Desperation (40 page)

5

Cynthia was pouring herself a
fresh glass of spring-water when the cougar let go its first cry. The sound of it unwound all her nerves and muscles. The plastic bottle slipped from her relaxing fingers, hit the floor between her sneakers, and exploded like a balloon waterbomb. She knew the sound for what it was—the yowl of a wildcat—immediately, although she had never heard such a sound outside of a movie theater. And, of course—weird but true—that was still the case.

Then it was a man screaming. Tom Billingsley screaming.

She turned, saw Steve stare at Marinville, saw Marinville look away, cheeks leaden, lips pressed together but trembling all the same. In that moment the writer looked weak and lost and oddly female with his long gray hair, like an old woman who's lost track not only of where she is but of who she is.

Still, what Cynthia felt most for Johnny Marinville in that moment was contempt.

Steve looked to Ralph, who nodded, grabbed his gun, and ran toward the stage-left opening. Steve caught up with him and they disappeared that way, running abreast. The old man screamed again, but this time the cry had a gruesome liquid quality, as if he were trying to gargle and scream at the same time, and it didn't last long. The cougar yowled again.

Mary went to Steve's boss and held out the shotgun she had up until then barely let go of. “Take it. Go help them.”

He looked at her, biting his lip. “Listen,” he said. “I have lousy night-vision. I know how that sounds, but—”

The wildcat screamed, the sound so loud it seemed to drill into Cynthia's ears. Gooseflesh danced up her back.

“Yeah, like a gutless blowhard, that's how it sounds,” Mary said, and turned away. That got Marinville moving, but slowly, like someone who has been roused from a deep sleep. Cynthia saw Billingsley's rifle leaning against the movie screen and didn't wait for him. She grabbed the gun and sprinted across the stage, going with it held high over her head like a freedom fighter in a poster—not because she wanted to look romantic but because she didn't want to run into something and risk having the gun go off. She might shoot someone up ahead of her.

She ran past a couple of dusty chairs standing by what looked like a defunct lighting control-panel, then down the narrow hall they had taken to get to the stage in the first place. Brick on one side, wood on the other. A smell of old men with too much time on their hands. And too much jizz, judging from their video library.

There was another animal scream—much louder now—but no more noise from the old man. Not a good sign. A door banged open not far ahead, the sound slightly hollow, the sound only a public restroom door can make when it's banged against tile.
So,
she thought.
The men's or the women's, and it must be the men's, 'cause that
's where the toilet is.

“Look out!” Ralph's voice, raised in a near-scream.
“Jesus Christ, Steve—”

From the cat there came a kind of spitting roar. There was a thud. Steve yelled, although whether in pain or surprise she couldn't tell. Then there were two deafening explosions. The muzzle-flashes washed the wall outside the men's room, for a moment revealing a fire extinguisher on which someone had hung a ratty old sombrero. She ducked instinctively, then turned the corner into the bathroom. Ralph Carver was holding the door propped open with his body. The bathroom was lit only by the old man's flashlight, which lay in the corner with the lens pointed at the wall, spraying light up the tiles and kicking back just enough to see by. That faint light and the rolling smoke from Ralph's discharged rifle gave what she was looking at a sultry hallucinatory quality that made her think of her half a dozen experiments with peyote and mescaline.

Billingsley was crawling, dazed, toward the urinals, his head down so far it was dragging on the tiles. His shirt and undershirt had been torn open down the middle. His back was pouring blood. He looked as if he had been flogged by a maniac.

In the middle of the floor, a bizarre waltz was going on. The cougar was up on her hind legs, paws on Steve Ames's shoulders. Blood was pouring down her flanks, but she did not seem to be seriously hurt. One of Ralph's shots must have missed her entirely; Cynthia saw that half of the horse on the wall had been blown to smithereens. Steve had his arms crossed in front of his chest; his elbows and forearms were against the cougar's chest.

“Shoot it!”
he screamed.
“For Christ'
s sake, shoot it again!”

Ralph, his face a drawn mask of shadows in the faint light, raised the rifle, aimed it, then lowered it again with an anguished expression, afraid of hitting Steve.

