chapter six

Almost as quick as the thought (it was impossible for a physical motion to be as quick as a thought, though now and again I came close), my hand flashed out and I seized George’s left earlobe between my left thumb and index finger. Incorrect; I shall clarify: I seized his earlobe between my left thumbnail and left index finger nail. And then I did what Cadence would not: tried to make my nails touch through his earlobe.

“Do ya, girl? Do yannnnaaaaaggghhh!” George blinked so fast tears came to his eyes. “Oh. Hi, Shiro. Please will you let go and then scrape my earlobe out from under your nails and mail it to me?”

“Do not shake your keys at Cadence and liken her to a dog.”

“Never! It wasn’t me! Framed, I was framed! I’m the victim, damn it.”

“You will be, if you do such a thing again.”

I let go and he cringed back, pawing at his ear. “Argh, Jesus! It burns and feels cold at the same time, and I’m pretty sure I’m gonna start crying; this isn’t making me horny at all. Your problem is, you’ve got no sense of humor.”

George was right; that was my problem. One of my problems.

“Yours is that you never know when to quit a jest.” One of his problems.

A sociopath fears only for himself. You may think that if his relative is threatened, he fears for that relative; he does not. He fears how harm to the relative will complicate/worsen/end his life. You cannot frighten or hurt a clinical sociopath with anything but his own pain. But although the option box is sparse when dealing with such types, it is very near a sure thing. Pain = compliance. It was crude and knee-jerk and quite Pavlovian. As was George.

Cadence’s baker boy had come back when George shrieked. “Shiro!” He put his arms around me, and I allowed it. I liked Cadence’s baker boy, not least because he could tell me apart from my sisters. Many cannot, which only proves the general sinking of IQs. “Just like you to show up after all the heavy lifting is done.”

“Indeed. I am sorry to leave before doing my share.”

“I was only teasing,” he said. He raised my hand to his lips and kissed the knuckles. “Sure you really want to go?”

“It is not a question of want,” I told him with real regret.

My dog, Olive, heard my voice and came running outside, frisking about my ankles as I knelt and petted her. “New house,” I told her as she looked up at me with unconditional adoration, “same rules. Off the furniture, Olive.” I was not sure why I was compelled to waste my breath in this matter: Cadence called our dog Pearl and let her on the couch, Patrick let her on the beds, and Adrienne … I shuddered to think.

“That poor fucked-up dog,” George observed, shaking his head. It wasn’t often he could sit in moral judgment of us so was unable to keep his mouth shut. “Different names and different rules.… Olive/Pearl/Dawg doesn’t have a chance. Also, Dawg? Dumbest name ever.”

“We didn’t give it to her,” I replied, annoyed. Her cretin former owner had referred to his dog as Dawg. You could hear the w. “And your shrill harping only shows your limited knowledge regarding all things canine.” I straightened up from petting her. She had a small, white, olive-shaped patch of fur on her black head: Olive. “Shall we go?”

“You could kill George,” Patrick wheedled, “and, while you disposed of the body and flawlessly covered up the crime, I could make you some hot chocolate.”

“You are Satan himself, tempting me with two of my fondest desires.” Cadence’s baker made what he called “Flanders cocoa.” With real chunks of real chocolate. Real milk (whole). No powder and no water; he was not a barbarian. Sipping his concoctions was like drinking chocolaty velvet. Alas …

“Can we please go look at a corpse now?” George whined, then added in a mutter, “I’d like to have one Friday in my life where I don’t say that. Not too goddamned much to ask, right?”

“Yes indeed,” I replied. I spared a last look at Cadence’s Band-Aid, the house painted in what George had perfectly described as thundercloud colors. From the outside it looked like a house anyone would want: two stories, the garage and main building shaped like barns, a housing trend I feared would never fall out of favor. Two-car garage, the second door twice as wide as the one on the right. Small sidewalk running beside the driveway to the wooden front porch and the cloud-purple door. It looked like normal people lived there. Perhaps were even happy there.

Was it any wonder my poor sister, who could be as deluded and psychotic as our sister Adrienne, wanted it so badly?