The Lost (33 page)

There was a pause and then his voice went soft again.

“Oh, I care, Kath. Believe me. I care.”

She didn’t like this tone of voice of his any more than she liked the nasty one. It frightened her. Like the guy was capable of innumerable instant changes. It also was making her mad and she needed to control that.

“Listen. This is getting us nowhere, Ray. I’m sorry if you feel hurt. I didn’t mean to . . .”

“What do you know about hurt, Kath? You get every goddamn fucking thing you ask for. You always do, don’t you? You ever get something you
didn’t
ask for?”

Screw this
, she thought.
You don’t need it
.

“That’s it. Discussion over. I’m going to bed now, Ray. I’m much too tired for this.”

“You’re saying you’re gonna hang up on me now? In the middle of all of this?”

And now he was sounding like a hurt little boy. The guy had more faces than Carter had pills.

“We’re not in the middle of anything, Ray. I’ve said everything I have to say. I’m sorry but . . .”

“Dammit, Kath! Will you fucking
listen
to me!”

“. . . but that’s the way it is. I’ve got to get some sleep. Good night, Ray. Good-bye.”

She placed the receiver down. Then took it off its cradle and placed it on the nightstand.

He wasn’t through. He’d try to call her. She knew he would.

She wondered how scared of him she should be.

She was shaking with tension. Exhausted or not she was not at all sure about getting to sleep tonight. She thought about her father’s brandy and single malt whiskey in the downstairs cabinet. A glass of something would calm her.

No, she thought. Ray Pye was not going to turn her into some goddamn alky. A good hot shower instead. But thinking about a shower immediately brought to mind Janet Leigh in
Psycho
. She remembered Ray appearing in her bedroom. Scaling the roof. Climbing in through her window.

Surprise me
.

Jesus. Tonight a good hot shower was not going to make it.

Maybe I should give Deke a call
, she thought.
See what he thinks. It’s still pretty early in California. The guy tells me he’s killed two people and now he’s practically threatening me over the telephone. Maybe I should phone the police
.

It was not her habit to have anything to
do
with the police. Nor was it Deke’s. But maybe.

One drink does not an alky make, she thought. Not even two or three.

She shut and locked the window and then she went downstairs.

Chapter Thirty-two

Ray

Ray couldn’t sleep. Though he was already halfway wasted on the last of his hash and the better part of a six-pack by the time he got her call. He wondered if she could tell he was high. If that contributed to her dumping him. He didn’t think so. He’d sounded fine.

The bitch, she’d made up her mind already. Didn’t even give him a chance.

He didn’t even get to mention the coke.

And now her phone was off the hook. He tried her over and over again.

What the fuck was going on here?

He drank another beer and then he switched to scotch. He sat in front of the TV set without hardly seeing it. All he saw were images of her. Kath stripping off her clothes by a moonlit pool, walking through the parking lot at Bertrand’s Island trying out locked car doors, showing tit to the guy behind the counter in the liquor store, Kath sitting gazing at him beneath a tree lit with red Chinese lanterns in New York City, in her bedroom wrapped in a towel, in an oversized white shirt and jeans and then naked beneath him and he remembered the feel of her, the taste of her mouth and scent of her hair and alongside all these eddying images and impressions an anger flowed and a will and a yearning that almost hurt him to consider.

More scotch and the images blurred and softened, springing into focus like slow strobic light, like a knife tearing up through paper glinting and disappearing. Finally he slept.

In his dream he was in Turner’s Pool.

Night in deep water.

He was swimming for his life.

Pulled down at the hands of strange maidens.

Chapter Thirty-three

Sunday, August 17
Jennifer/Katherine/The Cat

Jennifer woke around eleven with a dull throbbing headache that testified to the warm six-pack of Colt .45 from the night before, to drinking herself to sleep once she left the dock, drinking well into the morning and to a not-so-dull fury. In the shower the headache began to subside but not the anger. She dressed and had a cup of coffee and borrowed the Griffiths’ car. The day was gray, a slow drizzle of rain falling, misting the windshield. The houses along Poplar and Ridge Road looked sullen and empty. People were at church. People were at home reading their Sunday papers. People were still in bed.

And all these people had lives. Boring or not.

All these people were
doing
something.

Mrs. Pye was manning the front desk as she usually did on Sundays. She drove past it and back to Ray’s apartment and opened the car door and stepped out onto the macadam and leaned on the horn. She did not want to go inside. She wanted him to come
out
side and she didn’t give a good goddamn who else she managed to disturb to get him out there. The horn blared its steady note through the open motel courtyard and after a moment his door opened, Ray looking pissed and only now climbing into his shirt, his hair not even combed yet. So she’d woke him. Fine.

She wondered who was inside. Who he was fucking this time. His precious Katherine? She waited until he started walking toward the car and then released the horn.

“Jennifer? What the fuck?”

He looked terrible. Red-eyed and puffy.

“What the fuck. That’s exactly right. What the fuck makes you think you can use me whatever way you want, Ray?
Whenever
you want. What the fuck makes you think you can just go on and on with this bullshit? I came here to tell you, I quit. No more bullshit, Ray. You hear me?
No more
!”

She was shouting. She loved it. She felt practically weightless all of a sudden. It was pouring right out of her. All the poison,
his
poison—she even imagined its color,
green
, green and yellow—spilling right out of her across the macadam between them like some kind of nasty bile.

