Mom had loved that room, too.
“It’s fine, Dad,” she said. “I’m looking forward to it.” She held his gaze long enough for him to believe it, or at least add it to the tomb of self-denial he was perpetually building.
“It’s supposed to be beautiful tonight. Maybe a little chilly but we’ve got the thermal sleeping bags and the arctic tent. The portable grill, too. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a fire going.” He laughed in that way that always made him sound vulnerable. It was something she liked about her dad, something she’d liked about Joel at school, too. So many men came across as cocky know-it-alls; it was refreshing to find a few who could be self-deprecating.
“I know, Dad.”
“I bought the best stuff. It’s not like we’re heading out unprepared.”
“I know.”
“It’s going to be fun. Trust me.”
About a month before she died, Mom told Mercy all the things she loved about her husband. She said them slowly, breathing shallowly between words. When Mom started on the physical traits, Mercy had steeled herself against the expectation of graphic sexual references because sometimes in those last days Mom had forgotten what she was saying, gotten really vulgar. Instead, Mom said it was Dad’s smile that always moved her heart. So sweet and inviting. And those dimples.
Dad’s smile now was no less sweet but carried a weight of desperation. The beard he’d grown had covered his dimples and his face had thinned.
“You’re really sweet, Dad.”
“No pity on your old man. This is for us.”
When the waitress took their order, they both asked for more food than they had intended, like they knew they would need it.
Beyond the parking lot outside the window was Route 51, which led straight across the county to New Jersey in the west and onward to New York City in the east, and on the other side of the road, almost close enough to touch, waited the foot of Blood Mountain. Clouds obscured the peak like it was something secretive. Or dangerous.
THREE
Victor did use the bathroom before he left the diner. It was a cramped, two-person room with one stall and a urinal. When he relieved himself, Victor admired his penis. He stretched it out. From what he found on the Internet, it was above-average in length. When he had paid a woman to suck him off, she made no comment about his size. He almost asked but he didn’t want her to look at him with that skeletal face and gap-tooth smirk.
“Soon enough,” he murmured to it.
He put himself carefully away in his pants before he could get excited and washed his hands at the sink. Too many images crowded his mind. So many ways he could manipulate the female body. So many positions. He had to keep those images in check. If he let his excitement get control, he would lose the upper hand. He had planned this for far too long to let it get away because he was desperate for a woman’s touch.
After the cleansing, there would be plenty of women for men like him. Plenty of touching.
Mercy Higgins could be saved. It would be her choice.
Victor almost missed the writing on the mirror. He started to turn away, shaking his hands dry, and wondering if using their water had been such a good idea; it might permeate his skin, infect him.
In the lower right corner, scratched into the mirror’s surface, it said: Cleanse the World.
Victor traced the three words with his finger. The indentations they made in the mirror were like slices in skin, knife tracks about to spout blood.
It didn’t matter who put it there, Hugo or someone before him. It was another sign.
Victor left the bathroom. His smile must have looked so peculiar.
FOUR
While Mercy and her father gobbled eggs and pancakes and toast, the teens in the booth across from them discussed the recent shooting in which a crazy guy named Hugo killed five people in this very diner.
“Fucking guy came in with a shotgun or some shit and bam! bam! bam!” The teenage boy in the skinny jeans and body-tight hoodie made a child-like gun gesture with his thumb and forefinger.
His equally tight-dressed friend laughed like the kid was talking about some movie.
The first kid glanced around, like scoping out the place. “Can you imagine? Must of been sick to see it go down. Blood hitting the walls and shit.”
“You’re sick, man,” his friend said.
The first boy glanced at Mercy and her father. His gaze lingered briefly. What was he seeing in his head? Was he imagining fucking her in some degrading way? “Can’t be prude about it,” he said to his friend. “Most people live in a bubble.”
That’s what Joel had said: Mercy, you live in a bubble. And he’d told her to use fabric softener. Such a weird thing to say. You’re clothes always smell stale. So, she’d used dryer sheets and went around in a cloud of lemon. Then he’d told her she had clammy hands and that he’d found someone else. She tried to elicit a smile from him but he stared at her like she was some beggar on the street.
In a way she had been. She’d begged to have sex with him, told him she was a virgin and that she really wanted him, even though she wasn’t sure that was the case but she was almost out of college and nobody graduated college still a virgin. Only losers. Then he said her hands were clammy and he’d met someone else.
“Can you imagine how fucked up it must have been?” the first boy asked.
“I’m glad I wasn’t here,” his friend said.
“Fuck that. I would have taken that guy down. Would have shot him between his eyes. Watch the blood splatter. Been a hero.”
Mercy’s eyes started to water. A minute ago she had been fine. Her only feeling was one of slight dread about hiking up a mountain on a chilly spring day and then having to sleep on the ground at some campsite. Then those two boys started talking about the killing and she was remembering Joel for some reason and how he said she smelled stale and had clammy hands and wouldn’t have sex with her and then she had graduated a virgin. Now, she was crying. Sometimes she hated being a woman.
Her father put down his fork and touched her arm. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
She took several napkins out of the dispenser on the table and dried her eyes. When she looked at her father, he had that sweet face he always got when things didn’t turn out right for her. When she’d fallen off her bike as a little kid. When her violin audition for Juilliard fell through and she studied literature at the State University in Pleasantville instead. When Mom died.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You have nothing to be sorry about. This is my fault. I shouldn’t have pushed this whole camping thing on you. I just thought it would be fun. Thought we could have some time to bond.”
Tears began to reemerge. “It’s not that. I want to go camping. It’s just . . . Just . . .” She paused, breathed deeply. “I have to use the bathroom.”
When she slid out of the booth, the first boy said, “You think the guy wanted to have sex with any of the bodies? Shoot his load and then shoot his head off.”
If Mercy were a different sort of woman, she would tell them to stop being such stupid pricks and grow up and then she’d throw a cup of coffee on each of them.
She started to get her tears under control. A skinny guy with several-day’s worth of stubble on his face was staring at her. He was walking past the counter while she was on the opposite side of a dividing row of booths. He wore jeans and a black jacket. He was cute, too, aside from an undernourished face.
She knew him from somewhere.
Their eyes met and the man looked away. A moment later he was at the front door and Mercy was in the bathroom.