Feather Boa

She was breathless in the morning when she arrived at his door, a large ostrich feather boa draped around her shoulders. "What's all this? New digs already?"

She peered over his shoulder into his room and tsked over the acid burn stain visible in the carpet beside the bed. "You'll have to move that over to cover it. Jeez, what was the problem this time, that last one looked healthy enough. Not a blemish on him and you go wasting it. I thought he fit properly and you were happy with it. Guess you're more into the fashion angle than I thought." She cocked her head to one side as she studied him. "Yeah, this one does have a slightly stronger jaw. I can see why you like it."

He didn't want to talk to her. He had spent the majority of the evening staring at the acid blotch the disintegration of his last host had burned into the carpet, the wide brimmed hat of policeman Borgen turned in half circles by the workings of his fingertips. It was early, he'd had no rest, and her painful cheerfulness grated on his host's nerves, causing his own inner jelly body to ache.

"We need to leave," he said.

She rolled her eyes and tossed her feather boa over her shoulder and sauntered ahead of him, her fancy, beaded handbag clutched firm in her grip. This morning she was an actress in high form. She was wearing new shoes, he noted, and a new, silky, silver-coloured dress that draped over her with the careful pleats of a gown befitting a Roman empress.

"I haven't even had the complimentary breakfast," she pouted. She gave her own chin a playful pinch and giggled as she made her way down the long, dimly lit hallway, her fingers playing in the stringy down of the ostrich feathers, pulling them off one by one. A trail of soft lines lay behind her on the dark red carpet.

A feather floated past him, then settled on the heel of his shoe. To his dismay it held a bright red dot upon its pristine white surface. A calling card for murder.

"I thought Reggie was your friend," he said. He bent over to pick up the feather, the blood smearing onto his fingertips as he touched it. "I'm guessing this is a recent argument."

"Uh-uh, I asked a question first, and you still didn't answer me. Why did you need a new host?"

He bristled at the playful intensity of her accusation, the irony of it painful. "We need to leave. Now."

He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the elevator, her feather boa trailing behind her, tiny droplets of red visible at intervals as it rolled along the carpet. She swore and tried to tear herself from him, but he ignored her protests and shoved her into the opening elevator, its elderly operator mute as they argued within the tiny tin confines.

"You're a miserable brute!"

"Just settle down. We'll head straight to the car, we'll be out of here while the morning's young."

"I'm not going anywhere with you! I want my continental breakfast!" She punched him with her stony fists, her excellent aim giving the elevator operator pause as he raised his brow. Two solid punches, right to the jaw. He felt the wallop rock his head back, and he shook his shoulders to bring his broken neck back into alignment.

"That was uncalled for."

"I ought to play it, you know, I ought to force a few x's and o's onto you for good measure. You deserve it, you brute. You coward. You miserable, boring bastard!"

The elevator landed on the ground floor and he tossed her out of it, her heels catching on her long strand of pearls, the force of it alternatively choking and toppling her. She shot a look of killer proportions back at him before righting herself, her heavily painted lips a twisted grimace. The pearls rolled in a scattered circle around her, threatening every misstep.

Her careful guise was easily ruined. With her hair askew, and the skirt of her dress hiked past her knees, she was every inch the vicious whore she was accused of being.

"I hate you."

The blonde clerk watched on bemused, a nail file put to use as she feigned disinterest. She was no actress. She gave him a knowing wink as he marched past, the corner of her lips upturned in carnal understanding.

"Don't worry, these lover's spats don't last long, especially not with a girl like her."

"I'm afraid they can last for an eternity," he informed her.

He would look back to see the confused expression on her face, the one that would be the beginning of a morning of horror, when she finally found the bleeding body of Reggie, her boss, his eyes a game of tic-tac-toe. In his mind, he could already hear her bloodcurdling scream.

He slammed the front door to the hotel behind him, eager to get back into the motor car and onto the road. He'd leave her behind if he had to, there was no reason to drag her along. He'd find his target without her. He would have to.

But he could see her from where he was standing on the top step, and she was already fitted into the driver's seat, her white gloves angrily gripping the steering wheel as she waited for him. She hated him, but she still needed him. This was how her version of care worked.

He passed two shady characters on the stairs, possibly the same men from the night before, though it was difficult to tell. They all had the habit of anonymity, the brims of their hats creating an everyman gangster that couldn't be properly identified in a police station.

"Be seeing you around, Frankie," one of them said, and took a long drag of his cigarette.

He paused and turned back to them. He wanted to ask them, once and for all, why everyone he met thought he was this Frankie person, and just what was so significant about him. But Clara honked her horn and he didn't want to raise any more questions than he had already left behind. The discovery of murder wasn't going to be long from this moment.

