He was not big enough to contain the rush it gave him, but this was just house keeping. Sugar was only the bait in the trap. He didn’t say how much he ached to undo the beauty that killed his friend. He didn’t have to.
Frankie had tuned her up pretty good, so Gray had to push the envelope to get his point across. It was not the first time he’d enjoyed sloppy seconds off Jake, but the first time he’d closed the deal with a carving knife and a curling iron.
The driver let him spare no details here, until Gray squirmed. “How was she? Did she get wet when you hurt her?”
The whore had tried to lure him in, begging him to take her even as he made cube steak of her face, tried to turn it into something she could control. But he couldn’t be bought off. Fucking would be a sorry substitute for what he had planned.
When he was satisfied, perverse instinct told him to just walk away, leaving the mess for the world to stumble on, and wonder at what monsters walked among them.
But he wasn’t stupid, like Frankie. He knew that you could take your pleasures any way you liked, so long as you took care to cover how it looked.
He had learned this from Jake, who was truly all things to all men.
As wild as he was with Sugar, he was careful not to break any bones. He left a cigarette burning in her outstretched hand, over a puddle of spilled kerosene from a hurricane lantern, and kicked over a couple of candles for coverage. The mellow yellow glow of the spreading flames was just bright enough to compete with the blue bug-zapper light of the TV when Gray got back in his car.
At a rest stop, he changed the license plates on the Escort and cut the old plate into confetti with a pair of tin snips. Up to a point, getting into the mind of one’s prey was a sound tactic, but Gray hated playing with his food. To understand Frankie, you only had to know the ways of a cockroach. Every impulse was equally important to his tiny insect brain. To make him stay put, you just had to turn on the lights.
He texted Frankie on Sugar’s cell phone. In the disgusting babytalk of her previously sent messages—So sorry baby—U know 1 luv U!1!—he warned Frankie that the law was out for him, that they were looking for him everywhere, just keeping it off the news to spare Jake’s good name. CTN—Mom spyz—U bustd my teef u asshol!!! Sit tite Baby—Where R U?
The lovelorn dipshit tried to call sixteen times, but finally broke down and told her voice mail where he was hiding.
Sugarz com 1n6 4 U
It was not just dedication to his fallen friend that made Gray pop eight methedrine with cold coffee and get back on the southbound 15, without an hour’s sleep. Gray always believed that you put a bad day to bed before you went down yourself, and very high on Gray’s shit list was the republic of Mexico, and everything in it.
(An aside: it would be far easier to ask Gray to make a list of his friends, which he could fit on his thumbnail for easy consultation. The other list, of everything he hated, was life-size, and he lived in it. This was not just bearable, but almost sweet, whenever he could cross an item or two off.)
Frankie was holed up in a motor lodge in Calexico, wrapped up in rancid sheets with a saggy Mexican whore who didn’t wake up when Gray dragged her paramour out of the room by his peroxide locks and dumped him in the trunk of his own car, just before dawn.
So much for true love. Frankie seemed to have overcome his heartbreak just in time to soak up the new one Gray had planned for him, out in the desert.
This last part went on until well after lunchtime, but the driver had only one question.
So much for Frankie.
Only when he ran out of words, and the bile they floated on, did Gray take note of his surroundings. The engine flat-out roared like on a dead straightaway, but they were winding up the switchback road that went up the canyon wall. A terraced wedding cake of a mountain, with ledges just large enough for folks in fancy Spanish-tiled houses to look down on their lesser neighbors.
As they neared their destination, a bolt of pleasure hit him harder than the rotgut in his belly, and sparked warm but shivery jolts of anticipation throughout his exhausted body.
To think he would have left all this behind. Life was sweet, and about to get a lot sweeter.
The shit list he lived in was about to get a lot shorter.
Part III
Letting It All Hang Out
Chapter Ten
It was Evangeline’s turn up at bat; and no matter what, she was not going to break down, nor was she going to take a drink. Not now, when she was almost free.
