here, I freely admit it, and I might be lying now.”
That cough again—deep and dark and almost certainly painful.
“Let me out, Grunwald. I beg you. I am begging you.”
A long pause, as if The Motherfucker were considering this. Then he resumed his
previous scripture.
“In the end—when it comes to witches—we can’t rely on confessions,” he said. “We
can’t even rely on testimony, because it might be cocked. When you’re dealing with witches, the subjective gets all…it gets all…you know. We can only rely on the
evidence. So I considered the evidence in my case. Let’s look at the facts. First, you fucked me on the Vinton Lot. That was the first thing.”
“Grunwald, I never—”
“Shut up, neighbor. Unless you want me to tip over your happy little home, that is. In that case, you can talk all you want. Is that what you want?”
“No!”
“Good call. I don’t know exactly why you fucked me, but I believe you did it because you were afraid I meant to stick a couple of condos out there on Turtle Point. In any
case, the evidence—namely, your ridiculous so-called bill of sale—indicates that fuckery was what it was, pure and simple. You claim that Ricky Vinton meant to sell
you that lot for one million, five hundred thousand dollars. Now, neighbor, I ask you.
Would any judge and jury in the world believe that?”
Curtis didn’t reply. He was afraid to even clear his throat now, and not just because it might set The Motherfucker off; it might tip the precariously balanced Port-O-San
over. He was afraid it might go over if he so much as lifted a little finger from the
back wall. Probably that was stupid, but maybe it wasn’t.
“Then the relatives swooped in, complicating a situation that was already complicated
enough— by your gayboy meddling! And you were the one who called them. You or
your lawyer. That’s obvious, a, you know, QED type of situation. Because you like
things just the way they are.”
Curtis remained silent, letting this go unchallenged.
“That’s when you threw your curse. Must have been. Because the evidence bears it out. ‘You don’t need to see Pluto to deduce Pluto is there.’ Some scientist said that.
He figured out Pluto existed by observing the irregularities in some other planet’s
orbit, did you know that? Deducing witchcraft is like that, Johnson. You have to
check the evidence and look for irregularities in the orbit of your, you know, your
whatever. Life. Plus, your spirit darkens. It darkens. I felt that happening. Like an eclipse. It—”
He coughed some more. Curtis stood in the ready-to-be-frisked position, butt out,
stomach arched over the toilet where Grunwald’s carpenters had once sat down to
take care of business after their morning coffee kicked in.
“Next, Ginny left me,” The Motherfucker said. “She’s currently living on Cape Cod.
She says she’s there by herself, of course she does, because she wants that alimony—
they all do—but I know better. If that randy bitch didn’t have a cock to pole-vault on twice a day, she’d eat chocolate truffles in front of American Idol until she exploded.
“Then the IRS. Those bastards came next, with their laptops and questions. ‘Did you
do this, did you do that, where’s the paperwork on the other?’ Was that witchcraft,
Johnson? Or maybe fuckery of a more, I don’t know, ordinary kind? Like you picking
up the telephone and saying, ‘Audit this guy, he’s got a lot more cake in his pantry
than he’s letting on.’”
“Grunwald, I never called—”
The Port-O-San shook. Curtis rocked backward, sure that this time…
But once more the Port-O-San settled. Curtis was starting to feel woozy. Woozy and
pukey. It wasn’t just the smell; it was the heat. Or maybe it was both together. He could feel his shirt sticking to his chest.
“I’m laying out the evidence,” Grunwald said. “You shut up when I’m laying out the
evidence. Order in the fucking court.”
Why was it so hot in here? Curtis looked up and saw no roof vents. Or—there were, but they were covered over. By what looked like a piece of sheet metal. Three or four