When She Was Bad

by Jonathan Nasaw

  Circling around the wagon, or whatever it was, dragging/shoving Lily by her sweatshirt, Lyssy watching from a Max’s-eye view, thinking stop, thinking don’t, thinking let her go, goddamn you, let her go.

  Then he hears Max say, “Drop your drawers and bend over.”

  No, thinks Lyssy, you can’t, I won’t let you. But he’s powerless…or is he? If he could hear Max talking to him when he was conscious and Max was in co-con, then maybe there’s a way to make Max hear him. He fills his mind the way you fill your lungs, then: no, stop, let her go! Screaming the thought, thinking the scream. Stop, let her go, leave her alone….

  It had seemed so simple at the time, Lily remembered: lead Max away from Uncle Pen and Dr. Irene, give him the slip, then outrun him—he’s a cripple, after all.

  But somehow the right moment had never presented itself. Or if it had, she had missed it—one minute she was driving the mule, the next he had her by the hood of her sweatshirt and was holding a gun to her head—slip this, smart girl—and now here she was, bent over the back of Fano’s mule and apparently out of options.

  Except of course for the old reliable: give in. They’re big, you’re little, they have all the power, you have none. And if you cry or struggle, they’ll only hurt you worse.

  Only this time it wasn’t working. She’d been tasting what it was like not to feel helpless all the time, not to feel an emptiness at your very core, not to define yourself by what had been done to you, or lose yourself in the delicious, unabashed self-pity of childhood—in short, what it was like to be Lilith—long enough to realize that that avenue of retreat had been closed to her forever. She could no longer lose herself in the old familiar sadness—nor did she really want to.

  So up your ass with a piece of glass, Max, she thought to herself as he shoved her head down toward the oily-smelling boards. And twice as far with a Hershey bar. If you want to actually do anything to me, sooner or later you’re gonna have to let go my hood or put down the gun. And then you’ll find out what it means to fuck with me and Lilith.

  Me and Lilith—she kind of liked the way that sounded. Like she wasn’t alone, like she had an ally.

  Then suddenly she sensed Max growing distracted. He muttered something under his breath…she felt the absence of the constant pressure of the gun muzzle against her temple…but he still had that death grip on her hoodie.

  Next time, she promised herself—once again he had shoved the muzzle against the side of her head—next time she’d be ready. Slowly, she began unzipping the sweatshirt, her mind running faster and clearer than ever, thinking up and dealing with contingency after contingency: if he says anything, tell him you thought he told you to get undressed. Be ready to go when he moves the gun again. Whatever you do, don’t let him get your pants down. If he does, get them all the way down, step out of them. He won’t stop you. Because he can’t fuck you if—

  But the moment had arrived: Max was talking to himself again, and the gun was no longer pressed against her temple. No more hesitating: Lily threw herself violently to her left, her arms stretched straight out behind her like a high-diver, wriggled free, and ran for her life, leaving Max holding her empty sweatshirt by the hood.

  9

  For some reason—or maybe for no reason: he didn’t seem to be thinking all that clearly—sitting up had become of immense importance to Pender. It felt as though lying there in the dirt was the same as giving up—and he already knew that giving up was the same as dying.

  So he dragged himself over to the side of the road and pulled himself to a seated position with his legs outstretched and his back against the cliff wall, feeling like a beached whale. What with all the pain, he couldn’t even get the ol’ jukebox working right, though there were so many songs about hearts breaking it would take days to get through them all. Instead he found himself listening to that old Beatles song, the one about turning off your mind, relaxing, and floating downstream.

  Tempting—oh so very tempting. Except for this friggin’ tyrannosaur crushing his chest between its jaws.

  It wasn’t until she was over the rise of the humpbacked meadow that Lily stopped feeling the tingling in her spine, dead center between her shoulder blades, and was finally able to banish the image of Fano throwing his arms into the air and pitching forward, dead.