The cat shrieked and darted its triangular head forward. Steve snapped his own head back. They tangoed drunkenly that way, the cat's claws digging deeper into Steve's shoulders, and now Cynthia could see blood-blossoms spreading on the coverall he wore, around the places where the cat's claws were dug in. Its tail was lashing madly back and forth.

They did another half-turn, and Steve collided with the potty in the middle of the floor. It crashed over on its side and Steve tottered on the edge of balance, frantically holding off the lunging cougar with his crossed arms. Beyond them, Billingsley had reached the far corner of the men's room yet continued trying to crawl, as if the wildcat's attack had turned him into some sort of windup toy, doomed to go on until he finally ran down.

“
Shoot this fucking thing!”
Steve yelled. He managed to get one foot between the lower part of the potty's frame and its canvas catchbag without falling, but now he was out of backing room; in a moment or two the cougar would push him over.
“Shoot it, Ralph,
shoot it
!”

Ralph raised the rifle again, eyes wide, gnawing at his lower lip, and then Cynthia was slammed aside. She reeled across the room and caught the middle washbasin in a line of three just in time to keep herself from smashing face-first into the wall-length steel mirror. She turned and saw Marinville stride into the room with the stock of Mary's gun laid against the inside of his right forearm. His matted gray hair swung back and forth, brushing his shoulders. Cynthia thought she had never seen anyone in her life who looked so terrified, but now that he was in motion, Marinville didn't hesitate; he socked the shotgun's double muzzle against the side of the animal's head.

“Push!”
he bellowed, and Steve pushed. The cat's head rocked up and away from him. Its luminous eyes seemed to be lit from within, as if it were not a living thing at all but some sort of jack-o'-lantern. The writer winced, turned his head slightly away, and pulled both triggers. There was a deafening roar that dwarfed the sound of Carver's rifle. Bright light leaped from the barrel, and then Cynthia smelled frying hair. The cougar fell sideways, its head mostly gone, the fur on the back of its neck smouldering.

Steve waved his arms for balance. Marinville, dazed, made only a token effort to catch him, and Steve—her nice new friend—went sprawling.

“Oh Christ, I think I shit myself,” Marinville said, almost conversationally, and then: “No, I guess it was just the wind in the willows. Steve, you okay?”

Cynthia was on her knees beside him. He sat up, looked around dazedly, and winced as she tentatively pressed a finger to one of the blood-blossoms on the shoulder of the coverall.

“I think so.” He was trying to get up. Cynthia put an arm around his waist, braced, hauled. “Thanks, boss.”

“I don't believe it,” Marinville said. He sounded completely natural to Cynthia for the first time since she'd met him, like a man living a life instead of playing a role. “I don't believe I did it. That woman shamed me into it. Steven,
are
you all right?”

“He's got punctures,” Cynthia said, “but never mind that now. We have to help the old guy.”

Mary came in with Marinville's gun—the one that was unloaded—held up by one shoulder. Her hands were wrapped around the end of the barrel. To Cynthia her face looked almost eerily composed. She surveyed the scene—even more dreamlike now, not just tinged with gunsmoke but hazed with it—and then hurried across the room toward Billingsley, who made two more tired efforts to crawl into the wall and then collapsed from the knees upward, his face going last, first tilting and then sliding down the tiles.

Ralph reached for Steve's shoulder, saw the blood there, and settled for gripping his arm high on the bicep. “I couldn't,” he said. “I wanted to, but I couldn't. After the first two rounds I was afraid of hitting you instead of it. When you finally got turned around so I could make a side-shot, Marinville was there.”

“It's okay,” Steve said. “All's well that ends well.”

“I owed it to him,” the writer said with a winning-quarterback expansiveness Cynthia found rather nauseating. “If it hadn't been for me, he wouldn't have been here in the—”

“Get over here!” Mary said, her voice cracking. “Jesus Christ, oh man, he's bleeding so
bad
!”

