Seven Deadly Pleasures (9 page)

Denny's jaw dropped. Even though he had not known the exact answer until now (and awesome it was after all!) he had been quite aware that this particular question was a doozy. He had asked it twice before, once to the snack lady at the roller rink and the other to a meter maid giving his Dad a ticket outside the State Store at 30th and Arch. Both women had gone wide-eyed, tight-lipped, and flushed, the first spouting, "Never you mind!" and the other going off about Jesus, spoiled children, spare rods, and lead paint.

But this Josephine had given it to him up front and straight. He felt a small part of his heart warm to her, but he wasn't ready to show it off just yet.

"What's that stuff?" He was looking past her to the knapsack on the stoop and the large, square-looking zipper bag leaning against the screen door. She gave a half-turn back, swinging her long, tightly woven braids.

"It's my homework, some books, a few charcoal sticks, and a portfolio case filled with blanks. I draw. If you want I can show you, make a picture or two."

Denny moved to the first stair.

"Maybe and maybe not."

"Suit yourself," she said, and as Denny brushed past he realized that by her not seeming to care whether he checked out her drawings or not, he would now just explode if he didn't get a chance to see at least one. But again, he did not need to show this just yet. He turned the lock and pushed into the dark living room with his new sitter lugging her stuff in behind.

Dad had cleaned, but Josephine curled her lip just a bit once the lights were turned on. Sure, the couch was swept clear of last week's newspapers and the coffee table stood free of soda cans and other various recyclables, but Denny realized how stale the place must have seemed to a girl. Mom's curtains had been long taken down and replaced with gray blinds that were easier to maintain. There was an old brown chair but no footstool. There was an end table with nothing on it. There were no flowers, no books, no scented candles, and the imitation wood-panel wallpaper looked worn. The place was missing those soft, womanly things that made houses into homes, and being reminded of it in this unexpected way seemed unfair. Denny felt an unexpected responsibility and guilt for it as well, and that didn't seem too fair either. Denny slumped onto the couch.

"You can turn on the heat if you want, but it shouldn't go past sixty-two. If you look, you'll see the line my Dad put on the wall above the thermo-thing with red magic marker. Just match the arrow with the line,"

and you'll help keep a roof over our heads,
he silently finished. Josephine walked over to the thermostat and Denny stared at the blank TV. He could have flipped the heat on himself. But he was not quite tall enough to do it without dragging in a dining room chair and climbing on it. No thanks. The sure-to-be awkward moment would have pegged him for a baby in his own house, and he felt strange enough as it was.

"Pizza money's right there," he said. He nodded toward the twenty-dollar bill in the hotel-style ash tray on the coffee table. "It's just a first night thing, so you may as well go for it while you can."

"You having some too?"

"Nah. I'll just heat up some of Dad's left-over franks and beans."

She laughed through her nose.

"Do I get a say in this? Old beans could be deadly. Silent and deadly. In fact, I think you busted a fart on the way through the door."

Denny looked over his shoulder and grinned.

"Did not."

"Did so."

"He who smelt it dealt it."

"I'm not a 'he,'" she said. "And the one who denied it supplied it."

Denny turned and dug his knees into the sofa's back cushion.

"The one who first whiffed gave the gift."

"Yeah, but the one to first blame laid the flame." Her return answer had snapped back like whiplash. She was good. Denny paused, then scrunched up his nose.

"Did not."

"Hmm." She tossed her coat on the chair and folded her arms. "Now seriously, what else is there in the fridge for you?"

"Nothing."

"Yeah right."

"Really."

Her look was hard to read, but for a second Denny saw strange emotions pass through her eyes. Did she think he was lying? He could walk her into the kitchen right now and prove the fridge held nothing but a half-loaf of rye bread, some ketchup, some French's mustard, an unopened tub of whipped butter, some old Hi-C, Dad's beer, and some crusted jars in the door that were a million years old. It was never stocked up. Dad called that a waste and besides, there were always leftovers from his last take-out lunch to throw in the microwave. Leftovers were the best, didn't she know that? Any guy knew it at least. Dad said so all the time.

"Draw me a picture," Denny said in a blunt effort to switch subjects. She surrendered a bit of a smile then, but the strange look in her eyes still left traces.

"Really?"

"Yes!" he nearly shouted, suddenly bouncing on his knees. The couch creaked beneath him. "Yes, yes, yes!"

She paused only a moment more.

"All right, then. Move the ashtray."

Denny did it and then made room on the couch for her to get settled. From her zippered bag she removed three different sizes of paper and carefully placed them an inch apart, side by side on the table. Next surfaced the thin black case that, when laid open and flat, revealed charcoal sticks of various lengths. Each was set in its own individual leather pocket and each had been honed to a different style of point. The knife had a sewn-in sheath and its sharpening stone sat in a half-moon shaped pouch.

"Can I have a paper towel, Denny?"

He hopped to it, intrigued to be part of the ritual. She folded the paper in half, placed it on the left side of the table, and proceeded to take off her rings, all eight of them. She arranged them in a circle with the left thumb-ring in the middle. She webbed her fingers, turned them outward, and stretched.

"OK, now what do you want me to draw first?" Her hands were floating above the art case, ready to select the right tool for the job. Denny shoved back, sat on his hands, and frowned.

"I changed my mind."

Josephine raised an eyebrow but kept her hands hovering over the charcoal sticks.

"You're playing me now, right?"

Denny shook his head and struggled to bite back the grin. He knew the game better than anyone, and Josephine Thompson was not going to march right into the Sanborn house and take over that easily. If she wanted to come back she would have to survive the report to Dad, so Denny was proving right here who was boss. Oh, he wanted to watch her draw in the worst way, but wanted more to see how far he could push. After all, it was her job to make nice-nice and he was just here for the ride.