  She even allowed herself a triumphant, Rocky Balboa double fist pump. We did it, she thought, trotting steadily downhill, sneakers pounding the dirt as she followed the beige ribbon of the mule path in the pale moonlight. Nobody got shot, nobody got raped, and surely Uncle Pen and Dr. Irene would have contacted the authorities by now—soon the cops will be here with their dogs and helicopters, and sweep up Max like yesterday’s garbage.

  And as for Lyssy, it only took a little clear, Lilith-like thinking to understand that if he couldn’t maintain control over Max, their sketchy plans to escape to the villa in Mexico were only so many pipe dreams. Like what’s-her-name says in Casablanca, we’ll always have fucking Paris. Or in their case, La Guarida.

  Slowing as she reached the first switchback, Lily listened for pursuing footsteps and heard none. Leaning back, brushing her hand against the ground for balance, she half-skidded down the slope, regained her feet, and broke into her steady, downhill trot again, until she reached the next switchback. Then it was ease up, lean back, skid down, stand up, jog on to the next switchback, and the next, achieving an easy, comfortable rhythm, stopping only when she rounded the fourth or fifth turn and spotted a bulky, shadowy figure, like a bear in a baseball cap, sitting up with its back to the cliff wall.

  “Uncle Pen?” She stooped by his side.

  He turned his head slowly. “Lily?”

  “What happened? Are you all right?”

  “Ticker. Turns out the…doctors were…right. Imagine my…surprise.”

  “Where’s Dr. Irene?”

  “Gone for help. On foot.” The corners of his mouth twitched; if it was a grin, it was a ghastly one. “She forgot…her keys.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “Where’s Maxwell?”

  “Up—” Up there, Lily started to say. Then she heard footsteps above her, and falling pebbles. “Please get up, Uncle Pen—here, I’ll help.”

  But before he could get his feet underneath him, she saw a small figure limping down the road toward them. “Where’s the gun?” she whispered frantically. “Do you still have your gun?”

  He glanced around, dopey and confused by the pain; she followed his eyes and saw the wooden-handled pistol lying in the road only a few yards away, its blue-steel barrel glinting in the moonlight. She darted over to it, snatched it up, brought it back to Pender. “The safety,” he said. “Right there…on red…dead red. Two hands for…beginners. Aim for his chest. When he gets closer. Then squeeze…the trigger and…hold on.”

  The gun felt surprisingly comfortable in Lily’s hands, considering she’d never held one before. But Lilith had, she reminded herself. With this same hand.

  Maxwell was twenty yards away, hunched under the weight of the canvas knapsack and dragging his right leg; the black object in his hand was probably his gun. Fifteen yards.

  “Any…time,” whispered Pender.

  Ten yards—and he saw them. But instead of raising his pistol, he stuffed it into his waistband, then staggered forward with both hands out in front of him like the return of the Prodigal Son. “Lily!” he said in a high, piping voice. “Lily, you’re okay! I was so scared he’d done something to you.”

  “Lyssy?”

  “Shoot him,” said Pender, slumping sideways, feeling the darkness stealing over him again. “For God’s sake, shoot him now!”

  10

  Lily tucked Pender’s gun into her waistband and ran to meet Lyssy; their hardware clanked together as they embraced. “I beat him,” piped the voice Lily thought she’d never hear again. “I was in cocon, and I stopped him from hurting you, and we had like a mind war, and—” In a tone of astonished wonder: “I won!” Then, as if he’d jus
t noticed the slumping figure propped up against the side of the cliff: “Holy cow, isn’t that the guy I tied up last night? What happened to him?”

  “I think he’s having a heart attack—we have to get him some help.”

  “Are you kidding? What we have to do is get out of here before—What? You’re looking at me all funny.”

  “I’m not going with you, Lyssy.”

  “But I thought…you and me, I thought….”

  Lily put her hand on his cheek. She felt as if she were the older and more experienced of the two, and was enjoying, on a barely conscious level, the drama and adolescent romanticism of the moment. “I’m glad we had…before,” she said. “But even if I thought we had a chance of getting away, how could I ever go to sleep at night, knowing that when I wake up, you might have turned into that…that monster?”

  “But I can handle Max now.”

  “That’s what you said before.”

