Rose Madder (48 page)

Beyond this, his plan was simplicity itself. He would find the main concentration of women from the group home, and he would watch them as Hump from the sidelines—their games and conversational groups, their picnic. When someone brought him a hamburger or a corndog or a slice of pie, as some helpful cunt undoubtedly would (you couldn't propagandize their deep need to bring food to the menfolks out of them—that was instinct, by God), he'd take it with thanks, and he'd eat every bite. He would speak when spoken to, and if he should chance to win a stuffed animal playing ringtoss or Pitch Til U Win, he'd give it to some little kid . . . always being careful not to pat the rugmuffin on the head; even that could get you busted for molestation these days.

But mostly he'd just watch. Watch for his rambling Rose. He could do that with no problem at all, once he had been accepted as a valid part of the scene; he was a champ at the art of surveillance. After he spotted her, he could take care of his business right here on the Pier, if he wanted to; just wait until she had to use the potty, follow her, and snap her neck like a chickenbone. It would be over in seconds, and that, of course, was just the problem. He didn't want it to be over in seconds. He wanted to be able to take his time. Have a nice, leisurely chat with her. Get a complete rundown on her activities since she'd walked out on him with his ATM card in her pocket. The full report, so to speak, from chowder to cashews. He could ask her how it had felt to punch in his pin-number, for instance, and find out if she'd gotten off when she'd bent down to scoop the cash out of the slot—the cash he'd worked for, the cash he'd earned by staying up until all hours and busting scumholes who'd do anything to anybody if there weren't guys like him around to stop them. He wanted to ask her how she'd ever thought she could get away with it. How she'd thought she could get away from him.

And after she'd told him everything he wanted to hear, he would talk to her.

Expect maybe talk wasn't exactly the right word for what he had in mind.

Step one was to spot her. Step two was to keep an eye on her from a discreet distance. Step three was to follow her when she'd finally had enough and left the party . . . probably
after the concert, but maybe earlier if he was lucky. He could ditch the wheelchair once he was clear of the amusement park. There would be fingerprints on it (a pair of studded biker gauntlets would have taken care of that problem and also added to the Hump Peterson image, but he'd only had so much time, not to mention one of his horrible headaches, his specials), but that was all right. He had an idea that fingerprints were going to be the least of his problems from here on out.

He wanted her at her place, and Norman thought he was probably going to get what he wanted. When she got on the bus (and it would be the bus; she had no car and wouldn't want to waste money on a cab), he would get on right behind her. If she happened to spot him at some point along the line between Ettinger's Pier and the crib where she was turning her tricks, he'd kill her on the spot, and devil take the consequences. If things went well, though, he'd follow her right in through her door, and on the other side of that door she was going to suffer as no woman on the face of the earth had ever suffered before.

Norman wheeled his way to the booth marked
ALL-DAY PASSES
, saw that adult admission was twelve bucks, handed the money to the guy in the booth, and started into the park. The way was clear; it was early and Ettinger's wasn't really bustling yet. Of course, that had its downside, too. He'd have to be very careful not to attract the wrong sort of attention. But he could do that. He—

“Buddy! Hey, buddy! Come back here!”

Norman stopped at once, his hands frozen on the wheels of his chair, blank eyes staring at the Haunted Ship and the giant robot in old-time ship's captain's clothes that stood out in front. “Ahoy for terror, matey!” the robot ship's captain called over and over again in his mechanical drone of a voice. No, he didn't want to attract the wrong sort of attention . . . and here he was, doing precisely that.

“Hey baldy! You in the wheelchair!”

People turning to look at him. One was a fat black bitch in a red jumper who looked about half as bright as The Base Camp clerk with the harelip. She also looked vaguely familiar, but Norman dismissed that as plain paranoia—he didn't know anyone in this city. She turned and walked on, clutching a purse the size of a briefcase, but plenty of other people
were still looking. Norman's crotch suddenly felt humid with sweat.

“Hey, man, come back here! You gave me too much!”

