“Yeah. So quiet, I thought I’d disappeared.”
Swanny thinks of her vision the afternoon that Sharkey brought her to Torchtown: the branches reaching like fingers toward the car windows, the ground opening up below. The sense of not just being lost, but of losing oneself to a place. What does it mean that her home makes him feel the same way?
“C’mere,” he says, laying his arm across the back of the sofa.
They’ve been alone together before, dozens of times, and yet only now does she feel that seclusion bodily, in the peculiar vibration of his voice. Swanny blushes. “I thought you were going to show me the weapons.”
“I wanna see your teeth first.”
“Why? Don’t you trust me?”
“I wanna take another look.”
Swanny perches beside him on the edge of the seat. Gingerly, with one finger, she pulls the corner of her lip back. “Satisfied?”
“Open your mouth.”
She does, and Sharkey cups her chin in his hand, swivels her head slightly from side to side.
“That’s what I thought,” he says. “There are too many. When were you gonna tell me why?”
Swanny turns away, aghast. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. You’ve got that teeth disease. That mutation. From seepage in the Wonland wells.”
“How did you find out?”
“I’ve been doing some reading up on the subject. How come you didn’t tell me? I thought we were friends.”
“Because it’s fatal.”
“Not always.”
“Really?”
“Sometimes something else kills you first. That’s what I read.”
“How long do people live?”
“All kinds of time.”
Swanny thinks of his premonitions. He knows where the fires will be. He knew how to find her, among the endless vacant corridors of the abandoned city: I had a dream I was gonna meet somebody like you today. He saved her life, just down the street. Surely, he’s privy to some classified knowledge. When she asks her next question, it’s in a tone of utmost urgency. “How long will I live, Howie?”
He doesn’t hesitate: “Years.”
Falling into his arms is like succumbing to the aching pull of sleep, a sweet ocean of welcoming dark that rises up to meet her. His mouth is on her mouth, his tongue is in her throat, but there’s no need to breathe, no need to resurface; she is an animal made to dwell in the crashing of this tide. It’s only when he begins to slide his hand up between her thighs that with some difficulty, she partially extricates herself.
“I am married, you know,” she says. One of her suede pumps has fallen to the floor.
“You don’t seem to miss him much,” Sharkey observes, relocating his hand to her knee. She’s still sitting on his lap.
“How could you know what lurks in a woman’s heart?”
“I’ve got some idea.” Sharkey daubs at her smudged lips with his thumb; she can almost taste the spice of his skin. “Don’t pretend. It ain’t convincing.”
“I just need some time, Howie. Time to heal.” She reflects on the luxury of the phrase. You’ll have time, isn’t that what her mother said? At last she’s able to believe it. What a relief from the pressure that’s been upon her these last weeks—what a release. “He mistreated me terribly, you know.”
“Yeah.” Sharkey smirks. “He threw you to the wolves.”
“At any rate,” Swanny says, smoothing her mussed hair, “shall we get down to business?”
“What? You mean the guns?”
They disentangle, and Sharkey scales a stepladder in the bedroom closet. He returns with a large cardboard box. “Remember, it’s another two weeks before you get your ammo, though.”
Swanny rolls her eyes; it’s absurd he’s being such a stickler after everything else that’s passed between them. She sets the cardboard box on the cushion next to her and unseals the flaps.
“I don’t know how I’m ever going to choose one,” she warns him, “I’m an utter na?f about these things.”
Inside, the muzzles and triggers are crammed together. A pirate’s blunderbuss. A vaquero’s six-shooter. A dueling flintlock, inlaid with curlicues of gold. A tommy gun. Swanny lays them out on the rug one by one. Museum pieces, all. An antique gun collection. Deep inside her something twists: the knowledge that comes before knowledge. The feeling she had as a child, looking into that rabbit’s fanged insides.
“I could teach you,” Sharkey is saying. “Pop some bottles in the alley. Pop some rats.”
But Swanny isn’t listening to him. She’s looking at the double-action semiautomatic that she’s holding. As nonchalantly as she’s able, she turns it over in her trembling hand. The monogram is right where she remembers, emblazoned on the grip.
PFD.
Penelope Frederica Dahlberg.
Pretty Fucking Dead.
* * *
That night, Swanny and Sharkey supper together, as usual, in the parlor, at the long conference table where he has his meetings. Tonight’s meal is veal kidneys, sourced—Swanny guesses now—from some distant, plundered charcuterie or violated Frigidaire before finding its way to an ice-packed Styrofoam cooler in Sharkey’s larder. Dining on the organs feels a bit like chewing a loved one’s viscera, though Swanny forces herself to eat as much as she can. She mustn’t arouse his suspicion. She must keep up her strength.
“I finished that book,” says Sharkey.
“Which one?” Swanny asks. She’s never noticed before how many dents and spackled patches mar this room’s paint job. What kinds of interactions perforated these walls?
“That one you kept going on about. Canfield Manor.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Funny thing is, when it started off I thought it was gonna be a romance. But it’s actually more like a horror story.”
“How so?”
“After they kill Bertrand in the war, Etta’s a young widow. She’s desperate. And the colonel’s conveniently there. He’s been there this whole time. He even says something like, ‘I was waiting.’ ‘I was waiting.’ Kind of a funny thing to say to a woman whose husband just got rubbed out. It got me wondering if maybe he had something to do with it.”
“With what?” Swanny traces her finger along a crimson groove in the table. The surface of the wood is rough and scarred, its finish hacked away in spots. They’re sitting at an enormous cutting board.
“With what happened to Bertrand. Officers weren’t usually down on the battlefield, were they? Unless somebody put them there.”
“That’s an interesting analysis, Howie.”
“And the end, with their wedding night, Etta and the colonel, there’s no talking, no nothing. Just, ‘She surrendered herself to him utterly.’ Kind of a funny turn of phrase. ‘Surrendered.’ Kind of violent.” He scrapes a gold toothpick between his teeth. “I dunno, just my two cents.” He glances at her cup. “You’re not drinking your tea.”
“I may go out later.” She feels as though she might cry. “My investigation…”
Sharkey spits. “Suit yourself.”
23
SOURCE UNKNOWN