Jim Shepard - Kiss of the Wolf

He hit her again.

She shook. She crossed her arms. She tasted blood in her mouth.

“Ah, you’re gonna go all the way to the end, aren’t you, Joanie? You’re gonna go down with me, aren’t you?” he said.

Joanie opened her eyes and could see he was leaning closer.

“Joanie remembers from Blessed Sacrament: martyrs get the crown,” he said. “All those saints, Joanie, huh? All they had to do was die.”

“Maybe he never had it,” she said.

He leaned even closer. He was only inches from her face. “We searched his house,” he whispered. “We searched everything.”

She closed her eyes and ground the back of her head into the rug. He had her bad arm. The pain was like someone sawing a wire through her shoulder socket.

“All that time,” Bruno said. “You know what I was waiting for? I was waiting for you to tell me the truth.”

He got closer still.

“What did you want from me?” he whispered. “What did you ever want from me?”

“Oh, God, oh, God,” she said.

“What you did to me,” he whispered. “After all I felt about you.” She saw tears in his eyes through her own. Todd was on his knees behind him and swung the champagne bottle by the neck, and the sound it made on Bruno’s temple was new, was nothing she’d heard before. He made a guttural noise, like a fishbone was caught back in his throat, and he went over. And she had the brass rod in her hands, and Todd had the bottle, and in agony and together they pulled themselves over him and fell on him, as if their retribution were absolution. As if for now it was the only grace imaginable.

Jim Shepard (b. 1956) is the author of four short story collections and seven novels, most recently The Book of Aron , which has been shortlisted for both the Kirkus Prize and the American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal. Originally from Connecticut, Shepard now lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He is the J. Leland Miller Professor of English at Williams College, where he teaches creative writing and film. He won the Story Prize for his collection Like You’d Understand, Anyway , which was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Shepard’s stories have appeared in the New Yorker , the Paris Review , the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine , and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern , among other publications; five have been selected for the Best American Short Stories , two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories , and one for a Pushcart Prize.