by Wenke, John;
“This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for,” Brunhilda smiles.
Charles is too far away to rush them.
But at least, Charles, it’ll be like coming home.
“I’m a reporter,” Charles says, “and I’m curious. What’s it feel like to be serial killers? I mean, what’s the point? Somebody tell me.”
Brunhilda swells his chest up, opening his mouth in a wide oval. “Didn’t your mother teach you anything? You never ask questions of the tsarina.”
He raises his pistol and fires.
Mavis ducks and screams. She turns and sees Charles, his eyes squeezed shut, standing rigid and ready. He doesn’t move even after it’s clear that Brunhilda aimed far to his right. The bullets plunked the lake a hundred yards away. Far out in the middle, a man sits alone in a dinghy holding a fishing rod. The little man stands, looks toward them through a pair of binoculars, sits down, and starts rowing frantically toward the far shore.
Ignatius shakes her head at Brunhilda.
“You went and woke up the neighbors. If we don’t hurry, we’ll have company calling. Okay, you two. It’s time to strip. Strip!”
Ignatius fires a bullet that zings the stones to the left of Mavis’ feet.
“Undress, dears,” she smiles. “We have to be going.”
“I’m not doing a thing,” Charles says. “If you want my clothes, you’ll have to take them, bloody and dirty.”
“Now will you listen to that?” Ignatius laughs, scratching her head. “You’re a tough guy.” Out on the lake, the rowing man doesn’t seem to be making any progress. He’s still at least a half-mile from shore. “Charles, we don’t want them bloody and dirty. We want them just a little lived in. If you do things right we’ll bring this thriller to an end. It’s only when you don’t play right that things go boom boom.”
“I think it was only once, Ignatius dear. That jogging girl—she was a pesky scamp of a thing. A hussy. She made everything go screwy louie.”
“There might have been more, Hildy, but my memory isn’t what it should be.”
“Just give us the merchandise, and we will bid adieu. No curtain call, just exit to the nearest shopping center for our next free rental car.”
“Pay attention to the little lady,” Ignatius barks, shaking the pistol. “We got to go. Take your damn clothes off or I’ll zip you both. Case closed.”
Charles eyes the lake and looks at the car. Brunhilda puts the wig on his skull. With both hands, he settles the pill box hat on top.
“How do we know you won’t shoot us anyway?” Charles asks.
“You don’t,” Ignatius snarls. “You just have to trust us.”
She shoots the ground again and looks at the little man on the lake.
“Okay. Okay. Mavis, we should do what they say. What the hell.”
Charles reaches for the top button of his blue shirt.
Don’t you dare!
It’s our best chance.
Charles unbuttons his shirt, slips it down, and tosses it toward Ignatius.
This is disgusting, Charles. She’ll see you.
I want to live. Mavis does, too.
I thought you couldn’t wait to see me.
It’s too much, Meg. It’s time you were quiet.
One by one his shoes turn in the air and land on a bed of pine needles. His cotton trousers sag to his ankles.
Mavis is not surprised to see that Charles wears blue bikini briefs, but she is shocked to see that the back of his thighs are covered with little lumps of fat. When he slips out of his briefs, Mavis can barely tell where it is. It’s tucked away like a little cap amid a tuft of graying hair. Seeing Charles’ fat thighs and smallish thing emboldens her. She feels her spirits lift—maybe they won’t shoot them—just as a buzzing sound, like a wasp, seems to settle inside her ear. She slaps it away.
It’s remarkable how quickly she undresses—shirt, bra, slacks, panties, those sheer anklet nylons—all gone, all tossed into the air. With Brunhilda pointing his gun, Ignatius gathers the goods, hustles to the trunk, and stuffs everything into a large plastic bag.
“Take the device, dear,” Brunhilda says, handing the gun to Ignatius. “It’s time to wrap things up. What do you think?” He picks the coiled rope from the ground. “Face to face or bum to bum?”
“Face to face is better,” she decides. “Okay. Hands at your sides and don’t try anything funny. I’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”
“You got the clothes,” Charles says. “What now?”
