20
Just after midnight, everyone seemed to break up into little groups. Johnny and Lisa hung together, lounging in wing-backed chairs over by the fireplace. The mysterious bikers, Joe and Ruby Sue, stayed together by the window. Lou joined Ben in a little ell off the study. No lights burned that weren’t absolutely necessary.
Nancy was sleeping, but not peacefully.
She tossed and turned and sweated. She didn’t look good at all.
“How you holding up?” Lou asked him.
“Peachy,” Ben said dismally. He was sitting on a little window seat, studying the dark, empty courtyard beyond the glass. “How about you?”
“Nervous. Agitated. So scared, I think I might have kittens pretty soon. Other than that, hey, I’m just fine.” He sat down, pulled a cigarette out, thought better of it and put it away. “I better save what’s left of my throat.”
Ben stroked his closely-trimmed beard apprehensively. “My wife… Nancy… she’s not doing so good. I think she’s on the point of a nervous breakdown. I think she might be in shock or something.”
Lou licked his lips. They felt very dry. “Like you said, she’s been through the mill.”
“So have you. So have I. So have the others.”
“People handle it different ways, Ben. It’s human nature.” Lou thought that sounded pretty good, even if he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. “I knew this guy in Newark, right? Back in the old days when I used to drive truck. This guy—his name was Al DeAmato—owned a string of dry cleaning outfits. Big, tough Italian guy. Honest, hard-working, doing pretty good for himself. But you know what it’s like in Jersey, right? Well, maybe you don’t. Let’s just say that it’s corrupt in spots, lot of mob action there. Had my truck hijacked two, three times in Bayonne by those fucking wops, excuse my French.
“Anyway, my friend had one of his stores in the Down Neck area of Newark. Tough area. Mob-controlled or mostly. One day these hoods show up and tell Al real sweet-like that they want a piece of his operation, that it would be in his best interest to go along with them. Al tells them to go fuck their dogs or mothers or something. Of course, these guys, they turn the heat up. But Al? He won’t bend to them. They turn the heat way up finally. They firebomb his car. The union guys who fixed his machines, they’d never show. One night a couple hardass toughs jumped him and beat him to a pulp with lead pipes. Al? He still won’t give in. Fuck you and the donkey you rode in on. He’s in the hospital almost a month. He gets out, they burn down one of his stores. But Al keeps on plugging. Finally, they let him alone, moved on to easier pickings. He still had trouble with the union guys. And every now and then a gang of street toughs would break some windows, but eventually, even that stopped.
“So, you see what I’m saying, right? Al was tough, determined. Stood up to those guys. Nine out of ten people would’ve crumbled. Hell, ten out of ten people. But not Al. Finally, when things chilled out, Al had a breakdown. He came out of it okay. His nerves one day just said, Hey, enough is enough, man, and right to the rest home he goes. I tell you this story because Al rode the storm when things were tough and gave as good as he got. It wasn’t until the dust settled that he fell to pieces, when he had time to think about how ugly it all was, how close he’d been to getting killed. And I think, Ben, that your wife is like that. She’s a tough broad, right? Tough, capable, knows what she wants and how to get it. But now that the action’s over for the time, now that there’s time to sort it all out, it’s tearing her up. Just like Al. That’s what I’m telling you.”
Ben smiled, looked him in the eye. “Thanks. I guess that makes me feel better.” But the words were barely out of his lips, when a shadow crossed his face again. “I hope that’s all it is. I really do. God knows I do. But if—”
“Don’t even think that. Not yet.”
Ben looked close to tears. “I can’t help myself. She’s in a bad way, Lou. We both know that. If she’s a danger to the others, then, shit, I’ll have to get her away somehow so she won’t infect them. I’m not being pessimistic here, just realistic.”
Lou admired his strength. He nodded, listened to the muted voices singing on in the basement. “Christ, how long can those nuts keep that up? They’re giving me the creeps.”
“Wouldn’t be so bad if they’d just come out and introduce themselves already.”
“Maybe,” Lou said darkly, “they will when they’re ready.”
“I guess that’s what I’m afraid of.”
Lisa sat in her chair by the fireplace, cloaked in shadow. Johnny sat across from her. They’d been staring at each other for nearly ten minutes. Not speaking, not moving, just staring. She had this unsettling feeling that something important, something pertinent, something revelatory was about to be said.
The air between them was hush, yet electric like the atmosphere before an important presidential press conference.
“Well?” she finally said. “Say it.”
“Say what?”
“You know. Whatever you’re thinking.”
She could see his face break into a smile. “Pretty perceptive, aren’t ya?”
“That’s me. They voted me Most Likely to be Perceptive in high school. Cut River High, by the way. Same place you probably went… back in the stone age.”
He was still smiling. “Were you voted Miss Piss-and-Vinegar, too?”
“I was voted so many things, I can’t remember them all. Problem was, I was out in the parking lot getting stoned all the time and I never did show up for those damn awards ceremonies.”
“You got a nice ass,” he said.
“Pardon me?”
“I said you’ve got a nice ass.”
“Yeah, I heard you. I just couldn’t believe you.”
“I speak my mind.”
“Remind me to be impressed.”
“I’ll make a note of it.”
Playful exchange finished, the silence fell again. As completely and thoroughly as if an invisible sheet had dropped over them. But it was still there, Lisa knew, that something that needed to be said.
What was it?
A question? A confession?
She lit a cigarette. In the glow of the flame Johnny’s face was all lines and bony pockets and shifting shadow, his eyes shining and metallic. It was a tough face, a dangerous face, but an intriguing face. Desirable, even, in some way.
Here’s a guy, she found herself thinking, that’s lived the sort of life I’ll only see on TV or read about in books. She wondered what all that fierce, dehumanizing training did to a man. What happened to someone’s soul when they killed people for a living, when they waded through blood and guts and cloak and dagger bureaucratic bullshit for too long? What happened when they saw something they weren’t supposed to see, when they were cut loose from the machine and dropped back into a society that had no practical use for them?
But she knew what happened to them: they became Johnny Davis.
They became disillusioned and hateful and paranoid and angry. The same way she was going to be after this little waltz when the government began denying and she began to look like a fool. How long could you could stare right through the walls of society and see the crawly things that spun the wheels before you rotted inside?
“Must be quite a life,” Johnny said, scratching the side of his bald, fleshy skull. “Living the way you do.”
“Rock and roll, you mean?”
“Sure. Electric Witch, you say? Catchy. I like it.” He looked down at the floor. “Before the war we listened to the Who, the Animals, Hendrix, Beatles, Stones—all the big groups. Some of the crazy, loud shit—Blue Cheer, MC5, Sir Lord Baltimore. Over in ’Nam, you heard a lot of CCR and Motown. A lot of Country Joe and the Fish, Janis Joplin, the Doors. When I got back, it was a lot of heavy shit. But different. They called it acid rock then. Black Sabbath, Led Zepplin, Uriah Heep, Lucifer’s Friend, all that stuff.”