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  Maybe he had collected her for that reason alone in the first place, though now he was better able to pare his motivation down to its reality, uncluttered by pretenses of love and affection. Yes—maybe he had never loved her. Watching the couple leave the store, Marie had tears in her eyes. No, he loved me, part of her countered desperately, almost panicking at the thought. But he’s grown more and more bitter with life. He’s close to me, and that’s why he can take it out on me.

  Did she believe that? She certainly wanted to. But in recent months, she had come to feel that she had always been just another blue flamingo in Edwin’s collection. A glorified, extra realistic blow-up doll you didn’t need to talk to, who couldn’t voice complaint. A beautiful mannequin, to be put away with the rest of the attic treasures when not in use.

  Deaf friends Marie had known in school, but now lost track of, had been feisty, taught to be independent and bold. But in others, the world crushed that, like a tank over a foot soldier. Friday, for instance, Marie had driven to the market to do the weekly grocery shopping. On the way to and from, impatient drivers cut her off, rode her tail, swore at her and thumped their wheels in frustration at her careful driving. In the store, she had to ask the man at the deli counter a question three times in order to read his lips, and she had read at last, “What are you, stupid?” A woman banged Marie’s hip with her cart without apology. Another, whose cart blocked the way, wouldn’t move it when Marie asked, forcing her to move the woman’s cart herself, in a rare act of boldness. Another woman had glared and actually pulled her child away when Marie patted its head. It was all just little things. But so many, and every day. This was common life. They could do this, though they would hate to have it done to them. They simply did not empathize with one-another, so obsessed were they with their own destinations and needs and desires.

  Handicaps didn’t bring out the best in other people, either, she had found…but the worst. They activated the pecking order syndrome. The abolition of the weak, the mutant. They couldn’t empathize with that, because they didn’t want to imagine themselves that way. Acknowledge their frailty and mortality. So it was now, also, with the handicap of age. Old things were hip, but old people weren’t. The mutely strutting models on MTV were desirable objects, but not the silent reality. Edwin had once told Marie, when drunk and lofty-mouthed, that Renoir nudes didn’t sweat, didn’t have periods. Marie remembered that now and cemented her conviction once and for all.

  Which hurt, because, either out of programmed masochism or simply the need to feel important to at least one person in this world, Marie still loved him.

  * * *

  It had taken Marie a while to figure out why she had such empathy for the stuffed alligator. Her feelings for the toys and knickknacks made more sense. Maybe because it had once been truly alive. And a baby, too. But there was a stuffed iguana, gray, its mouth filled with red-painted plaster, and some trophy heads of higher animals. It had to be that the thing was so shocking to see, its condition so cruelly unnatural and humiliating.

  The alligator was positioned so as to stand on its hind legs and tail, a foot tall that way. In its outstretched arms, like Oliver Twist, it proffered a wooden bowl, presumably as a change holder. Maybe candy, depending on its artist’s perversity. Its hands were fastened to the bowl with nails; reptilian stigmata, a Lizard King of Kings. In its mouth it clamped a red light bulb. It was a table lamp. It was the bizarre and grotesque lengths someone had gone to that so disgusted Marie, and made her hurt for the thing. Like a shrunken head, or a lamp shade made from the skin of a Jew. A blasphemous work of art.

  Staring at it, she turned the bulb on. Red light painted her face, and made reflected red pupils in the creature’s ebon eyes. She fantasized about burying the tortured creature.

  Looking up, she was startled to see Edwin there smiling at her derisively. He was late back from the auction, and he’d been drinking already. “I’ll cry the day I have to part with that beauty,” he told her, though not in sign language. “I should just take it upstairs.”

  “It’s horrible and sick,” Marie signed to him. She hadn’t wanted to use the intimate awkwardness of her voice with him for weeks now.

  “I saw you mooning over it. Don’t get disgusted at me; I didn’t kill the thing.” Edwin joined Mrs. Morris behind the counter. “I’ve loved that thing since I saw it,” he told the older woman. “Freaky.”

  “You like the freaky, Ed,” she replied distractedly, otherwise occupied. Though she didn’t exaggerate her mouth’s movements, Marie could read her lips.

