Queenpin by Megan Abbott Page A

darted around to look at me. Her eyes, were they red?
    And a low, ugly whisper: “I don’t want the gun.”
    I thought she was just going to finish him off, don’t you see?
    Yeah, that was bad too, but he wasn’t going to make it anyhow, his face falling off, a bullet rolling around in his gut. I thought she was just going to finish the job, a deep, clean jag across the throat without the noise of another gunshot. Maybe the opener’s point was sharp enough. Maybe she could make it quick.
    But there was something wrong. She was lifting her arms in those strange, jerking moves, like she was on strings and when I saw the pointy tip … and then it went down and up and down and up in jittering motions, like an old movie reel jumping and rocking. And the blood kept spinning up like a Tilt-A-Whirl and it was spraying her face and her hair and I saw that she’d slipped off her mask, finally, and here was her heat but look what kind of heat it was.
    Her gloves soaked through red, pooling in her fingertips. She peeled them off and they fell like swollen petals in a pile beside her and still she didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. I saw that. She’d never stop.
    I tossed the gun and grabbed her under her arms and pulled as hard as I could, fighting her strength. I think now that it was the first time I’d ever touched her, she who’d put her hand on me countless times, adjusting my clothes, smoothing my hair, straightening my seams, grooming me, making me …
    I lifted her to her feet. Her arms, her hands, her whole torso was shaking. We both nearly slipped on the slick floor.
    The letter opener was in her hand, her grip so tight her fingers had slipped and I could see its blade pressed in her palm. Still standing behind her, I uncurled her fingers from it one by one until it dropped to the floor with a clatter.
    “Well, that’s done,” she muttered, breathless. She was looking down. I couldn’t look down. But I could smell the horrible sweetness and could feel it.
    I stepped back and bent down to pick up the gun, and as I did, I saw her silver stiletto pull back right beside Vic’s head, then kick
    forward, tugging the last strands of muscle loose and sending the jaw bone skimming across the floor towards me.
    “Don’t worry,” she said, turning towards me, cool as ever. “We’ll find someone else for you to fuck.”
    ∞◊∞
    We might have been standing there thirty seconds or thirty years. She was figuring things, you could see her running it down in her head. And her chest was heaving, and she was giving off waves of heat. She was deciding what to do, how to fix it. I was watching her, wondering how it happened, wondering how she’d lost it all.
    The front of her sharkskin suit steeped in blood, her stockings drenched red along the shin bones, her hair spattered with it. Worst of all was her face. I kept thinking of those pictures of South Seas headhunters in Weird Tales. When I was a kid, I’d look at those pictures for hours, my fingers pressed on the pages, on the fearsome mandaus they brandished, hair teeth and claws rising from the hilts. I’d have nightmares they were coming for me, crossing oceans and continents for fair-faced little girls to behead, to roast on spits over the fire. That’s what she looked like, she looked like one of those Dyak warriors, her face red and raw, streaked and spangled.
    Gloria, all those stories about you were true. And they weren’t half as dark as this.
    As we stood there, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to say a word. I couldn’t imagine what I could say. I wasn’t looking at the body in the corner, and I couldn’t bear to look her in the face. I stared at the floor.
    Finally, she spoke. “It’s going to work like this,” she said. “You’re taking the El Dorado. You’re going to do three things. Are you ready? Are you with me? Pull it together, kid.”
    I forced myself to meet her gaze, but she couldn’t make me focus my eyes. Instead, I looked at a