Read Kiss The Girls and Make Them Die for Free Online Page A

scene.” And Oh, Man, he was right, sixteen weeks in a potato cellar, you had to stand in a crouch, there was no room to sit down, and every time you breathed you took in a lungful of farts because there was nothing to eat but beans and tortillas. And then Debra came down looking stiff and pale, telling me it cost her husband a thousand bucks and why didn’t I settle down and make something of myself—for mama’s sake if nothing else.
Mama’s dead
, I told her,and her eyes got that cold oyster look and I knew it was time to quit talking because she’d quit listening …
    “Debra?” the psychiatrist asked. “Who—?”
    “My sister.”
    “I see. What was the age difference, exactly?”
    “Three hours.”
    She lifted her brows. “Oh. I didn’t know you were twins. I got the impression she was … older.”
    “She was, physically. She developed a couple years before I did. Could be that’s where I got hung up in pubic hair.”
    “Could be. Go on.”
    “Well, my brother-in-law had a hundred and sixty acres of woods in the Ozarks. I saw myself as the Old Coyote, you know, silent shadow of the forest. I camped in a lean-to until Boots—my brother-in-law—started coming up with ideas on how to improve my living standard. He figured anything I did would add to the land value. So I built a cabin and got a bulldozer in to dam up the creek so I could bathe. When it froze over I used to wade in slowly and break the ice ahead of me with a stick—”
    “Why did you—?”
    “With my asshole clenched up like a knotted rubber band. Excuse me. You had a question?”
    “I was wondering why you didn’t heat water for bathing.”
    “Oh, well—I was trying to kick. I mean, the reason i got into dope was to stop the pain. So I figured I had to learn how to endure … Does that make sense? I wasn’t exactly flying blind, you know. I was into Yoga, not one of those heavy guru-worship scenes like they get into here, but I studied the books and did exercises.”
    “I was under the impression that one had to have a guru.”
    “Yeah well, that’s guru-propaganda. They try to create jobs for themselves. Like the Jesus people say you gotta go through Jesus to make contact with God, which is totally pure unadulterated shit—look, this whole thing is pointless.”“How do you mean, pointless?”
    “Talking about God. Talking, period. What can it possibly accomplish? You couldn’t spring me from this place, could you?”
    “I’m only a staff psychiatrist. I couldn’t get you out without a staff conference, and even then—you know why you’re here, don’t you?”
    “So I won’t endanger society by smoking dope out in the woods by myself.”
    “You’re here because the circuit court—”
    “Because the judge wants you to turn me into an institutional robot so I’ll sit quiet in court and not wake up the jury. Shit, what’s the use? Talking to your goddam machine. Or even to you. You’re telling me you’re just one of the gears. You sit there smiling and pretty as all hell but you’re no more responsive to me than those steel bars they’ve got on our quaint little homelike cottages—”
    “Would you like to go back on Thorazine?”
    “Right. We’re having a nice informal conversation and the minute I start expressing myself off comes the velvet glove.”
    “It wasn’t a threat. You seem agitated.”
    “How can you say that? I’m smiling. You want me to act the way I feel?”
    “You can’t avoid it, in the long run.”
    “So if I feel like killing somebody, I should go ahead and do it?”
    “No, but you should recognize the urge and deal with it.”
    Recognize the urge and deal with it
. The phrase rolled around his mind while he looked at her. “Suppose I had an urge to grab the lapels of your neat white clinical blouse and pull ‘em apart? And spilled those beauties right out into the light. And then hooked my fingers under the waistband of those creased flared slacks and jerked them down to