  “When I was young you could still go to a carnival and see those deformed babies in bottles they called pickled punks, before somebody made a stink about transporting dead bodies over state lines. If I could find any of them today I’d buy them and put them upstairs for sure. How’s that for freaky?”

  “Yuck.”

  “Marie.” He looked up at her. “I’m wet; go make me a cup of coffee, will ya?” He was good-naturedly ugly from drinking and from coming back empty-handed from the hunt.

  Marie didn’t doubt at this moment that Edwin would also buy a shrunken head or a lamp shade of human skin if he could find them. She shut off the bulb and moved to the stairs.

  Freaky, her mind echoed.

  * * *

  The smell of sex always seemed to repulse Edwin afterwards, so he went to take one of his long, languid baths with a paperback and a scotch Marie brought to him. She left him and went down into the store, to sit by the shelf of old books and read in her own manner…maybe to fill the void of emptiness inside her with something at least dustily alive.

  She chose a book she had browsed through repeatedly recently, a volume of poetry by Thomas Hardy. There was a poem she had read last time, and she looked for it again. As she flipped through, she glanced up at the alligator standing on the glass counter beside her. She felt the strange desire to change the red bulb to a normal one, and have the creature light her reading for her. An intimacy rather than an exploitation. She didn’t do it. She had found the poem: The Mongrel.

  The rain droned on outside as Marie read. Mrs. Morris had long since gone home, to discover the bodies tomorrow upon her return.

  The poem told the story of a man who could no longer afford to keep his dog, and so he threw a stick into the water to trick it into drowning itself. The dog’s naive trust and love showed in its eyes as it bravely tried to paddle back to shore, the stick in its mouth. Finally it succumbed, however, sucked under by a strong current…but in dying, and realizing the treachery of its master in the face of its own unswerving loyalty, a look of contempt for the whole human race came into its eyes. Like a curse, said Hardy.

  Marie empathized with the dog.

  She shut the book. The salt in her tears burned the vulnerable surfaces of her eyes. She was moments from being swept under. Now she allowed herself to feel the hatred she had been repressing.

  It felt like a curse.

  Marie rested a hand on her thigh. In Maine as a child, when she was still considered retarded rather than deaf, a baby-sitter had purposely ground her heel into the top of that hand while Marie was playing on the floor…

  And the thigh under her hand—Edwin had once kissed it, run his tongue along it. Well, he still did. But he had also crushed that thigh in his hand recently while they were in the car, so upset had he become at her driving. He hadn’t hit her—yet. Marie felt that first blow moving toward her through time. The bruises from his grip had taken days to fade…

  Marie rose from the chair, slid the book back into the shelf. At a table close by she stood and gazed down at the unique items spread there. A tarnished pocket watch. Costume jewelry. Several ivory-handled straight razors, the blades old and brittle but still frighteningly sharp…

  She sat back down beside the glass counter where the alligator stood, an array of African tribal masks hanging above it like an audience of spirits. Marie didn’t mind their company. They were a comfort, in fact. They could lead her aw
ay, if they wanted.

  She rolled up the sleeves of her bathrobe, hating the smell of sex on her now also, and anxious to escape it. She wanted to drown like the dog, in salt tears. In blood. She cursed the frail impermanence of humankind, which caused so much greedy fear. She would have plenty of time to let this happen; Edwin would remain in the tub for two hours or more, soaking himself outside and in. She reached out to the alligator…somewhat guiltily…and flicked on its light so as to wash out the vivid color when it came—but it was intimacy, not exploitation.

  * * *

  Mrs. Morris found Marie, and the horror of it made her scream. Pale as she was, Marie looked like a mannequin propped in her chair. Mrs. Morris cried out for Edwin, and bolted upstairs to wake him…

  In the open doorway of the bathroom, Mrs. Morris screamed a second time.

  It was a perverse way to kill a man, the police said when they came. As perverse in imagination as the creation of that lamp in the first place.