The four of them gathered around Mary and Billingsley. She had gotten him onto his back, and Cynthia winced at what she saw. One of the old geezer's hands was mostly gone—all the fingers but the pinky chewed to stubs—but that wasn't the worst. His lower neck and shoulder had been flayed open. Blood was spilling out in freshets. Yet he was awake, his eyes bright and aware.

“Skirt,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Skirt.”

“Don't try to talk, oldtimer,” Marinville said. He bent, scooped up the flashlight, and trained it on Billingsley. It made what had looked bad enough in the shadows even worse. There was a pond of blood beside the old guy's head; Cynthia didn't understand how he could still be alive.

“I need a compress,” Mary said. “Don't just stand there,
help
me, he's going to die if we don't stop the bleeding
right now
!”

Too late, babe,
Cynthia thought but didn't say.

Steve saw what looked like a rag in one of the sinks and grabbed it. It turned out to be a very old shirt with Joe Camel on it. He folded the shirt twice, then handed it to Mary. She nodded, folded it once more, then pressed it against the side of Billingsley's neck.

“Come on,” Cynthia said, taking Steve's arm. “Back on stage. If there's nothing else, I can at least wash those out with water from the bar. There's plenty on the bottom sh—”

“No,” the old man whispered. “Stay! Got to . . . hear this.”

“You can't talk,” Mary said. She pushed harder on the side of his neck with the makeshift compress. The shirt was already darkening. “You'll never stop bleeding if you talk.”

He rolled his eyes toward Mary. “Too late . . . f'doctorin.” His voice was hoarse. “Dyin.”

“No you're not, that's ridiculous.”

“Dyin,”
he repeated, and moved violently beneath her hands. His torn back squelched on the tiles, a sound that made Cynthia feel nauseated. “Get down here . . . all of you, close . . . and listen to me.”

Steve glanced at Cynthia. She shrugged, then the two of them knelt beside the old man's leg, Cynthia shoulder to shoulder with Mary Jackson. Marinville and Carver leaned in from the sides.

“He shouldn't talk,” Mary said, but she sounded doubtful.

“Let him say what he needs to,” Marinville said. “What is it, Tom?”

“Too short for business,” Billingsley whispered. He was looking up at them, begging them with his eyes to understand.

Steve shook his head. “I'm not getting you.”

Billingsley wet his lips. “Only seen her once before in a dress. That's why it took me too long to figure out . . . what was wrong.”

A startled expression had come over Mary's face. “That's right, she said she had a meeting with the comptroller! He comes all the way from Phoenix to hear her report on something important, something that means big bucks, and she puts on a dress so short she'll be flashing her pants at him every time she crosses her legs? I don't think so.”

Beads of sweat ran down Billingsley's pale, stubbly cheeks like tears. “Feel so stupid,” he wheezed. “Not all my fault, though. Nope. Didn't know her to talk to. Wasn't there the one time she came into the office to pick up more liniment. Always saw her at a distance, and out here women mostly wear jeans. But I had it. I did. Had it and then got drinking and lost track of it again.” He looked at Mary. “The dress would have been all right . . . when she put it on. Do you see? Do you understand?”

“What's he talking about?” Ralph asked. “How could it be all right when she put it on and too short for a business meeting later?”

“Taller,” the old man whispered.

Marinville looked at Steve. “What was that? It sounded like he said—”

“Taller,”
Billingsley said. He enunciated the word carefully, then began to cough. The folded shirt Mary held against his neck and shoulder was now soaked. His eyes rolled back and forth among them. He turned his head to one side, spat out a mouthful of blood, and the coughing fit eased.

“Dear God,” Ralph said. “She's like
Entragian
? Is that what you're saying,
that she's like the cop
?”

“Yes . . . no,” Billingsley whispered. “Don't know for sure. Would have . . . seen that right away . . . but . . .”

“Mr. Billingsley, do you think she might have caught a milder dose of whatever the cop has?” Mary asked.

He looked at her gratefully and squeezed her hand.

Marinville said, “She's sure not bleeding out like the cop.”

“Or not where we can see it,” Ralph said. “Not yet, anyway.”

Billingsley looked past Mary's shoulder. “Where . . . where . . .”