That was what he thought then. Of course, he also thought he would never take a drink, not after seeing what it had done to his father.
Sometimes we just get it wrong.
RATTLESNAKE
1
Her name was Andrea Steiner, and she liked movies but she didn’t like men. This wasn’t surprising, since her father had raped her for the first time when she was eight. He had gone on raping her for that same number of years. Then she had put a stop to it, first popping his balls, one after the other, with one of her mother’s knitting needles, and then putting that same needle, red and dripping, in her ra**st-sire’s left eyesocket. The balls had been easy, because he was sleeping, but the pain had been enough to wake him in spite of her special talent. She was a big girl, though, and he was drunk. She had been able to hold him down with her body just long enough to administer the coup de grâce.
Now she had years eight times four, she was a wanderer on the face of America, and an ex-actor had replaced the peanut farmer in the White House. The new fellow had an actor’s unlikely black hair and an actor’s charming, untrustworthy smile. Andi had seen one of his movies on TV. In it, the man who would be president played a guy who lost his legs when a train ran over them. She liked the idea of a man without legs; a man without legs couldn’t chase you down and rape you.
Movies, they were the thing. Movies took you away. You could count on popcorn and happy endings. You got a man to go with you, that way it was a date and he paid. This movie was a good one, with fighting and kissing and loud music. It was called Raiders of the Lost Ark. Her current date had his hand under her skirt, high up on her bare thigh, but that was all right; a hand wasn’t a prick. She had met him in a bar. She met most of the men she went on dates with in bars. He bought her a drink, but a free drink wasn’t a date; it was just a pickup.
What’s this about? he’d asked her, running the tip of his finger over her upper left arm. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse, so the tattoo showed. She liked the tattoo to show when she was out looking for a date. She wanted men to see it. They thought it was kinky. She had gotten it in San Diego the year after she killed her father.
It’s a snake, she said. A rattler. Don’t you see the fangs?
Of course he did. They were big fangs, out of all proportion to the head. A drop of poison hung from one.
He was a businessman type in an expensive suit, with lots of combed-back presidential hair and the afternoon off from whatever paper-pushing crap he did for work. His hair was mostly white instead of black and he looked about sixty. Close to twice her age. But that didn’t matter to men. He wouldn’t have cared if she was sixteen instead of thirty-two. Or eight. She remembered something her father had said once: If they’re old enough to pee, they’re old enough for me.
Of course I see them, the man who was now sitting beside her had said, but what does it mean?
Maybe you’ll find out, Andi replied. She touched her upper lip with her tongue. I have another tattoo. Somewhere else.
Can I see it?
Maybe. Do you like movies?
He had frowned. What do you mean?
You want to date me, don’t you?
He knew what that meant—or what it was supposed to mean. There were other girls in this place, and when they spoke of dates, they meant one thing. But it was not what Andi meant.
Sure. You’re cute.
Then take me on a date. A real date. Raiders of the Lost Ark is playing at the Rialto.
I was thinking more of that little hotel two blocks down, darlin. A room with a wetbar and a balcony, how does that sound?
She had put her lips close to his ear and let her br**sts press against his arm. Maybe later. Take me to the movies first. Pay my way and buy me popcorn. The dark makes me amorous.
And here they were, with Harrison Ford on the screen, big as a skyscraper and snapping a bullwhip in the desert dust. The old guy with the presidential hair had his hand under her skirt but she had a tub of popcorn placed firmly on her lap, making sure he could get most of the way down the third base line but not quite to home plate. He was trying to go higher, which was annoying because she wanted to see the end of the movie and find out what was in the Lost Ark. So . . .
2
At 2 p.m. on a weekday, the movie theater was almost deserted, but three people sat two rows back from Andi Steiner and her date. Two men, one quite old and one appearing on the edge of middle age (but appearances could be deceiving), flanked a woman of startling beauty. Her cheekbones were high, her eyes were gray, her complexion creamy. Her masses of black hair were tied back with a broad velvet ribbon. Usually she wore a hat—an old and battered tophat—but she had left it in her motorhome this day. You didn’t wear a tall topper in a movie theater. Her name was Rose O’Hara, but the nomadic family she traveled with called her Rose the Hat.