Snake Face

by Amber Foxx

  The tunnel of psychic travel brought her to a sunny kitchen with red, black, and white checked tiles, where the cat crouched at a self-dispensing food dish. The appliances looked new and expensive with a kind of brushed metal surface she’d only seen in magazines, while the table and chairs were either real or fake country antiques with streaky, faded, red paint. Mae’s perception was so sharp that she heard the crunching of dry cat food and saw Gasser’s skin twitch. What a bad idea, a free feeding station for this animal.

  Out the window she had a different view than she’d had from the living room, showing a large wire-fenced pen with a doghouse in it. Three shiny muscular little dogs with tightly curled tails ran into the pen, followed by the same woman who had been with Gasser before. She wore workout clothes and athletic shoes, and looked sweaty. She must have been running with the dogs. They circled her, bouncing but not barking. Mae thought she heard one yodel, but that seemed too strange.

  Gasser looked up, his head turned toward the sound. The woman disappeared from the window view. Gasser resumed eating, and then lapped with tiny slapping sounds at the water bowl. Mae could hear perfectly. The dog did yodel.

  When the woman came in through the door, she sniffed and scrunched up her nose. “Oh, Gordo. Apestas!” She crossed the room and opened another door, then walked to Gasser and gave him a nudge with her foot. Not a kick or a shove, but not an affectionate gesture, either. Gasser looked up, stood, and she pushed her toe into his side again.

  Seeming to recognize a familiar cue, he padded to the open door and stepped down into a garage, his belly dragging on the threshold. In the light from the kitchen, Mae saw a white sports car. Her vision followed Gasser past the car and she caught a glimpse of Texas license plates, but the woman closed the door before Mae could see the numbers. The garage went pitch dark.

  Gradually she noticed a thin crack of light under the edge of the garage door, but it only illuminated the very edge of the cement floor. Into the silence and darkness Gasser delivered one enormous, plaintive yowl, so long and loud and sad it was like he’d practiced some kind of kitty opera while riding shotgun with Jamie.

  Mae left the vision.

  What did she know? Three strange dogs. A white sports car with Texas plates. The owner went running with the dogs, said Oh Gordo. Apestas! to Gasser and almost literally kicked him out. He cried.

  Jamie would be upset. She had more evidence that his cat was unloved in his new home, and not much identification of that home other than Texas. Mae put the crystals in the pouch for those that had been used and needed a saltwater bath, and picked up her phone again.

  Before she could call, Stamos asked, “So how was the psychic travel?”

  “I found out the cat’s in Texas. Or at least, this lady has Texas plates.” Mae had driven around New Mexico with North Carolina plates for a while. “But it’s probably Texas. Her place is real fancy and Western, and she looks settled, not like she just moved. She’s got dogs that make some kind of funny little noise like they yodel instead of bark, got a big pen and dog house for ’em—”

  “Really?” Stamos looked unexpectedly attentive and tense. “Texas and the dogs yodel? What else did you pick up?”

  “She talked to Gasser, but all she said was Gordo, apestas.”

  “That’s means Fatso, you stink.”

  “I kinda thought she didn’t like him. She puts him out in the garage, and she doesn’t pet him. I can’t figure out why she has him. She goes out running with those dogs, but she didn’t pet them either, or even talk to ’em.”

  “That is because she is this rich Texan’s pet sitter.”

  “I think you’re right. That’d explain a lot. So now I need to find a rich Texan with a white sports car and yodeling dogs.”

  “A white sports car?”

  Stamos gave her a significant look, eyebrows lowered, and tapped the jewel case for the Brazos CD. Puzzled, Mae picked it up. The cover featured a photo of the singer seated on a tall stool, playing guitar. A black cowboy hat cast its shadow on his tanned, hard face. He was a young man but weathered, with long, unruly, sun-bleached hair and a two-day growth of darker beard that Mae suspected was a cultivated look. He wore faded jeans, a fancy belt, and a sleeveless black T-shirt that showed every muscle in his arms, and held his guitar as if he were its lover. He did look Texan. “Are you saying it could be him?”

  “Look inside. Don’t tell me you never read the liner notes.”