“You’ll find out,” Ignatius says. “Please hurry, dear. We must be going.”
Across the lake the rowing man is less than a quarter mile from shore.
“Pretend you’re slow dancing.” And then Brunhilda croons, “Swaying to the music.”
As the rope gnaws her flesh, Mavis feels the press of Charles’ hands on her lower back, his chest on hers, and the scratchy tangle just below her navel. His feet lay upon her toes. Brunhilda runs round and round them, stringing the rope tighter and tighter. As the rope bites Mavis’ skin, her mind drifts into another place. She’s not thinking about Ignatius and the guns or Brunhilda’s shiny head or the awful speech or the blizzard strafing Duluth or footsteps clomping away or the engine turning and the tires kicking gravel. Instead, she feels a settled peace fall upon her like calm rain, this feeling that she isn’t going to die, not now, not soon. All she feels is how her breasts are flat against his stomach, how the rope is so tight she can’t move, how she’s standing stone still. She flattens her hands on his shoulder blades and scrunches her forehead just below his chin line. She can barely hear him saying how it’s all right now, that the maniacs are gone, that the man across the lake will soon be calling the cops. Mavis is not really listening. Instead, she fixes her attention just below her waist where the glob of Jell-O begins to stir. It moves, stumbles, and shapes itself like a stunted thumb, pointing ever so slightly toward the sky.
The Jolly Season
“You dropped this,” a woman bellowed.
Joe Cantwell turned. Her green babushka covered a nest of metal curlers. Her fat smiling face was a shade lighter than her red plaid hunting jacket. She handed him a list.
“Thanks.” He stuffed it inside his brown Harris Tweed overcoat. “This is my list. I don’t want to lose my list.”
“At least you made one,” she whooped, backing through the other line of customers. “That’s why I’m here. I never make ’em. Twenty shopping trips and I still haven’t gotten tinsel!”
For two months now, the list had been Molly Cantwell’s focus when assigning Joe his share of the shopping. Since this was Joe’s first Christmas “out,” it was best, she explained, that they develop a system for handling present and future Christmases. The list was symmetrical—two divorced parents shopping for an un-divorced set of twins. Not only did the list make chaos imitate order, it was extremely flexible, continually subject to change. At first, Molly had insisted that Joe pick up the Mad Scientist Dissect-an-Alien Kit for Scott and the Funwich Sandwich Factory for Zelda. Two days later, she decided she didn’t want Scott sawing into rubberized alien hide, yanking out and reinserting internal organs. She was afraid he’d graduate from carving aliens to slashing cats. He had already started jabbing their tabby with sharpened sticks. Nor was it a good idea to encourage the already chubby Zelda to explore creative, high caloric innovations in sandwich design.
With a simple flick, Molly scratched out the offending entries. She substituted pre-school superblocks for Scott and for Zelda she added Ken and Barbie dolls. In the margin, Molly noted specific ensembles: cowboy and cowgirl, doctor and nurse, fireman and starlet. She marked a double asterisk next to the astronaut Ken and Barbie costumes. Each outfit, she said, cost $17.99—a little high on the scale of things, Joe figured, but what the hell. It didn’t matter if doll clothes cost slightly more th
an a set of plain white T-shirts and slightly less than a pair of colorful bikini briefs. Joe was loaded. Money was not one of his problems.
Making and revising the list was Joe’s admission ticket. Coming up the walk to his former home, he’d take it out, look it over, and rub his chin. With Molly peeping through the curtains, he’d play the “good father” playing Santa Claus. When he stood at the door, list in hand, forehead ribbed, Molly had to let him in. There was always something to subtract, something better to add—a potentially dangerous toy, a cute gadget. The list was nothing short of a paper bridge from one way of life to the next.
During the divorce proceedings—through their respective lawyers—Joe and Molly had exchanged lists of demands as frequently as some teenagers surrender hearts. It even seemed the Christmas list was making it easier for Molly to like him again. That prospect—that Molly might like him again—had inspired him to draw up and give her a list of his own invention. Since he’d been far too busy to do any actually shopping, he’d made up a list of imaginary purchases. Soon, he’d take the list and make good. In a better world, the shopping would already be done, but he had waited and now he was stalled in line, fighting the clock.
