WIDOW (20 page)

She had the things off her arms, her breasts. She finished up on the last note, turning to exit in a perfect pirouette wearing the scarlet G-string.

The abrupt silence lasted a millisecond before they whistled and hooted and called out suggestions to her retreating back. In all that cacophony she heard it again. “You.” Then: “Hey, you.”

In the dressing room she asked Maybell, the older dancer with the puckered nipple, what she should do if the cop was waiting at her car out back.

“Come inside and get Bertram. He'll fix it.”

“What if someone else is waiting. Someone . . . dangerous.”

Maybell halted in putting lipstick over her stretched-thin lips and checked Shadow's eyes in the mirrored reflection. “Freak? Someone out front?”

“Yeah. Big guy. Tried to give me a hundred, I think, but I moved off. He scared me.”

“That case, have Bertram walk out with you.”

He said, when Shadow asked him, “I got to do that shit tonight? The place is full, two girls ain't come in, and I gotta walk you out?”

“Oh, just fucking forget it, you don't have to fucking whine about it.” She should have been startled at what a bad mouth she had developed, but everyone in the business talked that way. The word fuck meant no more than hello and goodbye. She threw the gym bag over her shoulder and thought about getting a gun. A big gun.

She checked both ways at the dancers' exit into the alley. Empty. Her fist tightened on the bag. Someone came out of the dark, she'd swing the damn thing. She had stiletto heels in there, cans of hairspray and hair gel. She wished she had a brick in it.

She slipped down the alley, sure now she was going to get a gun, and made it to the Toyota's door before the voice stopped her.

“You. Going. Somewhere?”

He was on the other side of the car. Lounging against a tall wood fence that separated the parking area from a residence, a bear waiting to make a run for her. She turned and moved into the alley again, her breath dead in her lungs. It was a long way back to the door.

Too long.

He was very fast, faster than she could have imagined. He pinned both her arms at her sides from behind. Her feet came off the pavement a half-inch. He said in a whiskey slur, “I offered you a hundred bucks. You think my money's different from those other geeks'?”

“No.”

“How ‘bout a date, then?”

“Maybe some other night.”

For a half-minute he didn't respond. He just held her in place. She thought, I can't swing the bag. If I kick up and back, I might hit his balls, but I might also hit his leg, and that would make him hurt me.

“Soon then,” he said. “Here's a down payment.” He let go one arm and she almost rammed her elbow into his fat gut, but something stopped her. His hand came in front of her face with the hundred in it. Still folded stiff along the length. As if he'd had it behind his ear, waiting to hand it over. “Take it,” he said.

She took it when he let go her other arm. A cold aura spread over her and she was no longer afraid. Her mind had slipped—someway, somewhere—and protected her from fear. She detested this man, but she knew he couldn't get to her, the real her, not when she went away into the dark corners of her mind.

He turned her around to face him and before she could stop it, he mashed his lips into hers, his tongue up hard against her teeth. He let her go and left the alley, away from where she was parked.

She spit twice, getting his saliva out. “God,” she muttered, sickened.

On the way home across the city to Seabrook, she never lost the coldness that had seized her. Instead, she found herself obsessing about the fat man and the way he had treated her—like a commodity—and her fury at this injustice burned harder, colder. Never mind that she was a titty dancer, flaunting her body before the public. Never mind that what she did for a living left an impression open to interpretation. She was a person, wasn't she? She had rights, didn't she? You couldn't buy her off a counter in Woolworth's. The last time she'd looked, there was no price tag on her back.

The big guy must have hung out at the club every night because no one knew, not even the manager, when Shadow would decide to dance. Some weeks she danced two days, other weeks she danced four or five, depending on how much money she needed. But whenever she danced now, the man was there in the audience with his hundred-dollar bill. She had the manager walk her to her car. The gorilla didn't accost her again. Not until the fourth week after the first time. When her guard was down and Bertram was too busy and too pissed off to walk her out.

