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CHAPTER 48
THE BAD MAN PAUSES INSIDE the doorway. I retreat slowly, putting as much of the prep table between us as I can. The space is now filling with steam as I’d hoped, the dishwasher chugging through its cycle, empty dish rack rolling through boiling hot spray before arriving at the end, then wrapping down and around to do it all over again.
He eyes the dishwasher, then me.
“Hoping to escape in a cloud of smoke?”
He smiles again. I can’t answer back and he knows it.
“Do you miss it? Being able to talk? Tell people things? Including what I did to your stupid mama so many years ago?”
I don’t move, just watch as he steps farther into the room. I’ve had years to study him, view him in action. I know he’s as powerful as he looks. I know he can take down fleeing girls in a single leap. I know he smiles so broadly when he uses that knife, there can be flecks of blood in his teeth.
“Your mother was a whore. She ever tell you that?”
Three steps into the room. At the edge of the prep table now. Soon, my back will be pressed against the giant range. I’m trying to think, through my own pounding heartbeat, if there’s some way I can use that.
“Maid service, my ass. She could never make enough money to support you cleaning sheets. Dancing between them, however... She did it for you. So her daughter could have something more than rice and beans for dinner.”
I decide the range is a bad idea. If he leaps now and pins me against it, he’ll use those gas burners on me.
I need to get to the dishwasher. But for me to slide left, he must move right. I’ll have to move closer to him before I can drop back.
No time like the present.
I lift the soaking mop head. It’s heavy and my arms shudder with the strain.
He laughs. “Gonna fend me off with amop?”
I snap it in the air before him. Bleach sprays out. Maybe my mother lends a guiding hand, because some droplets nail him in the eyes. He yelps, jumping back, and I slide quickly into the steam of the dishwasher while I have the chance.
“You little shit! I’m not just going to kill you, I’m going to take my time with it. Cops are dead, you know. Neither put up a fight. Now your mom, she was interesting. Bitch had started intercepting girls on the way to my office, waving them off. Sometimes she even gave them money to board another bus, get out of there. She thought she could save them from her fate.
“I couldn’t let that continue, of course. The defiance. The disruption of my inventory. In my line of work, freshness of goods matters.”
He wipes at his eyes with his free hand. They appear red and swollen, but he doesn’t seem bothered. A man who has inflicted so much pain, maybe he likes it himself. Maybe, after all these years, he doesn’t feel it anymore.
The room starts to stir. He can’t sense it, but I can. His words, his voice, his presence—he’s making them angry. Reminding them of how easily he destroyed them.
The mist swirls around the dishwasher, seeking substance. I feel a silvery presence at my shoulder. My mamita. She is sad. Because he told me the truth? It wasn’t anything I hadn’t figured out these past years. This man, his line of work, the days we had meat on the table.
She is my mamita. I am her chiquita. I don’t care about the rest. The Bad Man is evil. And the rest of us suffered for it.
As if listening, the room grows heavy. The house has opinions, too. Not that the Bad Man understands. Like so many, he ignores what he can’t comprehend.
“Shooting you was one of the best things I ever did,” he gloats now. “Gave me an excuse to bail on that godforsaken desert and come home once and for all. I needed the local doc to patch you up. There’s good money in young girls, you know. But unfortunately, the bullet did too much damage to your face, lowered the value. Once he diagnosed you as mute, however, I convinced Martha to take you in. What could be better than a servant who can never talk back? I moved my operation to the mountains and business exploded, especially after I found some other ‘specialty’ suppliers who were only too happy to help. We’ve had a great run for over a decade now. If that damn hiker had never gone off trail...”
I tilt my head, listening despite myself. I don’t know this story. The whole of it. I only know the bits and pieces myself and the others have lived. My curiosity allows him to close the gap between us without me realizing it.
His flash of smile in the steamy air is the only warning I get.
He pounces. Instinctively, I swing up the mop. I can’t see where I hit. Enough to earn a startled oomph, then he’s on the move again.
I jab the air with the mop. I twirl it to spray more bleach. I target his groin, knees, any point of weakness, while the dishwasher’s steam builds thickly, and the house groans its distress, and I feel my mother’s spirit suddenly snap around me, as if she would hold me tight.
He grabs the wooden handle. I try to tug back. He jerks the mop toward him. I have no choice but to release my only weapon, or be tossed against him.
He steps through the steam, and there’s no mistaking the triumph in his face. He brings up his bloody blade, waving it almost lazily. A click, somewhere to the side. It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.
