"Flowers for Bobby Salton," the delivery man said.
"I'll take them." Eva reached out with both hands. They were probably from Dennis, she thought. But wait a minute. Why would he send flowers when he could've brought them with him? She hesitated, her eyes still on the flowers.
"You do that," the delivery man said and thrust the arrangement into her hands. "Now back up a ways and let me in."
Eva looked up. The man was aiming a gun at her. She knew at once who he was, and thought what fools she and Alma had been. They should've called the local police at once, put them in touch with the sergeant in Jamestown. Instead, they'd wasted precious time debating the likelihood of this man's appearing at their door.
"Go on," he said, and gave her a smile that made her flesh crawl. Jerking the gun to one side, he indicated she should keep moving, and she continued to back up the length of the foyer, trying to think what to do. This was Bobby's husband, the previously faceless man looming over Bobby in that sickening late-night confession. Dead-flat eyes and a ghastly grin.
"What do you want?" she demanded, knowing perfectly well what he wanted. He'd come for Bobby, come to kill her. She felt incredibly foolish for having opened the door. Yet she knew it wouldn't have mattered if she hadn't. He'd have found some other way to get inside. For a moment she was stricken by a profound sense of déjà vu. All this had happened before in another time, another place. There was a sickening familiarity to every move, even to her every emotion. She wanted to be able to do something to avert disaster, to prevent what she knew was going to happen. She also felt a desperate need to protect Penny. She would not allow any harm to come to the child. That much was perfectly clear in her mind.
They arrived at the archway to the living room and Alma looked up, unable initially to believe what she was seeing. A delivery man in a peaked cap pointing a gun at Eva, who was holding a floral arrangement and looking positively thunderstruck. A moment, and then she understood. She shouldn't have been quite so cavalier, should have taken Eva more seriously. She decided instantly to pretend she had no idea who he was. "Take what you want and get out!" she said. "Eva, give him whatever cash we have."
"That's not why he's here," Eva said, impressed by her aunt's ingenuity but at a loss as to how to deal with the situation. She was unable to take her eyes off Bobby's husband, riveted by his glinting eyes and malevolent grin. He seemed to be in the grip of a barely controlled frenzy, energy radiating from him in almost visible waves. Without actually moving, he seemed to be dancing around inside his clothes.
"You got that right," Joe said, sizing up Alma in her wheelchair.
"What's going on?" Alma asked her niece, keeping up the pretense. Bobby had been right to fear this man, she thought. He was plainly evil; he exuded menace.
"I've come for Bobby," he said, taking a quick look around, getting his bearings, all the while keeping the gun directed at Eva.
"She's not here," Eva said.
"Where is she?"
"She's away for a few days."
He laughed and poked the end of her nose with the gun barrel. Shocked by the small jolt of pain, Eva put a hand to her face.
"Don't insult my goddamned intelligence, bitch. She's out with that long drink of water she's fucking, at this fancy-ass Eye-talian restaurant a couple of miles up the pike. You think I'm stupid?" he challenged Eva, jabbing her upper lip with the gun. "Put those fucking flowers down and get in there!"
She did as he asked, setting the arrangement on one of the end tables before going to stand beside Alma's wheelchair, her hand automatically coming to rest protectively on her aunt's jutting shoulder. She'd kill him before she allowed him to hurt anyone in this house.
He moved into the middle of the room, the gun now pointed at both of them, and took another look around saying, "We're gonna sit down now and wait for Bobby to get back. Fuck with me and I'll blow you away." Noticing the empty coffee cups, he said, "Get me some of that coffee."
"I'll have to make a fresh pot," Eva said, thinking he couldn't watch both of them. She'd have time alone, time enough to call the police.
"So make it," he said, spotting the telephone extension on the table near Alma. "Go on!"
Eva started slowly toward the door, fearful of taking her eyes off the man but determined to get to the kitchen phone.
