He turned to see Sandy, nude and transformed. At her side, she dangled three feet of braid like a dead snake, limp and headless. Her once long hair was now choppy and short around her face. Like Kit. Without speaking she went to the dirty clothes on the floor and put on plain underwear, men’s jeans, and a work-soiled white T-shirt. She approached Manny and stopped in front of him, a grotesque facsimile of his one true love. In the dim light of the lamp he saw that she had wiped away her makeup. In her eyes, the mad look of last resort. She tugged him by the belt and punched him across the nose. Something warm and wet trickled over his lip. He tasted blood.
Entranced by the brazen move, he lifted her under the thighs and plowed her against the wall. He forced his mouth across her face like he could swallow her whole. She bit at him furiously and yanked his head back, denying him, and he flipped her around, arms pinned at the small of her back. “Face me like a man,” she seethed, and even now her voice came out like that of a wild thing, like Kit’s.
He pulled down the jeans, too tight around her hips, but she took his hands and wrapped them around her neck. “Hurt me,” she said. “Break my bones.” And she blinked, her eyes glossed over with tears, and dissolved the spell. She whimpered, and all of a sudden Manny saw her as she was. A feeble, sallow waif in masquerade. She kept nothing to herself, left it all in the open, emotionally pornographic. He hated her face, her poor teeth, her fawning regard. Her vulnerability made him ill.
The mounting desires and hateful twitch that churned beneath his skin since Kit had left him today, and fourteen years ago, and even before Kit, since his mother had favored his faggy brother over him, and taken him to bed and caressed him like her one and only, since his father had tucked his dick between his legs and hunched away, cuckolded by his own son—all of it rained down like many whips at this monster. Hair like Kit, bags for breasts like Mother, wilting spine like Papa. He wrapped the braid around her neck and pulled it tight. She looked back more directly, searching his eyes for connection. After a minute, when lack of air tripped her instincts, fear overtook her. She thrashed.
“Yes,” Manny said. “Fight it.”
He held her by her throat while the rest of her flailed. Soon, she fell limp into resigned, fatal sadness. He tightened the noose, her only vanity, years of her small life wrapped around her neck, punishing her weakness. And as she faded out of this world that had failed her so terribly, even to the end, her eyebrows furrowed and her eyes met Manny’s with what looked like disdain. Her lips puckered, and with all the strength she had left, she spat.
“Good girl,” Manny said, and he held her until the last heartbeat. He admired the fierceness she had shown there at the end, albeit too late to save her. And as soon as she was gone he was overwhelmed by a sense of peace and rightness, even a fondness for this docile creature in his arms. He thanked God for his mercy and for showing him the way. All this time he had squandered his gift on manipulation, charm, libidinous excesses. Cheap, sordid, disposable. Here, now, he had tapped the purest source, the power to take a life.
He regarded her now like a miracle. She was warm to touch, still, so much so that he wouldn’t have believed she was dead, if it weren’t for the look on her face. All life had been cast out, the eyes vacant and askew. He pulled the T-shirt she was wearing up and over her face, a partial shroud.
Just then he heard a car pull up and could see from the window that it was police. His heart picked up. Had someone seen him come here? Or maybe had called about the horse, came to ask Kit about it? Manny wasn’t armed. He might be able to slip away unnoticed, or hide until they left. Surely the cop wouldn’t bust in. Wasn’t that kind of town.
The cop slammed his car door and stepped into the light of the front porch so Manny could get a look at him. A baby face. A boy with a gun. He had seen him at church once, nothing special. Too curious to leave, Manny went downstairs and crouched next to the door, listening. The cop marched up the steps and knocked, three decisive raps. A tedious minute passed.
“It’s Caleb,” the cop called out. First name basis, are we? Manny thought with a jealous punch. He peered through one of the tall, curtained windows flanking the door in time to see the guy puff into the hollow of his hand and sniff. He was checking his breath.
“I’m sorry to bother you so late,” the cop said. “I hope I didn’t spook you. I was headed home for the night and got to thinking . . .” The words came out mushy, like he’d been drinking. “I decided . . .” the cop said and took a breath. “I decided I should check on you. Make sure you’re all right after the other night at the Roll-In.” Caleb’s voice broke like that of a teenager, and he coughed to clear it.
This goofus do-gooder was head over heels. Manny felt bad for him, really. The cop and Sandy were cut from the same cloth. Victims both. Edible things for animals like us.
Manny smothered a laugh with the back of his hand and froze. The cop stopped moving and cocked his ear. Manny scanned the room for weapons. No gun above the door. Maybe there was a knife in the kitchen, or a good, heavy pot. But the bitch didn’t cook, and there was no counting on anything being where it ought to be. A kitchen chair brought down on the head would have to suffice.
Manny stood to the side where the door would open and raised the chair above his head. He’d begun to sweat now, his heart giddy as he waited for the right moment. But the cop didn’t bust in, or even bother to look around the house.
“Oh, okay,” the cop said. “Um, yeah, sorry to bother you.” He drooped like a cut flower and slunk away to his car, dejected from the looks of it. Ashamed. And then Manny understood. The cop had heard Manny laughing and thought it was Kit.
As he carried Sandy out like a bride, Manny hummed his favorite hymn.
There is power, power, wonder-working power,
In the blood of the lamb.
There is power, power, wonder-working power,
In the precious blood of the lamb.
He contemplated her in a bashful sort of way. After all, she had been his first. Dear Sandy, not fit for this world, not even for a town as humble as this. Meek and mild, shat upon by all. Perhaps he was guilty of abusing her, too, but at least he had given her his attention, had filled her heart with the love she felt for him. He could be proud for having shepherded a soul in pain back into the Lord’s generous arms.
He loaded her remains in the deep trunk of her Caprice. It took some doing, as she was a densely packed woman, ever more so now that she was dead. When she was nicely arranged, he shut the trunk and headed back to the house to clean up after himself. He wanted to wipe the last traces of his little peccadillo from the scene. A few loose ends, nothing glaring, but he liked to be tidy.
The sound of someone walking over gravel stopped him in his tracks. This was an unpleasant interruption.
In the blacks and grays up ahead he caught sight of the lanky silhouette with Kit’s determination and his swagger marching a straight line down the middle of the driveway, a shotgun slung across her back. Then, awestruck, he understood.