She was staring down at the fervent face of the Reverend Bliss. “Baptism in the Holy Ghost!” he promised, blithely.
“What does it matter what he is?” she said.
“Otherwise it’s over.”
She made no reply. He went to the sink and washed his face and chest in cold water. As far as the European was concerned, they were like sheep in a pen. Not just in this room, in any room. Wherever they hid he’d find their refuge in time, and come. There might be a small struggle-do sheep fight the oncoming execution? he wondered. He should have asked the fly. The fly would have known.
He turned from the sink, water dripping from his jawline, to look at Carys. She was staring at the floor, scratching herself.
“Go to him,” he said without warning.
He’d tried a dozen ways to open this conversation as he drove back, but why try to sweeten the pill?
She looked up at him, empty-eyed. “What did you say?”
“Go to him, Carys. Go into him, the way he goes into you. Reverse the procedure.”
She almost laughed; there was a sneer mustering in reply to this obscenity. “Into him?” she said.
“Yes.”
“You’re insane.”
“We can’t fight what we don’t know. And we can’t know unless we look. You can do that; you can do it for both of us.” He started across the room toward her, but she bowed her head again. “Find out what he is. Find a weakness, a hint of a weakness, anything that can help us survive.”
“No.”
“Because if you don’t, whatever we try to do, wherever we try to go, he’s going to come, him or one of his cohorts, and slit my throat the way he did Flynn’s. And you? God knows, I think you’ll be wishing you’d died the way I did.” This was brutal stuff, and he felt dirtied by the very saying of it, but he knew how passionately she’d resist. If bullying didn’t work, he still had the heroin. He squatted on his haunches in front of her, looking up at her.
“Think about it, Carys. Give the idea a chance.”
Her face hardened. “You saw his room,” she said. “It’d be like locking myself in an asylum.”
“He wouldn’t even know,” he said. “He wouldn’t be prepared.”
“I’m not going to discuss it. Give me the smack, Marty.” He stood up, face slack. Don’t make me cruel, he thought.
“You want me to shoot up, and then wait, is that it?”
“Yes,” she said, faintly. Then more strongly: “Yes.”
“Is that all you think you’re worth?” She didn’t reply. Her face was impossible to read. “If you thought that, why’d you burn yourself?”
“I didn’t want to go. Not without . . . seeing you again. Being with you.” She was trembling. “We can’t win,” she said.
“If we can’t win, what’s to lose?”
“I’m tired,” she replied, shaking her head. “Give me the smack. Maybe tomorrow, when I’m feeling better.” She looked up at him, eyes shining in the bruises of her eye sockets. “Just give me the smack!”
“Then you can forget all about it, eh?”
“Marty, don’t. It’s going to spoil-” She stopped.
“Spoil what? Our last few hours together?”
“I need the dope, Marty.”
“That’s very convenient. Fuck what happens to me.” He suddenly felt this to be indisputably true; that she didn’t care what he suffered and never really had. He’d run into her life and now, once he’d brought her dope, he could fade out of it again and leave her to her dreams. He wanted to hit her. He turned his back on her before he did.
Behind him, she said: “We could have some dope-you too, Marty, why not? Then we could be together.”
He didn’t reply for a long moment. When he did he said:
“No fix.”
“Marty?”
“No fix until you go to him.”
It took Carys several seconds to register the full impact of his blackmail. Hadn’t she said, a long time ago, that he’d disappointed her because she’d expected a brute? She’d spoken too soon.
“He’ll know,” she breathed, “he’ll know the moment I get near him.”
“Tread softly. You can; you know you can. You’re clever. You’ve crept into my head often enough.”