Rose Madder (51 page)

“I know.”

Gert squeezed her arm. “It'll be fine. I promise.”

“Okay, you know best.”

“Yeah, right, dream on. But I
do
know he shouldn't be hard to find, if he's still cruising around in that wheelchair. If you see him, keep away from him. Do you understand?
Keep away from him!”

Lana looked at her with deep dismay. “What are you going to do?”

“Take a leak before I die of uremic poisoning. Then go to the Security office and tell them that a man in a wheelchair tried to snatch my purse. We'll go from there, but step one is getting him the hell away from our picnic.” Rosie wasn't here, she might have a date, or some other appointment, and Gert had never been so grateful for anything in her life. She was his trigger; with Rosie not around, they had a chance of neutralizing him before he did any damage.

“Do you want me to wait for you while you go to the toilet?” Lana asked nervously.

“I'll be fine.”

Lana frowned at the path leading back through the grove. “Maybe I'll wait anyway,” she said.

Gert smiled. “Okay. This won't take long, believe me.”

She had almost reached the comfort station when a sound impinged on her thoughts: someone panting, and hard. No—
two
someones. A smile curved the corners of Gert's large mouth. Someone was enjoying a little afternoon delight behind the toilets, from the sound. Just having a nice little—

“Talk
to me, you bitch!”

The voice, so low it sounded almost like the growl of a dog, froze the smile on Gert's lips.

“Tell me where she is, and do it
right now!”

G
ert ran around the side of the squat brick building so fast she barely avoided hitting the abandoned wheelchair and going ass over teakettle. The bald man in the motorcycle jacket—Norman Daniels—was standing with his back to her, holding Cynthia so tightly by her thin upper arms that his thumbs had nearly disappeared into her scant flesh. His face was jammed down against hers, but Gert could see the peculiar cant to Cynthia's nose. She'd seen that before, once in her own mirror. The girl's nose had been broken.

“Tell me where she is or you'll never have to bother with lipstick again, because I'll bite your fucking kisser right off your fa—”

Gert stopped thinking then, stopped hearing. She went on autopilot. Two steps took her to where Daniels was. As she took them, she laced the fingers of both hands together to make a cudgel. She raised this over her right shoulder, getting as much height as she could; she wanted all the velocity she could muster. Just before she brought her hands down, Cynthia's terrified eyes shifted to her, and Rosie's husband saw it happen. He was quick, Gert had to give him that. He was terribly quick. Her locked hands caught him and caught him hard, but not on the nape of the neck, where she had wanted to hit him. He had already started to wheel around, and her hands caught him on the side of his face and the angle of his jaw instead. Her chance for a quick no-fuss, no-muss knockout had passed. As he turned to face her, Gert's first thought was that he had been eating strawberries. He grinned at her with teeth that were still dripping blood. The grin horrified Gert, and filled her with the certainty that she had only managed to make sure two women were going to die back here instead of one. This wasn't a man at all. This was Grendel in a motorcycle jacket.

“Why, it's Dirty Gertie!” Norman exclaimed. “You wanna
rassle,
Gertie? Is that what you want? To
rassle?
Gonna whip me into submission with those 52-Ds of yours, is that what you're gonna do?” He laughed, patting the flat of one hand against his chest to communicate how tickled he was by the idea. The zippers on his jacket jingled.

Gert snatched a glance at Cynthia, who was looking down at herself as if wondering where her shirt had gone.

“Cynthia, run!”

Cynthia gave her a dazed look, took two hesitant steps backward, then simply leaned against the comfort station, as if just the thought of escape had tired her out. Gert could already see bruises rising on her cheeks and forehead, like fresh dough.

“Gert-Gert-bo-Bert,” Norman crooned, starting toward her. “Banana-fanna-fo-Fert, fee-fi-mo-Mert . . .
Gert!”
He laughed like a child at this, then armed some of Cynthia's blood off his mouth. Gert could see beads of sweat clinging to his naked skull. They looked like sequins. “Oooh, Gertie,” Norman crooned, and now his upper body began to sway from side to side, like the body of a cobra emerging from a snake-charmer's basket. “Oooh,
Gertie.
I'm gonna roll you like a doughnut. I'm gonna turn you inside out like a pair of gloves. I'm—”

“Then why don't you come on and do it?” she barked at him. “This ain't the high-school prom, you chickenshit asshole! If you want me, come and get me!”

