"Naughty girl," said the rat, shaking a roguish finger at Susannah-Mio. Its other hand was still holding hers. The thing's mate - the low man in the garish tuxedo - was laughing so hard he had doubled over, and when he did, Mia saw something poking out through the seat of his pants. It was too bony to be a tail, but she supposed it was, all the same.
"Come, Mia," Sayre said, drawing her forward. And then he leaned toward her, peering earnestly into her eyes like a lover. "Or is it you, Odetta? It is, isn't it? It'syou, you pestering, overeducated, troublesome Negress."
"No, it beme, you ratface honky mahfah!" Detta crowed, and then spat into Sayre's face.
Sayre's mouth opened in a gape of astonishment. Then it snapped shut and twisted into a bitter scowl. The room had gone silent again. He wiped the spit from his face - from the mask he woreover his face - and looked at it unbelievingly.
"Mia?" he asked. "Mia, you let her do this tome? Me, who would stand as your baby's godfather?"
"You ain't jack shit!" Detta cried. "You suck yo' ka-daddy's c**k while you diddle yo' f**kfinger up his poop-chute and thass all you good fo'! You - "
"Get RID of her!"Sayre thundered.
And before the watching audience of vampires and low men in the Dixie Pig's front dining room, Mia did just that. The result was extraordinary. Detta's voice began todwindle, as if she were being escorted out of the restaurant (by the bouncer, and by the scruff of the neck). She quit trying to speak and only laughed raucously, but soon enough that, too, was gone.
Sayre stood with his hands clasped before him, looking solemnly at Mia. The others were also staring. Somewhere behind the tapestry of the knights and their ladies at feast, the low laughter and conversation of some other group continued.
"She's gone," Mia said at last. "The bad one is gone." Even in the room's quiet she was hard to hear, for she spoke in little more than a whisper. Her eyes were timidly cast down, and her cheeks had gone deathly white. "Please, Mr. Sayre...saiSayre...now that I've done as you ask, please say you've told me the truth, and I may have the raising of my chap. Please say so! If you do, you'll never hear from the other one again, I swear it on my father's face and my mother's name, so I do."
"You had neither," Sayre said. He spoke in a tone of distant contempt. The compassion and mercy for which she begged owned no space in his eyes. And above them, the red hole in the center of his forehead filled and filled but never spilled.
Another pain, this one the greatest so far, sank its teeth into her. Mia staggered, and this time Sayre didn't bother steadying her. She went to her knees before him, put her hands on the rough, gleaming surface of his ostrich-skin boots, and looked up into his pale face. It looked back at her from above the violent yellow scream of his sports jacket.
"Please," she said. "Please, I beg you:keep your promise to me."
"I may," he said, "or I may not. Do you know, I have never had my boots licked. Can you imagine? To have lived as long as I have and never to have had a single good old-fashioned boot-licking."
Somewhere a woman tittered.
Mia bent forward.
No, Mia, thee mustn't,Susannah moaned, but Mia made no reply. Nor did the paralyzing pain deep in her vitals stop her. She stuck her tongue out between her lips and began licking the rough surface of Richard Sayre's boots. Susannah could taste them, at a great distance. It was a husky, dusty, leathery taste, full of rue and humiliation.
Sayre let her go on so for a bit, then said: "Stop it. Enough."
He pulled her roughly to her feet and stood with his unsmiling face not three inches from her own. Now that she'd seen them, it was impossible to unsee the masks he and the rest of them wore. The taut cheeks were almost transparent, and whorls of dark scarlet hair were faintly visible beneath.
Or perhaps you called it fur when it covered the whole face.
"Your beggary does you no credit," he said, "although I must admit the sensation was extraordinary."
"You promised!" she cried, attempting to pull back and out of his grip. Then another contraction struck and she doubled over, trying only not to shriek. When it eased a little, she pressed on. "You said five years...or maybe seven...yes, seven...the best of everything for my chap, you said - "
"Yes," Sayre said. "I do seem to recall that, Mia." He frowned as one does when presented with an especially pernicious problem, then brightened. The area of mask around one corner of his mouth wrinkled up for a moment when he smiled, revealing a yellow snag of tooth growing out of the fold where his lower lip met his upper. He let go of her with one hand in order to raise a finger in the gesture pedagogical. "The best of everything, yes. Question is, do you fill that particular bill?"
Appreciative murmurs of laughter greeted this sally. Mia recalled them calling her Mother and saluting herhile, but that seemed distant now, like a meaningless fragment of dream.
You was good enough to tote him, though, wasn't you?Detta asked from someplace deep inside - from the brig, in fact. Yassuh! You 'us good enough to do dat,sho!