by John Lutz
“Sure,” Nudger said. “Sounds good.”
He went with her into the kitchen and sat at the small, white-enameled wood table while she gathered ingredients for lunch. It was warmer in there; the cool air from the laboring window unit barely made it through the doorway. A strand of Marlou’s red hair flopped down and lay plastered by perspiration to her glistening forehead. She moved lightly and quickly, lost in her task. Knew what she was doing. Hardscrabble Ozark girl who liked to work in the kitchen.
They had Diet Pepsi, potato chips, sweet pickles, and bologna sandwiches with tomato slices and lettuce on them. And mayonnaise.
17
Marlou changed into black slacks and a matching blazer. Wore a white blouse with what looked like a man’s silk bow tie. Didn’t look at all like a man.
Nudger drove her in her businesswoman’s outfit to Fisk Realty on South Kingshighway and watched her push open the glass front door and sashay inside. She wobbled slightly, as if unused to wearing high heels. He imagined she usually went barefoot alone in her apartment.
From where Nudger was parked across the street, he could see her talking to a fat man in a light-colored suit. Then she sat down behind the receptionist desk, and her abbreviated workday began. Within a minute or two Nudger saw her pick up a phone, swivel her head and call to someone in the office.
The office had to be small. It was at the end of a low, onestory building and was flanked on the north side by a florist. Nudger wondered if the flowers at the funeral home had come from the florist; convenient for Marlou. Maybe the only thing convenient in her life lately.
Nudger sat and kept an eye on her for a while, though he figured she was relatively safe in the tiny, bustling office and in plain view from the street.
After about half an hour he drove around the block slowly, then checked Fisk Realty again. He did that now and then for the next couple of hours, parking from time to time on side streets, choosing different routes so he wouldn’t attract attention. Kingshighway was a major thoroughfare; it was easy to drive past Fisk Realty frequently without being noticeable. Occasionally customers would come and go, and more sharply dressed people, usually carrying briefcases or attaché cases, entered or left the office. Salespeople, probably. They had the look.
Marlou continued to sit primly behind her desk, womaning the phones. Frequently someone would be standing nearby talking to her or receiving written messages. She was working more or less steadily, but time had to be crawling for her. It was for Nudger.
After a while his stomach growled something like “Eeeeenough!” and he started the Granada and headed north to Uncle Bill’s Pancake House.
Uncle Bill’s was a South St. Louis institution that served the best pancakes in the universe. Nudger had a stack of them and some black coffee for supper. Then he sat for a while in the booth and watched traffic stream past on Kingshighway. The afternoon was finally giving way to early evening, but it was still ovenlike beyond the tinted window and slanted awning. Sun glinted off passing windshields and the rows of polished used cars at the dealer’s lot across the street. CREAM PUFF, proclaimed a sign in one of the cars’ windshields. Talking about me? Nudger wondered, remembering his stomach’s violent reaction to what Roger Bobinet had done to the canary. It was, after all, merely a dead bird.
No, it was more than that, he knew; it was what the dead bird meant. How close in reality it was to what might happen to Nudger himself, and in the same dispassionate manner. He was sure the life of an animal and the life of a human being were of equal value to Bobinet. That was how he could do to a fellow human what had been done to Vanita. That was what had chilled Nudger’s blood when he’d witnessed the crushing of the canary. Roger Bobinet’s tactics were primal and savage, but they worked as surely as heads of the enemy stacked near an ancient city gate. They instilled terror, and it stuck.
After five cups of coffee, Nudger couldn’t stand the bitter taste in his mouth, and his inactivity. It was possible he’d become one with the booth; affixed there like some sea creature to a reef.
He took a sip of water, left a generous tip for tying up the booth for so long, and paid the cashier. He pushed through the door near the register, passing the ornate ceramic display in the foyer, wondering who would buy the silver wall clock fashioned to look like a toilet seat. Beneath the toilet seat clock was an equally garish statuette of Christ laboring beneath his cross on the road to the crucifixion. The Christ statue was equipped with a switch and was actually a lamp. Ah, South St. Louis.
