“Root beer is a grown-up drink,” Em said. She pointed to Charlotte’s Coke. “When are you going to stop drinking kid stuff?”
Em was convinced that root beer could be as intoxicating as real beer. Sometimes she pretended to be smashed after two glasses, which was stupid and embarrassing. When Em was doing her weaving-burping-drunk routine and strangers turned to stare, Charlotte explained that Em was seven. Everyone was understanding—from a seven-year-old, what else could be expected?—but it was embarrassing nonetheless.
By the time the waitress brought dinner, Mom and Daddy were talking about some people they knew who were getting a divorce—boring adult talk that could ruin an ambiance fast if you paid any attention. And Em was stacking french fries in peculiar piles, like miniature versions of modern sculptures they’d seen in a museum last summer; she was absorbed by the project.
With everyone distracted, Charlotte unzipped the deepest pocket on her denim jacket, withdrew Fred, and put him on the table.
He sat motionless under his shell, stumpy legs tucked in, headless, as big around as a man’s wristwatch. Finally his beaky little nose appeared. He sniffed the air cautiously, and then he stretched his head out of the fortress that he carried on his back. His dark shiny turtle eyes regarded his new surroundings with great interest, and Charlotte figured he must be amazed by the ambiance.
“Stick with me, Fred, and I’ll show you places no turtle has ever before seen,” she whispered.
She glanced at her parents. They were still so involved with each other that they had not noticed when she’d slipped Fred out of her pocket. Now he was hidden from them by a basket of french fries.
In addition to fries, Charlotte was eating soft tacos stuffed with chicken, from which she extracted a ribbon of lettuce. The turtle sniffed it, turned his head away in disgust. She tried chopped tomato.
Are you serious?
he seemed to say, refusing the tidbit.
Occasionally, Fred could be moody and difficult. That was her fault, she supposed, because she had spoiled him.
She didn’t think chicken or cheese would be good for him, and she was not going to offer him any tortilla crumbs until he ate his vegetables, so she nibbled on the crisp french fries and gazed around the restaurant as if fascinated by the other customers, ignoring the rude little reptile. He had rejected the lettuce and tomato merely to annoy her. If he thought she didn’t give a hoot whether he ate or not, then he would probably eat. In turtle years, Fred was seven.
She actually became interested in a heavy-metal couple with leather clothes and strange hair. They distracted her for a few minutes, and she was startled by her mother’s soft squeak of alarm.
“Oh,” said her mother after she squeaked, “it’s only Fred.”
The ungrateful turtle—after all, Charlotte could have left him at home—was not beside her plate where he’d been left. He had crawled around the basket of fries to the other side of the table.
“I only got him out to feed him,” Charlotte said defensively.
Lifting the basket so Charlotte could see the turtle, Mom said, “Honey, it’s not good for him to be in your pocket all day.”
“Not all day.” Charlotte took possession of Fred and returned him to her pocket. “Just since we left the house for dinner.”
Mom frowned. “What other livestock do you have with you?”
“Just Fred.”
“What about Bob?” Mom asked.
“Oh, yuch,” Emily said, making a face at Charlotte. “You got Bob in your pocket? I hate Bob.”
Bob was a bug, a slow-moving black beetle as large as the last joint of Daddy’s thumb, with faint blue markings on his carapace. She kept him in a big jar at home, but sometimes she liked to take him out and watch him crawl in his laborious way across a countertop or even over the back of her hand.
“I’d never bring Bob to a restaurant,” Charlotte assured them.
“You also know better than to bring Fred,” her mother said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Charlotte said, genuinely embarrassed.
“Dumb,” Emily advised her.
To Emily, Mom said, “No dumber than using french fries as if they’re Lego blocks.”
“I’m making art.” Emily was always making art. She was weird sometimes even for a seven-year-old.
Picasso reincarnate,
Daddy called her.
“Art, huh?” Mom said. “You’re making art out of your food, so then what are you going to eat? A painting?”
“Maybe,” Em said. “A painting of a chocolate cake.”
