Miles to go before he sleeps, and then the final touch, the cherry on top of the sundae. He won’t need Freddi Linklatter for that, only Dr. B.’s MacBook. He’s running without a leash now.
He’s free.
11
Around the time Z-Boy is proving that he can still count to ten, Freddi Linklatter’s blood-caked lashes come unstuck from her blood-caked cheeks. She finds herself looking into a gaping brown eye. It takes her several long moments to decide it isn’t really an eye, only a swirl of woodgrain that looks like an eye. She is lying on the floor and suffering the worst hangover of her life, even worse than after that cataclysmic party to -celebrate her twenty-first, when she mixed crystal meth with Ronrico. She thought later that she was lucky to have survived that little experiment. Now she almost wishes she hadn’t, because this is worse. It’s not only her head; her chest feels like Marshawn Lynch has been using her for a tackling dummy.
She tells her hands to move and they reluctantly answer the call. She places them in push-up position and shoves. She comes up, but her top shirt stays down, stuck to the floor in a pool of what looks like blood and smells suspiciously like Scotch. So that’s what she was drinking, and fell over her own stupid feet. Smacked her head. But dear God, how much did she put away?
It wasn’t like that, she thinks. Someone came, and you know who it was.
It’s a simple process of deduction. Lately she’s only had two visitors here, the Z-Dudes, and the one who wears the ratty parka hasn’t been around for awhile.
She tries to get to her feet, and can’t make it at first. Nor can she take more than shallow breaths. Deeper ones hurt her above her left breast. It feels like something is sticking in there.
My flask?
I was spinning it while I waited for him to show up. To give me the final payment and get out of my life.
“Shot me,” she croaks. “Fucking Dr. Z shot me.”
She staggers into the bathroom and is hardly able to believe the train wreck she sees in the mirror. The left side of her face is covered with blood, and there’s a purple knob rising from a gash above her left temple, but that’s not the worst. Her blue chambray shirt is also matted with blood—mostly from the head wound, she hopes, head wounds bleed like crazy—and there’s a round black hole in the left breast pocket. He shot her, all right. Now she remembers the bang and the smell of gunsmoke just before she passed out.
She tweezes her shaking fingers into the breast pocket, still taking those shallow breaths, and pulls out her pack of Marlboro Lights. There’s the bullet hole right through the middle of the M. She drops the cigarettes into the basin, works at the buttons of the shirt, and lets it fall to the floor. The smell of Scotch is stronger now. The shirt beneath is khaki, with big flap pockets. When she tries to pull the flask from the one on the left, she utters a low mewl of agony—all she can manage without taking a deeper breath—but when she gets it free, the pain in her chest lessens a little. The bullet also went through the flask, and the prongs on the side closest to her skin are bright with blood. She drops the ruined flask on top of the Marlboros, and goes to work on the khaki shirt’s buttons. This takes longer, but eventually it also falls to the floor. Beneath it is an American Giant tee, the kind that also has a pocket. She reaches into it and takes out a tin of Altoids. There’s a hole in this, too. The tee has no buttons, so she works her pinky finger into the bullet hole in the pocket and pulls. The shirt tears, and at last she’s looking at her own skin, freckled with blood.
There’s a hole just where the scant swell of her breast begins, and in it she can see a black thing. It looks like a dead bug. She tears the rip in the shirt wider, using three fingers now, then reaches in and grasps the bug. She wiggles it like a loose tooth.
“Oooo . . . ooooh . . . ooooh, FUCK . . . ”
It comes free, not a bug but a slug. She looks at it, then drops it into the sink with the other stuff. In spite of her aching head and the throbbing in her chest, Freddi realizes how absurdly fortunate she has been. It was just a little gun, but at such close range, even a little gun should have done the job. It would have, too, if not for a one-in-a-thousand lucky break. First through the cigarettes, then through the flask—which had been the real stopper—then through the Altoids tin, then into her. How close to her heart? An inch? Less?
Her stomach clenches, wanting to puke. She won’t let it, can’t let it. The hole in her chest will start bleeding again, but that’s not the main thing. Her head will explode. That’s the main thing.