For a moment the sense of this didn't come through to him—it was like something spoken in a foreign language. Then he understood, and an enormous sense of relief—mingled with feelings of disgust at his own stupidity—washed over him. Of course he had given the guy in the booth too much. He had forgotten he was not an Adult Male but a Handicapped Person.

He pivoted and wheeled back to the booth. The guy leaning out of it was fat, and he looked as disgusted with Norman as Norman felt with himself. He was holding out a five-dollar bill. “Seven bucks handicap, can'tcha read?” he asked Norman, first pointing at the sign on the booth with the bill and then shoving it in Norman's face.

Norman entertained a brief vision of jamming the fivespot into the fat fuck's left eye, then took it and stuffed it into one of his jacket's many pockets. “Sorry,” he said humbly.

“Yeah, yeah,” the man in the booth said, and turned away.

Norman began wheeling himself into the park again, his heart pounding. He had carefully constructed a character . . . made simple but adequate plans to accomplish his aims . . . and then, at the outset, had done something not just stupid but incredibly stupid. What was happening to him?

He didn't know, but from this point on he was going to have to work around it.

“I can do that,” he muttered to himself. “Goddam right I can.”

“Ahoy for terror, matey!” the robot sailor droned down at him as Norman rolled past. In one hand he waved a corncob pipe the size of a toilet bowl. “Ahoy for terror, matey! Ahoy for terror, matey!”

“Whatever you say, Cap'n,” Norman muttered under his breath, and kept rolling. He came to a three-way intersection with arrows pointing to the Pier, the midway, and the picnic area. Beside the one pointing to the picnic area was a small sign which read
GUESTS AND FRIENDS OF DAUGHTERS AND SISTERS EAT AT NOON, EAT AT SIX, CONCERT AT EIGHT ENJOY! REJOICE!

You bet, Norman thought, and began to roll his bestickered wheelchair down one of the concrete flower-bordered paths which led into the picnic area. It was actually
a park, and a good one. There was playground equipment for children who had tired of the rides or found them too stressful. There were jolly topiary animals like the ones at Disney World, horseshoe pits, a softball diamond, and lots of picnic tables. An open-sided canvas tent had been set up and Norman could see men in cooks' whites inside, preparing to barbecue. Beyond the tent was a row of booths which had clearly been put up just for today's events—at one you could buy chances on a couple of handmade quilts, at another you could buy tee-shirts (many bearing the same sentiments which decorated “Hump's” wheelchair), at another you could get any sort of pamphlet you wanted . . . as long as you wanted to find out how to leave your husband and find joy with your lesbian soul-sisters.

If I had a gun, he thought, something heavy and fast like a Mac-10, I could make the world a much better place in just twenty seconds. Much better.

Most of the people here were women, but there were enough men that Norman did not feel particularly conspicuous. He rolled past the booths, being pleasant, nodding when nodded to, smiling when smiled at. He bought a chance on the snowflake quilt, putting his name down as Richard Peterson. It might not be such a good idea to call himself Hump—not here. He picked up a pamphlet called Women Have Estate Rights, Too and told the lesbo queen minding the booth he was going to send it to his sister Jeannie in Topeka. The lesbo queen smiled and told him to have a nice day. Norman smiled and said right back atcha. He looked at everything in general and for one person in particular: Rose. He didn't see her yet, but that was okay; the day was young. He felt almost positive that she'd be here for the sitdown meal at noon, and once he'd gotten a confirmed sighting of her, all would be well, all would be well, and all manner of things would be well. Okay, he had screwed up a little at the All-Day booth, but so what? That was behind him now and he wouldn't screw up again. Absolutely not.

“Cool wheelchair, my friend,” a young woman in leopardskin shorts said cheerfully. She was leading a little boy by the hand. The little boy had a cherry Sno-Kone in his free hand and appeared to be trying to coat his entire face
with it. To Norman he looked like a world-class booger. “Cool sentiments, too.”

She held out a hand for Norman to slap, and Norman wondered—just for a moment—how fast that stupid little I-brake-for-cripples smirk would disappear from her face if he bit off a couple of her fingers instead of giving her the low five she was expecting. It was her left hand she was holding out and Norman wasn't surprised to see there was no wedding ring on it, although the rugrat with the cherry shit all over his face looked just like her.

