Son of the Endless Night, page 14
The terrible noise of her skull cracking in half deafened Karyn, but, unmercifully, she couldn't lose consciousness even then. She fell one last time and, with a sense that all was lost, lay on her back in quickening convulsions while his iron bar flailed. Her frontal lobes were clenched like the fists of a newborn on her divided forehead. She sank slowly and with no further sensation of anxiety into a blanket of snow that steamed with her blood.
Her unbroken eye never closed, and she studied him faintly through blow after blow. Seeking Rich, but never finding him.
Then the last of the light sped from her eye into the outer dark; his own eyes, all that remained of a desolated universe, opened wide. They were red giants toward which her body, quieted, was attracted in a nightmare orbit.
Who? Karyn thought, as she died. And never knew the answer.
PART TWO
Zarach'
27
Several hours before the death of Karyn Vale in Haden County, Vermont, a professional wrestler named Irish Bob O'Hooligan, six feet four and 245 pounds, teamed with his partner, the Matamoros badass Chico Panache, to trounce the good guys in a preliminary to the main event at the high school gymnasium in Dempster, Massachusetts. The bout lasted fourteen minutes and ended in a lively free-for-all, where the main objective was to whip the crowd into a lather and survive in good enough shape to wrestle again the next night. At some point, while he was applying a persuasive but illegal reverse deathlock to the handsome kid who called himself Reno Studaway, he'd taken an accidental shot to the kidneys from the boot of Reno's partner, and he suspected it would have him chewing aspirin and pissing blood for the better part of two days.
Afterward Irish Bob and Chico split the winners' purse, two hundred fifty dollars, and each contributed ten percent to their manager, the former World Wrestling Alliance heavyweight champ Buddy Dilworth. Buddy had promised them an eventual shot at the New England states tag team championship if they continued their villainous crowd-pleasing ways in the smalltime rings where they earned a decent living.
The pain in his kidneys persisted through a hot shower, and Irish Bob considered adding to his high medical expenses by seeking out the family doctor in the morning. On reflection he decided not to bother. He was only thirty-seven, but his doctor had already advised him on three occasions to get out of wrestling. The poundings had taken their toll in places that didn't show: tendons, joints, and soft irreplaceable organs. Some men could go on and on in the ring, and some couldn't. He knew he was already heading downhill, but he could still fake it. As if he had a choice. Three kids at home, these days he wasn't about to find something that compensated for the nightly traumas and the heavy travel. Close to thirty-six thousand last year before expenses. And it was largely a cash business, no W-2 forms. A lot of charity promotions. Half for me and half for thee, and fuck the IRS.
Jackie Bailiff, who had kicked him too enthusiastically from outside the ring ropes, apologized to Irish Bob in the showers. Jackie had a purpling lump over one eye from having been slammed repeatedly face-first against a turn-buckle by Chico, who sometimes got carried away when he went into his berserk-greaser routine. All in a night's work, anyway. It was a fraternity of large individuals, further swollen by boisterous egos, the touching vanity of the very ignorant. There were always minor offenses to sulk about, personality clashes; but the sincere feud was a rarity. They saved their calculated outrage and blood lust for the promotional spots in front of the TV cameras on studio wrestling days. Real pain added to the sleaze glamour of their routines.
For the truly talented and charismatic the bucks could mount up. But Irish Bob was realistic about his career. He would never wrestle anywhere but near the bottom of the card at a class hall like Boston Garden or the Hartford Civic Center, even if by some freak of chance he got there before a knee gave out for good or the headaches became such a problem he was forced to quit. He preferred sticking to Dilworth's New England circuit, which seldom required him to work more than a hundred miles from home.
