Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

She remembered, all right. They had been in his bed. He had been studying her hand, fingers entwined with his. He had kissed the underside of her wrist, her beating pulse.

He said, “I promised you that, right?”

Now she was getting scared. “Yes.”

His screen door opened and a woman stepped out, wiping wetness from her chin as though she had just slurped water from a sink tap.

A bomb went off. The planet cracked open with a tremendous, shuddering roar, and Tracy stood in a deep crater of earth now, the heated air buzzing around her with smoke and steam.

The woman saw Tracy and stopped. They recognized each other.

Oh my God.

Wanda Tedmond.

“Ha,” said Wanda, stopping. “What do you know?” She looked at Donny with surprise that, by the time she looked back at Tracy, turned mocking. “Tracy Mithers, right? The llama girl.”

Tracy stared at the skinny girl’s filthy bare feet.

Wanda walked down the steps and across the stone landing to the grass. “I helped myself to some water, hope that was okay.”

She was talking to Donny. Familiar with him.

Her toes were wide-spaced and short and ugly. The nails were unpainted and ground down. The dirt around the bottoms of her heels looked congealed with blood.

Wanda said to him, “You should have told me you were expecting someone.”

Her collarbone stood out like a hanger on which her overwashed blue tank top hung, her bony legs rising into beige, Juniors-department Adidas shorts with white piping held up by no hips at all. She wore sweatbands on her forearms like she was a rapper, and a pair of men’s sunglasses sat perched on the bridge of her nose, chrome-rimmed, wide and obnoxious on her underfed face.

Tracy looked at Maddox. He looked right back at her.

“Tomboy cutoffs,” Wanda said, eyeing Tracy. She wasn’t at all flummoxed by the awkwardness of their encounter. “The farm girl look. That works, huh? Once you scrub all that llama shit off your knees, I guess.”

The artlessness of the insult stunned Tracy. They had no history Tracy was aware of, good or bad, none at all. If she was exacting revenge, it was not at Tracy’s expense: it was at Donny’s. And that shocked Tracy even more.

“Anyways,” said Wanda, “I wouldn’t want to intrude. Just stopped by to say hi.” She smiled at Donny and started away, passing a few steps wide of Tracy. “Bye.”

Closer, the more hideous Wanda appeared to Tracy. Skinny verging on frail, her hair a sweaty, mustardy mess, making her look drowned. Her limp boobs were barely covered by the stringy tank; Tracy saw ribs pressing through its sides. And she had sores. Like pimples but without whiteheads on them. Scratch marks on her neck.

Say something.

“See you around,” said Tracy. Not brilliant, but sort of cutting.

“Oh, definitely,” said Wanda, with a quick little smile back at Tracy that said, Game on, slut.

Wanda walked away with her head angled down, knowing her skinny backside had an audience. She reached the FOR SALE sign and turned the corner.

No car. Barefoot, no shoes in her hands. No handbag, no pockets, even. Wanda Tedmond had walked all this way without any money or keys. For what?

Tracy waited many moments before turning back to Donny. She wanted to say something poised. Her heart was pounding in her ears.

“Well,” she said. “That was a surprise.”

Donny was nodding. “For me too.”

“Really.”

“Entirely.”

“Hm,” she said through tight lips, trying to keep from shaking. She kept swallowing, to calm herself, looking out toward the wetlands but not seeing anything.

Donny said, “She asked to use the bathroom.”

“For what, to shoot up drugs in there?”

“What do you know about shooting drugs?”

“What do you know about having a girl like that inside your house?”

“You notice, I stayed outside.”

“Because you knew I was coming.”

She might have been yelling. It was a possibility. She stopped speaking for a little while because she did not want to seem hysterical. Her mother was the one who got hysterical.

Tracy felt the sun boring a hole into her. “I only wish you had told me you liked girls that skinny. Girls on a sperm-only diet.”

Wow. The smile stretching her cheeks felt tight as a strap. The burning in her throat was acid left over from the taste of those words.

Donny retreated to his front step and sat down. His strategy was to try and wait her out.

Tracy said, “Isn’t she with Bucky Pail already?”

“I believe so.”

“So one Black Falls cop isn’t enough for her? Does she want to take on all six at once?”

“This is how women talk about each other when the gloves come off?”

“When one is sniffing around my man? You bet. ”

She then had a wild thought that he was holding back a smile.

“Am I being ridiculous?” she said, her voice getting away from her again. “Do I look ridiculous? Do I look hysterical ?”

“No. You look pissed, and you have every right.”

“You’re goddamn right about that, mister.” Mister? She nodded like she had won the argument. “ Goddamn right about that.” She folded her arms and walked in a neat little circle. “So what are you going to tell me? This has something to do with work?”

“That’s right.”

“Her walking halfway across town barefoot to your house. On a Saturday afternoon. Uninvited?”

“Completely uninvited.”

She was the cop now, checking his eyes for lies. Breaking down his alibi. “But you won’t tell me why.”

“I don’t know why.”

She stopped. “Come on. ”

“I did not invite her here. I don’t know why she showed up.”

Tracy threw her hands out at him. “How do you know her at all? You’re a Black Falls cop. An auxiliary patrolman, part-time!” The pounding surged inside her again. “Fine. Then why do you think she came here, to you, today, this hour?”

“Honestly? For sex. And possibly air-conditioning.”

Tracy kept staring. The thought was so repulsive to her, she needed to show him how much it hurt by baring her wound. “And what about me?” she said. “Is that what I come here for?”

He very wisely declined to answer that.

“She was inside your house, ” said Tracy. “That no-ass trash. ”

Tracy remembered when Wanda repeated eleventh grade and wound up in some of Tracy’s study periods and gym class. How she was always being sent to the office. A hard girl with hashed-up hair and an underage, oversexed snarl, who made out with boys between classes, right there in the hallway. When Wanda dropped out for good halfway through the year, every single girl in Tracy’s class sighed with relief.

“So she’s poor,” Tracy said. “And we’re all supposed to feel sorry for her. But, God — I could loan her a bra if she needs one. I work. I might get my knees rough working around a barn, but I don’t need to live off a man.”

He nodded, infuriating her.

“And me, stupid me — I was coming here to apologize to you. For my mother this morning. For the way she lumped you in with the rest of the cops in town.” She shook her head. “It’s proof anyway that my mother doesn’t know anything about us. No one did — until today. Until Wanda fucking Tedmond. But, whatever.”

It was stupid. The afternoon was ruined, the day was ruined, everything was ruined. When Tracy got disappointed like this, she always thought of her mother, who was the queen of disappointment. She remembered her scowling at Donny that morning.

“What did Pinty mean? ‘If I can take it, you can too’?”