He unplugged the extension, leaving the cord connected to the wall outlet, and tossed the handset behind the sofa. Approaching the wheelchair, he prodded Alma's left arm with the gun, then reached out, lifted her hand, and with a laugh watched it flop bonelessly back into her lap. Humiliated, Alma wanted to annihilate him.
Watching from the doorway, Eva clenched her fists but kept silent.
He smiled at Alma, said, "I guess you're not going anywhere," then followed Eva to the kitchen, where the first thing he did was disconnect the wall phone. "Hustle your buns," he told her, opening the refrigerator and tossing the phone into one of the crisper drawers.
He had a loud voice. Eva hoped to God he didn't awaken Penny. She also hoped he didn't notice the door to the apartment, which was standing ajar. Determined to keep her head, she filled the carafe with cold water and poured it into the well of the coffee maker. Behind her, she heard him pull out one of the chairs and sit down at the table. She could smell him. He emitted a powerful odor of cigarette smoke and sweat that had her breathing through her mouth. It staggered her to think she could function under these circumstances. But she could. Her hands automatically went about the business of making the coffee.
"Bobby's not going to go with you," she said, turning to look at him once she had the machine going.
"Bobby's not going anywhere with anybody," he said, taking his eyes slowly up the length of her body, making her feel naked; using his eyes to turn her into one of those vile mental images she'd been viewing for days. She understood now why Bobby felt as she did. She herself felt even worse for responding as she had to the things Bobby told her. She'd been wrong, judgmental and wrong. And she should have known better. She should have remembered the truth of that adage about not knowing how you'd behave in a given situation until you found yourself in it. She, more than most people, knew that from experience. Yet she'd failed consistently to give credence to the things Bobby had told her about this man. She'd insisted on viewing Bobby from the lofty vantage point of a woman with choices, and only now could she see that sometimes, in all innocence, some women were forced to surrender their right to choose.
"First," he went on, "I'm gonna take out that creep she's been fucking. Then I'm gonna fix her ass once and for all. You give me any grief while we're waiting, I'll whack your mother. Don't make a bit of difference to me."
Eva glanced at the rack of knives on the counter. She had a fleeting vision of herself stabbing the man. She knew it would feel right. God! Astonishing how quickly one could shed all one's notions of civilized behavior.
He laughed. "Go ahead and try," he said. "I'll shoot your fucking hand off. Think I give a shit?"
He meant it; he didn't care. And she understood that unless someone or something intervened, he intended to kill all of them. Deeply afraid, she was also arbitrarily convinced that she could outsmart him somehow. There'd be an opening. All she had to do was stay alert and seize the moment, when it came.
Thirty-Two
Bobby lit a cigarette, then took a sip of her coffee while Dennis went to work on a thickly frosted slab of chocolate cake. "You sure you wouldn't like some?" Dennis asked, prepared to slide his dessert plate closer to her.
"I really couldn't," she said. "Thanks anyway."
"That's why you stay thin and I have to work out a couple of times a week to keep my weight down," he said with a smile.
"I got really thin being married to Joe," she confided, finding it progressively easier to tell him about her experiences. "I was too nervous to eat. Every time we sat down to the table I was waiting for him to go crazy, to jump up and start screaming." Unexpectedly, telling about it brought it all close to
her again, made it very fresh in her mind, as if she'd only been away for a few hours.
Dennis had stopped eating and was looking straight at her. "It got you scared telling me that, didn't it? I'm starting to be able to tell when you're scared. I can see it in your eyes."
She nodded, impressed. "How old do you feel?" she asked him.
"How old? Interesting question." He took another bite of cake, chewed and swallowed. "It depends on the situation. My folks can make me feel about eight years old." He grinned and shook his head. "But most of the time I feel my age."
"I feel real old," she said. "Sometimes I look at Pen and see she's still little, and it reminds me I'm not old at all. Same thing when I catch sight of myself in a mirror. It's a real jolt to see I'm still young, because I feel about a thousand years old. There's not much I haven't seen or heard," she said, trying obliquely to give him some hint of the things Joe had done to her. She took a hard drag on her cigarette, her eyes on his. "You probably shouldn't get your hopes up about me, Dennis. I've been … used in some bad ways. I don't know if I'm ever going to get over it. There are days when it seems as if I will, and days when everything that's happened is like this mountain I've got to climb and I'm too tired to take one more step.”