Nudger hovered around Fisk Realty until quarter to five, then parked a few hundred feet down the block and waited for Marlou.
Twenty minutes passed before she emerged from the realty office, looking as fresh as when she’d entered. Youth. Even the dreariness of routine couldn’t grind it down. Look at the spring in her legs. She was probably ready to dance.
“What’d you do while I was working?” she asked, sliding into the car and slamming the door hard enough to make the rearview mirror slip out of kilter.
“Oh, I hung around, had a bite to eat.” He straightened the mirror, checking the street behind them. Nothing unusual there.
“Eat,” she said. “That sure enough sounds good. Yakking on the phone works up a powerful appetite.”
Nudger had never noticed that, but then he wasn’t one to hang on the phone like Gidget.
“There’s, like, a great place near here,” Marlou said. “Uncle Bill’s.”
Ten minutes later Nudger found himself in the same booth, sipping even more coffee and watching Marlou devour a large order of buckwheat pancakes and bacon. “I pig out here regular,” she mumbled around a mouthful of hotcake. Would she reach age forty and two hundred pounds simultaneously? He couldn’t imagine her at either of those figures.
After dinner he drove her back to her apartment and waited while she changed into her mourning clothes. She still wore the black blazer, but now with a dark blouse and gray skirt. In the living room she said she hadn’t had much experience with death and dying, and she struck a kind of Sears-catalog-model pose and asked in a serious voice if she looked okay. He said sure, she looked fine. Then he went with her to the funeral home.
No one came to view Vanita tonight, and Nudger didn’t look into the still-open casket near the front of the room. Even Martini wasn’t there. Nudger sat outside the room and leafed through the morning paper, now and then glancing in at Marlou. She was seated on a small brocade ivory sofa with her legs crossed, looking young and lonely. Made his heart ache. Also his stomach. He treated himself to his last antacid tablet and dropped the crumpled silver foil into an ashtray.
He remained at the edge of the Resurrection Cemetery during the funeral the next morning. Leaning against an ancient sycamore tree while a blue jay on a low branch kept cocking its head and natterering at him. Nudger wasn’t about to move out of the shade. Let the bird bitch.
He wanted to stay close to Marlou, but the less he was actually seen with her the better. The pallbearers were furnished by the funeral home, as was the minister. It figured Vanita hadn’t been a churchgoer. The only mourner other than Marlou was the woman she’d told him had been Vanita’s boss at a lounge.
The morning was beautiful. The service was brief. About all you can ask of a funeral, other than that it isn’t yours.
Afterward Marlou spoke for a while with the minister, who laid a soft and lingering hand on her shoulder, like a televangelist curing her of all things before walking away to one of the funeral home limos. Vanita’s former boss didn’t say anything, only glanced at Marlou and then minced away with the peculiar rolling gait of overweight women on high heels, toward the Porsche convertible she’d driven in the short funeral procession.
The funeral home’s two black limos and the gleaming hearse glided slowly from the cemetery. The irrepressible sun bounced off them gaily, as if this morning marked a beginning rather than an end.
Marlou stood for a moment staring at Vanita’s casket waiting to be lowered
into a grave that was for the moment surrounded by what looked like artificial turf that had been peeled from an infield. Then she turned abruptly and walked through sun-dappled sunlight toward Nudger. The broken light made her seem to be moving jerkily, though her stride was smooth.
When she got closer he could see the redness and puffiness of her eyes. She wouldn’t look directly at him. She fished in her black purse for a pair of oversized violet-lensed sunglasses, put them on and looked like a kid playing movie star.
All she said as she strode past Nudger toward the Granada was, “Let’s get on up to Hannibal.”
Until now, she’d seemed somewhat reluctant to go into hiding. Maybe the finality of the funeral had impressed her. The realization that now Vanita was no more than memory.
They went back to Marlou’s apartment so she could pack. As soon as they were inside, she slipped off her shoes. Nudger watched her walk into the bedroom, carrying one in each hand.
Then he heard her shriek. Not a scream exactly. More a violent intake of breath, but almost as loud as a scream.
