Nightrunners (4 page)

She shivered.

"Blessed Mother," she mumbled to herself, "how did I get into this?"

All she wanted was a wedding. The sort with a veil, a long bridal train dragging behind her. Nothing more. Except Jimmy dressed in a suit instead of greasy jeans and jacket for a change.

That was hardly what she had gotten.

But then, not getting what she wanted or expected had become a way of life for her.

It had always been that way.

Each day was just one bigger shit-brick than the last.

Her first memories of her father were of him speaking Spanish drunkenly, fondling her between the legs—until her mother caught him one night, and that was the last she saw of him. Here today. Gone tomorrow. No big loss.

The thing she remembered best after that was her mother constantly making her strip and lie on the bed so she could explore with cold hands— always cold hands—the inside of her snatch. Make sure she was still a virgin. This was an obsession with her mother, making sure her daughter was unsoiled.

She went out on a date, her mother would be waiting. Then she'd get the strip, cold fingers in the snatch routine.

If her mother suspicioned she had been near boys, it was the strip, cold fingers in the snatch routine.

Look at a boy's picture too long in a magazine, it was the strip, cold fingers in the snatch routine. What was she expecting to find in there? The refuse of wood-pulp jism?

Was the guy in the magazine going to come out of the picture and stick a paper dick in her? What was the deal?

The routine got to be daily.

She began to think maybe her mother just liked smelling her fingers afterward.

That and looking at her religious crap were her only pastimes. Had the shit all over the house. A living room full of tiny Blessed Mother shrines and crosses. And in the kitchen, over the sink, so she could watch it while she did the dishes, there was a five-dollar plastic Jesus with batteries and a lightbulb inside. Touch the switch—cleverly located in the statue's side wound—and J.C.'s eyes glowed like a cat in the dark.

And there was that stupid 700
Club
blaring all the time. Lots of preachers in expensive suits with hair sprayed down hard enough to look like concrete curbing.

It was enough to drive a madman sane.

Some life.

Then she met Jimmy. Ugly, pimple-faced Jimmy.

But he was nice and interested in marrying her, could take her away from the shrines and the 700
Club.

She met him one day after school. He was sitting on the hood of an old battered white Ford. When she walked by he yelled, "Hey," and she stopped.

He climbed down off the hood of the car, went over to her.

"Hey, I'm Jimmy. What's your name?"

"Why do you need to know, taking a survey?"

"'Cause I wanta."

"Why?"

"I like the way you look."

"No kidding, so do a lot of other guys."

"Yeah, I bet."

"Really?"

"Sure. You say so, I believe it. Besides, look at you."

"That some kind of crack?"

"Naw, no way. I mean, look at you. You look good. Lots of guys would like the way you look, just like me. I mean, you could probably have any guy you want."

"Yeah, yeah, maybe I could."

"You could."

"Yeah, okay, I could."

"Now, will you tell me your name?"

"I guess. . . Angela."

"Nice name."

"Yeah, well, Jimmy isn't so hot. I had a hamster named Jimmy. My mother killed it with a broom."

"So it's not a good name. Do I look like a hamster to you?"

"A little."

He smiled. "Carry your books, Angela?"

"I guess."

He put her books under his arm and started walking toward the Ford. "I'll give you a lift.

Where you going?"

She thought a moment. "Nowhere," she said, and meant it.

At first he was something to fill the hours, someone to spend time with after school. And each day, after she left him, and after her mother made with the exploration through the country of her privates, she would find herself looking forward to the night, to when he came to her window. He'd sneak up the back alley and scratch on the screen and they'd talk, sometimes until way into the morning. Talk was all they did, nothing more. She never even unlatched the screen.

Jimmy never tried any funny business with her, just told her he loved her and wanted to marry her.

It was an idea, she told him, but he didn't have a job. What were they going to live on?

He admitted it was a problem.

Shortly thereafter, he dropped out of school and got a janitor job at the Galveston courthouse. Didn't pay much, but it was something.

