Rot (5 page)

“Marianne, what’s wrong with you?” Kyle’s throat tightened, squeezing his voice out in a tremulous whisper.

Marianne looked him straight in the eye. She smiled slowly and let her head fall to one side, at the angle it had lain that night in the road outside Elkhorn City.

“Don’t you know what’s wrong with me, Kyle? You should. You did it to me. You made me what I am. You and that Gypsy. Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“That’s crazy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He pulled up his pants.

She opened her mouth to speak.

He put a hand over her lips. “I don’t want to hear any more. Go home, Marianne. Go home and take a bath.”

She got to her feet, looking not quite steady. “If you say so, lover. I can see you’re all through for now, anyway.”

She found her jeans and pulled them on. Kyle turned away so he would not have to watch her. When she was dressed Marianne pushed open the door of the tool shed.

“Bye,” she said. “For now.”

Kyle hastily closed his fly and stood in the doorway. He watched Marianne walk to the little red Mustang in a peculiar gait that made her look like her joints were a little too loose.

She turned when she reached the car and waved at him, the unhealed wound a dark smear on the pale flesh of her arm. “See you soon,” she called.

The implied threat in her words froze his heart. He turned away and stumbled back toward the house.

Mrs. Simms was in the kitchen as he came in through the back door. She stood at the counter chopping at something with a chef’s knife. She did not look around.

“How’s Marianne?”

“She’s fine,” he said, ignoring the insinuation in the woman’s tone, and hurried through the kitchen and upstairs to his room.

He stripped off his clothes, wrapped a towel around his waist, and padded across the hall to the bathroom. There he got under a steaming shower and scrubbed at his skin until it was pink, trying to obliterate any memory of the act in the tool shed. When the flesh of his entire body tingled, he switched the shower to
Cold
and stayed under it until his teeth chattered.

When at last he came out he felt a little better. At least he could no longer smell Marianne on himself. He bundled up the clothes he had worn and stuffed them into the wicker laundry hamper.

He declined supper that night, pleading a touch of the flu, and went to bed. He pulled the sheet and hand-stitched quilt up to his chin, and lay shivering despite the warmth of the June evening. All the scrubbing in the shower had not erased the mental picture of the scene in the tool shed, nor cleansed his nose of the odor of rot. He lay curled into the fetal position until far into the night before he slept.

The next day Kyle stayed in his room with the window shade pulled all the way down. He kept seeing Marianne’s loose-lipped smile and hearing her parting words.
“See you soon.”
He was reluctant to open the door for fear she would be standing there grinning at him, loose limbed, head askew. Stinking.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said aloud, “how did I get into this.”

At sundown Mrs. Simms rapped once and opened his door. “You feel like eating something?”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“You’ll feel better if you eat.”

Okay, might as well admit it, he
was
hungry. And he couldn’t hide under the covers forever.

“I’ll be down soon as I wash up.”

Mrs. Simms had prepared a supper of creamy chicken fricassee, mountains of mashed potatoes with cream gravy and green garden peas. Kyle ate with an appetite that surprised him. Dessert was German chocolate cake with caramel frosting. He was about to take the first bite when an automobile horn sounded outside.

Kyle jumped up from the table and made it to the door before Mrs. Simms. The horn honked again.

Mrs. Simms peered past him. “That looks like Marianne’s car.”

“I’ll go see,” Kyle said.

“Tell her to come in and have something to eat.”

The horn blared again, impatiently, as he went out the door and trotted across the lawn to the car.

The window on the driver’s side was rolled down. When he reached the car Marianne peered up at him crookedly from the driver’s seat. The sweet perfume brought tears to his eyes. Her breath carried a heavy odor of mint that did not quite mask the sour smell.

“Hi, lover. Glad to see me?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m back to see you. Just like I promised. Want to go for a ride?”

“I can’t. I-I’m eating dinner.”

“Oh, yes you can. I think you’d better. Never forget that you owe me.”

Kyle looked back over his shoulder. At the kitchen window he could see the shadow of Mrs. Simms’s head and shoulders.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Elkhorn City.”

