The Nightrunners Part 4

"Yeah, they've taught me some stuff. Sure. Real cool guys."

"Things like how to treat women?"

"Things like that."

"You love me, don't you, Jimmy?"

"Yeah, I guess . . . I'm just not sure I want to get married until I've sampled the water, you know what I mean? Get in there and get my feet wet."

"Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"

"What's that?"

"Think about it."

"Don't try and turn the tables on me, Angela."

"I'm not trying, you a.s.shole, I'm doing. I don't care much for the new Jimmy. You can take these new friends of yours and shove them up your a.s.s."

"Hey, you're getting loud. Your mother will hear."

"What do you care? I'm giving you your money back."

"Hey, why's that? We're getting married."

"Who's getting married? You haven't gotten to sample the water." She started away from the window.

"Say, Angela, I'm sorry, baby. Really."

"Mean it?" she said, turning back to him.

"Yeah . . . Yeah, I mean it."

"You sure?"

"I said so."

"Just being the tough guy for no good reason?"

Silence.

"Come on, say it, Jimmy."

Nothing.

"I'll get your money."

"Okay, okay . . ." Softly: "Just being a tough guy. No good reason."

"Where I can hear you."

"I said it, that's enough."

"Want me to get you money?"

"Yeah, get the f.u.c.king money. I've had it."

"Fine." She started across the room.

He called through the window, just above a whisper. "Sorry."

She turned. "Did some wind blow through here or something, or did I hear you talking?"

"Sorry," he said.

""How sorry are you, Jimmy?"

"For Christsakes, what do you want from me?"

"I want the old Jimmy back, the one without the tough mouth and the tough-guy friends.

The one that cries at movies when they're sad."

"G.o.dd.a.m.nit, I don't."

She smiled. "I've seen you. It's okay."

A moment of silence. Then: "I'm sorry. Real sorry. These guys, they say I let you push me around too much. That I see you too much. They say I'm p.u.s.s.y-whipped."

"How's that? You don't get any."

"Well, they don't know that."

"So you been telling them how it is with hot little Angela?"

"Not exactly."

"But you suggest?"

"Sort of ... I mean it isn't manly for me not to ... You know?"

She crossed the room, rested her elbows on the windowsill. He moved his hands up, clutched her elbows gently. Softly, shyly, he said: "Sorry."

"Yes, you are."

"Don't deny it. It's just that . . . well, I want to run with these guys. They're neat . .

. and they got this house. I thought when we got married we could move there. Wouldn't cost us much. Later . . . well, later we could get us an apartment."

"Who are these guys?"

"Real cool heads."

"Who are they?"

"Just some guys I met around the pool hall. They got this big house and some girls live there with them sometimes."

"Change girls like socks, huh?"

"Guess. I don't know. Don't care."

"Jimmy?"

"Yeah?"

"You're acting like an a.s.shole. Your friends sound like a.s.sholes. All they're good for is trouble, I know it."

"You don't know them."

"I don't need to. I can smell them on you, and I don't like the stink."

"I'm not acting like an a.s.shole. And they're not a.s.sholes neither."

"Take my word for it, you, them, a.s.sholes. Big ones."

Jimmy sighed. "You're the hardest girl I ever did know."

"a.s.sholes,"

"All right, a.s.sholes. I'm an a.s.shole and they're a.s.sholes. Happy?"

"Completely."

"Good. Real good."

"Jimmy, we don't want to live in any crummy house with this bunch of a.s.sholes that are making you an a.s.shole, now do we?"

Jimmy didn't quite grit his teeth. "I guess not."

"Can you climb through this window?"

Silence. He looked at her strangely.

"Are you deaf? Can you climb through this window? Answer me that, can an a.s.shole like yourself climb through this window?"

"I can do that."

"You want to climb through?"

"You say so, yeah."

She stood up, pulled her shirt over her head. Unfastened her bra. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s small, dark and firm bounced free.

Jimmy got through that window in record time.

She had her pants off now, her underwear.

Then they were in bed and he was pounding her for all he was worth, and she was getting about as much pleasure out of it as the bag down at the gym that the prizefighters train on, when suddenly the bedroom door opened and the light came on and her mother shrieked, grabbed the old teddy bear off Angela's dresser and began pounding Jimmy briskly about the head and ears.

Jimmy rolled off the bed, scooped up his clothes and like a seal leaping off a rock, dove through the window and out into the night.

Still clutching the stuffed bear, Angela's mother turned on her, breathing like an asthmatic hippo.

"Know what, Momma?" Angela said. "You won't have to check this time. Take my word for it. The cherry's gone, nothing left now but the box it came in."

Angela got the whipping of her life; beat half to death by an elderly, outraged, Puerto Rican mother with a teddy bear for a club. If it hadn't hurt so bad, it might have been funny.

When her mother finally quit there was nothing left of the bear but a floppy brown rag of cloth. Its cotton guts lay strewn from one end of the room to the other.

"Get out of my house," her mother yelled, "you're no daughter of mine."

"Works for me," Angela said.

She got dressed even as her mother sat on the edge of the bed, occasionally screaming, "Get out, wh.o.r.e!"

She grabbed some extra clothes, the money they had saved, and went out to look for Jimmy.

That was the falling of s.h.i.t-brick number one.

Brick number two fell when she found Jimmy. They didn't get married right away ("soon," Jimmy kept saying), but they did rent an apartment in the sleazy section of the city. And the "friends" he had told her about, the guys from The House, as it was called, came to live with them-at least two of them.

She thought: Now isn't this the s.h.i.ts? I get kicked out of the house with my mother thinking I'm the local amus.e.m.e.nt ride, and two a.s.sholes I never wanted to live with, never wanted to meet, have moved in with me.

There was a positive side. Jimmy told her that there had originally been four a.s.sholes.

Thank the Blessed Virgin for small favors.

But the two guys scared her, made her flesh creep around her bones. There was that wild laughing one who was always sniffing glue, "doing the bag" he called it. And then there was Stone, never speaking, just watching with razor-blade eyes that stripped away her clothes and ripped her flesh.

She wanted Jimmy to make them leave, but he wouldn't, Or it seemed that way at first. After a time she realized it wasn't that he didn't want them to leave, but, like her, he was afraid of them. Their "friendship" had shed its skin to reveal something considerably less tasteful-a kind of cancer that dominated him.

Then came the third s.h.i.t-brick: Brian Black-wood.

After that, the bricks began to fall like rain.

So, here they were, with Brian and his two crazy pals, parked in the woods, stopping for a while before they . . .

G.o.d, she didn't want to think about it.