the heights of ecstasy.

  He heard what sounded like a low moan that issued from the center of the earth, as if the gates of Hell were grinding open. There was another noise like the banging of a distant gong, getting louder. It took him a few seconds to register that a train was passing through the middle of Stonefield, only a couple of blocks away. Glass rattled in the windows and the tired timbers groaned. The entire house seemed to be shaking itself to pieces in the throes of its own mad moment. In this maelstrom of movement and noise the man who held the revolver had a vision of voluntarily firing the weapon because he was so close to it anyway, so very close, and with a blast of additional noise and a spurt of flame Ginger LaFrance’s head exploded and that was the end of a fancy lady who thought herself so hot and so icy. The thought and the image was so intense that it suddenly pushed him over the edge and lifted his hips off the bed with a shout caught between his teeth. Above him the woman shuddered, her back arched as if it were about to break, her eyes squeezed tightly shut and the sweat gleamed on her face, and the train clattered its way through Stonefield like a storm made up of a hundred whirling iron pots and pans.

  In the aftermath of the train’s thrumming passage, Ginger sat atop Pearly and quickly pushed the pistol away from her head.

  Pearly managed to speak though his chest was heaving and it took him a few seconds to find his breath. “Don’t have much sex, do you?”

  “Nope. But when I do, it’s a doozy.” She accepted the gun from his hand and emptied the cylinder of its single bullet. Then she eased off him, took the gun and the bullet to her purse and put them away, after which she returned to the bed and lay down beside him, not with her head on his shoulder but upon the second pillow.

  They lay there listening to each other breathing for a little while. Then Ginger said, “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-two,” he answered. And though it might be an indelicate question, he asked it anyway: “You?”

  “Thirty-four,” she said without hesitation. “You married?”

  “No, never been. How about you?”

  “Not now. I was. Twice.”

  “Kids?”

  “No.” She’d said it as if the very idea had stricken her with an intestinal pain. And she emphasized it: “Lord, no.”

  Pearly waited a few heartbeats before he ventured any further. Then: “What was that with the gun? You get a thrill out of that?”

  “Sure. Didn’t you?”

  “Maybe,” he had to admit. He added gravely, “Wouldn’t have been such a thrill if my finger had slipped on that trigger.”

  “But it didn’t,” she said. “See, that’s what it’s about, Pearly: settin’ the gamble, and winnin’ it. And about somethin’ else, too: keepin’ some part of yourself in control, no matter what you’re doin’ or thinkin’, no matter where you are, no matter who your cock’s in or whose cock’s in you…always there’s some part of yourself that stays…well, distant, I guess it would be. Like you’re watchin’ from another place, instead of bein’ right there. You had a taste of
that tonight…or this mornin’, I ought to say. It’s good for you, Pearly. Toughens you up.”

  “Toughens me up for what?” he asked.

  “For whatever,” she answered. “You never can tell what’s around the corner.”

  “Sunrise, I suppose.”

  “Yep,” she said. “Sunrise. And I’ll be wantin’ to slip this burg early, too.” She got out of bed, and Pearly watched as she retrieved her gown and put it on, covering up her voluptuous body. “Need some sleep,” she told him. “My own room. Meet me downstairs at six-thirty. That suit you?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  “Okay, then.” She went to the dresser and picked up her purse. “Get some sleep too, you may need to be rested tomorrow.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  She paused at the door and gave him a long, steady look. “How long you plan to be chasin’ hearses?”

  “It’s a passin’ thing, I figure.”

  “What else you got cookin’?”

  “Nothin’ right now,” he admitted. He shrugged. “I’m doin’ all right, most weeks. But somethin’ else will come along. I just have to find it.”

  “It may find you,” she said, and then she gave him a smile. “Sleep tight.” She pushed the latch back, opened the door, closed it behind her, and she was gone.

