"We'll need coats," said Dina.
"What about them?" Suzanne indicated their former host and hostess.
"Michelle goes," said Lorelle. "Price stays. He's mine, now. And I only need him for a couple of minutes."
"God, I let him hit me, I wanted him so bad…" Suzanne's voice trailed away, out of ammo.
Dina took a position at a sisterly distance. "I wanted him the same way. Look at us now."
"Yeah. Okay." She could somehow comprehend that everybody was entitled to a shot at Price.
"That Humvee has a hard shell and weighs a couple of tons," said Lorelle. "If you hit a snag in the road, just sit tight." It was the only ride that could have brought them during the height of the storm; just the walk to the driveway would be like groping through oil.
The air bludgeoned in, stinking of the sea. Michelle's perceptions were that of a drunk stuck in a revolving door; no fight there. Lorelle and Dina got her installed and seat-belted.
Lorelle pulled Dina close enough to get her lips next to her ear inside the fluttering fur of the parka she had given her. "You did good. Thanks.''
"Yeah. Good luck," Dina said, not really meaning it.
Nobody hugged anybody.
***
It took Dina a moment to wheel the big vehicle around in the crowded turnout of the driveway. A windblown tree had water-failed out of the sky to smash the roof of Bryan's Riviera into a vee. The Humvee's Industrial Revolution roar was barely audible above the storm. The taillights dwindled into the spume at a steady five miles per as the armored car commenced its slow trek back toward civilization. Lorelle was forced to fall back to the garage to watch; the lashing of the hurricane was just too brutal.
Lorelle tried to massage warmth back into her hands. "It's just you and me now, big guy,'' she said as she secured the garage door. It was almost midnight.
"When I was in the eighth grade, I had the most gorgeous complexion. Fair; feminine, almost. Then, wham, hormones, zit apocalypse, and I might as well have used Spackle to seal the pits. I used to have this friend named Tito. He boiled everything in the world down to two opinions: 'That sucks,' he'd say, or 'That's pretty cool.' "
Price rambled like a boring inebriate at a party, eyes closed or drawn to dark corners of the room, seeing only the monsters that cats can see. His whole attitude had been slapped out of focus; he acted vaguely strung-out, jittery, nervous, keeping up patter against the noisy violence of the storm outside.
"You don't want to mess with me, bitch meat; you don't know half the shit I've done." It was like he was doing different character voices.
His threat bore no danger. Price was naked on the sofa, turned toward the room on his left side like a beached dolphin, in roughly the same state as Lorelle had been after receiving a full-charge blast from the Viper stun baton. His bare feet felt as though they were freezing in the next county. He could not feel his arms. Nor his wrists, which were zip-stripped together with plastic so durable it would take a tow truck to snap them apart. The strips had been among the scattered tools in the garage. They would have been useful on the late Bryan.
"Tell me how you feel," Lorelle said, seated a safe distance away, drinking half a cup of instant soup. She let Blitz finish off the rest.
"I feel like ripping off your head and shoving it up your ass until you can see out your own neck while I stump-fuck you in the eyehole."
The snake in Lorelle's chest (Art's snake), sensed the presence of another of its own kind, assumed the S-curve for striking, and began to buzz.
"Michelle warned me I should stop playing with you," said Price. "Said I needed to get the people at the party out. When did that hoity-toity gash scrape together a conscience? Said get the numb fucks outta the cabana. Cabana blew away already, stupid. And now she doesn't want to play, because of you. Like she felt sorry for you or something, and the goddamn roof caves in, and she fucking betrays me right at the climax of our exciting episode. So, Art- Lorelle, I mean… did you at least get a piece of that action?"
She held firm and level. "No."
"You must be really disappointed. You know you were having a humid little fuck fantasy the minute you saw her. And that would've been like, I don't know. Getting a fuck-telegram from your idiot husband. What a fucking tool that guy is. But you did make do with leftovers from my pussy drawer, didn't you? Low class."
