Misty was dreaming about a nipple. A nipple on fire. Not just any nipple. But her own, the left one. Burning. Flames rising from it. Dark licks of fire shooting out the puckered tip. Seeing that in her dream, the red nipple twisted erect, the spurt of fire, the white jet flame of a welder’s torch. Blackness all around it like one of those surreal paintings, that guy with the clocks dripping off tree branches, a picture like that, only Misty’s picture was a floating nipple in a sea of blackness, a thin spray of fire shooting out the tip. Hurting. Her left nipple aching so bad, burning so hot and stinging, the pain dragged her up from a dark spiraling cave of sleep.
She blinked, opened her eyes, stared up into the darkness.
Nude, lying on her back in her narrow bed, peering up at the ceiling, she could barely breathe from the pain. With great effort she lifted her right hand and reached up to pat her breast, soothe the ache. Somehow knowing what she was about to find. Feeling it now, the pressure, the tight grip.
She laid her right hand on top of the hand gripping her left breast.
It wasn’t a dream anymore. She was wide fucking awake. Speechless. There was no air in the room. Dark as midnight at the bottom of the sea. She stroked the hand cupping her left breast, pinching her nipple, causing fire to spurt from it.
Her fingertips touching the back of his hand. Broad and cold and slick as marble, the hand of a statue in the park. She would’ve screamed if she could’ve filled her lungs. She would’ve twisted away, tried to scramble into the bathroom if her muscles would unfreeze.
She tried to pry the hand loose, but it wasn’t like any hand she’d ever touched. She couldn’t say why. Something about the skin. Something about the unmoving weight of it. Holding her entire body in place like that Star Trek guy with the pointy ears, the way he could pinch somebody by the shoulder, the Vulcan death grip, freezing them stock-still. Same thing. She was stiff against the mattress, the pain in her nipple so intense she was groggy, the bed starting to sink beneath her. She was writhing inside, deep down in her gut, but her body lay perfectly still on the mattress.
When he spoke, his voice sounded mechanical. Some kind of accent she didn’t recognize. She was usually good with accents. Amazing her customers at Hooters. Wisconsin, Virginia, Alabama, New York, west Texas, east Texas. It wasn’t all that hard. She had a good ear. You just had to listen, remember. But this guy spoke with no accent at all. Like he’d learned English from a machine, one of those tapes for foreign speakers, making you practice over and over. Hello, my name is Anne. I have a dog. My dog’s name is Wags. He spoke like that, a machine. A deep, whispery voice.
“Who are you?” is what he said.
Her throat was swollen with pain. She couldn’t reply.
She pointed at his hand, made a gargling sound.
He eased his grip, then slowly he moved his hand off her nipple. She felt his fingertip touch her throat. A sharp, cutting pain against the flesh of her neck.
“You’re hurting me,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”
“Why? What have I done to you?”
“Who are you?” In that same mechanical tone. Like a doll she had once, pull the string, it says, “Please hug me.”
“What do you mean, who am I? I’m a girl. I’m Misty.”
“Who are you, Misty?”
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” she said. “You mean what do I like to do? My hobbies, favorite color, like that?”
Using the long, hard fingernail on his thumb, he began to draw a simmering line down her body. Starting at her throat, running between her breasts, her sternum, down her soft white belly, to her navel and below that, a straight line, all the way to the brim of her pubic hair. Stopping there. For the moment, at least
Along the seam he’d drawn, the skin burned as if he’d been using a scalpel, opening her up. She could sense the moisture beside his thumb tip, although that might have been sweat A straight, slow razory line back to her throat. Like he was dissecting her, going to peel back her flesh, climb inside.
Misty was paralyzed. Unable to look down at her body to see if it was sweat or blood she felt. Afraid of what she’d see in the dark, the gleam of her own fluids.
“Why are you following Hannah Keller, Misty?”
Misty lay very still as once again the man drew the hot line down her body, along the exact same seam.
“Why are you following her, Misty? What do you want from her?”
“Who the hell is Hannah Keller?”
“You’re not good at surveillance, Misty. I spotted you easily. In your blue car with the peeling leather top, stalking Hannah Keller. I saw you on her street, I saw you follow her across Miami.”
“What’re you, a cop?”
