Ladies' Night (8 page)

He heard a loud shriek of laughter from one of the tables behind him. He turned.

In a corner to the back of the room a woman was standing — she was one of a party of four — shaking with laughter. She had just poured her drink down the shirt of the small balding man in tie and jacket beside her, probably her date. The other tables had noticed and the laughter was loud and general. Even Erica, their table's waitress, stood there laughing.

The man stood up to shake the ice cubes off him, his bald head red and gleaming.

He wasn't smiling.

The Boot and Jimmy Diamond stood across the street two doors down in front of the barber shop and watched the woman leave
MacInery's
.

They watched her weave past the cleaners, bobbing her head like a chicken, tits sliding every which way under the faded red t-shirt, purse dangling loosely from her hand. Boot had to laugh. She was exactly what they needed. A real stone alky they had here.

They waited till she got to the corner and disappeared down Riverside. Then they crossed the street and started after her.

The lady was barely conscious. Boot had his blade ready inside the jacket pocket but that was just a precaution. This was gonna be easy.

They picked up the pace. No sense her getting home before they reached her. You grab a purse, that was one thing. She opens her door, that's B&E, and there was no point upping the stakes for the same damn take. From the look of her she wouldn't be carrying much. But she'd been to a bar. And bars cost money.

It was dark on Riverside. Streetlights out in a couple of places, thank you New York City. They hung tight to the shadows and closed the distance. Boot had a look around. The street was empty. A new Mercedes glided by and passed them. He gave the nod.

They broke into a run.

Streetside
, Boot went for the purse strap while Jimmy Diamond came up directly behind her
and they had this down, man, really down, because the moment Boot touched the strap Jimmy would push her in the gutter, they had done it a hundred times by now, best team in the city
. And it happened just the way they played it. Boot hit the strap and Jimmy Diamond slapped her back hard with the palms of both hands and stepped away.

Only she didn't go down.

Drunks fell down. Women, you could push them.

But this one just stuck out her fucking leg to brace against the impact and at the same time whirled so fast he'd never have believed it in a million years, whirled on Jimmy Diamond and got hold of his arm.

And then she sort of
pulled herself onto him
.

Crawled onto him like some sort of bug — only fast, real fast, looking like maybe a spider would look to you if you were another bug and about to be eaten.

You could see Jimmy's face go grey, even though it was dark, even though it happened in just a second. She had him belly-to-belly with her legs wrapped around him like she was going to fuck the
sonovabitch
, like she
wanted
to fuck him, hips moving against him like that and it was grotesque, man, it was almost funny for a moment until the one hand came off his shoulders while the other tightened around his neck and Jimmy pulled back because he could see where that free hand was going but there was nothing he could do about it, the hand clawed across his eyes and Boot blinked his own eyes watching it, he could almost feel the pain himself and when the blink was over so were Jimmy's eyes.

There was blood pouring down his face. Boot screamed. They both screamed.

And the woman let Jimmy go then and turned to Boot.

He'd never moved so fast in his fucking life. Because there was nothing in that face you'd recognize as human. Well, there was one thing,
it was smiling
. But it was not a smile you could look at without getting scared sick that such a thing existed. It was not just crazy. The face looked at him the way a sewer rat had looked at him once down by the East River, eyes red with the pure love of biting and killing.

And this face
smiled
.

He did not look back or worry about Jimmy. Four blocks away he got the guts to turn and saw she wasn't following. Another two blocks and he realized he still had her purse dangling from his fist.

He stopped and opened it half-blindly, breathing hard, not even knowing why he was doing it except it was the right thing to do, it was normal, you stole a purse you went through it.

He turned it inside out on the sidewalk.

Lipstick. Hairbrush. Matches from
MacInery's
. Gum. Scraps of dirty paper. He found the wallet and opened it. There was a single dollar bill inside and a dime and a nickel in the change compartment.

It was the worst night of Boot's life.

And it was just beginning.

Andy didn't know what the noises were at first but they woke him from his dream.

He was at summer camp climbing a mountain. There were shade trees all around. The quiver of arrows was slung over his back — though for some reason the bow was missing — and the scout knife was in his hand. The knife was open to the big blade because there was something on the mountain he was supposed to be afraid of. He wasn't really afraid, though. He felt sure that whatever was up there wouldn't hurt him. The knife was just in case.

As he climbed, though, the nature of whatever was up there began to change. He didn't know how he knew that but he did. At first it was a cat like a mountain lion, then something insect-like whirring out of sight above his head as he crawled up the rock face. Then he was walking past a storefront, somehow not out of place there, and knew that whatever it was, it was inside the store now and had changed again.

He was opening the storefront door when something woke him. It sounded as though she was crying.

He pushed off the covers and got out of bed and peered into the hallway, listening.

She was crying all right.
In her sleep?

For some reason he felt she was asleep.

Little liquid crying sounds. And the breathing wasn't right
.

He wondered if he should go in there. If he was wrong and she was awake, she might feel bad about him seeing her like that. He didn't want to make her feel bad. He walked out into the hall.

She'd left the door open. There was light in the room from the streetlight. He could walk by, pretend he was going to the bathroom, take a peek and keep on going. That way if she was awake he wouldn't have to embarrass her. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, assumed what he thought was a normal, going-to-take-a-whiz-in-the-middle-of-the-night pace, and walked by. And stopped.

