Trigger Finger (14 page)

18.

The rising body
count didn’t bother Allie.
 
We made love
that night, but of course I couldn’t come.
 
After twenty minutes, Allie asked me, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I
gasped, sweat dribbling down my face.

“It’s staring to
hurt.”

Crazily enough, it
started hurting me, too.
 
My hip muscles
rumbled with sedition.
 
On the verge of
revolt, they threatened to cramp up on me at any second.
 
But I wouldn’t give up.
 
I’d never given up before, and I wouldn’t
give up now.
 
What did some of those
posters say?

Determination.
 
Perseverance.

I began flipping
through the Rolodex of pornographic images in my brain.
 
I found the one from our first night in this
house, down in the kitchen amidst the boxes and newspapers and dishes that hadn’t
found their home yet—gourmet kitchens, I discovered that night, were like
Spanish Fly for upper-class white women.
 
I envisioned Allie bent over the kitchen table, her hair falling in a
golden brown waterfall over her shoulders, her pajama bottoms puddled around
her ankles and…

She put her lips
up to my ear and whispered, “Come on.”

…the Rolodex began
to flip on its own.
 
It buzzed like a
playing card in the spokes of my bicycle when I was a little boy, and when it
stopped flipping it came to rest on an entirely different image.
 
Pinnix.
 
Or Ramseur.

Or a bald
man.
 
I really couldn’t tell.

Rough hands on her
hips, hairy legs slapping against the backs of her thighs.
 
Her gasps of pain.
 
The pool table, not the kitchen table, and a
belt buckle rattled on the basement’s cement floor, metal scraping the concrete
as the table itself groaned in rhythm with every violent thrust.

A face.
 
Smiling, laughing, because this was funny to
him.

Right then, I
knew: this was one of my nightmares.

Say it, you bitch.

And she did, only
her voice shook and broke.

Fuck me harder,
she whimpered.

My legs seized up
and my erection vanished.
 
For a moment,
I couldn’t breathe.

“Kevin?
 
Are you okay?
 
Kevin!”

I was most
certainly not okay.
 
In fact, I couldn’t
remember ever being this not okay in my life.
 
I rolled off abruptly and lay beside her, gasping for air.
 
“I’m fine.”

“Are you having
chest pains?”

Where in the hell
had that image come from?

“No chest pains,”
I said, laying my forearm across my eyes.
 
“I just…I don’t know.
 
I think all
this shit’s been getting to me.”

The furnace kicked
on and added its low hum to the whoosh of the ceiling fan.
 
Somewhere down the hall, the pressure change
forced a door closed and pulled another one open.
 
I wiped sweat from my face and rolled over on
my side to look at her.
 
Large brown eyes
blinked at me in the dark.
 
A blue satin
sheet followed the rise of her body as it crested at her hip and plunged into
the trough of her waist.

“I thought you
girls liked a guy who could go forever,” I said.

“Oh, that’s great
in theory.”
 
She sat up and hunted on the
floor for her underwear.
 
When she
couldn’t find it, she rose and walked naked to the bureau, where she fished out
a pair of bikini underpants and slipped them on.
 
I stared at her from the bed, taking in every
flex of smooth muscle.
 
Only the
Caesarean scar on her flat belly anchored her image in reality.
 
“Not so great in execution.
 
Like many things.”

She climbed back
into bed and wrapped her arms around me, burying her face in my chest.
 
I buried mine in turn in her hair.
 
I took long
ki
breaths in which I inhaled deep lungfuls of her scent and tried
to forget those claws digging into her hips.

The enemy overran my perimeter,
I
thought,
and he’s still here.

No, he’s not,
Bobby replied.
 
That’s
just your fucked-up mind playing sick tricks on you.

“What are you
thinking about?”

I didn’t answer
her for a long time.

“I think I
remember one of the dreams,” I said finally.
 
“One of the bad ones.”

“Want to talk
about it?”

I pondered
that.
 
Then I said, “Not
particularly.
 
It involves you…and
another man.”

I paused.
 
She said nothing.

“You weren’t
exactly a willing participant,” I added.
 
“That’s what I’m carrying away from it, anyway.
 
When you started talking dirty to me there,
it was like a switch flipped and suddenly, there it is.”

I sat up, shaking
my head and holding it in my hands.

Be a man,
Bobby admonished,
and handle your own shit.

Handle my own
shit.
 
Yeah.
 
I’d been doing a great job of that.

“I talked to Craig
today,” I said, changing the subject.
 
“About the mugger.
 
And Pinnix and
Ramseur.”

She waited.

“Nobody knows who
they are,” I said.
 
“Three guys, no
positive ID.
 
After talking to Craig, I’m
not even sure the first two were named Pinnix and Ramseur at all.
 
According to him, nobody knows where those
names came from.”

Ki
breath.

“The guy on the
phone,” I said, “the one I call the Bald Man, he threatened me.
 
That guy I stabbed said his name, he said
Bald Man
right before he died.
 