Dempster, Massachusetts. The temperature down around six or seven degrees, snow starting to fly in the quick-moving storm that had passed through western New England several hours ago. Irish Bob dressed quickly in the high school locker room, wishing he had time to take advantage of the diathermy machine in the trainer's room. The kids here still had terrific facilities despite the ravages of Proposition Two and a Half, which had cut funds for public school athletic programs all over the state. And left him without his other job, as assistant wrestling coach at the high school in Joshua, where he lived. The school board had figured one wrestling coach was enough, and they could also do without his services teaching remedial English to dull-witted freshmen. Ten thousand a year down the tubes. But he was still wearing the handsome wool Joshua Jaguars athletic jacket, leather piping down the sleeves, patches on the elbows. Someday, maybe, he would go back to coaching full-time. Too bad the good Lord had not seen fit to gift him with even one kid who had straight teeth.
Trying to ignore the pain in his lower back, he let himself out of a side door in the gym, yowls and catcalls echoing behind him. Two women wrestlers were on;- the card had another twenty minutes to run. With no reluctance Conor Devon left Irish Bob O'Hooligan behind and headed for the center of his life.
Gina was waiting for him in the Ford station wagon; she had the engine and the lights on. Couldn't be much mistake about who he was but she made sure before springing the locks to let him in, and even then she cradled in her lap the Colt Python revolver, which she had learned to fire with exceptional accuracy, until he settled himself beside her and the doors were locked again.
"Hi, babe."
He kissed her and handed over the cash. She was a snub-nosed strawberry blonde whose name had been Travitano before he married her. The coloring of northern Italy, the short-waisted, big-breasted figure of the south. In the back seat someone was snoring from the effects of a lingering head cold.
"Who did you bring?"
"Dean. He didn't have any homework for Monday and he wanted to spend some time with his daddy. Better at least wake him up and say hello."
He did better than that; he reached back and picked up the sleeping ten-year-old and lifted him over the seat. Dean yawned and blinked away cobwebs.
"How did you do?"
"The bad guys won, I'm happy to say."
Dean snickered. "You're not a bad guy."
"Who am I?"
"You're my dad. Where're you going tomorrow?"
"Albany, New York."
"Okay." Dean snuggled closer and shut his eyes as Gina backed out of the parking space and drove away from the gym. In the lights from a passing car she looked tired; smudges under her eyes. The boutique in Joshua which she operated with a friend had had a dismal Christmas season and some of their accounts were sixty days behind; Gina and her partner Kay Finlay had met with their accountant that afternoon trying to decide if they should call it quits. Gina loved the shop and had invested five years in it; he hoped they could save it.
"What did DiFalco say?"
"We'll run the sale to the end of the month. If there's enough cash then we can hold on till spring. It's a good spring line, but we'll need to advertise. Radio, the papers."
"How much would that cost?"
"Four thousand, I figure."
He sighed. "Maybe we could— "
"Uh-uh, no way! We agreed in the beginning. One Pearl Place had to earn its own way. We don't touch personal savings, Conor. No sense throwing good money after bad in this economy."
She was still silent for a couple of miles, until they were traveling northbound on 495 toward home. It was snowing harder; the windshield wipers were going. Gina had put on her glasses, but still she didn't see well at night, and the Interstate was slippery.
"Want me to drive, honey?"
"No, no, I'm all right. I was just thinking. Do you know how many small businesses failed in this country last year? More than twenty-seven thousand."
"Things have to get better," Conor said.
"I forgot to ask. You okay?"
"I'm not the horse I used to be," Conor admitted. He was hurting from the weight of the sleeping boy in his lap, but didn't want to move him. Times likes these were too precious. He lightly stroked Dean's blond head. Reddish blond like his mother. The same tough, intelligent eyes, lips that had a tendency to flake and peel no matter what the weather.
