Love and Other Wounds (10 page)

Green goes into the bathroom. It is steamy from the shower. Green pulls back the curtain. Aaron looks at Green, squinting against the water's spray.

“What the fuck are you—” he says. Then Green is on him. Green gets the belt loop around the neck. He yanks the belt's tail above Aaron's head. The noose tightens. Aaron loses his footing. He slides onto his back in the tub. His fingers claw at the belt. The belt bites deep into his neck. Green tries to keep the angle right. He sits on the toilet and leans back like a man waterskiing. He puts his feet on Aaron's shoulders. He yanks the belt toward the ceiling. He feels the man's skull uncork from his spine.

Green stands back up. He lifts Aaron. Green's body shakes with the strain. He gets the belt over his head. He ties Aaron's body to the shower curtain rod.

Green stages the scene. He remembers the times he helped clean up an auto-choke death. He re-creates scene details. He leaves the water running. He puts the laptop on the toilet lid. He opens up four tabs' worth of porn. He goes real dirty with the selections.

He plays what will come next in his mind. A maid will find the body. She will be bought or frightened. Everyone will know the drill. The mess will be cleaned up. They will hide the evidence of a jerk-off death. They will clean up evidence of the murder along with it. They will slap a cover-up over his cover-up. No one will look close enough to dig down two layers deep.

He calls Victor from the car.

“Cleanup on aisle seven,” Green says. He hangs up before Victor can ask him what he means.

He goes home. He writes. It goes slow. He leaves nothing out but his name. He leaves nothing UNSAID. He copies and pastes it into an e-mail. He sends it to everyone he can. He wishes Sarah could read it. It is a press release. It is a moral fucking inventory.

I love you.

I watch you bleed. I pull back your sweatshirt. I rip the bloody cloth with adrenaline Hulk-hands. I watch blood bubble from the bullet hole, frothy and too fast. The bullet caught you high and hard where the shoulder meets the neck. The bullet burst out the other side of you and smacked into the liquor store's wall. And now you are bleeding too fast to live. Too fast for us to fix here on this dirty kitchen floor. You need a hospital. I tell you we will get you there.

Rift says no hospital.

We came back to his place after the job went bad. In the yard out back, Rift's dog barks, the kind of sound that calls up caveman fears from the base of your brain. The dog growls. It whips drool chains around like a biker looking to beat ass.
Part pit bull, part cane corso. All killer. So is Rift. He paces. He rubs on an india ink neck tattoo. He counts bloodstained money. He says no hospital. He says with a bullet wound, doctors got to call the cops in. He says after the doctors sew you up, the cops will make you for the liquor store job in two seconds. He says you'll give up me and my faggot ass in two more. He says once the cops get to me, me and my faggot ass will flip on Rift faster than a Chinese gymnast. He says after that one clerk went for his piece and plugged you, Rift had to do them both. He painted the cigarette shelf and the boner-pill display with a fresh coat of brains and hair. He says the two cooling bodies turn the job into a capital case for all three of us. He says it's a death jolt for sure if we take you to the hospital with a gunshot wound. He says if you're bleeding out, you die to save me and him. Too bad so sad.

I love you.

You can't talk. You are past talking now. Your eyes, beautiful and fear-wide, beg me. I tell Rift you won't say anything to the cops. I tell him I know how strong you are. I tell him that you have to go to the hospital. I tell him that I'm taking you and he can kill me if he wants to stop me. I stand up. Rift picks his pistol up from next to the pile of bloody money.

Rift says he's done fucking around.

One bullet in the head of each the Koreans behind the counter means the Ruger still has four shots. Plenty enough for me and you. He points it at me. He says he's chopping up one corpse or two tonight, my choice. He says he'll use our meat to teach the dog to hunger for long pig. Says if I want to be with you so bad, we can mix together in his dog's ass. Behind him the dog scratches the glass door and shows me his teeth, the back of his throat. It bites the air as an appetizer. I know I can't let you die. I know there has to be a way out.

I love you.

