What Came Before He Shot Her (40 page)

The pure animal nature of what was going on between Kendra and Dix escaped Ness entirely. Male and female driven by instinct to mate when in naked proximity to each other and in possession of suffi cient energy to do so as a means of propagating a species . . . Ness simply did not understand this. She heard sex. She thought love: Kendra having something that Ness had not.

In the state in which Ness found herself after her encounter with Six and Natasha in Queensway, then, Kendra’s situation seemed monumentally unfair. Ness saw her aunt as practically an old lady, an aging woman who’d had her chances with men and who by rights ought to be stepping aside in the eternal competition for male attention. Ness began to hate the very sight of Kendra when she appeared each morning, and she found herself unable to repress comments such as “Had a
good
time las’ night?,” which took the place of a more conventional morning greeting, as did, “Feelin
sore
’tween the legs today,
Ken
dra?”

and “How you managin to walk, slag?” and “So he givin it to you the way you
like
it, Ken?”

Kendra’s response was, “Who’s giving what to whom is none of your business, Vanessa,” but she worried. She felt inextricably caught between lust and duty. She wanted the freedom implied by sex with Dix whenever she felt like sex with Dix, but she didn’t want to be judged unfit to keep the Campbells with her. She finally said to him, “I think we got to cool things off, baby,” one night as he approached her. “Ness can hear us and she’s . . . Maybe not every night, Dix. What d’you think? This is . . . well, this is bothering her.”

“Let her be bothered,” was his reply. “She got to get used to it, Ken.” He nuzzled her neck then, kissed her mouth, and trailed his fingers down and down until she arched, gasped, sighed, desired, and forgot Ness entirely.

So the pressure Ness felt continued to build, mitigated by nothing.

She knew she would have to do something for relief. She thought she knew what that something was.

Dix was watching his pirated copy of
Pumping Iron
when she made her move. He was preparing for an upcoming competition, which generally made him less aware of his surroundings than he ordinarily was.

Whenever he faced a bodybuilding event, his concentration was on preparing to take another title or trophy. Competitive bodybuilding was a mind game as much as it was a demonstration of one’s ability to sculpt one’s muscles to obscene proportions. For days before an event, Dix prepared his mind.

He was on a beanbag, his back against the sofa, his gaze on the television screen where Arnold was eternally playing mental games with Lou Ferrigno. All attention on Arnold, he noted when someone sat down on the sofa, but he didn’t note who it was. He also didn’t note what she was wearing: fresh from having bathed, a thin summer dressing gown of Kendra’s pulled around her naked body.

Kendra was at the charity shop. Joel and Toby were in Meanwhile Gardens, where Joel had promised to accompany Toby so that he could watch the board riders and the cyclists in the skate bowl. Ness herself was due at the child drop-in centre to work off more of her community service hours, but the sight of Dix watching his video, the reality of their being alone in the house, the persistent memory of the thumping bed, and the fact that she needed to dress in this very space that he was occupying—her supposed
private
space—all urged her to approach him.

He was taking notes, chuckling at an Arnold witticism. He held a clipboard on his knees, and his legs were bare. He wore silky running shorts and a vest. He wore nothing else that Ness could see.

She noted the hand in which he held the biro. She said, “I di’n’t know you were a lefty, blood.”

He stirred, but was only partially aware. He said, “Dat’s how it is,”

and continued writing. He chuckled again and said, “Lookit him. Dat bloke . . . Never been anyone like him.”

Ness glanced at the television. At best it was a grainy film, peopled by men with pudding-bowl haircuts on heads too small for the rest of their bodies. They stood before mirrors and heaved their shoulders around. They clasped their hands this way and that with their legs poised to show off massively bulging muscles. It was all not-so-vaguely obscene. Ness shuddered but said, “You look better’n dem.”

He said, “No one looks better’n Arnold.”

“You do, baby,” was her reply.

She was close enough to him to feel the heat coming off his body.

She moved closer. She said, “I got to get dressed, Dix.”

He said, “Hmm,” but did not attend.

She gazed at his hand. She said, “You use that lefty for everyt’ing?”

He said, “Dat’s right,” and made a notation.

She said, “You put it in wiv your left?”

