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Victor looked a bit shaggy, having been deceased for the better part of the work week. His shoulder blades, butt and legs down to the heels were blue-black with dependent lividity. His eyes were so crusty that one was welded shut. His hair was lank and wild, the most alive thing about him; his skin tone hung somewhere between catgut and bottled pig’s knuckle.
He crackled as he moved. That would be rigor.
He had obviously been walking for some time. At each of his joints the dry flesh had split into gummy wounds with chafed and elevated flaps. The distance from the morgue to Barb’s bedroom was about twelve pedestrian miles.
Provided, that is, Victor had come here directly, after sitting up on his slab and deciding to ruin their lives, Re
Re
Enough.
At the crack point it was the batting that mattered, not the invec-tive. The bulb end of the bat smashed Victor’s dead left ear deep into the dead left hemisphere of his dead brain. Victor wobbled and missed his zombie grab for Re
Re
Re
While the Re
Deeper down, Re
Barb had wanted to play faithful and loving right up to the climax of the drama. Loving, hah. Faithful, not since she’d met Re
In the end it hadn’t come down to murder, but right now Barb sure was reaping some drama.
Things were so lively right now that Re
“Is he dead?” said Barb, cowering.
“I don’t think he’s go
“How? How did he? He…we…I don’t…it just.” Barb was still having a bit of trouble being coherent.
“Victor was always a stubborn sumbitch, you know that one, babe.”
Barb stood up and risked moving a little closer to what was left of Victor. “Maybe he, you know, didn’t really die. Went into a coma or some-thing.”
“Barb, Victor was dead. He was dead last week and he was still dead when he walked in on us. He is the deadest thing I ever saw.”
“You knocked his head off,” she said, dully.
“Stopped him, didn’t it?”
“What’re we go
“Shush. What we’re go
“What makes you so smart?”
Re
“I mean, you think they’ll buy it?” There she went again. Barb was one of those people who strolled through life obliviously, thinking a call to the police would sling her free of any sort of trouble. Now she was just as convinced that the Authorities-capital A-would swoop down at any moment to point j’accuse.
“Babe, just dream up a good description. Say he was a Mexican in a green windbreaker.”
“But Re
Re
Re
Barb glimpsed what was coming up, and managed to finish him off before the police came knocking. Once again she told Re
Then the Authorities arrived, and Re
Funerals never were much of a hoot. Neither Barb nor Re
Half an hour after the services, both of them were naked and neither of them was very depressed.
Most a
Fine. Re
In the bathroom, Barb watched herself in the mirror for a long time, not quite sure what her surveillance was in quest of. Victor had hit her in this bathroom. He’d also done it to her, same day, in the tub, which was too small for love. Victor’s tendency to boil over all at once was fright-ening, a pit bull on a very iffy leash, thought Barb. Whether it got hos-tile, life-threatening, might depend on a dozen factors. When it last ate. Whether it was pissed off. Whether it liked you. Whether it liked your smell. Victor Jacks had been like that.
But when Victor got to the part where he put his big hands all over her, large, powerful, warm hands, unbuttoning and unzipping her, mak-ing her naked and telling her she was wanted, touching her in places only she touched-curve of ass, inside of thigh, underside of breast, smooth-shaven armpit-oh, my. He made her moist, filled her up; she would practically hallucinate and she had always slept gorgeously af-terward. The sex was never violent between them; only the occasional backhand was.