This time the fat man hurt her.

“What do you want?” Again she was putty in the vice of his monstrous hands. She never had purchased that gun. She wished now she had.

“I want you, that's what I want. I'm tired of this fucking around. You gonna come across or am I gonna have to convince you?”

His fingers tightened. The flesh of her arms was crushed to the bone and then it began to hurt. “Stop it!”

He swung her around to face him and slapped her so hard she saw stars drifting down into the alleyway to lie pulsing on the pavement.

“I paid you a lotta money these last few weeks. I want something in return.”

She thought of telling him she'd call the cops, but she knew it wouldn't scare him off. He was like a natural disaster. Was there any way to stop a tornado?

“All right.” She was still wincing from the blow to her face and the pressure on her arms.

“Now?”

“I won't be dancing again until Saturday night. Meet me after work.”

Then he released her and she almost slumped to her knees. She wobbled and ground her teeth to remain upright. She heard his footsteps leaving the alley. She knew what she must do, for now she hated him—hated him enough to kill.

She brought her hand to her cheek and felt how hot it was where he'd slapped her.

A series of questions she'd like to ask the jerk began forming in her mind. They took over from the hate and gave her something else to concentrate on. There were so many questions she would like to ask that she couldn't keep them straight. She drove fast and loose on the freeway, lucky not to see a police cruiser.

Once in the mansion on the bay, she strode to the counter in the kitchen where Charlene kept a large yellow legal pad and a cup of pens for taking notes on the phone. She found a black ballpoint. She took it and the pad to her room.

Charlene padded behind her, wringing her hands. “What's the matter? Something's the matter. You get hurt? Shadow, what's wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, shutting Charlene out.

From behind the door: “Something's wrong. I know it is.”

“Nothing,” she said again, an edge of anger making her clip the word.

“I'm sorry.” Pause. Shuffling of slippers at the closed door. “If it's me, I'm sorry.”

Shadow didn't trust herself to explain how the heavy man accosting her in the alley had flashed her back to the night her children had been shot to death. How it was men, always fucking men, who ruined every goddamn thing in a woman's life. You had to watch them like fucking hawks or they were right there, in your face, trying to hurt you one way or the other. All they wanted to do was steal away your babies or rape you in the dark of night or frighten you with so many threats you couldn't refuse.

She needed to be left alone.

To write those questions down. And the plan involving the questions.

Her head came up and she said, “Charlene, you there?”

A small abashed “Yes.”

“Saturday night I'm bringing home company. Man company. When I do that, I'd appreciate it if you stayed in your room when you see us drive up after work.”

“Okay.” Still smaller, hardly a squeak.

Shadow wrestled suddenly with an impulse to fling open the door and reassure Charlene, but she couldn't, not the way she felt right now, not with this cold ice locking up her heart.

“See you in the morning,” she said, trying not to take it out on her friend.

Charlene was gone, evidently. There was a ringing silence in the house.

Shadow stretched out on her stomach in the middle of the bed. She clicked the ballpoint pen a few times while staring at the legal pad. The plan slowly jelled in her mind. Nothing about it seemed wrong, though she understood it was against the law both of God and man. That it was wrong according to law should have set off warning bells that maybe she was sliding back into that dark place where madness dwelled, but it did not. She had already killed once. That killing had been done to protect a friend. More might be done to protect herself and other women, and what was wrong with that? It might even protect children too, for that matter. And how often were they afforded real protection?

She printed out the word: GUN. Then crossed it out. She didn't know how to handle a gun. She wrote: KNIFE. Crossed it out. There were too many ways a knife might fail her. She wrote: POISON.

Stared at it. Wondered about it. What kind? She knew about household cleaners—bleach, lye, insecticide. She knew about some poison plants, having been warned about them as a child—belladonna, lily of the valley, honeysuckle, oleander. Even the smoke from burning an oleander bush could kill you. She needed the proper poison, one that worked fast. Fast and hard. Something painful for the victim. Oh yes, the more painful the better.