“Do I look like a cop, Misty?”
“I don’t know, I can’t see you.”
“Trust me. I’m not a cop.”
“You see me driving around Miami, then you show up in my apartment. How’d you find me if you aren’t a cop?”
“That’s what I do,” he said. “I find people.”
“Yeah? And then what do you do, when you find them? You pull on their nipples? Big strong guy, got to show how tough he is.”
“I find people, then I kill them.”
Misty was quiet. Her heart was quaking. She snuck down a breath, let it out. Snuck down another one.
“Look, goddamn it,” she said. “Nobody’s stalking anybody. You broke into the wrong damn apartment.”
But Misty could hear the quiver in her voice, the lie so obvious.
“When a polar bear stalks his prey across the ice, Misty, he covers his black nose with his white paw so he won’t be seen. Even the polar bear knows more than you know.”
“Polar bear?”
“Why are you stalking Hannah Keller? Tell me, Misty?” The words broke from her like a belch.
“Because I hate the bitch.”
The man was quiet for a moment, looking down at her.
“Why do you hate Hannah Keller?”
“Forget it,” Misty said. “I’m not telling you a damn thing. You break in here, pinch my breast. Why am I going to tell you anything?”
“Why do you hate her, Misty?”
The guy didn’t listen. He was touching her throat now, fingers spreading around it, tightening.
“Okay, okay. I hate her because she’s living my life, the one I was supposed to have. She stole it from me. That’s why.”
“How did she do that, steal your life?”
“She just did. Don’t worry about it. She stole it, take my word for it.”
“Who are you, Misty?”
He started the incision line back down her throat, down between her breasts, the same exact line, all the way down. His thumbnail halting again right at the edge of her pubes. Like he was shy or polite, had his limits.
“For chrissakes, I’m Misty. Misty Anne Fielding.”
“Oh,” the man said, pausing for several moments. “You’re the daughter.”
A pale glow from the streetlight out on Flagler seeped around her orange curtains and lit up a portion of his face. She saw heavy eyebrows and a burr haircut. His lips were large, eyes with a dark glint. Beyond that, she couldn’t tell much. Not enough to pick him out of a lineup later. That is, if she was still alive.
“And what is your father’s name, Misty Fielding?”
“What is your father’s name?”
“I said …”
He gripped her left nipple again, just a quick pinch.
Misty groaned.
“What is your father’s name, Misty Fielding?” She barely had breath for the words. Saying it in a burst.
“John Jackson Fielding. J.J. for short. But he’s dead.”
“Is he?’
“He’s dead to me.”
The man released her nipple and stood up slowly and she could see him tug something from his jacket pocket. Misty heard a plastic snap, then saw the gray glow of some kind of small screen.
“Is that why you are stalking Hannah Keller, Misty, because of your father?”
“Jesus,” she said. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Who are you, Misty?”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “You want to know who my daddy was. I’ll tell you who he was. He was a banker. A good successful one. He made nice money. We lived in a nice house, I went to a good school, had pretty clothes. Then they came and tried to arrest him, the police, the FBI. They had their best guys going after him, but my old man was too quick. One night he didn’t come home. Blink, he was gone. Emptied his bank accounts and ran off, left my mother and me with a ten-thousand-a-month nut and not a nickel to pay it with. That’s what happened. That’s what Hannah Keller’s old man did. My daddy never hurt anybody. Just because he had some business dealings with a couple of drug dealers, they went after him, chased him into hiding. That’s all it was, some banking bullshit. I mean drug dealers need to put their money somewhere safe like everybody else, right? Is that a crime?”
“Where is he hiding, Misty?”
“Hey, do you ever listen to anybody? You ask somebody a question, they answer it but you’re off to something else, like I never said anything. Like the subject never came up. You’re back to this other thing. Man, it’s not possible to have a fucking conversation like that. It’s too twisted.”
“Where is your father hiding, Misty?”
He laid his hand on her breast. Resting lightly, but she could still feel a slow shiver begin to take over her body.
“I told you, he’s dead as far as I’m concerned. What do you want with him anyway?”
“Your father,” the man said, “stole money. A great deal of money.”
“Oh, Christ, I knew it.”
“You knew what, Misty?”
“You’re one of them, one of the drug guys.”
