Decker swigged his beer. A large-framed photograph of Cab stood on the dressing table opposite him, smiling cheerily, and for the first time since he and Maggie had started fooling around together he felt guilty. He hadn’t felt guilt in a long time, ever since Cathy was killed, and it came as a sour, unpleasant surprise, like the sudden taste of copper pennies in his mouth.
Maggie peeled off his socks. “Least your socks don’t smell. Cab—whew!—you could use his socks to carry out the death penalty.”
“Maggie—”
“You just relax, lover man. This is my time to take care of you. Hey—what happened to your feet? They’re scratched all over.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I was helping a friend clear some briars at the back of his property and I was stupid enough not to wear any shoes.”
“They look sore,” she said, giving them a flurry of lip-sticky kisses.
“I’ll live. Teach me to wear shoes next time.”
Maggie tugged down his zipper and wrestled off his pants. Maggie took hold of him through his blue-and-white-striped shorts and gave him a hard squeeze. “And what do we have in here? Don’t tell me we’ll be having boudin blanc for starters?”
“Maggie—” he said, but she pressed her fingers to her lips.
“You hush up. I’m the one giving the orders today.”
She took the bottle of beer out of his hand and set it down on the nightstand. Then she hooked her finger into the elastic of his shorts and pulled them down at the front so that his erection was exposed.
“You need refreshment, my man, that’s what you need.”
She poured cold beer over the swollen plum of his penis so that it ran down between his legs. He jolted upward and said, “Shit, Maggie!” but she laughed that famously dirty laugh and leaned over him and sucked it. Cold one second, hot the next.
Climbing onto the bed beside him, she crossed her arms and lifted her dress over her head. Her breasts were huge, and she had a rounded belly and thighs like an Olympic shot-putter. And then there were all the gold and silver beads that she had woven into her pubic hair, so that she looked as if she were wearing a glittering thong.
She sat astride him and pushed his shoulders down onto the bed. She swung her breasts from side to side so that her prune-black nipples grazed his chest. “I’m going to make you so excited you’re going to forget what day of the week it is.”
He tried to smile at her, but somehow his heart wasn’t in it. He kept thinking of Cathy draped in that sheet, and the sudden burst of blood. He kept thinking of George Drewry, with his intestines piled up in front of him in heaps. He kept thinking of Jerry Maitland, swinging from the hospital window like a grisly parody of a bungee jumper.
“You got to switch yourself off, lover man,” Maggie told him. “You got to think about nothing but me, and this bed, and this moment. I know you’re off wandering inside your head, but I want you here and now.”
Without another word, she took hold of his penis and guided it inside her. She was very juicy, but all the same he could feel her vaginal muscles rhythmically gripping him, as firmly as fingers. She lifted herself slowly up and down on top of him, sometimes rising so high that he was right on the very edge of slipping out of her, but then lowering her hips again so that he felt as if he were penetrating her soul as well as her body.
She began to hum, as she often did when she was aroused. It was a low, hypnotic humming, like a spiritual, and Decker found that he was gradually calming down. Maggie was dreamily smiling and her breasts were dancing their own slow merengue and there was that persistent lascivious shlup, shlup, shlup as she rose up and down on top of him.
“Nobody knows … the feeling you give me.… Oh, Lord, nobody knows … how deep you go …”
Then something flickered across the room, just behind her. It was so fast that Decker couldn’t see what it was. It was like a ripple in the air, momentarily distorting the pattern on the wallpaper. He gripped Maggie’s thighs to stop her riding up and down, and lifted his head up.
“What’s the matter, lover? What’s wrong?”
“There’s nobody else in the house, is there?”
“Why do you say that? Of course not. It’s just me and you and your uncle Willy.”
“I thought I saw something, that’s all.”
“Oh, come on, you’re tired and you’re stressed. All you need is some good home cooking.”
With that, she slowly rotated her hips, around and around, and squashed her breasts in her hands as if she were weighing them and testing them for ripeness.
