Usuality

by Thomas Mueller

  Johnson knew better. “I don’t believe for a second you’re the bitch-on-wheels you pretend to be, but that doesn’t mean I have the time or the energy to help you discover that fact for yourself.” Opening the glove box, he dug his snub-nosed .38 from the back of his jeans and deposited it inside.

  “I only carry it for work,” he explained, even though Marin hadn’t asked, “and then only from habit. Investigating is a whole lot of hurry-up-and-wait. Not very exciting, but there’s always the chance it could turn unpredictable.”

  He could have told her that he wasn’t the kind of person that liked the idea of the unpredictable ever turning into the unmanageable. That he had had unmanageable situations thrust upon him in the past. That he had survived them and had every intention of surviving any that might come up in the future, ethics and honor be damned. He could have told her any number of things, but right then all he wanted to do was go home and climb into bed, and he was starting to regret not leaving her behind at the motel.

  “I thought you were just happy to see me,” said Marin.

  “Nope, that was a gun in my pocket. You can put your clothes back on,” he said, “I’m not interested.” He picked up her pants and underwear and thrust them back towards her.

  She studied him in the mirror. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’d be surprised if you did.”

  “But you’re a guy.”

  “Last time I checked.”

  “Men don’t turn down free sex,” she said, propping herself up on an elbow.

  “There’s no such thing,” said Johnson. He tossed her clothes at her, then turned his attention to his jeans and carefully rezipped his fly.

  Marin didn’t move. “I thought you were different from all the rest.”

  “Anybody ever turn you down?”

  Her tone was frosty. “No.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  Johnson held up his hand, cutting off Marin’s reply. The headlights of another vehicle had rolled up behind them. The silhouette wasn’t a police car. It was big, a van of some sort, but beyond that the glare made it impossible to tell. Habitually cautious, Johnson reached back into the glove box.

  “Fuck,” said Marin, noticing the light and scrambling to put her clothes back on. “Is it the Russians?”

  Pointing his gun at the door, Johnson said, “You mean those out-of-work cabbies Polito had waiting to mug Silverman and take the blackmail photos?”

  “But Nick said—”

  “That the Russian mob was involved. Yep. He said that to scare your other ex-boyfriend into giving up Silverman’s photos.” Johnson eyed the sideview as he talked. The van’s door opened and a thin man stepped out. “Polito probably sent his boys a picture of your ex when he learned he was involved, told them to find out what had gone down upstairs. Maybe he thought the Russian thing would hide his involvement.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  Johnson shrugged. He stared into the mirror. The lanky man from the van came towards them like an upright cobra. Trusting his gut, Johnson rolled down his window and greeted the stranger with the nose of his revolver.

  “I’ve showed you mine,” prompted Johnson.

  Nonplussed, Nerd Glasses unbuttoned his jacket with one hand and pulled it back to reveal his shoulder holster. It was empty.

  “I just want to talk,” he said.

  Johnson shot him in the chest. The report of the revolver was like somebody jackhammering an anvil, but he was familiar with the sound and didn’t flinch. Nerd Glasses sailed over backwards and landed in the middle of the street.

  Johnson rolled his tongue around the inside of his molars, a habit he still hadn’t been able to break whenever guns were drawn. “Nobody who says that ever just does.”

  “Does what?” said Marin.

  “Wants to talk.”

  Marin pulled her clothes on faster, even, than she’d taken them off. “You shot him.”

  “What do you suppose comes out when you pull the trigger, confetti?”

  “But he’s dead,” repeated Marin.

  “No, he’s not. He’s wearing bulletproof clothing. You can tell by the way the impact knocked him over backwards. You shoot somebody, most of the time they just drop. It doesn’t pick them up and send them flying ass-over-tea-kettle like in the movies.”

  “You knew he was wearing a bulletproof vest?”

  “A bulletproof suit, not a vest. High end stuff. The fabric itself actually stops the bullet, not a bunch of plating sewn into it. CEOs wear it, celebrities, South American dictators, anybody with enough money that they want to waste it on looking like they aren’t actually worried about getting shot.”

  “But you knew he was wearing it when you shot him?”

  Johnson said nothing.

  Marin gawked. “You didn’t know.”

  “I don’t need to justify myself to you.”

  In truth, he felt like his actions did need justifying, at least to his own conscience. He hadn’t felt like one of the good guys for some time. Not since his stint in the Middle East, and even the righteousness of that got chipped away little by little, day by day, every time he ran into some years-late activist protesting America’s War of Aggression on a street corner, or read some armchair editorialist bemoaning Cowboy Imperialism. So-called intellectuals who found it easier to force-fit complicated situations into neatly labeled boxes, dismissing any good that men and women like Johnson might have accomplished. People were dying for a thousand shitty reasons all over the world. Very few of them had the luxury of discussing how fucked up their country was over lattes before work. American do-gooders, Johnson had long ago decided, didn’t care what, if any, actual effect their actions had on the world around them, just so long as, in the doing, those actions made them feel better about themselves while disrupting their lives as little as possible. He hated hypocrisy, and, when you came right down to it, hating hypocrisy meant hating most people, too.