Hillary, Dean, and Charles, who was the youngest of the Devon clan at eight. They'd come along with surprising regularity the first years of their marriage. No telling how many there'd be now if the fourth one hadn't been stillborn; the doctors had advised Gina to have her tubes tied. Not bad for an ex-priest, he thought. He was making out all right in the world, though he still remembered vividly the shock of renouncing his vows, the feelings of impotence and abandonment. No worldly goods other than those he could pack into a very small suitcase. No idea of what to do with himself. So in six months, still without prospects, he was married, to the first girl who was nice to him. Although Gina claimed to have had her eye on him since they were fifth-graders at St. Ignatius. A likely story, but Conor knew how lucky he was. Not many women could have stayed the course, through his fits of depression, his neuroses and drinking bouts. Spiritually she was the toughest woman he'd ever known, including his own mother, who had been through three husbands and a leg amputation before a stroke got her.
Grateful not to have to make the forty-five-minute drive himself, Conor dozed until they pulled into the driveway of their home in Revere Park, the best area of Joshua. The house, a Williamsburg Colonial with four bedrooms and a den which he'd turned into a gym, was set on a knoll above the street. The long slope of the drive was the only drawback: in winter both family cars had to be equipped with chains to make it. Gina maneuvered past the babysitter's Honda and put the wagon in the garage.
Conor carried Dean into the house and up the back steps to the boys' room, took his time tucking him into the upper bunk; he hoped Dean would wake up again and want to come down to the kitchen for hot chocolate and a chat despite the late hour. But only Charles woke up, and requested a drink of water. Conor got it for him, paused to chew four aspirin, kissed his youngest good-night, and went downstairs.
Gina was fixing his post-match meal: six scrambled eggs, fried Polish sausage, biscuits. Black coffee in a mug with a shot of Bushmill's on the side. He settled carefully onto a padded stool at the breakfast bar, and when she put a heaping plate in front of him he ignored the food momentarily, preferring to put an arm around her waist and hold her close.
"Your beard needs a trim."
"I know."
Smoke from the fat sausages was faintly visible, greasing the air around them; Gina opened the back door a finger's width. Cold air snaked in.
"I'd better take a look at that stove vent fan in the morning. Hasn't been working right for a week."
Conor had his shot and half a mug of coffee before tackling his meal. Gina sat next to him, elbows on the counter, chin on her clasped hands, and watched him eat. He sneaked a look at her, hoping for what he saw so seldom nowadays: the calm of a madonna, her spade-shaped face bridal-serene. Instead he saw new lines, obscure agitation, fitful shadows in her eyes.
"Worried about the boutique?"
"If it goes under, well. Women just don't shop for clothes like they used to. Who can afford it? I'll find something else to do. It isn't as if we've been depending on the income."
"How are we fixed?"
"All bills are current. There's eleven hundred in checking, seven thousand in the government securities fund, stocks are worth sixteen six, and SCM just split two for one. The utilities are still yielding a little better than twelve percent."
"That's good news," Conor said, smiling at her acquired expertise.
"Do you know where I think I could make a fortune? Retailing?"
"Where?"
"At the new mall that's going up in Lowell."
"Rentals are steep, aren't they?"
"The builders were six months behind schedule going into winter, and they only have seventy percent occupancy so far; I hear they're willing to make concessions."
"Move One Pearl Place to Lowell?"
"If we stay solvent I'm sure we could swing a loan."
"You're talking about twenty miles a day, each way. And you'd be staying open most nights until nine, nine thirty. Have to hire more help."
"I worked it out today on the Apple. I really haven't been using my time to best advantage, Conor."
He had to smile again. "Is that so?" She was seldom in bed before midnight, up for early Mass every morning at Blessed Sacrament Church. Car pools, scouts, midget hockey, committees, good works, a full-time job with a struggling business that hadn't paid her a salary for over a year, an infirm mother to visit twice a week in Mattapan. Gina still did all of the cooking and some of the cleaning in their thirty-two-hundred-square-foot house. And they tried to have two date nights a month: bowling with friends, dinner out, a Bruins game at the Garden where she invariably yelled herself hoarse.
"Really. I'll show you later." She reached out to flick a crumb of egg from his beard.
