Rose Madder (50 page)

“Hey!” someone shouted from the growing All-Day line. “Let's go, let's go!”

There were cries of agreement, and Monsieur World's Greatest Grandpa raised his videocam again. This time he seemed interested only in capturing Gert's new friend, Mr. Congeniality, on tape. Gert saw Chris look at him, saw the color mounting into his cheeks, saw the abortive move to cover the side of his face with his hand, like a crook coming out of the county courthouse after his arraignment. Any chance she might have had of finding something out here had now passed.

“It's
not
the guy!” Chris snapped. “Completely different! Now get your fat ass out of here, or I'll have you tossed out of the park.”

“Look who's talking,” Gert sniffed. “I could set a twelve-course
meal on what you're carrying behind you and never drop a single fork down the crack in the middle.”

“Get out! Right now!”

Gert stalked back toward the picnic area, her cheeks flaming. She felt like a fool. How could she have blown that so badly? She tried to tell herself it was the place—too loud, too confusing, too many people running around like lunatics, trying to have fun—but it wasn't the place. She was scared, that was why it had happened. The idea that Rosie's husband might have killed Peter Slowik was bad, but the idea that he might be
right here today,
masquerading as a paralyzed iron horseman, was a thousand times worse. She had run into craziness before, but craziness combined with this degree of craft and obsessive determination . . .

Where was Rosie, anyhow? Not here, that was all Gert knew for sure.
Not here
yet, she amended to herself.

“I blew it,” she muttered aloud, and then remembered what she told almost all the women who came to D & S: If
you know it, own it.

All right, she'd own it. That meant Pier Security was out, at least for the time being—convincing them might be impossible, and even if she succeeded, it might take too long. She had seen the bald biker in the wheelchair hanging around the picnic, though, talking to several people, most of them women. Lana Kline had even brought him something to eat. Ice cream, it had looked like.

Gert hurried back to the picnic area, needing to pee now but ignoring it. She looked for Lana or for any of the women who'd been talking to the bald guy, but it was like looking for a cop—there was never one around when you needed one.

And now she
really
had to go; it was killing her. Why had she drunk so goddam much iced tea?

N
orman rolled slowly back down the amusement park midway and toward the picnic area. The women were still eating, but not for much longer—he could see the first dessert trays being passed. He'd have to move fast if he wanted to act while most of them were still in one place. He wasn't
worried, though; the worry had passed. He knew just where to go in order to find one woman alone, one woman he could talk to up close.
Women can't stay away from bathrooms, Normie,
his father had once told him.
They're like dogs that can't pass a single damn lilac bush without stopping to squat and piddle.

Norman wheeled his chair briskly past the sign reading
TO COMFORT STATIONS.

Just one,
he thought.
Just one walking by herself, one who can tell me where Rose has gone if she's not here. If it's San Francisco, I'll follow her there. If it's Tokyo, I'll follow her there. And if it's hell, I'll follow her there. Why not? That's where we're going to end up, anyway, and probably keeping house together.

He passed through a little grove of ornamental firs and went freewheeling down a mild slope toward a windowless brick building with a door at either end—men on the right, women on the left. Norman rolled his chair past the door marked
WOMEN
and parked on the far side of the building. This was a very satisfactory location, in Norman's view—a narrow strip of bare earth, a line of plastic garbage cans, and a high stake privacy fence. He got out of the wheelchair and peered around the corner of the building, sliding his head out farther and farther until he could see the path. He felt all right again, calm and settled. His head still ached, but the pain had receded to a dull throb.

A pair of women came out of the toy grove—no good. That was the worst thing about his current stakeout position, of course, the way women so often went to the john in pairs. What did they do in there, for Chrissake? Finger each other?

These two went in. Norman could hear them through the nearest vent, laughing and talking about someone named Fred. Fred did this, Fred did that, Fred did the other thing. Apparently Fred was quite the boy. Every time the one doing most of the talking paused for breath the other one would giggle, a sound so jagged it made Normal feel as if someone were rolling his brain in broken glass the way a baker would roll a doughnut in sugar. He stood where he was, though, so he could watch the path, and he stood perfectly still, except for his hands, which opened and closed, opened and closed.

At last they came out, still talking about Fred and still giggling, walking so close together that their hips brushed and their shoulders touched, and Norman found himself
hard-put to keep from rushing after them and seizing their slutwhore heads, one head for the palm of each hand, so he could bring them together and shatter them like a couple of pumpkins stuffed full of high explosive.

“Don't,” he whispered to himself. Sweat ran down his face in large, clear droplets and stood out all over his freshly shaven skull. “Oh don't, not now, for Christ's sake don't lose it now.” He was shivering, and his headache had come back full force, pounding like a fist. The bright zigzags boogied and hustled around the edges of his vision, and his nose had begun to leak from the right nostril.

The next woman who came into view was alone, and Norman recognized her—white hair on top, ugly varicose veins on the bottom. The woman who'd given him the Yogurt Pop.

I got a pop for you,
he thought, tensing as she started down the concrete path.
I got a pop for you, and if you don't give me the answers I'm looking for, and right away, you're apt to find yourself eating every goddam inch of it.

Then someone else came out of the little grove of trees. Norman had seen her, too—the fat, nosy bitch in the red jumper, the one who had looked him over when the guy in the booth called him back. Once again he felt that maddening sense of recognition, like a name that dances impudently on your tongue, darting back every time you try to catch it.
Did
he know her? If only his head wasn't aching—

She still had her oversized purse, the one which looked more like a briefcase, and she was pawing around in it.
What you looking for, Fat Girl?
Norman thought.
Couple of Twinkies? A few Mallow Cremes? Maybe a—

And suddenly, just like that, he had it. He'd read about her in the library, in a newspaper article about Daughters and Sisters. There had been a picture of her crouched down in some asshole karate posture, looking more like a doublewide trailer than Bruce Lee. She was the bitch who told the reporter men weren't their enemies . . . “but if they hit, we hit back.” Gert. He didn't remember the last one, but her first name had been Gert.