  Still clutching his pistol, Johnson whipped the camper van in a tight u-turn. In the street, Nerd Glasses was starting to stir.

  When they were just past the other man’s panel van, Johnson stomped on the brakes. The van’s side was smashed in at bumper height, but it obviously hadn’t affected it’s drivability. Taking aim, Johnson shot out one of the white van’s tires. Then, on a hunch, he put the gun in his lap, took his phone from his shirt pocket and snapped a photo of the vehicle’s license plate.

  A silenced gun coughed, barely loud enough for Johnson to hear. The bullet passed his wrist close enough for him to feel the air move. It tore into the mirror beside his hand, shattering it. Pulling his arm back like the night outside had suddenly caught on fire, he floored the accelerator, knocking Marin unceremoniously to the floorboards in the back.

  “Time to go.”

  A second shot smacked into the rear windshield, exiting out the front, passing murderously through the space Marin’s head had been a split-second before. Johnson pulled savagely on the wheel and managed—barely—to get them around the first corner they came to.

  He was gonna bill somebody for the windshield repair, he thought blackly. He didn’t know who, but somebody was gonna pay for his van getting all shot to hell. He supposed he should have felt lucky, but the irritation at not having left Marin back at the motel, at getting dragged back into the Gaitskill woman’s mess, easily trumped any relief. This is what he got for being nice.

  “Damn it,” he said out loud.

  Marin pulled herself into a sitting position. She had crashed into the couch during the turn. Her hair was tousled and she no longer looked like she was even remotely enjoying herself.

  “What’s the problem now?” she asked.

  “You’re still alive,” said Johnson, clicking on the radio and cranking up the volume until his ears hurt.

  XXIV: DO-OVER

  It wasn’t like the first time, thought Garrett. It was everything the first time should have been. And it wasn’t until after, side by side under the bed�
��s flimsy sheet, that Garrett remembered about the hidden camera somewhere above the door that was feeding live video of their room to the television in Pickle’s office.

  His first impulse was to tell Reagan. But that wouldn’t do either of them any good, and it would ruin the moment. She probably wouldn’t believe that, with everything that had happened, the camera being in their room had simply slipped his mind.

  He wondered if Pickle kept a recording of the feed. He wouldn’t mind enjoying what they’d just done a second time around and from a different point of view.

  This time it had only been the two of them in the room. Guilty thoughts of Nick and Marin hadn’t colored their lovemaking. And this time, during and after, Reagan had lost herself in the joy of it, and the ferocity with which she climaxed left them both gasping for breath.

  “What are you thinking about?” Reagan asked.

  “How good I look naked.”

  Reagan’s pillow smacked him in the face before he had a chance to fend it off.

  “How many women have you used that line on?”

  “That mattered? Only one.”

  He expected a sarcastic reply, but Reagan was silent. He turned to kiss her cheek and found it was wet.

  “You’re crying.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  Garrett sat up. He stuffed his pillow behind his head. “Do you have a pen?”

  “What?”

  “A pen.”

  “Why?”

  “For the survey.”

  “Oh, my God. There’s a survey? For The Garrett Lindsay Big Experience?” Suddenly Reagan was laughing and sniffling and beating him with her pillow all at once. “Why didn’t we do this as kids?”

  “Jesus, what kind of a kid were you?”

  “You know what I mean. I had the biggest crush on you, you know.” She stared at the ceiling like she was seeing something a million miles away. “The whole world was infinite, like lying on your back and looking up at the stars and feeling that at any moment you might fall up into the sky forever and never stop. We were young. What happened?”

  “Too much.”

  Reagan pressed her pillow over her face with both hands. Then she flung it across the room.

  “Do you know what I wish? I wish I had one of Pickle’s joints. Or something to drink that wasn’t a Mr. Pibb. I lied to you,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “The last time with you, it meant something to me.”

  “I lied, too,” said Garrett. “When you asked if I remembered that night on the swings and I said I didn’t.”

  Reagan was silent. Fearing she might be crying again, Garrett said, “You still like Mountain Dew?”

  “Oh, God,” she said longingly. “Caffeine.”

  “So what do you want? I’ll go to the liquor store.”

  “Are you crazy? You can’t go out.”

  “You’re right. It’s been whole hours since I made Number One on America’s Most Wanted. They probably have posters up on every street corner by now.”

  “Give me your pillow so I can beat you with it.”

  “No.”

  The darkness was comfortable, but the sex was fading and, as it did so, their surroundings came back into focus. The heater had kicked in and was whirring asthmatically. The smell of Sonny’s cologne lingered in the room like somebody had forgotten to close a men’s magazine. The motel sheets were papery against their naked bodies, yet none of it bothered Garrett like it normally would have. A dead body in the corner wouldn’t have bothered him like it normally would.

  “So what did you think of that guy?”

  “What guy?”

  “That guy. The private eye.”

  Reagan stirred beside him. “I think he’s a jerk. I think he pretends to be some smooth-talking tough guy so he can justify taking advantage of people and their problems. I can’t believe you offered to hire him. He’s no better than the people he investigates, treating everybody like that. Sonny isn’t all that bad. He’s just an acquired taste.”

