of them, and Erin would want to go to a pretty house with expensive furniture, because she believed she deserved a life like that, instead of appreciating the life she had.
Pick and choose. Follow on foot or in the car. He stood, blinking and trying to think, but it was hot and confusing and his head pounded and all he could think was that Erin was sleeping with a gray-haired man and the realization made him sick to his stomach.
She probably dressed in lace and danced for him, whispered words that made him hot. Begged him to let her please him, so she could live in his house with fancy things. She’d become a prostitute, selling her soul for luxuries. Selling herself for pearls and caviar. Probably slept in a mansion now, after the gray-haired man took her out for fancy dinners.
He felt sick, imagining it. Hurt and betrayed. The fury helped his thoughts clear and he realized that he was standing in place as they were getting farther and farther away. His car was blocks away, but he turned and started to run. At the carnival, he pushed through people wildly, ignoring their shouts and protests. “Move, move!” he shouted, and some people moved and others were shoved aside. He reached a spot clear of the throngs of people, but he was breathing hard and he had to stop to vomit near a fire hydrant. A couple of teenage boys laughed at him and he felt like shooting them right then and there, but after wiping his mouth, he simply pulled the gun and pointed it at them and they shut up fast enough.
He stumbled forward, feeling the ice pick chip away at his head. Stab and pain, stab and pain. Every damn step it was stab and pain and Erin was probably telling the gray-haired man about the sexy things they would do in bed. Telling the gray-haired man about Kevin and laughing, whispering, Kevin could never please me the way you do, even though it wasn’t true.
It took forever to get to his car. When he reached it, the sun was baking it like a loaf of bread. Heat spilled out in clouds, and the steering wheel was scalding to the touch. Hellhole. Erin had chosen to live in a hellhole. He started the car and opened the windows, making a U-turn back toward the carnival and honking at people in the street.
Detours again. Barricades. He wanted to blow through them, to blast them into pieces, but even here, there were cops and they would arrest him. Stupid cops, fat and lazy cops. Barney Fife cops. Idiots. None of them were good detectives but they had guns and badges. Kevin drove the side streets, trying to zero in on where Erin was heading. Erin and her lover. Both of them adulterers, and the Bible says Whoever gazes at a woman with lust has committed adultery in his heart.
People everywhere. Crossing the street haphazardly. Making him stop. He leaned over the steering wheel, straining to see through the windshield, and caught sight of them, tiny figures in the distance. They were just beyond another barricade, heading toward the road that led to her house. A cop was standing at the corner, another Barney Fife.
He surged forward, only to be stopped when a man suddenly appeared at the front of his car, banging on the hood. A redneck with a mullet, skulls on his shirt, tattoos. Fat wife and greasy-looking kids. Losers, all of them.
“Watch where you’re going!” the redneck shouted.
Kevin mentally shot all of them, bang-bang-bang-bang, but forced himself not to react because the cop at the corner was eyeballing him. Bang, Kevin thought again.
He turned, speeding up, heading through the neighborhood. Turned left and sped up again. Turned left again. More barricades up ahead. Kevin made another U-turn, went right, and turned left at the next block.
More barricades. He was stuck in a maze, like a rodent undergoing an experiment. The town conspiring against him while Erin got away. He slammed the car into reverse and backed up. He found the road again and turned, then raced straight to the next intersection. It had to be close now and he turned left again, saw a line of traffic ahead, moving in the direction he wanted. He turned, muscling his car between a couple of trucks.
He wanted to accelerate but couldn’t. Cars and trucks stretched before him, some with Confederate flags on the bumper stickers, others with gun