“Good God, why?”

“I have business there.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Nobody asked what you think.”

It was time, he decided, to stop being a wuss. This girl could cause him a lot of trouble, sure, but sometime he had to put a stop to this blackmail. It might as well be now.

“I’m not going.”

Her eyes narrowed for a moment, then she spoke again in a parody of a little girl’s pleading voice. “Please, Kyle, I need you to do the driving. I’m strong enough, but I’m not so well coordinated since … the other night.”

“No. Forget it. I’m out of this.”

“You don’t want me to make trouble for you.”

“Do what you want.”

“Kyle, I
have
to do this,” she said. “Help me just this one time and I’ll leave you alone.”

He pushed himself back from the car and looked off to the west where the last glow of the sunset was fading. The sun would still be shining back in California. What wouldn’t he give to be there right now? If he refused to drive Marianne tonight he had no doubt she would tell everybody her version of what happened in Elkhorn City and afterward. Though he did not think he committed an actual crime, there would still be inquiries and explanations required. The whole thing could drag on keeping him here for months. On the other hand, if he could take on this one last odious task, drive the girl fifteen miles to do whatever she felt had to be done, he would be free.

“Okay,” he said finally.

Marianne smiled at him. He looked away. She hoisted herself awkwardly over the center pedestal and gear shift while he got in behind the wheel. With Mrs. Simms watching from the window, he backed the little car around and gunned it out to the highway, turning there toward Elkhorn City.

“Where, exactly, do you want to go?” he asked as they sped over the dark, deserted highway.

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

Kyle drove leaning to his left, toward the open window, drawing in as much of the sweet night air as he could.

After a minute he said, “What’s your business that’s so important?”

“You’ll see.”

The cold hand of dread squeezed his kidney area, but he was too far into this now to turn back. He kept repeating silently to himself,
This is the last of her, the last, the last …

The night was clear and scented with blossoms as Kyle tooled the Mustang into Elkhorn City. The young people of the town strolled the streets in small groups laughing, flirting, having fun. Kyle envied them so much he ached.

“Turn here.”

He followed Marianne’s directions and left the main street, named, as they all were in the Midwest, “Main Street.” They drove beneath big old shade trees, past houses with people sitting on the porches talking, smoking, enjoying the night. Everything normal. Everything nice.

Another turn, and another, and they were on the edge of town. They passed an auto wrecking yard, an abandoned railroad siding, a sawmill. Marianne touched his arm and pointed to a wooden sign illuminated by a single light bulb:

“That’s it.”

Kyle steered in through the ungated iron fence and down a roadway that passed between rows of large mobile homes. The flickering glow of television sets could be seen behind many of the windows. A few people, mostly elderly, were outside in lawn chairs talking quietly or just sitting in the warm June night.

Marianne gestured him on toward the back of the lot. As they continued the mobile homes grew progressively smaller, the yards shabbier, until they came to the rear fence where the old beatup travel trailers were parked.

Marianne pointed at a rusting rectangular trailer with flaking yellow paint and faded awnings over the windows.

“That one.”

A familiar yellow Custom Kawasaki stood off to the side under an awning.

Kyle said, “Isn’t that the Gerstner kid’s bike?”

“That’s right. Fabian lives here with his brother Jesse. If we’re lucky they’ll both be home.”

Kyle turned in the seat to face her. “Marianne, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Without answering she reached down between the seats and drew out a heavy, long-bladed screwdriver.

“What’s that for?”

“You don’t want to know.”

She got out of the car and pulled off the denim jacket. Underneath she had a tight yellow tank top. She shoved the screwdriver, blade-first, down the back of her jeans. Kyle started to get out.

“I think you better wait here.” The words were spoken softly, but with unmistakable menace.

He wanted to get out of the car, do something, stop this girl from whatever it was she had in mind. He wanted to, he knew he should … but he didn’t do anything. Instead, he leaned back in the seat, wrapped his arms around himself, and tried not to think. With a morbid fascination, he watched Marianne walk jerkily up the short path to the door of the trailer.