Decker tried to get back into the mood but he began to shrink. After a few minutes Maggie had to climb off him. She took hold of him and flopped him from side to side. “What’s this?” she demanded, playfully but obviously frustrated. “I didn’t order no eel.”
Decker didn’t say anything but rolled off the bed and walked naked through to the kitchen where he had left his shoulder holster hanging on the back of a chair. He pulled out the Colt and went straight to the back door. He jiggled the handle but it was locked.
Maggie came out of the bedroom. “Decker, what’s wrong with you, lover? There’s nobody here but us adulterers.”
He walked past her into the living room, with its white leather couch and its gilded coffee table and its enormous reproduction painting of an orange sunset: Nobody there. Nobody visible, anyhow.
“Come on,” Maggie coaxed him. “Come back to bed and let’s do some real loving.”
Decker reluctantly followed her back to the bedroom. The house was silent, but he was sure that he could hear the faintest of prickling sounds, as if somebody or something were moving from room to room, disturbing the molecules in the air. He opened the doors to the second and third bedrooms, and the cleaning closet, too, but there was nobody there, either.
Nobody visible.
They climbed back onto the rumpled bed, and this time Maggie lay on her back. She took hold of Decker’s penis and pulled it between her bosoms, stretching it as if it were saltwater taffy. Then she pressed her cleavage tightly together, and said, “Second course. Stuffed breasts of quail,” and gave that deep, dirty laugh.
Decker moved up and down on her, and he began to stiffen again. Maggie looked up at him with that sexually luminous smile on her face, and counterrotated her breasts with her hands so that she was massaging him with warm, sweaty flesh.
“You are the lover of the century, Decker. No question. The feelings you give me.”
Decker began to feel the clock spring tightening between his legs. Maggie lifted her head and every time his penis bobbed up between her breasts she stuck out her long red tongue and licked it. Decker went faster and faster and his thigh muscles quivered with effort. Maggie let out little squeals and gasps, but Decker could do nothing but pant. At last he could feel his climax rising, and with a sound that was halfway between a snort and a cough he ejaculated over her collarbone, decorating her with a glistening necklace of white pearls.
“Ohhh, Decker, you’re so bad.…”
But at that moment Decker opened his eyes, and in the dressing-table mirror he glimpsed a dark gray triangular shape, which was instantly gone. It looked like part of a coat, or a cape, but it disappeared so quickly that it was impossible for him to tell. He scrambled off the bed, picked up his revolver, and ran back into the living room.
Again, nobody there. Not only that, all the doors were locked from the inside and all the windows were closed. Maggie came after him and stood watching as he ducked down to check under the couch, and under the beds in the two spare bedrooms.
“You don’t have to worry, Decker,” she said, as he opened the closet in the second bedroom. There was something in her voice that made him turn and frown at her. She didn’t sound like Maggie at all. None of that throatiness. None of that suggestive banter.
He closed the closet doors. “I don’t have to worry about what?”
“I’ll protect you, I promise. I won’t let Saint Barbara harm you.”
He went up close to her. “What do you know about Saint Barbara?”
“I know that Saint Barbara is looking for revenge.”
“Don’t you mean Changó?”
She gave a small, evasive smile. “You can call a god by any name you like. It’s still a god.”
He stared at her intently. It was then that he realized that her irises were yellow, rather than brown—yellow like a reptile’s. Or maybe gold. His mother had once told him that all angels have golden eyes.
“Cathy?” he said.
“You have to find Saint Barbara, Decker, before Saint Barbara finds you. He knows who you are now. He knows where you live. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Was it Changó who killed the Maitlands? Was it Changó who killed George Drewry?”
“Find Saint Barbara before Saint Barbara finds you.”
Decker took hold of her arm. “Cathy, if there’s any way that you can—”
Without warning, half of Maggie’s head exploded, leaving her with only one eye and only half a face, and plastering Decker in blood and brains.
“No!” he screamed. But then her head exploded again, and she twisted around and collapsed onto the carpet. Decker was left with flesh and mucus all over his face, and fragments of bone stuck to his lips.
