Authors: Jim Shepard

Kiss of the Wolf (24 page)

She pulled herself up on an elbow, stunned. She heard a heavy thump and a high-pitched bark from Audrey. Bruno dragged Todd into the room by the feet and dumped him on the floor beside the coffee table. Then she heard him hustle the dog through the kitchen by the collar and pitch her down the stairs. There was a spectacular crash.

He came back into the living room and stood over them, breathing hard.

Audrey was barking and crying in the basement, and Joanie could hear her dragging herself around, but her voice was getting weaker. Bruno ran his hand over his hair. He flexed his shoulders to fix his shirt. He waited until there was only one solitary bark. Then he turned on the lamp and took a seat on the couch.

Todd was up on his elbows, too. His nose was bleeding. He was crying, but he wiped his face fiercely.

Bruno was looking into her eyes. “
âSordo come una compana,'
” he said. “âMy stone-deaf love.'”

There was a stabbing pain in her shoulder blade when she tried to put weight on her other elbow. She cried out.

“Pretty good tumble you took,” Bruno remarked.

“
Fucker,
” Todd said. It was the first time she'd heard him use the word.

“Fuckin' Flyin' Wallenda,” Bruno said.

“What're you
do
ing?” she said. “What do you
want
from us? We don't have your money.”

He put his hand out flat toward her. “Forget the money. The money's history. Did I ask about the money? The money's over. Please. Let's talk about you.

She went faint and cold and momentarily had the impression she couldn't make out the color of the rug.

Todd was sniffling and got to his hands and knees. Bruno put a foot on his rear and pushed him over.

“Let me tell you a little secret,” Bruno said. “Tommy was coming to meet us that night. He parked a mile or so up the road. We were far away and had a bad angle on it, but we saw him get hit. It was pretty dark but we saw some of the car. We saw someone get out.”

Joanie remembered the darkened parked car right before the accident. She leaned more on one elbow and pulled her other arm closer to her body to lessen the pain. “Why didn't you do something?” she asked.

“How did
we
know what was goin' down?” Bruno said. “The people whose money we had were already a little upset.”

“You knew then?” Joanie said. “You knew then it was me?”

He shook his head. “Not until I saw you again. Saw the two a you again. You're not exactly fuckin' archcriminals.”

He stood up and leaned the brass floor lamp at a forty-five-degree angle between the sofa and the floor. The neck of the lamp assembly was on the arm of the sofa. He kicked through it and the lamp part snapped off. He picked up what was left, the rod and base, and wrapped the electric cord around it. Her insides seized up and then released. “Why didn't you do something then?” she whispered.

“Fuck you,” Bruno said.

He unscrewed the base and yanked the cord out of the rod. What was left in his hands was about three feet long and hollow and an inch thick.

“Now, what Joey's up to, I don't know,” he said. “He was up in Hartford with us, I know that. This I took to be a bad sign. But I'm in deep shit. You understand me? I'm up to my fucking ears.”

“We don't have the money,” she said.

“Nobody else can have it, Joanie,” he said matter-of-factly. “Where else could it fuckin' go?”

“Maybe it blew away,” she said. “Maybe the cops took it.”

He snorted.

“Think of it like having a overdue book out of the library,” he said. “Having a
real expensive
book out of the library. And a real cranky librarian.” He stood up. He hefted the brass rod. “Where is it?”

“We don't know,” she said.

He brought the rod down on Todd's backside. Todd howled.

“You son of a
bitch,
” she screamed. He stepped across Todd and put a foot on her bad shoulder and pinned her. The pain spiraled through her, and she saw lights.

He stood back off her shoulder. When she opened her eyes, Todd was on his side, curled and holding himself.

“What am I gonna do with you?” Bruno asked, like he was talking to a dog that was resisting being house-trained. “What am I gonna do?”

“I can't believe you hit him like that,” she said. She was whimpering from the pain and the shock.

“Deal with it,” he said.

Rage flooded her and she thought, I'm not sitting still for this, goddamit, and she rocked forward. The pain was blinding. She got more upright, though.

“You think maybe now I should be convinced of your sincerity and I should just go away, maybe with a heartfelt apology. Right?” Bruno said. “Is that what you'd like?”

She looked at him with hatred and nodded.

“That's very nice,” he said. “That's nice to know. Now here's some news for you:
I give
a
fuck.
”

“You son of aâ” she said, and he hit her again, a baseball swing, in the ribs. He hit Todd across the thigh.

She thought, I have to kill him. He's going to kill
us.

“Ask yourself,” Bruno said. “Why did you do this? Say: why did I do this?”

“I'll kill you,” she managed to say.

“You did it because it was me, didn't you, Joanie? Because you had me so far on the fuckin' hook. âWhat's
Bruno
gonna do about it? The sappy
fuck.'
”

He hit her again.

She shook. She crossed her arms. She tasted blood in her mouth.

“Ah, you're gonna go all the way to the end, aren't you, Joanie? You're gonna go down with me, aren't you?” he said.

Joanie opened her eyes and could see he was leaning closer.

“Joanie remembers from Blessed Sacrament: martyrs get the crown,” he said. “All those saints, Joanie, huh? All they had to do was die.”

“Maybe he never had it,” she said.

He leaned even closer. He was only inches from her face. “We searched his house,” he whispered. “We searched everything.”

She closed her eyes and ground the back of her head into the rug. He had her bad arm. The pain was like someone sawing a wire through her shoulder socket.

“All that time,” Bruno said. “You know what I was waiting for? I was waiting for you to tell me the truth.”

He got closer still.

“What did you want from me?” he whispered. “What did you ever want from me?”

“Oh, God, oh, God,” she said.

“What you did to me,” he whispered. “After all I felt about you.” She saw tears in his eyes through her own. Todd was on his knees behind him and swung the champagne bottle by the neck, and the sound it made on Bruno's temple was new, was nothing she'd heard before. He made a guttural noise, like a fishbone was caught back in his throat, and he went over. And she had the brass rod in her hands, and Todd had the bottle, and in agony and together they pulled themselves over him and fell on him, as if their retribution were absolution. As if for now it was the only grace imaginable.

About the Author

Jim Shepard (b. 1956) is the author of four short story collections and seven novels, most recently
The Book of Aron
, which has been shortlisted for both the Kirkus Prize and the American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal. Originally from Connecticut, Shepard now lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He is the J. Leland Miller Professor of English at Williams College, where he teaches creative writing and film. He won the Story Prize for his collection
Like You'd Understand, Anyway
, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Shepard's stories have appeared in the
New Yorker
, the
Paris Review
, the
Atlantic Monthly
,
Harper's Magazine
, and
McSweeney's Quarterly Concern
,
among other publications; five have been selected for the
Best American Short Stories
, two for the
PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories
, and one for a Pushcart Prize.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Kat JK Lee

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2667-3

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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