From the mirror that formed the entire rear wall of the master bedroom, back at him leapt his reflection: a caped horror show, his face defining itself pinkly through the sodden mask. Black with rain, the new hat drooped around his ears. About his bones, the army surplus poncho was seaweed-slick. I am nothing but a thing soaked to its skin, in clothes two years ragged, holding a gun. I am shorn, bespattered, psychopathic, bestially liberated. And I am here for you. Fear in the beautiful green eyes of the woman who should not have been here, transformed into something else that promised hysteria. Panic jittered along her arms like St Vitus’s Dance and made her hands flutter before she clutched them to her cheeks. Minutes before, as the couple alighted from the Ferrari, the father’s dripping presence had appeared in the garage. The moment the soles of Yonah Abergil’s hand-stitched loafers found the cement floor, an aerosol of the evil shit had pattered over his jowly head.
