Swanny startles back, almost capsizing her chair, at the tap on the window. She pulls up the blind to reveal Duluth hulking on the fire escape outside.
“The shop was closed, so I came around,” he grunts, stooping to squint in through the pane. “You seen Grub and Morsel? They never came to the meat locker last night.” Swanny vaguely remembers that Duluth lives in some decommissioned freezer, the only extant part of a butcher shop long since dragon-burned to the ground. “Not for night scraps, not for bed.”
“Night scraps?”
“You know, the scraps I give ’em before they go to sleep.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“They’re my boys.” He shrugs, and for the first time Swanny realizes that the children aren’t orphans. They’re Duluth’s sons.
“Oh. No, I’m afraid I haven’t seen them.” But her mind flashes to the twins, huddled beneath the counter. Surely they couldn’t have stayed there all night. Surely they couldn’t still be there now.
“Swan?”
“Yes?”
“You all right?”
She touches her face self-consciously. “I…fell.”
Duluth knows better than to pursue this line of inquiry: “Well, lemme know if you see ’em.”
He thuds back down the fire escape; Swanny marvels that it can support his weight. She supposes it could support hers too, if she chose to escape. Did Grub and Morsel sneak out this back route in the aftermath of yesterday’s horror show? But then why didn’t they rush home to their father? Were they too traumatized by what they witnessed? Or—the thought persists—were they so paralyzed with fear that they never left at all?
Swanny gets up and sidles down the narrow hallway to the Chaw Shop showroom. She flips on the electrolier. The scene is tidier than she left it. The bullet holes remain in the floor, like outsized cigarillo burns, but Sharkey’s already spackled the dent in the wall from the shot that grazed him, and bleached a couple of spots where one or both of them bled on the rug. She walks around to the other side of the counter. The bare floorboards here creak beneath her feet, as if this place has been sealed up a hundred years, not less than a single day. She peers beneath the counter. SLAKELESS, cobwebs, one of the twins’ slingshots, forgotten in a hurry. But not the boys themselves.
Swanny exhales, uncertain why she’s been holding her breath. Then she sees streaks, faint and rust-colored—drag marks from the space just under the register, leading toward the door. Parallel lines. Even if she isn’t a girl detective, she can still spot a clue.
But he didn’t kill me, she thinks. He must truly love me, if he didn’t kill me.
The thought is almost gratifying, and then the full import of it strikes her. Sharkey is evil, and she belongs to him now.
It should have been her. It should have been her.
Like a sleepwalker, Swanny drifts over to the wall of mason jars. She’s survived enough killing offenses, near misses, and diagnoses that she feels immortal. But anyone can die, if she puts her mind to it. Chaw brings you very close to death, that’s what Sharkey told her.
She reaches for the jar marked DEAD MAN’S CHEST, always one of their top sellers, and pops the lid. The scent of waterlogged cedar greets her. She picks up the shears and cuts off a sizable two-penny chunk of rope, then brashly inserts it in her mouth. Her tongue numbs almost immediately, yet somehow an awareness of the flavors asserts itself in her brain. Beneath the aromatic wood, she discerns sea salt and a delicate metallic taste, like filaments of gold. Ill-gotten treasure, the kind that dooms you in the end.
Swanny chews. And chews. And chews.
* * *
Sharkey gets back to the shop around nine. It was harder than he expected to fob off the corpses of the twin kindlings. Torchtown’s landlocked, a concrete cell, it’s not like you can just dig a hole. Plus he had to do this one careful; he doesn’t want Duluth finding out. If Duluth did find out, Sharkey’d have to kill him, hide his body, then find somebody else to trust with the limo. And it’s so hard to find somebody you can trust.
Sharkey washes the blood and lime off his hands at the hydrant outside his house and pats his gator on the head. Poor fucker hasn’t gotten a chance to sleep in the bathtub since Swanny came to live at the shop. The price you pay, he guesses, for a woman’s company.
Maybe she won’t kill him. But he’s never been wrong before.
He lets himself in the front. All the lights are out inside. She might be upstairs, in her bed. Or on his couch. He pictures her nestled under the afghan, paging through one of his books, sucking on her fingers while she teethes. Reading, and for pleasure. Most torchy girls don’t even know how. The luxury comes to her as natural as breathing. He doesn’t know why it stirs him, but it does.
He’s about to climb the steps to the second floor when he hears her singing in the showroom, a lullaby offered up to the dark, a disembodied voice trying to soothe itself to sleep. It’s a pretty tune. He steps inside and flips on the electrolier. Swanny is all balled up in the corner, hugging her knees.
“I committed suicide,” she whispers, her baby-doll eyes even wider and more vulnerable than usual, despite the shiner. “Oh my God. I’ve taken poison.”
“What did you take?” It’s a strain not to slap her in the face. “What did you take?”
“I—don’t remember…the pirate flavor, to start with…”
“Talk sense. I got antidotes upstairs, you’ve just gotta tell me exactly what you took.”
“And then there was the funeral home…and cherry cordial?”
Sharkey slowly looks at the floor around where she’s sitting. Gnawed-down plug ends litter the carpet around a weirdly fragrant spittoon.
“Golden Apple Jam, that one I recall for certain.”
Sharkey sighs, straightens his hat. “Put your face on. We’re going out.”
“Excuse me? I’m quite certain I overdosed. I’ve been chewing for hours.”
“Yeah, you overdosed all right, but on the wrong thing. Chaw can’t kill ya, you crazy broad. Where’d you even get an idea like that?”
“From you—you told me. ‘It brings you very close to death,’ you said.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Well, what did you mean?”
“You’re gonna have an interesting night. Try not to puke in the car.”
Sharkey calls Duluth on the walkie-talkie and tells him to bring around the limo right away. He picks up his backpack from the showroom closet. Then he wraps Swanny in her chinchilla and leads her outside.
“Oh, how lovely, it’s snowing,” she murmurs, reaching her hand up skyward.
“These things you see, they’re not really there,” Sharkey informs her. “That’s important to remember.”
“You mean the snowflakes?”
“Yeah. And whatever comes after.”
He opens the car door for her, shields her head as he guides her in. Gets in himself and slams the door.
“Drive us to Nick’s,” Sharkey tells Duluth, then slides the privacy screen shut. Who the hell knows what might come out of Swanny’s mouth next; he’d rather keep the big guy deaf to it. Though right now, Swanny isn’t saying much of anything. She’s studying her hands like they have some special fascination for her.