I move past him to the glass door. The dog goes epileptic with blood lust. I open the door. Time does me a favor and slows down. I dodge dragon teeth. I get the dog by the collar. I unchain him. I barely control him. My grip won't last long. I tell Rift to get the car started. I tell him I'm taking you to the hospital. I tell him there won't be any cops called. Maybe animal control at worst. Because by the time we get to the hospital, there won't be any bullet wounds left. I aim the dog at you. At your shoulder. Rift gets it.

Rift says oh shit oh shit oh shit.

I set the dog on you. The dog bites down hard. You scream. Of course you do. He resets his bite and gives you a death shake. He grinds the muscle of your shoulder to hamburger. He chews the bullet wound away. When it's done I rip him off you and throw him back in the backyard. He smears pink drool against the glass as he scratches at the door. I don't care. I'm done with him. I lift you. You've never been so light. I tell Rift to get the car. We don't have much time. You're bleeding so much faster now. He runs to do it. He's scared of me now. He knows I can do anything. I know it too.

I love you.

. . . and now, the last bad thing about my fat: my fingers can't find the bullet holes. They must be there, because they brought me down and now there is sticky blood mixing with the sweat all over, but my clumsy hands can't find what kind of holes just got poked into my body. Are they just little puckers in the flesh? Or is it worse than that? Are scoops of me missing?

Somebody will write about this on the Internet. I bet they call the article “Fatty and Clyde” or something like that. Everyone will read it and chuckle. And everyone will look at me and see something else, which is what always happens. That's how Benny got to me when I should have known better. He looked right at me and he saw me.

Men sit next to me on the Metrolink and talk about women like I'm not even there. I'm just the thing taking up two seats
when the train gets crowded. Everyone shifts their body away from me. Nobody points and laughs unless there's a kid. Then the mom can try to shush the little kid and maybe smile an apology and then look away, tell the kid it's not polite to stare. Honest, it's okay when the kid stares. At least it stops me from feeling invisible.

The others, the adults, they look and they just see other things. They look at me and their faces change, and I see my reflection in every little gesture and twitch. They look away and I look away.

So when Benny puts his tray across from mine at the Galleria food court, I don't believe him for a second. But he is so pretty, really, like Brad Pitt in
Thelma and Louise
. Later on I'll learn that he's from Springfield, down in the opposite corner of the state, same as Brad. And once he'll even try to tell me that they're cousins. Yeah, right, I'm sure Brad Pitt just has dozens of relatives who work for the St. Louis mob. What kind of cousin, I ask, like your mother's brother's son or what? And he says, no, I mean cousin cousin, like that means something.

But all that comes later. When Benny sits across from me I'm sitting in a corner of the food court with my fried rice and egg rolls, thinking about the store. I want to be a salesgirl. Mr. Nesbitt laughed when I told him, and said he didn't know what he'd do without me working the computers. The salesgirls, like Amanda who sits in the middle of the food court, don't know half what I do about carats and cut and clarity, but they look like the kind of woman you want to drape in diamonds. And now I'm replaying the conversation in my head, the way Mr. Nesbitt won't look at me while he laughs at the idea. And then there's Benny staring straight into my eyes and asking if this seat is taken.

He sits across from me talking and smiling. I'm trying not to stare at him. The napkin I put over my General Tso's chicken is turning orange from the grease it's drinking. As soon as this gorgeous hunk gets up and leaves, I'm going to dip my crab rangoon in the General Tso's sauce and suck out the cream cheese. But he doesn't leave, and after he tells one lame joke he winks at me. I wonder if the girls at Nesbitt's maybe hired this guy or something.

I've met chubby chasers, and this guy isn't one. Guys like that like to say something about my size right away, to try and make me feel comfortable. Oh God, like how they like a woman with some meat on her bones. Like maybe they're planning on cooking me up later.

He's not looking around the room while we talk, either. Most men, when they end up in a conversation with me in a bar or something, they're always looking around. Maybe they're looking for better options, but mostly, I think, it's because they're afraid someone might see them. A friend told me this joke once. I guess it's a joke men tell to each other:

Why's a fat girl like a moped?

They're a lot of fun to ride, but you wouldn't want your friends to see you on one.

Benny looks right in my eyes when he talks to me. His eyes are clear blue, and I don't see myself reflected in them at all.

