Thinner (3 page)

'I feel
great.
And if you don't let me go to sleep, I'll prove it by jumping your bones again.'

'Go ahead.'

He groaned. She laughed. Soon enough they slept. And in his dream, he and Heidi were coming back from the Shop 'n Save, only he
knew
it was a dream this time, he
knew
what was going to happen and he wanted to tell her to stop what she was doing, that he had to concentrate all his attention on his driving because pretty soon an old Gypsy woman was going to dart out from between two parked cars - from between a yellow Subaru and a dark green Firebird, to be exact - and this old woman was going to have a child's five-and-dime plastic barrettes in her graying grizzled hair and she was not going to be looking anywhere but straight ahead. He wanted to tell Heidi that this was his chance to take it all back, to change it, to make it right.

But he couldn't speak. The pleasure woke again at the touch of her fingers, playful at first, then more serious (his penis stiffened as he slept and he turned his head slightly at the metallic clicking sound of his zipper going down notch by notch); the pleasure mixed uneasily with a feeling of terrible inevitability. Now he saw the yellow Subaru ahead, parked behind the green Firebird with the white racing stripe. And from between them a flash of pagan color brighter and more vital than any paint job sprayed on in Detroit or the Toyota Village. He tried to scream
Quit it, Heidi. It's her. - I'm going to kill her again if
you don't quit it! Please, God, no! Please, good Christ, no!

But the figure stepped out between the two cars. Halleck was trying to get his foot off the gas pedal and put it on the brake, but it seemed to be stuck right where it was, held down with a dreadful, irrevocable firmness.
The Krazy Glue of
inevitability,
he thought wildly, trying to turn the wheel, but the wheel wouldn't turn, either. The wheel was locked and blocked. So he tried to brace himself for the crash and then the Gypsy's head turned and it wasn't the old woman, oh no, huhuh, it was the Gypsy man with the rotted nose. Only now his eyes were gone. In the instant before the Olds struck him and bore him under, Halleck saw the empty, staring sockets. The old Gypsy man's lips spread in an obscene grin - an ancient crescent below the rotted horror of his nose.

Then:
Thud/thud.

One hand flailing limply above the Olds's hood, heavily wrinkled, dressed in pagan rings of beaten metal. Three drops of blood splattered the windshield. Halleck was vaguely aware that Heidi's hand had clenched agonizingly on his erection, retaining the orgasm that shock had brought on, creating a sudden dreadful pleasure-pain ... And he heard the Gypsy's whisper from somewhere underneath him, drifting up through the carpeted floor of the expensive car, muffled but clear enough:
'Thinner.'

He came awake with a jerk, turned toward the window, and almost screamed. The moon was a brilliant crescent above the Adirondacks, and for a moment he thought it was the old. Gypsy man, his head cocked slightly to the side, peering into their window, his eyes two brilliant stars in the blackness of the sky over upstate New York, his grin lit somehow from within, the light spilling out cold like the fight from a mason jar filled with August fireflies, cold like the swamp-fellas he had sometimes seen as a boy in North Carolina - old, cold light, a moon in the shape of an ancient grin, one which contemplates revenge.

Billy drew in a shaky breath, closed his eyes tight, then opened them again. The moon was just the moon again. He lay down and was asleep three minutes later.

The new day was bright and clear, and Halleck finally gave in and agreed to climb the Labyrinth Trail with his wife. Mohonk's grounds were laced with hiking trails, rated from easy to extremely difficult. Labyrinth was rated 'moderate,' and on their honeymoon he and Heidi had climbed it twice. He remembered how much pleasure that had given him - working his way up the steep defiles with Heidi right behind him, laughing and telling him to hurry up, slowpoke. He remembered worming through one of the narrow, cavelike passages in the rock, and whispering ominously to his new wife, 'Do you feel the ground shaking?' when they were in the narrowest part. It had been narrow, but she had still managed to give his butt a pretty good swat.

