by J. Boyett
Then he suddenly remembered, like a message from above, this one scene from that movie Blade Runner. He and Elly had both liked it when they were kids, what with their age differences it was one of the few movies they’d watched together, so maybe it was floating around in his head for that reason. There was that one scene where the brunette woman told Harrison Ford to leave her alone, and tried to leave his apartment, and Harrison Ford blocked her, then blocked her again. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her full-on—she resisted at first but then gave in. You could tell that the brunette had actually wanted to be with him the whole time, but she’d felt sort of obligated to resist. . . . Maybe it wouldn’t work out that way in real life, but on the other hand maybe that was exactly what Jesse was waiting for him to do. If he wound up really pissing her off then she could always just make him stop.
Still he kept sitting there a few seconds longer, frozen by stage fright. But he forced himself to get up, and walked to the door she’d gone through, then stepped through it.
Jesse was sitting at a little desk. She really was going through a bunch of coupons. She looked up at him, surprised. “Ricky?” she said. “Are you okay?” He must have looked weird.
He looked down at her. Her being seated threw him for a loop. After spending a few seconds trying to figure out what to do about it, he said, “Um, would you mind standing up?”
She kept staring at him. Then she got up, but didn’t step towards him yet. “Okay,” she said. “Now what?”
He started to move forward, seemed to hitch to a stop, then lurched forward again and took her in his arms and leaned forward and down and kissed her.
Jesse pushed back at his chest and slid her mouth out from under his. “Whoa,” she said. “Ricky, I told you. . . .”
“I need you, though,” he said.
She kept squirming. “Ricky. . . .”
He grabbed her by the arms and shook her, and held her face up very close to his, letting her see his passion: “I need you!” he said.
With that she sort of went limp and her eyes died out. She’d given herself over. Ricky held her in his arms and felt her strange stiff looseness and felt, for the first time maybe in years, a huge elation with no edge of fear—he’d won—she was giving herself to him, he’d done it right. He worked his mouth and tongue against hers as it stirred against him, but less forcefully than before; her tongue was like a slug that had been left in the refrigerator a long time and was numb and slow now. When he pulled her shirt up over her head, she had trouble raising her arms for him, and he had to help her, gently. He took her bra off and undid her pants, and when she was losing balance he led her to the bed and lay her down on it. He got undressed and took the condom out of his wallet and held it up and showed it to her. “Look,” he said. “See? I got a condom.” She looked at it, sort of nodded. He unwrapped it and invited her to watch as, straddling her, he rolled it onto his dick. Her eyes flicked down there. As he made love to her, he held her tightly, her cheeks against his palms. His fingers pressed tenderly into her temples, and the flesh in front of her earlobes. He stared hard into her eyes, willing his whole soul inside her; his lips touched hers, he shared her breath, both of them lived off the same hot fog, their eyes so close to each other that the features fractured and floated loose in each one’s field of vision. He rocked himself back and forth on top of her, in and out of her, willing her to make some sound, even though he would have felt silly making noises himself; and finally she did, little moans, like she was overwhelmed with feelings, somewhere deep down and far away. Then Ricky got to a point where he had to make some noises, too. He made a bunch of them in quick succession, and then he came. Once he came he kind of collapsed onto Jesse, his sweaty forehead buried in the pillow next to her ear, his mouth slack and wet on her shoulder. Then he realized that he was probably totally crushing her, so he raised himself up on his elbows and looked down into her red wet face. “Hey,” he said. “How was that? For you, I mean?”
Jesse was staring out into space. After taking a half-second to gather herself, she put her arms around him and patted his shoulder a couple times. “It was fine,” she reassured him.
He was a little bit hurt that she was so lukewarm, but tried not to show it. After all, it wasn’t like he didn’t want her to be honest with him. If it hadn’t been the greatest, well, it hadn’t been the greatest. He said, “It’s my first time in, like, years,” then felt embarrassed by the admission. Why should he, though? She had to already know he hadn’t had sex with a girl in years.
“I know,” she said, and patted him on the shoulder again, then rubbed him vigorously on the same spot. He thought he heard some impatience or something in her voice, so he shut up, self-conscious, and ducked his face again into the hollow between her neck and shoulder.
They lay there like that a while. Then Jesse, sounding both annoyed and apologetic, said, “Um, you’re kind of heavy. . . ?”
“Sorry!” said Ricky, and started to roll off her, but remembered in time to reach down and hold the condom against the base of his softening dick, to make sure he didn’t leave it inside her, along with his cum. He peeled it the rest of the way off himself and held it up for Jesse to see. “Where should I put this?” he asked.
She looked with distaste at the wet distended rubber bag hanging from his fingers. “Um, the wastebasket?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. He almost asked her where it was but then caught himself and decided to glance around first to see if he could spot one. There was one right there, in the corner of the room. He got up and walked over and dropped the loaded condom into it. Only when he turned around and was walking back to the bed did he remember that he was naked—it felt good to be naked with another person, to be intimate like that again.
He got back in bed with Jesse. The sheets were wet and cooling, like when you wake up and realize that hours earlier you wet the bed. He gathered her up into his arms, and said, “You want to just sort of lay here a while?”
