As a child, in the days before Christmas, Becki would sometimes pick up a favorite snow globe, showing a little pond and people in nineteenth-century dress skating amid the glitter, and she would crank the key in the base and listen to the music—“Noel, Noel”—and tell herself stories about the people under the glass.
She found herself doing the same thing now, only with the gun instead of a snow globe. She stared down at its etched-silver barrel and pictured herself walking into Devotion Diamonds with it. In her imagination Rog was still in the office, on the phone with his wife, wasn’t aware of her entering the store. She floated to the extension in the customer-fulfillment nook and picked up the line.
“Mrs. Lewis?” she said in a pleasantly social voice. “Hi. It’s Becki. I just wanted you to know that whatever Roger told you about me isn’t true. He just doesn’t want you to know he was fucking me. He said if I ever tried to tell you the truth about us, he’d make it look like I stole things from the store and have me arrested. But I know I couldn’t survive even one day in jail, not even overnight, and I feel sick to have committed the sin of adultery with him. I can’t ever make it up to you, but I can apologize. And I am so sorry, Mrs. Lewis. You will never understand how much.” And then she’d shoot herself, right in his store, right by the phone. That would stick it to him. Leave him with a corpse and blood all over the white shag carpet.
Or maybe she’d march into his office and jam the gun into her temple and pull the trigger in front of him. She wanted to hear him scream before she did it. She’d been in the car screaming the word “No!” over and over again in her head for almost half an hour. Now it was his turn. She felt if she could hear him scream it just once—NO!—it would almost be worth it to blow her brains out. She needed to see some horror on his face, needed him to know he didn’t have control of everything.
But then if she wanted to see some horror in his face, it might be better to point the gun at him. Point it at his cock. See if he’d plead like she had pleaded. Or make him text the truth to his wife. Make him eat ten thousand dollars of diamonds. Make him write an e-mail to everyone at Devotion Diamonds and apologize to them personally for fucking a twenty-year-old employee, disgracing himself in the eyes of his wife and the Lord. The possibilities swirled, like bright flecks of snow in a snow globe, like bright flecks of diamond-bright Putumayo cocaine.
At some point she wriggled back into her underwear. She felt a little less dirty then. The sun was well up over the trees, and it was getting stuffy in the car, and suddenly she needed to get out into cooler air. She brought the gun with her.
The hazy bright of late morning made her head ache. She reached back into the car for her cheap pink sunglasses. Better. It would hide her bloodshot eyes, too. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but she knew she wanted to look good doing it. She leaned back into the car, collected the flower-print do-rag she wore to the gun range, and wrapped her hair to keep it out of her face. Last she rucked up her skirt and buckled the holster onto her thigh.
It was still early, and it wasn’t busy inside the mall. A scattering of people strolled among the shops. Her heels cracked on the marble like gunshots. With each step she felt she was leaving all thought behind, all anxiety.
Becki climbed the stairs in the atrium for the second time that morning. She was halfway up when the holster began to slip down her thigh. She was hardly aware of it happening until it abruptly dropped to her knee. She tugged it awkwardly back up without slowing. She wasn’t looking where she was going, and her shoulder thudded into a guy going down the stairs past her. It was the tall, skinny black kid who worked in Boost Yer Game, carrying a pair of frosty coffee drinks. She didn’t make eye contact with him and didn’t look back as she wrestled the holster into place. She had a sense he’d stopped walking and was staring at her.
She didn’t feel emotional at all. She felt as glassy and inanimate as one of the skaters in her old snow globe. So it surprised her when, at the very top of the stairs, she turned her ankle and stumbled. She hadn’t known that her legs were trembling. A fat dude with curly hair came out of nowhere to grab her elbow and steady her. He had a breakfast Crunchwrap in his free hand. Scrambled eggs fell out of it and spattered across the floor.
“You okay?” he asked her. He was a pimply, moon-faced boy in a too-tight striped polo that clung to his man boobs. He smelled of hot salsa and virginity.
“Fuck off me,” she said, and jerked her arm out of his soft hand. It was horrible to be touched.
He lurched aside, and she clacked unsteadily along, but the holster had slipped down to her knee again, the fucking thing. She hadn’t cinched the straps tight enough. Becki cursed, pulled at the buckles, tore the holster off, and clutched the whole mess to her stomach. Anyone who looked might think it was a purse.
Devotion Diamonds was a labyrinth of glass display cases, bulletproof coffins for artfully arranged bracelets and earrings and crosses and medallions. Rog was at the fulfillment center in a back corner. He was completing a transaction with a pretty, dark-skinned lady in a dove-colored cloak or dress and one of those head scarves the Arabs wore. A hijab, that was the word. Becki was obscurely proud of herself for knowing it. She wasn’t as ignorant as Rog thought.
Rog took the Muslim woman’s order with an air of hushed calm, speaking in the fond, approving tone he always used when someone was about to give him money. He had left the panel into the back office open, and Becki aimed herself at it, keeping her hands low, the gun beneath the level of the display cases, where he couldn’t see it. She caught his eye on the way past, nodded for him to follow.
His jaw tightened. The Muslim saw his change of expression and glanced around. Becki took in that the Muslim lady had an infant in a BabyBj?rn, worn against her chest. The baby was facing inward, asleep beneath a striped blue cap. The mom had enormous eyelashes above her dark eyes and was really very pretty. Becki wondered if she had tried something on and Rog had told her she was unblemished.
She swept by them both and into the office, pushing the panel partway shut behind her. She shook with adrenaline. She hadn’t thought about other people being around. The window overlooking the rear lot was still open wide, and Becki went behind the desk, thinking that another deep breath of the outside air might calm her.
Then Becki was in a position to see what was on the screen of Rog’s iMac, and she went very still. She took off her sunglasses, put them down, blinked at the screen.
“One moment, ma’am,” Rog was saying in his smooth, hushed voice, but Becki knew him well enough to recognize the barely suppressed urgency just beneath the surface. “I’ll be right back.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes, perfect, perfect. One more moment and we’ll get you rung out. Thanks. Thanks so much.”