Beneath the word “poison,” she wrote the first question.

If you ever had thoughts about hurting someone you loved, would you go immediately for help or fight those thoughts on your own?

That was the question she wished she'd asked her husband. If she'd ever known he'd had those kinds of thoughts, she could have removed her children from the house and saved them. Blame. There was so much for which she was to blame. There must be some way she could make up for it.

If you were sexually excited but the woman said no, what would you do?

That was a good one. She'd have to decide when they answered if they were telling the truth. She'd make them tell the truth. She knew there would be more than one death. More than one poisoning. The world was just too full of men like the one who had hurt her tonight.

She continued writing down the questions she wanted to ask of men until she had ten of them. She went over the list several times, deciding if it was clear and direct enough. She didn't want any confusion, this was too important—it involved life or death. After a while, she wrote at the top of the pad in bold letters, TRUTH OR PAIN. But this wasn't a game like “Truth or Consequences.” She marked it out, going over the big letters again and again until there was a solid black box making them illegible. She could tell the men the name of the game once it was in play. Before then she didn't want them to see the list.

She glanced up from the pad at the bed she lay on. It had no headboard or footboard. It was a plain double mattress set on top of a rolling frame. Wouldn't do. Below the list of questions she added:

Iron bedstead.

Rope or scarves.

Whiskey. Good stuff.

A great sense of satisfaction at a job well done descended upon her and sleep tugged. She lay the pad and pen on the floor beside the bed and turned her cheek onto crossed arms. She'd rest a little. She'd get up in a minute and undress, turn out the light.

Before the minute had passed she was fast asleep, fully clothed, sprawled over the bed with her bare feet hanging off the end of the mattress. She didn't wake in nightmare or move until Charlene came knocking at noon, calling to tell her breakfast was ready.

~*~

After eating the pancakes Charlene had cooked, Shadow moved to the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink and opened the doors wide. She rummaged beneath, taking up bottles and cartons to inspect before putting them back again.

“What are you doing?” Charlene wanted to know. “What's this boric acid for?” She held up a quart plastic container.

“Roaches. That's what the state hospital used. Only thing seems to work. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“What are you looking for?”

“We have any rat poison?”

“Rat poison? We got rats?”

Shadow smiled a secret smile, her face turned away from Charlene. They had rats all right. There were rats every goddamn where. “I thought I heard them in the walls last night. In my room.”

Charlene shivered where she sat at the table, nibbling the folded pancake she held in one hand. “I never heard any rats in the house.”

“It's a big house. I know we have rats.”

“I don't think we have any poison for them.” Shadow swiveled from the sink cupboard. She stood, closing the doors, “Let's go to the feed store.”

“What feed store?”

“Well, I don't know where one is, but all these little towns outside Houston have them. I'll look in the phone book.”

“You really heard rats in the walls? I don't like rats.”

“Don't worry, we'll get rid of them.” For all time, she thought.

They had to drive all the way to Channelview, but they found a country feed store. It smelled of hay and chicken feed and chicken shit. In the back was a cage of yellow fluffy chicks for sale. They peeped and chirped their distress. A huge gray cat meandered the aisles, tail held high, king of his domain. Bet that old torn would like to get the little chicks, she thought.

While Charlene played with a barrel of horses' hooves that were sold as chew toys for dogs, Shadow searched out the section of wall that held cans of poisons. All of them were wrapped with warning labels or had a skull and crossbones signature on the front. She read the ingredients on the back of one product: Warfarin—45%. Anticoagulant.

Made them bleed to death. Inside, she guessed. Down in their black guts.

The other rat poisons had a lesser concentration of the deadly chemical. She chose the forty-five percent. On the way to the cash register, she picked up a can of rose-and-flower insecticide spray, a small jeweled cat collar, flea powder, and cat wormer. Just normal stuff people bought from a feed store. She didn't want them remembering her buying just the rat poison.