“Sure,” she said.
He kissed her on the top of her head, and put his leg over her legs and pulled them in towards him too. He tenderly nuzzled her hair with his lips, then felt self-conscious again—but that was silly, he didn’t need to feel that way anymore, that was the whole point. Unsure of whether it was the right thing to say, he went ahead anyway and said, “Thank you.”
Jesse was silent for a few seconds. Then: “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It wasn’t anything.”
11.
Jesse got up after a while and took a shower because she had to go to work at Vino’s before too long. Only a four-hour shift. She told Ricky to feel free to leave, but he waited for her to get ready so they could depart at the same time.
He drove away, well below the speed limit. He had no idea where to go looking for Ted. Jesse and Paul were the only people who would know anything, and they knew nothing. Ricky did know what the guy looked like, because he’d seen photos. He could go driving through the hipper parts of town looking for him; he knew from Elly that Ted was sort of a hipster. The odds of spotting him were crazy small—he was no more likely to be in his usual hangouts than he was to be at his house—but Ricky felt obligated to do something.
He tried to think of where the hip neighborhoods were, besides the area around Vino’s. For the moment he just drove to Vino’s, wondering if he would get there at the same time as Jesse. As he approached he saw Paul walking along the otherwise deserted sidewalk, a guitar case strapped to his back. Ricky pulled over and unlocked the passenger door. Instead of hopping right into the car Paul leaned forward and stared through the window at Ricky as if he didn’t recognize him. Ricky leaned over again and opened the passenger door. “Need a ride?”
Paul reached around and opened the back door, put his guitar on the backseat, then got into the passenger seat and buckled his seatbelt. “Thanks, man!” he said, “I’m just going to Vino’s.”
Vino’s was less than a minute’s drive away, so you would have thought
Paul could have just held the guitar in his lap and maybe even gone without the seatbelt. As they drove off, Ricky said, “Are you in a band?”
“Yeah,” said Paul, “we’re playing tonight. I’m way early, I was just going to hang out a while and have some beers first.” As they went through an intersection he said, “You missed the turn there.” Then, “So what are you up to?”
“Just leaving Jesse’s place.”
“Really? That’s kind of far from here, though. . . . You hung out with her again? Twice in one day?”
“Yeah.” Ricky hesitated, and then said, “We’re kind of dating now.”
“Really?!” exclaimed Paul, staring at him.
Ricky shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Why not?”
Paul stared at him. “No reason. Just, you know. Fast.”
Ricky nodded, giving the point its due. “Yeah. I guess it is sort of fast. Just sort of happened, I guess.”
Paul kept looking at him. “Well, that’s awesome, bro,” he said. “Jesse is a great girl.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, hey, dude, you missed another turn you could have taken. . . .”
“Oh, sorry. . . .”
“It’s cool, I’m not in a big hurry. I mean, we go on last, I’m like five hours early.”
Ricky had nothing to say for a few seconds. Then he said, “I was about to go driving around looking for Ted, if you can think of anyplace he might be.”
“Dude, I really think you should, you know, sort of chill out a little bit about Ted.”
“Well, but he killed my sister, though.”
“I know. Sorry. I guess that wasn’t like a very, like, sensitive thing to say. I get why you’re all fucked up about that stuff. All I mean is, you’re not going to be able to find him. Unless he’s hanging at his house. Did you check there?”
“If he was just hanging out at his house then the cops would’ve found him.”
“That’s true. You know what? Don’t check out his house.” Ricky made a left turn, starting his journey around the block so he could head back to Vino’s. “It’s none of my business, but I feel like what you’re doing is putting off the whole grieving process by taking on this whole big task thing. Like, even if you did find Ted, what then? You’d call the police and they’d come get him. Which is going to happen anyway, I mean even without you, they’re going to get him. And after they come to arrest him, then what? You’re going to be right back the same place where you started, with all this grief stuff still waiting to be done.”
“If I find him then I’m not going to call the police.”
“Well. Okay. I actually kind of figured that and that’s part of what worries me. I mean, you’re on parole, man. Right? I mean, you don’t want to get mixed up in that kind of shit. Even though I guess no one would blame you, since it wouldn’t be like you’d gotten into some shit with just whoever. But, still, it could wind up fucking with you.” Ricky made another turn. “I mean, even if you did, like, track down Ted or whatever. And whether you turned him in or whether you, you know, whatever—I mean, what good would it do? Would it bring back Elly? No. Would it make you feel better? I don’t think so, dude. Not for long. Maybe for just a few seconds.”
They were in front of Vino’s, so Ricky stopped the car. Paul was still looking at him. Ricky looked back at him, and explained, trying to be clear but not too condescending about it: “It’s sort of more like an honor thing, Paul.”
Paul stared at him like he was nuts. Then he said, “Okay.” He undid his seatbelt and got out of the car, he got his guitar out of the backseat. Before he closed the front door, he leaned down again so as to be at eye level with Ricky and said, “Seriously, dude. Just, let go a little. Let us help you.”
Ricky shrugged. He didn’t ask why Paul said “us” instead of “me.”
