Horns

“’S all right,” Merrin said, but Terry was already handing his coat forward. “Thank you, Terry.” Her tone so ingratiating and needy that Lee wanted to backhand her. Merrin had her qualities, but fundamentally she was a woman like other women, aroused and submissive in the face of status and money. Take away the trust fund and the family name and Lee doubted she ever would’ve looked at sorry Ig Perrish twice. “You m-must think-”

“I don’t think anything. Relax.”

“Ig-”

“I’m sure Ig is fine. Don’t worry yourself.”

She was still trembling, hard-a little bit of a turn-on, actually, the way her breasts were quivering-but she pivoted to reach a hand into the backseat. “Are you all right?” When she drew her hand back, Lee saw blood on her fingertips. “You ought to have some g-gauze for that.”

“It’s fine. No worries,” Terry said, and Lee wanted to backhand him. Instead he pushed down on the pedal, in a hurry to dump Terry at his house, get him out of the picture as quickly as possible.

The Cadillac rose and fell, swooping along the wet road and swaying around the curves. Merrin hugged herself under the robe of Terry’s coat, still shivering furiously, her bright, stricken eyes staring out from the tangled nest of her hair, a mess of wet red straw. All at once she reached up and put one hand against the dash, her arm stiff and straight, as if they were about to pitch off the road.

“Merrin, are you all right?”

She shook her head. “No. Y-yes. I-Lee, please pull over. Pull over here.” Her voice was thin with tension.

When he glanced at her again, he saw she was going to be sick. The night was shriveling around him, slipping beyond control. She was going to puke in the Caddy, a thought that frankly appalled him. His favorite thing about his mother’s illness and subsequent death was that it left him sole right of the Cadillac, and if Merrin threw up in it, he was going to be pissed. You couldn’t get the smell out no matter what you did.

He saw the turnoff to the old foundry coming up on the right, and he veered off the road into it, still going too fast. The front right tire bit into the dirt at the shoulder of the road and flung the back end out to the side, not the thing you wanted to do with a sick girl in the passenger seat. Still decelerating, he pointed the Caddy up the rutted gravel fire lane, brush swatting at the sides of the car, rocks pinging against the undercarriage. A chain stretched across the road rose in the headlights, rushed toward them, and Lee kept the pressure on the brakes, slowing steadily, evenly. At last the Caddy whined to a soft stop, bumper right against the chain.

Merrin opened the door and made an angry retching sound, almost like a wet cough. Lee slammed it into park. He felt a little tremulous himself, with irritation, and made a conscious effort to regain his i

He stepped out and came around the car, the rain plopping around him, dampening the back and shoulders of his shirt. Merrin had her feet on the ground and her head between her knees. The storm was already tapering off, just dripping quietly in the leaves overhanging the dirt road now.

“You all right?” he asked. She nodded. He went on, “Let’s take Terry home, and then I want you to come over to my place and tell me what happened. I’ll fix you a drink, and you can unload. That’ll make you feel better.”

“No. No thank you. I just want to be alone right now. I need to do some thinking.”

“You don’t want to be alone tonight. In your state of mind, that’d be the worst thing. Hey, and look. You have to come to my place. I fixed your cross. I want to put it on you.”

“No, Lee. I just want to go home and get into some dry things and be by myself.”

He felt another flash of a

“Got gym clothes. Shirt. Pants. They’re dry and they’re warm, and there’s no sick on them.”

She hesitated, then took the strap of the bag and rose from the car. “Thank you, Lee.” Not meeting his eyes.

He didn’t let go of the bag, held on to it, held on to her for a moment, kept her from striding away into the night to change. “You had to do it, you know. It was crazy, thinking that you could-that either of you could-”

She said, “I just want to change, okay?” She tugged the bag out of his hand.

Merrin turned and walked stiffly away, her tight skirt stuck to her thighs. She passed through the headlights, and her blouse went as clear as waxed paper. She stepped around the chain and continued on into the dark, up the road. But before she disappeared, she turned her head and gave Lee a frowning look, one eyebrow raised in a way that seemed to ask a question-or offer an invitation. Follow me. Then she was gone.

Lee lit a cigarette and smoked it, standing next to the car, wondering if it would be all right to go after her, not sure he wanted to head into the woods with Terry watching. But in a minute or two, he checked and saw that Terry had stretched out across the backseat with an arm over his eyes. He had rapped his head good, had a red scrape close to the right temple, and he’d been pretty out of it even before that, as baked as a Thanksgiving turkey. It was fu

He watched Terry another minute, but when he didn’t stir, Lee flipped his cigarette butt into the wet grass and started up the road after her. He followed the gravel ruts around a slight curve and up a hill, and there was the foundry, framed against a sky of boiling black clouds. With its towering smokestack, it looked like a factory built to produce nightmares in mass quantities. The wet grass glistened and shook in the wind. He thought perhaps she had walked up to the crumbling keep of black brick and shadows, was changing there, but then he heard her hiss at him from the dark, to the left.

“Lee,” she said, and he saw her, twenty feet off the path.

She stood below an old tree, the bark peeling away to show the dead, white, leprously spotted wood beneath. She had pulled on his gray sweatpants but was clutching Terry’s sport jacket to her thin, bare chest. The sight was an erotic shock, like something from a lazy afternoon masturbation fantasy: Merrin with her pale shoulders and slim arms and haunted eyes, half naked and shivering in the woods, waiting for him alone.

The gym bag was at her feet, and her wet clothes were folded and set to one side, her heels placed neatly on top of them. Something was tucked into one shoe-a man’s tie, it looked like, folded many times over. How she did like to fold things. Lee sometimes felt she had been folding him into smaller and smaller slices for years.

“There’s no shirt in your bag,” she said. “Just sweats.”

Lee said, “That’s right. I forgot.” Walking toward her.

“Well, shit,” she said. “Give me your shirt.”

“You want me to take off my clothes?” he said.

She tried to smile but let out a short impatient breath. “Lee-I’m sorry, I’m just…I’m not in the mood.”

“No. Of course you aren’t. You need a drink and someone to talk to. Hey, I’ve got weed if you really need something to relax.” He held up the joint and smiled, because he felt she needed a smile right then. “Let’s go to my house. If you’re not in the mood tonight, another time.”