CHAPTER 42
FANTASTICALLY YELLOW FROM HEAD TO FOOT, Corky Laputa accepted the shocking-pink plastic bag from Mr. Chung.
He was aware that he evoked smiles from other customers, and he supposed that in his yellow-and-pink flamboyance, he must be the most cheerful-looking anarchist in the world.
The bag bulged with containers of Chinese food, and Mr. Chung overflowed with good will. He effusively thanked Corky for his continuing patronage and wished him all the best that fortune had to offer.
After a typically busy day in the pursuit of social collapse, Corky seldom found himself in the mood to make dinner. He got takeout from Mr. Chung as often as three or four times a week.
In a better world, instead of resorting repeatedly to Chinese takeout, he would have preferred to dine frequently in upscale restaurants. If an establishment offered fine cuisine and excellent service, however, there were invariably enough customers to ruin the experience.
With but few exceptions, human beings were tedious, self-deluded bores. He could tolerate them individually or in classroom situations [276] where he set the rules, but in crowds they were not conducive to the enjoyment of a good meal or to proper digestion.
He drove home through the rain with his pink bag, and he left it unopened on the kitchen table. Mouth-watering aromas flooded the room.
After changing into a comfortable Glen-plaid cashmere robe suitable to a drizzly December evening, Corky mixed a martini. Only a trace of vermouth, two olives.
In the sublime afterglow of a day well spent, he often liked to walk his spacious home and admire the richness of its Victorian architecture and ornamentation.
His parents, both from well-to-do families, had purchased the property shortly after their marriage. Had they not been the people they were, the beautiful house would have been alive with wonderful family memories and with a sense of tradition.
Consequently, his only fine family memory, the one that warmed him most, was associated with the living room, especially with the area around the fireplace, where he had separated his mother from his inheritance by the application of an iron poker.
He stood there for only a minute or two, basking in the fire, before going upstairs again. This time, martini in hand, he went to the back guest bedroom, to check on Stinky Cheese Man.
He didn?t even bother to lock the door these days. Old Stinky wasn?t going anywhere under his own power ever again.
The room would have been dark in daylight, for the two windows were boarded over. The wall switch by the door controlled the lamp on the nightstand.
The tinted bulb and the apricot silk shade provided an appealing glow. Even in this flattering light, Stinky appeared paler than pale, so gray that he seemed to be petrifying into stone.
His head, shoulders, and arms were exposed, but the rest of him remained covered by a sheet and blanket. Later, Corky would enjoy the entire show.
Stinky had once been a trim 200 pounds, in excellent condition. If [277] he could have gotten on a scale now, he probably would have weighed less than 110.
All bone, skin, hair, and pressure sores, he was barely strong enough to lift his head an inch off his pillow, too weak by far to get out of bed and onto a scale, and the depth of his despair had weeks ago broken his will to resist.
Stinky was no longer semi-sedated. His sunken eyes met Corky?s, darkly shining with a desperate petition.
On the IV tree, the dangling twelve-hour bag of glucose and saline solution had drained completely. The slow drip of glucose, vitamins, and minerals that kept Stinky alive also infused a drug that ensured mental vagueness and reliable docility.
Corky put down his martini, and from a small refrigerator well stocked with full infusion bags, he plucked a replacement for the empty container. With practiced hands, he removed the collapsed bag and installed the plump one.
The current drip included no drug. Corky wanted his withered guest to have a clear head later.
After picking up his martini and taking a sip, he said, ?I?ll rejoin you after dinner,? and he left the bedroom.
In the living room once more, Corky stopped by the fireplace to finish his drink and to remember Mama.
Unfortunately, the historic poker was not here to be polished, hefted, and admired. Years ago, on the night of the event, police had taken it away with many other items, intent on collecting evidence, and had never brought it back.
Corky had been too wise to request its return, leery that the police might suspect that it had sentimental value to him. All the fireplace tools had been purchased new following his mother?s death.
Reluctantly, he had replaced the carpet as well. If the homicide detectives had for any reason returned in the months following the murder, upon seeing the bloodstained carpet still in place, they might have at least raised an eyebrow.
[278] In the kitchen, he heated the Chinese food in the microwave. Moo goo gai pan. Mu shu pork. Beef and red pepper. Rice, of course, and pickled cabbage.
He could not eat all this food himself. Ever since he?d begun methodically to starve Stinky Cheese Man in the guest room, however, Corky had been buying too much takeout.
Evidently, the spectacle of Stinky?s ghastly decline was not merely entertaining but subconsciously disturbing. It raised in Corky a deep-seated fear of being underfed.
In the interest of good mental health, therefore, he continued to purchase too much takeout and enjoyed the therapeutic pleasure of feeding the excess to the garbage disposal.
This evening, as had been the case more often than not in recent months, Corky ate at the dining-room table, on which were stacked the complete blueprints of Palazzo Rospo. These prints had been produced from a set of diskettes developed by the architectural firm that had overseen the six-million-dollar renovation of the mansion soon after Manheim had purchased the estate.
In addition to receiving new electrical, plumbing, heating, air-conditioning, and audio-video systems, the enormous house had been computerized and fitted with a state-of-the-art security package designed for continual, easy upgrading. According to one source on whom Corky was relying, that package had indeed been upgraded at least once in the past two years.
As if the night were a living thing, and moody, it rose out of its sodden lethargy and worked up a peevish wind, hissing at the windows, clawing at the house walls with prosthetic hands that it fashioned from tree limbs, and by the shaking of its great black coat, rattled barrages of rain against the glass.
In his warm dining room, wrapped in Glen-plaid cashmere, with a Chinese feast before him, with worthwhile and exciting work to occupy his mind, Corky Laputa had seldom felt so cozy or more glad to be alive.