Body Language

by James W. Hall

“Later,” he said. “Not now. There’s no time.”

  “You still love your peach fuzz, don’t you? You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”

  “I haven’t changed my mind. Just go, Jennifer. Just go and get back.”

  “Aren’t you horny for me, or anything?”

  “I got a fucking broken leg, Jennifer. My fucking wife’s going to try to put me in the electric chair. All in all, I’m not feeling real sexual at the moment. You see what I’m saying?”

  “I bet Meyer Lansky didn’t push his wife away when times got tense.”

  “Go, goddamn it. Hurry up:”

  “You sure it’s safe going into your house?”

  “Hell, no, I’m not sure it’s safe. But I don’t have any choice. My ‘Get out of jail free’ card is in there. So go. And hurry up. Longer you take, more dangerous it gets.”

  Stan hauled his broken ass out of the car and Jennifer started the engine and rolled off down the street.

  His white Ford was sitting in the driveway, thanks to one of his buddies at work dropping it off. The house was totally dark. Stan hobbled up the walk, got the door key from under a rock out front, and let himself in. He stood there a minute in the dark, listening. He watched the shadows move on the living room floor.

  With his pulse thudding, he went from room to room, but she wasn’t there. The old man’s smell was heavy in the guest room, but he wasn’t around, either. Stan checked the closets. Everything still where it was supposed to be, luggage, clothes.

  On his crutches, he hauled himself out to the Florida room and eased down onto the tiles beside his green La-Z-Boy; he reached up under the front dust ruffle, peeled the electrical tape away from the .38 Smith & Wesson, and pulled it out. For twenty years, Lawton Collins had kept that pistol cleaned and oiled and loaded, and that’s how it still was.

  Stan got his crutches back under him, then humped out to the kitchen and dragged a Tecate out of the six-pack. He took it back to the Florida room and sat down. A cold beer and a loaded gun, the only companionship any real man needed.

  He didn’t turn on any lights. He didn’t turn on the TV. He rocked back in the La-Z-Boy and listened to the night birds out in the back yard and drank his beer. He listened to an occasional car pass by on Silver Palm. The pistol lay on his lap, heavy but comfortable.

  As far as Stan knew, Alex only had one friend—Gabriella Hernandez. But Gabbie was being pursued by those Cuban exile wackos. Not exactly a safe haven for Alex, a woman on the run herself. Then there were people at work or at her karate class she might call on, but Stan doubted it. She’d never mentioned any of them, never got calls at home from them. Alexandra, the loner.

  No, she probably took the old man and drove off somewhere. Could’ve gone to Clewiston or Fort Myers or Palm Beach or down to the Keys. She could be anywhere. A motel, a rented room. Sleeping in her car. Five hours away, two hours. Or she could’ve caught a plane and gone any goddamn place in the world.

  Stan Rafferty watched the shadows on the floor flutter and sway from the breeze through the palms next door. He sat and rocked and let his mind work on the problem. But he got nowhere.

  It was his stomach that did it finally. Eleven-thirty, he had a rumble in his belly. Stan pushed himself to his feet and hobbled into the kitchen, going to make himself a toasted cheese sandwich, get another beer. That’s when he saw the plaster dust on the floor. The gouge in the ceiling where the old man had shot his gun during breakfast. All of that happening yesterday, right after Alex had been talking about a vacation. Going off somewhere. She’d even had a brochure.

  Stan switched on the kitchen light. He limped over to the shelves above the stove, seeing the shiny folded-up pamphlet. His heart waking up, starting to bump. Feeling that old heat come back into his muscles, that urge to hit somebody, get his body moving full speed and collide with another guy just as big, coming just as fast. Only the other guy never liked it as much as Stan did. That was the difference between winners and losers in foot ball, and in a lot of other things. You had to like to hit and get hit; you had to love the pain.

  A minute or two later, he was at the kitchen table, just finishing his Tecate, hunched over the pamphlet that showed the white beaches and colorful houses of Seaside, Florida, when the phone rang.

