Norman Partridge - Slippin' into Darkness

The car paused. The window on the passenger side was down. A single sound broke the night. Each man heard it, but only Marvis recognized it as the rasping percussion of a speed-winder, the device used by professional photographers to take a quick sequence of photos.

The car spit exhaust and disappeared around the comer.

And Bat Bautista’s words filled Marvis’s ears: “Click. Click. Click. You missed the best shot, Shutterbug. But that’s okay. I’m still waiting for you, and this time…I’m ready!”

The words danced in Shutterbug’s head. He was still thinking about the car and the sound of the speed-winder. It was difficult to split his concentration after the beer and the coke. A minute passed before Bat’s statement coalesced in his brain.

Bautista slapped the yearbook against Shutterbug’s Nautilus-constructed chest. “It’s what she wrote in your yearbook, numbnuts,” he said.

Shutterbug stared at a glowing streetlight. In his mind it was a big flashbulb that was taking an inordinate amount of time to die. And suddenly the words April had written were with him in that strange afterglow between unforgiving brightness and complete darkness, forcing every other thought from his head, and he could almost hear her whisper riding the warm April breeze.

They could call the place a mobile home park if they wanted to. That was okay with Amy. The name game was as old as advertising itself. But she knew what kind of people lived in places like this, and she didn’t think of them as “mobile home” trash.

Trailer trash. That was what you called people who ended their lives as April Destino had, holed up with a broken air-conditioner in a tin prison that could have passed for the hotbox in Cool Hand Luke.

Amy snatched a cushion from the worn sofa, unzipped it, and found nothing inside but a hunk of foam rubber that smelled like a whore’s sour sweat. Businesslike blonde bangs tickled her eyebrows as she shook her head. Unbelievable. She didn’t even know what she was looking for, but here she was, on a treasure hunt, ripping apart April Destino’s place.

Not that she had gotten very far. She’d only searched the coat closet in the living room, but already she was sweating like common trailer- No. She wouldn’t start thinking like that. She didn’t have anything in common with April Destino.

And that had to be the understatement of the year. Amy had to laugh at April’s place. A velvet Hendrix hung on the wall, next to a faded picture of Amy with the cheerleading squad. A pressed-wood coffee table sat before a tattered couch. Several tabloids were scattered on the scarred table. Movie star tabloids, not the space alien kind-doodled whiskers on Di’s chinny-chin-chin, sagging saddlebags drooping under Liz Taylor’s eyes, Michael Jackson needing no doodles to look like the Phantom of the Opera. Imitation oak bookcases stocked by the Trailer Trash Psychic Library lined one wall; books on dreams and reincarnation and Elvis’s undying spirit and numerology were wedged between plastic plants and the components of an ancient Panasonic stereo.

Amy was tempted to remove the foam speaker covers. It was possible that April might have hidden her legacy between the barker and tweeter, or whatever the hell those things were called. Certainly such useless facts would have clogged her mind if she were a man. But she was a woman. Her mind was thankfully free of any esoteric knowledge concerning stereos or automobiles or long-dead baseball players.

That kind of info undoubtedly filled Doug Douglas’s brain. Just thinking about him annoyed her. Doug Douglas was actually ordering her around. Doug Douglas. If she had only begun exploring the divorce a year ago, instead of today, it wouldn’t have mattered that Doug had caught her with Ethan. But she had wanted to make it look as if she’d really made a go of the marriage in hopes of gaining a better settlement. Earlier today-yesterday actually, since it was now well past midnight-she’d talked to a lawyer for the first time. The meeting had gone extraordinarily well, so well that the trip to Ethan’s apartment was to have been a celebration.

If Doug did anything with his photos now… Well, the results would be disastrous. She had to do as he said. She had to do what April wanted.

And that meant looking around this damn trailer, not sitting on her butt, because she had to have those photos.

Amy searched the lower shelves of the bookcase, shaking her head over some genuine relics-an eight-track tape player and a leaning stack of tapes, each roughly the size of a sandwich. Starland Vocal Band. War. Earth, Wind, amp; Fire. Bay City Rollers. The Bee Gees. Talk about your moldy oldies. Amy wouldn’t listen to that kind of stuff. Not tonight, not ever. Not even during one of her most perverse, depressed, self-loathing PMS attacks.

Maybe April had left a taped message for her. Amy flipped open a little black door and peered inside the eight-track.

Caught herself lying there on the floor.

Pictured herself as she would look to someone entering the room.

Unbelievable. April Destino wasn’t going to pull any Mission: Impossible stuff. She wasn’t that smart.

Amy sighed. It was late, and the air conditioner in April Destino’s trailer was broken. Amy was hungry and tired. She aimed a long breath through pursed lips at her sweaty forehead, but the businesslike bangs that were plastered there didn’t even move. Maybe she’d just cash it in. Let her husband see the pictures. Maybe they’d turn him on. Nothing else seemed to-

The phone rang.

“Are we having fun yet?”

“No, Doug. We’re not.”

“Oh, come on. You used to have so much fun going through other people’s stuff.”

“Look…why don’t you just tell me what I’m looking for, and where it is?” Amy’s voice softened. “I’m tired. And I really wish you’d think about my offer. We’ve got some time. My husband won’t be back for another week. I have money, Doug, and I’m prepared to be generous if you’ll meet me half-”

“C’mon, Amy. You’re not getting into the spirit of things. Don’t you remember the day that April quit school? I remember it…the night after the day, anyway. You and me were at the drive-in. I think we were sitting through The Exorcist for the millionth rime. Not that we watched the movie. God, you were horny that night. Breaking into April’s locker really got you all hot and bothered. I thought it was weird, you getting turned on by something like that. But, hey, I wasn’t going to complain.”

“This isn’t like that at all, Doug.”

“Oh, I think it is. You just don’t know it yet. You haven’t seen what April left for you.”

Amy was tired of talking. She didn’t say anything.

“Amy?”

“Yes?”

“Did you ever imagine what it was like for April when she opened that locker?”

No answer.

“For one thing, she said she never forgot the smell. Greasy-sweet. And then one of the condoms you’d glued to the inside of the door dropped onto her wrist and stuck there like a slimy worm. She looked into the locker and saw the white stuff smeared all over her cheerleading sweater, and the eight ball lying there in the middle of it, and she gagged on that greasy-sweet smell…even though by then she realized it was only mayonnaise. And then the fear hit her for real. She almost threw up. She never forgot that feeling. She never forgot how it was to walk out of that school knowing that every person she saw might have been the one who hated her enough to trash her locker and hurt her like that. Like they say, that was the straw that broke-”

“Look, I’m sure you’ve memorized a veritable cornucopia of cliches that April requested you share with me. I’m especially fond of the one about the whore with the heart of gold. But much as I’d love to sit here and chat, I’ve got to go.”