Horns by Joe Hill
Merrin touched the small of his back, and for just a moment he thought she was going to push him over the side of the roof, and he was going to twist and grab her by her pale throat and pull her with him. She must’ve seen the shock on his face, because she smiled for the first time and offered him one of the Heinekens. He nodded thanks and took it and held it in one hand while he lit up with the other.
She sat on an air-conditioning unit with her own beer, not drinking it, just spinning the wet neck around and around in her fingers. Her feet were bare. Her little pink feet were cute anyway. Looking at them, it was easy to imagine her placing one foot between his legs, her toes gently kneading his crotch.
“I think I’m going to try what you said,” she told him.
“Voting Republican?” he asked. “Progress at last.”
She smiled again, but it was a morose, wan sort of smile. She looked away and said, “I’m going to tell Ig that when he goes to England, I want to take a relationship vacation. Like a trial breakup, so we can both see other people.”
Lee felt as if he had tripped over something, even though he was standing still. “When were you planning to lay this on him?”
“When he gets back from New York. I don’t want to tell him on the phone. You can’t say anything, Lee. You can’t even hint.”
“No. I won’t.” He was excited and knew it was important not to show it. He said, “You’re going to tell him he should see other people? Other girls?”
She nodded.
“And…you, too?”
“I’ll tell him that I want to try a relationship with someone else. I’m not going to tell him anything more than that. I’ll tell him that whatever happens while he’s away is off the books. I don’t want to know who he’s seeing, and I won’t be reporting in to him about my relationships. I think that’ll…that’ll make things easier all around.” She looked up then, a rueful amusement in her eyes. The wind caught her hair and did pretty things with it. She looked less ill and wan out under the pale violet sky at the end of day. “I feel guilty already, you know.”
“Well. You don’t need to. Listen, if you really love each other, you’ll know it for sure in six months, and you’ll want to get back together.”
She shook her head and said, “No, I…I do think this is looking a little more than temporary. There are some things I’ve learned about myself this summer, some things I know, that have changed how I feel about my relationship with Ig. I know I can’t be married to him. After he’s been over in England for a while, after he’s had time to meet someone, I’ll finish it for good.”
“Jesus,” Lee said softly, playing it again in his head: There are some things I’ve learned about myself this summer. Remembering what it was like in the kitchen with her, his leg between hers, and his hand on the smooth curve of her hip, and her soft, fast breath in his ear. “Just a couple weeks ago, you were telling me what you were going to name the kids.”
“Yeah. But when you know something, you know something. I know I’m never going to have kids with him now.” She seemed calmer, had relaxed a little. She said, “This is the part where you step up to defend your best friend and talk me out of it. You mad at me?”
“No.”
“Do you think less of me?”
“I’d think less of you if you pretended you still want to be with Ig when you know in your heart there’s no future for the two of you.”
“That’s it. That’s exactly it. And I want Ig to have other relationships, and be with other girls, and be happy. If I know he’s happy, it’ll be easier for me to move on.”
“Jesus, though. You guys have been together forever.” His hand almost trembled as he shook a second cigarette from his pack. In a week Ig would be gone and she would be alone, and she would not be reporting in to him about who she was fucking.
She nodded at the pack of cigarettes. “One for me?”
“Seriously? I thought you wanted me to quit.”
“Ig wanted you to quit. I was always kind of curious, but, you know. Figured Ig would disapprove. Guess I can try them now.” She rubbed her hands on her knees and said, “So. Are you going to teach me how to smoke tonight, Lee?”
“Sure,” he said.
In the street a skateboard banged and crashed, and some of the teens shouted in a mixture of appreciation and dismay as a boarder went sprawling. She looked over the edge of the roof.
“I’d like to learn how to skateboard, too,” she said.
“Retarded sport,” Lee said. “Good way to break something. Like your neck.”
“I’m not too worried about my neck,” she said, and turned and stood on her tiptoes and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Thank you. For talking me through some things. I owe you, Lee.”
