Page 172 of Random in Death
“I thought you were a man,” Peabody commented.
“Oh, I am.”
“Well, the clerk remembers you,” Eve told him, “kid or man, and your fancy Stuben loafers, with tassels. The button-down shirt, the dress pants.” Eve shook her head. “Really, Francis, wearing old man designer shoes to buy cheap kicks? Makes you stand out.”
“I’m hardly the only individual in the city who has Stuben loafers.”
“With tassels,” Peabody added. “And you’re probably the only teenager who wears them to shop at L&W.”
“Well, it’s called Losers and Wheezes for a reason.” Eve smiled at the quick, hot flush that burned over Francis’s face.
“Didn’t know that, did you? Where’d you get the wig? MHF? Major Hair Fail?”
“I found it, all of it. I went for a walk and I found this bag with all of it in there. I wondered how it would look.”
“Handy it was all your sizes.”
He sneered at Peabody. “It was. That’s why I wanted to see how it all looked.”
“And you put all that gear on last night before you went to Coney Island to kill Delaney.”
“I know her. We go to school together. Why would I hurt Delaney? We were lab partners once. I don’t know what happened.” He widened his eyes again, but in them lived the vicious. “I think I had a kind of breakdown. I put the outfit on and the wig. And I was like someone else. The next thing I remember is there were all these lights, and people. And then you knocked me down.”
“And the syringes just happened to be in your pockets?”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“You really are stupid.”
“I said fuck you. My IQ is easily the sum of both of yours combined.”
“Monumentally stupid, plus short, dopey-looking, bad hair. You got it all. No wonder you can’t get laid.”
“Shut your mouth, bitch.”
“Guess what, you pissant, you’re not in charge here. I am. I’m in charge. I have the authority.”
She got to her feet, leaned in close. “I’m in charge. You’re free to shut up if you want while I tell you what you are. Loser. I don’t add the dick because I don’t have to look at it to know it’s very, very tiny. Here’s a tip. Jerking off constantly won’t make it bigger.”
“Get out. You’re a whore. Just another whore trying to emasculate men, pretending she can do a man’s job. I don’t want a whore cop talking to me.”
“I’m in charge. You’re nothing here. Nothing out there, either. Nothing anywhere. Girls don’t go for the nothings like you. Those bitches, those stupid bitches.”
She rounded the table, then shoved the photos closer under his face. “They’d barely look at you, hardly speak to you. And when they did, they’d look at you with disgust, speak to you with pity. Pity, from them? When you’re their superior.”
“I am. I am superior.”
“You deserved their attention!” Eve whipped out the words. “Their respect. Hell, their adoration. But those whores, bitches, sluts ignored you, rejected you. Again and again. You wanted inside them, and they wouldn’t even look at you.”
“I have a right. I’m entitled.”
“You have a right to their attention. You’re entitled to do what you want with their bodies.”
“It hurt and angered you,” Peabody put in, “they wouldn’t give you what you’re entitled to. But with your intellect and skill, your dedication to the project, you found a way to take what you deserved.”
“Women are weak,” he said simply. “But conniving creatures nonetheless. Men are stronger, physically, mentally, certainly emotionally, to the female. Though they manipulate and maneuver to attempt to make us less, we’re superior. I’m vastly superior to those moronic jocks, the leather-clad idiots those weak-minded tramps lie down with.”
“You hate them, those weak-minded tramps,” Eve said. “But you want them. Want them, but despise them. Jenna, out there shaking her ass on the dance floor, showing herself off. Asking for it, wasn’t she? You made her pay for making you want what you hate. You had to make her pay.”