Charlotte zipped shut her jacket pocket, imprisoning Fred.
“Wash your hands before you go on eating,” Daddy said.
Charlotte said, “Why?”
“What were you just handling?”
“You mean Fred? But Fred’s clean.”
“I said, wash your hands.”
Her father’s snappishness reminded Charlotte that he was not himself. He rarely spoke harshly to her or Em. She behaved not out of fear that he’d spank her or shout at her, but because it was important not to disappoint him or Mom. It was the best feeling in the world when she got a good grade in school or performed well at a piano recital and made them proud of her. And absolutely nothing was worse than messing up—and seeing a sad look of disappointment in their eyes, even when they didn’t punish her or say anything.
The sharpness of her father’s voice sent her directly to the ladies’ room, blinking back tears every step of the way.
Later, on the way home from Islands, when Daddy got a lead foot, Mom said, “Marty, this isn’t the Indianapolis Five Hundred.”
“You think this is fast?” Daddy asked, as if astonished. “This isn’t fast.”
“Even the caped crusader himself can’t get the Batmobile up to speeds like this.”
“I’m thirty-three, never had an accident. Spotless record. No tickets. Never been stopped by a cop.”
“Because they can’t catch you,” Mom said.
“Exactly.”
In the back seat, Charlotte and Emily grinned at each other.
For as long as Charlotte could remember, her parents had been having jokey conversations about his driving, though her mother was serious about wanting him to go slower.
“I’ve never even had a parking ticket,” Daddy said.
“Well, of course, it’s not easy to get a parking ticket when the speedometer needle is always pegged out.”
In the past their back-and-forth had always been good-humored. But now, he suddenly spoke sharply to Mom: “For God’s sake, Paige, I’m a good driver, this is a safe car, I spent more money on it than I should have precisely because it’s one of the safest cars on the road, so will you just give this a rest?”
“Sure. Sorry,” Mom said.
Charlotte looked at her sister. Em was wide-eyed with disbelief.
Daddy was not Daddy. Something was wrong. Big-time wrong.
They had gone only a block before he slowed down and glanced at Mom and said, “Sorry.”
“No, you were right, I’m too much of a worrier about some things,” Mom told him.
They smiled at each other. It was all right. They weren’t going to get divorced like those people they’d been talking about at dinner. Charlotte couldn’t recall them ever being angry with each other for longer than a few minutes.
However, she was still worried. Maybe she
should
check around the house and outside behind the garage to see if she could find a giant empty seed pod from outer space.
4
Like a shark cruising cold currents in a night sea, the killer drives.
This is his first time in Kansas City, but he knows the streets. Total mastery of the layout is part of his preparation for every assignment, in case he becomes the subject of a police pursuit and needs to make a hasty escape under pressure.
Curiously, he has no recollection of having seen—let alone studied—a map, and he can’t imagine from where this highly detailed information was acquired. But he doesn’t like to consider the holes in his memory because thinking about them opens the door on a black abyss that terrifies him.
So he just drives.
Usually he likes to drive. Having a powerful and responsive machine at his command gives him a sense of control and purpose.
But once in a while, as happens now, the motion of the car and the sights of a strange city—regardless of how familiar he may be with the layout of its streets—make him feel small, alone, adrift. His heart begins to beat fast. His palms are suddenly so damp, the steering wheel slips through them.
Then, as he brakes at a traffic light, he looks at the car in the lane beside him and sees a family revealed by the street lamps. The father is driving. The mother sits in the passenger seat, an attractive woman. A boy of about ten and a girl of six or seven are in the back seat. On their way home from a night out. Maybe a movie. Talking, laughing, parents and children together, sharing.
In his deteriorating condition, that sight is a merciless hammer blow, and he makes a thin wordless sound of anguish.
He pulls off the street, into the parking lot of an Italian restaurant. Slumps in his seat. Breathes in quick shallow gasps.
The emptiness. He dreads the emptiness.
And now it is upon him.