His note taking hesitated. She went on.

“C’n you do it wiv either hand is what I mean. Or do you have to guide it at all? Reckon not, eh. Bet you don’t have to. Big enough an’

hard enough to find it’s own way, innit.” She stood. “Oh, I been feelin fat. What d’you t’ink, Dix? You t’ink I’m fat?” She placed herself between him and the television, her hands on her hips. “Gimme your

’pinion.” She unloosened the belt of the gown and let it fall open, presenting herself to him. “You t’ink I’m too fat, Dix?”

Dix averted his eyes. “Tie dat t’ing up.”

“Not till you answer,” she replied. “You got to tell me cos you’re a man. What I got . . . you t’ink it good enough make a man feel hot?”

He got to his feet. “You dress yourself,” he told her. He looked for the video player’s remote control and he switched off the film. He knew he needed to get out of the room, but Ness stood between him and the stairs. He said, “I got to go.”

She said, “You got to answer first. Shit. I ain’t goin to bite you, Dix, and you the only man round here I c’n ask. I let you go once you tell me the truth.”

“You ain’t fat,” he said.

“You di’n’t even have a look,” she told him. “All it’s goin t’ take is a little one, anyways. You c’n do dat much, can’t you? I need to know.”

He could have pushed past her, but he was wary of how she would take any physical contact between them. So he cooperated to buy her cooperation. He gave her a glance and said, “You look good.”

She said, “You call
dat
a look? Shit, I seen blind men give once-overs better ’n dat. You goin to need some help, ain’t you? Here, den. Le’s try dis again.” She dropped the dressing gown and stood before him naked. She cupped her breasts towards him, and she licked her lips.

“You guide it in, Dix, or it go by itself? You got to tell me or you got to show me. I know which way I want it, mon.”

At all this, Dix would have been inhuman had he not felt aroused.

He tried to look elsewhere but the very flesh of her demanded, and so he looked at her and for a terrible moment fixed on her chocolate nipples and then, even worse, on her triangle of wooly hair from which it seemed the scent of a siren rose. Her age was girl; her body was woman.

It would be easy enough, but fatal as well.

He grabbed her by one arm. Her flesh burned as much as his, and her face brightened. He stooped quickly and felt her hand on his head, heard her little cry as she tried to guide his face, his mouth . . . He scooped up the dressing gown and flung it on her, wresting himself away from her grip.

“Cover yourself,” he hissed. “What’re you
t’inkin
anyways? Life s’pose to be ’bout gettin stuffed by every man come your way? An’
dis
the way you t’ink men like it? Dat what you t’ink? Struttin round displayin yourself like some ten-quid slag? Hell, you got the parts of a woman, but dat’s it, Ness. Rest of you, so goddamn bloody stupid I can’t t’ink of a man who’d even want a piece, no matter how desperate.

Y’unnerstan? Now get out of my way.”

He pushed past her. He left her in the sitting room. She was trembling. She stumbled to the video machine and pulled out the cassette.

It was a simple matter for her to yank the tape from its housing and to trample it. But it was not enough.

FABIA BENDER’S VISIT to Edenham Estate put Kendra in the position of having to reevaluate. She didn’t want to do that, but she found herself doing so anyway, especially once she read through all the paperwork that Joel had been given by Luce Chinaka at the learning centre.

Kendra wasn’t stupid. She’d always known that something would have to be done eventually about the problem of Toby. But she’d convinced herself that Toby’s difficulties had to do with the way he learned. To dwell on anything else as the source of his oddity meant heading directly into a nightmare. So she’d told herself that he merely had to be sorted out, educated properly to the extent he could actually
be
educated, given some kind of appropriate life skills, and led into an area of employment that might allow him a modicum of adult independence, eventually. If that could not happen for him in Middle Row School and with the extra assistance of the learning centre, then another educational environment would have to be scouted out for him. But that was the extent to which Kendra had so far been willing to dwell on her little nephew, which allowed her to ignore the times Toby just faded away, the muttered conversations he had with no one present, and the frightening implications of both these behaviours. Indeed, in the months the Campbells had been in her care, Kendra had successfully managed to use the disclaimer, “Toby’s just Toby” no matter what the boy did. Anything else didn’t bear consideration. So she read the paperwork and she put it away. No one would test, assess, evaluate, or study Toby Campbell while she had a say in the matter.

