Swallows was seventeen. He had lived, he thought, a full life for a seventeen-year-old. He’d seen two violent deaths, he’d lost his virginity to his half-sister-at fourteen, he’d raised whippets, he’d watched snuff movies, he’d taken every kind of pill he could get his trembling hands on: it had been, he thought, a busy existence, full of acquired wisdom. But this was new. Nothing like this, ever. It made his bladder ache.
Breer still had hold of the thief’s useless arm.
“Let me go . . . please.”
Breer just looked at him, his jacket still swinging open, those bizarre wounds displayed.
“What do you want, man? You’re hurting me.”
Swallows’ jacket was also open. Inside was another weapon, thrust into a deep pocket.
“Knife?” Breer said, looking at the handle.
“No, man.” Breer reached for it. The youth, eager to oblige, pulled the weapon out and dropped it at Breer’s feet. It was a machete. Its blade was stained, but its edge keen.
“It’s yours, man. Go on, take it. Only let go of my arm, man.”
“Pick it up. Get down and pick it up,” Breer said, releasing the injured wrist. The youth went down onto his haunches and picked the machete up, then handed it to Breer. The Razor-Eater took it. The tableau, with him standing over his kneeling victim, blade in hand, meant something to Breer, but he couldn’t fix exactly what. A picture from his book of atrocities, perhaps.
“I could kill you,” he observed with some detachment.
The thought had not escaped Swallows. He closed his eyes, and waited. But no blow came. The man simply said, “Thank you,” and walked away.
Kneeling in the doorway, Swallows began to pray. He quite surprised himself with this show of godliness, reciting by rote the prayers he and Hosanna, his half-sister, had said together before and after they’d sinned.
He was still praying ten minutes later, when the rain started to come on in earnest.
65
It took Breer several minutes of searching along Bright Street before he found the yellow house. Once he’d located it, he stood outside for several minutes, preparing himself. She was here: his salvation. He wanted their reunion to be as perfect as he could make it.
The front door was open. Children were playing on the threshold, having been driven from their hopscotch arid skipping games by the onset of the rain. He edged past them with caution, anxious that his lumpen feet shouldn’t crush a tiny hand. One particularly fetching child earned a smile from him: she did not return it, however. He stood in the hallway, trying to remember where the European had told him Carys was hiding. Second floor, wasn’t it?
Carys heard somebody moving about on the landing outside the room, but that passage of shabby wood and peeling wallpaper lay across unbridgeable straits, far from her Island. She was quite safe where she was.
Then somebody outside knocked on the door: a tentative, gentlemanly knock. She didn’t answer at first, but when the knocking came again she said, “Go away.”
After several seconds’ hesitation, the handle of the door was lightly jiggled.
“Please . . .” she said, as politely as possible, “go away. Marty isn’t here.”
The handle was rattled again, this time more strongly. She heard soft fingers working at the wood; or was that the slosh of waves on the shore of the Island? She couldn’t find it in her to be frightened or even concerned. It was good H Marty had brought. Not the best-she’d only had that from Papa-but it took away every fiber of fear.
“You can’t come in,” she told the would-be intruder. “You’ll have to go away and come back later.”
“It’s me,” the Razor-Eater tried to say. Even through the haze of sunshine she knew the voice. How could Breer be whispering at the door like this? Her mind was playing unwelcome tricks.
She sat up on the bed, while the noise of his pressure on the door increased. Suddenly, tiring of subtlety, he pushed. Once, twice. The lock succumbed too easily, and he stumbled into the room. It wasn’t mind-play after all, he was here in all his glory.