Daniels stopped weaving and gaped at her, seemingly unable to believe that this tub of guts had shouted at him. Had
taunted
him. Behind him, Cynthia retreated another two or three tired stumble-steps, the seat of her shorts whispering against the brick of the comfort station, then leaned against the wall again.

Gert cocked her arms and held them out in front of her. The palms of her hands faced each other, about twenty inches apart. Her fingers were splayed. She dropped her head between her shoulders, hulking like a mother bear. Norman observed this defensive posture, and his expression of surprise dissolved into amusement.

“What you gonna do, Gert?” he asked her. “You think you're gonna run some Bruce Lee moves on me? Hey, I got news for you, he's
dead,
Gertie. Just like you're gonna be in about fifteen seconds—just a fat old nigger bitch lying dead on the ground.” He laughed.

Gert suddenly thought of Lana Kline, glancing nervously around and saying that maybe she would wait for Gert to use the bathroom.

“Lana!”
she screamed at the top of her voice.
“He's here! If you're still there, run and get help!”

Rosie's husband looked startled again for a moment, then relaxed. His smile resurfaced. He snatched a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure Cynthia was still there, then looked back at Gert. His upper body resumed its back-and-forth swaying.

“Where's my wife?” he asked. “Tell me that and maybe I'll only break one of your arms. Hell, I might even let you go. She stole my bank card. I want it back, that's all.”

Can't rush him,
Gert thought.
He has to come to me—there's no other way I have even a chance of handling him. But just how am I supposed to make him do that?

Her thoughts turned to Peter Slowik—the parts that had been missing, and the places where the concentration of bite-marks had been the heaviest—and thought she might know.

“You give the term
eat me
a whole new meaning, don't you, fagboy? Just sucking his cock wasn't enough for you, was it? So what do you say? Are you coming for me, or do women scare you too much?”

The smile did not just slip from his face this time; when she called him a fagboy it fell off so suddenly that Gert almost heard it shatter like an icicle on the steel toes of his boots. The weaving stopped.

“I'LL KILL YOU, YOU BITCH!”
Norman screamed, and charged.

Gert turned sideways, just as she had when Cynthia charged her on the day Rosie had brought her new picture down to the basement rec room at D & S. She kept her hands lowered longer than she did when she was teaching throw-holds to the girls, knowing that not even his blind rage was enough to guarantee her success—this was a powerful man, and if she didn't suck him all the way in, she'd be chewed up like a rat in a threshing machine. Norman reached for her, his lips already peeling back from his teeth, getting ready to bite. Gert tucked even further, her fanny slapping against the brick wall, and thought,
Help me, God.
Then she seized both of Norman's thick, hairy wrists.

Don't spoil it by thinking about it,
she told herself, and turned back toward him, socking one big hip into his side and then snap-pivoting to her left. Her legs spread, then bunched, and her corduroy jumper never had a chance; it split up the back almost all the way to her waist with a sound like a pineknot exploding in a fireplace.

The move worked like a charm. Her hip had become a
ball-bearing and Norman went flying helplessly across it, his expression of rage turning to a faceful of shock. He crashed headfirst into the wheelchair. It overturned and landed on top of him.

“Wheee,” Cynthia said in a husky little croak from where she was leaning against the wall.

Lana Kline's brown eyes peered cautiously around the side of the building. “What is it? What are you shouting ab—” She saw the bleeding man trying to crawl out from beneath the overturned wheelchair, saw the bright malevolence in his eyes, and stopped talking.

“Run and get help,” Gert snapped at her. “Security. Right now. Scream your head off.”

Norman shoved the wheelchair away. His forehead was only dripping blood, but his nose was gushing like a fountain. “I'm going to kill you for that,” he whispered.