Her tank top clung to her breasts, and in the cool night air her nipples had crinkled, dimpling the fabric. He thought of reaching up and putting his hands on her hips, wondered if they could get started with a little touch and feel tonight. Before he could reach for her, though, the roof door banged open. It was the roommate, chewing gum, looking at them askance.
“Williams,” said her roommate, “your boyfriend is on the phone. I guess him and his Amnesty International friends waterboarded each other today, just to see what it feels like. He’s all excited, wants to give you the rundown. Sounds like he’s got a great job. Did I interrupt something?”
“No,” Merrin said, and turned back to Lee and whispered, “She thinks you’re one of the bad guys. Which, of course, you are. I should go talk to Ig. Rain check on dinner?”
“When you do talk to him—are you going to say anything about—us, the stuff we’ve talked about—”
“Oh, hey. No. I can keep a secret, Lee.”
“Okay,” he said, dry-mouthed, wanting her.
“I have one of those butts?” said the fat, butchy slant, coming toward them.
“Sure,” Lee said.
Merrin flapped one hand up in a little wave, crossed the roof, and was gone.
Lee shook a Winston out for the roommate and lit it for her.
“Heading to San Diego, huh?”
“Yeah,” said the girl. “I’m moving in with a friend from high school. It’s going to be cool. She’s got a Wii and everything.”
“Does your old high-school friend play the game with the dots and the lines, or are you going to have to start doing your own laundry?”
The slant squinted at him, then waved one chubby hand, swiping away the curtain of smoke between them. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“You know that game, where you put a whole bunch of dots in a row and then take turns making lines, trying to build squares? Don’t you play that game with Merrin to see who does the laundry?”
“Do we?” said the girl.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
HE LOOKED BACK AND FORTH with his one good eye, searching the parking lot for her, everything lit up by the weird, infernal glow of the red neon sign that towered above all—THE PIT—so the rain itself fell red through the hazy night, and then there she was, out under a tree in the rain.
“There, Lee, right there,” Terry told him, but Lee was already pulling over.
She’d told him she might need a ride back from The Pit, if Ig was very angry, after “The Big Talk.” Lee had promised he’d drive by to check on her, which she said he didn’t need to do, but smiling and looking grateful, so he knew she really wanted him to. The thing about Merrin was that she didn’t always mean what she said but often said things that were in direct opposition to her intentions.
When Lee saw her, in her soaked blouse and clinging skirt, her eyes reddened from crying, he felt his insides contract with nervous excitement, the thought in him that she was out there waiting for him, wanted to be with him. It had gone badly, Ig had said terrible things, had finally cast her aside, and there was no reason now to wait; he thought there was a good chance when he asked her to come home with him, she would agree, would say yes, in a gentle, accepting voice. As h
Lee wanted her up front and turned his head to tell Terry to get in back, but Terry was already up, about to pull himself over the front seat. Terry Perrish was trashed, had smoked half of Mexico in the last couple hours, and moved with the grace of a tranquilized elephant. Lee reached past him to open the passenger-side door for her, and as he did, he put his elbow in Terry’s ass to move him along. Terry fell into the back, and Lee heard a soft, metallic bashing sound as he came down on the toolbox open on the floor.
She got in, pushing the wet strings of her hair out of her face. Her small, heart-shaped face—still the face of a girl—was wet and white and cold-looking, and Lee was seized with an urge to touch her, to gently stroke her cheek. Her blouse was soaked through, and her bra had little roses printed on it. Before he knew he was doing it, he was reaching out to touch her. But then his gaze shifted and he saw Terry’s joint, a fat blunt as long as a ladyfinger, sitting on the seat, and he dropped his hand over it, palmed it before she could see it.
Instead she was the one who touched him, lightly putting her icy fingers on his wrist. He shivered.
“Thanks for picking me up, Lee,” she said. “You just saved my life.”
