The speed of light, Kiki thought. The moon entered her mind; the cold moon and the darkness that surrounded it.
“No,” she said with a dry throat. “Never, ahem, never.”
Kiki handed the folder back to Sheldon and sat down, trying to look natural. She crossed her legs and sat back.
“It came through my office,” Sheldon said. “You know I sign a lot of these things, but when the money’s this high I usually check it. I usually send it down to the adjusters. I mean, I don’t just sign everything that comes across my desk.”
Kiki felt the dull thud of a hammer against the inside of her chest. An urge came over her to run, run right out of there. She could go back down south. Down to Arkansas. Nobody could find her in the small towns. She could work anywhere, live in the woods. Her father would never have to know she was there. She could never let him know where she was. For years after she’d run from home she worried that he would find her. He used to whisper in her ear, while he had his whole fist up in her rectum, that she could never get away; that he knew people all over the country and if she ran he’d send her picture to everyone he knew and they’d be looking for her and the police would bring her back home. He could find her anywhere and pull her right off the street, no one would even try to stop him. He’d whisper all that while opening his hand inside her. She’d gasp, helpless as he gripped her on the inside, and she believed him — every word.
“They’ve been investigating it for two weeks,” Sheldon said. “They didn’t even tell me about it until this morning.”
“Why not? Do they think you did something?”
“No,” he said reassuringly. “Not at all. They think that it was somebody in computer operations working with this couple.” Sheldon turned the folder and pointed at the names. “They routed the papers and checks to an interoffice box and then forged the name with a stamp from the VP’s office.”
“How’d they get that?” Kiki asked, trying to act like she didn’t have the guile to figure it out.
“There’s at least half a dozen of them floating around operations. And there’s one in the locked box at the end of the hall. It’s locked but almost everybody has the combination.
“It doesn’t matter, though. Now that we know, we’ll be able to trace it down.”
“How long will that take?”
Sheldon hunched his small shoulders.
Hot needles poked from behind Kiki’s eyes. She couldn’t get a full breath. Sheldon was talking again but she didn’t, she couldn’t make out what he was saying. Her intestines started rumbling and she was on the verge of throwing up. The stitches in her side, almost healed now, began pinching.
Then came the sound.
At first it was a distant booming, like someone playing a kettledrum down in the basement with all the doors closed. But as it got louder it became harder and less resonant. And then, for one moment, Kiki was back in the dream. Her father’s hard soles banging around in the basement and then loud knocking...
A jolt went through her body. Suddenly everything was all right, everything was calm. The cool of a fever breaking passed over her forehead and down the back of her neck.
“Whatever it is that’s wrong,” she said, “it beats gettin’ fist-fucked up the ass.”
Sheldon’s mouth dropped open.
Kiki reached across the desk and picked up the folder.
“I’ll see if I have anything about this in the files, Sheldon.” She went out to her desk and put the folder in its alphabetical place in the file cabinet. That was at ten-thirty in the morning.
Kiki came home early that day with an armful of groceries. She had hamburger and sweet peas and French bread. She brought home lemon and apple pies with vanilla ice cream and two six-packs of Old New York beer. In a separate bag she had her every-other-day bottle of sour-mash whiskey.
Soupspoon and Randy were at the table, talking blues. Soupspoon had his wedding suit on and his guitar out. His tape recorder was plugged into the wall and running.
“Hi guys,” she said with a big smile.
“Hi.” Randy waved.
Soupspoon looked up and scowled. He’d never seen her home from work early. He was half worried that Kiki would be mad to find somebody else in the house. But she didn’t seem to mind. Soupspoon was relieved, because just that morning, when he’d been tuning his guitar, he felt a twinge in his chest and a sharp jolt down his leg.
“That’s what music’s all about, Randy,” Soupspoon had been saying before Kiki came in. “It’s all about gettin’ so close to pain that it’s like a friend, like somebody you love.”
“Why don’t you stay for dinner, Randy?” Kiki offered.
Randy had brought with him sample T-shirts, mainly buxom women in impossibly small bikinis and hard-muscled superheros all pumped up and in a rage.
“People buy this shit?” Soupspoon asked. “I wouldn’t wear sumpin’ like that in the street. Damn! Anybody could see I don’t look like that. I ain’t got no girlfriend look like that neither.”
“Kids buy’em up for the superheros and pinups. I almost always sell fifty shirts, but with you, Soup, I bet I sell all hundred and twenty-five.”
“Hamburgers and sour mash.” Soupspoon lifted his glass in a toast. Kiki’s eyes sparkled.
Soupspoon gave Randy a tin spoon and a mayonnaise jar. He showed the boy how to follow a beat. Then he started playing his guitar. He strummed and sang,
Kiki showed that she had a rough, sexy voice by the second chorus. She cried and sang and laughed with the men.
Soupspoon realized somewhere near midnight that they were playing music. These children weren’t even born when he came around but they were playing his music. They were living it too.
He felt the arthritis in his fingers as they traveled up and down the strings. His hip and leg ached dully under him.
Kiki started to dance and Randy rocked with her. They didn’t know a thing about dancing. But you didn’t need to know anything to dance to those tunes.
After a while Randy left Kiki to dance by herself while he slapped the table, almost in time with Soupspoon’s song. It was like back in the days when Negroes broke stones and one man was their voice. Every line ended with a grunt and the impact of the sixteen-pound hammer.
They played music until the liquor was gone. Then Randy kissed Kiki on both sides of her face and shook the bluesmaster’s hands.
“I’ll pick you up at seven on Saturday, Mr. Wise,” Randy said. He looked at Kiki hopefully, but when she didn’t take his hands he knew that he was going home alone.
The phone rang at three-thirty in the morning.
“Hello?” Kiki said in a drugged voice. She could see Soupspoon still seated at the kitchen table. He was asleep on his folded arms, next to the lacquer-red guitar.
“I know what you did, you cunt.”
“Fez?”
“If you don’t tell them what you did I’m gonna come over there and slip my knife up your goddamned pussy. You understand me?”
Kiki hung up.
She got up and went over to the old man. When she touched his shoulder he turned up his face and cried, “What?” in a small-boy voice. Then he wrapped his arms around Kiki and shuddered.
She took his clothes off without him really waking up and helped him into the bed, pulling the covers snug under his chin.