"Don't give up on us yet," he said, as if afraid she was going to dump him there and then. "The thing is, I wouldn't want you getting hurt because I can't be the way you'd like me to be."
"I like you just the way you are. I'm not planning to change you."
He seemed almost too good to be true, and she wondered if she'd always be suspicious of the things men said and did. "How can you like the way I am? I sure don't."
He laughed and patted her on the arm. "Take it easy on yourself. One of these days you'll start believing there's a lot about you to like.”
"You know what scares me more than anything else?"
"What?"
"That Joe's bound to come after me. Somehow or other he'll track us down. You can't imagine what he's like. Alma says I can get legal papers to keep him away, that I can't spend my life living scared. But I know no paper on earth could keep him away."
"Listen," he said, taking hold of her hand, "I really care about you and Pen. So do Alma and Eva. D'you think we'd just sit by and let something happen to you? You're not alone, Bobby. You've got friends here."
She took a final puff on her cigarette before putting it out. "I have this daydream lately," she said softly, wondering what harm there could be in telling him. They'd been so truthful with one another, and he'd said he liked her, that he cared about her and Pen. It had to be okay to admit she cared too, in her own way. "I picture the three of us together, you, me, and Pen, and I get a good feeling. I've had some of the best times of my life with you, Dennis. It feels like you're a real friend."
"I like your daydream," he told her, giving her hand a small squeeze. "I have one of my own that's a lot like it."
She looked at their two hands joined on the tabletop, then up at him, and said, "I never held hands with anyone but my grandpa and my aunt Helen." A blush rising into her cheeks, she lowered her eyes and laughed almost inaudibly. "I sound like such an idiot."
"You sound fine. And I like hearing you laugh. You're making progress, Bobby. It shows a bit more every time I see you."
"I sure hope so," she said. "I'm trying my best."
"I know you are, and everyone's rooting for you."
Eva and Alma sat and watched the intruder gulp down two cups of coffee between furious puffs of a cigarette. Every few minutes he got up and went to the window to look out, then he checked the time before sitting down again, the gun always in his hand. Each time he moved, the women could smell the sweaty tobacco odor he gave off. And as the minutes passed, the odor grew stronger. Alma thought that if evil had a distinct smell, this was it.
Eva wanted badly to do something, but there was nothing she could do, and her mounting frustration was like a weight bearing down on her. There was no way to warn Bobby, no way to get this man out of the house. Each time he went to the window she considered making a dash for the door, but she couldn't abandon Alma. She had no doubt this man would shoot her aunt in retaliation for any move she might make, and she wanted all of them to survive this encounter. Every time her eyes met her aunt's, Alma gave her an almost imperceptible shake of her head, signaling that Eva was to do nothing. So they sat, and waited.
And while they waited—he clock on the mantel ticking audibly, maddeningly—Eva vacillated ever more wildly, fervently wishing at one moment that she'd never allowed Bobby to set foot in the house, and deeply ashamed of herself in the next for entertaining such a thought. None of this was Bobby's fault; she wasn't to blame. But, God, if she'd never responded to their ad none of this would be happening. Eva had to concentrate hard simply to maintain some semblance of calm. Were she to be completely honest with herself, she'd have to admit that Bobby and her precocious little girl had enlivened the household, had given Alma back some measure of her former zest for life. Both their lives had been enriched by exposure to Bobby's simple goodness and affection. Yes, she had perhaps told more than Eva had wanted to hear. But Eva was entirely responsible for that; she'd practically begged Bobby to confide in her. One couldn't ask to see someone's personal photo album then complain about the quality of the snapshots. That was neither right nor fair. Bobby had bared her soul, seeking only understanding. Eva had denied her that. She'd never behaved so badly to someone who so little deserved it. She wanted desperately to apologize, to make amends. But how? And when? This madman was waiting to kill her. There had to be something she could do, something.