Each week he brought her the bulk of his earnings, and now she was unlocking the screen, taking the money, holding his hand, and leaning forward to take his lips.

Things were looking good for Angela baby, and that should have been a clue.

Because suddenly, it was shit-brick time again.

Yep, she could count on it. Soon as she started having a pretty good time and things started looking up, the shit-bricks would fall.

Angela's feeling good. Look out! Here comes the shit-bricks.

Angela's luck looks like it's going to change, and watch it! Because here comes a whole wall of tumbling shit-bricks, right down on top of her little Puerto Rican head.

This time was no exception.

The first shit-brick to fall was not the last, not by any means, but it was certainly a doozy.

Hit right smack on the head of her dream.

Jimmy got buddies, and suddenly he was a tough guy. Started seeing her less, and when he did come around he'd say: "I'm not so sure about this marriage stuff. How do I know you're going to be a good piece of ass? I mean, I haven't seen any action."

She let that go for a while, then one night, while he was singing the same song, one hundreth verse, she said: "Whatever happened to my nice Jimmy?"

That seemed to get him a bit, but he said, "Part of my problem. Too much Mr.

Nice Guy.

What's it got me?"

"After we're married you can have me."

"After we're married, after we're married, that's all I ever hear about. You got stock in marriage licenses? I'm not so sure I want to get married anymore. I mean, I might be getting a pig in a poke, you know what I mean? Or maybe a pig that won't poke, know what I mean?"

"What's with you? . . . You're different."

"I'm learning some things about women."

"From your friends?"

"Yeah, they've taught me some stuff. Sure. Real cool guys."

"Things like how to treat women?"

"Things like that."

"You love me, don't you, Jimmy?"

"Yeah, I guess . . . I'm just not sure I want to get married until I've sampled the water, you know what I mean? Get in there and get my feet wet."

"Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"

"What's that?"

"Think about it."

"Don't try and turn the tables on me, Angela."

"I'm not trying, you asshole, I'm doing. I don't care much for the new Jimmy. You can take these new friends of yours and shove them up your ass."

"Hey, you're getting loud. Your mother will hear."

"What do you care? I'm giving you your money back."

"Hey, why's that? We're getting married."

"Who's getting married? You haven't gotten to sample the water." She started away from the window.

"Say, Angela, I'm sorry, baby. Really."

"Mean it?" she said, turning back to him.

"Yeah . . . Yeah, I mean it."

"You sure?"

"I said so."

"Just being the tough guy for no good reason?"

Silence.

"Come on, say it, Jimmy."

Nothing.

"I'll get your money."

"Okay, okay . . ." Softly: "Just being a tough guy. No good reason."

"Where I can hear you."

"I said it, that's enough."

"Want me to get you money?"

"Yeah, get the fucking money. I've had it."

"Fine." She started across the room.

He called through the window, just above a whisper. "Sorry."

She turned. "Did some wind blow through here or something, or did I hear you talking?"

"Sorry," he said.

""How sorry are you, Jimmy?"

"For Christsakes, what do you want from me?"

"I want the old Jimmy back, the one without the tough mouth and the tough-guy friends.

The one that cries at movies when they're sad."

"Goddamnit, I don't."

She smiled. "I've seen you. It's okay."

A moment of silence. Then: "I'm sorry. Real sorry. These guys, they say I let you push me around too much. That I see you too much. They say I'm pussy-whipped."

"How's that? You don't get any."

"Well, they don't know that."

"So you been telling them how it is with hot little Angela?"

"Not exactly."

"But you suggest?"

"Sort of ... I mean it isn't manly for me not to ... You know?"

She crossed the room, rested her elbows on the windowsill. He moved his hands up, clutched her elbows gently. Softly, shyly, he said: "Sorry."

"Yes, you are."

"Don't deny it. It's just that . . . well, I want to run with these guys. They're neat . .

. and they got this house. I thought when we got married we could move there. Wouldn't cost us much. Later . . . well, later we could get us an apartment."