“You crazy? You want to tell me what the fuck’s going on?”

“You’ve fucked with my head for the last time, Ray, that’s what’s going on. I’m gone. You got it? History. You played me for a sucker for the last time. You know what? I don’t need you anymore, Ray. I don’t know if I
ever
needed you. I think you were just a real bad habit. Guess what? Habit’s broken. I’m
Tim’s
girl now, you asshole! And he’s better in bed than you’ll ever be. And he doesn’t have to stuff his shoes with beer cans to make people think he’s got a great big cock. So screw you, Ray! And screw your goddamn phony ring!”

She dug it out of her pocket and threw it at him hard, heard it
thunk
off his forehead just over his eye and tinkle like a bell on the ground and saw him flinch, saw the
big man, the big stud
flinch from a blow from a tiny little broken ring and it felt so good she laughed.
She laughed right at him, right into his face
and at that moment he was nothing, Ray was absolutely nothing to her for practically the first time she could remember and she knew this with a certainty she’d never known about anything in her life.

“You
fucking bitch
!”

He lunged at her, grabbed her by the arms. His breath sour with old alcohol. And then he was shaking her. The fingers hurt but she didn’t care. He could slap her, punch her, throw her to the ground and she wouldn’t care about that either. There wasn’t a thing he could do to her, there wasn’t any way he could hurt her anymore. Not in that soul-deep way he’d hurt her all these years. She’d made it past that in one big leap.
She
was done with
him
now and and not the other way around and as he raised a fist she looked him in the eye and saw the hesitation there, the moment of cowardice and doubt, almost laughed in his face again and then she heard a voice behind her.

“
Raymond. “

She saw him glance beyond her down the drive and turned and saw his mother standing there behind her.

“Let her go, Raymond. Right now.”

There was a moment when she thought he still might hit her despite the cold command in the voice and she steeled herself for that. She could take a punch. She could take whatever the hell he was dishing out. Whatever it was it had been worth it. Then the fist dropped. The fingers on her arms relaxed and then released her. She turned back to him and looked into a face so explosively red, at an expression so strained and twisted, she thought he might just have a stroke right then and there.

Go ahead
, she thought.
Die
.

You damn well deserve to die
.

And it was the first time she’d thought that too. Though she more than anyway knew he did.

“Get back inside, Raymond. We’ll talk about this later. Jennifer, I think you should get into your car.”

She took a deep breath and nodded and then climbed into the driver’s seat. She didn’t close the door. Through the windshield she saw him glaring at her, then turn and spit down to the macadam and as he walked back to his apartment trying to look so tough, the long strides, the fists clenched, the open shirt flapping in the misty breeze, slamming the door behind him, she thought that it really
was
a damn funny walk he had. Really, it was ridiculous.

Mrs. Pye leaned in through the open door.

“You better stay away for a while,” she said.

She nodded. “Like forever.”

She realized suddenly that she’d never really seen Ray’s mother up close before. Not this close. His mother was always just passing by or sitting behind a desk. She was a handsome woman. Her eyes were narrow, dark. Her lips were almost nonexistent, her good skin barely lined, the nose attractive and slightly beaked, the long graying hair pulled back tight into a severe bun.

“I can’t stand the temper on that boy. I’m damned if I know where he gets it from.”

The eyes glittered, moved back and forth, studying her.

“I don’t know either,” she said. She started the car. “Thanks, Mrs. Pye.”

“Jane, honey. Call me Jane.”

“Thanks . . . Jane.”

The eyes studied her again.

“You go on home now,” she said and stood there watching until the car pulled away.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon before Katherine reached him on the phone. Ten in the morning California time. It sounded like she’d woken him.

“Where were you last night, mister?” she said.

“Don’t ask and I won’t say.”

“Okay. You sound like shit though.”

“Thanks, Kath. I really appreciate that, y’know?” He yawned. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

As best she could Katherine told him about the conversation of the night before.

“What do you think? Should I call the cops?”

“Jesus, Kath. I don’t know. You really want to get involved with the Man? What are they gonna do for you?”

“Arrest him?”

“For what? It’s not like he showed you the goddamn rifle or something. It’s your word against his. They talk to him, release him, and then he’s
really
pissed at you.”

“Harrassment?”

“He’s not harrassing you. He’s phoning you. You had a shouting match over the phone. So what? You really scared, babe? You really scared of the guy?”

“I don’t know.”

“You want me to drive on out there?”

“Here?”

“Sure. Big fella on a Harley. Have a little talk with the asshole?”

“You’d do that?”

“For you I would. I wouldn’t drive that far to see the Pope piss on Lyndon B. Johnson’s leg but for you I would. Sure.”

She laughed. “I always told my father you were a romantic. He never believed me.”

“They never do.”

“Tell you what,” she said. “Anything else happens, I might actually want to take you up on that. I’ll give it a few days though, I guess. Wait and see.”

“Okay. You watch that ass of yours for me though, okay? He gives you any more shit, you call me.”

“I will. Love you, Deke.”

“Love you, babe. Later.”

She pictured Deke’s Harley pulling up at a stoplight beside Ray’s Chevy convertible. Ray’s Chevy with the top down. Ray glancing over. Deke glancing over. The Harley’s engine revving.