She was alone. His father wasn't there.

She was asleep.

And she was naked.

He was not supposed to see her that way.

She was lying atop the covers with her nightgown open, naked underneath. He had never in memory seen his mother naked before. He had never seen what she was doing either.

Not in real life. In some of the R-rated movies they rented sure and even then you didn't see much. But not a real woman.

Not his mom.

He felt dizzy. A wave of heat passed over him, then a wave of chilling cold.

There was something . . .
not right
about it.

It wasn't the masturbation. He knew about masturbation — at least he knew people did it, though he'd never heard of anybody doing it in their sleep before. And it wasn't just that it was his mother either. Though it was partly that.

It was the
sounds
.

Whimpering, crying.

Then growling
. Low in her throat like an animal.

He didn't know how he dared but he moved closer, into the room, a few feet from the bed.

She was sweating. Her body was coated with sweat, plastering back her hair, pooling where her breasts pressed together trembling—trembling because both hands were down there now, her legs spread wide and the fine pale hair of her thighs dewy with sweat and one of her hands —
God! her
whole
hand!
— glistening with what was inside her. She was writhing like a snake. He saw four fingers disappear inside her to the knuckle and the other hand rubbing something
wet
outside and there was that noise, that hissing, crying, groaning sound like she was in pain, like she was dying!

Run!
he thought.

No! Wake her!

But he was afraid to wake her and it was as though he were hypnotized, he
couldn't
run. He was afraid to wake her because he stared down at what her hands were doing and the teeth grinding and the lips quivering as though from some biting cold and the awful
trembly
smile and he didn't even hardly recognize her, he was
scared
of her,
what had happened to his mother?

His stomach rolled and tumbled. He was going to be sick.

He watched the hand glide back and forth, the head toss and shudder.

He ran. He stumbled into his room. The dizziness was terrible. He fell into bed, trembling, sweating now almost as much as she had been. He pulled the covers up to his chin — the first time since the second grade. He really
did
have to go to the bathroom now but he was not going to pass that door again. No way.

He listened. The sounds had stopped.

Had she heard him?
Was she awake, coming toward the bedroom? He heard nothing.

Maybe she's asleep now
, he thought.
Really asleep
.

Outside his window he heard a siren, a police car rolling by. His hands on the bed sheet looked ghostly pale. The room seemed filled with shadows.

He lay there for a long time, listening and hearing nothing, remembering the look of her, the dark full nipples against the pale breasts, the glistening public hair, the streams of sweat. He remembered her face most of all, that rictus grin of pain and ecstasy. Remembered it with horror.

Horror
, he thought.
And I thought it was monsters and Freddy Kruger
.

Slowly, a long time later, he was able to push the vision away from him. In the long silence his eyes began to close. The shadows folded back into the ordinary landscape of the room — dresser, closet, TV set, window.

Once he seemed to hear her sigh.

She sounded as she always sounded.

There might have been an inkling on the evening news. It might have saved lives if there had been. But as yet little anyone would consider particularly newsworthy had happened. What slept inside them slept like a malefic shadow in the corner of a huge bustling room, unnoticed.

By the time it erupted, for many residents of Manhattan the night had concluded normally. They had made love, gone to films and bars, watched television. And finally, slept.

If there appeared to be somewhat more police activity than usual on the lower West Side or Chelsea or Central Park South, it was just another busy night for the city's numerous thugs and crazies. If a disturbance erupted in a theatre it was hardly the first time.

Only on the West Side could you tell immediately — something so askew now that stepping out of the subway at 72nd Street your impulse might be to turn and run. Elsewhere it was simple city madness, more virulent than usual. But here, in the very feel of the place, you sensed something.

~ * ~

On Amsterdam and 66th Street a woman walked into a fire station wearing nothing but a black half-slip and, laughing, accosted the nearest fireman, smearing his face with cruelty-free Flame-
Glo
Honey Raisin Lip Gloss, which she had applied on her own face from nose to chin.

Across the park on 5th and 81st Street, an old man recuperating from his second coronary in as many years leaned out his fifth-floor window and heard someone crying for help just out of sight around the corner. The voice was male and terrified. Heart pounding, he closed the window.

On the northernmost border of Greenwich Village, a normally quiet lesbian bar called Belle Starr's erupted into an orgy the likes of which its proprietor, an ex-stripper named Lorna Dune, hadn't seen since Albert Anastasia was alive and she was still more or less straight.

In
Soho
, an aging ingénue hung her two-month-old infant son from the bathroom shower curtain rod using the white cloth belt she had worn as the Girl in
The
Fantastiks
and watched it strangle.

At 42nd and Broadway, three dancers in a peep show hurled themselves through the nearest fifty-cent window and dragged its occupant screaming through the broken glass.

~ * ~

The drunk at Broadway and 69th woke on his bench to stare at the world through sore, soupy eyes. Someone had kicked his bottle.

He was keyed to that sound. It was probably the only sound that would have woke him. He reached for the bottle instinctively beneath the flaking weather-beaten green park bench but the effort was far too much for him. He wheezed a sigh and leaned back against the bench.