Chosen Prey

me.”
    “Okay, okay . . .” Qatar held up his hands. He was leaving. “I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
    Then Randy came back: “Ain’t you gonna drop me?”
    “I thought, uh . . .”
    “You can’t leave me out here on the fuckin’ street, man. Where’s my money?”
    “In your pocket.”
    Randy dug in his pocket, found it. “Sonofabitch. I had it all the time. Let’s go.”
    On the way, Randy pressed his hands to his temples, looked at Qatar, and blurted, “I made a garland for her head and bracelets too and fragrant zone. She looked at me as she did love and made sweet moan.”
    “What?”
    “I made a garland for her head . . .”
    Randy’s brain was missing a few links, Qatar thought. Even so, he knew where he was going. He would point at corners and say, “There,” and “There, that way.” He said, “Over there, Richard. . . . Can I call you Richard?”
    In five minutes they were idling in front of an apartment on Como Boulevard. Randy hopped out and said, perfectly rationally, “You can come in if you like, but they mostly brothers. They don’t like white boys that good.”
    “That’s okay. I gotta get home anyway.”
    Randy slapped the car roof in reply, then darted into the apartment’s dark front entry, never looking back.
     
    Q ATAR ROLLED AWAY from the apartment. Instead of cutting back onto I-94 to Minneapolis, the car seemed all by itself to roll back across the interstate to Randy’s place. He’d been thinking about the woman since they left the apartment—not the possibility of sex, but the other possibility.
    He sat outside for ten minutes, unable to make up his mind. He was sure that Randy had no idea who he was; he might never get the money from the jewelry, but he ought to get something. He could feel an artery in his neck, beating harder, a thick, ropy pounding. He wanted her; he could feel her. He fished the starter rope out from under the front seat of the car and tucked it into his hip pocket.
    Randy’s brain was fried. He wouldn’t remember this. . . . Did he really know who Qatar was, anyway? And Qatar was suffused with courage. He was competent, hard, athletic. He went to the door and rang.
    The blonde had gotten dressed again, though her feet were still bare. At the door, Qatar said, “Randy talked me into giving him five hundred. But he said I get you, any way I want.”
    The blonde looked past him, unsure, and then asked, “Where’s Randy?”
    “He’s back at the apartment, partying. When we’re done, I’m supposed to take you over there.”
    A misstep: Now she was suspicious. “I can’t go outside ’til I got a name.”
    “He thought of the name,” Qatar improvised. “You’ve got a name.”
    “I do? What is it?”
    “Tiffany. Like the jewelry store.”
    “Tiffany,” she said aloud. She tasted it. “That’s pretty good. Tiffany.” She looked him over again, then said, “Okay. Come on in.”
    She was a hooker, and it didn’t take long: He got her on her hands and knees, in front of the couch, waiting for him to enter her. He’d rolled the condom down, positioned himself behind her. His pants had been tossed on the couch, and he fished the rope out of the back pocket. Touched her back with it; trailed it her down her spine.
    She asked, “What’s that?” and turned her head.
    “Nothing, nothing . . . keep going.”
    Formed his loop; touched her neck again. Held the loop open, smiled, dropped it around her neck and . . .
    Snap! He tightened it like a hangman’s noose, and her hands went to her throat and she tried to turn, flailing like a caught crow, but he pressed her down with his weight. He didn’t want to see her eyes; he used the power of the rope to bend her sideways and down, and she continued to flop and twist and struggle, her feet banging against the couch, smashing the back legs of an EZ-Boy, and then he half stood, and lifted her, held her suspended above the floor like a billfish on the deck of a big-game boat. Held her and shook her and watched her hands flailing, watched them weaken, felt the power surging through his arms into his heart. . . .
    As her struggles slowed and weakened, he straddled her and lowered her to the floor, her hands scratching along the furry carpet. He knelt over her, then sat on her buttocks, keeping the pressure on, his teeth showing now in a slashing grimace, squeezing, squeezing. At the end, she arched her back and her hands fluttered in a terminal