He kicks her ankles again, this time harder, and she cries out in pain.
“What a joke. Look at you. Who’s my little pretty now? You’re filth. Spoiled little brat, ungrateful little smart aleck. I’ll teach you humility. Say you’re sorry.”
He kicks her ankles harder, and she screams and tears fill her eyes and they shine like glass in the moonlight.
“You’re not so high and mighty now, are you. Think you’re so much better, so much smarter than everybody else? Look at you now. Obviously, I’m going to have to find some more effective way to punish you. Put your shoes back on.”
Confusion touches her eyes.
“We’re going back outside. It’s the only thing you listen to. Say you’re sorry!”
Her glassy, wide eyes stare at him.
“You want the snorkel again? Say you’re sorry!”
He pokes her with the shotgun and her legs jerk.
“You’re going to tell me how much you want it, aren’t you. Thank me because you’re so ugly no one would ever touch you. You’re honored, aren’t you.” He lowers his voice, knows how to make it scarier.
He pokes her again, pokes her breasts.
“Stupid and ugly. Let’s get your shoes. You’ve left me no choice.”
She doesn’t say anything. He kicks her ankles, kicks them hard, and tears roll down her blood-caked face. Her nose is probably broken.
She broke Hog’s nose, slapped him so hard his nose bled for hours and he knew it was broken. He can feel the bump in the bridge of his nose. She slapped him when he did the bad thing, when she struggled at first, the bad thing that happened in the room behind the paint-peeled door. Then his mother took him to that place where the buildings are old and it snows. He had never seen snow before, he had never been so cold. She took him there because he lied.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” he says. “Hurts like hell when you’ve got coat hangers biting into your anklebones and someone kicks them. That’s what you get for disobeying me. For lying. Let’s see, where’s the snorkel.”
He kicks her again and she moans. Her legs shake beneath the wilted green robe, beneath the dead green dragon draped over her.
“I don’t hear the boys,” she says, and her voice is getting weaker, her fire going out.
“Say you’re sorry.”
“I forgive you,” she says with wide, shiny eyes.
He raises the shotgun and points it at her head. She stares straight at the barrel, stares as if she doesn’t care anymore, and he seethes.
“You can say forgive all you want, but God is on my side,” he says. “You deserve His punishment. That’s why you’re here. Do you understand? It’s your fault. You have heaped these burning coals on top of your own head. Do what I say! Tell me you’re sorry!”
His big boots creak very little as he moves through the thick, hot air and stands in the doorway, staring back into the room. The slain green dragon stirs and warm air moves through the broken window. The room faces west, and in the late afternoon the low sun seeps in through the gaping broken window, and light touches the shiny green dragon and it shimmers and glows like emerald-green fire. But it doesn’t move. It is nothing now. It is broken and ugly and it is her fault.
He looks at her pale flesh, her doughy, sour flesh covered with insect bites and rashes. He can smell her stench halfway down the hallway. The dead green dragon stirs when she stirs, and it incenses him when he thinks of capturing the dragon and discovering what was under it. She was under it. He was tricked. It’s her fault. She wanted this to happen, tricked him. It’s her fault.
“Say you’re sorry!”
“I forgive you.” Her wide, shiny eyes stare at him.
“I guess you know what happens now,” he says.
She barely moves her mouth and no sound emerges.
“I guess you don’t know.”
He stares at her, ruined and disgusting in her foulness on the filthy mattress, and feels coldness in his chest, and the coldness feels quiet and indifferent like death, as if anything he has ever felt is as dead as the dragon.
“I guess you really don’t know.”
The shotgun’s pump slides back with a loud crack in the empty house.
“Run,” he says.
“I forgive you,” she mouths, her wide, watery eyes fixed on him.
He steps out in the hallway, surprised by the sound of the front door shutting.
“Are you here?” he calls out.
He lowers the gun and walks toward the front of the house, his pulse picking up. He wasn’t expecting her, not yet.
“I told you not to do that,” God’s voice greets him, but he can’t see her, not yet. “You do only what I say.”
She materializes in the darkness, her black, flowing self in the dark, flowing toward him. She is beautiful and so powerful and he loves her and could never be without her.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she says to him.
“She still isn’t sorry. She won’t say it,” he tries to explain.
“It isn’t time. Did you think to bring the paint before you got so carried away in there?”
“It’s not here. It’s in the truck. Where I used it on the last one.”
“Bring it in. Prepare first. Always prepare. You lose control and then what. You know what to do. Don’t disappoint me.”
God flows closer to him. She has an IQ of a hundred and fifty.
“We’re almost out of time,” Hog says.
“You are nothing without me,” God says. “Don’t disappoint me.”
42
Dr. Self sits at her desk, staring at the pool and getting anxious about the time. Every Wednesday morning, she is supposed to be at the studio by ten to get ready for her live radio show. “I absolutely can’t confirm that,” she says on the phone, and were she not in such a hurry, she would enjoy this conversation for all the wrong reasons.
“There’s no question you prescribed Ritalin hydrochloride toDavidLuck,” Dr. Kay Scarpetta replies.
Dr. Self can’t help but think of Marino and everything he has said about Scarpetta. Dr. Self isn’t intimidated. At the moment, she has the advantage over this woman she has met only once and hears about incessantly every single week.
“Ten milligrams three times daily,” Dr. Scarpetta’s strong voice comes over the line.
She sounds tired, maybe depressed. Dr. Self could help her. She told her so when they met last June at the Academy, at the dinner in honor of Dr. Self.
Highly motivated, successful professional women like us must be careful not to neglect our emotional landscapes, she said to Scarpetta when they happened to be in the ladies’ room at the same time.
“Thank you for your lectures. I know the students are enjoying them,” Scarpetta replied, and Dr. Self saw right through her.
The Scarpettas of the world are masters at evading personal scrutiny or anything that might expose their secret vulnerability.
“I’m sure the students are quite inspired,” Scarpetta said, washing her hands in the sink, washing them as if she were scrubbing for surgery.
“Everyone appreciates your finding time in your busy schedule to come here.”
“I can tell you really don’t mean that,” Dr. Self replied quite candidly. “The vast majority of my colleagues in the medical profession look down on anyone who takes their practice beyond closed doors, walks out in the wide open arena of radio and television. The truth, of course, is usually jealousy. I suspect half the people who criticize me would ransom their souls to be on the air.”
“You’re probably right,” Scarpetta replied, drying her hands.
It was a comment that lent itself to several very different interpretations: Dr. Self is right, the vast majority of people in the medical profession do look down on her; or half the people who criticize her are jealous; or it is true that she suspects half the people who criticize her are jealous, meaning they may not be jealous at all. No matter how many times she has replayed their conversation in the ladies’ room and analyzed that particular remark, she can’t decide what it meant and whether she was subtly and cleverly insulted.