His heart slammed in his chest as he ran toward the bedroom.
Marlou was bent over. Retching. There was vomit splatter on her black shoes, still held in each hand. The shoe in her right hand was dangling by a thin strap between her fingers and looked ready to drop.
At first Nudger didn’t understand what was going on. Then he saw the dead animal on the bed. A medium-size brown dog. It was sprawled on its back with its legs askew, as if playing dead. It wasn’t playing, though. It had been disemboweled, not neatly. Near the foot of the bed was a small wreath with R.I.P. printed on its silk ribbon. Protocol had been observed; there was a card.
Nudger averted his eyes from the dog and leaned down to read the card. Black felt-tip printing said SORRY ABOUT YOUR SISTER. DEATH CAN HAPPEN ANYWHERE TO ANYONE. He wasn’t surprised to see there was no signature.
Marlou retched again. Coughed.
Nudger, floating somewhere above all this, said, “Your dog?” His voice was choked.
Marlou shook her head violently. “Ain’t got a dog. Holy God, who’d do this, Nudger?”
“Somebody I know who likes to use the animal world to make his point.”
Marlou was standing up straight now, looking better, though she was still pale. She was a country girl and had seen plenty of dead animals, but not like this. On her bed. At the head of the bed, propped on a pillow, was the Raggedy Ann doll, still grinning widely with determined cheer. Nudger wondered if Marlou slept with the doll. Its childish and innocent presence made the butchery seem even worse.
Nudger forced his thoughts into some kind of order. Found some resolve, though he still refused to fully comprehend what had happened here. He was a city boy, and this was simply too horrible.
He clutched Marlou’s shoulders and pointed her toward the bathroom. “Get cleaned up,” he said. “Then get packed.”
Her wide eyes rolled to the butchered dog. “Aw, Christ, Nudger ...”
He gave her a shove, and she went. Moving like a zombie, but she went.
He swallowed bile. Stumbled into the kitchen. Found a large black plastic trash bag in the cabinet beneath the sink.
He returned to the bedroom and turned off ninety percent of his mind so he could do what had to be done. The smell of blood and corruption was in his mouth now as well as in his nose. It was taste. With his eyes almost closed, he quickly folded the bedspread around the bloody dog. Standing as far back as possible, he lifted the surprisingly heavy bundle and lowered it into the trash bag. Stuffed the funeral wreath in on top of it. He hurried back to the kitchen and got a wire twist, then quickly fastened the top of the bag.
He carried the ghastly bundle out the back door, then down some steps to a door leading to a metal porch and fire escape. After lugging the bag to the alley, he left it behind the garage. He didn’t like the way it sloshed when he dropped it.
His own stomach was reacting now. In the back yard, up close to the building, he leaned over and vomited. Spat several times.
Then, feeling slightly steadier, he hurried back into the apartment. The shower was hissing in the bathroom, air whining in the pipes. He dabbed cold water on his face with a paper towel and rinsed out his mouth at the kitchen sink.
Marlou was wearing only a blue towel when she came out. He stood in the bedroom doorway and watched her wrestle her damp body into panties and bra, then Levi’s and a T-shirt. She had to sit on the floor to work into the Levi’s. Neither of them was embarrassed. They didn’t want to be by themselves. She didn’t once glance at the bed, but he was sure she knew the dead animal was gone or she wouldn’t have stayed in the room.
He helped her scoop clothes out of her dresser drawers and stuff them into an old red suitcase. She had enough presence of mind to choose what she wanted from the closet, handing him about a dozen dresses, slacks, and blouses, all on wire hangers.
She ran into the bathroom with a white plastic grocery bag lettered NATIONAL SUPERMARKETS in bright red, and he heard her dumping cosmetics into it.
Marlou carried the cosmetics bag, and he carried the suitcase in his right hand, the hangered clothes slung over his left shoulder. After she locked the door behind them, they tromped down the stairs and outside into the heat and sunlight. They didn’t speak.