Paul made a face like he was kind of giving up. “Okay,” he said. “Well, thanks for the ride, dude.”
“No problem.”
“And, listen, if you get tired of driving around, just come back here. Me and Jesse would be glad to hang out with you.”
Paul closed the door and went into Vino’s. Ricky drove away.
12.
Drove away to where, though? He was afraid to go see his mom again, and Elly was dead so he couldn’t go to her place. He didn’t know where to find Ted. But it really would be weird if he went back and hung out with Jesse and Paul again right away.
He looked at the sidewalks to see if he could spot Ted. But he wasn’t sure he would even recognize him, he’d only seen a couple photos of the guy. Curly black hair. Ricky drove to the Hillcrest neighborhood, which was another hip area, and checked for guys who looked like Ted sitting on the benches. He didn’t see any. He didn’t even see anyone who looked all that hip. Then, looking at Jaubert’s as he passed it, he went way over to Kanis Park on the other side of town and drove through the parking lot to the skating bowl. There was nobody there. He sat in the car listening to the engine idle and looked at the branches, swaying in the wind. Through the scrim of trees he heard the steady whoosh of traffic. Fuck it, he decided, he might as well go check out Clover Street, to fill the time if for nothing else.
When Paul had given him the directions to Ted’s house, Ricky had recognized each turn, and he’d expected the drive there to be like a relaxed homecoming. But again shocks kept lunging out at him. He got disoriented along the way, almost lost, but not because things had changed—it was all stuff he’d never quite known.
When he rounded the corner onto Clover, the blinking of the police lights made him flinch at first, because he assumed they were coming from inside his own head. Then the whole police car formed itself in his field of vision.
Seeing the cop cars, he slammed hard on his brakes, halting in the middle of the road with a loud squeak. What he should have done was just act natural and continue driving past, but reflexes had kicked in, or something. In the rearview mirror he saw a car coming up from behind, so he pulled over onto the curb. He didn’t cut the engine but he did set the parking brake.
He sat watching, even though there wasn’t much action right now: just lights, no sirens. From here he couldn’t see the house’s number, but he figured it was Ted’s. No surprise—he’d even said that the cops would be coming around Ted’s. Why should he be shocked to see them there? Maybe he was just surprised that they didn’t have any better ideas. He’d only bothered to come here out of desperation. But it was kind of pathetic that the cops hadn’t been able to come up with anything better, what with all their resources and shit.
There were a couple of cops standing in the yard, looking around. They looked like they were keeping an eye out for Ted. Ricky’s scorn was mounting—like Ted would ever in a million years come near the house with all these cops out here. Fucking stupid retard pigs.
The front door of the house opened and some more cops came out holding a handcuffed guy by the arms. He had curly black hair, he was Ted. From this far away it was hard to see clearly, but it looked like his eyes were red and his face was wet, but also like he was scowling, or smirking even. The cops pulled him through the front yard and stuck him into the back of a police car. Then the cops got in their cars too. By now people were coming out of their houses to watch, and enough cars were slowing down or even stopping that Ricky didn’t seem conspicuous after all.
The cops pulled off. Ricky sat there watching. Once they were more than a few yards away from him, he took off the parking brake and followed them. They still had their lights flashing, but they hadn’t turned on the sirens and they were going at a normal speed. The three cop cars went through a stop light that was green for the first but yellow for the last two—Ricky gunned it and went through while it was red. The cops didn’t seem to notice.
Ricky kept following them. He was thinking that actually he maybe could wind up following them all the way, like to the police station, or wherever. He didn’t know what he would do there, but maybe they would question him, or let him sit in while they quest
ioned Ted. He could explain that he was Elly’s brother and maybe they would decide that he might have some input.
But then they did put the sirens on and started to speed up. Cars got out of their way; they wouldn’t get out of Ricky’s way like that. Still he followed them. He was really speeding now, but apparently none of the cops looked in their rearview mirrors and noticed the ballsy driver taking advantage of the trail they blazed. Or else they didn’t care.
Finally they pulled away from him. They were just going too fast.
He took his foot off the accelerator and let the car sort of drift. When he started getting too slow to be on this busy road he got into the right lane, so as to be able to pull into one of the side streets. He didn’t check to see if there was any traffic coming up behind him from back there, and as he turned into that lane someone behind him honked. When he turned into a side street he didn’t bother putting on the brakes at all and the inertia shoved him into the corner of his seat.
He let the car drift along the straight empty road a little while. Fuck it. So Ted was going to jail. Ricky was glad, since the guy had killed his fucking sister. Who cared that Ricky hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to him first, who cared that he hadn’t brought him in? Ricky thought about going to break the news to Paul, or Jesse, and even started to map out in his head the route back to Vino’s. But it would have been weird to go back there already. It would have been crazy not to tell anyone, though. He decided to go back to his mom’s house. It was probably time to check on her, anyway.
13.
You could hear the TV from out in the yard. Ricky opened the front door and poked his head in gingerly; “Mom?” he called. She was sitting on the couch in front of the TV, looking at it. “Hey, Mom!” he said, louder, so she could hear him over the TV’s volume.
She looked at him, kind of annoyed. “What?” she said. “I heard you the first time!”