T. Boyle - If the River Was Whiskey

Instantly, the scene was transformed. Whereas a moment earlier they’d been calm, civilized people having a drink before a calm, civilized meal, they were suddenly transformed into hand-wringing zombies, helpless in the face of the technology that assaulted them. For Sid had activated the alarm and no one, least of all Ellis, knew what to do about it. The EMERGENCY strip was flashing wildly, the alarm beep-beep-beeping, the girls and the Carfarcts’ boy fleeing the TV room in confusion, four pairs of hands fluttering helplessly over the box, and Ellis trying to dredge up the disarm code from the uncertain pocket of memory in which it was stored. “One-two-two-one!” Hilary shouted. Tina was holding her ears and making a face. Sid looked abashed.

When at last — after two false starts — Ellis had succeeded in disarming the thing and they’d settled back with their drinks and exclamations of “Jesus!” and “I thought I was going to die,” there was a knock at the door. It was a man in a SecureCo uniform, with nightstick and gun. He was tall and he had a mustache. He invited himself in. “There a problem?” he asked.

“No, no,” Ellis said, standing in the entranceway, heart pounding, acutely aware of his guests’ eyes on him, “it’s a new system and we, uh — it was a mistake.”

“Name?” the man said.

“Hunsicker. Ellis.”

“Code word?”

Here Ellis faltered. The code word, to be used for purposes of positive identification in just such a situation as this, was Hilary’s inspiration. Pick something easy to remember, the SecureCo woman had said, and Hilary had chosen the name of the kids’ pet rabbit, Honey Bunny. Ellis couldn’t say the words. Not in front of this humorless man in the mustache, not with Sid and Tina watching him with those tight mocking smiles on their lips…

“Code word?” the man repeated.

Hilary was sunk into the couch at the far end of the coffee table. She leaned forward and raised her hand like a child in class, waving it to catch the guard’s attention. “Honey Bunny,” she said in a gasp that made the hair prickle at the back of Ellis’ neck, “it’s Honey Bunny.”

That had been two nights ago.

But now, in the clear light of Saturday morning, after sleeping the sleep of the just — and prudent (Panty Rapist — all the Panty Rapists in the world could escape and it was nothing to him) — feeling self-satisfied and content right on down to the felt lining of his slippers, Ellis sat back, stretched, and gave his wife a rich little smile. “I guess it’s a matter of priorities, honey,” he said. “Sid and Tina can think what they want, but you know what I say — better safe than sorry.”

When she talked about it afterward — with her husband at Gennaro’s that night (she was too upset to cook), with her sister, with Betty Berger on the telephone — Giselle said she’d never been so scared in all her life. She meant it too. This was no horror story clipped from the newspaper, this was real. And it happened to her.

The guy was crazy. Creepy. Sick. He’d kept her there over four hours, and he had no intention of buying anything — she could see that in the first fifteen minutes. He just wanted an audience. Somebody to rant at, to threaten, to pin down with those jittery blue eyes. Richard had wanted her to go to the police, but she balked. What had he done, really? Scared her, yes. Bruised her arm. But what could the police do — she’d gone there of her own free will.

Her own free will. He’d said that. Those were his exact words.

Indignant, maybe a little shaken, she’d got up from the kitchen table to stuff her papers back into the briefcase. He was cursing under his breath, muttering darkly about the idiots on the freeway in their big-ass Mercedeses, crowding him, about spics and niggers and junior-high kids cutting through his yard—“Free country, my ass!” he’d shouted suddenly. “Free for every punk and weirdo and greaser to crap all over what little bit I got left, but let me get up from this table and put a couple holes in one of the little peckerheads and we’ll see how it is. And I suppose you’re going to protect me, huh, Miss Mercedes Benz with your heels and stockings and your big high-tech alarm system, huh?”

When she snapped the briefcase closed — no sale, nothing, just get me out of here, she was thinking — that was when he grabbed her arm. “Sit down,” he snarled, and she tried to shake free but couldn’t, he was strong with the rage of the psychopath, the lion in its den, the loony up against the wall.

“You’re hurting me,” she said as he forced her back down. “Mr.…Coles!” and she heard her own voice jump with anger, fright, pain.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said, tightening his grip, “but you came here of your own free will, didn’t you? Thought you were going to sucker me, huh? Run me a song and dance and lay your high-tech crap and your big bad SecureCo guards on me — oh, I’ve seen them, bunch of titsuckers and college wimps, who they going to stop? Huh?” He dropped her arm and challenged her with his jumpy mad tight-jawed glare.

She tried to get up but he roared, “Sit down! We got business here, goddamnit!” And then he was calling for his wife: “Glenys! Woman! Get your ass in here.”

If she’d expected anything from the wife, any help or melioration, Giselle could see at a glance just how hopeless it was. The woman wouldn’t look at her. She appeared in the doorway, pale as death, her hands trembling, staring at the carpet like a whipped dog. “Two G&T’s,” Coles said, sucking in his breath as if he were on the very edge of something, at the very beginning, “tall, with a wedge of lime.”

“But—” Giselle began to protest, looking from Coles to the woman.

“You’ll drink with me, all right.” Coles’ voice came at her like a blade of ice. “Get friendly, huh? Show me what you got.” And then he turned away, his face violent with disgust. “SecureCo,” he spat. He looked up, staring past her. “You going to keep the sons of bitches away from me, you going to keep them off my back, you going to give me any guarantees?” His voice rose. “I got a gun collection worth twelve thousand dollars in there — you going to answer for that? For my color TV? The goddamned trash can even?”

Giselle sat rigid, wondering if she could make a break for the back door and wondering if he was the type to keep it locked.

“Sell me,” he demanded, looking at her now.

The woman set down the gin-and-tonics and then faded back into the shadows of the hallway. Giselle said nothing.

“Tell me about the man in the mask,” he said, grinning again, grinning wide, too wide, “tell me about those poor old retired people. Come on,” he said, his eyes taunting her, “sell me. I want it. I do. I mean I really need you people and your high-tech bullshit…”

He held her eyes, gulped half his drink, and set the glass down again. “I mean really,” he said. “For my peace of mind.”

It wasn’t the fender-bender on the freeway the night before or the two hundred illegals lined up and looking for work on Canoga Avenue at dawn, and it wasn’t the heart-clenching hate he still felt after being forced into early retirement two years ago or the fact that he’d sat up all night drinking gin while Glenys slept and the police and insurance companies filed their reports — it wasn’t any of that that finally drove Everett Coles over the line. Not that he’d admit, anyway. It wasn’t that little whore from SecureCo either (that’s what she was, a whore, selling her tits and her lips and her ankles and all the rest of it too) or the veiny old hag from Westec or even the self-satisfied, smirking son of a bitch from Metropolitan Life, though he’d felt himself slipping on that one (“Death and dismemberment!” he’d hooted in the man’s face, so thoroughly irritated, rubbed wrong, and just plain pissed he could think of nothing but the big glistening Mannlicher on the wall in the den).…No, it was Rance Ruby’s stupid, fat-faced, shit-licking excuse of a kid.