The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [60]
She could sneak away now, walk back home, and it might be a while before anyone found him. But someone would find him, eventually, and eventually he’d be returned to his proper owner. His family would be very angry at her, but she might worm herself out of being blamed, since they seemed to be willing to believe anything that made their lives easier. But he wouldn’t care. Either he’d remember and forgive her, or he’d forget. Exasperating creature. She watched him a while longer, his white shirt and white hair glowing under the streetlight. The sharp smell of gasoline wafted up from the nearby garage. Her ankle went from stiff to achy. A car with rock music blasting came rushing past him, too close, but he didn’t budge. She didn’t feel sorry for him, she didn’t. But this wasn’t any fun.
Without deciding to, she broke through the hedge and strolled boldly down the strange lawn toward him, the ground soft from armadillo tunnels, praying she wouldn’t slip and fall. Hello, Canterbury Hills, I am making myself right at home here! “Yoo-hoo,” she called to Wilson. “Avon calling!”
He didn’t turn around. He didn’t even glance at her.
“Ready?” she said in a chipper voice. “My friend, Vivian, Viv, was making mimosas and wouldn’t give me one.” His legs stuck straight out in front of him, like a kid’s legs. Her white tennis shoes were half the size of his. “You got big feet. But then so does Viv.”
His cheeks were well shaven and smooth for an old man, but he smelled like fresh sweat. “Help me up,” he said. “Take me home.”
Glad that she wasn’t yet as old and stiff as he was, she pulled him to his feet and he walked off by himself, a little way down the street, and then turned around, facing her.
“Am I going the right way?” he asked.
“What is this, some existential drama?” she said. “Keep walking and find out.”
He exhaled loudly. “Just go ahead and kill me,” he said, “if that’s what you want to do. I’m right here. Get it over with.”
She almost burst out laughing. It was just like her fantasy, the one she’d had the first time she’d seen him in his yard overwatering his azalea bushes, when she wished he’d just pop up and ask to be killed and hurry up about it. “Should I hurry up about it?” she couldn’t resist saying.
“Please.”
“No. I won’t. You can’t make me.” She went forward, took his arm, and they started down the block in the direction home should’ve been in. Immediately she felt uneasy. Nun’s Drive looked different in the dark. Houses seemed to have rearranged themselves, driveways looked like streets, streets like driveways. Lights in the houses made them seem even more remote. One house had a huge TV, glowing blue and green like an aquarium, that took up most of a wall. Two large-sounding dogs in someone’s backyard barked ferociously. He was leaning on her, making it hard to walk. “I’ve changed my mind about killing you,” she said. “But I’m not done with you. You are not off the hook, Adolf.”
“Verna Tommy will have left the light on,” he said. “She never forgets.”
* * *
That night Tropical Storm Alberto crept over the Florida Panhandle. The next morning the weather channel reported that near Homosassa two people who did not evacuate required water rescue. And at Egmont Key State Park a woman fell off a boat when a band of showers and surging currents made navigation difficult; her husband and a friend drowned after jumping in to save her without life jackets, though the woman returned safely to the boat.
Marylou went outside into her twig-littered carport to get the newspaper, and she discovered that her blue rug had mysteriously reappeared. A couple of mornings ago it had disappeared from the bottom of the steps, and she’d looked all around the yard but couldn’t find it. Who, she’d wondered, would want an ugly little