From the Corner of His Eye

frenzy required to produce this blood graffiti and to act out the symbolic mutilation of Bartholomew with a knife.
        As Tom Vanadium studied the stained and ravaged wall again, a cold and quivery uneasiness settled insectivally onto his scalp and down the back of his neck, quickly bored into his blood, and nested in his bones. He had the terrible feeling that he was not dealing with a known quantity anymore, not with the twisted man he'd thought he understood, but with a new and even more monstrous Enoch Cain. Carrying the tote bag full of Angel's dolls and coloring books, Wally crossed the sidewalk ahead of Celestina and climbed the front steps.
        She followed with Angel in her arms.
        The girl sucked in deep lungsful of the weary clouds. "Better hold tight, Mommy, I'm gonna float."
        "Not weighed down by cheese and Oreos, you won't."
        "Why's that car following us?"
        "What car?" Celestina asked, stopping at the bottom of the steps and turning to look.
        Angel pointed to a Mercedes parked about forty feet behind the Buick, just as its headlights went off.
        "It's not following us, sugarpie. It's probably a neighbor."
        "Can I have an Oreo?"
        Climbing the stairs, Celestina said, "You already had one."
        "Can I have a Snickers?"
        "No Snickers."
        "Can I have a Mr.'Goodbar?"
        "It's not a specific brand you can't have, it's the whole idea of a candy bar."
        Wally opened the front door and stepped aside.
        "Can I have some 'nilla wafers?"
        Celestina breezed through the open door with Angel. "No vanilla wafers. You'll be up all night with a sugar rush."
        As Wally followed them into the front hall, Angel said, "Can I have a car.
        "Car?"
        "Can I?"
        "You don't drive," Celestina reminded her.
        "I'll teach her," Wally said, moving past them to the apartment door, fishing a ring of keys out of his coat pocket.
        "He'll teach me," Angel triumphantly told her mother.
        "Then I guess we'll get you a car."
        "I want one that flies."
        "They don't make flying cars."
        "Sure they do," said Wally as he unlocked the two deadbolts. "But you gotta be twenty-one years old to get a license for one."
        "I'm three."
        "Then you only have to wait eighteen years," he said, opening the apartment door and stepping aside once more, allowing Celestina to precede him.
        As Wally followed them inside, Celestina grinned at him. "From the car to the living room, all as neat as a well-practiced ballet. We've got a big headstart on this married thing."
        "I gotta pee," Angel said.
        "That's not something that we announce to everyone," Celestina chastised.
        "We do when we gotta pee bad."
        "Not even then."
        "Give me a kiss first," Wally said.
        The girl smooched him on the cheek.
        "Me, me," Celestina said. "In fact, fiancées should come first."
        Though Celestina was still holding Angel, Wally kissed her, and again it was lovely, though shorter than before, and Angel said, "That's a messy kiss."
        "I'll come by at eight o'clock for breakfast," Wally suggested. "We have to set a date."
        "Is two weeks too soon?"
        "I gotta pee before then," Angel declared.
        "Love you," Wally said, and Celestina repeated it, and he said, "I'm gonna stand in the hall till I hear you set both locks."
        Celestina put Angel down, and the girl raced to the bathroom as Wally stepped into the public hall and pulled the apartment door shut behind him.
        One lock. Two.
        Celestina stood listening until she heard Wally open the outer door and then close it.
        She leaned against the apartment door for a long moment, holding on to the doorknob and to the thumb-turn of the second deadbolt, as though she were convinced that if she let go, she would float off the floor like a cloud-stuffed child.
        In a red coat with a red hood, Bartholomew appeared first in the arms of the tall lanky man, the Ichabod Crane look-alike, who also had a large tote bag hanging from his shoulder.
        The guy appeared vulnerable, his arms occupied with the kid and the bag, and Junior considered bursting out of the Mercedes, striding straight to the Celestina-humping son of a bitch, and shooting him point-blank in the face. Brain-shot, he would drop quicker than if the