The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [103]
When he had finished inserting the darts in the mus?lin pattern garment, he tried it on in front of the mir?rors. The little dog watched from the corner, her head cocked.
He needed to ease it a little under the arm holes. There were a few remaining problems with facings and interfacings. Otherwise it was so nice. It was supple, pliant, bouncy. He could see himself just running up the ladder of a water slide as fast as you please.
Mr. Gumb played with the lights and his wigs for some dramatic effects, and he tried a wonderful choker necklace of shells over the collar line. It would be stun?ning when he wore a décolleté gown or hostess pajamas over his new thorax.
It was so tempting to just go on with it now, to really get busy, but his eyes were tired. He wanted his hands to be absolutely steady, too, and he just wasn't up for the noise. Patiently he picked out the stitches and laid out the pieces. A perfect pattern to cut by.
“Tomorrow, Precious,” he told the little dog as he set the beef brains out to thaw. “We'll do it first thing tomooooooorooow. Mommy's gonna be so beautiful !”
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 47
Starling slept hard for five hours and woke in the pit of the night, driven awake by fear of the dream. She bit the corner of the sheet and pressed her palms over her ears, waiting to find out if she was truly awake and away from it. Silence and no lambs screaming. When she knew she was awake her heart slowed, but her feet would not stay still beneath the covers. In a moment her mind would race, she knew it.
It was a relief when a flush of hot anger rather than fear shot through her.
“Nuts,” she said, and put a foot out in the air.
In all the long day, when she had been disrupted by Chilton, insulted by Senator Martin, abandoned and rebuked by Krendler, taunted by Dr. Lecter and sick?ened by his bloody escape, and put off the job by Jack Crawford, there was one thing that stung the worst: being called a thief.
Senator Martin was a mother under extreme duress, and she was sick of policemen pawing her daughter's things. She hadn't meant it.
Still, the accusation stuck in Starling like a hot needle.
As a small child, Starling had been taught that thiev?ing is the cheapest, most despicable act short of rape and murder for money. Some kinds of manslaughter were preferable to theft.
As a child in institutions where there were few prizes and many hungers, she had learned to hate a thief.
Lying in the dark, she faced another reason Senator Martin's implication bothered her so.
Starling knew what the malicious Dr. Lecter would say, and it was true: she was afraid there was something tacky that Senator Martin saw in her, something cheap, something thieflike that Senator Martin reacted to. That Vanderbilt bitch.
Dr. Lecter would relish pointing out that class resent?ment, the buried anger that comes with mother's milk, was a factor too. Starling gave away nothing to any Martin in education, intelligence, drive, and certainly physical appearance, but still it was there and she knew it.
Starling was an isolated member of a fierce tribe with no formal genealogy but the honors list and the penal register. Dispossessed in Scotland, starved out of Ire?land, a lot of them were inclined to the dangerous trades. Many generic Starlings had been used up this way, had thumped on the bottom of narrow holes or slid off planks with a shot at their feet, or were com?mended to glory with a cracked “Taps” in the cold when everyone wanted to go home. A few may have been recalled tearily by the officers on regimental mess nights, the way a man in drink remembers a good bird dog. Faded names in a Bible.