Dream’s shoulders slumped and her chin dipped toward her chest. And here was the next necessary stage she’d come to expect. This abrupt agony of remorse. The tears came, hot and plentiful, spilling in rivulets down her cheeks to moisten the collar of her T-shirt. No one said anything. They were used to this by now. Her friends. She’d started out hating them all. Not anymore. She belonged with them. They understood her. Accepted her. She’d told Ellen she thought of them as family. And it was true enough. Sort of an all-girl version of the Manson family, yes, but family nonetheless.
She sighed and the tears abruptly stopped. The remorse was gone. And now the dead man beneath her was just a slab of meat. A thing to be dealt with, no more significant than a bag of garbage.
She swiped moisture from her nose. “Let’s get this bag of shit out of here.”
Alicia leaned across the bed and unlocked the cuffs. She removed them from the dead man’s limp wrists and tossed them onto the table. Dream climbed off the bed, slid her arms beneath the big body, and lifted him as easily as she’d lift a small child. There was a distant ache in her knuckles as she turned and carried him toward the bathroom. The slight pain was nothing. A normal person’s knuckles would be broken and useless.
Ellen raced ahead of her and threw the bathroom door open. Dream turned sideways and moved through the opening. Ellen followed her in and opened the shower’s sliding glass door. Dream dumped the body inside. It landed awkwardly on the gleaming white tile, one leg tucked beneath a fat buttock, the other splayed across the edge of the tub. The strip of duct tape had come off again and his plump lower lip looked like a rancid sausage. Dream closed the glass door and turned away from the ugliness.
Ellen continued to stare at the dead man. “Look at him. Pathetic. He deserved that.”
Dream shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t really give a shit.”
Ellen followed her back out to the main room, skipping across the beige carpet like a child on a playground. Dream shot her a look of mild rebuke, but the girl didn’t notice. She was bouncing off the walls. That damn cocaine. And now Marcy was chopping fresh lines on the back of the Gideon Bible. The sisters took turns kneeling over the table, inhaling white lines through a clipped fast-food straw. Ellen did the last line and tossed her head back, loosing a manic shriek of exultation.
Dream frowned. “Too loud.”
“You need to loosen up, Dream.” Marcy shook the last bit of white powder from the Baggie and went to work with the razor blade again. “Little Miss Gloomy all the time.” She grinned. “Haven’t you had enough of feeling on the verge of doom every waking moment? I know I have.”
“Yeah!” Ellen leaped into the air and clapped her hands. Then she dashed over to the nightstand next to the bed and started fiddling with the little alarm clock radio. “Let’s have a fucking party!”
The radio’s tinny speaker emitted a long buzz of static as the red dial indicator moved all the way to the left before at last hitting a surprisingly strong signal that turned out to be a college radio station. A student DJ spoke in a monotone before introducing a Violent Femmes song. Ellen shrieked again as the first herky-jerky notes of “Blister In The Sun” rattled the little speaker. Then she leapt up on the bed and began a manic dance that made her look like a person having an extraordinarily violent seizure. Marcy hopped up on the bed and mimic ked her sister’s spastic moves. The mattress springs squeaked in loud protest and the headboard slammed against the wall over and over.
Dream shook her head. “You guys weren’t even born when that song came out.”
The sisters didn’t hear her. They sang along loudly, the combined volume of their voices overwhelming the meager capability of the radio-clock speaker. Dream experienced a reflexive bit of annoyance, but it felt halfhearted. The beginnings of a smile tugged at the edges of her mouth. How strange. Circumstances dictated the exercising of caution at every turn. Otherwise they could wind up cornered by half the cops in Ohio, the last moments of their wild spree playing out on television screens across the country, providing vicarious entertainment for millions of disapproving good citizens in safe suburban homes.
But as Dream watched the sisters some of their enthusiasm began to infect her. “Blister In The Sun” ended and a more modern tune she didn’t recognize began. The girls evidently recognized it, as they let out identical shrieks and continued to torture the mattress springs.
She moved to the table and sat down. She pulled the Bible close and stared at the little mound of powder.
Alicia chuckled. “Go ahead. Have a toot.”
Dream picked up the clipped straw. “I’ve never done this before.”
Alicia braced her elbows on the edge of the table and leaned toward her. “Dream, you just killed a man. That’s five motherfuckers you’ve knocked off since we hit the road. Every John Law in the whole goddamned country is looking for your ass. Most people would be shitting themselves just about now, maybe be ready to swallow a bullet rather than face the music. But not you. Uh-uh.” She made a clucking sound and shook her head, grinning broadly. “Because you’ve got these super freaky powers. On some level you feel invincible. Am I right?”
A corner of Dream’s mouth turned up. “Could be.”
“Damn straight.” Alicia slapped the table and laughed. “Ain’t nobody takin’ you down and you know it. You’re the baddest bitch ever lived, bar none. And you’re telling me you’re afraid of a little powder.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms beneath her ample breasts, shaking her head. “Well, shit.”
Dream sighed. “Okay. Stop giving me static.”
She picked up the razor blade-another thing pilfered from the dead man’s belongings-and scraped the powder into a thin white line. Then she wedged the straw into her right nostril, pressed the other nostril shut with a finger, and bent toward the cocaine. She inhaled hard. The stuff hit her nasal passage and she almost sneezed. She didn’t care for the physical sensation at all. But she inhaled again and finished off the line.
She dropped the straw and rubbed at her nose. “Goddamn.”
Alicia cackled. “Kinda grabs you by the short and curlies, don’t it?”
Ellen shrieked and pointed at Dream. “Ohmigod! Ohmigod!” She grabbed a still-bouncing Marcy by the shoulder and made her look at Dream. “Dream’s gone crazy! She’s got white-line fever!”
The girl flopped onto her back, making the bed springs squeal again. Then she rolled onto her side and pressed her face into the pillow, kicking her feet and convulsing with hysterical laughter. Marcy hopped off the bed and made a beeline for Dream. There was a wild gleam in her eyes, a hint of something wicked. She slid onto Dream’s lap and pushed her tongue between her lips. Dream’s initial reaction was shock bordering on revulsion. This wasn’t her thing at all. But the cocaine was working on her now. She felt wild and up for anything. So she let Marcy kiss her, even started kissing her back.
Then she heard something.
A click.
She broke the liplock with Marcy and turned her gaze to the hotel room’s front door. The brass doorknob moved. The motion was slight, careful. She heard another click and knew someone was breaking in. She pushed Marcy off her lap and got to her feet as the door swung open and two men rushed into the room. One was a middle-aged man in a cheap suit. The other was a wiry, black-clad kid with scraggly hair that hung in his face. The older man had a.38 clutched in a beefy fist. The kid brandished a large and quite lethal-looking knife.
The older one kicked the door shut with the heel of his shoe and leered at them. He dropped a lockpicking tool into a suit poc ket. “Party’s over, bitches.”
Dream opened her mouth to tell the intruders they were messing with the wrong people. But the words never made it past the tip of her tongue. Things started happening. She saw it develop like a slow-motion scene from a cheesy ’70s cop movie. But the impression was a false one. It was happening fast. Too fast. She felt a hot surge of panic as Ellen rolled off the bed and made a grab for Marcy’s Glock, which was on the nightstand now. The wiry kid flipped the blade in his hand and snapped his arm back. His arm came forward as Ellen brought the gun around. A scream filled the room. Marcy. The knife was a blur as it spun through the air. The blade buried itself in Ellen’s side. Her finger jerked on the Glock’s trigger, squeezing off a reflexive shot that sent a bullet whizzing by Dream’s head. The bullet punched a hole through the television and Ellen dropped to the floor.