  First they found a wooden bowl in the threshold of the bathroom. Then in the tub they observed the male corpse. He had died by electrocution, the cord of the lamp plugged into an outlet close at hand. But rather than simply toss the alligator lamp in there with him, the woman had gone to the trouble of stabbing the nails which protruded from the creature’s palms into the sides of her husband’s neck, so that the creature appeared to be strangling him.

  But the sequence of all this was confusing. There was no great splashing of blood in the bathroom, so she had to have slit her wrists after the electrocution. How, then, or when, had the woman managed that other bizarre flourish…wetting the hind feet of the alligator in her blood, and tracking its prints up two flights of stairs and on into the bathroom?

  “Freaky,” the policemen said, in disgust of her.

  Mass Production

  Harris shot his boss first. Though he would have liked to save the best for last, he was afraid that if he didn’t, the bastard might escape. Most of the people in the plant would escape; he had no delusions about killing them all…though God knew he had enough ammo, and enough inspiration, to do so.

  He took the courtesy of knocking before he came in, and while his boss was in the middle of churning out one of his patented manufactured smiles, the kind that promised promotions, changes, raises that never came, Harris swept the ten pound Galil assault rifle out from under his rain-spattered coat, brought it up to point from the waist. Now he smiled. His boss didn’t. One cherry bomb crack for the group leader he never became. One crack for the unmade changes. One for the recently denied raise. And Harris made sure that the boss was conscious of the first two cracks before the merciful third. There. Now he’d take whoever else he could.

  Turning back toward the door, he folded out the skeleton stock of the gun, an Israeli weapon roughly patterned after the AK-47. It had a thirty-five shot magazine. He had another magazine in one pocket, and a whole box of shells for the .357 revolver holstered on his belt. He had armed up and loaded up with the same care he had taken to shower and shave and dress…a little addition to the daily routine. He didn’t feel a hot, maddened surge inside him, to have set the machine into motion. He stepped out of the office and into the plant as if to go to work.

  * * *

  Thomas Willis Peterson was the head of maintenance, and at the time of the shooting was up on a step ladder replacing the blown fuse that had cut power for the processor upstairs. At first he thought it was something to do with the plant itself, until moments later he heard female screaming and the correct interpretation came to him. He almost fell coming down the ladder, and held onto it to listen as more gun shots rocked the plant…three in rapid succession. He tried to determine their direction, and to get parts of himself to believe what other parts knew was happening.

  Warren was the supervisor upstairs, the one who had told Peterson the processor was down, the one who had insisted he stay and see to the problem himself although he had a dentist appointment at five and the second shift supervisor was certainly capable of changing a fuse. Peterson’s ten year old niece could change a fuse. But Warren had insisted, and here I am, Peterson thought, trapped in the building with somebody going nuts with a gun.

  Warren didn’t get it yet, even with the screams and shouts. “What the hell is that?” he said indignantly, insulted at having been startled.

  “Sounds like somebody’s on a spree out there,” Peterson said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kill spree. With a gun.”

  “Bull-shit.”

  “Why not go have a look? Sounds like it’s coming from the social presses.”

  “For God’s sake,” Warren hissed, and actually stormed off in that direction as if to break up a squabble between two workers. Peterson had to snort at that. Good. He hated that arrogant dick. He’d put up with his crap for a good fifteen years now. Let him go walk into a bullet. Peterson was going to get the hell out of the plant.

  He removed the noisy and heavy hindrance of his tool belt, but first drew from it a screwdriver with a very long blade. More shots. Chaos out there. The most Peterson had experienced in the way of excitement at work was presses running down and toilets running over. He had to smile. This would be on the news for sure. A dentist could be gone to any time.