  Garrett regretted asking the question, but now they were talking it seemed awkward to stop. “Johnson seemed alright. I’m sure your parents were just trying to look out for you.”

  “Right.”

  “You’ve got a big heart, Rea. You see somebody treated unfairly and you want to make it right. But you can’t lose sight of the big picture. And the big picture is that Nick and Sonny are assholes.”

  “You think I’m too nice? You think I’m not enough like Marin?”

  “You’re nothing like Marin,” said Garrett. “And before you get all butthurt, that’s a good thing.”

  He got up and retrieved Reagan’s pillow, taking the opportunity to peek through the drapes. Nothing had changed. The parking lot was still empty. No means of transportation had magically appeared to whisk them away come morning. It felt like something in the outside world should mirror the upset in their own lives, but they could have been the last two people left on the earth for all the evidence Garrett could see to the contrary.

  He felt silly peering out like some kind of fugitive. They were safe as long as Nick and his friend didn’t decide to come back for another go-around over the photos. Nobody else knew where they were. He was being paranoid.

  He brought Reagan’s pillow back to her. She accepted it but didn’t immediately put it back under her head.

  “They’re assholes,” she admitted finally. “Happy? Nick’s an asshole, Sonny’s an asshole. All men are assholes.”

  “Now that we’ve got that settled.”

  “You know what I mean.” She groaned. “I can’t believe my parents. Why wouldn’t they just tell me they were worried? Who does that, hires somebody to dig into their own daughter’s life? My parents were never Those People.” She rolled onto her side and lay hugging her pillow against her round soccer-ball tummy. “Do you really think Nick did all that stuff Johnson says he did?”

  Garrett couldn’t bring himself to lie to her.

  “You do.”

  “I think anybody is capable of doing almost anything,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you were a bad person all along. You make a wrong decision, it doesn’t suddenly change the person you were beforehand, only the person you are from that point forward. Same thing goes for making good choices. It doesn’t automatically fix the bad you’ve done previously.”

  “So you think I should forgive him?”

  “Nick? Forgive him for what? Marin? The blackmail scheme? Being a macho jerk?”

  “Any of it. All of it. I don’t know,” Reagan sighed.

  “Do you want to?”

  “If by forgive you mean cut off his balls, throw them in a blender, and force him to drink it, then yes. What are we going to do? The agency is done for. You’re homeless,” she said, echoing his earlier thoughts. “We haven’t got any more cash, we can’t travel anonymously. Nick and Sonny want the photos, and so does somebody else who’s willing to kill for them. And all Detective Douchebag wants is to bleed my parents dry just for telling them something they already know.”

  “That Nick’s a—”

  “You don’t have to keep saying it!” she all but shouted.

  “Then stop defending him. And you can’t stand Sonny. Why are you making excuses for him?”

  He found his tux pants and, after a little searching, his boxers, and pulled both on.

  “You hated Nick,” Reagan said accusingly.

  “I would have hated his guts even if he had been the perfect guy. Maybe especially then.”

  Reagan bit her lip and wondered why he always had to choose the worst possible time to say the right thing. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she began, but at that instant headlights played across the curtains.

  A vehicle was turning into the lot.

  “See who it is.” She found her clothes and began to get dressed. Noticing the covers in disarray, she felt a twinge of guilt before reminding herself she no longer had to explain anything to her fiancé. That she did, in fact, no longer have a f
iancé at all.

  Garrett was busy trying to find his shirt, so she went up to the window herself and pulled the drape back just in time to have one eye blinded as the headlights pulled up outside their room. “Oh, wonderful. Marin and Detective Douchebag are back.”

  “What?” Garrett reached under the bed, came up with a sock. “Why?”

  “I’m sorry, I seem to have forgotten my crystal ball at home this morning. Go out and see what they want for yourself while I finish getting dressed. And try not to accidentally sleep with Marin on the way back.”

  Garrett looked up from slipping on his shoes. “You don’t mean that.”

  “No,” said Reagan. “But it felt good to say it anyway.”

  Garrett opened the door just in time to be pushed aside. Johnson walked unapologetically in and announced, “Checkout time just got moved up. We need to go.”

  Reagan finished strapping on her bra.

  “Damn, cowboy,” said Johnson. “You don’t waste time.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but there’s a lot of history between us,” said Garrett.

  “And now there’s some more drying on the bedsheets. Your pal with the glasses followed us.”

  “What?”

  “Your pal with the glasses followed us.”

  “I heard you,” said Reagan. She sat at the edge of the bed in her bra and panties and stretched, arching her back like she was daring Johnson to look at her. Garrett felt his stomach drop at the sight, as if he was cresting a roller-coaster, but Johnson only cleared his throat. Garrett noticed the gun grasped loosely in the big detective’s left hand.

  “Then hear this,” Johnson said. “We’re doing things my way from now on.”

  “Lucky us.”

  “That’s right. Lucky you. You wanted me involved and now I am. You don’t much like me. That hurts my feelings, but I’ll get over it. What I won’t get over is Betsy being all shot to hell, and I’m certainly not about to let the same thing happen to myself. I’m a good deal less charming with a hole in the head.”