Lee Child - First Thrills

The meterman stepped back from the pool. Where there are rats, there are snakes.

He heard a television blasting. It was a game show. A crowd roared; Wheel of Fortune.

Some old person , he thought. Can’t hear.

He rang the back doorbell, then pounded on the door. He walked over to the glass sliding door, looked in the window through the gap in the vertical Levelors. He saw Victor-his profile sagging, his hair bristling, his leather hands were clamping black talons dimpling the armrests.

When the gurney wheeled out onto the driveway, the silver cord that attached Victor to the brown husk dissolved. He floated freely, into the cloudless sky, looking down at the streets in their tidy grids, the rows of palm trees lined up so neatly, so intentionally, and the swimming pools, blue and twinkling like merry gems.

As he floated higher, Victor realized, without alarm, that the shimmering silver pieces that suggested his form were drifting apart. The spaces between the silver became wider, and wider, until there was nothing but space. A brief thought flashed. Victor knew that he would, himself, be on television that evening. And he felt curiously happy, because he no longer cared.

CYNTHIA ROBINSONlives in San Francisco. She is the author of the Max Bravo series of black comedy mysteries. St. Martin’s Press is publishing The Dog Park Club in 2010 and The Barbary Galahad in 2011.

I’ vejust killed Carol Ann. Sweet, innocent Carol Ann. Her blond hair flows down her back and trails in the spreading pool of blood. What have I done?

I’ve known Carol Ann for nearly my whole life. Every memory from my childhood is permeated by the blonde angel who moved in across the street when I was five or so. Skipping up the street after the ice cream truck, getting lost in the shadows during a game of hide-and-seek, watching her sit in the window of her pink room, brushing that glorious hair. We were two peas in a pod, two sides of the same coin. Best friends forever. Forever just turned out to be an awful long time.

Our relationship started as benignly as you’d expect. I’d seen the moving truck leave and knew that a family had taken the Estes’ house. Mrs. Estes died, left her son with bills and a dozen cats. I missed the cats. I’d wondered about the family, then went back to my own world.

Carol Ann spied me sitting on our front step, twirling my fingers through the dandelions in the flowerbeds. Mama had sent me out to pluck the poor, insignificant weeds from the ground, worried they’d ruin her prized flowers. Mama’s flowerbeds were local legend. The best in three states. At least that’s what the members of the garden club said about them. Full to the brim with the heady blooms of gardenias, azaleas, jasmine, roses, sweet peas, hydrangea, daylilies, iris, rhododendrons, ferns, fertile clumps of monkey grass, and a smattering of black-eyed Susans… the list went on and on. A green thumb, Mama had. She could make any flower grow and peak under her watchful gaze. All but me, that is. Her Lily.

I was crying about something that day, I don’t remember what. It was past ninety degrees, a sweltering summer afternoon. A shadow cast darkness across my right foot. A strange girl stood on the sidewalk in front of the A-frame house I grew up in. A yellow-haired goddess. When she spoke, I felt a rush of love.

“Hey girl,” she said. “Would you like to play?”

“Do I wanna play?” I answered, suddenly numb with fright. I’d never had a playmate before. Most folks’ kids steered clear of me. The nearest child my age was a bed-ridden boy who smelled funny and coughed constantly. Mama made me go over there once, but after I screamed as loud as I could and pulled his hair, she didn’t make me go back. Mama’s garden-club friends didn’t bring their spawn to visit with me while they played canasta under the billowing tent in the backyard. There was no one else.

“Are you simple or something?” the girl asked.

“Simple?”

“Oh, never mind.” She turned her back and started away toward the river, skipping every third step. She wore a white dress with a pink ribbon tied in the back in a big bow-the kind I’d only ever wear on Easter, to go to church with Mama. Even from behind, she was perfect.

“Wait!”

My voice rang as true and strong as it ever had, deep as a church bell. She stopped, dead in her tracks, and turned to me slowly. Her eyes were wide, bluer than Mama’s china teapot. Then she smiled.

“Well. Who knew you’d sound like that? I’m Carol Ann. It’s nice to meet you.”

She strode to me, her hand raised. I’d never shaken hands with a girl my age before. It struck me as awfully romantic. She grasped my hand in hers.

“How do,” I mumbled.

“Now, is that any way to greet your dearest friend?” Her voice had a lilt to it, Southern definitely, but something foreign, too. She squeezed my hand a little harder, her little fingers pinching mine.

“That hurts. Stop it.” I tried to shake loose, but she was like a barnacle I’d seen on Tappy’s boat once. Tappy took care of the rest of the yard for us. He wasn’t allowed to touch the flowerbeds, but someone had to mow and weed and prune. Mama could grow grass like nobody’s business, too.

“Not until you do it right. My God, am I going to have to teach you manners as well as how to bathe?”

She wrinkled her nose at me and I realized how sweet she smelled. Just like Mama’s flowers. I was lost. I looked her straight in those china blue eyes, my dull brown irises meeting hers. I cleared my throat, but I didn’t smile.

“It’s nice to meet you as well.”

She dropped my hand then and laughed, a tinkling, musical sound like wind chimes on a breezy afternoon. She had me enthralled in a moment.

“Let’s go skip rocks in the river.”

“I’m not allowed. Mama says-”

“Oh, you’re one of those .” She dragged the last word out, gave it an extra syllable and emphasis.

“One of what?” My hackles rose. Two minutes and we were having our first fight. It should have been a warning. Instead it made my blood boil.

She smiled coyly. “A mama’s girl.”

Back then, I thought it was an insult. I reached out to smack her one good, but she pranced away, closer to the river which each skip.

“Mama’s girl, mama’s girl.” She singsonged and danced and I followed, my chin set, incensed. Before I knew it, we were on the river, a whole block away from Mama’s house. I wasn’t allowed to go to the river. A boy drowned the summer past, no one I really knew, but all the grown-ups decided it wasn’t safe for us to play down there. This girl was new, she wouldn’t know any better. I didn’t want to be a mama’s girl anymore.

Mama skinned my hide that night. She’d called and called for me to come to dinner, had Tappy look for me. Carol Ann and I were too busy to hear. We skipped rocks, whistled through pieces of grass turned sideways between our thumbs, and dug for worms. I showed her how to bait a line and she nearly fainted dead away when I put a warm, wriggling worm in her hand. Tappy found us right after sunset and took me home screaming over his shoulder. The joy I felt wouldn’t be suffused by Mama’s switch. Never again. I had a friend, and her name was Carol Ann.

It was the first of many concessions to her whims.

“My Goodness, Lily, can’t you try to look happy? You’re all sweet and clean, and we’ll have some ice cream after, if you’re good. All right?”