  * * *

  Harris had dropped Chuck and Kevin, the two sub-moronic pressmen who had laughed at him several times, as they were wont to do with most everybody in their boozer-jock superiority and perfection. Harris had brought them down to earth—literally. Then he had swivelled and picked off a kid all the way down at the end of the line. He had walked in on the kid doing some coke in the men’s room one night. Scummy little loser. Snort this. The kid got up and staggered out of view, however. Oh well. Three out of four so far…

  Peripherally he glimpsed Tracey of the dyed blond hair and skin-tight sweat pants, who had declined the nervous invitation to dinner he had offered her last year, after months of screwing up the nerve. He spun and fired as she was darting for cover, hit the Coke machine by the time clock instead. He started walking casually after her, not too intent on catching her since he had pretty much gotten over that. But he made a very deliberate point of stopping at the time clock. His worst enemy in the plant, it had followed him here from place after place, dogging his trail for twenty years now. So what if this one was digital, computerized…it couldn’t hide its identity. Harris grinned as he blew it to pieces. Whatever else happened to him after today, he was finally liberated.

  * * *

  “Easy, easy does it.” Peterson crouched down beside the boy who was cowering behind the fork truck, clasping his thigh and sobbing. Peterson pried his hands away and looked at the wound through the hole in his jeans. “Looks like it went clean through…bet it didn’t hit the bone. It’s bloody, but I don’t think it got an artery.” From the fork truck he snatched an oily rag, and tied that around a big wad of tissue he pulled from a box at the shipping station behind them. It would have to do for now.

  “Can you make the effort to crawl out of here, kid?”

  “I don’t know,” he whimpered.

  “Try. Right out the loading dock behind us…he sounds like he’s heading off for the commercial presses. Do you know who he is?”

  “I don’t know the dude’s name…Harris?”

  Peterson nodded. Harris. That made sense. You’d have thought the company would have been more careful about a forty year-old man who came into work this week with a Mohawk haircut. Warren was going to go stomping up to that? What was he going to do, write him up? True, the company did frown on mass murder. Insolent bastard, that Warren. His shit didn’t stink. But Peterson had a hunch he wouldn’t prove bullet-proof.

  “I’d get out while I could, kid.”

  “Thanks, man. Hey, what are you going to do…go after him?” The kid hadn’t missed the giant screwdriver.

  “Yeah,” said Peterson.

  The boy looked up at him, clearly impressed. In every harrowing situation
, one man stepped forward. It was what sold People magazine. It was the American fighting spirit. Peterson’s fist was tight on his greasy Excalibur. The kid suddenly felt excited to be a part of it all. Maybe they’d even interview him in the Enquirer.

  * * *

  Warren hunkered down behind a shelf full of boxes of paper. If the killer knew he was there, the bullets would tear through easily, so the idea was to simply stay out of view. The shooting was uncomfortably close at hand; commercial press line, he figured. Good God, who could it be? These things only happened on the news! If that damn Peterson hadn’t taken so long with the fuse, he’d be safely on his way home by now…

  The plant reminded him of a sinking ship now—the Titanic—the gunfire its engines exploding, and the crew screaming and running about in panic. He had to get to the nearest exit…leave it to somebody else to call the police. Women and supervisors first…

  A man knelt down suddenly beside Warren, and his heart almost cried out with a voice of its own. “Peterson,” he hissed, “are you trying to get me killed?”

  Peterson smiled at that, and drove the screwdriver up through the front of Warren’s throat. The impact bulged his eyes from their sockets. Then Peterson pushed sideways on the clear yellow handle as if forcing a stuck lever.

  Police in Europe are well acquainted with the likes of a Thomas Willis Peterson. A man frustrated by his fearful desire of women and inability to communicate with them for terror of rejection, who takes to stabbing them with an easily palmed awl in the buttocks or thighs in tight crowds and then drifts anonymously away. A sort of revenge on the whole unobtainable species, and a kind of brief intimate penetration. A cowardly, pathetic sort of man they give the elegant name piqueur. In America, in these parts, for ten years now they had called their version of this man—less elegantly, more ominously—the Pick.

  Thomas Willis Peterson—the Pick—had never killed anyone, however. But today it had come easily. Today he was inspired…

  Now to find Harris, and kill him. He had to stop to reload sooner or later, and the Pick, ever stealthy, would be there. And why not? He could murder a man and become a hero for it. How ironic! Then he’d simply say he had pulled the screwdriver out of Harris’s pocket during the struggle with him. The screwdriver Harris had killed the upstairs supervisor Warren with. Saw the whole thing, Peterson the heroic murderer would tell them…