Vengeance Is Mine

I moved so the light would be out of her hair and the gold would be gone from it, covering up the insane hatred of memory by lifting my hand to drink from the bowl of the broken glass.

It spoiled the picture for me, a picture that should be beautiful and desirable, scarred by something that should be finished but kept coming back.

I put the pieces of the glass down on the window sill and she said, “You looked at me that way again, Mike.”

This time I forced the memory out of my mind. I slipped my hand over hers and ran my fingers through her hair, sifting its short silky loveliness. “I’ll make it up to you sometime, Juno. I I can’t help thinking and it hasn’t got anything to do with you.”

“Make it up to me now.”

I gave her ear a little pull. “No.”

Why?” .

“Because.”

She pouted and her eyes tried to convince me.

I couldn’t tell her that it was because there was a time and place for everything, and though this was the time and place she wasn’t the person. I was only a mortal. A mortal doesn’t undress a goddess and let his eyes feast and his hands feel and his body seek fulfillment.

Then too maybe that wasn’t the reason at all. Maybe she reminded me of something else I could never have.

Never.

She said it slowly. “Who was she, Mike? Was she lovely?”

I couldn’t keep the words back. I tried, but they were there.

“She was lovely. She was the most gorgeous thing that ever lived and I was in love with her. But she did something and I played God; I was the judge and I the jury and the sentence was death. I shot her right in the gut and when she died I died too.”

Juno never said a word. Only her eyes moved. They softened, offered themselves to me, trying to convince me that I wasn’t dead . . . not to her.

I lit a cigarette and stuck it in my mouth, then got the hell out of there before her eyes became too convincing. I felt her eyes burning in my back because we both knew I’d be back.

Juno, goddess of marriage and births, queen of the lesser gods and goddesses. Why wasn’t she Venus, goddess of beauty and love? Juno was a queen and she didn’t want to be. She wanted to be a woman.

Darkness had come prematurely, but the reflected lights on the whiteness of the snow made the city brighter than ever. Each office building discharged a constant stream of people clutching their collars tight at the throat. I joined the traffic that pressed against the sides of the buildings trying to get away from the stinging blast of air, watching them escape into the mouths of the kiosks.

I grabbed a cab, stayed in it until I reached Times Square, then got out and ducked into a bar for a quick beer. When I came out there were no empty cabs around so I started walking down Broadway toward Thirty-third. Every inch it was a fight against the snow and the crowd. My feet were soaked and the crease was out of my pants. Halfway there the light changed suddenly and the cars coming around the corner forced the pedestrians back on the curb.

Somebody must have slipped because there was a tinkle of glass then a splintering crash as the front came out of a store showcase on the corner. Those who jumped out of the way were crammed in by others who wanted to see what happened. A cop wormed in through the melee and stood in front of the window and I got out through the path he left behind him.

When I reached Thirty-third I turned east hoping to find a taxi to get over to the parking lot and decided to give it up as a bad job and walk the rest of the way after one more look.

I stepped out on the curb to look down the street when the plate glass in a window behind me twanged and split into a spider web of cracks. Nobody had touched it this time, either. A car engine roared and all I saw was the top half of a face looking out from the back window of a blue sedan and it was looking straight at me for a long second before it pulled out of sight.

My eyes felt tight and my lips were pulled back over my teeth. My voice cut into the air and faces turned my way. “Twice the same day,” I said, “right on Broadway, too. The crazy bastard, the crazy son-of-a-bitch!”

I didn’t remember getting to the car lot or driving out through traffic. I must have been muttering to myself because the drivers of cars that stopped alongside me at red lights would look over and shake their heads like I was nuts or something. Maybe I was. It scares me to be set up as a target right off the busiest street in the world.

That first window. I thought it was an accident. The second one had a bullet hole in the middle of it just before it came apart and splashed all over the sidewalk.

The building where I held down an office had a parking space in the basement. It was empty. I drove in and rolled to a corner and locked up. The night man took my keys and let me sign the register before letting me take the service elevator up to my floor.

When I got out I walked down the corridor, looking at the darkened glass of the empty offices. Only one had a light behind it and that one was mine. When I rattled the knob the latch snapped back and the door opened.

Velda said, “Mike! What are you doing here?”

I brushed right past her and went to the filing cabinet where I yanked at the last drawer down. I had to reach all the way in the back behind the rows of well-stuffed envelopes to get what I wanted.

“What happened, Mike?” She was standing right beside me, her lip caught between her teeth. Her eyes were on the little .25 automatic I was shoving in my pocket.

“No bastard is going to shoot at me,” I told her. My throat felt dry and hoarse.

“When?”

“Just now. Not ten minutes ago. The bastard did it right out in the open. You know what that means?”

That animal snarl crossed her face and was gone in a second. “Yes. It means that you’re important all of a sudden.”

“That’s right, important enough to kill.”

She said it slowly, hoping I had the answer. “Did you . . . see who it was?”

“I saw a face. Half of it. Not enough to tell who it was except that it was a man. That face will try again and when it does I’ll blow the hell out of it.”

“Be careful, Mike. You don’t have a license anymore. The D.A. would love to run you in on a Sullivan charge.”

I got up out of my crouch and gave her a short laugh. “The law is supposed to protect the people. If the D.A. wants to jug me I’ll make a good time out of it. I’ll throw the Constitution in his face. I think one of the first things it says is that the people are allowed to bear arms. Maybe they’ll even have to revoke the Sullivan Law and then we’ll really have us a time.”

“Yeah, a great whizbang, bang-up affair.”

For the first time since I came in I took notice of her. I don’t know how the hell I waited so long. Velda was wearing a sweeping black evening gown that seemed to start halfway down her waist, leaving the top naked as sin. Her hair, falling around her shoulders, looked like onyx and I got a faint whiff of a deep, sensual aroma.,

There was no fullness to the dress. It clung. There was no other word for it. It just clung, and under it there wasn’t the slightest indication of anything else. “Is that all you got on?”

“Yes.”

“It’s cold outside, baby.” I know I was frowning but I couldn’t help it. “Where you going?”

“To see your friend Clyde. He’s invited me out to supper.”

My hand tightened into a fist before I could stop it. Clyde, the bastard! I forced a grin through the frown. It didn’t come out so well. “If I knew you would look like that I’d have asked you out myself.”

There was a time when she would have gotten red and slammed me across the jaw. There was a time when she would have broken any kind of a date to put away a hamburger in a diner with me. Those times had flown.