Halleck would admit to himself (but never, never to Heidi) that it was those narrow passages through the rock that worried him now. On their honeymoon he had been slim and trim, only a kid, still in good shape from summers spent on a logging crew in western Massachusetts. Now he was sixteen years older and a lot heavier. And, as jolly old Dr Houston had so kindly informed him, he was entering heart-attack country. The idea of having a heart attack halfway up the mountain was uncomfortable but still fairly remote; what seemed more possible to him was getting stuck in one of those narrow stone throats through which the trail snaked on its way to the top. He could remember that they'd had to crawl in at least four places.

He didn't want to get stuck in one of those places.

Or
...
how's this, gang? Ole Billy Halleck gets stuck in one of those dark crawly places and
then
has a heart attack!

Heyyyy! Two for the price of one!

But he finally agreed to give it a try, if
she
would agree to go on by herself if he was simply not in good enough shape to make it to the top. And if they could go down to New Paltz first so he could buy some sneakers. Heidi agreed willingly to both stipulations.

In town, Halleck found that 'sneakers' had become
declasse.
No one would even admit to remembering the word. He bought a pair of dandy green-and-silver Nike walking-and-climbing shoes and was quietly delighted at how good they felt on his feet. That led to the realization that he hadn't owned a pair of canvas shoes in
...
Five years? Six? It seemed impossible, but there it was.

Heidi admired them and told him again that he certainly
did
look as if he had lost weight. Outside the shoe store was a penny weighing machine, one of those that advertises ‘YOUR WATE AND FATE.' Halleck hadn't seen one since he was a kid.

'Hop up, hero,' Heidi said. 'I've got a penny.'

Halleck held back for a moment, obscurely nervous.

'Come on, hurry up. I want to see how much you've lost.'

'Heidi, those things don't weigh true, you know that.'

'A ballpark figure's all I want. Come on, Billy - don't be a poop.'

He reluctantly gave her the package containing his new shoes and stepped up on the scale. She put a penny in. There was a clunk and then two curved silvery metal panels drew back. Behind the top one was his wate; behind the lower one, the machine's idea of his fate. Halleck drew in a harsh, surprised breath.

'I knew
it!' Heidi was saying beside him. There was a kind of doubtful wonder in her voice, as if she was not sure if she should feel happiness or fear or wonder.
'I knew
you were thinner!'

If she had heard his own harsh gasp, Halleck thought later, she no doubt thought it was because of the number at which the scale had red-lined - even with all his clothes on, and his Swiss army knife in the pocket of his corduroy pants, even with a hearty Mohonk breakfast in his belly, that line was centered neatly at 232. He had lost fourteen pounds since the day Canley had settled out of court.

But it wasn't his wate that had made him gasp; it was his fate. The lower panel had not slid aside to reveal FINANCIAL MATTERS WILL SOON IMPROVE or OLD FRIENDS WILL VISIT or DO NOT MAKE IMPORTANT

DECISION HASTILY.

It had revealed a single black word: 'THINNER.'

Chapter Four

227

They rode back to Fairview mostly in silence, Heidi driving until they were within fifteen miles of New York City and the traffic got heavy. Then she pulled into a service plaza and let Billy take them the rest of the way home. No reason why he should not be driving; the old woman had been killed, true enough, one arm almost torn from her body, her pelvis pulverized, her skull shattered like a Ming vase hurled onto a marble floor, but Billy Halleck had not lost a single point from his Connecticut driver's license. Good old tit-grabbing Cary Rossington had seen to that.

'Did you hear me, Billy?'

He glanced at her for only a second, then returned his eyes to the road. He was driving better these days, and although he didn't use his horn any more than he used to, or shout and wave his arms any more than he used to, he was more aware of other drivers' errors and his own than he ever had been before, and was less forgiving of both. Killing an old woman did wonders for your concentration. It didn't do shit for your self-respect, and it produced some really hideous dreams, but it certainly did juice up the old concentration levels.

'I was woolgathering. Sorry.'

'I just said thank you for a wonderful time.'

She smiled at him and touched his arm briefly. It
had
been a wonderful time - for Heidi, at least. Heidi had indubitably Put It Behind Her - the Gypsy woman, the preliminary hearing at which the state's case had been dismissed, the old Gypsy man with the rotted nose. For Heidi it was now just an unpleasantness in the past, like Billy's friendship with that wop hoodlum from New York.

But something else was on her mind; a second quick side glance confirmed it. The smile had faded and she was looking at him and tiny wrinkles around her eyes showed.