You slut, he thought. I look at you and I see everything that's wrong with this fucked-up world. What did you do? Get one of your dyke friends to knock you up with a turkey-baster?

He smiled and slapped her outstretched hand lightly. “You the best, girl,” he said.

“Do you have a friend here?” the woman asked.

“Well, you,” he said promptly.

She laughed, pleased. “Thanks. But you know what I mean.”

“Nope, just diggin the scene,” he said. “If I'm in the way, or if it's a private gig, I can always head out.”

“No, no!” she said, looking horrified at the idea . . . as Norman had known she would. “Stay. Hang out. Enjoy. Could I bring you something to eat? It would be my pleasure. Cotton candy? A hotdog, maybe?”

“No, thanks,” Norman said. “I was in a motorcycle accident awhile back—that's how I lucked into the wonderful wheelchair.” The bitch was nodding sympathetically; he could have her bawling in about three minutes, if he felt like it. “I don't seem to have much appetite since then.” He grinned tremulously at her. “But I enjoy life, by God!”

She laughed. “Good for you! Have a great day.”

He nodded. “Goes back double. You have a good day too, son.”

“Sure,” the kid said noncommittally, and looked at Norman with hostile eyes from above his cherry-lathered cheeks. Norman had a moment of real panic, a sense that the boy was looking into him and seeing the Norman who was hiding behind Hump Peterson's studhorse cleanhead and many-zippered jacket. He told himself it was simple garden-variety paranoia he was feeling, no more and no less—he was, after all, an imposter in the court of his enemies and it was perfectly
normal to feel paranoid under such circumstances—but he went on his way quickly just the same.

He thought he would start to feel better again once he was away from the kid with the hostile eyes, but he didn't. His brief burst of optimism had been replaced by an antsy feeling. The noon meal was close now, people would be sitting down in fifteen minutes or so, and there was still no sign of her. Some of the women were off doing the rides, and it was possible that Rose was among them, but he didn't think it was very likely. Rose wasn't a Crack the Whip kind of gal.

No, you're right, she never was . . . but maybe she's changed, a voice inside whispered. It started to say something else, but Norman muzzled it savagely before it could get a single word out. He didn't want to hear that crap, even though he knew that something in Rose must have changed, or she'd still be at home, ironing his shirts every Wednesday, and none of this would be happening. The idea of Rose's changing enough to walk out of the house with his goddam ATM card took hold again in his mind, took hold in a gnawing, beavery way he could hardly stand. Thinking about it made him feel panicky, as if there were a weight on his chest.

Stay in control, he told himself. That's what you've got to do. Think of it as being on stakeout, as a job you've done a thousand times before. If you can think of it just that way, everything will be fine. Tell you what you do, Normie: forget it's Rose you're looking for. Forget it's Rose until you actually see her.

He tried. It helped that things were pretty much as he had expected; Hump Peterson had been accepted as a valid part of the scene. Two dykes wearing tee-shirts cut off to display their overbuilt arms included him briefly in their Frisbee game, and an older woman with white hair on top and really ugly varicose veins down below brought him a Yogurt Pop because, she said, he looked really hot and uncomfortable, stuck in that chair. “Hump” thanked her gratefully and said yes, he was a little hot. But you're not, sweetie, he thought as the woman with the graying hair started away. No wonder you're with these lesbo queens—you couldn't get a man if your life depended on it. The Yogurt Pop was good, though—cool—and he ate it down greedily.

The trick was never to stay in one place for too long. He
moved from the picnic area to the horseshoe pit, where two inept men were playing doubles against two equally inept women. To Norman it looked as if the game might go on until the sun went down. He rolled past the cook-tent, where the first hamburgers were coming off the grill and potato salad was being dished into serving bowls. Finally he headed for the midway and the rides, wheeling along with his head down, sneaking little peeks at the women who were now heading for the picnic tables, some pushing strollers, some carrying trumpery prizes under their arms. Rose was not among them.