He asks if I want to go see a movie after work. I never told him that I worked at the mall. I could have been shopping. This is something I don't think about until later. At the time I can hardly think at all. But later on, it will come back to me and make perfect sense.

Back at the store, Amanda corners me. Her skin is the color of Arizona dirt, and it's stretched so tight you can see three sides of her collarbones. She asks me who I was talking to. Just
some guy. Pretty cute, she says back, the way you'd say it to a niece who had not yet admitted to liking boys. Whatever, I say, just like your niece would.

After work, I stop at Lion's Choice and pick up a few roast beef sandwiches and eat them while I drive, barely chewing at all. He's taking me to dinner, and I'll be damned if I'm going to the restaurant hungry. He's not really going to show up, I tell myself as I drive and swallow. There's no way. Maybe he's just into fat chicks, I tell myself. But that doesn't feel right.

Maybe he's hogging, I think. I read one time about guys who will set out to pick up the fattest thing they can find, and they all show up someplace and the guy with the biggest girl wins. Wins what, I don't know. Respect? I can see in my head a table full of women like me, all of us knowing what is going on and not a one of us doing a thing about it while the men get drunk and laugh at us. For the hundredth time I cancel the date in my head and then remind myself that I don't even have this guy's number. My fate, at least for the night, is sealed.

It takes me about three hours to get dressed, an hour of that in the shower, getting everything, shaving my legs, even that patch down by my ankle. I have to hold my breath to reach it. I'm lucky I don't break my neck. Choosing a dress takes longer. Black, of course. Black's slimming, you know. I put my makeup on using a mirror and trying not to look at myself. Then I eat a pint of Cherry Garcia standing over the sink, thinking he's not going to come and if he does then that might be even worse and that there's something wrong with him; there must be something wrong, but even if there is I don't care because at least that kind of wrong will be something new. When the doorbell rings, I just about bite through the spoon.

We eat Italian on the Hill, and I get fettuccini with white sauce and laugh at his jokes, which aren't very funny. He tells me he works in contracting, and I ask him what that means, and he fumbles a bit. So we drink more, and I let myself get drunker than I should on a date, because if I don't I'm going to jump out of my skin. Which wouldn't be so bad, really.

After the dinner, after I refuse to have dessert, just say no, when he asks me if I want to go to his place, I say yes. I breathe in deep, trying to see if my nervous sweat has kicked up any of the smell, but I don't smell anything. The way Benny smokes, I'd be surprised if he can smell anything at all. We go to his place in the Central West End and it's done up in that way that looks tasteful but just means that you bought everything at the same store. And I'm looking around and he puts a hand on my shoulders and it's like someone set my insides on puree.

When we make love, he wants to leave the lights on, but I stand my ground. He shuts off the light. He almost glows in the dark.

When we lie in bed the light through his window throws my silhouette against the wall, hiding Benny's completely. He doesn't try to put his arm around me, thank God. He sits up against his headboard and smokes and talks. He lets the name Frank Priest slip, and anybody who reads the paper knows he's like the biggest mob boss in town, and another part of Benny becomes clear. Then he asks me what I do. I tell him I run a computer system at a store in the mall. He asks what kind of store and I tell him, jewelry, and he says, oh, really?

Two nights later he takes me to a bar, and the other women look at me with hateful eyes like maybe I'm holding Benny hostage. Benny gets up at one point to get us refills and some guy with gelled hair and an upturned collar comes by my table, the
muscles in his face slack and his eyes shot. He's trying to talk to me but he's laughing too hard to do it. At another table behind him his friends are tamping down their giggles like children in church.

The guy never gets his line out. Maybe it was about a moped, I'll never know. Benny comes out of the dark and doubles the guy with a punch in the stomach. Then he gets both hands in the crisp bristles of the guy's hair and slams his head against our table, making my amaretto sour jump. The guy just drops after that. Benny holds his hand out to me, palm up, and says, m'lady. His hand has little specks of blood on it. I take it in my own and I walk out of that place feeling like I left two hundred pounds sitting on the bar.

That night, after we make love, I tell him I know what it is that he wants. And that it's okay.

Yeah? He asks me.

Yes, I tell him. Just tell me what your plan is, and let's work together to make it better.