You bastard!” he shouted, pushing his way back into the living room. “Show yourself, you son of a bitch, where are you?”
He went back to the kitchen and the master bedroom but there was still nobody there. “I’m coming to get you!” he yelled. “I’m coming to get you and you’re going to suffer for this!”
It was then that he saw himself in the mirror, naked, with his gun in his hand, but not bloodied at all. He looked at himself for a moment, and he was just about to go back to the second bedroom when Maggie reappeared, intact, unharmed, and still wearing his rapidly drying necklace.
“Decker,” she said. She went up to him and put her arms around him and held him close. “I don’t know what’s wrong, Decker, but I think you need some help.”
“I’m fine, I’m okay. I’m stressed, that’s all.”
She shushed him by kissing her fingertips and touching his lips. “This is not the right time for us, lover man. Maybe it never was. This is the time to say that it was fun while it lasted.”
He looked into her eyes and they were darkest brown. “Yes,” he admitted. “Maybe you’re right. It was fun while it lasted.”
She sat and watched him as he dressed, and then unloaded his revolver and kissed each of the bullets. “There’s some kind of fire burning inside you, Decker Martin,” she said. “I hope you find a way to put it out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The storm broke just after eleven o’clock. Lightning walked up the James River like the Martian tripods in The War of the Worlds. Thunder bellowed all the way across the city from Mechanicsville to Bon Air, and the rain crashed down in such torrents that the storm drains all along Canal Street and Dock Street were gushing water and the Richmond Fire Department was called to pump out basements and cellars all along the waterfront.
John Mason left Appleby’s Restaurant on East Main Street just two minutes shy of midnight, and it was still raining hard. He hadn’t brought an umbrella to work that afternoon but he had looked in the lost-property closet and borrowed a ladies’ umbrella with splashy red poppies on it and three broken spokes. It didn’t do much to keep him dry. The rain was clattering down so fiercely that it bounced off the sidewalk and soaked the bottom of his pants.
John had celebrated his thirtieth birthday last week and the rest of the staff at Appleby’s had arranged for a Strip-A-Gram. In the photographs, with a half-naked redhead perched on his knee, John looked as if he had just been electrocuted, his thin mousy hair standing up on end and his teeth clenched. The red eyes hadn’t helped, either.
John liked girls, but he had always found it difficult to talk to them. Edmundo, who worked in the kitchens with him, had a gorgeous black-haired girlfriend called Rita, and the way Edmundo spoke to Rita always amazed him. Do this, Rita, do that, Rita, bring me this, bring me that, shut up your face, you za-za. And yet Rita adored Edmundo and was always nuzzling him and kissing him. John was sure that if he spoke to a girl like that he would have his face slapped, twice, once in each direction.
All the same, he was fixed to go on a date tomorrow with a girl called Stephanie, to the Theatre Virginia on Grove Avenue to see I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change. In actual fact Stephanie was a friend of his sister Paula and the only reason he had been invited was to make a foursome with Paula’s boyfriend, Carl. John hated Carl. He was a six-foot-four-inch loudmouth who sold paneling and who was forever slapping John on the back and calling him “chief.” But he liked Stephanie. She was quiet, with large glasses, and lank brown hair, and she enjoyed walking and reading and all the other solitary activities that John did.
He hailed a taxi and it pulled into the curb and drenched him in filthy rainwater up to his knees. The cabbie looked like the late Scatman Crothers, from The Shining. “Hell of a night,” he said, as John climbed into the backseat, struggling to fold his broken umbrella.
“Sure is. May Street, please. Corner of Grove.”
As the cabbie drove off, John sniffed and realized that there was a strong acidic smell in the back of the taxi. What was more, the seat of his pants was soaked. He rubbed his hand on the vinyl seat and then he sniffed his fingers. Somebody had vomited in the taxi and he had sat in it.
“Stop!” he shouted, rapping on the partition.
The cabbie said, “What?”
