'How much weight have you lost?'
Billy's eyes strayed to the wall-sized mirror across the room. He remembered reading– in a John D. MacDonald novel, he thought – that every modem motel room in America seems filled with mirrors, although most of those rooms are used by overweight businessmen who have no interest in looking at themselves in an undressed state. Its state wag very much the opposite of overweight,but he could understand the antimirror sentiment. He supposed it was his face – no, not just his face, his whole head which had thrown such a fright into Richard. The size of his skull had remained the same, and the result was that his head perched atop his disappearing body like the hideously oversize head of a giant sunflower.
I never take it off you, white man from town, he heard Lemke say.
'How much weight, William?' Ginelli repeated. His voice was calm, gentle even, but his eyes sparkled in an odd, clear way. Billy had never seen a man's eyes sparkle in quite that way, and it made him a little nervous.
'When this began– when I came out of the courthouse and the old man touched me – I weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. This morning I weighed in at a hundred and sixteen just before lunch. That's what … a hundred and thirty-four pounds?'
'Jesus and Mary and Joseph the carpenter from Brooklyn Heights,' Ginelli whispered, and crossed himself again. 'He touched you?'
This is where he walks out– this is where they all walk out, Billy thought, and for one wild second he thought of simply lying, of making up some mad story of systematic food poisoning. But if there had ever been a time for lying, it was gone now. And if Ginelli walked, Billy would walk with him, at least as far as Ginelli's car. He would open the door for him and thank him very much for coming. He would do it because Ginelli had listened when Billy called in the middle of the night, and sent his rather peculiar version of a doctor, and then come himself. But mostly he would perform those courtesies because Ginelli's eyes had widened like that when Billy opened the door, and he still hadn't run away.
So you tell him the truth. He says the only things he believes in are guns and money, and that's probably the truth, but you tell him the truth because that's the only way you can ever pay back a guy like him.
He touched you? Ginelli had asked, and although that was only a second ago it seemed much longer in Billy's scared, confused mind. Now he said what was the hardest thing for him to say. 'He didn't just touch me, Richard. He cursed me.'
He waited for that rather mad sparkle to die out of Ginelli's eyes. He waited for Ginelli to glance at his watch, hop to his feet, and grab his briefcase. Time sure has a way of flying, doesn't it? I'd love to stay and talk over this curse business with you, William, but I've got a hotplate of veal marsala waiting for me back at the Brothers, and…
The sparkle didn't die and Ginelli didn't get up. He crossed his legs, neatened the crease, brought out a package of Camel cigarettes, and lit one.
'Tell me everything,' he said.
Billy Halleck told Ginelli everything. When he was done, there were four Camel butts in the ashtray. Ginelli was looking fixedly at Billy, as if hypnotized. A long silence spun out. It was uncomfortable, and Billy wanted to break it, but he didn't know how. He seemed to have used up all of his words.
'He did this to you,' Ginelli said at last. 'This . . .' He waved a hand at Billy.
'Yes. I don't expect you to believe it, but yes, he did.'
I believe it,' Ginelli said almost absently.
'Yeah? What happened to the guy who only believed in guns and money?'
Ginelli smiled, then laughed. 'I told you that when you called that time, didn't I?'
'Yeah.'
The smile faded. 'Well, there's one more thing I believe in, William. I believe in what I see. That's why I'm a relatively rich man. That's also why I'm a living man. Most people, they don't believe what they see.'
'No?'
'No. Not unless it goes along with what they already believe. You know what I saw in this drugstore where I go? Just last week I saw this.'
What?'
They got a blood-pressure machine in there. I mean, they sometimes got them in shopping malls, too, but in the drugstore it's free. You put your arm through a loop and push a button. The loop closes. You sit there for a while and think serene thoughts and then it lets go. The reading flashes up in big red numbers. Then you look on the chart where it says“low,” “normal,” and “high” to figure out what the numbers mean. You get this picture?'
Billy nodded.
