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prostitute, selling her soul for luxuries. Selling herself for pearls
and caviar. Probably slept in a mansion now, after the gray-haired
man took her out for fancy dinners.
He felt sick, imagining it. Hurt and betrayed. The fury helped his
thoughts clear and he realized that he was standing in place as
they were getting farther and farther away. His car was blocks
away, but he turned and started to run. At the carnival, he pushed
through people wildly, ignoring their shouts and protests. “Move,
move!” he shouted, and some people moved and others were
shoved aside. He reached a spot clear of the throngs of people, but
he was breathing hard and he had to stop to vomit near a fire
hydrant. A couple of teenage boys laughed at him and he felt like
shooting them right then and there, but after wiping his mouth, he
simply pulled the gun and pointed it at them and they shut up
fast enough.
He stumbled forward, feeling the ice pick chip away at his head.
Stab and pain, stab and pain. Every damn step it was stab and
pain and Erin was probably telling the gray-haired man about the
sexy things they would do in bed. Telling the gray-haired man
about Kevin and laughing, whispering, Kevin could never please me
the way you do, even though it wasn’t true.
It took forever to get to his car. When he reached it, the sun was
baking it like a loaf of bread. Heat spilled out in clouds, and the
steering wheel was scalding to the touch. Hellhole. Erin had
chosen to live in a hellhole. He started the car and opened the
windows, making a U-turn back toward the carnival and honking
at people in the street.
Detours again. Barricades. He wanted to blow through them, to
blast them into pieces, but even here, there were cops and they
would arrest him. Stupid cops, fat and lazy cops. Barney Fife cops.
Idiots. None of them were good detectives but they had guns and
badges. Kevin drove the side streets, trying to zero in on where
Erin was heading. Erin and her lover. Both of them adulterers, and