It turns out that his plan needs a lot of work. Benny doesn't know much about jewelry stores, or even jewelry. So I tell him about the security room and its own special server, which I can access. I tell him about the loose stone set, and how they keep another box just like it full of cubic zirconium fakes.

He talks about us robbing it together, like Bonnie and Clyde. You could wear a mask, he tells me. And I just look at him. A mask? What kind of mask could I wear?

He wants to blow the safe. He's already got a bomb, he says. He shows it to me, how you just twist these wires onto those connectors and then push down the little plunger and boom! Never thought I'd learn how to set up a bomb. When I tell him that we won't need to blow anything up, that the best stuff sits
out in the inventory room so people can look through it, he gets a look on his face like I just took away his lollipop. He spent a lot of money on the bomb, he says. Well, it doesn't go bad, does it? I ask. Just put it in the closet, and maybe we'll need it next time.

Over the next two weeks I lose ten pounds. In that number there's a future where diamond money can buy the gastric bypass, buy new clothes, the kind of clothes they put in the windows of the stores at the mall. There's a future where people could see me and Benny at a bar somewhere and not laugh or gape or guess I'm his sister. And we finally come to make a plan that I'm pretty sure will work. When we finally get it all set out and planned, Benny gets out a bottle of champagne and after a toast he pours some of the champagne on me and licks it off, and I don't push him away or wonder how I smell. I just look up at the ceiling and see that other life hanging there, so close I can almost taste it.

The morning of the robbery, we leave from Benny's place, each in our own car. Just before we pull out, I get back out and head back inside. Benny gives me a look like, what? I just point to my stomach and roll my eyes. Let him think I have last-minute jitters. It takes only a minute to do what I have to do. Then we're on course.

None of the salesgirls hanging around the display cases say hello. My card opens the door into the back of the store. I boot up the store server, then buzz the door to the inventory room. Jack, a sweet old guy with a gun on his ankle, lets me in. I boot up the security server, then wreck it with a few clicks of the mouse. I act confused and ask Jack to check a connection across the room. While he does that, I put a little red sticker on the top of the loose stone case, the one without the fakes in it. Jack
comes back and tells me the wires are plugged tight, and I say, well, that probably makes it the motherboard. Let me make a call. I step outside of the inventory room and dial Benny's number. He doesn't answer, but he's not supposed to. He's coming from the food court where we first met. He should be here in the time it takes me to take five deep breaths.

He wears a wig and dark glasses, and he steps into the store with his silver pistol pointing right at Amanda's face. With his left hand he grabs her by the hair and yanks her across the counter. That's how skinny she is. And then he's pushing her to the back of the store and one of the other salesgirls starts screaming. Benny pushes past me without even looking and gets Amanda to open the back door and then just pulls open the inventory door, because I zapped the electric lock when I fried the server. A few seconds later the gunfire starts.

Maybe Jack went for his gun. I don't know. But there are two loud pops and Amanda screams and then Benny is back out, kicking Amanda in front of him, the loose stone case in one hand and the pistol in the other. Right in front of me Amanda falls down and Benny points the gun down and there's a bang and all sorts of stuff slops out of Amanda onto the floor. I would never have guessed she'd have so much inside her.

Then Benny looks up at me, and even though he's wearing glasses and a wig I can see him perfectly, and he sees me, like we're both naked in the daylight.

I turn so I don't have to watch the gun barrel rise, or Benny's face when he pulls the trigger. That's why the bullets hit me in the back.

If it had gone according to the plan that both of us knew was a lie, then Benny would have headed out the door next to the Foot
Locker across the way; ditched his wig, glasses, and coat in the hall; and put the loose stone case inside the big plastic Gap bag he had tucked inside his pants. He would have gotten in his car and driven to the motel just past Six Flags on I-44. After the police questioning finished, I was supposed to drive there myself.

But first, I would have stopped at his apartment and unhooked Benny's bomb from the front door, where I'd hooked it up just before we left. I would have put the bomb back into the closet and gotten ready for my new life. But I guess Benny will just have to find it himself. See, Benny never really had me fooled. But he did make me hope.

Damn him for that.