To Colley, watching her, it seemed as though she came off the counter and moved swiftly to where the jeans were crumpled on the floor and stooped to them and reached for them with one hand and with the other hand tugged at the T-shirt bunched above her breasts, all in a single graceful motion instead of several separate, panicky moves. He saw the swollen breasts for just an instant longer before she pulled the shirt down over them again. The nipples were still erect, they poked through the thin cotton fabric, the nipples were the same but everything else was changing, everything else was on the edge of becoming a nightmare.
She was just beginning to come up out of her crouch, the blue jeans in her left hand. She raised her head, tossed her hair back over her shoulder, and then her lips parted just a trifle, and Colley saw terror come into her eyes as she stood erect and backed a pace deeper into the kitchen. She was naked from the waist down, the T-shirt reaching to just an inch above the tufted blond triangle of her crotch, and she was looking past Colley to a spot somewhere behind his left shoulder. He turned swiftly, and immediately caught his breath. Jocko was in the doorway to the kitchen. He was huge and he was naked and the bandage covering his shoulder was soaked through with blood, and blood was running down his arm the way it had in the liquor store just after he’d been shot, dribbling onto the floor, the clock syncopating its tick-tick-tick against the steady patter of Jocko’s blood.
“What the fuck?” he said, and took a quick step into the kitchen, and what happened next happened so quickly that Colley wasn’t sure it was happening at all. With his good right arm, Jocko flicked Colley aside as though he were a eunuch caught in the sultan’s harem. The motion was only a backward swipe of his arm as he moved past Colley toward where Jeanine stood cowering near the sink. But Jocko’s strength was such that even though he’d been bleeding since shortly after nine o’clock, and was still bleeding, this casual motion of his arm could send Colley smashing violently against the wall, his head banging back against the plaster. Jeanine screamed. Colley, dazed, slid down the wall to the floor. Jocko brought back his right arm, the palm of the hand open, and then uncurled the arm like a pitcher throwing a curve ball. Jeanine’s head snapped to the side with the force of the blow.
Jocko was upon her now. He seized the T-shirt in his big fist, twisted the thin fabric, and holding on to the fabric, his fist literally wrapped in it, he punched out at her, sending her flailing back against the refrigerator. He did not let go of the shirt. He pulled her off the front of the refrigerator, and then punched out at her again and again, still holding the shirt, bouncing her repeatedly against the refrigerator, Jeanine grunting each time his huge fist struck her chest or her breasts or her rib cage. The shirt was tearing. He pulled her off the refrigerator a final time, and swung her around against the counter. Letting go of the shirt, he brought his arm back and pistoned a short hard punch to her shoulder, and then punched her in the left arm, a blow so hard it caused the arm to fall limply to her side.
She was collapsed against the countertop now, her right arm across it, her hand flapping, grasping, the fingers opening and closing spasmodically, reaching, searching for something, anything. Each time Jocko threw a punch, the force of it rumbled through her body, and each blow sent blood specks flying from his wounded arm onto the white T-shirt. Colley was moving toward them to help her now, afraid to help her, feeling it would be useless to try, but knowing he would anyway. He saw Jeanine’s hand blindly strike the handle of a bread knife in the drying rack on the counter. Her hand recognized the knife, her fingers closed on it. The knife blade clinked against a dish that was drying on the rack, and then the knife came around in an arc, high into the air above Jeanine’s head, clenched in her fist just as Jocko drew back his arm to punch her again. Colley saw her eyes and knew she would kill him, and he thought Yes, kill him, kill him! but he shouted, “No, Jeanine,” and then more sharply, “No, don’t!” but he was too late.
The blade came down with tremendous force.
She was a big woman, and she was terrified, and she was angry, and she sank the fourteen-inch blade into his chest clear to the handle, plunging it in just below the right wing of his collarbone, and then pulling it free and plunging it in again in fury. “Jesus,” Jocko said, and she pulled the knife free again, and her hand came up again, and Colley stood unable to move, watching as though paralyzed, and Jocko said “Jesus,” breathing it this time, and Jeanine said “Yes,” and plunged the knife again, and said “Yes,” her voice rising, and “Yes” again and “Yes” and “Yes,” each uttered affirmative coinciding with a plunge of the knife, “Yes” and “Yes” and “Yes,” till Jocko fell, gushing blood, to the kitchen floor, and then she straddled him as though she were fucking him, and she kept plunging the knife into his chest and his throat and his face until finally the blade broke on the hard bone of his forehead, and even then she brought the handle and the broken blade down twice more before she realized the knife was broken, and then she stopped.
“Yes,” she said.
She was breathing heavily. Straddling Jocko, she looked into his face and nodded. Then she got up slowly, and backed away from him a pace, and nodded again. She heard Colley behind her, and she whirled at once, her eyes wide, surprised to see him, surprised that she was not alone in the kitchen with the man she had just killed. She was still holding the broken knife in her hand, and for a moment Colley thought she would strike out at him blindly and in terror. But the surprise left her eyes almost at once, and he realized that she was not frightened, she had only been startled. Neither of them said anything. She took a quick step to the counter and put the broken knife down on its wooden top. She looked down at Jocko again, and then walked around him, and went to where Colley was standing. The broken knife blade had fallen onto Jocko’s chest. It lay half hidden in the red hairs curling there. His tiny cock seemed to have shriveled in death. Only the rounded head peeked from the red pubic hair like a mushroom cap. His blue eyes were open wide and staring up at the ceiling.
“Close his eyes, for Christ’s sake,” Colley said, and moved past her and knelt beside the body, and made one abortive attempt to close the eyes himself, pulling back his hand before he touched the lids. Behind him, he could hear Jeanine’s heavy breathing. He reached out again, and closed one lid with his thumb, the other with his forefinger. Jocko’s face was crisscrossed with cuts. His throat had been opened with one deep slash of the knife, and Colley looked into the wound and saw exposed raw tissue there. He turned away immediately and brought his hand to his mouth, certain he would vomit.
Behind him, Jeanine laughed.
The laughter was dark and chilling, it seemed to rumble up from somewhere deep inside her, rising in her throat to find voice behind tightly compressed lips. Her eyes were mirthless. Looking into her face, he saw something that warned him to get out of this place now, before it was too late. Leave here, go, get away, run.
She held out her hand to him.
It was her right hand, the hand that had wielded the knife. The fingers and the palm were covered with blood. There was blood on the tom T-shirt and on the breast that showed where the fabric was ripped. There were flecks of blood on her thighs. He was not sure why she was extending her hand. He hesitated. When he did not move to her, she came to him, and put her arms around his neck and moved her mouth toward his and he saw — in the instant before they kissed — that there was blood on her lips as well.
They made love on the sofa.
Through the open doorless jamb between kitchen and living room, Colley could see a thin line of blood trickling across the kitchen floor. He was on top of Jeanine, she was spread beneath him when he discovered the thin trickle of Jocko’s blood creeping inexorably across the kitchen floor. And then he noticed for the first time that the springs were jutting through the fabric on the easy chair opposite the sofa, and he saw that the cabinet of the television set was scarred with cigarette burns, and the ceiling plaster was chipped and peeling, and there was a rust mark on the wall from a leaking pipe, and the rug Jeanine could not get the bloodstains out of was worn and faded — the place was a dump. Jocko’d been in this business for more than fifteen years, and his place was a dump. And he was dead on the kitchen floor, his blood trickling toward the doorjamb while a stranger fucked his wife.