Quit while you’re ahead, is what the game is called. That’s how I saw it then. From where I’m sitting now, it doesn’t seem so clear-cut.
But when I climbed into the Spyder that last time, I figured I was headed straight for hell. Layla’s chosen revenge was fine by me — let the Spyder roar and the blood flow. That was how I felt about it. I was going to die young and leave a good-looking corpse and all that. I was counting on the power of legend — a handful of Technicolor hours that would never change — but I never figured I’d be around to see the legend take hold.
I guess I’d never considered the business end of the proposition.
The studio laid it on heavy with my family back in Indiana. The body of his car was aluminum, you see. It couldn’t stand up to such a battering. It’s so tragic. What a future he had, and to be left a cripple. Brain-damaged. Horribly disfigured. Better to place him in a private sanitarium. Let the world think him dead. The fans would pry, you understand, torture him. This way he will always be young. And the desert is such a peaceful place.
Things have been quiet for a long time, but it’s never quiet inside my head. I always demand blue sheets on my bed. When I sleep, I dream of Joselito and Granero and Maera — Hemingway’s bullfighters, all three buried long ago in the rich soil of Spain. I dream of these men in their suits of light, and of angry black eyes and sharp horns.
The walls of my room are a bright and cheery yellow.
Evenings I watch the desert sky. On temperate nights the nurses wheel me outside, my faded red windbreaker draped over my shoulders. Wonderful colors bleed overhead, night after night. Always something different, if you’re willing to watch. Sometimes the sky is as red as blood, but it never seems to make any difference, even though I keep hoping that it will.
I miss the color of blood. Real blood, I mean. I remember the hot brightness rushing out of me as the broken steering wheel speared my chest, remember how I painted myself and painted the Spyder and how the speedometer was masked by a curtain of blood. I remember staring down at the torn pieces of flesh that clung to the twisted metal and clung to my bones and knowing that every piece belonged to me and every drop of blood was mine and everything around me in that moment was as simple and clear as the waxy red shine of that stubby red crayon down in Texas.
And then they came and scraped me out of the car and stitched me back together. And in time the angry scars faded from scarlet to dull, dusty purple. All of it happened so fast, really, and then it was over.
And there was no turning back.
Like with Layla and me. I know that I was right about her and all the others, and about being hungry.
Like I said: once you get something, you’ll never hunger for it in that same way again.
But that doesn’t mean you won’t be hungry.
The walls of my room are a bright and cheery yellow, and the sheets on my bed are blue, and the sky is often as red as blood. But I know that my life is a dull, dusty purple — the color of a scar — and a blood-red sky can never change that.
Because in this desert the blood in the sky dried long ago.
And the fog never comes.
MINUTES
11:59.
Moonlight filtered through the oatmeal-colored drapes, bathing the bed in an amber glow. Under the covers, Susan Hunter tossed and turned, caught in the grip of a nightmare.
Outside, the sound of gravel crunching beneath heavy boots.
Susan awoke. Her eyelids, smeared with runny mascara, flashed open. Empty green eyes in goblin-black pools.
The sound. Crunching. Giant iron fists smashing tiny, bleached skulls.
A temple bell rang. Soft. Then loud. Soft, then loud.
Susan’s breath caught in her throat.
On the bedroom drapes, a shadow.
The oily shadow boiled across the translucent drapes. Susan shook away her dream of giant fists, tiny skulls, and temple bells.
The shadow loomed larger.
Susan heard footsteps on the gravel path.
Crunch. Crunch. Giant fists. Tiny skulls.
Moonlight pooled on the bedroom floor. Susan clutched the down comforter; she could sense someone staring through the tiny crack where the drapes didn’t quite meet.
“Randy,” she whispered. “There’s someone outside.” Her hand slipped across the sheets, searching for her husband’s callused fingers. She was ready to forgive every angry word he’d spoken earlier, forget all the biting remarks that had made her cry and —
A cold, empty space where Randy should have been.
Instantly, Susan knew that she was alone in the house. She shivered. Her wedding ring felt like a band of ice.
Damn him. Damn Randy Hunter. He’d slipped out to the bar. He wasn’t going to protect her. She’d have to suffer for his crime all over again, and this time he wasn’t even going to share the punishment.
Susan wondered if the man outside had planned it that way.
12:00.
Gravel crunched beneath heavy boots.
A brass wind-bell rang in a willow tree. Soft. Then loud. Soft, then loud.
Willow branches swayed; their twisted black shadows crept fingerlike across the drapes and scratched at the shadow.
Suddenly, the shadow melted away.
A booming slam. Metal smashing metal.
A scream.
Quietly, Susan picked up the phone. She punched 9, then 1, then hung up, knowing that the law wouldn’t help. Sheriff Conrad hated Randy and pitied her. He’d ask why Randy couldn’t investigate the noises. He’d want to know where Randy was.
Susan pictured Sheriff Conrad’s stern, cynical face. “In my opinion, judge, Mr. Hunter shows little remorse for his actions. He seems to think that this awful accident was a case of simple bad luck. He doesn’t want to recognize that his drinking was the cause… his neglectful behavior... his childish disregard.
Susan drew a deep breath, telling herself that she’d only seen a shadow, and that the scream could have been a bobcat.
Or a drunken farm worker on a midnight tear. Or —
Susan didn’t want to think about it.
God, why do we stay here? The middle of nowhere, the back road to hell—
Gravel crunched. The shadow was back, but this time Susan could make out a head, a torso, and arms.
Runny mascara burned Susan’s eyes. She waited for the sound of shattering glass.
The shadow’s left arm came up fast. Something squealed against the windowpane and Susan buried her face in her mascara-stained pillow. When she looked back at the drapes, the shadow was gone. Three heavy lines were smeared on the window, straight lines that left crooked shadows on the pleated drapes. Two were horizontal and parallel; the other was vertical.
Next to the lines, Susan could make out a fat circle. She watched as a cobweb-thin drip rolled through its center, transforming the circle into a “
“Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered. “Randy isn’t even here. Leave me alone.”
12:01.
A wind-bell rang.
The willow-branch shadows scratched at the lines and the circle. Another booming slam. Metal smashing metal.
Another scream.