Nudger gassed up the car at a Texaco station that featured a convenience store. When he paid for the gas he bought a fresh role of antacid tablets and thumbed two of them into his mouth. Chewed them too fast and swallowed jagged fragments. He plopped more money on the counter for the acne-cursed teenage clerk, and pulled a can of Mountain Dew out of the cooler near the door. He pried up the can’s pull-tab and washed down the antacid tablet fragments with the fizzy soda so his throat felt better and he could talk without it closing. Still, his eyes were watering.
When he got back in the car, Marlou had her head bowed and was silently crying. He drove around for a while, slumped behind the steering wheel and taking a pull now and then on the Mountain Dew can.
Marlou finally stopped crying and was quiet, staring straight ahead, but at something inside her skull.
Hell of a life, Nudger thought. just a hell of a life. He squeezed the empty can so it wouldn’t roll, then dropped it on the car’s floor. Cut the wrong direction down some one-way streets to make sure nobody was following them.
Then he aimed the Granada’s rusting hood north toward Hannibal.
18
Mark Twain this, Mark Twain that. The great writer had been dead almost a century but he was still his hometown’s principal industry. Nudger wondered what Twain would say about it all if he could somehow see it. Surely it would give the old cynic a few good yuks.
Highway 36 ran through the heart of town and became 3rd Street. Nudger turned the Granada east onto Center and drove toward the river.
The riverfront was dominated by what looked like some tall, connected grain-storage tanks, lined up in a neat row like stubby missile silos ready for a launch. Beyond them was a docked excursion riverboat: dinner, music, and dancing while paddle wheels churned the Big Muddy. As might be expected near the river, that end of town seemed to be comprised mostly of industrial property, some of which had been converted to shops and small hotels. This was a tourist area, all right: antique “shoppes,” cutsey restaurants, even a former brothel that had been fashioned into a hotel. Huck’s river.
Nudger drove west again, then slowed the car. It didn’t rattle so much at a reduced speed. He was afraid Hannibal’s roughly paved streets might have messed up the suspension, but maybe the jolting ride had only loosened a few bolts here and there. What you’d expect with an old car.
He touched the brake pedal again. “That place looks good.”
Marlou said, “Good as any.” Her voice was flat. Vanita’s funeral still weighing on her.
Nudger pulled the Granada into the lot of the Aunt Polly Motel, a U-shaped, two-story structure with an oval swimming pool in the center. The sign near the entra
nce was in the form of two youths standing perilously on a log raft. Nudger wondered what it looked like at night, lighted. The pool had one of those curved plastic slides with a trickle of water constantly running down it to keep the surface wet and slippery. A strikingly well-built woman in a red bathing suit was leaning with one hand on the chain-link fence surrounding the pool, watching a couple of preteen boys splashing around in the deep end beneath the diving board. She looked worried, as if she wished they’d do something less dangerous, maybe use the slide the way they had when they were seven.
“Can I swim here?” Marlou asked as they climbed out of the car. Surprised Nudger.
“Sure,” he said, “so long as there are other people in the pool. But don’t strike up or encourage any conversations. You oughta be safe here if you keep to yourself as much as possible.”
She squinted her green eyes up at him. “We gonna register me under some other name?”
“Yeah. Romantic, isn’t it? Got any ideas?”
She shook her head. “Whatever the name is, I won’t have to answer to it, so it don’t make any difference.”
The motel office was small and paneled in knotty pine. There was a flying fish mounted on a plaque on the wall behind the registration desk. Near matching gray vinyl chairs was a table with a Mr. Coffee just like Nudger’s on it. That one must work, though. Its glass pot was half full of coffee and filled the room with a fresh-dripped smell that reminded Nudger he hadn’t had lunch and was hungry.
The desk clerk was an elderly woman with a pleasant moon face and thinning gray hair. Bright blue eyes behind round spectacles too small for her wide features. She looked like one of those dolls with kindly, fleshlike faces made out of soft, dried apples. Might have been Aunt Polly herself.
Nudger exchanged pleasantries with the woman, who volunteered the location of nearby restaurants and shops. He pretended Marlou was his sister, paid cash for a room, and registered her as Rebecca Thatcher. Had to have his fun.