Get out of here, Gert,
Norman thought at the big black woman in the red jumper. His hands were tightly clenched, the nails digging into his palms.

But she didn't. “Lana!” she called instead. “Hey, Lana!”

The white-haired woman turned, then walked back to Fat Girl, who looked like The Fridge in a dress. He watched the
white-haired woman named Lana lead old Dirty Gertie back into the trees. Gertie was holding something out to her as they went. It looked like a piece of paper.

Norman armed sweat out of his eyes and waited for Lana to finish her confab with Gert and come down to the toilet. On the other side of the grove, in the picnic area, desserts were now being finished up, and when they were gone, the trickle of women coming down here to use the bathroom would become a flood. If his luck didn't change, and change soon, this could turn into a real mess.

“Come on, come on,” Norman muttered under his breath, and as if in answer, someone came out of the trees and started down the path. It was neither Gert nor Lana the Yogurt Pop lady, but it was someone else Norman recognized, just the same—one of the whores he'd seen in the garden on the day he'd reconned Daughters and Sisters. It was the one with the tu-tone rock-star hair. The bold bitch had even waved at him.

Scared the hell out of me, too,
he thought,
but turnabout's fair play, isn't it? Come on, now. Just come on down here to Papa.

Norman felt himself getting hard, and his headache was entirely gone. He stood as still as a statue, with one eye peeking around the corner of the building, praying that Gert would not pick this particular moment to come back, praying that the girl with the half-green, half-orange hair wouldn't change her mind. No one came out of the trees and the girl with the fucked-up hair kept approaching. Ms. Punky-Grungy Scumbucket of 1994, come into my parlor said the spider to the fly, closer and closer, and now she was reaching out for the doorhandle but the door never opened because Norman's hand closed on Cynthia's thin wrist before she could touch the handle.

She looked at him, startled, her eyes opening wide.

“Come around here,” he said, dragging her after him. “Come on around here so I can talk to you. So I can talk to you up close.”

G
ert Kinshaw was hurrying for the bathroom, almost running, when—wonder of wonders—she saw the very woman she'd been looking for just ahead. She immediately opened her capacious purse and began hunting for the photograph.

“Lana!” she called. “Hey, Lana!”

Lana came back up the path. “I'm looking for Cathy Sparks,” she said. “Have you seen her?”

“Sure, she's throwing horseshoes,” Gert said, cocking a thumb back toward the picnic area. “Saw her not two minutes ago.”

“Great!” Lana started in that direction at once. Gert cast one yearning glance at the comfort station, then fell in beside her. She guessed her bladder would hold a little longer. “I thought maybe she'd had one of her panic attacks and just fired on out of here,” Lana was saying. “You know how she gets.”

“Uh-huh.” Gert handed Lana the fax photo just before they reentered the trees. Lana studied it curiously. It was her first look at Norman, because she wasn't a D & S resident. She was a psychiatric social worker who lived in Crescent Heights with her pleasant, non-abusive husband and her three pleasant, non-dysfunctional kids.

“Who's this?” Lana asked.

Before Gert could answer, Cynthia Smith walked by. As always, even under these circumstances, her weird hair made Gert grin.

“Hi, Gert, love your shirt!” Cynthia said smartly. This was not a compliment but just something the girl said, a little Cynthia-ism.

“Thanks. I like your shorts. But I bet if you really tried, you could find a pair that let even more of your cheeks hang out.”

“Hey, tell me about it,” Cynthia said, and went on her way with her small but undeniably cute fanny ticking back and forth like the pendulum of a clock. Lana looked at her with amusement, then turned her attention back to the photo. As she studied it she absently stroked her long white hair, which she had tied into a ponytail.

“Do you know him?” Gert asked.

Lana shook her head, but Gert thought she was expressing doubt rather than saying no.

“Imagine him without the hair.”

Lana did better than that; she covered the photo from the hairline up. Then she studied it more closely than ever, her lips moving, as if she were reading it rather than looking at it. When she looked up at Gert again, her face was both puzzled and concerned.

“I gave a Yogurt Pop to a guy this morning,” she began hesitantly. “He was wearing sunglasses, but—”

“He was in a wheelchair,” Gert said, and although she knew this was where the work really began, she felt a great weight slip off her shoulders, just the same. It was better to know than not to know. Better to be sure.

“Yes. Is he dangerous? He is, isn't he? I'm here with a couple of women who've been through a great deal of trauma in the last few years. They're pretty delicate. Is there going to be trouble, Gert? I'm asking for them, not me.”

Gert thought it over carefully before saying, “I think everything's going to be all right. I think the scary part's almost over.”

N
orman tore off Cynthia's sleeveless blouse, baring her teacup-sized breasts. He clamped one hand over her mouth, simultaneously pinning her to the wall and muzzling her. He rubbed his crotch against hers. He felt her trying to pull back, but of course there was no way she could do that and that excited him more, how he had her trapped here. But it was only his body that was excited. His mind was floating about three feet over his head, watching serenely as Norman leaned forward and clamped his teeth on Miss Punky-Grungy's shoulder. He battened on her like a vampire and began drinking her blood when it burst through the skin. It was hot and salty, and when he ejaculated in his pants, he was hardly aware of it, any more than he was aware of her screaming against his hard palm.

“G
o on back and hang with your patients until I give you the all-clear,” Gert told Lana. “And do me a favor—don't mention this to
anyone,
not yet. Your friends aren't the only women here today who are psychologically delicate.”