Then why did he do it?
Something about the dream he had last night, maybe – the smell of burned cookies. Something about Shan Ackerman, maybe, and the picture she drew for him of the flamingo. Maybe it even has something to do with Phil Stanhope, who will have told the police she went out with him because he seemed like such a nice man. A writer, maybe even one with a future, a star to which a working girl could hitch her wagon. Would she tell them she slept with him? If she leaves that part out, Diane Fazio won’t. Diane saw them leaving the house, even gave Billy a thumbs-up.
Maybe it has to do with all those things, but probably it just comes back to the simple fact that he couldn’t kill her. No way could he. That would make him as bad as Joel Allen, or the Las Vegas rape-o, or Karl Trilby, who made movies of men fucking kids. So he put on his fake wig and fake belly and plain glass spectacles and here he is, walking to a drugstore in the rain. Alice Maxwell not only knows he’s William Summers, she knows about Dalton Smith, the clean identity he had spent years building up.
Those assholes could have dumped her on another street, Billy thinks, but they didn’t. They could have dropped her further down Pearson Street, but they didn’t do that, either. He could blame fate, except he doesn’t believe in fate. He could tell himself everything happens for a reason, but that’s goofy bullshit for people who can’t face plain unpainted truth. Coincidence is what it was, and everything followed from that. From the moment they dumped the girl he might as well have become a cow in a chute, with nothing to do but trot with the others onto the killing floor. But it is what it is, as they also used to say in the sand, so what the fuck.
And there is one tiny glimmer of hope: she told him to put on the sweatshirt. It probably means nothing, just something she said to make him feel like she was a little bit on his side, but maybe it does.
Maybe it does.
7
The drugstore’s a CVS. Billy finds the morning-after pill in the family planning aisle. It costs fifty dollars, which he supposes is cheap compared to the alternatives. It’s on the bottom row （as if to be as hard to find as possible for bad girls who need it） and when he straightens up he gets a glimpse of wiry red hair two rows over. Billy’s heart jumps. He bends down again and straightens up again slowly, peering over the boxes of Vagisil and Monistat. It’s not Dana Edison, who he’s decided is the hardest of Nick’s hardballs. It’s not even a man. It’s a woman with her wiry red hair yanked into a ponytail.
Easy, he tells himself. You’re jumping at nothing. Dana and the others are long gone back to Vegas.
Well, maybe.
The women’s underwear is on the back wall. Most of it is for ladies who are leaky, but there’s a few other kinds as well. He thinks about the bikinis but decides that would be a little suggestive. It’s funny, in a way; he’s still operating on the assumption that she’ll be there when he gets back. But what other assumption is there? He will go back, because he has no other place to go.
He grabs a three-pack of Hanes cotton boy-leg shorts and takes them to the counter, looking for police cars outside, but doesn’t spot any. Of course they wouldn’t park in front, anyway. He’d clock them and maybe hole up with hostages. The clerk is a woman in her fifties. She rings up his purchases with no comment, but Billy is good at reading faces and knows she’s thinking that someone had a busy night. He pays with a Dalton Smith credit card and walks back out into the rain, now just a fine drizzle, waiting to be taken. There’s no one there but three women, chatting amiably together. They don’t look at him as they go into the drugstore.
Billy walks back to 658 Pearson. It seems like a very long walk because it’s more than a glimmer of hope now, and hope may be the thing with feathers, but it’s also the thing that hurts you. They could be waiting around back or in the apartment, he thinks. But no blue boys come rushing around the old three-decker, and there’s no one in the apartment but the girl. She’s watching Today on his television.
Alice looks at him and something passes between them. He shifts the pharmacy bag and digs in his righthand pocket. He holds his hand out to her and sees her flinch a little, as if she thinks he means to strike her. The bruises on her face are at their most colorful. They shout assault and battery.
‘I found your earring.’
He opens his hand and shows her.
8
Alice goes into the bathroom to put on a pair of the new underpants but stays in the shin-length T-shirt because her skirt is still damp. ‘Denim takes forever to dry,’ she says.