He feels as if he is a hollow man, made of the thinnest blown glass, fragile, only slightly more substantial than a ghost.
At times like this, he desperately needs a mirror. His reflection is one of the few things that can confirm his existence.
The restaurant’s elaborate red and green neon sign illuminates the interior of the Ford. When he tilts the rearview mirror to look at himself, his skin has a cadaverous cast, and his eyes are alight with changing crimson shapes, as if fires burn within him.
Tonight, his reflection is not enough to diminish his agitation. He feels less substantial by the moment. Perhaps he will breathe out one last time, expelling the final thin substance of himself in that exhalation.
Tears blur his vision. He is overwhelmed by his loneliness, and tortured by the meaninglessness of his life.
He folds his arms across his chest, hugs himself, leans forward, and rests his forehead against the steering wheel. He sobs as if he is a small child.
He doesn’t know his name, only the names he will use while in Kansas City. He wants so much to have a name of his own that is not as counterfeit as the credit cards on which it appears. He has no family, no friends, no home. He cannot recall who gave him this assignment—or any of the jobs before it—and he doesn’t know why his targets must die. Incredibly, he has no idea who pays him, does not remember where he got the money in his wallet or where he bought the clothes he wears.
On a more profound level, he does not know
who
he is. He has no memory of a time when his profession was anything other than murder. He has no politics, no religion, no personal philosophy whatsoever. Whenever he tries to take an interest in current affairs, he finds himself unable to retain what he reads in the newspapers; he can’t even focus his attention on television news. He is intelligent, yet he permits himself—or is permitted—only satisfactions of a physical nature: food, sex, the savage exhilaration of homicide. Vast regions of his mind remain uncharted.
A few minutes pass in green and red neon.
His tears dry. Gradually he stops trembling.
He will be all right. Back on the rails. Steady, controlled.
In fact he ascends with remarkable speed from the depths of despair. Surprising, how readily he is willing to continue with his latest assignment—and with the mere shadow of a life that he leads. Sometimes it seems to him that he operates as if programmed in the manner of a dumb and obedient machine.
On the other hand, if he were not to continue, what else would he do? This shadow of a life is the only life he has.
5
While the girls were upstairs, brushing their teeth and preparing for bed, Marty methodically went from room to room on the first floor, making sure all of the doors and windows were locked.
He had circled half the downstairs—and was testing the latch on the window above the kitchen sink—before he realized what a peculiar task he had set for himself. Prior to turning in every night, he checked the front and back doors, of course, plus the sliding doors between the family room and patio, but he did not ordinarily verify that any particular window was secure unless he knew that it had been open for ventilation during the day. Nevertheless, he was confirming the integrity of the house perimeter as conscientiously as a sentry might certify the outer defenses of a fortress besieged by enemies.
As he was finishing in the kitchen, he heard Paige enter, and a moment later she slid both arms around his waist, embracing him from behind. “You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, well . . .”
“Bad day?”
“Not really. Just one bad moment.”
Marty turned in her arms to embrace her. She felt wonderful, so warm and strong, so
alive.
That he loved her more now than when they had met in college was no surprise. The triumphs and failures they had shared, the years of daily struggle to make a place in the world and to seek the meaning of it, was rich soil in which love could grow.
However, in an age when ideal beauty was supposedly embodied in nineteen-year-old professional cheerleaders for major-league football teams, Marty knew a lot of guys who would be surprised to hear he’d found his wife increasingly attractive as she had aged from nineteen to thirty-three. Her eyes were no bluer than they had been when he’d first met her, her hair was not a richer shade of gold, and her skin was neither smoother nor more supple. Nevertheless, experience had given her character, depth. Corny as it sounded in this era of knee-jerk cynicism, she sometimes seemed to shine with an inner light, as radiant as the venerated subject of a painting by Raphael.
So, yeah, maybe he had a heart as soft as butter, maybe he was a sucker for romance, but he found her smile and the challenge of her eyes infinitely more exciting than a six-pack of naked cheerleaders.