The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

She came across Vicky in the downstairs lounge that afternoon, staring at the TV. Only the TV was turned off. She said Vicky seemed distant and disconnected. She’d seen Vicky that way before, when she lost count of her pills and took one too many, or took them in the wrong order. She asked if Vicky wanted to go to the Wellness Center and get looked at. Vicky said no, she was fine, it had been a hard day but she’d be feeling better very soon.

There was a nasty little kid, Vicky told Carla. I fucked up my tryout, and then this kid started ragging on me.

That’s too bad, Carla said.

George knew him, Vicky said. He told me he didn’t, but I could tell he did. Do you want to know what I think?

Carla said sure. By then she was positive Vicky had screwed up her meds, smoked some dope, or both.

I think George put him up to it, she said. For a tease. But when he saw how upset I was, he was sorry and tried to make the kid stop. Only the kid wouldn’t.

Carla said, That doesn’t make sense, Vic. George would never tease you about a part. He likes you.

Vicky said, That kid was right, though. I might as well give up.

At this point in Carla’s story, I told her the kid had nothing to do with me. Carla said I didn’t even have to tell her that, she knew I was a good guy and how much I cared for Vicky. Then she started to cry.

It’s my fault, not yours, she said. I could see she was screwed up, but I didn’t do anything. And you know what happened. That’s on me, too, because she didn’t really mean to. I’m sure she didn’t.

Carla left Vicky and went upstairs to study. A couple of hours later, she went down to Vicky’s room.

I thought she might like to go out and get something to eat, she said. Or if the pills had worn off, maybe have a glass of wine. Only she wasn’t there. So I checked the lounge, but she wasn’t there, either. A couple of girls were watching TV, and one said she thought she saw Vicky going downstairs a little while ago, probably to do a wash.

Because she had some sheets, the girl said.

That worried Carla, although she wouldn’t let herself think why. She went downstairs, but there was no one in the laundry room and none of the washers was going. The next room along was the box room, where the girls stored their luggage. She heard sounds from there, and when she went in, she saw Vicky with her back to her. She was standing on a little stack of suitcases. She’d tied two sheets together to make a hanging rope. One end was noosed around her neck. The other was tied to an overhead pipe.

But the thing was, Carla told me, there were only three suitcases, and plenty of slack in the sheets. If she’d meant business, she would have used one sheet and stood some girl’s trunk on end. It was only what theater people call a dress rehearsal.

You don’t know that for sure, I said. You don’t know how many of her pills she might have taken, or how confused she was.

I know what I saw, Carla said. She could have stepped right off those suitcases and onto the floor without pulling the noose tight. But I didn’t think of that then. I was too shocked. I just yelled her name.

That loud shout from behind startled her, and instead of stepping off the suitcases, Vicky jerked and toppled forward, the suitcases sliding along the floor behind. She would have hit the concrete floor smack on her belly, Carla said, but there wasn’t that much slack in her rope. She still might have lived if the knot holding the two sheets together had given way, but it didn’t. Her falling weight pulled the noose tight and yanked her head up hard.

I heard the snap when her neck broke, Carla said. It was loud. And it was my fault.

Then she cried and cried and cried.

I got her out of the coffee shop and into a bus shelter on the corner. I told her over and over again that it hadn’t been her fault, and eventually she stopped crying. She even smiled a little.

She said, You’re very persuasive, George.

What I didn’t tell her – because she wouldn’t have believed it – was that my persuasiveness came from absolute certainty.

5

‘The bad little kid came after the people I cared about,’ Hallas said.

Bradley nodded. It was obvious that Hallas believed it, and if this story had come out at the trial, it might have earned the man a life sentence instead of a billet in Needle Manor. The jury very likely wouldn’t have been completely sold, but it would have given them an excuse to take the death penalty off the table. Now it was probably too late. A written motion requesting a stay based on Hallas’s story of the bad little kid would look like grasping at straws. You had to be in his presence, and see the absolute certainty on his face. To hear it in his voice.

The condemned man, meanwhile, was looking at him through the slightly clouded Plexiglas with a trace of a smile. ‘That kid wasn’t just bad; he was also greedy. For him, it always had to be a twofer. One dead; one left to baste in a nice warm gravy of guilt.’

‘You must have convinced Carla,’ Bradley said. ‘She married you, after all.’