'You're welcome,' he said. 'You're
always
welcome, babe.'

'And when we get home'

'I'll jump your bones again!' he cried with bogus enthusiasm, and manufactured a leer. Actually, he didn't think he could get it up if the Dallas Cowgirls paraded past him in lingerie designed by Frederick's of Hollywood. It had nothing to do with how often they had made it up at Mohonk; it was that damned fortune. THINNER. Surely it had said no such thing - it had been his imagination. But it hadn't
seemed
like his imagination, dammit; it had seemed as real as a New York
Times
headline. And that very reality was the terrible part of it, because THINNER wasn't
anybody's
idea of a fortune. Even YOUR

FATE IS TO SOON LOSE WATE didn't really make it. Fortune writers were into things like long journeys and meeting old friends.

Ergo, he had hallucinated it.

Yep, that's right.

Ergo, he was probably losing his marbles.

Oh, come on, now, is that fair?

Fair enough. When your imagination got out of control, it wasn't good news.

'You can jump me if you want to,' Heidi said, 'but what I really want is for you to jump on
our
bathroom scales'

'Come on, Heidi! I lost some weight, no big deal!'

'I'm very proud of you for losing some weight, Billy, but we've been together almost constantly for the last five days, and I'll be darned if I know
how
you're losing it.'

He gave her a longer look this time, but she wouldn't look back at him; she only stared through the windshield, her arms folded across her bosom.

'Heidi . . .'

'You're eating as much as you ever did. Maybe more. The mountain air must have really gotten your motor revving.'

'Why gild the lily?' he asked, slowing down to slam forty cents into the basket of the Rye tollbooth. His lips were pressed together into a thin white line, his heart was beating too fast, and he was suddenly furious with her. 'What you mean is, I'm a great big hog. Say it right out if you want, Heidi. What the hell. I can take it.'

'I didn't mean anything
like
that!' she cried. 'Why do you want to hurt me, Billy? Why do you want to do that after we had such a good time?'

He didn't have to glance over this time to know she was near tears. Her wavering voice told him that. He was sorry, but being sorry didn't kill the anger. And the fear that was just under it.

'I don't want to hurt you,' he said, gripping the Olds's steering wheel so hard his knuckles showed white. 'I never do. But losing weight is a
good
thing, Heidi, so why do you want to keep hitting on me about it?'

'It is not always a good thing!'
she shouted, startling him making the car swerve slightly.
'It is not always a good thing
and you know it!'

Now she
was
crying, crying and rooting through her purse in search of a Kleenex in that half-annoying, half-endearing way she had. He handed her his handkerchief and she used it to wipe her eyes.

'You can say what you want, you can be mean, you can cross-examine me if you want, Billy, you can even spoil the time we just had. But I love you and I'm going to say what I have to say. When people start to lose weight even though they're not on a diet, it can mean they're sick. It's one of the seven warning signs of cancer.' She thrust his handkerchief back at him. His fingers touched hers as he took it. Her hand was very cold.

Well, the word was out. Cancer. Rhymes with
dancer
and You
just shit your pants, sir.
God knew the word had bobbed up in his own mind more than once since getting on the penny scale in front of the shoe store. It had bobbed up like some evil clown's dirty balloon and he had turned away from it. He had turned away from it the way you turned away from the bag ladies who sat rocking back and forth in their strange, sooty little nooks outside the Grand Central Station
...
or the way you turned away from the capering Gypsy children who had come with the rest of the Gypsy band. The Gypsy children sang in voices that somehow managed to be both monotonous and strangely sweet at the same time. The Gypsy children walked on their hands with tambourines outstretched, held somehow by their bare dirty toes. The Gypsy children juggled. The Gypsy children put the local Frisbee jocks to shame by spinning two, sometimes three of the plastic disks at the same time - on fingers, on thumbs, sometimes on noses. They laughed while they did all those things, and they all seemed to have skin diseases or crossed eyes or harelips. When you suddenly found such a weird combination of agility and ugliness thrust in front of you, what else was there to do but turn away? Bag ladies, Gypsy children, and cancer. Even the skittery run of his thoughts frightened him.