And certainly not here, in front of these people.
Just let me get through this, she prayed, but not to God. No God who couldn’t have spared a lightning bolt for Jake Connaway twenty years ago was worth praying to.
All eyes on her, burning as cold as the fire was hot. Fuck. She should have followed Jasper and Christian out for a smoke.
“So let me get this straight,” she said. “You want me to spill the beans on Jake.” Esther nodded like her neck needed oiling. She wasn’t even halfway out of Jake’s shadow, even now. “Okay. So what do you want to know?”
“I’m not sure I want to hear anything you have to say.” Emmy just sat, pointed at her, not seeing.
A warming glow of livid bitterness, like a belt of good brandy, kindled in Evangeline’s gut. Fine. Maybe this wouldn’t feel like work, after all.
“I met him when he was still on his first marriage,” she said. “He was in a band then, spending all her money on guitars and blow. Until he found Jesus”—she pointed a nod at Emmy—“and realized he could make more money off of him.”
Bible Girl started to honk out loud, but Evangeline wasn’t having it.
“Jake’s been doing me for the last fifteen years, all right? Paying me to do it for the last ten, when he wasn’t pimping me out to others. Man’s the sickest motherfucker I’ve ever met.”
“Omigod…” Esther’s voice was like a tire deflating.
“I went from a nice little high school junior to a junkie, to a hooker, to jail, to rehab…”
“I told you!” Mathias piped in.
“…to a nice little job as a secretary.” Faux wistful, as she said it. “To a junkie. To a hooker. All thanks to Saint Jake. And believe me, you don’t have to take my word for it.”
Emmy tried once again to interrupt, but this time no sound would come out.
“There are so many witnesses to his crimes—so many people whose lives he screwed up—that my little story’s like a drop in the bucket. But you know why nobody talks? Because either a) they believed in him”—she winked at Emmy, because she just couldn’t help it—“and/or b) he had something on their asses. A little incriminating evidence. Or maybe a lot.”
Everyone’s mouths were hanging open, though Esther quickly poured some more scotch into hers. Evangeline understood completely, but that did nothing to subvert her mounting rage. She focused on the ladies, staring hard from one to the other.
“You look all shocked. But I think you know more than you’re letting on. Both of you. And that’s what pisses me off.”
Eddie looked at Esther. Mathias looked at Emmy. Both women looked stricken, and neither could conceal it from their men. Or each other. Or themselves.
“Emmy?” Mathias chafed her arm, but he might as well have been combing spaghetti. Emmy looked, for all the world, as if she’d gone into an ecstasy of prayer; but Evangeline knew what was playing in the Little Chapel of Emmy’s Head…
…and Emmy couldn’t help it, and more than she could stop her face from turning red as the burning embers. Her shame, and the sense-memory of it, was too close to the surface.
She closed her eyes, and Jake was there: standing massively upright as she knelt before him in the grass by the rickety jungle gym right outside this very front door, less than two weeks ago today…
…and his eyes never left hers for a moment, not even as his hands went down to undo his belt buckle: a jagged metal lightning bolt with the letters “JC” emblazoned across it�
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…and when his pants slid down to his knees, then ankles, she had tried to close her eyes, but he wouldn’t have it…
…and then she knew, for the first time, what Eve’s apple of temptation truly looked like, in the flesh…
…and he said to her, “This is what a man looks like. And this is what a true man wants. If you want to be with him, you will want that, too. You will come to need it. To recognize it as most holy communion. To recognize it as prayer…”
…and when she started to cry, he reached down to stroke her hair, ever so subtly pulling her closer, so that she and the apple at the end of his staff were almost mouth to mouth…
…and that was when he said, “You know I love you…”
…and she did not bite, but kissed instead…
Less than fifteen seconds had elapsed in real time, since Evangeline dropped the bomb. But as Emmy snapped back, all eyes were upon her.
Including Mathias, who looked stunned to the core.