  He looked at it but didn’t get up. Five rings, six. He let it get up to twelve; then he reached over and snapped it off the wall and listened to half a minute of silence at the other end. Then finally a voice.

  “Stan?” It was Jennifer. She sounded stiff, out of breath.

  “Hey, where the hell are you? It’s almost midnight, for Christ sakes. I told you to hurry.”

  “It’s taking longer than I thought.”

  “Well, guess what? I know where Alex is. I figured it out.”

  “Good, Stan. I’m happy for you.”

  “She’s up in the fucking Panhandle. Place called Seaside. Some little resort town near Panama City. We leave right away, we could be there tomorrow noonish.”

  “Stan,” she said. “You told me not to go back to my house. But I went anyway. I disobeyed you. I’m here now. I’m at my house.”

  “Jesus Christ, Jennifer. Get out of there. They could be watching the place. Get over here, and make sure you’re not followed.”

  “No, you’ve got to come over here. Something’s happened.”

  “Something’s happened?”

  “Do me this favor, Stan. Please. Come on over here. Can you do that for me, honey?”

  A car passed by on the street and Stan pulled back the drapes and watched it cruise past.

  “What the fuck’s going on, Jennifer? You in trouble? Is there somebody there?”

  “I’m trying to be Mrs. Lansky, Stan. I’m trying. But you got to come over here. You got to come right away. You’ll come, won’t you, Stan? Won’t you?”

  “That was good, Jennifer,” Emma said. “She’s a bright girl, don’t you think, Norman?” Emma put down the other phone she’d been listening on. “Cute little figure, too. She might’ve gone a long way in this world, except she got mixed up with a bunch of losers.”

  Jennifer was duct-taped to a swivel chair.

  “Where’s Seaside?” Norman was sitting on the green couch. Sinking deep into the foam rubber.

  “Jennifer’s heartthrob said it was up in the Panhandle. You got a map, Jennifer? A map of the state of Florida?”

  “Oh, come on. I did what you asked. Now let me out of this chair, okay? I have to use the bathroom.”

  Emma walked into the kitchen, started opening drawers and cabinets, searching for a map.

  “You whining, Jennifer? Is that the sound I heard in your voice? It sounded like a whine to me. Is that what you heard, Norman?”

  “Yeah, a whine.”

  “You think your boyfriend’s going to come and save you, Jennifer? You think he heard some signal in your voice, and now he’s on his white horse riding over here?”

  Jennifer made a face and didn’t reply. Emma came back into the living room, carrying something in her hand.

  “What’s this thing, Jen? What’s it for? Some kind of medical instrument?”

  “It’s to open wine bottles,” the girl said, a wretched look on her face as she stared at the device.

  It was a plastic air pump with a long syringe on one end.

  “How’s it work, Jen? Could you explain that to me?”

  “You stick the needle through the cork, pump the bottle full of air, and the cork pops out.”

  “You ever see one of these gadgets, Norman? A wine-bottle opener.”

  “On TV,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with a regular corkscrew, Jen? Not Yuppie enough for you?”

  Emma gave the pump a couple of strokes, touched a finger to the sharp tip of the needle.

  “Let’s see if it works, Norman? You feel like a little wine?”

  “No.”

  “How about you, Jennifer? Care for a sip?”

  Emma touched the needle tip to
Jennifer’s cheek, scratched a red line in her flesh.

  “Don’t,” Jennifer said.

  “I wonder what would happen,” Emma said. “Stick this needle in a whiny girl. Maybe go in through her eardrum, pump her skull full of air, see what pops out. What do you think, Norman? You think I should pump whiny Jennifer full of air, see if she blows a cork?”

  “You’re sick,” Jennifer said. “You’re disgusting. Both of you. Perverts.”

  “Or maybe the cat. Pump up the cat, see if any mice blow out.”

  “Leave Pooh Bear alone. If you’re going to torture somebody, let it be me.”

  “Don’t worry,” Emma said. “I’m not going to hurt you, not at this particular moment. We’re just getting to know each other, that’s all. I’m testing your reflexes, see how you respond, so we can be all ready for when lover boy Stan gets here. He’ll come, won’t he? He’ll do anything to save his Jennifer, his pretty little whiny girlfriend. Won’t he, Jen? Won’t he?”