Lorelle rather enjoyed Price in this mood. At least it was honest. "That was some shit with that fucking dog. You think I don't know German? You're an imbecile, too." He craned his neck to shout at Blitz, his voice raw: "Blitz! Fan, und reidd' ihm den Ardch aufi!" Price had just ordered Lorelle's own dog to rip her ass open. Lorelle overrode: "Neln! Tu dad nicht! Vergiss es!"
The dog got up, then sat back down, as though manipulated by an inept puppeteer. He snorted in disgust, opting to go with what he smelled rather than the nonsense he heard.
"I had this dog," said Price, still cresting between worlds. "I wouldn't talk to this bitch at school, Marlena, so she poisoned him. I found his body right in front of her house. I thought, I'll do the lugs on her car do the wheeld drop off. Then I got pissed and slashed the tires. Pretty soon I was so mad that I just torched the fucker right there; lit a rag in the gas tank and kaboom. I did juvie time and I did grownup time, so don't think you can do anything to me.''
The lanterns flickered and the storm outside stopped howling and started screaming. The house seemed to undulate against its rage. Lorelle sat across from her captive, unsure of how to proceed. Part of her just wanted to observe while Price thrashed about, raving. ft was the same impulse that makes people stare at dangerous animals in captivity. Already maturing in Lorelle's head was the idea that no simple punishment would be suitable for Price, and who was she to be meting out justice, anyway? This warred with the demon that wanted to close Price's face by filling it with the shotgun barrel. The conflicting stew of emotions held at a volatile rolling boil.
Price had learned a lot about being accountable since the fiery indiscretions of his youth. He had not beaten anybody up, except Suzanne, who gave her permission. He had not attacked Lorelle or her house; merely walked in an open door. He had not shot anyone. He had probably directed Suzanne and Michelle to strip Lorelle just to see her naked. I didn't force anybody to ingest anything, he had said. I am not responsible for what adults decide to do on their own. Except for his penchant for aiming people at one another and letting their worst self-interests wreak havoc, Price was unimpeachable. That was his talent. It would be evil unless it was compared to Lorelle's own recent hit list of conditional crimes, situational sins.
Damn it all, Lorelle was supposed to have the upper hand here, but Price had succeeded in making her feel guilty.
"People like you need people like me," said Price, almost whiny now.
"Really? The marks of the world need con men?"
"Ouch, that's harsh. C'mon, untie me and let's make up."
"I'm not available for dating, right now."
"So where does that leave us? C'mon, you're pretty smart… for a girl."
She shook her head, not caring whether Price could see the gesture in the dark. Thus far she had kept the demon safely back, knowing Price was trying to piss her off, make her do something rash.
"Your wiring got crossed in the factory," said Lorelle. "You think anything's acceptable as long as you spin it to make your victims thankful that they didn't get burned more."
"My victims? Oh, ho, ho, ho-excuse me, Supergirl, I'm not the gun nut running around holding people hostage."
"You ruined my sofa. I might as well trash what's left, since you're lying on it."
Lorelle saw unexpected fear arc across the cockiness shining from Price's eyes, something that surprised Price as well. "You're not going to blow me away, Lorelle. You don't function like that."
"Maybe I've learned some new tricks from you."
"Doesn't turn you into a maniac. You just defended your turf. Look at me-I'm not a threat.''
Lo
ok at me was what Price said whenever he was engaging his odd process of mesmerization. Using her name in that fake-intimate way. She let the tip of the stun gun drift within sniffing distance of Price's nose. "Yeah, you're right. Hope this doesn't go off accidentally."
Price's grin was patently bogus, the fine print of his doubletalk as apparent as his exposed butt. "Just trying to see what you're made of, man.''
"Remember when you were pontificating about how you were the real world?'' said Lorelle, holding firm. She needed this sociopath to acknowledge her point of view. "You were right. You're the world- you're everything that's wrong with it, one of those parasites that always slips through the cracks and gestates inside the decay. You thrive when people are at their worst. You eat the lives you destroy and only get stronger."
"Wooo, I'd applaud if you'd untie my hands."
"Haven't you wondered, yet, about why you feel so disoriented-or do you normally cultivate suckers by babbling about your fucking dog and your madcap high-school days. What, is that supposed to make you appear more human?"
