She heard the rustle of a sack. Then his voice: "Hey, Ginger! How come you got all this baby food?"
An answer had come to her by the time she walked back into the kitchen. "A cat comes around sometimes. I've been feeding it."
"A cat? Likes baby food? Man, I hate cats. Gimme the creeps." Gordie's beady brown eyes were always moving, invading private spaces. They found the crust of melted plastic on one of the oven's burners, registered the fact, and moved on. "Got roaches," he noticed. He walked around the kitchen as Mary put the groceries away. Gordie stopped before one of the framed magazine pictures of a smiling infant. "You got a thing about babies, huh?"
"Yes," Mary said.
"How come you don't have a kid, then?"
Keep the secret, Mary thought. Gordie was a mouse nibbling at a crumb between a tiger's fangs. "Just never did."
"You know, it's funny, huh? Been doin' business with you… what, five or six months? And I don't know nothin' about you." He pulled a toothpick from the pocket of his shirt and probed at his small yellow teeth. "Don't even know where you're from."
"Hell," she said.
"Whoaaaaaa." He shook his hands in the air in mock fear. "Don't scare me, sister. No, I ain't shittin'. Where're you from?"
"You mean where was I born?"
"Yeah. You ain't from around here, 'cause there ain't no Georgia peaches in your accent."
She decided she'd tell him. Maybe it was because it had been a long time since she'd said it: "Richmond, Virginia."
"So how come you're here? How come you ain't in Virginia?"
Mary stacked the TV dinners and put them in the refrigerator's freezer. Her mind was interweaving fictions. "Marriage went bad a few years ago. My husband caught me with a younger dude. He was a jealous bastard. Said he'd cut me open and leave me bleeding in the woods where nobody could find me. He said if he didn't do it, he had friends who would. So I split, and I never looked back. I kept on driving. I've been here and there, but I guess I haven't found home yet."
"Cut you open?" Gordie grinned around his toothpick. "I don't believe it!"
Mary stared at him.
"I mean… you're a mighty big lady. Take a hell of a man to get you down, huh?"
She put the jars of baby food into the cupboard. Gordie made a sucking sound on his toothpick, like the infant with the pacifier. "Anything else you want to know?" She closed the cupboard and turned to face him.
"Yeah. Like… how old are you?"
"Too old for any more bull shit," she said. "Did you bring my order?"
"Right here next to my heart." Gordie reached into his jacket's inside pocket and brought out a cellophane bag that held a small square of waxed paper. "Thought you might like the design." He handed the bag to Mary, and she could see what was on the paper.
Four small yellow Smiley Faces, identical to the button she wore, were spaced equidistantly on the square.
"My friend's a real artiste," Gordie said. "He can do just about any kind of design. Client wanted little airplanes the other day. Another dude asked for an American flag. Costs extra with all them colors. Anyhow, my friend enjoys his work."
"Your friend does a good job." She held the paper up against the light. The Smiley Faces were yellow with lemon-flavored food coloring, and the tiny black dots of the eyes were cheap but potent acid brewed in a lab near Atlanta. She got her wallet out of her purse, and removed the Magnum automatic, too. She laid the pistol on the countertop as she counted out fifty dollars for her connection.
"Nice little piece," Gordie said. His fingers grazed the gun. "I sure as hell got you a good deal on it, too." His hand accepted the money, and the bills went into his jeans.
Mary had bought the Magnum from him back in September, two months after she'd been steered to Gordie by a bartender in a midtown lounge called the Purple People Eater. The.38 in her drawer and the sawed-off shotgun had been purchased from other connections in the last few years. Wherever she went, Mary made the effort to find somebody who could supply her with two of her passions: LSD and guns. She'd always had a love affair with guns: their smell and weight thrilled her, their beauty dark and brooding. "Feminist cock envy" was how he'd put it, way back when. Lord Jack, speaking from the gray mist of memory.
The LSD and the guns were links to her past, and without them life would be as hollow as her womb.
"Okay. So that does it, right?" Gordie removed the toothpick and slid it back into his pocket. "Until next timer
She nodded. Gordie started out of the kitchen, and Mary followed him with the acid-loaded Smiley Faces in her hand. When he left, she would give birth. The infant was in the closet in her bedroom, confined in a box. She would lick a Smiley Face and feed her new baby and watch the hateful world kill itself on CNN. Gordie was reaching toward the latch. Mary watched him move, as if in slow motion. She'd had so much LSD over the years that she could slow things down when she wanted to, could make them break into strobelike movements. Gordie's hand was on the latch, and he was about to open the door.
He was a skinny little bastard. A dope dealer and gun smuggler. But he was a human being, and Mary suddenly realized that she wanted to be touched by human hands.
"Wait," she said.
Gordie stopped, the latch almost thrown.
"You got plans?" Mary asked. She was ready for rejection, ready to curl back into her armored shell.
Gordie paused. He frowned. "Plans? Like plans for what?"
"Like plans to eat. Do you have anywhere to go?"
"I'm gonna pick up my girlfriend in a couple of hours." He checked his Swatch. "Give or take."
Mary held the Smiley Faces in front of his nose. "You want a taste?"
Gordie's eyes ticked from the offering to Mary and back again. "I don't know," he said. He'd caught an unspoken invitation – not for the LSD, but for something else. Maybe it was the way she crowded his space, or maybe it was the slight tilt of her head toward the bedroom. Whatever it was, Gordie knew the language. He had to think about this for a minute; she was a client, and it was bad business to screw clients. She wasn't a raging beauty, and she was old. Over thirty, for sure. But he'd never sacked a six-foot-tall woman before, and he wondered what it would be like to swim in that swamp of flesh. She looked like she had a nice pair, too. Her face could be pretty if she wore makeup. Still… there was something mighty strange about her, with all these baby pictures on the walls and –
Hell! Gordie thought. Why not? He'd screw a tree if it had a knothole big enough.
"Yeah," he said, his grin beginning to spread. "I guess I would."
"That's good." Mary reached past him, and double-locked the door with its chain. Gordie smelled the aroma of hamburgers in her hair. When she looked at him again, her face was very close and her eyes were a shade between green and gray. "I'll make dinner, and then we'll trip out. You like minestrone soup and ham sandwiches?"
"Sure." He shrugged. "Whatever." Trip out, she'd said. That was an ancient expression. He heard it in old movies on TV about the sixties and hippies and shit like that. He watched her as she went into the kitchen, and in another moment he heard her run water into a pot.
"Come in and talk to me," Mary said.
Gordie glanced at the latch and the doorchain. Still can go if you want to. That big woman'll grind you down to white jelly if you don't watch out. He stared at the lava lamp, his face daubed blue.