  She touched the point of the wine pump to Jennifer’s temple.

  “He’ll come,” Jennifer said. “And you’ll be sorry.”

  “Oh, I hope he comes. For your sake, I hope he does. It would make things a lot neater.”

  “He’ll come.” But she didn’t sound certain about it. And Emma, despite how good-looking the girl was, despite how whiny, felt a little pang of pity for Jennifer.

  Emma set the gadget on the coffee table and sat down on the foam couch next to Norman.

  “Hey, Jen. You know what has white blood and eighteen knees?”

  Jennifer gave her a long appraisal.

  “Well, do you?”

  Jennifer flipped her hair and said, “A space creature?”

  EIGHTEEN

  Stan was roaring north on Main Highway, pedal to the floor, two blocks from Leafy Way, when he saw a blue pool truck roll through the stop sign at the end of Jennifer’s street, turn north, and head up the highway right in front of him. Three people crammed in the front seat. He caught them in his headlights for only a second. A big guy driving, a curly-headed blonde riding shotgun, and squeezed between them was another blonde, this one with straight hair. He set his hands on the wheel, about to swerve into Leafy Way, when he saw the blonde in the middle give her hair a flip.

  “Jesus Christ, what the hell?”

  He jerked the wheel back straight and fell in behind the truck, staying a couple of car lengths back.

  He followed them north across Dixie Highway, then west out Bird Road to the Palmetto, up the ramp, onto the expressway. Fifteen minutes, twenty. Keeping them in sight through the late-night traffic, weaving drunks, racing teenagers. The pool truck was working its way north, slowest damn car on the road, north and north till the signs for I-75 started showing up. Alligator Alley, that dead, dark highway across the width of the state to Naples and Fort Myers. And the pool truck eased into the exit lane and followed the signs, leaving behind the lights of Miami, the throb of the traffic, leading Stan across the high, sweeping ramps west into the dark chaos of the Everglades.

  That’s when the thought flashed into his head, and his stomach twisted. That fucking brochure. Seaside, those pretty houses, the white beach. In his mad stumble out to his car, Stan had left the goddamn pamphlet sitting on the kitchen table, right out in the open, for anyone to see.

  He was in a cowboy bar near the university, watching a new one.

  It was closing in on midnight, Friday turning into Saturday.

  This one had curly red hair and wore cowboy boots and tight jeans and a leather vest over her red-and-white-checked shirt. She wasn’t tall enough. She was too heavy. But if she was the right age, he was going to use her anyway. He had a new idea, a master stroke of genius.

  The cowgirl knew he was watching her. She was sneaking looks back at him in her peripheral vision. That’s what they did, women. They didn’t look squarely at you. It was too bold, too overt. But they did look. They always looked. He’d never had trouble with that. He had the bone structure they liked. He had good lines.

  The cowgirl didn’t have a girlfriend to consult with. No one to warn her to be careful. She was sitting at a booth in the corner, sipping a long-neck Bud. The other eight people in the bar were paired off, leaning close or dancing. The jukebox was playing Waylon Jennings. He hated cowboy music and cowboy bars and girls who dressed up like cowgirls, like their horses might be tied up out front in the Miami night. He didn’t like liars, impostors, or pretenders of any kind. He wasn’t one himself. If someone had come up to him at that moment and asked him if he was the Bloody Rapist, he would have told them, “Yes. I don’t particularly like the name they gave me, but yes, I am.” And if they asked him why he did it, he would reply, “I do it out of self-defense. A preemptive strike. Do them before they do me. And yes, I feel something. I’m not dead inside, emotionally numb, or anything easy like that. I feel like anyone else. I feel sadness and anger, and I’m always deeply disappointed that these women put me in the position so that I have no choice but to do the things I do.”

  He always told the truth and he always dressed the way he felt and gave them his real name, no aliases, and where he lived, his job, everything they wanted to know.