Conor poured another shot of Bushmill's for himself, looked inquiringly at Gina. She shook her head and put more sugar in her coffee instead, then with a spoon fished out one of the saturated cubes and sucked thoughtfully on it.
"I think we could gross nearly a hundred thousand a year the first year. Of course we have to pay a percentage of the profits to the mall. But it would be worth it. Our location's hurting us now; we can't build up enough steady customers. What do you think?"
"I think you should have been twins."
She kissed him and whirled off her stool. "I need to do a little sewing before bed, can I get you something else?"
"I'm just fine, honey."
Conor cleaned up after himself, rinsing the dishes first in the stainless steel sink, enjoying the modest domestic chore. He put everything into the dishwasher, which already was half filled with the dishes from dinner; the thrifty Gina only ran the Kitchenaid when it had a full load. He looked briefly at the bottle of Bushmill's on the breakfast counter, decided against smuggling it upstairs to bed. A long time ago, to get him to cut down, she'd made a firm rule: "The only thing I want to smell on your breath in bed is my pussy."
The thought made him smile and put heat in his groin; he left the Irish alone and went upstairs.
Gina, in a pale blue floor-length Dior nightgown, was seated in the alcove off the master bedroom putting a patch on some purple leotards for Hillary, using the old black Singer that had been in her family for fifty years. Conor undressed and went morosely into the bathroom, stood over the toilet and was relieved to see only traces of red in his urine. His lower back still hurt, a hard lump of pain as if he were growing an unneeded bone down there. He pulled on a sleep shirt with IRISH BOB and his caricature— which made him look a lot like Yosemite Sam in the Bugs Bunny cartoons— on the back, turned on the TV for the CNN news, and crept gratefully into bed, which was already nicely warmed by the electric blanket. Gina thought of everything. Spoiled him, in fact.
The Celtics were big winners, the Bruins had tied at St. Louis. Conor yawned. "Don't keep that up all night," he called to Gina.
"I'll be right there."
Tonight, for a change, she did make it to bed before he fell asleep. He had her out of the nightgown in half a second.
"Oh," Gina said, lying back in an Odalisque pose, her eyes shapely with sexual intrigue, "what's the matter, didn't you get enough exercise throwing those big gay studs out of the ring?"
"They just kept bouncing back."
With her thick wedding ring she rubbed the underside of his bullish glans. His fingers dabbled in her buttery breasts, plucking at the little tightwads of her nipples. They kissed and kissed. Her hair shaky over his cheeks, her tongue warm as a bath. How he loved the gingery curl and deep-down grain of cunt, the flex and tug of insistent muscle drawing him in like a baby's famished mouth. The speed of her blood. The touch of blunt toes on his shin-bones, climbing. The little bulge of a blue vein on one thigh. Her laugh. Her greed.
(You're fucking mefuckingmefucking me
No don't put it in yet.)
Gina looked stealthily back over one shoulder.
"Maybe I'd just better lock the door first, Dean's been walking in his sleep again."
She took care of the door and the lights and snuggled back into bed, fawning over him, lips avidly apart as if she were silently caroling.
* * *
(Can you get bigger? Bigger? What do you want me to do to make it bigger?
Lick me.
Oh I want to lick you. And then what do you want me to do?
Get on top.
Would you love it if I got on top?
Really love it.)
She took several delicious minutes sucking, then working his cock fully into her, and by then he was nicely separated from his wits. She fucked him slowly and all he had to do was hold on, feeling the muscles at work in her small ass, which had not lost any firmness after ten years and four babies. When she began to moan softly with each long, released breath he placed a wettened finger carefully in her anus, stretching her but not painfully. Her own fingers winnowed through the abundant hair on his chest, tugged at his wiry beard when she came in scalded gasps. He came a little after, like a fountain flowing miles-high and condensing into soft cloud.
She cuddled then beside him, and they went to sleep secure in each other, the TV still on and murmuring, casting rainbow shadows across their glazed faces. Married folks. The sex familiar, always nice and sometimes still terrific.
