Giles Blunt - Forty Words for Sorrow

"Miss Soames, tell me something."

Here we go. Edie started straightening the cash in her drawer, putting all the bills faceup.

"Miss Soames, I just want to ask you something. I just want to ask you if you are having a hobby, or some other line of endeavor you are pursuing. Music, perhaps. Philately or some such."

"Yeah, I have a hobby." Killing people, she was tempted to say, just to see the expression on his silly brown face. "Special things I like to do."

"I am glad, Miss Soames. Because you will never be a success in dealing with the public. You are lacking the required sympathy."

"Who cares? Sympathy is for weaklings."

"For weaklings? You have been reading some terrible philosopher, I take it. That poor lady has no money. It hurts her when prices go up. Can you not spare a kind word for her?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"What does it hurt you to say, 'Yes it's a shame,' or some such? You are not losing anything by it."

They were interrupted by a dark-haired lady who bought six boxes of henna. It was the beginning of the late rush. Someone else purchased damn near a year's supply of My-lanta Gas. One day they stock up on Kaopectate, next day it's Ex-Lax, Edie thought. We get 'em coming and going. A young woman bought three different cold remedies and shampoo and nail polish and conditioner. A curly-haired woman bought stuff to straighten her hair, and a girl with perfectly straight hair that Edie envied bought stuff to make hair curl. Edie herself had tried every remedy under the sun- as a Pharma-City employee, she got a ten-percent discount- but none of the ointments, creams, and steroids made the slightest difference to the dead glare of her skin. "Hey, Edie," she remembered one of her high-school contemporaries shouting at her. "You been sticking your head in the oven again? Next time don't use a microwave!" She carried the memory like an old bullet lodged in her rib cage.

A boy bought a dozen Sheiks from her. Condoms were kept behind the counter, and the boys never bought them from Margo; they felt safer with an ugly woman. Margo was working away at her cash register, happy as a lark. Margo was such a birdbrain that she actually enjoyed the stupid job. Since Edie had stopped speaking to her, Margo was at a loss during slow times; she would pull out her People magazine and flip through the same old tired stories, month after month, cracking her gum.

Edie was slipping on her parka when a man in a dark-blue blazer said, "Miss Soames, would you come with me, please?"

He was with the security company. He would catch shoplifters and yell at them in front of the whole store to humiliate them. Struk, his name was. Edie followed him into the little office upstairs, where a fat female security guard sat in front of a surveillance monitor. Struk pointed at her purse. "Miss Soames, would you open that, please?"

"Why? I haven't taken anything."

"Pharma-City reserves the right to spot-check its employees. You signed a release when you were hired."

Edie opened her purse. Struk carefully fingered his way through her Kleenex, her address book, her chewing gum. He even went through her wallet. Did he suppose she was hiding condoms in it?

"Would you turn out your pockets, please?"

"Why?"

"Just do it. Otherwise, I'll have Franny here pat you down. Let's get it over with."

Two minutes later she was back outside the office, straightening her purse. Margo was joking with Struk as he led her into the office. They left the door open, and Edie heard Struk go through the drill once more.

"Help yourself," Margo said. "Nothing in there but makeup and chewing gum."

"Uh-huh." There was a pause. "And I bet you're gonna tell me you have a prescription for these."

"Are those pills? I didn't put those in there. They're not mine, I swear. I don't know how they got in there."

"Don't lie to me. This is grounds for dismissal. There must be fifty diazepam here. How did they get into your purse?"

"I don't know! I swear I don't! I didn't take them, you have to believe me! Someone must've put them in my purse!"

"And why would anyone do a thing like that?"

Margo had broken down in tears by then, and Edie didn't hang around to hear the rest. She hurried downstairs and out into the shopping mall. Suddenly, she was in such a good mood that she went straight into Kmart and bought herself a new pair of shoes.

WHEN she got home from the mall Edie kicked off her snowboots, which were soaked through with slush, and went upstairs in damp socks to check on Gram. The old biddy was snoring away, mouth hanging open like a garage door. She hadn't even asked about the gunshots the other day, more concerned about the shouting. Time to check on the prisoner.

The three bolts were still in place. Edie put her ear to the door and listened for a full minute before opening it. Eric had told her not to speak to the prisoner unless he was there, too, but they'd been holding him so long, Edie could no longer resist. What was the point of having a prisoner, if you couldn't show him who was boss?

He was seated upright in the chair, his wrists and ankles still securely fastened. The blanket had fallen off, leaving him completely naked. His entire body was pimpled with goose bumps.

He raised his head when Edie came in. Above the taped mouth, the eyes were red and pleading.

Edie sniffed. "Couldn't wait, could you. Pig." They hadn't fed him for at least twenty-four hours, or given him anything to drink, so using the basin they had set under the hole in his chair seemed a deliberate provocation.

She checked his leg wound. It was just a little hole with a bit of a burn around it, nothing serious.

The prisoner was trying to say something, grunting and groaning under the tape. Edie sat on the bed and observed him. "Pardon me, prisoner? Can't hear you." The red eyes bulged wider, the groans were louder. "What's that, prisoner? Speak up."

Whatever it was he was trying to communicate, he must have been shouting it. It filtered through the tape as a kind of subterranean roar.

"Stop that racket. I'll get a screwdriver and stick it in your bullet hole. Want me to do that?"

The prisoner shook his head in a comic, exaggerated way.

She squatted down in front of him. "You know the only reason you're still alive?" she said softly. "I'll tell you. The only reason you're still alive, prisoner, is because we're trying to find a place where no one will hear you scream."

Suddenly a hot tear fell on Edie's wrist, and she jumped back, staring at it. "Bastard," she said, and spit, catching him square in the face.

The prisoner bent his head down to evade her.

Edie had to squat down again to get him. She spat at him again and again- calmly, there was no passion in it- and after a while her prisoner stopped even trying to avoid it. Edie kept spitting until his face was glistening all over. She didn't stop until she was completely out of spit.

CARDINAL led Fast Freddie back to his cell and ushered him inside. "I had nothing to do with no killings, and you know it. You ain't got a shred of evidence."

For the tenth time, Cardinal told Fast Freddie that no one suspected him of any killings, but Fast Freddie was a small-town drunk and druggie- he lived out beyond Corbeil when he was not in jail- and being charged with murder would be the only interesting thing that ever happened to him.

"I have an alibi, you son of a bitch. I can prove where I was, and you know it. I'm gonna have Bob Brackett on your case, man. Fix your ass good."

Of course Freddie could prove where he was: Approximately twenty-seven inmates at the district jail- not to mention the guards- could testify that Fast Freddie had been securely locked in that institution for the past two years less a day. Cardinal had confirmed this within ten minutes of Fast Freddie's crack-up on Highway 11. He closed the cell door.