• • •

Fabian Gerstner, wearing only a pair of white jockey shorts, lay on one of the two narrow beds that folded up flush with the wall when not in use. In practice, the beds were hardly ever folded up. Fabian and his brother Jesse were not big on housekeeping.

Fabian tipped a can of Blatz and took a long swallow, not taking his eyes from the 15-inch television screen where Charles Bronson was stalking the bad guys in an old movie. He paid no attention to the
chunk
of a car door outside. It would not be Jesse coming home. Jesse was at the Forty-One Road House hustling what he could at the pool table and would not be back before midnight. Nobody else would be coming to their trailer.

Wham!
Bronson gut shot one of the bad guys with a pistol the size of an artillery piece. Blood spurted from the bad guy’s belly and the guy flew backward through a plate glass window.

“All
right
!” Fabian cheered, grabbing another swallow of beer.

Fump, fump, fump
. Somebody was knocking at the loose aluminum trailer door.

“Shit,” he muttered. Just when the movie was getting to the good part.

He got up and made his way between the beds, carrying the beer can. The first thing that hit him when he opened the door was the smell. It was heavy and sweet, but under that … something like old garbage.

Then he recognized the girl who was standing there. Marianne For Chrissake Avery. She wore a skimpy tank top that let her nipples show through, and a pair of skintight jeans. In the glow from the television set her face had a peculiar look. Fabian stood trying to figure exactly what was wrong.

“Hi,” she said. “Can I come in?”

He looked over her shoulder. A red Mustang was parked out on the roadway. He could not be sure, but it looked like somebody was sitting in it. “What do you want?”

“Hey, don’t get spooked. I didn’t report you guys or anything. You didn’t think I would, did you?”

His eyes got sly. “Report us for what?”

“Is Jesse here?”

“No. Just me.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to do. Can I come in?”

“What do you want?” he said again.

“Can’t you guess?”

Behind him shots rang out as Charles Bronson continued his war on evildoers.

A slow grin grew on Fabian’s face. “You liked it, huh? The other night?”

“What do you think?”

“Yeah, a lot of girls like it rough. You kind of surprise me, though.”

“I’m full of surprises.”

He moved back out of the doorway. “Come on in.”

Marianne stepped inside and pulled the trailer door shut behind her.

Fabian gestured with the Blatz can. “Want a beer?”

“No.”

He took a closer look at her in the light. She really didn’t look that great tonight. Her eyes had dark shadows, and there was no life in them. Her hair was matted. Her skin looked sallow and kind of loose around her face. Still, she was Marianne Avery, the candyass Homecoming Queen and cheerleader who wouldn’t have walked on the same side of the street as the Gerstner brothers before. You never knew what was going to turn the bitches on.

He ran his thumbs around the elastic band of his shorts. “So … you want to have some fun?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

He frowned, remembering something. “Who’s that out in the car?”

“Nobody important. Don’t worry, he won’t bother us.”

“I’ll just make sure of that.” He stepped past her and latched the door, then turned back to face her, rubbing his hairy stomach. “Now we for sure won’t be disturbed.”

Marianne reached behind her back, as though to pull down her jeans. Instead, she drew out a heavy mechanic’s screwdriver.

“What’s that for?”

“This is what we’re going to have fun with.”

Jesus, a kinky one. Who would have guessed it. He said, “I got something here better than that.”

“I doubt it,” she said.

She smiled then, a dark, crooked smile, and drew the screwdriver back, her right hand gripping the handle. While Fabian was still wondering what she was going to do, she pumped it forward with more strength than a girl should have, and plunged the long blade into his belly just below the navel with a liquid
pop
.

Fabian looked down at the yellow plastic handle protruding from his gut. Dark red blood welled out around it and ran down to soak the front of his jockey shorts. He looked up at the girl. Her head was cocked at a weird angle. She smiled. Her tongue slid out over her lips. He wondered at the purplish color of her tongue, then all of a sudden he felt really sick.