  Liars were the true evil in the world. Hypocrites, posers, deceivers. People who felt one way and acted another. People with an outside that didn’t match their inside, who mouthed morals they didn’t observe. Those who wrote laws they broke in secret. College girls who dressed like Annie Oakley on a Saturday night so they could pretend to be brave and rugged and exploratory, when in fact they were more than likely cowardly and frail and boring.

  He was attracted to this one despite her extra twenty pounds. Despite her shortness. Despite her cowboy gear. He was aroused by her, though it had been no more than a few days since his last one. He had rekindled his drive in record time. Bounced back. Necessity was the mother of perversion. This one would do just fine. He would leave her out in the open, the canvas exposed to the heavens. A clear, pure message.

  He ordered another Budweiser, and when it came, he paid for it, then picked it up and carried it across the empty dance floor through the harsh blue lights of the jukebox to the corner of the room where the cowgirl sat. She could no longer pretend she wasn’t looking at him.

  She lifted her eyes from her beer, from the rings of condensation on the table, looking up at him as he halted beside her booth and set the Budweiser down in front of her, an offering.

  “I’ve been watching you,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d come over.”

  He smiled at her. She smiled back. Pitch, catch. Tit, tat.

  “I’m slow to rouse,” he said.

  “Oh, really? Well, you’re the first one of those I’ve met.”

  “I’m a dying breed.”

  She liked that. Her eyes glittered.

  “You’re not thirty yet, are you?”

  “A woman’s age is her own business.”

  “I’d guess twenty-eight.”

  “Off by a year,” she said, her eyes hardening, looking away.

  “The reason I ask,” he said, “I have a soft spot for twenty-nine-year-olds.”

  “Do you now?”

  “If I’m being rude, I’m sorry.”

  Her eyes drifted back to him. She looked him over, making her choice.

  “You’re in luck. I’m twenty-nine.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “You going to stand there all night? Or sit down and try to sweet-talk me?”

  “I’m slow to rouse,” he said. “But when I get going, I’m unstoppable.”

  She had a sip of her beer, eyeing him the whole while.

  “I’m no one-night girl,” she said. “If that’s what you thought.”

  “I’m more interested in eternity,” he said. “The long forever.”

  Her smile lost its edge, eyes taking a quick anxious detour toward the bartender.

  “Are you a student around here?”

  “A student of some things,” he
said. “And you?”

  Her eyes came back. She looked up at him, serious.

  “Anthropology. Take my doctoral exams in January. U of M.”

  He was standing so close beside her, she could have reached out and stabbed him in the belly, sliced him open, torn out his small intestines. If she’d known who he was, what he wanted from her, she surely would have done it.

  “So you’re a young Margaret Mead,” he said. “Is that why you’re here? Studying the natives?”

  Her eyes crinkled and the light rose behind her smile.

  “That’s right,” she said. “The bizarre dating rituals of the North American redneck.”

  “That’s what you think? I’m a redneck?”

  “Well, you don’t talk much like a redneck.”

  “And you speak very uncowgirl-like yourself.”

  Her smile deepened.

  “I just put this on to fit in. You know how it is.”

  “Yes, the native dress.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you feel comfortable in that getup?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, then you should take it off. Or have someone take it off for you.”

  . She looked down and smiled to herself, had another sip of her beer, and set it aside.

  “Picking up women in a bar, it’s so trite. A bright guy like you, it doesn’t seem to fit.”

  “Well, it’s my first time.”

  “Oh, is that right? Where do you usually troll for women?”

  “The grocery store.”

  “That’s original.”

  “Frozen-food aisle. Arrive at about six, six-fifteen, stand there like I’m mulling over my choice for the night.”

  “But you’re actually scouting the women.”

  “That’s right. Someone dressed from work, panty hose, a suit, picking out her frozen dinner for the evening. A single dinner, so I know she’s not married or living with anyone.”

  “And you hit on her.”

  “I don’t hit,” he said. “I say hello. I say the beef bourguignon is good. Weight Watcher’s Mexican is fair. Like the two of us have this in common, this sad, pathetic, lonely existence.”