Alice was still smiling at him.
“Stop smiling,” he said softly. “I don’t like it.”
She did as she was told.
“What am I, Alice?”
“You’re the key.”
“And what are you?”
“The lock.”
“Now that I’ve opened you, you’ll do whatever I tell you to do. Isn’t that true?”
“Yeah.”
He took three one-dollar bills from his wallet and put them on top of the lunch check. “I’m going to test you, Alice. I’m going to see just how obedient you are.”
She waited docilely.
“When you leave this table,” he said, “you’ll take the check and money to the cash register. You’ll ring up the sale and take your tip from whatever’s left of the three dollars. Is that clear?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you will go to the kitchen. Is there anyone back there?”
“No. Randy went to the bank.”
“Randy Ultman?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good,” Salsbury said. “Now, when you go to the kitchen, you’ll pick up a meat fork, a cook’s fork. One of those big, two-pronged forks. Is there one of those in the kitchen?”
“Yeah. Several.”
“You’ll pick one of them up and stab yourself with it, run it all the way through your left hand.”
She didn’t even blink.
“Is that understood, Alice?”
“Yeah. I understand.”
“When you turn away from this table, you’ll forget everything we’ve said to each other. Understood?”
“Yeah.”
“When you run the fork through your hand, you’ll think it was an accident. A freak accident. Won’t you, Alice?”
“Sure. An accident.”
“Go away, then.”
She turned and walked to the half-door at the end of the lunch counter, her smooth hips rolling provocatively.
When she reached the cash register and began to ring up the sale, Salsbury slid out of the booth and started toward the door.
She dropped her tip into a pocket of her uniform, closed the cash register drawer, and went into the kitchen.
At the entrance Salsbury stopped and put a quarter in the newspaper vending machine.
Bob Thorp laughed loudly at some joke, and the waitress named Bess giggled like a young girl.
Salsbury took a copy of the Black River Bulletin from the wire rack, folded it, put it under his arm, and opened the door to the foyer. He stepped across the sill and began to pull the door shut behind him, thinking all the while: Come on, you bitch, come on! His heart was pounding, and he felt slightly dizzy.
Alice began to scream.
Grinning, Salsbury closed the first door, pushed through the outer door, went down the steps, and walked east on Main Street, as if he were unaware of the uproar in the cafe.
The day was bright and warm. The sky was cloudless.
He had never been happier.
Paul shouldered past Bob Thorp and stepped into the kitchen. The young waitress was standing at a counter that lay between two upright food freezers. Her left hand was palm down on a wooden cutting board. With her right hand she gripped an eighteen-inch-long meat fork. The two wickedly sharp prongs appeared to have been driven all the way through her left hand and into the wood beneath. Blood spotted her light blue uniform, glistened on the cutting board, and dripped from the edge of the Formica-topped counter. She was screaming and gasping for breath between the screams and shaking and trying to wrench the fork loose.
Turning back to Bob Thorp, who stood transfixed in the doorway, Paul said, “Get Doc Troutman.”
Thorp didn’t have to be told again. He hurried away.
Taking hold of the woman’s right hand, Paul said, “Let go of the fork. I want you to let go of the fork. You’re doing more harm than good.”
She raised her head and seemed to look straight through him. Her face was chalky beneath her dark complexion; she was obviously in shock. She couldn’t stop screaming-an ululating wail more animal than human-and she probably didn’t even know that he had spoken to her.
He had to pry her fingers from the handle of the fork.
At his side Jenny said, “Oh, my God!”
“Hold her for me,” he said. “Don’t let her grab the fork.”
Jenny gripped the woman’s right wrist. She said, “I think I’m going to be sick.”