I’ve got this idea that…I don’t know…maybe
the Bald Man
made
him.”

“
Made
him?” She asked.
 
“Like a golem?”

“What’s a golem?”

“An old, old
Jewish folk tale,” she answered, rolling away from me and propping herself up
on one elbow.
 
“A creature made from mud,
or dust, or dirt, or whatever.
 
It’s
supposed to be a man, but it isn’t a man because God didn’t make it—someone
trying to
be like
God made it, so of
course it falls short.
 
Men create golems
to do their bidding.
 
Sometimes they’re
bad.”

That picture of
the Bald Man in his dark room again.
 
Conjuring.
 
Creating.
Making
.

My mouth went
dry.
 
Golems; holy shit, that was
it.
 
Motherfucker was sending
golems
after me.
 
The idea clicked so loudly that I almost
jumped.

“Pinnix and
Ramseur and this asshole who tried to mug me are…golems.”

“Probably
not.
 
Golems can’t talk.”

She paused,
studying me.

“You know I’m
kidding, right?”

I didn’t answer.

“The mugging was a
coincidence,” she said.
 
“The fact that
nobody knows who these guys are means nothing, because when you exist on the
periphery of society not only does nobody know who you are, but nobody
cares
who you are.
 
And as for this little vision of yours, these
dreams, they’re nothing more than a product of the anxiety you’re feeling over
your perceived inability to protect me from harm.
 
It’s completely natural.”

I remained silent,
thinking.

“Your brain,” she
continued, “understands now that the world isn’t as safe as you thought it
was.
 
So, it says, I have to train.
 
Practice.
 
When you dream, it’s actually practicing the skills necessary to get you
out of those situations.
 
So that if they
ever happen again, it can react automatically.”

“You think so?”

“I do.
 
I’m just surprised your therapist hasn’t
brought this up with you.
 
Any psych
undergrad knows these things.
 
Please
tell me you’re not going to walk around thinking you were attacked by a couple
of Jewish fairy tales; I don’t want to have you committed.”

I laid back down
and covered my face with my hands.
 
I
wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.

“You know what I’m
starting to think?”
 
She asked, laying
back down.

“What’s that?”

“Maybe this Dr.
Koenig isn’t such a great therapist after all.”

“Yeah,” I
said.
 
“I’m starting to wonder that
myself.”
 

19.

I had come to
doubt Dr. Koenig’s effectiveness as a therapist.
 
But I kept my next appointment.

“I really dig this
time of year,” I told him.
 
“You can’t go
to the beach or anything, but I think I like it even more than summertime.”

Thanksgiving had
yet to arrive—the turkeys had begun stuffing the freezers at every grocery
store, but no one had bought one.
 
Although
it was still only mid-November, the air had turned cold this morning with an
abrupt snap that I almost heard as I lay awake staring at the ceiling, eyes
bleary from too little sleep.
 
Sleep
deprivation notwithstanding—along with the very real possibility that a
supernatural being with the ability to create bat and knife-wielding golems was
after me—I felt a familiar tickle of enthusiasm and pleasure at the apple cider
chill I smelled when I first stepped outside.

“Why’s that?”
 
Dr. Koenig asked, sitting down in his leather
chair and removing
 
pad and pen from his
Italian leather briefcase.

The cover of
Southern Rifleman
was coming loose—I’d
need to tape it up when I left here so that it didn’t disintegrate.
 
I had developed a habit of slipping a hand
into my own briefcase and fondling it as I waited in court or talked on the
phone or completed any number of other tasks that comprised my day.
 
I gently laid it on the coffee table that had
no business in an atmosphere of sophistication and luxury—and laced my fingers
between my knees.

“Allie and I
started dating in September of 1994,” I said, “pretty close to the beginning of
our freshman year.
 
But it took a few
weeks for her to really fall for me the way I fell for her, so I spent all of
September and most of October staring at the underside of my roommate’s bunk
and wondering how long it was going to be before she dropped me.”

“I thought it was
love at first sight.”

I straightened
up.
 
“For me, yeah.
 
Of course.
 
But for the first couple of weeks, it was kind of touch-and-go on my
end.
 
I didn’t know what I was doing—I’d
never had a girlfriend before.
 
So I felt
pretty sure I’d screw it up.
 
Throughout
September and into October, anyway.”

“What happened in
October?”

“She just warmed
up to me,” I said.
 
“Suddenly it wasn’t
just me calling her anymore, or me sending her letters to her campus mail box
or me coming up with things for us to do together.
 
She started to…participate.
 
And that happened about this time of year.”

I looked out the
picture window at the bare dogwood trees flanking the bench.
 
I stretched.
 
Dr. Koenig stared down at his notepad, decorated with scribblings from
our last session.

“Speaking of
Allie,” he said.

I tensed.

“Where is she?”

I sighed.
 
“She didn’t want to come.”

“Why not?”