"Tell me a story," he said.

"You're playing me," she said for the second time. "Tell me you're playing." Denny shook his head and smiled at his sneakers.

"Nope. Not playing. Don't you know any stories?"

"What kind of story do you want to hear?"

"A scary one." He looked back over. She was smiling now, not so much in a sweet way, but more in a knowing one. Her hands had migrated to her lap but the rings were still on the table.

"Do you want me to tell something like
The Monkey's Paw
?"

"Heard it," Denny said.

"What about
The One-Armed Brakeman
?"

"Too stupid. Why don't you make one up? Do you know how to do that? Make one up?"

She blinked a few times as if in pure disbelief at Denny's smart mouth, then looked away, thought for a moment, and turned back. Her voice went creepy.

"Turn off the overhead light, Denny, and flip on that table lamp over there. We need atmosphere to do this just right."

He obeyed and the room wore its shadows a bit deeper. The thickening winter darkness outside seemed to press against the windows and Denny got ready for a thrill. He had asked for it.

It was 4:09 P.M.

4.

Denny tried lifting his chin, going up on tip-toes, and jumping in place, but he could not see what Josephine was creating from his angle by the dining room archway. She was bent over the coffee table with one arm covering the work and the other drawing sweeps across the page. These broad motions were intertwined with little flicks of the wrist, rapid back to forth straight-hand, and various moments of smudge rubbing. Every ten seconds or so she would switch charcoal sticks and with each stick, she changed the grip at least twice. Her eyes remained hidden behind dangling braids. She was good. Denny knew this without even seeing the picture, for he could tell by her arm technique alone that she was a machine.

"C'mon!" he said. "Show me! What is it? How is it part of the story? What are you doing?"

She raised her head slowly. The lamp light caught her eyes and made mirrors. Her voice had gone toneless.

"I'm going to use the picture frame. Don't try to stop me."

She turned her drawing face down on the table, rose up, and made for the short mantel above the fireplace. The old, dusty picture frame she was going for sat at the back of the narrow shelf, wedged behind Dad's upstairs toolbox and a Rayovac security flashlight.

The article in question was Denny's first attempt at making straight lines, back from age one and a half. His mother had made a big deal about it by setting the paper into the oversized twelve-by-sixteen frame, but through the years the importance of the whole thing had faded. In fact, Denny had sort of forgotten the picture was there in the background until Josephine brought it up.

"Nice," she said, once the copper pinch-borders were removed and the pre-school scribbling was slipped out from between the thin glass face plates. For a moment Denny thought her tone was sarcastic, but her face was one of appreciation. She carefully placed the ancient page on the chair and set the now-empty frame next to her drawing on the table. She sat, clasped her hands, and looked over.

"Turn away while I frame my page, Denny. This is it. One peek while it's not caged behind the glass and both of us could be killed. For real, for real."

Denny spun toward the kitchen as fast as he could. Not only was the set-up getting better by the minute, but there was something about Josephine Thompson herself that was actually starting to spook him a bit. She was deep with this, no laughs and no smiles. She really wanted to scare him.

Cool.

"OK, you can turn around," she said. "The danger is locked up for now."

Denny raced back into the living room, eyes wild and ready, but the picture frame was still laying face down. Not fair! Bogus times two, and he was about to stamp, whine, and complain about it when Josephine asked him a question.

"Ever kill a bug, Denny?"

His eyes widened. Most ghost stories started something like,
"Deep in the dark woods outside this summer camp in the Catskills,"
or
"Years ago in this old house on the hill,"
but this one was going to be personal.

Double cool.

"Yeah, I've killed bugs."

"Ever kill bugs just for fun?"

"Yes, yes!" he shouted, thinking about the ants he'd torched with a magnifying glass last spring by the old dumpster behind the 15th Street Pep Boys. Then of course was the hot July afternoon when he was hiding under the Wilton Avenue Bridge, plucking the legs off daddy long legs spiders and watching the wriggling oval bodies cut across rainbow patterns in the oil slicks. And who could forget the countless lightening bugs he got by handclap, the houseflies he got by
TV Guide,
and the basement waterbugs he got by the old-fashioned sneaker. Oh, he was guilty of the crime all right. He was guilty as all hell.

"Yes. I kill them! I kill them all the time!" His eyes were shining and Josephine's eyes were shining right back.

"Sit down and chill, Denny."

He sat.

"Breathe deep."

He breathed. She folded her hands and leaned in.

"We kill those little pests because they're small and ugly. They crawl, they buzz, they bite, and they sting, so we squash the life out of them every chance that we get."

Caught in the trance of her eyes, Denny suddenly felt his skin come alive with a sick rush of the creepy-crawly itchies. He scratched his arms and legs furiously.

"They hate us," she continued. "We kill them by the thousands and think of them as helpless, but they are not. From the beginning of time the souls of all dead bugs have been gathering in the deepest pit of the earth, growing and forming a nasty demon-king, the dark spirit of all insects that waits for revenge in a hot puddle of slime."

"Revenge?"

"That's right, revenge. And if its soul was ever released the beast would keep on coming, never ever to stop." She picked up the picture frame and started to turn it around. "This is the Slither-Shifter, never before seen by human eyes."

The portrait came around to full front and for a moment Denny was speechless with awe. It was a horrid picture of partials and pieces, all drawn in fine detail. There were ten slanted eyes, all without pupils and each made up of what seemed like hundreds of miniature black bulbs. Below them was a lipless mouth overrun with jagged, uneven fangs. There was no body, but the proportion was cleverly hinted by two half legs, barbed at the joints and reaching out with dripping pincer claws. The one drawn wing had poisoned-looking stingers poking out at the veined cross-sections of webbing, and the whole thing looked mad as blazes.