Gert had no intention of giving him a chance to try. As Lana turned and fled, howling at the top of her lungs, Gert landed on Norman Daniels in a flying drop that Hulk Hogan would have envied. There was a lot of her to drop—two hundred and eighty pounds at last count—and Norman's efforts to get to his feet ceased at once. His arms collapsed like the legs of a card-table that has been asked to hold a truck engine, his already wounded nose slammed into the hard-packed dirt between the brick wall and the fence, and his balls were driven into one of the wheelchair footrests with paralyzing force. He tried to scream—his face certainly looked like the face of a man who is screaming—and produced only a harsh wheezing sound.

Now she was sitting on top of him, the jumper's split skirt hiked almost all the way to her hips, and as she sat there, wondering what to do next, she found herself remembering the first two or three times in Therapy Circle when Rosie had finally mustered enough courage to speak. The first thing she told them was that she had terrible backaches, backaches that even lying down in a hot bath could sometimes not ease. And when she had told them why, many of the women had nodded in recognition and understanding. Gert had been one of the nodders. Now she reached down and pulled the split skirt higher, revealing a pair of vast blue cotton underpants.

“Rosie says you're a kidney man, Norman. She says that's because you're one of those shy guys who don't like to leave
marks. Also, you like the way she looks when you hit her there, don't you? That sick look. All the color goes out of her face, doesn't it? Even her lips. I know, because I had a boyfriend who was that way. When you see that sick look on her face, it fixes something inside you, doesn't it? At least temporarily.”

“. . . bitch . . .” he whispered.

“Yeah, you're a kidney man, sure, I can tell a lot from faces, it's a talent I have.” She was using her knees to wriggle her way up his body. She had made it almost to his shoulders. “Some guys are leg men, some guys are ass men, some guys are tit men, and then there are
some
guys, weirded-out assholes like you, Norman, who are kidney men. Well, you probably know the old saying—‘To each her own, said the old maid as she kissed the cow.' ”

“. . . off me . . .” he whispered.

“Rosie's not here, Norm,” she said, ignoring him and wriggling a little higher, “but she left you a little message from her kidneys, by way of
my
kidneys. I hope you're ready, because here it comes.”

She knee-walked one final step, positioned herself over his upturned face, and let go. Ah, sweet relief.

At first Norman didn't appear to realize what was happening. Then understanding came. He screamed and tried to buck her off. Gert felt herself rising and used her buttocks to thump herself back down on top of him. She was surprised he was able to make as much of an effort as he had, after the pounding he had taken.

“No, you don't, me foine bucko,” she said, and went on voiding her bladder. He was in no danger of drowning, but she had never seen such revulsion and anger on a human face. And over what? A little hot water. And if anyone in the history of the world had ever needed pissing on, it was this sick fu—

Norman gave a vast, inarticulate cry, reached up with both hands, grabbed her forearms, and sank his nails into them. Gert screamed (mostly in surprise, although it
did
hurt like hell) and shifted her weight backward. He timed her move perfectly and flung himself up again as she made it, harder than before this time, and succeeded in tipping her over. She went sprawling against the brick wall to her left. Norman stumble-staggered to his feet, his face and bald head running
with moisture, his motorcycle jacket dripping with it, the plain white tee-shirt beneath the jacket plastered to his body.

“You pissed on me, you cunt,” he wheezed, and lunged for her.

Cynthia stuck her foot out. Norman tripped over it and went sprawling face-first into the wheelchair again. He scrambled away from it on his hands and knees, then turned. He tried to get up, almost made it, then fell back, panting, looking at Gert with his bright gray eyes. Crazy eyes. Gert started toward him, meaning to put him down and keep him down. She would break his back like a snake if that was what it took, and this was the time to do it, before he found enough strength to get on his feet again.

He reached into one of the motorcycle jacket's many pockets, and for one stomach-freezing moment she was sure he had a gun, that he was going to shoot her two or three times in the gut.
At least I'll die with an empty bladder,
she thought, and stopped where she was.