'Okay. So I am waiting for the guy to give me a bottle of this stomach medicine my mother has to take for her ulcers. And this fat guy comes waddling in. I mean, he goes a good two-fifty and his ass looks like two dogs fightin' under a blanket. There's a drinker's road map on his nose and cheeks and I can see a pack of Marlboros in his pocket. He picks up some of those Dr Scholl's corn pads and he's taking them to the cash register when the high-bloodpressure machine catches his eye. So he sits down and the machine does its thing. Up comes the reading. Two-twenty over one-thirty, it says. Now, I don't know a whole fuck of a lot about the wonderful world of medicine, William, but I know two-twenty over one-thirty is in the creepy category. I mean, you might as well be walking around with the barrel of a loaded pistol stuck in your ear, am I right?'
'Yes.'
'So what does this dummocks do? He looks at me and says,“All this digital shit is fucked up.” Then he pays for his corn pads and walks out. You know what the moral of that story is, William? Some guys – a lot of guys – don't believe what they are seeing, especially if it gets in the way of what they want to eat or drink or think or believe. Me, I don't believe in God. But if I saw him, I would. I wouldn't just go around saying, “Jesus, that was a great special effect.” The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing. And you can quote me.'
Billy looked at him consideringly for a moment, and then burst out laughing. After a moment, Ginelli joined him.
'Well,' he said, 'you still sound like the old William when you laugh, anyway. The question is, William, what are we going to do about this geezer?'
I don't know.' Billy laughed again, a shorter sound. 'But I guess I have to do something. After all, I cursed
'So you told me. The curse of the white dude from town. Considering what all the white dudes from all the towns have done in the last couple hundred years, that could be a pretty heavy one.' Ginelli paused to light another cigarette and then said matter-of-factly through the smoke: 'I can hit him, you know.'
'No, that won't w -' Billy began, and then his mouth snapped closed. He'd had an image of Ginelli walking up to Lemke and punching him in the eye. Then suddenly he had realized that Ginelli was speaking of something much more final. 'No, you can't do that,' he finished.
Ginelli either didn't understand or affected not to. 'Sure I can. And I can't get anyone else to, that's for sure. At least, not anyone trustworthy. But I am as capable of doing it now as I was at twenty. It ain't business, but believe me, it would be a pleasure.'
'No, I don't want you to kill him or anyone else,' Billy said. 'That's what I meant.'
'Why not?' Ginelli asked, still reasonable– but his eyes, Billy saw, continued to whirl and twirl in that mad way. 'You worried about being an accessory to murder? It wouldn't be murder, it'd be self-defense. Because he is killing you, Billy. Another week of this and people will be able to read the signs you're standing in front of without asking you to move. Another two and you won't dare to go out in a high wind for fear of blowing away.'
'Your medical associate suggested that I might die of cardiac arrhythmia before it went that far. Presumably my heart is losing weight right along with the rest of me.' He swallowed. 'You know, I never had that particular thought until just now. I sort of wish I hadn't had it at all.'
'See? He's killing you… but never mind. You don't: want me to hit him, I won't hit him. Probably not a good idea anyway. It might not end it.'
Billy nodded. This had occurred to him, as well. Take it off me, he had told Lemke– apparently even white men from town understood that was something that had to be done. If Lemke was dead, the curse might simply have to run itself out.
'The trouble is,' Ginelli said reflectively, 'you can't take back a hit.'
'No.'
He rubbed out his cigarette and stood up. 'I gotta think about this, William. It's a lot to think about. And I got to get my mind in a serene state, you know? You can't get ideas about complicated shit like this when you're upset, and every time I look at you, paisan, I want to pull out this guy's pecker and stuff it in the hole where his nose used to be.'
Billy got up and almost fell. Ginelli grabbed him and Billy hugged him clumsily with his good arm. He didn't think he'd ever hugged a grown man in his life before this.
'Thank you for coming,' Billy said. 'And for believing me.'
