Thomas Perry - Poison Flower

Jane and Iris got up and put on the rest of the clothes Sarah had left on the dressers in the room-for each, jeans, a fresh T-shirt, a long-sleeved shirt to keep off the night chill. They didn't stay for breakfast or to put on makeup. They just gathered their few belongings and went through the office to the lobby that had once been a living room. Through the window Jane could see a small SUV with tinted windows waiting in the driveway. A middle-aged woman got down from the driver's seat and opened the side doors, but no light went on.

The SUV took them across the city to a quiet street in Henderson, and up the street to a small yellow-tan stucco house with a red tile roof that made it look as though it had been built in Tuscany. The van pulled into the open garage and Jane and Iris got out. Jane said, "Thank you."

"Stay safe," the woman said, and waited in the driveway to watch them walk to the back door of the house.

Jane knocked on the kitchen door, and in a few seconds a woman about forty years old, taller than Jane, came and opened it. She was wearing black capri pants and a T-shirt, as though she were up for the day and knew it would be hot. "Come in."

As they did, Jane said, "My name is Melanie. This is Iris."

"Hello," the woman said. "I'm Sandy. There are three other women here already-Beth, Michelle, and Diane. They're asleep, but they've got jobs that start around nine, so they'll be up before too long. I volunteered to let you in."

"Thank you," Jane said.

"I'll show you your room. Do you mind sharing"

"No," Iris said. "It helps."

They followed Sandy into a back bedroom, where there were two narrow beds. Jane stepped close to the window and eased the curtain aside a half inch. The light was strong enough already so she could read the sign at the end of the street and the numbers on the houses. There were lights on in the kitchens of many of the houses, but very soon they wouldn't be needed. She said, "Come on, Iris. Maybe we can make ourselves useful in the kitchen. Before long it will be time for breakfast."

"Great idea. Let's get started." Iris hurried out of the room. She seemed to react instantly to fulfill any suggestion from anyone, as though on her own she had no idea what to do, or even what to want.

Sandy said quietly, "Do you know her story"

"No. But it can't have been good. I figured keeping occupied might help her."

Sandy nodded. "It helps us all." They headed into the kitchen. As soon as Iris got there she began to work. As each new person came in for breakfast, she would nod and smile, but say nothing. Jane would introduce her and ask what each person wanted to eat, and Iris would duck her head away and go to work like a short-order cook, making the food as quickly as possible. There was a strange subservience about her, and Jane recognized that this was a person who had spent a long period buying safety with compliance. When the others left to get dressed for work, Jane cleaned the kitchen and did the dishes. She made Iris sit at the table and drink coffee "to keep me company." She praised Iris's cooking, and talked about what they could do to their new room when they'd found jobs and had time to earn a little money.

During the afternoon Iris kept to herself, going around the house dusting and vacuuming and polishing things that looked to Jane to be polished already. After dinner Iris took her turn in the shower and then lay on her bed with a transistor radio next to her head, turned on so low that a person five feet away couldn't hear.

Jane tried to get to know the other housemates. Not one could talk about who she was without referring to a husband or boyfriend who had at some point begun to hurt her, first by belittling, then by cursing, and finally by hitting. In the midst of the stories there were varying digressions about drugs, alcohol, other women, children. Jane didn't reciprocate. She said little, until a woman named Kyesha finally said, "And what about you What are you doing here" Jane stood, lifted the back of her shirt to show the angry burns and the deepening purple marks of the beatings, and then sat down again. "I don't think I'm ready to talk about it yet." Then she changed the subject to what jobs the women had found and where she might look for work, and the others seemed relieved.

Jane was trying to recover by getting as much rest and sleep as possible, so she excused herself at nine and went into the bedroom. Iris had fallen asleep with the radio on, so she turned it off. Within minutes she was asleep, too.

She slept deeply, until she awoke sitting up. She looked at the clock beside the bed. It was just after two a.m. She lay back in bed and closed her eyes again, listening to the night silence of the house. Had there been a noise that woke her Yes. She heard it again-the scraping of metal on metal. She lay still, listening and evaluating the sounds, then decided that letting this kind of sound go uninvestigated would be the wrong thing to do.

She stood with some difficulty and put most of her weight on her strong left leg. When she stepped with her right there was pain, but she quietly moved toward the source of the sound. The sound was coming from the kitchen door, and it was so low that she could hear it only because the air conditioner had cooled the house enough to quit and leave absolute silence. Jane looked out a crack between the kitchen window curtains and saw the shadow of a man bent over, fiddling with the part of the door near the doorknob. He must be jimmying the lock.

There was a quiet creak, a cracking sound as the wood beside the lock was compressed by a tool, and the door moved inward a little. Jane turned and bent low, moving as quickly as she could on her bad leg toward the bedroom. She made it through the doorway, found her bed, and flopped onto it. She listened, and after a few seconds she heard the floor in the hallway creak.

A shadow filled the doorway, and a man's voice said, "I know you're awake." The level was conversational, not a whisper. "You can't hide in bed."

Jane sat up to face him, and turned on the lamp beside her bed so the room was awash in bright light.

"Iris!" the man said loudly.

Iris's legs jerked under the covers as though she were trying to run. She lifted her head, seemed to wake, and saw him. Her face appeared to collapse, her mouth hung open, and Jane heard a low moan that grew steadily higher, like a sob.

The man was tall, dressed in a pair of tight blue jeans and western boots. His black shirt hung loose like a Hawaiian shirt, and Jane suspected it was to cover some kind of weapon. She said, "Who are you"

The man stepped toward Iris's bed without looking at Jane. "None of your business."

Jane flung her blanket aside and called, "Hold it."

The man's eyes involuntarily turned toward her voice, and saw that her hand held a gun that was aimed at his chest. He stopped in mid-stride.

Jane spoke quietly. "If you take a step toward her, you'll never take another one."

He turned his head the rest of the way toward Jane, and his shoulders squared. "I came to take her home." He glared at Iris for a moment, and his voice seemed to harden. "She asked me to come because she wants to go home." He turned to Iris. "Don't you"

Jane swung her good leg to the floor, stood up beside her bed, and aimed the gun at him with both hands. "I know you can probably scare her into saying something that she doesn't want to. Now I want you to take a long, careful look at me. If you think I haven't fired a gun into a man before, or that I have even a slight reluctance to do it again right now, then go ahead. Try to get to me."

He studied her angrily, and seemed to see something he didn't like. His arms and shoulders lost their rigidity, and his knees straightened. He crossed his arms on his chest. "Why don't you let her decide"