He stood quivering before her, staring at her face with widened, maniac eyes. Slowly, Carrie raised her hand to avert the blow. "Greg, please don't-" she began.
Fury deafened him. He couldn't hear the heavy, thudding sound the earpiece made against her cheek as he slammed it across her face with all his might. She fell back with a strangled cry. "You bitch," he gasped. "You bitch, you bitch, you bitch!" He emphasized each repetition of the word with another savage blow across her face. He couldn't see her clearly either; she kept wavering behind a film of blinding rage. Everything was finished! She'd blown the deal! The Big One was gone! God damn it, I'll kill you! He wasn't certain if the words exploded in his mind or if he was shouting them into her face.
Abruptly, he became aware of the telephone receiver clutched in his aching hand; of Carrie lying, open-mouthed and staring on the bed, her features mashed and bloody. He lost his grip and heard, as if it were a hundred miles below, the receiver thumping on the floor. He stared at Carrie, sick with horror. Was she dead? He pressed his ear against her chest and listened. At first, he could hear only the pulse of his own heart throbbing in his ears. Then, as he concentrated, his expression tautly rabid, he became aware of Carrie's heartbeat, faint and staggering. She wasn't dead! He jerked his head up.
She was looking at him, mouth slack, eyes dumbly stark.
"Carrie?"
No reply. Her lips moved soundlessly. She kept on staring at him. "What?" he asked. He recognized the look and shuddered. "What?"
"Street," she whispered.
Greg bent over, staring at her mangled features. "Street," she whispered, ". . . night." She sucked in wheezing, blood-choked breath. "Greg." She tried to sit up but couldn't. Her expression was becoming one of terrified concern. She whispered, "Man . . . razor . . . you-oh, no!"
Greg felt himself enveloped in ice. He clutched at her arm. "Where?" he mumbled. She didn't answer and his fingers dug convulsively into her flesh. "Where?" he demanded. "When?" He began to shiver uncontrollably. "Carrie, when?!"
It was the arm of a dead woman that he clutched. With a gagging sound, he jerked his hand away. He gaped at her, unable to speak or think. Then, as he backed away, his eyes were drawn to the calendar on the wall and a phrase crept leadenly across his mind: one of these days. Quite suddenly, he began to laugh and cry. And before he fled, he stood at the window for an hour and twenty minutes, staring out, wondering who the man was, where he was right now and just what he was doing.
Dying Room Only
The cafe was a rectangle of brick and wood with an attached shed on the edge of the little town. They drove past it at first and started out into the heat-shimmering desert.
Then Bob said, "Maybe we'd better stop there. Lord knows how far it is to the next one."
"I suppose," Jean said without enthusiasm.
"I know it's probably a joint," Bob said, "but we have to eat something. It's been more than five hours since we had breakfast."
"Oh-all right."
Bob pulled over to the side of the road and looked back. There wasn't another car in sight. He made a quick U-turn and powered the Ford back along the road, then turned in and braked in front of the cafe.
"Boy, I'm starved," he said.
"So am I," Jean said. "I was starved last night, too, until the waitress brought that food to the table."
Bob shrugged. "So what can we do?" he said. "Is it better we starve and they find our bleached bones in the desert?"
She made a face at him and they got out of the car. "Bleached bones," she said.
The heat fell over them like a waterfall as they stepped into the sun. They hurried toward the cafe, feeling the burning ground through their sandals.
"It's so hot," Jean said, and Bob grunted.
The screen door made a groaning sound as they pulled it open. Then it slapped shut behind them and they were in the stuffy interior that smelled of grease and hot dust.
The three men in the cafe looked up at them as they entered. One, in overalls and a dirty cap, sat slumped in a back booth drinking beer. Another sat on a counter stool, a sandwich in his hand and a bottle of beer in front of him. The third man was behind the counter looking at them over a lowered newspaper. He was dressed in a white, shortsleeved shirt and wrinkled white ducks.
"Here we go," Bob whispered to her. "The Ritz-Carlton."
She enunciated slowly, "Ha-ha."
They moved to the counter and sat down on stools. The three men still looked at them. "Our arrival in town must be an event," Bob said softly.
"We're celebrities," Jean said.