It was the night before Christmas and all through the mall, not a creature was merry, nobody at all.
Joe’s neck muscles gripped, and the guilty, nervousness weight of omission pushed down on his chest like wet snow on the edge of a ragged cliff.
In Toy Fantasia, he surveyed his three loaded shopping carts and the two tricycles he kept butting forward. An immediate worry nagged him: while all the gifts he hadn’t bought could have filled a room, the gifts he was about to buy might not quite fit into his new Nissan 370Z.
Joe checked his watch. It was 4:15 p.m. Seventy-five shopping minutes till Christmas gave him a little time to spare. He could drive the stuff out to the house, unload it in the garage, help trim the tree, and zoom back to Mary’s by eight.
Mary Marano, a pert loan officer at First National, was his fiancée. Her parents were down from New York City, and for months she had planned a special late Christmas Eve meal—a full blown version of the Italian “Feast of the Seven Fishes.” She was pulling out the stops, trying to give herself a nervous breakdown. For months, she’d worried about uncontrollable things: Could she get fresh, tender clams and calamari? Would her smelt taste like fried pencils, her shrimp scampi too tough? Would her parents finally see her as a worthwhile person?
That morning, after months of hectoring, the local fish store had come through. But she had still felt besieged by a final worry. Would he, her fiancé, be on time? He was never on time. For once in his life, he needed to be on time. Over and over he assured her he’d be on time. What did she take him for? He knew his priorities.
In his state of strained reverie, Joe happened to push the front cart a little too far. It bumped a tall elderly man holding a Battery Run Train Set. The red price tag said $69.99.
“Excuse me,” Joe coughed.
The man surveyed Joe’s mounds of boxes.
“That’s some haul.”
“Better late than never,” Joe piped with a winning smile. He felt the old urge to spin the guy a story. “I’ve been out of the country for three weeks, in Argentina, doing some government work. You see, my wife’s dead and my six kids have been staying with my parents. They can’t get around so much anymore. I got back today and nothing’s been done. Santa has to do everything at the last flipping minute.”
The man turned away. Joe frowned. The guy wouldn’t cooperate. He didn’t ask how the poor wife had died or the ages of all those kids or what he did for the government. The man didn’t see fit to task Joe’s fertile powers of invention.
There was nothing to do but stand in line. He had been inching forward for almost an hour. Though there were fifteen check-out stations, only two were in operation. It irritated him that the other line was moving so quickly and it irritated him that he was irritated. He had promised the doctor he’d avoid unnecessary irritation. One way to do that, the doctor suggested, was to focus on the good things. Joe took a fix. It was Christmas time, the jolly season. He wasn’t dead. He was in love. He had two healthy, if overweight and anxious, children—twins, aged four. He made a lot of money. Just yesterday he had bought his hot new sports car.
Having run out of good things, Joe found himself slipping on the slick of the bad things. Within the past year, his father had died. His mother, after a massive stroke, languished in a nursing home, blinking at the ceiling and talking over and over about a dog named Biff that had died when she was a child. Since she hadn’t known Joe or anyone else from Biff, Joe had few qualms about signing the papers that let them warehouse her. But it bothered him to visit and mumble upbeat lies about his alcoholic sister and jailbird brother. On top of it all, Joe’s health could have been better. At the age of thirty-four, he had high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Looking in the mirror at those sagging folds of flesh got him down, but not as much as the guilt he sometimes felt over Molly. His ex-wife had loved him without reservation for most of their marriage. She had suspected nothing. It was always easy for a guy who brokered real estate to get out of the house. But those overnights-out-of-the-house had done him in. She hired a detective who provided pictures—indecent, disgusting, explosive pictures. In the face of pictures, the power of story can only go so far.