"How did you find her?" Alma asked him as he went again to look out the window. It was an academic question. She was fairly certain he'd killed to gain the knowledge. She was attempting to converse rationally with a murderer. Astonishing, petrifying. For a year her thoughts had been almost exclusively of death. Now, with the personification of death right there in her living room, she knew categorically that she didn't want to die.
Joe smiled again, that wide, animalistic grin that bared his teeth. "You don't want to know that," he said with a self-satisfied air, flopping back down in the armchair. "What you don't know can't hurt you, Grandma."
Alma's right hand tightened into a fist and she resisted the temptation to enter into a verbal sparring match. It would only exacerbate the situation.
He gave Eva another up-and-down once-over that caused the blood to pound in her ears, made her want to hurl the table lamp at him. This man was a visual rapist, and she feared doing anything that might tempt him to put his imaginings into action.
He stubbed out his cigarette and at once lit another, regarding Alma through the smoke. "This your house, Grandma?" he asked.
"What possible relevance can that have?" she said, keeping her tone of voice neutral, gazing back at him unflinchingly.
It took him a few seconds to catch the drift of her remark. Then, frowning, he sat forward on the edge of the chair and said, "I asked you a question, lady. Whose fucking house is it?"
"It's mine," Eva lied, hoping to deflect his attention from her aunt.
His eyes, when they turned, focused on her breasts, then slowly lifted to her face. "Yeah?" He started to smile. "Got yourself a rich husband, hunh?"
"That's right," Eva said, and looked pointedly at her watch. "He should be arriving home from the city anytime now."
Joe laughed and took another drag on his cigarette. "You wish, babe," he said. "Wherever your old man is, he's not about to show up here anytime soon. Think I'm stupid? I checked this goddamned place out for a day and a half. I didn't see no rich husband coming or going."
"He's been away on a business trip," Eva said icily.
Joe looked doubtful, his eyes going to the window, then returning to Eva. "Well," he said, "he shows up, he can join the party." He checked the time again, then got up and began pacing the width of the room, looking back and forth between the two women. "Who the fuck's that guy, a
nyway?"
"What guy?" Eva asked, wishing she could get her hands on one of the fireplace tools.
"The guy," Joe said, coming to stand over Eva, "that's fucking my wife. That guy."
"No one is fucking your wife," Alma said, articulating each word carefully. "Dennis is my physical therapist."
Joe snorted loudly and moved in front of the wheelchair. "Fat lot of good he's done you, Grandma," he said, poking her left arm with his gun.
Responding instinctively, Alma smacked his face with her right hand.
He didn't hesitate, but drew back his hand and whacked her so hard she flew to one side and nearly toppled over, wheelchair and all.
Eva seized the opportunity to grab the table lamp by its neck and swung the base at him as he turned, deflected the blow with an upraised arm, caught hold of Eva's wrist, and quickly twisted her arm up behind her back. The pain was immediate and acute, bringing tears to her eyes.
"Don't mess with me, bitch," he said in a low throbbing voice. "I'll rip your fucking arm out at the roots." He gave her a push that sent her sprawling on the floor, grabbed the lamp, and heaved it behind the sofa, where it landed with a shattering crash. To make sure she got the point, he kicked her in the thigh, saying, "Try any more cute stunts and I'll shoot you. Now get your ass on that couch and stay put. As for you, Grandma," he turned back to Alma, who was holding a trembling hand to her face, "mind your fucking manners. You don't go hitting people," he said, jamming his face right into hers so that she could see the tobacco stains on his teeth and smell his faintly garlicky breath. "It's not nice," he added, then stood up and smiled again.
"I was thinking we could take Pen to the circus next Sunday," Dennis was saying as he steered the VW along the southbound on-ramp at exit 17.
"Oh, she'd love that. As long as it's okay with Alma," Bobby said, feeling the small car rock in the backdraft as a huge truck roared past in the inside lane.
"You know it'll be okay with Alma." He smiled over at her.
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