“I knew it…” muttered Esther.
“I—I…!” Emmy yelped in protestation, then froze.
“Oh, you are so in love with him.” Evangeline rolled her eyes, but it was less judgmental than knowing.
“He told me, over and over,” Esther murmured. “‘I’m not nailing that little girl. It’s all in your head…’”
Emmy turned beseechingly to Mathias. “I never went to bed with him! I swear, I never did…”
The whore laughed. “If I know Jake, he had you wigglin’ like a fish…”
“I’M STILL A VIRGIN…!”
PA-POW! A knot in the blazing fireplace exploded. Everyone jumped, but none more than Emmy, who snapped in that moment and broke down, sobbing. She could feel Mathias shrink away from her on the couch, as if something unclean was seeping out of her.
And it was. Dear God, it was. She could feel her sweat burning and cold all at once, drenching her as her walls tumbled down. She had been so strong all day, had come here ready to be so strong…
…but all it took was one well-placed kick to pop her like a ketchup packet, letting everything out for all to see. So weak. So vain. So exposed and ashamed.
Not just in front of them.
But in the eyes of the Lord.
“So,” Evangeline said, “what else do you want to know?”
Chapter Eleven
The demons hung above for the moment, eating it up, enjoying all the people from an angle askew. Watching the shadows dance, as the house lights faded once again, then reared back up. Wind roaring.
And the fireplace roared as well, as Eddie knelt before it, pulled back the screen, and thought this can’t be right.
The typically slow-burning dogwood and yellow birch was going up like sugar pine, thick quartered logs that should burn for an hour reduced to cinders and ash in fifteen minutes.
It didn’t make sense. The wood was dry, but not that dry. Not like somebody poured gasoline on it. He piled the last couple pieces on, and watched them ignite the second they hit.
“I have to chop more wood,” he said.
Jasper’s cell phone rang. He passed the ebbing joint back to Christian, reached into his jacket. “Excuse me for a second.”
Christian nodded. “Time to check in on the ladies.”
“Exactly.” Then into the cell phone, without losing a beat, “Lisa. Hey, baby. How you doin’? Yeah, yeah. We’re almost done…”
Christian moved to the glass back door, which opened just before he got to it. Eddie nodded at him, slipped past, headed off behind the front of the house. Christian entered, pulled the door shut behind him.
The cold was bracing as Eddie rounded the corner of the house in his shirtsleeves. It was a nice little shock to his system after the heat of the fire. And the sound of the wind was a merciful balm from the emotional war zone inside.
In the wide walkway between the house and the property wall, the moonlight barely penetrated, leaving darkness so thick you could cut it with an ax.
Fortunately, one was waiting for him.
Right next to the woodpile, and the chopping block.
Eddie flipped the switch to the overhead light, yanking back the shadows. It was a hanging lamp, and it swung on its chain in the wind, casting its light beam back and forth in long, unnerving semicircles.
In the background, he could hear the voice of Jasper, smooth and low. “You’re hilarious. No…no. I can’t wait to get my hands on you, too…”
Eddie put a log on the block, picked up the ax. The women were still arguing inside, but he couldn’t quite hear what they said.
“Yeah, yeah. Exactly.” Jasper’s voice, louder. “You get the fucking joke, honey. That’s all I ask.”
Eddie looked over, saw Jasper round the corner, having wandered back to see what was up. Jasper waved with his cigarette-and-scotch hand.
Eddie brought down the ax.
Chapter Twelve
It didn’t take long for Esther to bring things back around to money. Now Evangeline was contemplative, looking back over the years.
“Well,” she said, “there was a boat I know he totaled. Every couple of weeks, he went to the casinos, gambled, had strings of call girls. And I think he had a Hummer for a couple of weeks that ended up at the bottom of a ditch.”
“Oh—I did see that Hummer.” Esther nodded to herself, as much from alcohol as memory. “He told me it was a congregant’s. Never mind that not once did people congregate here, but…”
“He told me he would show me the inner sanctum…” Emmy said quietly.