'You're a good fellow,' Ginelli said, releasing him. 'You're in a bad mess, but maybe we can get you out of it. Either way, we're gonna put some stone blocks to this old dude. I'm gonna go out and walk around for a couple of hours, Billy. Get my mind serene. Think up some ideas. Also, I want to make some phone calls back to the city.'
'About what?'
'I'll tell you later. First I want to do some thinking. You be okay?'
'Yes.'
'Lie down. You have no color in your face at all.'
'All right.' He did feel sleepy again, sleepy and totally worn out.
'The girl who shot you,' Ginelli said. 'Pretty?'
'Very pretty.'
'Yeah?' That crazy light was back in Ginelli's eyes, brighter than ever. It troubled Billy.
'Yeah.'
'Lay down, Billy. Catch some Z's. Check you later.
Okay to take your key?'
'Sure.'
Ginelli left. Billy lay down on the bed and put his bandaged hand carefully down beside him, knowing perfetly well that if he fell asleep he would probably just roll over on it and wake himself up again.
Probably just humoring me, Billy thought. Probably on the phone to Heidi right now. And when I wake up, the men with the butterfly nets will be sitting on the foot of the bed. They…
But there was no more. He drifted off and somehow managed to avoid rolling on his bad hand.
And this time there were no bad dreams.
There were no men with butterfly nets in the room when he woke up, either. Only Ginelli, sitting in the chair across the room. He was reading a book called This Savage Rapture and drinking a can of beer. It was dark outside.
There were four cans of a six-pack sitting on top of an ice bucket on the TV, and Billy licked his lips. 'Can I have one of those?' he croaked.
Ginelli looked up. 'It's Rip Van Winkle, back from the dead! Sure you can. Here, let me open you one.'
He brought it to Billy, and Billy drank half of it without stopping. The beer was fine and cold. He had heaped the contents of the Empirin bottle in one of the room's ashtrays (motel rooms did not have as many ashtrays as mirrors, he thought, but almost). Now he fished one out and washed it down with another swallow.
'How's the hand?' Ginelli asked.
'Better.' In a way that was a lie, because his hand hurt very badly indeed. But in a way it was the truth, too. Because Ginelli was here, and that did more to make the pain less than the Empirin or even the shot of Chivas. Things hurt more when you were alone, that was all. This caused him to think of Heidi, because she was the one who should have been with him, not this hood, and she wasn't. Heidi was back in Fairview, stubbornly ignoring all this, because to give it any mental house-room would mean she might have to explore the boundaries of her own culpability, and Heidi did not want to do that. Billy felt a dull, throbbing resentment. What had Ginelli said? The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing. He tried to push the resentment away– she was, after-all, his wife. And she was doing what she believed was right and best for him … wasn't she? The resentment went, but not very far.
'What's in the shopping bag?' Billy asked. The bag was sitting on the floor.
'Goodies,' Ginelli said. He looked at the book he was reading, then tossed it into the wastebasket. 'That sucks like an Electrolux. I couldn't find a Louis Lamour.'
'What kind of goodies?'
'For later. When I go out and visit your Gypsy friends.'
'Don't be foolish,' Billy said sharply. 'You want to end up looking like me? Or maybe like a human umbrella stand?'
'Easy, easy,' Ginelli said. His voice was amused and soothing, but that light in his eyes whirled and twirled. Billy realized suddenly that it hadn't all been spur-of-the-moment bullshit; he really had cursed Taduz Lemke. The thing he had cursed him with was sitting across from him in a cheap leatherette motel chair and drinking a Miller Lite. And with equal parts amusement and horror, he realized something else as well: perhaps Lemke knew how to lift his curse, but Billy hadn't the slightest idea of how to lift the curse of the white man from town. Ginelli was having a good time. More fun, maybe, than he'd had in years. He was like a pro bowler coming eagerly out of retirement to take part in a charity event. They would talk, but their talk would change nothing. Ginelli was his friend. Ginelli was a courtly if not exactly grammatical man who called him William instead of Bill or Billy. He was also a very large, very proficient hunting dog which had just slipped its chain.
'Don't tell me to take it easy,' he said, 'just tell me what you plan to do.'