He ignored the two men whose gaze intently followed him as he made his way to the car, skipping two steps at a time to gain speed. Clara was already pulling out of the parking garage, and he latched onto the passenger side door, opening it while she slowly turned the car around. He slammed the door shut as she put the car into a higher gear and careened back onto route 66.

"We'll drive all night," she said. Her voice was curt, still angry. "We'll get to California in twenty-four hours if we keep following this road. No looking behind, no looking to the side, got it?" She let out a deep sigh as she peeled off her ridiculous feather boa and shoved it at him. "Put that under the seat, mind you don't ruin it. It's expensive. Those feathers don't come cheap, you know. And here…" She tossed him her handbag, its weight landing in his lap with a cruel snap. "Get me a cigarette, why don't you. A girl could shrivel into ashes waiting for a smoke from the likes of you."

He slowly took her cigarette case out of her handbag, but not before he fished out the familiar switchblade. It was encased in two layers of handkerchiefs, and even this didn't stop the seepage of a line of blood from leaking out of its handle.

Behind them, the Reynolds Hotel was already a small square on the horizon, the horror it held secreted away in stains on the carpet and mysterious disappearances. He patted the inside pocket of his jacket in a nervous twitch, one that mimicked Clara's need to clack pearls at her teeth. This is what murder does, he thought. It gives you strange habits.

The weight of the gun he had taken from the body of Sheriff Borgen's brother made him feel off balance, even when seated. The handle dug into his host's ribs, a steady reminder of an unfortunate end.

The open road lay before them, a pristine vista of opportunity, sanitizing the ugly actions of the past. They were now exactly past the halfway point to California. Through New Mexico and then Arizona, a straight line that cut through the desert, a preserved road, locked into an eternity that was as stoic as the vast plains of rock surrounding them.

"Have you ever regretted killing someone?" he asked her.

She flicked her fingers over the radio dial, bringing a scratchy ragtime piano tune into clarity. She bopped happily in her seat, her hands keeping time with its positive rhythm. "Some people deserve what they get, I told you that before." Her cigarette stumbled at her lips. It fell into her lap and she quickly retrieved it, uttering a harsh curse. The motor car veered slightly to the left and she steered it back onto the road, which was thankfully empty of oncoming traffic. They avoided another head on crash. Too much of her existence depended on that nebulous concept known to her kind as Fate. She tempted it at every turn, even when it had been against her. A veering, near crash sometimes saved at the last second, sometimes not.

"Once they're gone, there's no point in worrying about it. Done is done." She flashed him a wide, disingenuous smile. A predator's grin. "This ride is wonderful, ain't it? And to think it has a radio! I never been in a motor car that had a radio before, it's real treat, ain't it, being able to listen in on the world like this. We didn't have no radio in my house growing up. No music, no dancing, no card playing, no books. Real upright and uptight. Was immoral, that's what they said, all the uptight adults in my life." She sucked a long drag of her cigarette and then tossed its remains onto the dusty road beside her. "Sure taught me, all those rules of what you can and can't do. There's power in going against what folks think is proper. I'm living proof of that."

It wasn't a power he was envious of, but he kept his opinion to himself. The closer they came to his target, the more he felt an inward unease, a rising sense of guilt that started somewhere in Chicago, poked holes in his ideology in Foss, and now, with the blood and skin of Sheriff Borgen's brother sliding over his jellied essence, he felt fully engulfed by Preacher Joe's descriptive Hell. She was better suited to his job, he knew. There were no moral questions burning in her black heart, no ambiguities of purpose. Her world wasn't full of good people versus bad. The quiet influence of caring meant nothing to her.

She put her foot on the gas and spun headlong into the abyss. It was his own failing if he couldn't do the same.

"There was this dog, once," she said. She shifted in her seat, uncomfortable. "I was only a kid and it was only a little thing. Some tiny dog, all yippy and miserable, just like the old lady that owned it. All it ever did when I walked by her fence was bark at me like it hated the sight of me. Couldn't stand that thing."

He put the switchblade and its handkerchief cover back into her handbag. She took it from him and tossed it into her lap, space competing on her spindly legs with the cigarette case. "That was the first time I ever used it."

"Your switchblade?"

"That's the one."

She patted her purse absently, as though it were a dog itself in need of petting. "It's helped me when nothing else would. That little dog hated my guts. Told me so with every little yip it shot at me through her iron fence. And one day, I find this switchblade just laying on the ground and I think to myself 'I'm going to teach that little yipper a lesson'. All it took was one swipe. Not even a yelp to say good-bye."

The landscape sped past them as she pushed further on the gas.

"Pulled its little body through the iron bars of her fence and tossed it onto the road. She thought it got hit by a taxi. Stupid old broad."