  “Okay, what about the woman Lilith killed in Oregon?”

  “Me and Lilith, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it—us and a shitload of expensive lawyers.”

  “But this morning you said—”

  “This morning was a million years ago.” Lily drew back from him. “I’m sorry, Lyssy, I don’t have time to stand here arguing with you. I’m going to go back up to the ridge and get the mule. I’d really appreciate it if you’d stick around to help me get him”—she jerked her head in Pender’s direction—“loaded onto it, but if you want to book it on out of here, I’ll understand, no hard feelings.”

  “I’m here for as long as you need me,” he replied, tears welling, lower lip quivering.

  Pender opened his eyes, turned his head, saw Maxwell sitting next to him, leaning back against the cliff wall. “God damn!” said Pender. “I told her to…shoot you.”

  “Shoot me? Lily loves me—why should she shoot me?” The other man turned his head toward Pender. “How’re you feeling?”

  Pender ignored the question. “Where is she?”

  “She went to get the mule.” Then, earnestly: “Don’t worry, it’s not a real mule. It’s more like a wagon with an engine—they just call it that.”

  Pender felt the tyrannosaur tightening its jaws again. Maxwell’s face swam in and out of focus. Pender heard his pulse pounding jaggedly in his ears. When that stops, he thought, I’m dead. Then, over the ragged drumbeat, as Pender’s head slumped forward onto his chest, knocking his baseball cap onto his lap, he heard a faint, hopeful-sounding pocketapocketapocketa.

  “Here she comes,” called Maxwell, picking up the cap, examining it as though he were trying to decide how it would look on him. Then he lifted the now-unconscious Pender’s head by the chin, put the cap back on him, and spun it around backward. “Whazzzzup?” he said, grinning, his eyebrows peaking devilishly.

  Lily drove the mule past Pender, backed up until the tailgate was only a few feet from him, shifted into neutral, tugged the hand brake upright until it locked, then hopped down. “How is he?”

  “Hanging in there. He’s in a lot of pain, though.”

  “Thanks for sticking around. Here, help me get him into the back.” Lily squatted next to Pender and draped his left arm around her shoulders. Lyssy—or at any rate, the man she assumed was Lyssy—took Pender’s other arm. Lily counted, “One, two, three, lift!” and they hauled him up onto his feet, the one-legged man grunting as he rose with all his weight on his real leg, his artificial leg stretched out in front of him like a Cossack dancer.

  Together they walked Pender over to the mule, Weekend at Bernie’s style, gently toppled him forward onto the platform, then lifted his legs up after him.

  “Thanks,” said Lily.

  “For what?”

  “For staying—for helping.”

  “Well, actually, I’ve been kind of thinking it over, and I decided you were right. I can’t take the chance on Max killing who knows how many more people, just to buy myself a few more days—’ specially if you’re not coming with me.”

  “Are you going to turn yourself in?”

  “Unh-hunh,” he said, climbing into the back of the mule and snapping the plastic webbing into place. “And I’m also going to tell them that I killed Patty, so you don’t have to worry about that anymore.” He crawled up to the front of the flatbed, facing rearward, and cushioned the semiconscious Pender’s big head on his lap.

  “And I’ll tell everybody how you stayed behind to help me save Uncle Pen, instead of trying to get away,” Lily reassured him, as she climbed up to the driver’s seat.

  Yeah, that’ll help, he thought as she released the hand brake. They’ll probably give me an extra Jell-O with my last meal.

  11

  Irene figured the return hike would be a piece of cake. Didn’t she jog the rec trail from Lovers Point to Fisherman’s Wharf and back, a round-trip of four miles, three times a week? Well, okay, once or twice a week—still, she wasn’t expecting any problems.

  Then her flashlight gave out. But the moon was well up by now, the earlier, impenetrable blackness under the trees replaced by a shimmering latticework shadow. After the creek had curved southward to rejoin the road, she could see the rushing water shining silver through the slender riparian willows. She tried her cell phone again—no bars, no signal—then jogged on, the soles of her Chuck Taylors pat, pat, patting the ground, the endorphins kicking in, the dirt road stretching on before her, pale tan in the moonlight. But endorphins sometimes make treacherous allies—she didn’t feel the blisters on the pad of her right foot (at the base of the piggy that had none and the piggy that went wee-wee-wee all the way home) until it was too late.

