“Feisty,” Skink agreed.
Bonnie Lamb felt like her skin was sizzling. She thought it would be glorious to bury herself in fresh snow. “Honest to God, it’s so hot. I feel like taking off my clothes.”
She couldn’t believe she’d said it aloud.
Snapper was startled, and too confused for lust. “Jesus Christ, what’s a matter with you people.”
Bonnie said, “I’m smothering.”
His eyes wandered to the young woman’s chest. Nothing like a pair of tits to fuck up the balance of power. He knew that if she flashed those babies, his position instantly would be weakened, his authority diminished. It was a lost advantage that even the .357 could not restore.
“Keep your goddamn shirt on,” he told her.
“Don’t worry.” Bonnie fanned herself in nervous embarrassment. In the back of the Jeep, Levon Stichler mewled inquiringly, trussed in his cocoon of moldy carpet. Skink figured the old man must have been listening, wondering if he was missing something.
Edie Marsh returned from the store. Her hair sparkled with tiny raindrops. She handed Bonnie a can of Dr Pepper. “The Cokes weren’t cold. Here, asshole.”
She shoved a brown paper bag at Snapper. He took out the Johnnie Walker bottle and opened it with one hand. He threw back his head and chugged, as if from a canteen.
“Take it easy,” Edie admonished.
Contemptuously he smacked his lips. “I bet you’d look good completely bald,” he said to her. “That guy on the new Star Trek, Gene Luke-you and him could pass for twins.”
Edie said, “Touch my hair again. Just try.”
He swung the .357 until the barrel came to rest on the tip of Edie’s nose. He cocked the hammer and said: “Come on. Somebody talk me out of it.”
Bonnie thought: Oh God, please don’t. She shivered in sweat.
Snapper took another sloppy swig of whiskey. The one-eyed man reminded him of the ammunition shortage. “Shoot her, that’d leave only one bullet for the rest of us.”
“There’s other ways besides the gun.”
Skink let loose an avalanche of laughter. “Son, I’m fairly immune to blunt objects and sharp instruments.”
Edie’s pitch was more blunt. “Pull the trigger,” she said to Snapper, “and kiss your hurricane money goodbye. Forty-seven grand goes out the window with my brains.”
Snapper’s bad mandible began to creak; a sign, Skink hoped, of possible cogitation. The moron was deciding between the long-term rewards from the money and the short-term satisfaction from shooting her. Apparently it wasn’t an easy choice.
Skink said, “Consider it an IQ test, chief.”
Impulsively Bonnie Lamb opened the cold Dr Pepper and poured it under her blouse; a fizzing caramel torrent from the cleft of her neck to her tummy.
“Stop!” Snapper yelled. “You stop that crazy shit!”
“I’m suffocating in here-”
“I don’t care! I don’t fucking care.”
Bonnie was so light-headed from the heat that Snapper’s fury didn’t register. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m really sorry, but it’s a hundred degrees in this stupid truck.”
The soda pop soaked through her top, so that Snapper could see the lacy outline of a bra and a pale damp oval of bare belly. Skink asked Edie Marsh to put on the air conditioner.
“I tried. It’s broken.” Edie’s voice was empty.
“Don’t even think about getting naked,” Snapper warned Bonnie, “or I’ll kill you.” His head jangled with loud voices, some his own. In exasperation he shouted: “You don’t think I’d shoot all you crazy shits? You don’t believe me? Check the fuckin’ hole in the roof a this Jeep!”
Yeah, Edie thought. Matches the one between your ears.
“Can we get on with this?” she said sourly. “It is awfully damn humid.”
As Bonnie’s skin cooled off, she heard herself apologizing repeatedly. Yet it was absurd to be ashamed. Why should she care what two common criminals thought of her?
But she did care. She couldn’t help herself. It was the way she’d been raised: A proper young woman did not
douse herself with soda pop in front of total strangers, even felons.
“It’s all right,” Skink said. “You’re scared, that’s all.”
“I guess I am.”
Snapper heard her. With a vulgar chuckle, he said, “Good. Scared is damn well what you ought to be.” He was halfway to shitfaced.