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Barb knew she would never get around to enjoying the way men apologized, every time, after they smacked her.
When she had met Victor Jacks, she was a waitress-newly-turned-exotic-dancer. Petite-chested, with good hips and sturdy, if not long, legs, she figured it was virtually the same aggravation for better tips and weirder hours; she fancied she needed more weird in her life. She got Victor. All he lacked was a puff of smoke to appear in.
When Victor had met Barb, he was comfortably into pharmaceutical dexedrine pops and on the cusp of crystal meth. He made do with the odd frame-weld for RUBs-Rich Urban Bikers-and bashed big-blocks for muscle-car meatheads with too much leisure cash. He paid Barb to table-dance and made her sit, just sit, while he looked at her. Manage-ment did not approve. Victor did not make a scene. He merely smiled and showed Barb’s bosses more money. To Barb, whose concept of fore-play was someone bigger than her saying shut up and lay down, this was romance with a big R indeed. After a week of this bizarre courtship, she went out with him…and he stayed in with her.
When Re
“You look like you could use a rest,” Re
Five days later the two of them were still trying to dope out some rationalization that might convince, say, a jury that she, Barb, and he, Re
Truth was, Re
Truth was, Barb preferred Victor’s flash-fire spats to shaking her ass for the beery swine who bellied up to the runway at Nasty Tramps.
So Truth held sway, and Victor stayed ignorant, dangerous and sexy. Barb had Re
…well, you can imagine.
The “tool excuse” had been Victor’s cover story. That afternoon, un-beknownst to Re
Victor had snarled. Literally snarled, lip curling. He came for his betrayers, his face bright crimson, the sclera of his eyes pinking. Two steps closer he stopped, stiffened, pawed at his left arm, and fell stone dead of the most concussive goddamned heart attack his mesomorphic build could contain. Victor’s fulsome, romantic-if-crazy heart shut down like a phone sex line with no callers, and all that remained was for the coroner to scribble death by chemical misadventure into the appropriate box…while Victor himself was trucked away to fill up another appropri-ate box.
Which brings us back to Barb, in the bathroom.
She flushed the toilet. Flushed, then blushed, in a match-head flare of anger as she remembered Re
In her mirror, by nightlight, she spotted a hickey on her neck. Crude.
But she loved the way Re
She liked to tease Re
Crude, dumb, uncaring, and boy-howdy opportunistic. Yeah, Re
Except that this day, somehow, Victor had found time out from his busy schedule to come back from the dead. This did not shock or be-fuddle Barb overtly. Maybe she’d seen too many monster movies, and lacked the emotional capacity for astonishment. She stared down her reflection eye-to-eye and reminded herself that Victor had done a lot of uppers in his thirty-odd years on the planet. Hell, he was probably spin-ning in his new grave right now-at 78 rpm.
The bathroom light was harsh. It made her feel lonely. She was for-tunate to know that it was a loneliness she could drive away. She wanted Re
She found him semiconscious and semi-erect. Re
They were both on their backs, kicking away sheets to let their own sweat cool them off, when Barb said, “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Little scritchy noise. Like a mouse.”
“Probably that stupid cat of yours.”
“No, he doesn’t make noises like that.”
“Then it probably is a mouse. This house is-”
“No, listen.”
Re
Barb pounded his shoulder. “It’s under the bed!”
“Jesus Christ.” Re
From beneath the dust ruffle, the baseball bat shot out like a piston, hitting Re
Re
It was a hand on his throat. He peeled it off. As he did, another ap-pendage trapped his hand.
Re
It was Victor again.
Moreover, it was Victor as he had been buried that afternoon. Bones all smashed. No head.
Re