“Where’s Ig?” Terry asked in a thick, stupid voice, ruining the moment. Lee looked at him in the rearview. He was hunched forward, his eyes unfocused, one hand pressed to his temple.
Merrin pushed her wrist into her stomach, as if just the thought of Ig caused her physical pain.
“I d-don’t know. He left.”
“You told him?” Lee asked.
Merrin turned her head to look out at The Pit, but Lee could see her reflection in the glass, could see her chin dimpling with the effort it took not to cry. She was shivering helplessly, so her knees almost knocked.
“How’d he take it?” Lee asked, couldn’t help himself.
She gave a quick shake of the head and said, “Can we just go?”
Lee nodded and pulled out into the road, swinging the car back the way they’d come. He saw the rest of the evening as a set of clearly ordered steps: drop Terry at home, then drive her to his house without discussion, tell her she needed to get out of her wet things and into a shower, in the same calm, decisive voice she’d told him to get into the shower the morning his mother died. Only when he brought her a drink, he would gently draw the curtain aside to look at her in the spray and would already be undressed himself.
“Hey, girl,” Terry said. “You want my jacket?”
Lee shot an irritated look into the rearview at Terry, had been so preoccupied with thoughts of Merrin in the shower that he’d half forgotten Terry was there. He felt a low current of loathing for smooth, funny, famous, good-looking, and basically dull-witted Terry, who had ridden a minimal talent, family connections, and a well-known last name to wealth and his pick of the finest pussy in the country. It made sense to try to twist Terry’s faucet, see if there wasn’t a way to make him pour some celebrity the congressman’s way, or at least some money; but in truth Lee had never much liked him, a loudmouth and an attention hog who had gone out of his way to humiliate Lee in front of Glenna Nicholson the very first day they met. It sickened him, watching the oily fuck turn on the charm for his brother’s girlfriend, not ten minutes after they broke up, as if he were entitled, as if he had any right. Lee reached for the air conditioner, annoyed with himself for not turning it off sooner.
“’S all right,” Merrin said, but Terry was already handing his coat forward. “Thank you, Terry.” Her tone so ingratiating and needy that Lee wanted to backhand her. Merrin had her qualities, but fundamentally she was a woman like other women, aroused and submissive in the face of status and money. Take away the trust fund and the family name and Lee doubted she ever would’ve looked at sorry Ig Perrish twice. “You m-must think—”
“I don’t think anything. Relax.”
“Ig—”
“I’m sure Ig is fine. Don’t worry yourself.”
She was still trembling, hard—a little bit of a turn-on, actually, the way her breasts were quivering—but she pivoted to reach a hand into the backseat. “Are you all right?” When she drew her hand back, Lee saw blood on her fingertips. “You ought to have some g-gauze for that.”
“It’s fine. No worries,” Terry said, and Lee wanted to backhand him. Instead he pushed down on the pedal, in a hurry to dump Terry at his house, get him out of the picture as quickly as possible.
The Cadillac rose and fell, swooping along the wet road and swaying around the curves. Merrin hugged herself under the robe of Terry’s coat, still shivering furiously, her bright, stricken eyes staring out from the tangled nest of her hair, a mess of wet red straw. All at once she reached up and put one hand against the dash, her arm stiff and straight, as if they were about to pitch off the road.
“Merrin, are you all right?”
She shook her head. “No. Y-yes. I—Lee, please pull over. Pull over here.” Her voice was thin with tension.
When he glanced at her again, he saw she was going to be sick. The night was shriveling around him, slipping beyond control. She was going to puke in the Caddy, a thought that frankly appalled him. His favorite thing about his mother’s illness and subsequent death was that it left him sole right of the Cadillac, and if Merrin threw up in it, he was going to be pissed. You couldn’t get the smell out no matter what you did.
