David Corbett - The Devil’s Redhead

He put his head in his hands. It wasn’t that he thought it was true, he just couldn’t convince himself it wasn’t true, and that felt close enough to guilt to settle the point. Regardless, he had a pretty fair idea that Shel would never forgive him. Not completely. There’d always be that doubt- You wanted it. Sure, he could tell her, tell himself, that he was only keen to save her, he was desperate, his intentions were, if not entirely pure, at least clear. But that didn’t explain the vaguely sadistic relief he’d felt, the satisfaction flickering at the edge of his horror as he’d snapped picture after picture of Frank’s smoldering, piecemeal remains. I wouldn’t cry too hard if he ended up on the bloody end of a stick.

So this is the way one learns, he thought- like Faust, like Bluebeard’s bride- there is no greater curse on earth than a gratified wish.

He increased the hot water, edging back the cold, until his skin scalded red and it hurt to sit there. He lifted his head back. The guilty are so sentimental, he thought, fingering his scapular. He pictured Shel as he’d last seen her and shortly he was unable to breathe. He put his face in his hand and the fingers came away with a melting thread of blood. He pulled himself up, stumbled, turned the water off and listened to the drain.

Yes indeed, atonement would most definitely be preferable to this.

In the mirror his eyes seemed fathomless points. On the way to the motel, he and Waxman had stopped at a drugstore to buy a tube of Unguentine. The name reminded him of a high school algebra teacher, Sister Norbertine. Named for the patron saint of soothing ointments. His hand trembled as he put the stuff to his skin.

Waxman returned with a sack of clothes and some toiletries. As Abatangelo pulled the fresh shirt and trousers from the sack, Waxman spread out on the bed a local newspaper and a map of Solano County he’d bought. He sat there staring at them, then said, “While I was out, I made another call to the police.”

Abatangelo froze. “And?”

“I had to, you realize. It was wrong, my just leaving the scene like that.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, hands clenched in his lap.

“You told them it was a suicide.”

“I gave them my name. I confirmed I was the one who’d called earlier, and said I would be contacting them later tonight or early tomorrow with a lawyer to discuss at length what happened out there. But yes, I also told them it was a suicide. I verified that.”

He looked up, his eyes a misery.

Abatangelo said, “Thank you.” Nodding toward the maps and newspaper, he added, “What’s the reading material?”

“That party I mentioned,” Waxman said, turning to open the paper, “the one for Moreira’s daughter. Turns out it’s tonight. There’s a little piece about it here in the Socials. It’s called a quinceañera , a sort of coming-out party for Mexican debutantes.” He checked the map. “From the description they give of this place, it looks like we cut through farmland, then turn south around here, near a place called Bird’s Landing.”

Abatangelo, removing pins from the shirt Waxman had bought, said, “Call your editor, Wax. You’re going to want someone to know where you are, why you’re there, and what to think if you don’t come back.”

Waxman looked up from the map. “If your intent is to frighten me, consider your work well done.”

“No,” Abatangelo said, putting his new shirt on. Stiff from sizing, it felt like butcher paper against his skin. “That’s not my intent.”

Waxman nodded. He went to the phone, called his editor, left a VoiceMail message and returned to the bed. He sat there looking toward the window. The curtains were drawn; there was no view to invite his gaze.

“This is going to sound odd,” he said finally, not turning around. “But ever since the explosion, and our walking around the flames and the debris? I’ve been unable to keep this image out of my head. It’s a schoolbook illustration, from some reader I had in grade school. It’s a picture of Icarus. He’s fallen in flames from the sky.” Waxman chuckled disconsolately. “I can’t seem to chase it from my mind.”

Abatangelo regarded him for a moment, then said, “That wasn’t a fable out there.”

Waxman looked at him finally. “Do you actually believe that these people are going to go ahead with this bizarre exchange? I mean, what has Felix Randall got to trade now?”

“It’s not about that,” Abatangelo said, pulling on his trousers. “I doubt it ever was.”

Waxman turned around to face him squarely, hands folded in his lap. “Then explain it to me.”

Abatangelo sighed. “The trick, Wax, is not to think too hard. God knows they don’t. Just a bunch of hoods, out to save their reputations.” Buckling his belt, he added, “Christ, we were fluff compared to these guys.”

“One would suppose,” Waxman said, “that no one knows that better than they do.”

“I wasn’t trying to claim privilege. Okay? I simply meant, as I recall, it was decidedly not the issue to kill anyone.”

“I think it reasonable to conclude that matters have gotten out of hand.”

Abatangelo laughed. “You’re a big help.”

“What do you want me to say? We were the blissful children of Aquarius? We were hippies and humanists, we got suckered into the concept of progress on the one hand and noble savagery on the other. Didn’t dawn on us the two conflicted just a bit. History was one grand push toward our own irrefutable excellence, except we were excellent to begin with before progress got in the way. That and a few other snags fucked up an otherwise nifty philosophy. Ergo, we learned the usual way, the ugly way, that life indeed is nasty, brutish and short, human nature is in a rut, and noble it ain’t. Basically, we’re pigs.”

Abatangelo sat down beside him on the bed, pulling on his socks. “I remember not feeling like a pig,” he said.

“Absent the grace of God,” Waxman intoned, “we are the scum of the universe. Satan’s little chancres. And, from all available evidence, God has been stingy with the grace of late.”

“Echo,” Abatangelo said.

Waxman regarded him quizzically. “I beg your pardon?”

“Echo. It’s Kierkegaard’s term for grace. Men of virtue perform good acts, it creates an echo of grace upon them and other men who follow their example.”

Waxman grimaced. “Metaphors do not constitute theology.”

Abatangelo stood up. “Yeah, well, back to your point about pigs. I gotta tell you, Wax. I’ll cop to what I’ve done. But the first time I came close to wanting to kill somebody was the past few days. And it had nothing to do with business.”

Waxman reflected on this and after a moment offered a diffident shrug. “The drugs are different. I’ll grant you that.”

Abatangelo shook his head. “There’ve been treacherous assholes all along. If you were smart, they were no big problem. They could be fooled, or avoided. Or bought off. But there’s a different wind these days. Maybe it’s all the crank, the crack, the nasty edgy shit they make people want. Maybe it’s just the money, I don’t know. But there’s so much blood in the air it’s almost sacrificial.”

Waxman rubbed his knees. “There are those who would consider your nostalgia for innocence wildly self-deluded.”

“ ‘Innocent’ isn’t the term I used. I never said ‘innocent.’ ”

“Not explicitly, no,” Waxman conceded. “But crank didn’t show up yesterday. When I was in high school I prowled the Haight for acid like a crazed lab rat. I was a poster child for the scene. But then all that bad product hit the street. They laced the tabs with speed, whoever ‘they’ were, and there were delicious rumors over that, too. Things turned very nasty almost overnight. Even an idiot could have predicted it, given what freaks like me were ingesting.”