The hand holding her breast was gentler now.
“Forget it,” she said. “I told you people everything I knew back when it happened, which was a big fat nothing. I didn’t know where he went back then and I still don’t know. You think I’d be living here, a rattrap apartment like this, if I knew where that rich fuck was? Hell, no. He abandoned me. I was a month from starting my junior year in high school, and bang, he’s gone. Not a good-bye kiss, see you later, it’s been nice being your dad, nothing, not one word.”
“And your mother? Does she know where he is?”
“Go pinch her nipple if you want to find out. I don’t talk to my mother. We stopped seeing eye-to-eye some time back.”
The man moved the gray glow down to her belly and rested it there. A palm-top computer with a black-and-white screen no bigger than a wallet. A tiny aerial sprouting from one edge.
Misty squinted at the thing. She didn’t sleep in her contacts. So she had to bring her head off the pillow and squint hard to make out the tiny black-and-white screen.
“Where is he hiding, Misty?”
“Mother of Christ,” she said quietly. “That’s him. That’s my old man.”
“Yes,” the man said. “And he looks very alive, doesn’t he?”
“Where is he? What the hell’s going on?”
“I would like to know this same thing, Misty.”
She stared up into the dark at the man’s half-illuminated face. She could see his left eye and his left cheekbone swimming in the shaft of streetlight. He looked like someone she knew. But she couldn’t remember who or when or where. Somebody halfway cute, halfway scary. A little like the kind of guys she used to date in high school. Guys who spent all their free time souping up their cars, drag racing, smoking dope out in the parking lot. Guys going nowhere, but having a great time getting there. Only this guy didn’t seem like he had a good time doing anything. At least not anything she wanted to know about.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Well, would you mind if I had some input on the issue? You know, make my case before you shoot me?”
“I don’t shoot. I don’t like guns.”
“Aw, shit Not knives. Don’t tell me you’re one of those, a blade guy.”
“Guns are unnatural. I’ve never used one. Not knives either. Both of them are inhumane.”
Misty lay back against the pillow.
“I would think, I mean, just as a philosophical point, if you wanted to kill somebody, a bullet in the brain would be fairly humane. It’s like a second or two and it’s over. That doesn’t seem as bad to me as knives. You stick somebody with a blade, they could take an hour to die, bleeding to death. Flopping around. Jesus, now that’s seriously inhumane.”
“I use my hand,” he said. “This one.”
He held up his right hand for her to see. Turned it in the light like he’d just washed it and was letting it dry.
“You strangle your victims?”
“At first, yes.”
“At first?”
“After they’ve blacked out, I reach inside.”
“Reach inside their mouths? I don’t get it.”
“No,” he said, “inside their chests.”
“Jesus. You can stop right there. I don’t want to hear any more of this.”
“When I’m inside their chests, that’s when I crush their heart.”
Misty closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the guy was still there, still with his hand up in the air, looking at it.
“Oh, yeah, well, that’s real humane. Crushing hearts.” The man lowered his hand.
“More humane than guns,” he said.
“But you got to cut them open, right? You still need a knife.”
“No,” he said. “I use this.”
He offered her his right hand and after a second’s hesitation, she reached up and felt around until she came to his thumbnail. It was long and hard, filed down to a sharp point. A claw.
Misty swallowed. She took a long breath, then let go of his hand. It was cold and slick, that marble feeling again. Or maybe a reptile, some big thick snake that has to lie in the sun all day just to heat its blood to room temperature.
“Look, why the fuck are you telling me this shit?”
“Because you asked me.”
“All right,” Misty said. “Now look. Number one, I don’t know where my old man is. If I did, I’d tell you in a flash. I would. I don’t have any love for the fucker, believe me. And, number two, I haven’t gotten a good look at you in the dark. So there’s no reason you have to kill me. I couldn’t identify you. Even if I did call the cops, which I’m not going to do. So if you’re worried about doing the humane thing, well, it seems pretty clear to me that the humane thing in this instance is just to leave me alone. Go on your merry way.”
“What are you planning to do to Hannah Keller?”
“Man, you don’t listen, do you? A person could make the best speech in the world, talk the birds down from the trees, but with you, it doesn’t matter, you’ve got some kind of hearing dysfunction or something.”