He saw the turnoff to the old foundry coming up on the right, and he veered off the road into it, still going too fast. The front right tire bit into the dirt at the shoulder of the road and flung the back end out to the side, not the thing you wanted to do with a sick girl in the passenger seat. Still decelerating, he pointed the Caddy up the rutted gravel fire lane, brush swatting at the sides of the car, rocks pinging against the undercarriage. A chain stretched across the road rose in the headlights, rushed toward them, and Lee kept the pressure on the brakes, slowing steadily, evenly. At last the Caddy whined to a soft stop, bumper right against the chain.
Merrin opened the door and made an angry retching sound, almost like a wet cough. Lee slammed it into park. He felt a little tremulous himself, with irritation, and made a conscious effort to regain his inner calm. If he was going to get her into the shower tonight, he was going to have to take it a step at a time, lead her by the hand. He could do it, could steer her where they were both headed anyway, but he had to get control of himself, of the wilting night. Nothing had happened yet that couldn’t be fixed.
He stepped out and came around the car, the rain plopping around him, dampening the back and shoulders of his shirt. Merrin had her feet on the ground and her head between her knees. The storm was already tapering off, just dripping quietly in the leaves overhanging the dirt road now.
“You all right?” he asked. She nodded. He went on, “Let’s take Terry home, and then I want you to come over to my place and tell me what happened. I’ll fix you a drink, and you can unload. That’ll make you feel better.”
“No. No thank you. I just want to be alone right now. I need to do some thinking.”
“You don’t want to be alone tonight. In your state of mind, that’d be the worst thing. Hey, and look. You have to come to my place. I fixed your cross. I want to put it on you.”
“No, Lee. I just want to go home and get into some dry things and be by myself.”
He felt another flash of annoyance—it was just like her to think she could put him off indefinitely, to expect him to pick her up from The Pit and dutifully drive her where she wanted to go with nothing in return—and then he pushed the feeling aside. He eyed her in her wet skirt and blouse, shivering steadily, then went around to the trunk. He got his gym duffel, brought
“Got gym clothes. Shirt. Pants. They’re dry and they’re warm, and there’s no sick on them.”
She hesitated, then took the strap of the bag and rose from the car. “Thank you, Lee.” Not meeting his eyes.
He didn’t let go of the bag, held on to it, held on to her for a moment, kept her from striding away into the night to change. “You had to do it, you know. It was crazy, thinking that you could—that either of you could—”
She said, “I just want to change, okay?” She tugged the bag out of his hand.
Merrin turned and walked stiffly away, her tight skirt stuck to her thighs. She passed through the headlights, and her blouse went as clear as waxed paper. She stepped around the chain and continued on into the dark, up the road. But before she disappeared, she turned her head and gave Lee a frowning look, one eyebrow raised in a way that seemed to ask a question—or offer an invitation. Follow me. Then she was gone.
Lee lit a cigarette and smoked it, standing next to the car, wondering if it would be all right to go after her, not sure he wanted to head into the woods with Terry watching. But in a minute or two, he checked and saw that Terry had stretched out across the backseat with an arm over his eyes. He had rapped his head good, had a red scrape close to the right temple, and he’d been pretty out of it even before that, as baked as a Thanksgiving turkey. It was funny, being out here at the foundry, where he had first met Terry Perrish the day he blew up the big frozen bird with Eric Hannity. He remembered Terry’s joint and felt in his pocket for it. Maybe a couple tokes would settle Merrin’s stomach and make her less shrill.
He watched Terry another minute, but when he didn’t stir, Lee flipped his cigarette butt into the wet grass and started up the road after her. He followed the gravel ruts around a slight curve and up a hill, and there was the foundry, framed against a sky of boiling black clouds. With its towering smokestack, it looked like a factory built to produce nightmares in mass quantities. The wet grass glistened and shook in the wind. He thought perhaps she had walked up to the crumbling keep of black brick and shadows, was changing there, but then he heard her hiss at him from the dark, to the left.