But that meant doing everything possible not to attract undue attention from any interfering governmental agencies. Thus, Kendra made a study of the room in which Toby and Joel slept, seeing it as Fabia Bender had likely seen it. It screamed impermanency, which was not good. The camp beds and sleeping bags were bad enough. The two suitcases in which the boys had kept their clothes for six months were even worse. Aside from the “It’s a Boy” sign that still tilted drunkenly across the window, there was no decoration. There were not even curtains to block out the nighttime light from a lamp on one of the paths in Meanwhile Gardens.

This would have to change. She was going to have to sort out beds and chests, curtains, and something for the walls. She would need to haunt secondhand and charity shops to do this; she would need to ask for handouts. Cordie helped her. She provided old sheets and blankets, and she put the word out in her neighbourhood. This produced two chests in moderate disrepair, and a set of posters featuring travel destinations that neither Joel nor Toby was likely ever to see.

“Looks good, girl,” was how Cordie supportively evaluated it when they had the room set up.

“Looks like a fuckin rubbish tip,” was Ness’s contribution.

Kendra ignored her. Tension had been rolling off Ness for some time, but she’d been continuing with her community service, so everything else she was doing and saying was bearable.

“What’s dis all about?” was Dix’s reaction when he saw the changes to the boys’ room.

“It’s about showing that Joel and Toby have a decent place to live.”

“Who t’inks they don’t?”

“That Youth Offending woman.”

“Dat woman wiv the dogs? You t’ink she means to take Joel and Toby away?”

“Don’t know and don’t intend to wait round to see.”

“I thought she come here ’bout Toby and th’ learnin centre.”

“She came because she didn’t know there
was
a Toby. She came because she didn’t know there was anyone besides Ness living with me till she got called by the learning centre woman and . . . Look. What does it matter, Dix? I got to get a proper environment set up for those kids

’n case that woman wants to give me aggravation about having them living here. As it is, they’re looking too close at Toby, and can you imagine what that’ll do to Joel and Ness if he gets sent away? Or if
they
get separated ’s well? Or if . . . Hell, I don’t know.”

Dix thought about this as he watched Kendra straighten secondhand sheets and thirdhand blankets on old beds—an Oxfam find—

whose pedigree was displayed in the cracks and gouges upon their headboards. With all the furniture in the room, there was barely space enough to move, just a narrow opening between the beds. The house was tiny, unintended for five people. The solution seemed obvious to Dix.

He said, “Ken, baby, you ever t’ink it’s all for the best?”

“What?”

“Wha’s going on.”

She straightened. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

“I mean the fact dis woman shows up. The fact dat maybe she t’ink about changin where the kids’re livin. Truth is, dis place ain’t proper for dem. It’s too bloody small, and wiv dis woman makin a report, seems to me like it’s the proper time to t’ink about—”

“What the
hell
are you suggesting?” Kendra demanded. “That I send

’em off? That I let ’em be separated? That I let ’em get taken away without trying to do something to head that off? And then you and I can
what
, Dix? Shag like bunnies in every room in the house?”

He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. He didn’t reply at once, so Kendra was left listening to the emotional echo of her words.

He finally said quietly, “I was t’inkin time we got married, Kendra. I was t’inkin time I showed I c’n be a proper dad to dese kids. Mum and Dad been wantin me to learn the café business, and—”

“What about Mr. Universe? You give up your dreams as easy as that?”

“Sometimes t’ings come up dat make ’emselves bigger’n dreams.

More important ’n dreams. You and I get married I c’n work a proper job. We c’n get a bigger place, we c’n have rooms for—”

“I like
this
place.” Kendra was aware that she sounded shrill, unreasonable, and unnervingly Nesslike, but she didn’t care. “I worked for it, I got a mortgage for it, I’m paying for it. None of it’s easy, but it’s mine.”

“Sure. But if we got a bigger place an’ we got married, den no social worker’s ever going to even suggest th’ kids need to be anywhere but wiv us, see. We’d be a proper family.”