"What the fuck are you talking about? Baby, you're high."
"No, you are."
It was especially pleasing to watch the way the blood drained from Price's superior expression. His next utterance was low, deadly, too controlled-the old, recognizable version of Classic Price. "What?"
"When Bryan showed up here he had a snap case of your special little capsules," said Lorelle. "Luther had more in a prescription bot-tie I stashed in the bathroom. We took one apart. It was almost all black crystals-the shit you'd been feeding to your guests. And while you were dishragged, just now, I fed them to you, one at a time. All of them. Taste your own tongue and tell me I'm lying."
Guardedly, Price ventured, "You're fucking with me, right?"
"Nope. But in a minute, you're going to be fucking with you. What did Michelle call it-Mr. Hyde? What's the Hyde version of you, Price? What happens when your normal personality gets squashed underneath the things you don't want anyone to see? Did you product-test your party mix on yourself, or did you just sit back and observe?"
"That's not even remotely humorous, Lorelle."
It was fun to watch raw fear swell inside Price, for a change. "It's not meant to be funny, Price, my new best pal. I'm done amusing you. All I want is my due. I want you to get the fuck out of my house."
"You're kidding. Out in that? Stop it."
"You might say that I want to see what you'll do. but you know what? I don't even care. My responsibility for you ends where my door begins. And you know what else?"
Price shut his trap and watched her as she touched the stun baton to his buttock. He arched galvanically, biting his tongue.
"I can do this, is what else."
She dumped Price off the couch at a dead drag, by the wrists. It was not that far to haul him toward the deck door on the seaward side of the house.
"You ought to regain enough juice in your legs to run around like a naked idiot in the storm, but as I said, by that stage I don't care."
Blitz brought up the rear as Lorelle released Price to flop side-wise near the remains of the dining-room table, three feet from where Luther had died. She began to crank up the shutter manually, and frigid air careened in through broken door glass.
Price formulated inchoate objection; he could barely speak. The man had iron in him, for certain. "Don't do…" he croaked. "Want me to beg, I will…" He was crying. As Dina had cried, as Suzanne had, as Lorelle herself had when Art had abandoned her. Lorelle had swallowed too much instruction, lately, on the uselessness of weeping.
The ocean was gobbling the beach in a feeding frenzy, within sight of the partially collapsed deck now, far too damned close for any design specs or zoning slack. The breakers seemed ninety feet high, and Lorelle imagined the intrepid Solomon atop the biggest one, surfing his heart out. Duuuude.
"Please," Price mumbled, not even sounding like Price anymore. "Why…?''
"Because I can. I learned this very valuable lesson from someone who lectured me about garbage." Lorelle had to yell against the storm, which stung and bit at her exposed face like a swarm of wasps; god knew how it felt on Price's flesh. "Before you throw something away, you always check one last time to see if the item has any residual worth. See you around, Price.''
She hoisted him upright the way she might unfold a lawn chair, his face pressed to the jamb by her hand on the back of his neck.
His lips formed a bubble around the word don't. Wind shear popped it.
"Party time," Lorelle said. She let gravity take him. For personal reasons, she put a foot into his ass to help propel him off the deck. When she looked up, she could see a monster wave swelling toward the house, luminescent in the swirling chaos of night, like some radioactive mountain on the move, tipping over. Avalanche. She had to hurry to crank the door shutters back down, and skinned a knuckle in her haste. The shield was six inches from the floor when incoming storm surge plastered what was left of the beach like Godzilla stomping on a pagoda. The whole house shook when it hit. Seawater gushed through the breach and bowled her over. Blitz whimpered and went low, ears flat, as the house buckled and rocked.
It held, at least until the next wave.
"Come on, kiddo," Lorelle said to the dog. They pulled back to the hallway-walls within walls, per Luther's counsel. Walls which might not stop certain bullets, but which Art Latimer had designed specifically according to stress distribution criteria. In the guest bathroom, in the medicine cabinet, were Bryan 's fancy little pillbox and Luther's prescription bottle. Both were still fully stocked.