  He lay in bed for awhile longer, lingering over the afterglow, and then he got up to lock the door. Ginger’s violent exertions had made him feel as if some of his bones had slipped from their sockets. He returned to bed, nearly walking with a limp, settled himself into it and as he fell into sleep heard only the faintest echo of a gunshot.

  ****

  At quarter to six by his wristwatch, Pearly in the pink light of morning discovered two things: first, that the key to his Packard was gone from atop the dresser, and second, that as he hurriedly dressed he found two blotches of blood on the right leg of his white trousers just above the shoe. One was small, about the size of a thumbnail, but the other was larger and shaped like a seahorse.

  In his hurry, with his own blood pounding in his face and his teeth clenched behind grim lips, he misbuttoned his shirt twice. He figured Ginger had put the key in her purse either when she’d removed the pistol or put it back in. He checked his wallet and found all his money there; he was surprised the bitch hadn’t copped that too, but then again he might have instantly noticed it was gone from the dresser after she left.

  He got himself dressed except for his tie and hat, and he was still lacing up his left shoe as he threw back the latch on his door and nearly ran to the stairs. Then he checked his rush, because even though he figured he’d been stung he still had to be careful, had to keep himself in order. He straightened his coat and his shoulders and forced his legs to carry him down the stairs at a stately pace.

  “Mornin’,” said Hilda Nevins as Pearly reached the bottom of the stairs. There was no expression, good or ill, in the greeting. The severe-looking woman, dressed in a brown-checked robe that was buttoned to her throat and nearly swallowed her up, had been using a featherduster on her shelf of ceramic bells. “Up early,” she observed.

  “Yes ma’am.” He gave her his soft smile while behind the mask of his face his braingears were going ninety miles a second. His eyes scanned the room, looking for any trace of Ginger LaFrance…her bags, a hat, anything. Nothing there.

  “Servin’ breakfast at the cafe,” she said, as she returned to her dusting with the great care an empress would give to her collection of priceless diamonds and emeralds.

  “Um…well ma’am…I’m somewhat confused.” How to put this? Just go ahead fullsteam, he told himself. “I was thinkin’ I was gonna get a ride to Shreveport with Doctor Honeycutt and Miss LaFrance.” The woman stopped dusting and turned to face him, and Pearly felt like backing away a few steps because she seemed to be looking right through him at a murder in the woods but he stood his ground. “Are they still here?”

  “That lady,” Hilda Nevins said with the sarcasm dripping from the edges of her lips, “woke us up about four o’clock. Seems she needed to go out and check on the doctor, he was sick last night and slept in his car. Seems he wasn’t no better than when she’d left him, so she was gonna pay their bill and head on. Grover offered to help carry the bags out but she said there was only two and she had ’em. So she paid and they’re gone and that’s that.” She shrugged. “Fine with me, that perfume she wore gave me a headache.”

  “Ah,” Pearly said. Had his voice cracked? He imagined he felt sweat gathering at his temples.

  “And,” Hilda Nevins continued, with her dark and owlish eyes condemning him, “I’m gonna have to charge you an extra dollar for what went on in your room last night.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “You smoked a cigarette,” she said, as if she were saying I know you shot somebody last night. “At least one,” she added. “Smelled it in the hall when I went up to check their rooms. So I’m addin’ a dollar to your bill, and it’ll be another dollar tomorrow if you do it again.”

  “Fine.” It had come out as a mumble, so he tried it once more. “Fine.”

  “Henry’s at work by now, if you want to give him a call.” She motioned with the featherduster to the telephone on the black lacquered desk. “Phone book’s in the top drawer.”

  Then she turned her back on him and began earnestly dusting her collection of little ceramic horses.

  Bullard answered on the fourth ring. Nope, Mr. Partlow, I’m waitin’ to hear from my supplier in Shreveport. Could be today, could be tomorrow. I’ll let you know when I’m gettin’ started. That oke with you?

  “Oh sure,” Pearly replied grimly, as he found himself staring at the seahorse-shaped bloodblotch on his trouser leg. “Oh yeah, that’s just peachy.”

