Nikki Newman was angrier than she had ever been in her life.
She sat on the bed in her small apartment, shaking with fury. This was the final, crushing straw! This was the last sneaky, slimy, underhanded insult she could take! She wasn't going to be treated like a piece of shit in this world any more!
In her trembling hands, she held the tiny black.32 snub-nosed revolver that she had bought back in Silver Spring before making her first trip to the big city. She turned it over and over, occasionally cocking the hammer and snapping the trigger, as if to reassure herself that they still worked. On the bed beside her was a little Styrofoam container of bullets. They stood in neat, soldierly rows, their brass jackets glinting dully in the dim light.
Well, she told herself viciously, her chin curdling, her lips trembling helplessly… something was going to be done about this! This was one she wasn't going to let go! She gritted her teeth fiercely, a small whine escaping her, but in spite of herself she felt the large, hot tears dropping on her knees. That made her even madder and she looked about frantically for something she could do to vent her anger, for something she could smash, for something she could throw. She finally tossed the gun aside and began beating her fists savagely into her pillows, raining one brutal blow after another into the yielding fabric, her arms wind milling furiously, until at last the killing edge came off her anger and she collapsed in an explosion of sobs.
This was too fucking much, Nikki told herself desperately… she didn't have to be the victim for shit like this!
Could you imagine the balls of that motherfucker bastard Friedman! She had gone to talk to Amanda Trafalgar, just to see if there was anything she needed to know and hadn't been told about the shoot. Had to bribe the booking agent at Hawley's fifty bucks which she didn't even have to get the goddam address, then when she got there it cost her another twenty to persuade the doorman to take her up.
Seventy fucking dollars! Christ, if hadn't been for the weekend of part-time hooking with Denise, she wouldn't have even been able to seethe fucking bitch! And for what?-to find out what! That the motherfucking shoot was already over, had been done weeks ago, and that Friedman wasn't even the sonofabitch handling it anyway! He'd been such a pimpy, obnoxious dicksucker about the whole thing, Amanda said, that Finnelli had finally told him to shove it up his ass and went to Stuart Simms.
And those official, proper, signed contracts were nothing but crap! They were nothing but toilet paper to wipe the shit out of your ass, she told herself bitterly, bursting into another helpless string of sobs. They were completely bogus all the way! Just sitting there waiting to help that nasty, old, shit-faced bastard exploit some other unsuspecting victim, exactly like he'd done to her!
Well, by God, she told herself savagely, sitting up on the bed, he wasn't going to get away with this one! She was going to kill the motherfucker!
She reached for the gun, her face hot and flushed with crying, her hair mussed, her lips swollen and still trembling, her teeth ferociously clenched. She dumped the Styrofoam holder on its side, pushed the cylinder out of the.32 and began shoving bullets into the empty chambers, working as fast as she could with her shaking hands.
She was going to take this motherfucking gun, and she was going to put it up to that big, ugly bastard's head, and she was going to blow his fucking brains out all over the floor!… Then they'd see just how goddam funny the bastard felt about that…!
She finished loading the revolver and slammed it shut, handling it like a policewoman who'd been dealing with weapons for years. She jumped off the bed and stuffed the gun in her purse, working it down to the bottom so it would be out of sight. Then she dragged out her keys, struggled into her vinyl coat, and hurried out to her car. It was pretty late now, so she could be almost certain of catching Friedman at home.
She smiled grimly to herself as she started the engine and headed the automobile for Friedman's expensive apartment. The old bastard would never dream she'd have the guts to do something like this! She was gonna' catch him flatter than a pancake run over by every steamroller in the whole world!… This was going to be beautiful! She was gonna catch him with his pants down a hell of a lot further than they'd been the last time the two of them met!
That idea put another interesting thought into her head. What the hell… maybe she'd blow his balls off first, then kill him!