The Subtle Art of Brutality

“Yes. Divide them in the spring or after they bloom or else—”

“This sounds terrible but it works: use hemorrhoid cream for the wrinkles under your eyes—”

I thrust through the front doors and eyeball the street, hoping to clear my skull and get a deep breath of crisp winter air. Things have gotten dark. Bleak. As if the situation has drained the atmosphere here of anything resembling hope.

These are the times I call upon my gun or my fists or my gut instincts to take the wheel. Autopilot. If I can just get my sights on the problem I can beat it to death. Primal. Final.

The snow piled in dirty frozen lumps up and down the road. Each one spilling a shadow that looks like a rock mason who should be wiring me my blood money. The arc sodium lamps buzz like flies getting ready to die and my breath has become a blinding cloud of opaque white before me.

I can’t think straight. My heart is rumbling, off-time and deafening. Detonating. So enraged at my own shortcoming it is hard to concentrate on anything else.

This is what blowing up in your face feels like.

This is what they mean when they say “screwing the pooch.”

Make it right. Make it right. Make it right.

I need to find Derne before he shows up here. I turn in a circle and realize if I can’t find Derne I can find Boothe. Fucking idiot. She was right there a second ago. I’ve walked halfway down the sidewalk when the thought hits me but I do an about face and double time it. Sometimes I can see it all, sometimes I miss so much.

Every car that rushes by I look for his face behind the wheel. Fifties. Thick glasses. Coarse beard the color of bleached sand. Hefty build. Thick. Stocky. He could have been saddled and pulled a cart in his youth. Maybe even now.

Slush and dirt spray up in plumes under tires. The sound is discordant and so loud it fills my entire head. The Doppler effect of engines roaring, each carrying on them the haunted ululating of incoming artillery. I tell myself this all gets fixed with one shot.

I’m only a door away from the Incest Survivor’s Anonymous building and I draw out my phone. Dial Derne. I’ll head him off, tell him I lost her. She went to the bathroom, whatever. Never came back. Call him in fifteen minutes and say I picked her scent back up. Have him meet me in some alley. Blip him. Send his face through the back of his skull. Go home. Maybe have some meatloaf.

She’ll never have to know. She’ll never have to know I hunted her down for her demon.

I dial. It rings. Each one slows my heart rate but tightens the tensions of this piano wire I walk out on.

In the background I hear a phone ring. In time. Coincidence. Has to be.

It’s not.

I hear the phone removed from a pocket and silenced. Same time I get connected to voice mail. I drop my phone into a pocket, scramble. Race. Scan. Detect. Infuriated. Used. The sound was coming from—

“Delilah!”

The sound comes from where that voice comes from.

I look. Derne, cautiously approaching his life-long victim. She freezes. The look on her face is the exact look a deer had once when I accidently stepped on a dry patch of leaves and alerted it to me. But the deer knew better than to think its life extended out any further. Alerted only to death.

I’m not trying to interrupt your life story.

“Delilah, I—”

She starts to back up. She’s crying. Other women look concerned. I draw the .44. Start to move faster. I look where to put my sights. I’ve always shot better at night. All the women know and no one has done anything to clue them in. Prey can smell this coming on the wind. Alerted only to death.

Derne says through his own tears and clenched teeth: “Delilah, I’ve always loved you, my sweet, sweet baby. My little queen.”

And then he shoots her in the face.

66

The .44 Magnum roars to life.

Before Delilah hits the ground, cold and dead as the world around her, I’ve got three hunks of lead on fire and flying at Derne.

Miss, miss, graze. He bares his teeth in a hiss of fury and malady. Grabs his thigh. My first two rounds zing off into the night. The brick edifice of the buildings across the street harmlessly absorbs them. Thank God. Each round fired in public that misses is a million dollar bullet. I’m moving.