MONDAY MORNING
The thing that had crash-landed on the roof in the middle of the night had been the hood from a cherry-red classic Cadillac, a '59, from the look of the contour. Lorelle never spotted the rest of any such car up-beach, down, floating in the sea, or hamstrung in the trees. The hood had destroyed the heart of the solar panel array and remained jutting upward like a shark fin. The last time Lorelle looked at her fortified beach home, the final thing she saw was the sparkling wedge of red hood, as clean as though polished by the rain.
Now Lorelle watched the drowned world, and its denizens: big, lazily moving tropicals in lurid, attenuated colors. Unreal, like dreamland creatures someone had made up. For all their beauty they appeared stunned or drugged; oblivious to the limits of their world, the way Price's intimates had seemed. The aquarium was their whole universe.
"Ms. Latimer? Find those cigarettes?'' It was a nice young blue-smocked man whose tag advised his name might be Rene.
Lorelle turned her abstracted gaze from the huge display tank- a window to that otherworld-and tried to recalibrate to the here and now. "Oh, yeah-two doors down at the Kwik-Stop". She had somehow made her return trip-twenty feet on the sidewalk, easy-last a whole smoke, a 100. She appreciated the concept of "a cigarette's worth of time.''
"Dr. Coulter says to come on back."
The bloated, gasping fish in the aquarium ignored Lorelle's intrusive god-like judgment and continued paddling about, perhaps thinking of predating on one another.
Blitz was sitting up attentively on the stainless-steel exam table, his hindquarters splayed to one side as though he was lounging.
"Tried to catch something that caught you instead, eh, boy?" said Dr. Coulter, ruffing Blitz's chest. Coulter was a barrel-shaped man with huge, callused hands and a fatherly sort of handlebar mustache. He wore very modest bifocals that were overwhelmed by the size of his head, wire frames that had the effect of lightly pinching a melon in midsection.
"This guy needs what's called a vital pulpotomy on that lower first molar; that's fancy talk for the prelude to a possible root canal. I just cleaned out all the junk and spackled it up with temporary fillings. That fourth premolar will have to go, and in a couple of days, too, - before it impacts. We're not equipped here for proper endodontic procedures, so you'll have to see my guy in the city right away. Posthaste. Pronto. Because otherwise, this big faker is going to b
e in a world of hurt."
"Du bist halt mein Better Hund," Lorelle said, letting Blitz get a good snort of her hand. "Guter Hund." To the doc she said, "Faker?"
"Yes. Animals prefer to suffer in silence if they're hurt. They rarely let on to the degree of hurt unless it's unbearable. I need you to call up my recommended specialist; his name's Dr. Beschorner. He can diagnose oral pathology and perform a proper dental prophylaxis. This guy is going to lose at least two teeth. But Dr. B can do proper X rays, use a laser for dental surgery, do proper restoration on the damaged teeth, and bond the loose ones up with dental acrylic, proper." Dr. Coulter used the word proper a lot; it was a comforting, specific, on-target word for him. He cocked one eyebrow and his expression was comically similar to that of a cartoon dog. "You're staring at me like the next thing you're going to say is, Christ, how much is this going to cost me?!"
"I don't care what it costs," said Lorelle. "It'll get done, and within a day, if I can help it along." She had her petty cash, and plastic-plenty.
"I won't lie," said Coulter. "It can be pricey. Figure a couple grand to do it right. If they have to put him under, make sure they have isoflurane gas anesthesia. Some places use acupuncture to ease pain during surgery."
"Dog acupuncture?"
"Sure, why not? Canine dentistry is a wider-spread specialty than it was, say, twenty years ago. You have to take your dog to a separate facility, but it's more focused. Proper.''
Coulter showed Lorelle a couple of different medications, already labeled for Blitz. More pills in bottles, meant to change things. "Now, first, remember that those temporaries will only last a day or two. Dogs can't help biting hard on things, even when it hurts. He's lucky his jaw's not broken. Keep an eye on those carni-nasal molars."
Now it was Lorelle who made the confused dog-face. Coulter clarified: "The broken teeth. Don't feed him anything crunchy or hard. He'll be in some pain, but like a headache."
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