  And now she was paying the price. Wincing at every step, hobbling, then limping as the blisters broke and the steady pat pat pat turned into pat squish pat squish. She tried varying her gait—walking on her heel, half-skipping, half-hopping to minimize the pain. She ran through a series of visualizations—what color is the pain? What shape? If it were a container, how much water would it hold?

  But nothing seemed to be working, so to distract her mind, Irene fell back on her old standby: composing haiku. Three lines of five, then seven, then five syllables. And against all odds, she even managed to come up with a keeper: Pain is sharp and red / And my shoe is full of blood / Stupid old blister!

  But to her credit, she never seriously thought about stopping, not even to bathe her blisters in the creek…which seemed to be running closer to the road than she had remembered…and come to think of it, the road, which should have been curving and climbing, was instead running flat…and straight…and narrowing…until it was only a rocky footpath running by the side of the creek.

  And looming dead ahead, Irene saw when she raised her eyes, was the graceful, towering, monumentally enormous concrete arch of the bridge the Barracuda had rattled over only a few hours earlier. Under its shadow, where the creek widened before merging into the Pacific, the damp, dauntless fog known as the marine layer had begun to drift in from the ocean, swallowing up the rocky beach where Lyman DeVries used to fly-cast.

  Irene trained her flashlight straight ahead, under the bridge, then shined it back the way she had come, and realized that the road she’d meant to follow had curved off to the left and begun the long climb to the highway several hundred yards back. She sighed and began retracing her steps.

  The mule jounced downhill, picking up speed. With the wheel clenched tightly in both hands, Lily carefully chose the line for the upcoming curve, then stood hard on the brake pedal; the mule skidded down the harrowing switchback, sending dirt and pebbles tumbling down the slope.

  “You okay back there?” she called, when they’d rounded the curve.

  “No problem.”

  “Good—’cause here comes another one!”

  And another, and another, until the mule had shot the last of the downhill rapids, and they’d rejoined the comparatively unexciting, if rough and rutted, road out to the highway. With only one forward gear, Lily k
ept the gas pedal to the sheet-metal flooring, maintaining a steady eight to ten miles per hour. “Hey, Lyss?”

  “Still here.”

  “I think you’re doing the right thing. And I promise, wherever they send you, I’ll come visit as often as they’ll let me.”

  “Don’t forget the cake with the file in it.” He twisted around to face front, leaning his arm over the railing. “You sure this thing doesn’t go any faster?”

  Lily chanced a curious backward glance. “Don’t sweat it—really. Even on foot, Dr. Irene is bound to have made it out by now—the cops’ll probably get here before we even reach the highway.”

  “Oh, right,” he said. “For a second there, I forgot I was giving myself up.”

  Using a springy willow branch as a makeshift walking stick, Irene had just finished retracing her steps, and had begun the long trudge up the hill to the gate when she heard the distant chugging of the mule. She turned and saw the headlight emerging from the trees. At first she couldn’t tell which of the three was behind the wheel. Didn’t matter—even if she could have run, there was no place to hide on the grassy hillside.

  “Dr. Irene, Dr. Irene!” Lily had spotted her and was half-standing behind the wheel, waving. Irene limped back down the hill, leaning on her stick, and met the mule at the bottom of the slope. Lily shifted into neutral, drew the creaking hand brake. “Uncle Pen had a heart attack,” she called. “And Lyssy’s back—he’s been helping me.”

  Irene threw down the willow branch and hurried around to the back of the mule. Oh, Pen, she thought. He lay supine, his windbreaker unzipped to the waist, his head pillowed on a wadded-up sweatshirt, and his face a shiny, unhealthy blue in the moonlight.

  “Hi, Dr. Cogan,” Maxwell said brightly, clambering down from the flatbed, which was scarcely wide enough for two. “I took real good care of him on the way down, honest.”