“Burlington
Women’s Club is serving dinner to the homeless at Loaves and Fishes
tonight.
 
She’s helping set up.
 
You know, peel potatoes, boil potatoes, boil
pasta.
 
Chop up cabbage.
 
I asked her to come meet with you and she
said she’s too busy.
 
She asked me to
help her feed the homeless and I said I’m too busy.
 
Guess we’re even.”

Bullshit.
 
Allie would indeed help out at Loaves and
Fishes this evening, but not until four this afternoon.
 
I simply hadn’t asked her.
 
The idea of seeing her in here with Dr. Koenig
bothered me, and it wasn’t just a reluctance to show her too much of my
vulnerability.
 
Things, I had realized,
were getting worse for me, not better.
 
I
didn’t want him getting under her hood, too; he hadn’t helped me worth a dime.

Yet here you are,
Bobby observed.

Because I’m a narcissistic prick
, I
replied,
and all we do in here is talk
about me.

“I find your
fixation on getting my wife in here a little misplaced,” I said.
 
“There’s a lot going on with me that I think
we need to focus on.
 
Especially now.”

“Such as?”

“Pinnix and
Ramseur.
 
And that guy I whacked the
other day, the one who tried to mug me.”

“Yes.
 
When you suddenly transformed into Kevin the
Ninja Lawyer.”

“Right.
 
Notice I don’t know his name.”

Dr. Koenig nodded
once.

“I don’t know his name
because the police don’t know his name.
 
No record, nobody recognizes the guy.
 
I can understand that, now, but you know what else?
 
Nobody knows who Pinnix and Ramseur are,
either.
 
We’ve got these names for them,
but nobody in the police department could tell Craig exactly how they figured
out those names.
 
Because the only ID
either one of them carried were membership cards to some adult video store in Durham.
 
And those cards have only numbers, no names.”

I leaned forward.

“So help me out
here, Doc.
 
How did the cops ID
them?
 
Where did those names come from?”

“Fingerprints.
 
The state’s DNA database.”

“Negative and
double-negative,” I said, shaking my head.
 
“No entries for either man on either the fingerprint or DNA
database.
 
These guys busted into my
house, tried to kill me, had it in their heads to rape my family, but they’d
never been arrested.
 
They’d never set
foot in a jail or anywhere else they could have been fingerprinted.
 
Isn’t that strange?”

“It is,” he
agreed.
 
His face remained impassive,
unintrigued.
 
I wondered if he, too,
might be a golem.

“So I’ve got this
crazy idea,” I said.

I licked my
lips.
 
This was harder than it sounds,
with my tongue all dry and tacky.

“You ever heard of
a golem?”

He blinked at me.

“I have.”
 
His gaze felt, his voice sounded, as flat as
old Coke.

I took a deep
breath.

“This is just an
idea, now,” I said, “just me thinking out loud.
 
But what if…what if these guys were
sent
?”

“Sent by who?
 
By someone out to get you?”

“Yes.”

“Who would that
be?”

“I don’t know, but
he calls himself the Bald Man.”

He looked down at
the paper, scribbled.
 
His lips pursed,
and his goatee twitched.
 
I noticed that
his beard stubble continued only to a point on his cheeks where it suddenly disappeared,
giving way there to older but smooth-shaven skin.
 
He had shaved his beard stubble to accentuate
the angles of his face, making him look thinner than he perhaps was.
 
Even kale-eating psychotherapists, I observed,
aren’t above a touch of baloney.

“Why would the
Bald Man be out to get you?
 
Why would
anyone want to send golems after you?”

“I don’t know,” I
said.
 
I thought of Angela then, her
catatonic voice, her stumbling walk.
 
“Why do bad things happen to anybody?
 
How does God pick the ones who make the rest of us feel lucky and flock
to Him for protection?
 
Can’t say I
understand how that works.
 
Just that I’m
blessed.”

“You’re blessed.”

I nodded.
 
“Oh, yeah.
 
On so many levels.
 
All you have
to do is look at what happened in my house last February and you’re like,
somebody upstairs loves this asshole.
 
And He took care of me again just this past Tuesday.
 
Think about it: how many chairborne commando
lilly-white lawyers stab muggers?
 
How
often does the mouse eat the cat?
 
That’s
God, man.
 
Looking out for me.”

I’d been smiling,
but it faded now.

“And I just wonder
if maybe the Bald Man knows that.
 
And
maybe this whole thing is bigger than any of us really understand.
 
Maybe I’m caught in a grudge match between
this guy, this
thing
, whatever you
want to call him, and a much higher power.”

“You’re Job,” he
said.
 
“From the Bible.”

I stared at him.

“No,” I said,
after some thought.
 
“Job got
ass-fucked.
 
I got a writeup in
Southern Rifleman.
”

He pursed his lips
again.
 
Another glance down at that
notepad.

“What’re you
thinking?”
 
I asked.

“I think we need
to go back to February,” he answered.
 
“And discuss this whack to your head.”