Christian laughed out loud. He couldn’t help it. Evangeline bit back her own laugh, and shushed him loudly.
Emmy, for her part, was a little too stunned to do anything but flinch as she continued. “Heaven’s Glory. A magnificent temple he was building…when I was ready to finally be saved…”
“Oh, sweetheart. No, no, no,” Esther admonished, slightly slurring the words. “No magnificent temple. And no life everlasting. At least not for him.”
“Amen to that,” said Evangeline.
“That’s why, if I can just get the two of you to help me…” Esther continued, gaze swimming between the two of them with drunk, conspiratorial fervor.
“Then what?” Evangeline, straight to the point. “What else do you want from me?”
“An affidavit—”
Evangeline’s turn to laugh. “You want me to go to court?”
“And testify against him. Yes.”
“And I would do that why?”
Esther looked at her like she was supposed to be smarter than that. “Revenge?”
“Fuck revenge,” Evangeline sneered back. “He’s already dead. You honestly think he gives a shit?”
“Okay, then. Justice.”
“Yeah, like that’s gonna happen…”
“It could, though!” Esther took a staggering step forward. “It could, if people would just tell the truth!”
“Let me tell you something about telling the truth,” Evangeline said. “Most people tend to frown upon it. That’s why it hardly ever gets told.”
“But—”
“Let me put it this way: I don’t have an album’s worth of my original songs up on MySpace, okay? This is not a career move for me. The only thing that happens is, I’m Whore Of The Week on national TV, and my life gets more fucked up than it already is.”
Esther jittered in her heels. “So you’re saying no?”
“I’m saying fuck no.”
“What if I gave you money…?”
“Yeah, that’d look great in court!” Evangeline barked out a laugh. “Have you even thought this shit through? ‘Widow Pays Prostitute to Testify Against Dead Husband.’ I mean, Jesus Christ almighty!”
Esther stared at her empty glass.
“And what about her?” Pointing at Emmy. “You gonna drag her ass up on Judge Judy, or Dr. Phil? ‘I Was a Philandering Slut For Jesus’? You honestly think that’s a plan?”
Emmy reacted as if physicall
y slapped. “I think it’s time to go…”
Chapter Thirteen
Jasper wrapped up his chat with to night’s little hookup—the lovely Lisa—just as Mrs. Connaway’s faithful servant finished scooping up the firewood.
This Eddie guy was an interesting piece of work. Very smart, in that he said very little. One poker-faced, inscrutable motherfucker.
The only gaping hole in the charade was the fact that he was here at all. Which was, clearly, because he loved that woman. And she loved him, too, though maybe not in quite the same way.
In other words, he and Eddie had an awful lot in common.
So Jasper felt kind of bad about his natural flirtation, the fact that Eddie had instantly pegged him as a scumbag. It was not a label he carried lightly—like Eddie, he cared far more than he was liable to admit—so he hung by the light switch, flashed a grin, and said, “Hey, man. You need a hand with that?”
Eddie shook his head, said nothing, stepped forward. Jasper nodded, waited for Eddie to pass him before flicking off the overhead light and following.
Then they were walking semiuncomfortably together, and that shit had to end. So Jasper muscled it up and said, “Hey, Eddie. Listen. Just so you know, I’m not here to fuck up your life. Okay?”
Eddie kept walking, said nothing.
“I’m just here for my friend, cuz she was scared to come alone. And as soon as they’re done, you’ll never see my ass again. Or any of us. We don’t want anything from her.”
Eddie nodded, said nothing, kept going. So Jasper stepped ahead of him quickly, up to the back door, put his hand on the handle, turned, and looked Eddie straight in the eye.
“All I’m sayin’ is, guy to guy: you’re a thousand times better man than Jake. Okay?”
Eddie said nothing; but as they looked into each other, their eyes said it all.
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