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.And that’s what he’d do tomorrow.Sleep tight, sucker.Half an hour later he quietly let himself into Hank’s house and tiptoed down to the basement.Immediately, he hit the rewind on the long-playing videotape in the VCR that recorded from the hidden camera in Jolene’s bedroom.He tapped on the monitor and punched play, got an empty bed illuminated by just enough night-light to make it interesting, even arty.He ran rewind, hit play, more bed; so he went back and forth until on his tenth or eleventh try.“Oh, wow.”Chapter Thirty-twoSomething shook him and he opened his eyes.Oh-oh.Right in front of him, a man and a woman grappled in the dark.His eyes rolled past the flickering carnal image, then lurched back.Really worried now—not sure if he was dreaming or awake, or even alive.Worry ran into panic.It was a sign.Get ready, it’s time.Stay calm.Stay calm.The only part of his life he had any control over was the moment he left it.He understood he must stay alert and focused.But it was hard to concentrate because his eyes were fixed on clutching knees and a sweaty, plunging back.He could almost smell the hormones popping in their armpits.The watching made him dizzy and dizzy was sensual.Almost like moving.His thoughts strained for sensation, to rise up and swarm, like fruit bats he’d seen once, leaving a jungle cave at sunset.He yearned to touch the sweaty skin.With the whole goddamn black void to aim at, he was drawn to one hot spot of jerky flesh.Distractions.He’d tried to prepare for this moment.He had meditated on the mechanics.And now it was unfolding just like the Buddhists said it would.Leaving the physical body, he was distracted from his journey to a higher plane by scenes of intense intercourse.These were the diversions.Hadda be.So this was IT.The big night jump.Don’t mess up your death with distractions, Hank.Stay focused one hundred percent in the moment.The last blinders of shock crumbled and Hank recognized Jolene out there tugging on Phil Broker’s business, with one elegantly muscled leg crooked in the air, like a snob’s little finger as she held a dinner fork.Except that wasn’t no fork she was holding.Broker.Comforting Jolene the widow not widow to Hank’s dead not dead.And, like back in the canoe during the storm, Broker paddling hard, trying his best to keep up.Hank could sympathize.Then—“I could kill you now and these pictures would be the last thing your brain would ever see.God, I wish you could see them.”Pictures.Earl’s voice established perspective and Hank realized the screwing was confined.Screwing in a box.Earl had recorded it, like he said he would, and now Hank was watching the video on television.“Okay, Lebowski,” Earl said.“Sit back and enjoy the show.Just for you, I’m going to run the part again where she blows him.”So Hank treaded in his ebbing life and watched Jolene’s deathless youth flicker on the screen.He could almost hear her voice again.Shit! He did hear her voice.“What’s going on in here?”Jolene stood in the doorway; her bare shoulders licked by the silent, shimmering video in which she wore nothing at all.Earl grinned, getting off on seeing her, split-screen; doing Broker on the video and, in the flesh, in the doorway a few feet away.She couldn’t see the front of the set and had no idea.Then Earl stopped the tape.Blip.Hit the reject on the VCR.Took it out.“Ah, nothing; just checking him.I thought I heard something but he’s all right.” Earl polite, smiling.“I, ah, see you’re sleeping in your own room tonight.”Jolene waved vaguely and went back to bed.Earl, as usual, switched on the Fox Channel, muted the sound, and left Hank with the TV remote stuffed in his dead fingers.Ha-ha.Hank, alone now, worked a venomous edge, lashed on by the silent fulminations of Sean Hannity.Then he steadied his eyes, looked beyond the TV, and fixed on the blackness out the windows.He wondered how many more times he would see the sun rise over the Wisconsin river bluffs.He felt no rancor for Broker.He pitied the man his innocent lust because he could not attribute innocence or spontaneity to Jolene.What’s she up to?Hank focused the fury he felt on his body mass.The body was mostly water, wasn’t it? And water conducted electricity.His thoughts became electric swimmers, thrashing toward the first and second fingers of his right hand.Just before the indifferent sun heaved up, the dead flesh of his index finger moved a fraction of an inch.Thank you, Earl.Thank you, Allen.Thinking about killing you is the only thing keeping me alive.Chapter Thirty-threeJolene slept through the alarm and missed turning Hank three times.Now, as a thin spoke of sunlight eased between the drapes, she stretched out on the king-size bed, lazing in and out of the first good night’s sleep she’d had since.She sat up and hugged herself, and she could feel the memory of Phil Broker’s body still imprinted in her arms.Another comic-book hero, like Hank.Briefly she fantasized that he would put Earl Garf back in his place, back in her past.And then.“THE DOW JONES CLOSED DOWN FOUR HUNDRED POINTS IN REACTION TO A SHARP RISE IN OIL PRICES.”The burst of frenzied audio catapulted her upright in bed.Jangled, she stared at the door to Hank’s studio, muttering “Earl” under her breath.Had to be.Playing his TV games with Hank.Not even taking time to pull on her robe, she scrambled off the bed and stalked into the next room.“.AGREE THAT ONLY EXTERNAL FORCES CAN THROW OFF MARKET FORECASTS.”“Goddammit, Earl,” Jolene yelled.Huh?The raucous blare and the driving musical background vanished the moment she entered the room.And there was no Earl in sight.Just Hank, propped on his side in bed, staring right at her with Ambush curled in the curve of his lap and the TV remote where Earl had left it, jammed in his fingers as a joke.Jolene.Naked.Even with the short hair, she was a serious meditation on original sin.Hi, honey.And in his head he was playing “Thus Spake Zarathustra” from 2001, like when the ape figured out he could use the tapir bone as a weapon, because Hank was using his index finger to traverse the buttons of the TV remote a big half-inch and touch the mute control.The set sizzled on at max volume.A hyper-verbal group of Fox talking heads were in full cry, puzzling over lurching stock prices, unrest in the Middle East, and terrorist attacks on a U.S.barracks in the Gulf.Smug Yuppie pukes having their adventures in capitalism; they really thought life was a fucking Mercedes ad.Too bad.Globalization wasn’t running like a smooth computer program guaranteed to enhance their portfolios.Hank coldly wished them several million tough, bitter, third-world peasants armed with AK-47’s.Back to Jolene.He switched off the set.Jolene said, “Wait a minute.” She peered at the motionless figure on the bed.She took a few cautious steps forward.Hank’s eyes did not depart on their usual loopy circuit; instead, they remained fixed, burning, on her.They were riveted in a way that made her aware of her nakedness, so intense was the stare that she began to feel the sweat drip cold in her armpits and dribble down her rib cage.It smelled like the fear of men she’d learned in puberty.Pissed, hungry eyes, looking right at her.Tap
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