"Who are these guys?"

"Real cool heads."

"Who are they?"

"Just some guys I met around the pool hall. They got this big house and some girls live there with them sometimes."

"Change girls like socks, huh?"

"Guess. I don't know. Don't care."

"Jimmy?"

"Yeah?"

"You're acting like an asshole. Your friends sound like assholes. All they're good for is trouble, I know it."

"You don't know them."

"I don't need to. I can smell them on you, and I don't like the stink."

"I'm not acting like an asshole. And they're not assholes neither."

"Take my word for it, you, them, assholes. Big ones."

Jimmy sighed. "You're the hardest girl I ever did know."

"Assholes,"

"All right, assholes. I'm an asshole and they're assholes. Happy?"

"Completely."

"Good. Real good."

"Jimmy, we don't want to live in any crummy house with this bunch of assholes that are making you an asshole, now do we?"

Jimmy didn't quite grit his teeth. "I guess not."

"Can you climb through this window?"

Silence. He looked at her strangely.

"Are you deaf? Can you climb through this window? Answer me that, can an asshole like yourself climb through this window?"

"I can do that."

"You want to climb through?"

"You say so, yeah."

She stood up, pulled her shirt over her head. Unfastened her bra. Her breasts small, dark and firm bounced free.

Jimmy got through that window in record time.

She had her pants off now, her underwear.

Then they were in bed and he was pounding her for all he was worth, and she was getting about as much pleasure out of it as the bag down at the gym that the prizefighters train on, when suddenly the bedroom door opened and the light came on and her mother shrieked, grabbed the old teddy bear off Angela's dresser and began pounding Jimmy briskly about the head and ears.

Jimmy rolled off the bed, scooped up his clothes and like a seal leaping off a rock, dove through the window and out into the night.

Still clutching the stuffed bear, Angela's mother turned on her, breathing like an asthmatic hippo.

"Know what, Momma?" Angela said. "You won't have to check this time. Take my word for it. The cherry's gone, nothing left now but the box it came in."

Angela got the whipping of her life; beat half to death by an elderly, outraged, Puerto Rican mother with a teddy bear for a club. If it hadn't hurt so bad, it might have been funny.

When her mother finally quit there was nothing left of the bear but a floppy brown rag of cloth. Its cotton guts lay strewn from one end of the room to the other.

"Get out of my house," her mother yelled, "you're no daughter of mine."

"Works for me," Angela said.

She got dressed even as her mother sat on the edge of the bed, occasionally screaming, "Get out, whore!"

She grabbed some extra clothes, the money they had saved, and went out to look for Jimmy.

That was the falling of shit-brick number one.

Brick number two fell when she found Jimmy. They didn't get married right away ("soon," Jimmy kept saying), but they did rent an apartment in the sleazy section of the city. And the "friends" he had told her about, the guys from The House, as it was called, came to live with them—at least two of them.

She thought: Now isn't this the shits? I get kicked out of the house with my mother thinking I'm the local amusement ride, and two assholes I never wanted to live with, never wanted to meet, have moved in with me.

There was a positive side. Jimmy told her that there had originally been four assholes.

Thank the Blessed Virgin for small favors.

But the two guys scared her, made her flesh creep around her bones. There was that wild laughing one who was always sniffing glue, "doing the bag" he called it. And then there was Stone, never speaking, just watching with razor-blade eyes that stripped away her clothes and ripped her flesh.

She wanted Jimmy to make them leave, but he wouldn't,

Or it seemed that way at first. After a time she realized it wasn't that he didn't want them to leave, but, like her, he was afraid of them. Their "friendship" had shed its skin to reveal something considerably less tasteful—a kind of cancer that dominated him.

Then came the third shit-brick: Brian Black-wood.

After that, the bricks began to fall like rain.

So, here they were, with Brian and his two crazy pals, parked in the woods, stopping for a while before they . . .

God, she didn't want to think about it.

The things she and Jimmy had seen them do.

The way they killed in cold blood. The way they had ...