Joe was now only three customers away from checkout, but a young man at the register was having problems. The manager was there shaking his head, throwing up his hands. There was nothing he could do. The poor guy had blown his credit card limit. He would have to pay cash or write a check for the Gymboree Gymkit. After a lot of threats and fist-shaking, the poor guy cleared out of the store. Joe opened his wallet and took out his gold card. His fingers ran along hard edges. Its shiny face flashed with light. Joe toed a tricycle, rolling it back and forth. Staring at the card, he read his name, number, and expiration date. That was him. Or was it “he”? It didn’t matter; Joseph B. Cantwell could never blow his limit. His world class card had no limit.
The sleek and low silver Nissan rumbled at the curb. The radio blared. Paul McCartney sang, “Simply having a wonderful Christmas time.” Sleet whipped in the wind and burned his face.
With squinting, tearing eyes, Joe stepped back and looked at the car. He had begun the operation by wedging the tricycles behind the seats and then working around them. He had placed the largest boxes—like the Babe Ruth Pro Locker and the Little Tyke Big Table and Chair Set—in the back. He stuffed the crevices with boxes and more boxes: Scott’s Videosmarts; Radio Control Cheetah; Road Blaster; Kid Sharp Gun and Holster Set; Power Workshop; Puke Shooter; Savage Mondo Blitzer; and Zelda’s Playdoh Ghostbusters; Video Tech World Wizard; Pottery Wheel Workshop; Frog Soccer; Little Tyke Beauty Saloon; and, Pfalzgraff Cook and Serve Plate Set.
He looked at the last shopping cart. There were five more pieces to squeeze in, and he couldn’t use the trunk. The trunk was loaded with Mary’s gifts. No problem. He had only to size up the remaining angles. With sleet pelting him, he wedged in the Princess of Power Crystal Castle, the Master of the Universe Evil Horde Fright Zone Set, the Super Madballs Touchdown Terror Football, and two Scoot-Skate Scooter Boards. With a muffled click, the door slapped shut. He took off his soaked coat and dumped it above the hand brake. Shivering, he plopped into the leather seat, turned up the heat, wiped his face and head with wet hands, and steered through the slush.
It was 5:15. He was almost on time. In good weather, he could have made it to the house in thirty-five minutes, ripping southward around the twisting country roads, out to his former five-bedroom colonial on thirty acres of woodland. The house was out in the boonies, but thanks to his satellite dish, he had never felt isolated. In the mornings, it had been pleasant to drive to the small city where he did business, a daily opportunity to take stock of the trees and cows, to plan his activities. But th
at was all behind him now. He was living downtown in a singles’ condo complex, where night silence was frequently ruptured by shrill screams and loud music. Joe sat and slept on rented furniture. He watched a rented TV. It was a temporary arrangement. By March, he’d be married again. He and Mary were building a house in the country a good twenty miles north of the city.
He fishtailed into traffic. Molly was expecting him at 5:30. He’d only be a little late. He smiled. All this business with the lists—he was going to get away with it.
Feeling an upsurge of lifted spirits, he slid into a convenience store lot and dashed inside. His cell phone was on his rented night table. He cursed himself for not getting the car’s mobile hooked up. It would’ve been a cinch to give Mary a quick report—cover his flank.
There was a working pay phone next to the beer cooler.
“It’s me,” Joe was breathless. “I got the toys. Every flipping one. Everything’s working. I might even be early. I’ll dump the toys and trim the tree. I’ll be out of there in no time. How long can it take to trim a goddamn tree?”
“Where are you?”
“On the road, just south of the toy store.”
“I thought you were going to shop this morning. You went out explicitly to shop this morning. My mother and I’ve been waiting all afternoon to do the wrapping. The twins need their toys wrapped. Ripping apart the wrapping’s most of the fun.”
“I didn’t have time this morning. The day got away from me. I called Molly about it and she said, ‘Don’t worry about the wrapping.’ Molly loves to do the wrapping. No problem.”
“Listen! I can’t talk now. Mommy and I are stuffing calamari. You get moving. Hurry up and get here!”
“No sweat. Everything’s under control.”
Wrapping! Joe fished in his pocket for more change. Molly’ll hit the roof over the wrapping.
The twins were screaming in the background.
“Molly, it’s me. Merry Christmas, honey. I’m on my way. I’m calling from a pay phone. I think I lost my cell.”