"What tire you doing?"
"Asking you what you think of me."
"Are you getting off? This a, this a tease or something?"
"When you talk about me, you sound alive. I like it when you sound alive. And… I like how I feel when a guy is talking about me. It makes me feel… I don't want to be Soledad. Having a guy like me, knowing I could like him back; it makes me feel not like Soledad. It makes me feel like I got some human in me, and I'm not… I don't know that I got much left."
"What's that mean?"
Like she feared, Eddi was on her way to saying too much. So she followed it up by saying nothing.
Vin, remembering: "Haragei it was called. In Japan when people talk without… whatever, without talking. Uaraqex is what it is."
Eddi stayed with Vin a little less than two hours more. They engaged in a little less than two of haragei.
Life in reprise. Waiting was the repetition, was the slow torture. One watch down. Another watch down. The third down.
No diminishing of desire. No cooling off. If anything, like a frat boy that'd been cock-blocked, frustration made Eddi hungrier for the act than previously.
Friday night. Saturday. Saturday night.
Eddi was back to drinking. Back to drinking alone.
Vin'd been a good booze buddy. But getting comfortable with him was not her desire. Vin's inclination was downward. Clearly, when this- «this» being murder- was over, Eddi was going to have issues to deal with. Getting caught up in Vin's wake wasn't going to help her deal.
She smiled. The first she could remember in a while. The first, she could remember since… the phone call. The news. Soledad was dead.
Eddi smiled and realized it was thinking of Vin that'd brought it on. An alky with no desire to be anything other. But Eddi thought of Vin and she smiled.
Sunday.
Eddi sat on the floor of her joint, played some Chicane on her multitasking CD/DVD system. Watching the sun pass through the sky was all the more assignment she'd given herself.
The sun in the sky.
What was it she'd learned? Long time ago. High school was it? Not even the sun … How did it go? Not even the sun will transgress his orbit hut the Erinyes, the ministers of justice, overtake him.
And she rubbed her left tit. Beneath the gray cotton of her undershirt, through her bra, Eddi could feel, could feel her tattoo. That hyper sense again. Death was coming.
In the nightstand was a photo book. In the photo book was a picture of her father. She kept it close. No matter tough little MTac she was, she didn't have the fortitude to display it, keep it in constant view. She could barely ever look at it. But it remained always near. Near enough that in the middle of the night she could reach out and take hold of it and clutch it to her chest and cry in secret. She'd done that Done it plenty.
The sun made its way to the edge of the sky.
The ministers of justice, overtake him.
Day was gone.
It was getting on evening.
Eddi got in her car and drove to the Valley and parked a short distance from the alley near the newsstand.
Shoot him in the head. Walk to her car. Go, Same as the Sunday previous. Except she expected more substantial results.
Eddi was vigilant this Sunday, saw Raddatz heading up the block, hitting the newsstand. She had a fear that the hitch this week would be Raddatz'd have his kids with him. She wasn't about to do the job with his kids close. That much, or that little-that sliver of morality- humanity Eddi had left.
Raddatz was consistent.
He arrived on schedule. Without family. He flipped through Esquire. Flipped through, again, Road & Track. Same as with just about all newsstands the automobile magazines were displayed next to the porn. One-stop shopping for a demographic. Two Sundays in a row Raddatz had looked at the car mags without so much as considering the porn. That bumped her some. Maybe it was stereotyping, but it seemed to Eddi a guy like Raddatz should have more visible vices.
Raddatz stood, stood reading an article. It felt to Eddi, timewise, he was reading The Fountainhead in a sitting.
He stood reading.
He stood reading.
Raddatz put back the magazine.
He chatted some with somebody.
He started off from the stand.
Eddi made the cross.
Raddatz stopped. Looked at another magazine. The Week.
Eddi didn't want to double back on herself in the middle of Laurel Canyon, call attention to herself. She kept up the cross, landed on the far north end of the newsstand. The porn mags Raddatz had skipped over. Eddi gave them a perusing. That she was making herself seem engaged in other women's bare bodies was lost on her. Head down, face hidden, she let her senses travel, touch and feel Raddatz as he read through the newsweekly, took it to the cashier, paid, started his walk again. Giving him a bit of a lead, Eddi fell in behind him.
This Sunday Raddatz took the alley.
Shoot him in the head. Walk to her car. Go.
Eddi closed on him.
in her pocket, hand on the .38's grip.
Give it to him quick.
Her finger brushed the trigger.
Give it to him twice.
Eddi pulled out, picked up the pace. Kept her hand down, gun at her side, hidden. Hidden, but ready to do work.
Raddatz oblivious
Shoot him in the head.
On him, nearly on top of him. Close enough she wouldn't miss. Close enough she couldn't help but kill.
A sound, behind her.
A witness?
Eddi turned.
A man. Wispy. Reedy. He barely registered, yet somehow reeked menace. Not a witness. Something bad.
Eddi brought her hand around, started to bring her gun up. The guy caught it, caught her wrist. Wispy. Reedy. But his grip was like getting caught up in steel rails. Couldn't move. Eddi could not even start to move her aim.
The wispy guy twisted her wrist. A machine going to work on her. The hurt the same as her limb getting torqued by mechanical rotors. Pain made her open her hand, her gun clanking to the ground. Her grunt drowning out the gun.
From behind her, from Raddatz: "No, no!"
Eddi's left hand came up, whipped out, caught the thin man hard in the head. Square in the face. Her fractured wrist fractured a little more. There was blood from the guy's nose, from his mouth. On impact his head hardly moved.
The thin man made a fist.
Sleepy time for Eddi.
Eddi was cognizant. She wasn't sure how long it took her to figure that out. A while.
She realized she was awake, that it was dark. The room she was in was a basement, a cellar. If it was day or night outside she didn't know. Couldn't tell She'd taken a blow to the head. Beyond the accompanying hurt she didn't feel as though she'd been drugged or otherwise roughed up. Probably, she'd been loopy only a short time at most. Probably, it was still Sunday evening. Sunday night.
So she'd narrowed the time frame. Like that was some F'n victory.
The space was windowless. And it stank. The choking stink of rotting flesh. Vermin probably. Maybe, Eddi considered, human.
Eddi realized she was staring up close at the print of a magazine. She lifted her head. Tried to. Her head told her real loudly to lay it the hell back down. Eddi didn't argue. She asked her eyes if they wouldn't mind focusing and, eventually, they responded.
The magazine: The Week. It'd been shoved under her face as a pillow. Or a drool cloth. Eddi had, she was coming to notice, done a lot of that while she'd been out.
She was coming to notice she was cuffed too. The steel of the restraints particularly painful to her already fractured wrist.