“Please,” the woman said.
She seemed to realize what was happening and broke for a cordless phone on the coffee table. Lennox had no choice. He pulled his gun and told her if she took another step he’d shoot her. Then Teddy hit her.
“Way too cool,” Teddy said when the woman brought her hand to her bloody month and stopped screaming.
Half an hour later, Lennox sat on the sofa and smoked a cigarette while Teddy paced the room and brandished his knife and talked incessantly about zombies and vampires and bogeymen. This was ugly and disorderly, but Lennox was too tired to stop it.
The couple looked at him with pleading eyes, but Lennox shook his head and smoked his cigarette. They were gagged and duct taped to straight-back kitchen chairs. Both of them were bleeding — the husband more profusely than the wife and Lennox figured before long the man would go into shock, since it looked as if Teddy’s knife had nicked an artery — and Lennox just kept thinking. “Thank God they don’t have children.”
Teddy went into the kitchen, came back with a bottle of Budweiser and a roll of salami. “This is a good fucking time, man.”
He downed the beer and pitched the bottle through a mirror over the mantel. Then he tilted his head and let out a grating yell, a poor imitation of Carol Burnett’s imitation of Tarzan. Lennox gave the woman the embarrassed, uneasy smile of an indulgent parent trying to explain the behavior of a toddler. Then he touched the .22 in his lap. He could put an end to it now. All he had to do was lift the gun, aim at the man’s head and then the woman’s. Their suffering would be over. But he couldn’t find the energy to do it.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” Lennox said.
Teddy took a bite of the salami. “Relax. You’re too uptight, man.” He chewed with his mouth open. “It’s all rock ’n’ roll, baby.”
Lennox stared at the television. They’d interrupted the couple’s Blockbuster night. On screen a frightened little boy told Bruce Willis that he saw dead people. Teddy picked up the remote and clicked off the movie.
“I saw that a couple of years ago,” he said. “It’s spooky shit. Gave me nightmares.”
Then Teddy plopped down on the sofa beside Lennox and pointed the knife at the husband. “How long until he bleeds to death?”
Lennox didn’t answer. Teddy said maybe the next one would be in the gut to sort of speed the process along. Then he cocked his head to the side and smiled at the woman and licked his lips.
“What do you think about her?” he asked.
What Lennox thought but wouldn’t admit was that there was something about her hair and the line of her jaw that reminded him of Muriel. He told Teddy to leave her alone.
Teddy smirked. “Don’t get jealous, pop. We could share her.” His smirk spread into a leer. “I mean both at the same time. That’s a real big fantasy for a lot of girls.” He leaned forward and pointed his knife at the woman. “You ever thought about it, hon? Two guys doing you together?”
The woman’s eyes widened, and she began to cry and shake her head. Lennox felt sick to his stomach.
Then Teddy crossed the room. He whispered something in the man’s ear that made him thrash his head and strain against the tape. Lennox didn’t want to watch, so he stared at his fingernails and thought how they needed cutting. When he looked up again, j the woman’s robe gaped open, and Teddy stood smiling and whistling his admiration for her body.
“How’d a geek like you get a babe like this?” he said to the man. Then he slapped the guy’s shoulder. “This is some fucking party.” He came back to Lennox and flopped on the couch. “Let’s do her man,” he said. “That would be too much.”
Lennox shut his eyes and shook his head. He felt ridiculous, like a little boy refusing to eat his peas or carrots. Then Teddy laughed, a deep, knowing laugh that Lennox found repulsive.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “Tell you what. I’ll do her and you can watch.” His hand found Lennox’s lap and squeezed. “Then I’ll take care of you the way you really like it.”
Lennox willed himself to not respond to Teddy’s touch, but he couldn’t help it. When Teddy massaged his erection right in front of the man and woman, Lennox felt ashamed and filthy. Teddy let him go and went for the woman. He cut the tape from her arms and legs and dragged her from the chair by her hair. She struggled and thrashed, but Teddy hit her once and put the knife to her throat, and she stopped fighting. The husband stomped his feet on the floor and thrashed his head and came close to tipping over.
“Come on, honey,” Teddy told the woman. “You know you’ll like it.”
Instead of leading her to the bedroom, he pushed her to the floor and ripped her robe away and told her to get on all fours. The woman kept shaking her head but she did as he told her.
“Doggy style!” Teddy said. “That’s the way uh huh uh huh I like it.”
He ripped her panties and pushed his jeans down and wrapped his arm around her neck to hold her head in place. The woman didn’t move. She just held still and waited for the inevitable.
Teddy craned his neck and grinned at Lennox. “You change your mind you can have sloppy seconds.”
When Teddy turned to mount the woman. Lennox raised the pistol, aimed slowly, and then squeezed the trigger. Blood splattered the husband, who stopped struggling and stared at Lennox in disbelief. Teddy fell forward and his weight drove the woman to the floor. Then Teddy struggled to get back to his knees. He’d almost made it when Lennox shot him again. Teddy fell on top of the wife, and she bucked her hips until he rolled off onto the floor.
“It wasn’t right,” he said.
Lennox nodded his head as if agreeing with himself. He’d repeat that as long as he needed to make himself believe it. If that didn’t work, he’d swear he shot Teddy because the woman reminded him of Muriel. Under no circumstance would he ever believe that a second before he pulled the trigger, he’d thought. “The son of a bitch is cheating on me.”
“It just wasn’t right,” he said again.
Lennox helped the woman to her feet and set her in the chair and grabbed the duct tape to secure her. Then he went to the front window and squinted outside. It was still snowing.
“I’m sorry,” he told them when he turned around.
He pulled the pint of Jack Daniel’s from his overcoat’s pocket and sat on the couch and took a long pull from the bottle. He lit a cigarette and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, searching for the words to tell his story. He wasn’t sure where to begin, but he knew he wanted them to hear all of it — the years on the road with nothing but miles in front of and behind him; the times he’d awakened alone and frightened and certain that he was dying; how he’d first met Muriel at a skating rink in Ohio; the absurd rituals they’d followed in an effort to conceive a baby; the way she’d turned away from him now that she was dying and didn’t want him with her and wouldn’t answer the phone. Afterward, he’d have to decide what to do with them. Would he kill them and move on down the road, or was this the night to put an end to his useless traveling? He took a deep breath and glanced back at the window. He made a bet with himself, a traveling game that he’d played a hundred times to decide meaningless decisions — if he’d eat at McDonald’s or Denny’s, stay on the interstate or break up the drive by taking a state road, stop for a drink or wait until he checked into his motel. If it was still snowing when he finished his story, he’d cut them loose, take one last swallow of bourbon, and put the barrel of the gun in his mouth. If it was clear, he’d make their deaths as quick and as painless as possible and get back on the road.
Lennox smiled at them and then glanced at the dead boy lying on the floor. He knew where his story would begin.