  “I don’t.”

  So Stamos was like Hubert in another way. He read lyrics and liner notes, and found it strange that Mae didn’t. She’d never seen the point. She could hear the words, so why read them? And she wasn’t really into the musicians’ personal comments and stories, just the music itself.

  She pulled the paper out for the first time now, and unfolded a long pleated sheet of words partially superimposed over a series of pictures. Joe Wayne posed with motorcycles, dogs, and horses—and a white sports car. The three dogs were small, muscular and shiny, with tightly curled tails, and Joe Wayne looked proud of them, crouching in the red Texas dirt with his arms around his animals. The dogs from her vision.

  “How do you know those dogs yodel? Have you been to his house?”

  “No. But I’ve met them. They’re basenjis, African dogs that don’t bark. He had them with him at the Route 66 Classic Car show last year in Albuquerque. Congo, Kikuyu, and Sotho.” A hint of contempt crept into Stamos’s voice. “I remember that, because he introduced them, but not the woman who was walking them.”

  Mae didn’t know where to follow her thoughts—to the bizarre possibility that Gasser was somehow in Joe Wayne Brazos’s house, or to the story of how Stamos knew him and why he didn’t like him. Was it only because Joe Wayne was the kind of jerk who liked his dogs better than his woman, or was there more?

  It seemed best to talk to Stamos about his feelings first. He didn’t share a lot of emotion, normally, but he had brought this up, and they were about to spend the evening hearing Joe Wayne in concert. Mae ejected the CD and put it back in the case, holding on to the liner notes.

  “Is that why you don’t like him? The way he treated that woman?”

  “Partly. I suppose I could sum the problem up as the way he treats women in general. I spent the better part of the day with him.” Stamos sat a little taller and seemed to deliberately ease his tightening grip on the wheel. “Joe Wayne Brazos is, as I am, a member of the Southwest Classic Car Club. He has a 1967 MG. I’m not sure a British car really belonged next to my Coronet in our grand tribute to the American road, but nonetheless we were neighbors in the car show.”

  “You mean he was out there showing his car and not getting swamped with fans and paparazzi?”

  “He was somewhat incognito. Clean-shaven, wearing a ball cap and sunglasses, with his hair in a ponytail. And he had the sign on his windshield under another name, Joseph Bradford Wainwright the Third. That’s the name I’d seen in the directory of our club, and I’d never thought it might be Brazos. After about twenty minutes I guessed who he was, but I let him be. He obviously wanted to enjoy the car show and not be, as you say, swamped.”

  “What did he do that was so bad with women?”

  Stamos focused on the road, silent for a while. “Never mind. This illustration is enough. You should have seen how he treated her, whoever she was. This tiny, slender young woman came up with the three dogs, and he introduced them. He talked on and on about what a great breed they are, such good runners, and so quiet. But he never mentioned the woman on the other end of the leash other than to snap at her about making sure they had plenty of water and shade. I assumed she was his personal assistant. I hated to think she could be his wife.”

  “I didn’t think he was married.”

  “I don’t think he is. No woman in her right mind would put up with him for very long.”

  “Sounds like the bad boy image isn’t an act.”

  Stamos nodded. “I’m afraid you are right.”

  So
this was the story. Stamos, the gentleman, disliked the way Joe Wayne treated women. It wasn’t personal, it was principled.

  She hoped Stamos had guessed correctly that the woman walking the dogs was a personal assistant. At least she’d be getting paid well to put up with Joe Wayne’s treatment. If not, she might be the woman addressed in the lyrics. Don’t you just have to say, that’s bad, sweetheart, and love me anyway. Until now, Mae had always assumed the song was a kind of fiction created for entertainment, but it could be autobiography. She scanned the liner notes to see if Joe Wayne wrote his own music.

  He did, but not alone. All songs by Joe Wayne Brazos and Sylvie Wainwright.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Hey sugar, I’ve got some news for you. You okay? You sound funny.”

