There was warmth, a warmth that was thick and liquidy, oozing, oozing.
Cotton Hawes fought unconsciousness.
He felt as if his body was quivering. He felt as if every part of him was swinging in a wild circle of nauseating blackness. Some inner sense told him he was lying flat on his back, and yet he had the feeling that his hands were clutching, grasping, trying to reach something in the blackness, as if his legs and feet were twitching uncontrollably. The pain at the side of his face was unbearable. It was the pain, finally, which forced away the unconsciousness, needling him with persistent fire, forcing sensibility into his mind, and then his body. He blinked.
The cigar smell was overpowering. It filled his newly alert nostrils with the stink of a thousand saloons. The shaft of light was penetrating and merciless, flowing steadily through an open window at the end of the room, impaling him with sunshine. A man stood at the window, his back to Hawes.
Hawes tried to get to his feet, and the nausea came back with frightening suddenness, swimming into his head and then dropping like a swirling stone to the pit of his stomach. He lay still, not daring to move, aware now that the side of his face was bleeding, remembering now the sudden blinding blow that had knocked him to the floor unconscious. The nausea passed. He could feel the steady seeping of the blood as it traveled past his jawbone and onto his neck. He could almost feel each separate drop of blood rolling over his flesh to be sopped up instantly by the white collar of his shirt. He felt as if he were being born, hypersensitive to every nuance of smell, and sight, and touch. And, newborn, he was also weak. He knew he could not stand without falling flat on his face.
He turned his head slightly to the left. He could see the man at the window clearly, each part of the man combining with the next to form a sharply defined portrait of power as he crouched by the window, the late afternoon sunshine enveloping the silhouette in whitish licking flames of light.
The man’s hair was black, worn close to his skull in a tight-fitting woolly cap. The man’s brow was immense in profile, a hooked nose jutting out from bushy eyebrows pulled into a frown. A small scar stood out in painful relief against the tight skin of the man’s face, close to the right eye. The man’s mouth was a tight, almost lipless line that gashed deep into the face above a jaw cleft like a horse’s buttocks. His neck was thick, and his shoulders bulged beneath the blue tee shirt he wore, biceps rolling hugely into thick forearms covered with black hair that resembled steel wool. One huge hand was clutched around the barrel of a rifle. The rifle, Hawes noticed, was mounted with a telescopic sight. An open box of cartridges rested near the man’s right shoe.
This is no one to tangle with in my present condition, Hawes thought. This may be no one to tangle with in any condition. He looks like a man who tears telephone books in sixteenths. He looks like a man who allows automobiles to drive over his inflated chest. He looks like the meanest son of a bitch I have ever seen in my life, and I am not anxious to tangle with him. Now, or maybe never.
But that’s a rifle he’s holding, and it has a telescopic sight, and he sure as hell doesn’t plan to pick his teeth with it.
Do I still have my gun? Or has he disarmed me?
Hawes looked down the length of his nose. He could see the white throat of his shirt stained with blood. He could see his shoulder holster strapped to his chest beneath his open coat.
The holster was empty.
There’s nothing I can do but lie here, he thought, and wait for my strength to come back.
And pray, meanwhile, that he doesn’t take a pot shot at anybody across the yard at the reception.
The black MG convertible had been a gift from Ben Darcy’s parents. Unaware of his private intention to enter dental school, they had offered the sleek, low-slung car to him as a sort of bribe. Ben had accepted the bribe and then entered dental school, anyway, just as he’d planned to. Everybody was happy.
The car was capable of hitting rather high speeds on a straight run, and Ben was doing his best at the moment to prove that the manufacturer’s claims were valid. The top down, his foot jammed on the accelerator, he cruised along Semplar Parkway at the lowflying speed of eighty-five miles an hour.
Beside him, her long brown hair blowing back over her shoulders, Angela Giordano, nee Angela Carella, watched the road ahead with wide eyes, certain she would be killed on her wedding day.
“Ben, can’t you slow down?” she pleaded.
“I like to drive fast,” he answered. “Angela, you’ve got to listen to me.”
“I’m listening, Ben, but I’m scared. If another car should—”
“Don’t worry about me!” he snapped. “I’m the best damn driver in Riverhead. You couldn’t be in better hands.”
“All right, Ben,” she said, and she clutched her hands in her lap and swallowed hard and continued to watch the road.
“So you married him,” Ben said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Oh, Ben, really, we went through all this on the dance floor. I wouldn’t have come with you if I’d known—”
“Why did you come with me?” he asked quickly.
“Because you said you wanted to take me for a spin for the last time. A ride around the block, you said. All right, I believed you. But we’re not going around the block, we’re on the parkway heading toward the next state, and you’re driving much too fast. Ben, would you please slow down?”
“No,” he said. “Why’d you marry him?”
“Because I love him. Does that answer you?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe me. Please believe me.”
“I don’t. How can you be in love with him? A bank clerk! For the love of God, Angela, he’s a bank clerk!”
“I love him.”
“What can he offer you? What’s he ever going to give you?”
“He doesn’t have to give me anything,” Angela said. “I love him.”
“I’m better looking than he is,” Ben said.
“Maybe you are.”
“I’m going to be a dentist.”
“Yes.”
“Why’d you marry him?”
“Ben, please, please slow down. I’m—” Her eyes widened. “Ben! Look out!”
The Buick came hurtling onto Ben’s side of the parkway suddenly, passing a slower car ahead of it. It came like a steam locomotive, unable to cut back because of the car ahead, committed to the pass, determined to reach the safety of its own lane by a new burst of speed. Ben recognized the impossibility of the situation. He swung the wheel sharply to the right, heading for the grass at the side of the parkway. The Buick whooshed past with the roar of a diving jet as the small MG cleared the vented fender of the bigger car by no more than a foot, climbing onto the steeply sloping bank of grass, and then executing a small sharp turn to the left as Ben yanked the wheel over again. For a moment, Angela thought the car would roll over. Tires squealed as it hit the concrete again, going into a skid, and then straightening to face the dead center arrow of the parkway. Ben slammed his foot onto the accelerator. The speed indicator rose to ninety.
Angela could not speak. She sat beside him gasping for breath. And finally she closed her eyes. She would not watch. She could not watch.
“It’s still not too late,” Ben said.
His voice droned in her ears over the rush of air in the open cockpit of the sports car. Her eyes were closed, and his voice sounded strange, low and meaningful, droning on monotonously.
“It’s still not too late. You can still get out of it. You can have it annulled. He’s wrong for you, Angela. You’d find that out, anyway. Get rid of him, Angela. Angela, I love you. You can have it annulled.”