‘Don’t be mean.’
‘I’m not being mean.’
‘You are. I don’t have to be a rabbit and get myself torn to pieces in order to understand how a poor bunny feels when a hungry fox chases it through a field.’
‘Actually, I suspect you do have to be the rabbit to really know that kind of terror.’
Shrugging into the ski jacket, she said, ‘Well, I’m not a rabbit, never have been a rabbit, and I’m not going to become a rabbit. What an absurd idea.’
‘What?’
‘If you want to know what that kind of terror feels like, then you become a rabbit.’
Befuddled, Tommy said, ‘I’ve lost track of the conver-sation, the way you keep twisting things around. We aren’t talking about rabbits, for God’s sake.’
‘Well, we certainly weren’t talking about squirrels.’
Trying to get the discussion back on track, he said, ‘Are you really an artist?’
Sorting through the other coats in the closet, she said, ‘Is any of us really anything?’
Exasperated with Del’s preference for speaking in cryptograms, Tommy indulged in one himself: ‘We’re anything in the sense that we are everything.’
‘You’ve finally said something sensible.’
‘I have?’
Behind Tommy, as if by way of comment, Scootie bit the rubber hotdog: tthhhpphhtt.
Del said, ‘I’m afraid none of my jackets will fit you.’
‘I’ll be okay. I’ve been cold and wet before.’ On the granite-topped foyer table, beside Del’s purse, were two boxes of ammunition: cartridges for the Desert Eagle and shells for the 12-gauge Mossberg that Tommy carried. She put down the pistol and began to fill the half dozen zippered pockets of her ski jacket with spare rounds for both weapons.
Tommy studied the painting that hung above the table:
a bold work of abstract art in primary colours. Are these your paintings on the walls?’
‘That would be tacky, don’t you think? I keep all my canvases in my studio, upstairs.’
‘I’d like to see them.’
‘I thought you were in a hurry.’
Tommy sensed that the paintings were the key that would unlock the mysteries of this strange woman—tthhhpphhtt—and her strange dog. Something about her style or her subject matter would be a revelation, and upon seeing what she had painted, he would achieve the satori that had eluded him earlier.
‘It’ll only take five minutes,’ he pressed.
Still jamming spare ammo into her pockets, she said, ‘We don’t have five minutes.’
‘Three. I really want to see your paintings.’
‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
‘Why are you suddenly so evasive?’ he asked.
Zipping shut a pocket bulging with shotgun shells, she said, ‘I’m not being evasive.’
‘Yes, you are. What the hell have you been painting up there?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why are you so nervous all of a sudden?’
‘I’m not.’
‘This is weird. Look me in the eyes, Del.’
‘Kittens,’ she said, avoiding his gaze.
‘Kittens?’
‘That’s what I’ve been painting. Stupid, tacky, senti-mental crap. Because I’m not really very talented. Kittens with big eyes. Sad little kittens with big sorrowful eyes and happy little kittens with big laughing eyes. And moronic scenes of dogs playing poker, dogs bowling. That’s why I don’t want you to see them, Tommy. I’d be embarrassed.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘Kittens,’ she insisted, zipping shut another pocket.
‘I don’t think so.’ He started toward the stairs. ‘Two minutes is all I need.’
She snatched the Desert Eagle.44 Magnum off the foyer table, swung toward him, and pointed the weapon at his face. ‘Stop right there.’
‘Jesus, Del, that gun’s loaded.’
‘I know.’
‘Don’t point it at me.’
‘Get away from the stairs, Tommy.’
There was nothing frivolous about her now. She was cold and businesslike.
‘I’d never point this at you,’ he said, indicating the shotgun in his right hand.
‘I know,’ she said flatly, but she didn’t lower her weapon.
The muzzle of the Desert Eagle was only ten inches from Tommy and aligned with the bridge of his nose.
He was looking at a new Deliverance Payne. Steely. His heart thudded hard enough to shake his entire body. ‘You won’t shoot me.’
‘I will,’ she said with such icy conviction that she could not be doubted.
‘Just to keep me from seeing some paintings?’
‘You’re not ready to see them yet,’ she said.
‘Meaning... someday you will want me to see them.’
‘When the time is right.’
Tommy’s mouth was so dry that he had to work up some saliva to loosen his tongue. ‘But I won’t ever see them if you blow my brains out.’
‘Good point,’ she said, and she lowered the gun. ‘So I’ll shoot you in the leg.’
The pistol was aimed at his right knee.
‘One round from that monster would blow my whole damn leg off.’
‘They make excellent prosthetic limbs these days.’
‘I’d bleed to death.’
‘I know first aid.’
‘You’re a total fruitcake, Del.’
He meant what he said. To one extent or another, she had to be mentally unbalanced, even though she had told him earlier that she was the sanest person he knew. Regardless of what mysteries she guarded, what secrets she held, nothing she ultimately revealed to him would ever be sufficiently exculpatory to prove her behaviour was reasoned and logical. Nevertheless, though she scared him, she was enormously appealing as well. Tommy wondered what it said about his own sanity to acknowl-edge that he was strongly attracted to this basket case.
He wanted to kiss her.
Incredibly, she said, ‘I think I’m going to fall in love with you, Tuong Tommy. So don’t make me blow your leg off.’
Astonished into a blush, conflicted as never before,
Tommy reluctantly turned away from the stairs and went past Del to the front door.
She tracked him with the Desert Eagle.
‘Okay, okay, I’ll wait until you’re ready to show them to me,’ he said.
At last she lowered her weapon. ‘Thank you.’
‘But,’ he said, ‘when I finally do see them, they damn well better be worth the wait.’
‘Just kittens,’ she said, and she smiled.
He was surprised that her smile could still warm him. Seconds ago, she had threatened to shoot him, but already he felt a pleasant tingle when she favoured him with a smile.
‘I’m as crazy as you are,’ he said.
‘Then you’ve probably got what it takes to make it till dawn.’ Slinging her purse over one shoulder, she said, ‘Let’s go.’
‘Umbrellas?’ he wondered.
‘Hard to handle an umbrella and a shotgun at the same time.’
‘True. Do you have another car besides the van?’
‘No. My mom has all the cars, quite a collection. If I need something besides the van, I borrow it from her. So we’ll have to use the Honda.’
‘The stolen Honda,’ he reminded her.
‘We’re not criminals. We just borrowed it.’
As he opened the front door, Tommy said, ‘Lights off,’ and the foyer went dark. ‘If a cop stops us in our stolen Honda, will you shoot him?’
‘Of course not,’ she said, following him and Scootie into the courtyard, ‘that would be wrong.’
‘That would be wrong?’ Tommy said, still capable of being amazed by her. ‘But it would’ve been right to shoot me?’
‘Regrettable but right,’ she confirmed as she locked the door.
‘I don’t understand you at all.’
‘I know,’ she said, tucking the keys in her purse.
Tommy checked the luminous dial of his watch. Six minutes past two o’clock.
Ticktock.
While they had been inside the house, the wind had died away completely, but the power of the storm had not diminished. Although no thunder or lightning had disturbed the night for hours, cataracts still crashed down from the riven sky.
The queen palms hung limp, drizzling from the tip of every blade of every frond. Under the merciless lash of the rain, the lush ferns drooped almost to the point of humble prostration, their lacy pinnae glimmering with thousands upon thousands of droplets that, in the low landscape lighting, appeared to be incrustations of jewels.