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.As he drove away he took his last look at her in the rearview mirror, standing in the snow on the street corner in her tepee-shaped coat, like some squaw that had got lost when the tribe moved on.HE KNEW HE WAS IN TROUBLE, MAYBE THE WORST TROUBLE HE HAD ever been in—it was the knife, he should not have brought out the knife—but he did not care.He was exultant.He had made his mark, had shown what he was capable of.His lap felt wet still but the sweat on his back and on the insides of his arms had cooled and was like oil, like—what was the word?—like balm.He wished that Cora Bennett could have seen him in the Buick with the girl out there on the headland, he wished Cora could have been there, and forced to watch.Cora, Claire, the big Irishman, Rose Crawford, Joe Lanigan and his sidekick that looked like Lou Costello, he imagined them all standing around the car, looking in the windows at him, shouting at him to stop and him just laughing at them.Cora Bennett had laughed at him that night when her blood got all over him and he rolled away from her and felt it on his thighs, the hot stickiness of it.“Why, hell,” she had said, laughing, “it’s only blood!” There had been blood with the girl, too, but not much.If Cora had been there he would have smeared it on her face, and laughed, and said, Why, Cora, it’s only blood! When she had seen how mad he was she had said she was sorry, though she was still sort of grinning.When she came back from the bathroom she sat down on the side of the bed where he was lying and rubbed her hand along his back and said again she was sorry, that it was not at him she had been laughing, but only that she was relieved because she had been kind of worrying, seeing she was two weeks late and she was never late, and that was why she had begun to wonder if what Claire had told her might not be the case, might just be one of crazy Claire’s crazy fantasies.He had sat up on the bed then, all his nerves alert, and asked her what she meant, and what it was that Claire had told her.“Why, that you shoot blanks, Tex,” she said, with that grin again, and put up her hand and mussed his hair.“Hence no little Andys or little Claires, or little Christines, either, of your own.”He could hardly believe she was saying what she was saying.At first he did not understand—Claire had told her it was him and not her who could not make a kid? But when she had come home from the doctor’s that day after she got the results of the tests that they had both taken she had said to him that the doctor had told her it was she who was the dud, that there was something wrong with her insides and that she could never have a baby, no matter how hard she tried.Cora, who was beginning to look like she was sorry she had started to tell him all this, said, well, Claire had told her it was the other way around, one day when he was at work and she had gone up to see if Claire maybe needed a cup of coffee or something.Claire was real upset, Cora said, crying and talking about the kid and the accident, and then she had told Cora about what the doctor had really said and how she had lied about it to Andy.As Cora was speaking, Andy’s leg had begun to shake that way that it did when he was worried or mad.Why, he wanted to know, why would Claire say it was her if it was really him that could not, could not…? “Oh, honey,” Cora had said soothingly, not grinning now but all serious, seeing clearly the damage she had done, “maybe it’s just what she told you, a little lie, you know, so you wouldn’t feel bad?” That was when he had smacked Cora.He knew he should not have done it, but she should not have said what she said, either.He had smacked her pretty hard, across the face and his knuckles caught her across the bridge of her nose.There was more blood then, but she just sat there on the bed, leaning away from him with a hand to her face and the blood running down out of her nose and her eyes cold and sharp as needles.That was the end, of course, for them.Cora would probably have kept it on, once she got over being sore at him for smacking her, but the truth was he was tired of her, of that slack belly of hers and her flat-fronted boobs and her ass that was already starting to get puckers in it.Now the laugh was on her.BY THE TIME HE HAD LEFT THE GIRL AND GOT BACK TO THE HOUSE HE had decided to take Claire with him.The decision surprised him, but it pleased him, too.It must be that he loved her, despite everything, despite even the things she had told Cora Bennett about him.He parked the car a couple of houses down, not because he did not want the neighbors noticing the fancy car—they had seen him in the Buick before this—but he wanted to get into the house without Cora Bennett coming out and pestering him.He slipped across the yard and went up the outside stairs three at a time, thankful for the snow that muffled the sound of his boot heels on the wood.Claire in her housecoat was slumped on the couch in front of the television on which some dumb quiz show was playing—who gives a fuck what the capital of North Dakota is?—and he paused in passing by her and gave her shoulders a shake and told her to get up and start packing.She did not move, of course, and he had to come back and put his fist in front of her nose and shout at her.He was in the bedroom, throwing shirts into the old carpet bag that had once belonged to his daddy, when he felt her behind him—he had developed a sixth sense, and could feel her presence without looking, as if she was a ghost already—and turned to find her leaning in the doorway in that tired-out, drooping way that she did, the housecoat pulled shut and her arms folded so tight it was like this was the only way she had of holding herself together.“There were people here today,” she said.“Oh, yeah? What people?” He had not realized he had so many shirts and coats and pairs of jeans—where did it come from, all this stuff?“They were asking about the baby,” Claire said.He went still suddenly, and turned slowly to look at her.“What?” he said softly.He was holding in his hand a belt with a buckle shaped like a steer’s head with horns
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Tematy
IndexChristine Amsden [Cassie Scot Cassie Scot ParaNormal Detecti
Christine Wood [Life Plan 01] A Life Plan Without You (epub)
Christie Craig [Divorced, Des Divorced, Desperate
Moore Christopher Ssij, mała, ssij (II)
Christine Cody [Bloodlands 01 Bloodlands (epub)
Christina Ross [Unleash Me, A Unleash Me, Vol 3 (epub)
Christian Fletcher [The Left Left on the Brink (epub)
Stasheff, Christopher Wizard in Rhyme 6 Haunted Wizard
Christopher G Nuttall [Royal The Royal Sorceress (epub)
Christine Feehan Mroczna Seri Mroczny Demon