A cold spear went through Mary's heart. She felt her smile slip a notch. "In Norcross," she said, which was a lie. She worked at the location on Blessingham Road, about six miles away.
"I just got this job," the cashier said, "but the pay ain't nothin'. You do the hirin' and all?"
"No." The acne might be makeup, Mary thought. The girl might not be as young or as dumb as she looked. "The manager does that." Her hand slid partway into her purse, and she could feel the chill of the pistol's metal with her fingertips.
"I don't like just standin' around. I like to be movin'. You need any help over there?"
"No. We've got all the help we need."
The girl shrugged. "Well, maybe I'll come in and fill out an application anyway. You get free burgers there, don't you?"
Mary sensed it. Someone coming up behind her. She heard a soft noise, like a gun coming out of an oiled leather holster, and her breath snagged.
She whirled around, her hand on the pistol's grip down in her purse, and she was a second away from drawing it when the red-haired young mother stopped her cart with the baby in it. The infant was still sucking wetly on the pacifier, eyes roaming back and forth.
"You okay?" the cashier asked. "Lady?"
The smile had left Mary Terror's face. For a small space of time the young mother caught a glimpse of something that made her pull the cart back and instinctively put her hand on her infant's chest in a protective gesture. What was standing before her she couldn't exactly say, because the sight was gone too soon, but she was left with the memory of the big woman's teeth clenched together and a pair of slitted eyes as green as a cat's. For those few stretching seconds the woman seemed to tower over her, and something cold came out of the big woman's skin like winter's mist.
Then it was over, as fast as a fingersnap. The clenched teeth and the slitted eyes were gone, and Mary Terror's face was bland and soft.
"Lady?" the cashier said.
"Such a pretty baby," Mary told the young mother, who didn't yet recognize what she was feeling as fear. Mary's gaze quickly scanned the area around the checkouts. She had to get out of there, and quickly. "I'm fine," she said to the cashier. "Am I ready?"
"Yeah. One sec and I'll get you sacked." The groceries went into two sacks. This was the dangerous time, Mary was thinking. If they were going to come after her, it would be when she had the groceries in her arms. She put away her license and hooked her purse over her shoulder. She left it unzipped, so she could get at the pistol in a hurry.
"My name's Toni," the cashier said. "Maybe I'll come in and fill out an application."
If she ever saw this girl again, Mary thought, she would kill her. From now on she would go to the Food Giant across the highway. She took the sacks in her arms and headed for the exit. A man in a camouflage jacket, the kind deer hunters wore, was walking across the parking lot in the nasty rain. Mary watched him carefully as she hurried to her pickup truck, but he didn't even glance at her. She put the groceries on the floorboard on the passenger side, next to the package from Art & Larry's Toys. Underneath the dashboard was a sawed-off shotgun secured by metal clips. She got behind the wheel, locked both doors, started the engine, and drove to her apartment by a circuitous route. All the time her hands were gripped hard on the steering wheel, her eyes ticking back and forth from the rearview mirror, and she hissed between gritted teeth: "Shit! Shit! Screwed up! Goddamn screwed up!" A light sheen of sweat was on her face. She took long, deep breaths. "Hold on. Take it easy, take it easy. Nobody knows you. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody knows you." She repeated it like a mantra, all the way to the red brick apartment building that had a trailer park on one side and a machine shop where truck engines were repaired on the other.
As Mary guided her pickup into her parking space, she saw a grizzled face peering out a window. It was the old man in the apartment next to hers. Shecklett was in his late sixties, and he rarely came out except to gather up the aluminum cans from the highway. He coughed a lot at night, too. She'd checked through the trash he'd brought out to the dumpster one night, and found an empty bottle of J. W. Dant bourbon, TV dinner trays, a Cavalier magazine with some of the ads clipped out, and pieces of a letter she'd taped together under a strong light. It was from a woman named Paula, and Mary remembered some of it: I really would like to come visit. Would that be okay? Bill says it's fine with him. We were talking, and we can't understand why you don't come out and be with us. Ought to be ashamed, living the way you do with all that money you've saved from the store. Don't pretend you didn't. I know, Mom told me, so there. Anyway, Kevin asks about his grandpap every single day.
As Mary pulled the handbrake up she saw Shecklett move away from the window, deeper into the darkness of his apartment. He watched her come and go as he watched the black woman upstairs and the young redneck couple on the other side of Mary's apartment. She would have wondered about the shine on his shoes if he hadn't been in the building long before Mary had moved in. Still, she didn't like being watched, being inspected and judged. When she decided it was time to leave, she might do something about Grandpap Shecklett.
Mary picked up the two sacks of groceries and took them inside. The apartment still smelled of burned plastic. The front room, paneled with pinewood, was neat and orderly; she never used it. A lava lamp cast a blue glow, the matter inside slowly coagulating and breaking apart. It made her think of semen searching for an egg. She laid the two sacks on the kitchen's countertop and flicked a dead roach off the scarred Formica. Then she went back out to get her new baby.
She heard the pickup's passenger door being opened before she reached the apartment's threshold. The door's hinges had a high, distinctive squeak. Her heart gave a violent kick, and she felt the blood swell in her face. Shecklett! He was rummaging in the truck! My baby! she thought, and she raced out the door with long, powerful strides.
Someone was leaning into the truck's passenger side. Mary grasped the door, slammed it against the offending body, and heard a wail of pain.
"Ow! Jesus Christ!" He came out of the truck, his eyes hazed with hurt, and his hand pressed against his side. "You tryin' to bust my fuckin' ribs?"
It was not Shecklett, though she was sure Shecklett was watching the drama from his window. It was Gordie Powers, who was twenty-five years old and had light brown hair that hung around his shoulders. He was as thin as a wish, his face long and gaunt, a stubble of beard on his cheeks and chin. He wore faded jeans and a flannel shirt under a battered black leather jacket decorated with metal studs. "Man!" he said. "You 'bout knocked the piss outta me!"
"I gave you a warning tap," she said. "What're you trying to steal?"
"Nothin'! I just drove up and saw you gettin' your groceries out! I thought I'd bring in the other sack for you!" He stepped away from the truck with a thin-lipped sneer. "That's what I get for bein' a Good Samaritan, huh?"
Mary glanced to the left and saw Gordie's silver Mazda sports car parked a few spaces away. She said, "Thanks anyway, but I'll get it." She picked up the package from the floorboard, and he saw the imprint ART & LARRY'S TOYS across the sack.
"What'cha gonna do?" Gordie asked. "Play games?"
Mary slammed the door and went into her apartment. Gordie followed, as she knew he would. He'd come to see her, after all. She'd placed an order last night, before Robby had been so bad. "Smells funny in here," Gordie commented as he closed the door and turned the latch. "You burn somethin'?"
"Yes. My dinner." Mary took the package into her bedroom and put it into the closet. Then, out of habit, she switched on the television set and turned it to the Cable News Network. Lynne Russell was on. Mary liked Lynne Russell because she looked like a big woman. The scene changed to a view of pig cars with their blue lights flashing, and a talking head saying something about somebody getting murdered. There was blood on a stretcher-sheet and the shape of a body. The images were hypnotic, a brutal pulse of life. Sometimes Mary watched CNN for hours on end, unable and unwilling to do anything but lie in bed like a parasite feeding off the torment of other human beings. When she was flying high on LSD, the scenes became three-dimensional and pushed into the room, and that could really be a heavy trip.