“You hate her. So you want to hurt her somehow. How are you going to hurt her?”
Misty lay there for a few moments wondering what to do. Just when she thought she was making headway, getting some connection going with the guy, bang, it’s like nothing happened between them at all. Very shaky ground.
“That thing you got,” Misty said. “That’s a computer, right? You’re on the Web?”
“The Internet.”
“Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll show you what I’m planning to do to Hannah Keller.”
She told him what to type in.
He used his first finger, pecking slowly, and entered the address. It took a few seconds to log on to the site.
She sat up and watched the screen with him.
When the page finally loaded, there were frogs perched on floating logs in the middle of a lagoon. They were snapping flies out of the air. Some of them were swimming past lily pads, their long froggy legs snapping through the water.
“What is this?”
“That’s her kid,” Misty said. “That’s his Web page.”
“Hannah Keller’s boy.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Frogs on logs,” he said.
“That’s just what it is this week. He changes it a lot. He’s a computer whiz, a smart little boy.”
“What’s his name?”
“It’s right there, at the top. Randall’s World. His name is Randall.”
“What are you going to do to Hannah Keller?”
“Okay,” she said. Going to give it another try. What did she have to lose, tell him everything, maybe that would do it, he’d leave. “I’ve been chatting up her kid, you know, over the computer. E-mail, instant messages. Seducing him, sort of. We’re getting pretty close. One of these days, I’m going to bump into him somewhere. The mall, or on the way home from school. I’ll let him know it’s me, the girl he’s been talking to. Girl who’s been sending him pictures of herself. You know, sexually suggestive, showing a little skin, but keeping the face hidden. And then, what I was thinking, I’ll talk the little guy into my car, and Randall and I’ll drive off together. Disappear somewhere. Maybe go out west, California. I haven’t thought out that part yet.”
“You’re going to kidnap her son.”
“That’s right. I’m going to steal her goddamn precious little boy.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m not?”
He was quiet for several moments. He was watching the frogs swim. Watching the long tongues unfurl and snap the flies from the air.
“You won’t do anything until I’ve told you it’s okay.”
“All right,” she said. “Okay, sure. I can live with that.”
“You’ll do nothing.”
“Sure, sure. Hold off a while. No problem, you don’t want me messing up your plan, whatever the hell it is. I can see that.”
The man snapped the tiny computer shut. He stood there a minute looking down at her. Breathing through his mouth.
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” he said.
Misty smoothed a hand over her sore breast.
“Inconvenience? What? Breaking into my apartment, torturing my tit? I’d say that’s a little more than a fucking inconvenience.”
He looked at her for a few more moments. Not moving, just that slow breath through his mouth.
“You ever been in a magazine, Misty? Your picture?”
“What?”
“I think you could be in a magazine. You have the right nose. The eyes.”
“I do?”
“Yes. You could be in a magazine.”
“That’s nice of you to say,” she said. “That’s sweet.”
“And what is that?” he said. Motioning up toward her wall.
“Oh, that,” Misty said. “It’s one of my art sculptures.”
Mounted on the wall a few feet over her bed was the crucifix Barbie. On a big brass cross Misty had glued a naked Barbie doll. In one of Barbie’s hands was a miniature hair dryer, in the other was a derringer. She’d glued a triangle of green shag carpet to Barbie’s crotch for pubic hair. There were five other sculptures on the other walls, hidden in the darkness. Her avant-garde phase.
“You are an artist?” the man asked.
“I used to be. I gave it up. Moved on to other things.”
“I don’t understand art,” he said. “It’s one of the things I don’t understand.”
“Well, you’re not alone,” Misty said. “I don’t understand it either. It’s just something I used to do. I glued a bunch of shit together and hung it on the wall. It pissed off my mother, pissed off my teachers, so I kept on doing it.”
The man stared at her Barbie crucifix. He wasn’t real tall. Wide shoulders, narrow waist, a slow, measured way about his movements like he thought everything through before he did it. He looked down at her again.
“From now on, Misty, you can call me by my name.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?”
“Hal,” he said.
She pushed herself up onto her elbows, rubbed her eyes, and squinted up at him for a better look.
“Hal what?”
But he had already stepped backward into the shadows and was gone.