The Edge of Everything (Untitled #1)(37)

Stan finished the cone, and strolled to the edge of the street, which was lined with trucks and SUVs. He examined a dark green pickup to see if it was worth stealing. He made up his mind against it, rubbed his nose, and kept walking.

Halfway down the next block, Stan swung open the door of a store and stepped out of sight. X followed. He couldn’t read the name on the store window, but, on the door, there was a pair of scissors and a woman caressing her silky hair.

X peeked over the lacy curtains that lined the windows. In the front of the store, behind a glossy desk, there was a bored young woman taking a photograph of her toenails. In back, there were half a dozen women in smocks milling about. Stan was already behaving ridiculously—dancing around a handsome, brown-skinned woman in a way that seemed vile. The woman kept gesturing nervously to the chair.

X was so close to Stan now that his body began to shiver. But revealing who he was—what he was—to another half dozen people seemed like madness. He leaned his head against the window, hoping the pain would pass.

It did not. It grew and grew, until X felt as if he were a puppet whose master was violently shaking his strings. He had broken so many laws of the Lowlands. What was one more indiscretion?

He swung the door open.

He was in such discomfort now that the woman behind the desk was just a floral, lipsticked blur.

“Welcome to the House of Uncommon Beauty,” she said in a drawl.

Before X could respond, the woman had taken in his preposterous hair.

“Oh, sugar,” she said, “I don’t think we can help you with that.”

X tried to center himself, to clear his mind. He could hear Stan in the back, yammering. He was telling the woman cutting his hair to call him Stan the Man or—“depending on how cozy we get”—Stanley the Manly.

The woman behind the desk rolled her eyes.

“That one’s trouble,” she said. “Minute he walked in, I said, ‘Mister, you been drinkin’?’ And he hoots and says, ‘Since I was fourteen!’ I’ll tell you what, I’m calling the sheriff if he gives Marianna any trouble.”

X growled, half in anger, half in agony, and stumbled toward the back. He ignored the woman when she called after him.



Marianna had laid a hot towel over Stan’s face. Steam rose off it now, as he reclined in his chair, moaning with pleasure.

“You ain’t beautiful, but you sure as shit ain’t ugly,” he told Marianna. “Why don’t you come sit on Santa’s lap?”

He reached out blindly to grope her, but she sidestepped him like a bullfighter.

X gestured for Marianna to stay silent. He drew close to Stan, disgusted and furious and raked with pain.

He grasped Stan’s throat.

Marianna gasped. The other women fled, half of them in smocks, their wet hair flying. But Marianna seemed too shocked to move.

Stan tore the towel from his face. He saw X in the mirror. He began kicking and punching wildly at the air.

X laughed darkly.

“It was my dearest wish that you would fight,” he said.

“Yeah, well, I sure as hell will, superfreak,” said Stan. “And, by the way, nice shirt, cowboy. Tight enough?”

Stan cast his eyes around as X closed his grip around his throat. There was a pair of scissors glinting on the counter.

He jabbed them into X’s thigh and twisted them viciously.

X cried out, more in annoyance than pain. He pulled the scissors from his leg, and sent them clattering across the floor. He did not let go of Stan’s skinny neck even when blood began to soak through his pants.

He turned to Marianna.

“You would be safer elsewhere,” he said, as gently as he could. He gazed around the salon, and saw his reflection multiplied endlessly in the mirrors, like he was the front line of an army.

“What are you gonna do to him?” said Marianna.

“I am going to propel him through the wall,” said X.

Marianna rushed out of the salon now, too.

Stan continued to struggle. He didn’t seem to realize that the more he lashed out, the harder X squeezed his windpipe.

“You ain’t taking me with you, superfreak,” he rasped. “You’ll have to kill me first.”

“Yes,” said X. “I will.”

Stan grabbed things from the counter and hurled them at X: spray cans, bottles, a brush, a hair dryer. X pushed him hard against the chair. He regarded Stan pityingly, as one would look at a child having a tantrum. When Stan had run out of projectiles, X pulled him out of the chair and dashed him to the floor.

Stan tried to scramble to his feet, but X raised his boot and brought it crashing down on his back. They remained motionless for a time. Then, breaking the silence, came a terrible new sound.

Stan was crying.

X had no pity.

“Has your courage fled so soon?” he said.

He took a step backward. Stan rolled onto his back, and cradled his enormous head in his hands, sobbing dismally. X loathed the man so much that the noise had no effect on him. It might have been the screeching of a scavenger bird.

Soon, Stan was listing the many reasons he did not deserve to die. X had heard such speeches from many men. (Banger was the only exception: he’d simply asked X if he’d be able to get cell service where they were going.) Stan moaned, lied, and made excuses for himself so vehemently that spittle flew from his lips. X only half-listened.