  Jamie tried to summon some energy, but failed. “Fuck.” Did he sound as dragged down as he felt? “I’m sitting in this ugly big-box store at the little café thing. Feel like I can’t move. Keep drinking coffee but it’s like I’m immune to it.” He sighed. “Fluorescent lights hypnotize me or something. Dunno. Had to buy new grundies and socks. Somebody stole my clothes last night while I was out on insomnia patrol in just my jeans, and now I’m eating this crap salad with iceberg lettuce—and fucking French fries. I’m—dunno. Dazed.”

  “Someone stole your clothes? Did you call the police?” Mae’s soft, girlish voice sounded so worried about him, it made him feel loved and yet guilty for bothering her.

  “Nah. Clothes aren’t worth much.”

  “You’ve been robbed twice and never called the police. Sugar, this is strange. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Fucking weird. And this Sylvie who has my instruments showed up with only a few of them—instruments, not my clothes—and then she sat next to me and read my shopping list.”

  “Sylvie showed up where, sugar? Sat next to you where?”

  “Raleigh. Durham.” He rose, dumped the remains of the disgusting meal in a red trash can, sucked down the last of a soda from its dregs of ice and dumped the container as well. Toxic food. It didn’t give him strength, it stole it. He headed for the van with his plastic bag of new purchases, aware of the security person at the exit watching him. The stupid huge lost and found shirt made him look like a shoplifter. “Christ, I’m buggered. And I haven’t done a bloody thing all day but creep the van around and shop. Took me an hour just to get to Durham.”

  “I think you need a swim. Get your energy back up. Get your stress out. Doesn’t your hotel have a pool?”

  Jamie crossed the parking lot to the van, unlocked it. Now that he’d been robbed twice he was religious about locking up. “I fucked up. Checked out. I was supposed to stay.”

  “Jamie, for Pete’s sake, you could check back in. What’s got into you? You’re being so passive.”

  “No. No.” Passive? Jesus. That wasn’t the image he wanted her to have of him. “I was going to take action, really. Thought I’d have you look at things from the poisoner and the thief, see if you could learn something.” He dropped his new bag into the passenger seat and began to look in his thrift shop bag for a sweater. It was around fifty degrees and he wasn’t quite cold, but he felt a need to cover the lost-and-found tent shirt.

  “Of course, that’s not action, is it?” he added. “It’s me asking you for more help. It’s stupid, too, since I told Sylvie I wouldn’t prosecute the thief, and if the poisoner never does anything but give me calories, dunno why I’m so worried about it except for that bloody inch. It’s getting up to two.”

  “I doubt it.” A long pause. “But you’re worried about Sylvie.”

  “Yeah.” Jamie pulled the sweater over his head. It felt tight, with the big shirt under it, or else it was the wrong size, or the weight really was piling on while he sat around all day. Two inches. Three. He didn’t want to take the giant T-shirt off while standing in the parking lot, even if doing so would reassure him that its bulk was why the sweater was tight. “Wendy checked her out and said she’s all right, but she doesn’t feel right, y’know? Think it’s me, though. Too much crap landing on me, starting to think dark.”

  “Sugar? What do you mean, dark?”

  “Oh, no worries. Just a little slump, y’know. I need Gasser. I’d sleep better, wouldn’t be so bloody fucking tired, and—fuck, shoot me. I’m whingeing.”

  “I wish you’d stop saying shoot me. I know what you mean: you want me to stop you from what you’re doing, but it’s—”

  “Too suicidal? Sorry.” He laughed. “At least I don’t say stab me or stuff me with pills.”

  “That’s not funny.” She hesitated again. “I don’t know if what I’m gonna tell you is gonna freak you out, or give you hope, or what. It’s about Gasser.”

  “I won’t freak out. Just tell me. D’you know where he is?”

  “I do, but it’s strange. Sylvie shipped Gasser to Joe Wayne Brazos.”

  Sylvie? Jamie dropped into the driver’s seat, his mind instantaneously transformed from coffee-proof mud to a swirl of lightning and wind. The heavy, aching sky should have stirred into a storm with him. Ideas snapped together into images. He didn’t think it, but saw it. Imagined it as it must have been. Sylvie at the Oklahoma rest stop. Sylvie outside his hotel in Asheville. Outside his windows, watching. Hope you got your britches on, cowboy.

