Twisted

looked like it hit a nerve. Going blind?”
    “Yeah, I guess. That’d be the worst thing I could think of.”
    That was a pretty damn scary thing and I’d thought on it before. ’Cause that was what happened to my old man. And it wasn’t not seeing anymore that got to me. No, it was that I’d have to depend on somebody else for . . . Christ, for everything, I guess.
    “Okay, think about this,” he said. “The way you feel about going blind’s the way my family’d feel if they lost me. It’d be that bad for them. You don’t want to cause them that kind of pain, do you?”
    I didn’t want to, no. But I knew I had to. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I asked him, “So what’s this last reason you’re telling me about?”
    “The last reason,” he said, kind of whispering. But he didn’t go on. He looked around the room, you know, like his mind was someplace else.
    “Yeah?” I asked. I was pretty curious. “Tell me.”
    But he just asked, “You think these people, they have a bar?”
    And I’d just been thinking I could use a drink too. I went into the kitchen and of course they didn’t have any beer in the fridge on account of the house being all closed up and the power off. But they did have scotch and that’d be my first choice anyway.
    I got a couple glasses and took the bottle back to the living room. Thinking this was a good idea. When it came time to do it it’d be easier for him and for me both if we were kinda tanked. I shoved my Smitty into his neck and cut the tape his hands were tied with then taped them in front of him. I sat back and kept my knife near, ready to go, in case he tried something. But it didn’t look like he was going to do anything. He read over the scotch bottle, kind of disappointed it was cheap. And I agreed with him there. One thing I learned a long time ago, you going to rob, rob rich.
    I sat back where I could keep an eye on him.
    “The last reason. Okay, I’ll tell you. I’m going to prove to you that you should let me go.”
    “You are?”
    “All those other reasons—the practical ones, the humanitarian ones . . . I’ll concede you don’t care much about those—you don’t look very convinced. All right? Then let’s look at the one reason you should let me go.”
    I figured this was going to be more crap. But what he said was something I never would’ve expected.
    “You should let me go for your own sake.”
    “For me? What’re you talking about?”
    “See, Jack, I don’t think you’re lost.”
    “Whatta you mean, lost?”
    “I don’t think your soul’s beyond redemption.”
    I laughed at this, laughed out loud, because I just had to. I expected a hell of a lot better from a hotshot vice-president salesman like him. “Soul? You think I got a soul?”
    “Well, everybody has a soul,” he said, and what was crazy was he said it like he was surprised that I didn’t think so. It was like I’d said wait a minute, you mean the earth ain’t flat? Or something.
    “Well, if I got a soul it’s taken the fast lane to hell.” Which was this line I heard in this movie and I tried to laugh but it sounded flat. Like Weller was saying something deep and I was just kidding around. It made me feel cheap. I stopped smiling and looked down at Toth, lying there in the corner, those dead eyes of his just staring, staring, and I wanted to stab him again I was so mad.
    “We’re talking about your soul.”
    I snickered and sipped the liquor. “Oh, yeah, I’ll bet you’re the sort that reads those angel books they got all over the place now.”
    “I go to church but, no, I’m not talking about all that silly crap. I don’t mean magic. I mean your conscience. What Jack Prescot’s all about.”
    I could tell him about social workers and youth counselors and all those guys who don’t know nothing about the way life works. They think they do. But it’s the words they use. You can tell they don’t know a thing. Some counselors or somebody’ll talkto me and they say, Oh, you’re maladjusted, you’re denying your anger, things like that. When I hear that, I know they don’t know nothing about souls or spirits.
    “Not the afterlife,” Weller was going on. “Not morality. I’m talking about life here on earth that’s important. Oh, sure, you look skeptical. But listen to me. I really believe if you have a connection with somebody, if you trust them, if you have faith in them, then there’s hope for you.”
    “Hope? What’s