'No one gets hurt,' Ginelli said. 'Just hold that thought, William. I know that's important to you. I think you're holding on to some, you know, principles you can't exactly afford anymore, but I got to go along because that's what you want and you are the offended party. No one gets hurt in this at all. Okay?'
'Okay,' Billy said. He was a little relieved… but not much.
'At least, not unless you change your mind,' Ginelli said.
'I won't.'
'You might.'
'What's in the bag?'
'Steaks,' Ginelli said, and took one out. It was a porterhouse wrapped in clear plastic and marked with a Sampson's label. 'Looks good, huh, I got four of 'em.'
'What are they for?'
'Let's keep things in order,' Ginelli said. 'I left here, I walked downtown. What a fucking horror show! You can't even walk on the sidewalk. Everyone's wearing Ferrari sunglasses and shirts with alligators on their tits. It looks like everyone in this town has had their teeth capped and most of 'em have had nose-jobs too.'
'I know.'
'Listen to this, William. I see this girl and guy walking along, right? And the guy has got his hand in the back pocket of her shorts. I mean, they are right out in public and he's got his hand in her back pocket, feeling her ass. Man, if that was my daughter she wouldn't sit down on what her boyfriend was feeling for about a week and a half.
'So I know I can't get my mind in a serene state there, and I gave it up. I found a telephone booth, made a few calls. Oh, I almost forgot. The phone was in front of a drugstore, so I went in and got you these.' He took a bottle of pills from his pocket and tossed it to Billy, who caught it with his good hand. They were potassium capsules.
'Thank you, Richard,' he said, his voice a little uneven.
'Don't mention it, just take one. You don't need a fucking heart attack on top of everything else.'
Billy took one with a swallow of beer. His head was starting to buzz gently now.
'So I got some people sniffing around after a couple of things and then I went down by the harbor,' Ginelli resumed. 'I looked at. the boats for a while. William, there must be twenty… thirty … maybe forty million dollars' worth of boats down there! Sloops, yawls, fucking frigates, for all I could tell. I don't know diddlyfuck about boats, but I love to look at them. They . . .'
He broke off and looked thoughtfully at Billy.
'You think some of those guys in the alligator shirts and the Ferrari sunglasses are running dope in those pussywagons?'
'Well, I read in the Times last winter that a lobsterman on one of the islands around here found about twenty bales of stuff floating around under the town dock, and it turned out to be some pretty good marijuana.'
'Yeah. Yeah, that's about what I thought. This whole place has that smell to it. Fucking amateurs. They ought to just sail their pretty boats and leave the work to people who understand it, you know? I mean, sometimes they get in the way and then measures have to be taken and some guy finds a few bodies floating around under a dock instead of a few bales of weed. It's too bad.'
Billy took another large swallow of beer and coughed on it.
'But that is neither here nor there. I took a walk, looked at all those boats, and got my mind serene. And then I figured out what to do… or at least, the start of it and the shape of how it should go afterward. I don't have all the details worked out yet, but that'll come.
'I walked back to the main drag and made a few more calls– follow-up calls. There is no warrant out for your arrest, William, but your wife and this nose-jockey doctor of yours sure did sign some papers on you. I wrote it down.' He took a piece of paper out of his breast pocket. “'Committal in absentia.” That sound right?'
Billy Halleck's mouth dropped open and a wounded sound fell out of it. For a moment he was utterly stunned and then the fury which had become his intermittent companion swept through him again. He had thought it might happen, yes, had thought Houston would suggest it, and even thought Heidi might agree to it. But thinking about something and hearing it had actually happened– that your own wife had gone before a judge, had testified that you had gone loony, and had been granted a res gestae order of committal which she had then signed – that was very different.
'That cowardly bitch,' he muttered thickly, and then the world was blotted out by red agony. He had closed his hands into fists without thinking. He groaned and looked down at the bandage on his left hand. Flowers of red were blooming there.
I can't believe you just thought that about Heidi, a voice in his mind spoke up.
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