  “Cafe’s servin’ breakfast,” Hilda told him again, after he’d returned the receiver to its cradle. “Good for a fella to start his day with a hearty breakfast.”

  Shit, Pearly thought, but he gave her a tight smile and answered, “Thank you kindly.” The idea that he’d been hoodooed by a murderous slut was a burning blade that kept driving itself into the base of his neck. No way could he live with this; if he ever hoped to draw another breath as a man he was going to have to find that woman, get his Packard back, and exact some kind of revenge. He could track her down somehow…somehow, he would get on her trail no matter where she was hiding.

  This he vowed, both to himself and to any God who happened to be listening.

  A sudden realization struck him hard, right at the gut.

  “Mrs. Nevins,” he said, at the same time shifting his balance and moving his body so his trouser leg with the offending bloodstains was hidden. The woman paused in her horse-dusting and turned to look at him, her eyebrows raised in question. Pearly went on: “I do believe I’m going to need some clothes.” He gave her a smile and a shrug that said he was just a poor and honest traveller hit by the misfortune of having a shitty automobile. “I’m hoping there’s a store not far from here?”

  “Surely,” she answered. “You likely passed it on your way to the cafe last night. Two doors down from the barbershop. Opens at ten-thirty.” Her gaze swept over his suit. “Nothin’ like that in there, though. Mostly dungarees, workshirts and such for the men.”

  “I have nothing against clothes made for men who are the salt of the earth,” he said.

  “Well, you can get yourself fixed up there, then.” Her frown returned and for an instant Pearly thought she’d seen the stains but then his fear passed because she was looking straight into his eyes. “Word of warnin’,” she cautioned. “Watch your wallet in there and make sure Vincent Lee don’t overcharge you. You walk in wearin’ that getup, he’ll see you as a slicker ready to throw your money into his pocket.”

  “Thank you for the advice.”

  “Vincent Lee’s as bad as his brother the sheriff,” said Hilda Nev
ins as she returned again to her chore. “Two peas from a rotten pod.”

  Pearly had started ascending the stairs when it very quickly dawned upon him that going into a clothing store run by the sheriff’s brother and wearing white pants with bloodstains on one leg was not going to hit the bull’s-eye on the smart target. He could not explain to Mrs. Nevins why he was unable to walk into that store like any normal customer, yet neither could he parade around town as he was, for though the stains were small they might catch somebody’s attention…in the cafe, maybe, where he would have to go if he wanted any food until that hick Bullard got his car working again and he could blow this fleabag town.

  In three seconds he decided there was only one thing he could do to get out of this jam, and with no further hesitation he did it.

  Five.

  There was the door he was seeking. On it were the tarnished metal numerals three and seven.

  Thirty-seven, go to Heaven he thought as he stood before the door and balled up his fist.

  But he didn’t doubt that Hell wouldn’t claim Ginger LaFrance before the count got to a mere three. For the moment, though, he had first dibs on her. And boy, did he mean to get his Satan’s share of payback.

  He knocked. One…two…three. Bust your knee. He waited a few seconds and then he said with his face pressed toward the door, “Shreveport Police, Miss Wiley. Open up.” And he added, “We have a man at the bottom of the fire escape, just for your—”

  The door was unlatched and swung open in one smooth motion.

  And there she stood, all five feet six inches of her, but if he hadn’t known that Ginger LaFrance was now going by the name of Lana Rae Wiley he might never have recognized her.

  She had darkened her hair to a dull shade of russet, she wore a sensible and conservative gray dress with a dark blue trim, and her champagne- colored eyes—very hard to disguise those, of course—regarded him with cool composure from behind the horn-rimmed glasses any stern librarian might choose. Her makeup was minimal, no lipstick at all, no nail polish, the swell of her breasts confined under a bra that must’ve been made of steel bands. She lifted her chin a few degrees, she put a hand on one hip, and she said quietly, “Took you long enough to find me.”