“I said stop! Somebody’s puked on the seat!”
“Somebody’s what?”
At last the cabbie pulled into the curbside again. John climbed out and said, “Somebody’s puked on the seat. For Pete’s sake, look at my pants.”
“Shit,” the cabbie said. “Just started my shift, too. Why don’t folks keep their previously enjoyed food to themselves?”
John had to walk the rest of the way home. The umbrella refused to open and in any case he didn’t really care if he got any wetter than he already was. Every time he breathed in he caught the sharp smell of vomit—alcohol and seafood and tomatoes.
Home was a second-story apartment he shared with his widowed mother on May Street, at the back of an ugly, squarish, brown-brick building that had been built in the 1900s as a hostel for disturbed children. John let himself in and trudged up the steep dark stairs. He had to feel his way because the lightbulb on the landing had gone again. The building’s super was a shriveled monkey of a man and probably the most argumentative person that John had ever known. He would refuse to change lightbulbs because the sun was going to come up in only a few hours, and they wouldn’t be needed anymore.
John opened the door to his mother’s apartment. The living room was gloomy and smelled of dead-flower water. The kitchen door was a few inches ajar and as usual John’s mother had left the portable television flickering with the sound turned off. He took off his soaking-wet shoes and left them on the welcome mat behind the door. Then he tippytoed across the carpet to the kitchen. His mother had left a plate of chocolate-chip cookies on the table and a note saying Please take my yellow dress to the cleaners tomorrow.
On the TV screen, Vincent Price was desperately trying to escape the fire in House of Wax. John switched it off and went along the corridor toward the bathroom.
“Johnsy?” his mother called. “You’re home late.”
“I couldn’t get a cab.”
“You’re not wet, are you?”
He opened the door to his mother’s bedroom. She was sitting up in bed with a white scarf on her head so that she looked as if she had been having chemotherapy. She was a very thin woman, with an almond-pale face and smudges of grief under her eyes. She always gave the impression that if anybody touched her they would cause her actual physical pain.
“You’re drenched,” she said. “Get out of those clothes and run yourself a nice
hot bath.”
Lightning flashed behind the brown floral drapes, and then almost immediately the house was shaken by deafening thunder, as if somebody had tipped a mahogany wardrobe down the stairs.
“Some storm, huh?” John said. “The whole of Dock Street was flooded.”
“What did you have to eat tonight? You ate, didn’t you?”
“Sure, I had fried chicken.”
“You and your fried chicken. Your father loved his fried chicken, too.”
“Right—I’d better take a bath.” His pants were sticking to him and he didn’t want to get into one of those long reminiscences about his father. He had only been seven when his father was killed, and he could barely remember him. He knew what he looked like, of course: There were photographs everywhere. But what he had felt like, and smelled like, and what his voice had actually sounded like, he couldn’t bring to mind. His father didn’t even visit him in dreams.
He always wore his father’s Marine Corps ring, but it had never imparted any feeling of what kind of man his father had been.
“Can I bring you anything?” he asked his mother.
She smiled and shook her head. “I’ve taken my tablets already. You get yourself to bed.”
John went to the bathroom and disgustedly pulled down his pants. The rain had washed off most of the half-digested food, but there were still flecks of crab and fragments of tomato on them and he put them in the basin and sluiced them in tepid water. At the same time he turned on the old-fashioned brass faucets to run a bath. He would have preferred a shower, but the washer had worn out and the super hadn’t gotten around to fixing it. “You think washers grow on trees?”
While the bath was running, he went into his bedroom. It was a long, narrow room, with a single sawed-oak bed with a dark brown candlewick throw and his pajamas neatly folded on the pillow. All along the wall beside the bed were photographs of classic automobiles—Hudson Hornets and Chevrolet Bel Airs and Packard Hawks—as well as pennants for Richmond’s soccer team, the Kickers. John had once stuck up a picture of Pamela Anderson in a wet T-shirt, but his mother had looked at it with such a disappointed expression that he had taken it down.
The Devil in Gray Page 17