  Mae’s sweet little voice stroked his ears. “Sugar, you still with me?”

  “Yeah. Jesus. How—” He struggled to slow his thoughts. “Who in bloody hell is Joe Wayne Brazos?”

  “Big country star.” Mae paused, and music came through the phone. Something about being a bad sweetheart. It was the tune Sylvie had whistled. “That’s his biggest hit. I’m guessing your Sylvie is the Sylvie Wainwright that co-wrote all his songs, because for sure, Gasser is in his house. I think the lady I’ve been looking at is a pet-sitter. Joe Wayne is in this antique car club with Stamos as Joseph Wainwright, so I figure that’s his real name and Sylvie Wainwright might be his wife. I never heard he was married, though. I reckon she could be his sister.”

  “Nah. He’s her husband.” Sylvie had been amazed when Jamie had never heard of this bloke Brazos, whistled this tune she couldn’t believe Jamie didn’t know, and said her husband was on the road. She’d been dropping hints like giant breadcrumbs in a trail Jamie couldn’t follow because he didn’t like country music—and that bothered her. She expected him to recognize her as some famous songwriter. Married to a big star. No wonder she had money. “Jesus. So why in bloody hell is she stalking me?”

  “I have no idea. It doesn’t make any sense at all. But I reckon that’s how she found Gasser out running around.”

  How strange. Was it some sort of luck he’d had a stalker, then, to rescue Gasser? “Yeah. But I don’t think she knows he’s mine. She never mentioned him.”

  “You’d better tell her, then. Get him back with your instruments. Be careful, if she’s a stalker. I don’t want to scare you—”

  “Me, scared? I’m fearless.” He snort-laughed. “Bloody fucking fearless.”

  “Sugar, your phone is beeping like your battery is running out. I need to know you’re okay before the phone dies. You’re really not scared?”

  No, I’m terrified. He looked at the battery icon. It was empty, a hollow outline. How had he not noticed? He pictured such a signal on his forehead, a little empty brain shape. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just tired, that’s all.”

  “Charge your phone then, and call me later, let me know what Hubert says about the van. I’ll be up late. We’re driving past midnight. I’ll keep an eye on Gasser for you. Be careful.”

  “I will.” Jamie’s next words seemed to speak themselves before he could stop them. “I love you.”

  He shut off his beeping phone and leaned back. How had that slipped out? His edges were getting soft, like his body. Something inside him blurred, as if he’d gone underwater, his flash of alertness already dissolving. He had to fight the dimness and get a grip. Think.

  Knowing who Sylvie wa
s made her even stranger. If she was some famous country music songwriter with a rich husband, why was she working in a bar? And following Jamie? She seemed to want him to guess who she was. To recognize her and her husband and their songs. Maybe once he did, she’d stop this game. He’d have to call to tell her he knew who she was, and that Gasser was his, as soon as he charged his phone.

  The charger had been in his luggage with his clothes. Jesus. Cruel. The thief was nickel-and-diming him to death, hassling his nerves into shreds with this petty crap. No wonder he was so buggered.

  He returned to the store and picked up both a car charger and one to plug in at his hotels. At the checkout he noticed a tabloid with a picture of a long-legged cowboy with shoulder-length blond hair, a five-o’clock shadow, and a black eye. The headline read Brazos Lives Like the Songs that He Wrote. So this was Sylvie’s asshole husband. Gasser was in this bloke’s house.

  Jamie bought a copy of the tabloid along with his chargers, plugged in the phone to get a few minutes’ worth of charge, then drove the feeble van to the parking lot of the place where he would play that night. Once there, he got out and began walking. The tropical depression still made his whole body hurt.

  Hubert called to confirm that he and Jen would be at the show and reassured Jamie that he’d spent most of his working life dealing with old cars, even if he was only twenty-eight years old. He would be able to understand the van. Grateful, Jamie said he’d try to get them in for free, if he could, and then the phone’s battery died again.

  He returned to the coffee shop where Sylvie had alarmed him, found a table with an outlet and plugged in his phone with the other charger. Desperate to recharge his brain as well, he bought more coffee and a vegan brownie, and began reading the magazine.