by Rex Pickett
“Okay,” she said.
“Hey, I saw the comet again tonight.”
“You remembered?”
“Yeah, it just sort of struck me all of a sudden. It’s weird the things you remember the night after getting sideways.”
“How’d it look?”
“Still disintegrating, I guess. Sort of like life.”
That last remark injected a chill into the phone line and brought a formality back to her voice. “Well, call me when you feel like it.” We exchanged good-byes and hung up.
I looked at the phone in my hand for a moment, and decided not to return any more calls.
I crawled into bed and turned the television on. Channel after channel insulted me with its inanity, deepening my melancholy, so I shut it off and lay wide awake in the dark. It was as if I had enwombed myself in a sensory deprivation chamber. My feeling of dread spiraled. Soon, I felt like I was floating, borne by some fickle wind, defenseless, sucking the marrow of my own brain. The beginning stirrings of a panic attack began to assail me. I felt like something was about to go horribly wrong: heart attack, stroke, asphyxiation. As my anxiety slowly tightened around me, I wheezed for air, pusillanimously invoked God—a god I didn’t believe existed except when I needed him—and cursed my absence of a partner who might have consoled me in this troubled moment. I broke down and dissolved a Xanax under my tongue. It took maybe thirty minutes for the drug to kick in, but that half hour felt like a terrifying eternity. Storms raged in my head. At the height of the attack, a sentimental memory of Victoria caused tears to
In the dead of night, I woke to the jangling of the cheap motel phone. I didn’t answer it. A few minutes later, the message light began flashing, accompanied by an annoying little ding ding noise every few seconds, and the room was suddenly throbbing red all over again. I inserted a pair of earplugs and pulled the covers over my head. Maybe I should have taken Maya up on her offer.
TUESDAY: STALKING THE BOAR
Jack wasn’t in the room when I returned from breakfast, so I climbed into my 4Runner and rode out to La Purisima. The sky was an opulent sea of blue, and the local flora was turned out in one of Nature’s more resplendent displays, imparting a sense of peace to my anxious soul.
I played twenty-seven holes with a reticent Japanese kid whose wealthy parents, he told me, were bankrolling his unrealistic dream of making it on the PGA Tour.
Afterward, I sat up in the observation tower sipping a frosty bottle of Firestone Ale and watched the shadows lengthen over the fairways, the late-afternoon sun bewitching the course in a green-gold light.
At a pay phone mounted on the side of the clubhouse I called home for messages. My agent hadn’t called and I was starting to worry about the response from the editor at Conundrum. Was this going to be yet another disappointment ? When I hung up, my fears escalated. What the fuck was I going to do if it didn’t sell? I had made money in the past as a screenwriter, but I had frittered most of it away
I drove back to the motel in the faint light of dusk, lost in self-deprecations. In my rearview mirror, the sun was a red disc narrowing on the horizon. Momentarily distracted by my bleak reverie and blinded by the sun’s intensity, I swerved at the last moment to prevent being flattened by a horn-blaring 18-wheeler.
It was almost night when I arrived in Buellton and swung into the Windmill Inn. As soon as I opened the door to our unit, I stopped dead in my tracks, assailed by the sounds of pleasurable moaning. In the dim light of the curtained room I could make out Jack on top of a splay-legged Terra, his hairy ass thrusting piston-like as he grunted like a rutting rhino. When they realized someone had broken in on their lovemaking, Jack leapt off Terra like the fornicator en flagrante he was, exposing her magnificently flourishing black bush. Terra started laughing uncontrollably, and her naked body seemed to be unintentionally rebuking me.
“Sorry, folks.” I quickly backed out of the room, shutting the door behind me, as muffled laughter erupted from inside.
I strode over to the Clubhouse, desperately needing a libation or five. The only other person in the place was the sepulchral-faced bartender and he was so mesmerized by a baseball game squawking on the overhead TV that he didn’t even see me at first. He finally turned when I called out “Hello,” and came over, without apology. I ordered a glass of the wretched Firestone Cab and he poured me one. An attempt to make small talk about the game quickly broke down because my heart wasn’t in it. I glanced over
Two glasses of Cab later, I had sandpapered the rough edges and momentarily shaken the image of my naked friend and his tittering small-town courtesan and her hot naked body. A body the likes of which I hadn’t experienced in nearly a year.
I climbed off the stool, found a pay phone by the bathroom, and called Maya. She wasn’t in and I didn’t leave a message. Had she been at home, I had half-resolved to disclose what was going on with Jack and his impending marriage. But not on an answering machine.
I slipped back into the bar and returned to my stool. Locals punching out of work were beginning to trickle in and the noise of pool balls smacking one another and voices jawing and music on the jukebox started to rise and overtake the gloomy quiet.
An hour or so later, Jack finally rolled in with Terra hanging on his arm and tilting her head up into his sheepish smile. She was laughing at something he was saying with the air of a young girl in love. It was obvious from the bloom in their faces and their disheveled appearance that they had been drinking and fucking all night and into the next day: a debauch of Dionysian dimensions.
“Miles, where’ve you been, brother?” Jack boomed.
“Played some golf, hung out,” I muttered, not bothering to conceal the disgruntlement in my voice.
“Hi, Miles,” Terra cheerfully called out, insensitive to the fact she was wrecking our little vacation.
“Hi, Terra,” I said, mustering a reserve of politeness.
“Maya missed you last night,” she said.
“Yeah, I spoke to her briefly.”
“You should have come with.”
I forced a swift smile, then turned back to my glass, salvation and sanctuary viniferously bundled into one. When I looked up, Jack and Terra were clutching each other feverishly, their mouths crushed together like reunited lovers on a rain-swept tarmac. Jesus! For a moment I was afraid they were going to go at it right in the bar.
I heard Terra say, “Okay, baby, I’ll see you later.” She gave Jack one last throat-probing kiss, then turned jauntily to me and waved. “Bye, Miles.”
I tossed Terra a halfhearted little wave. Jack wolfishly followed her sashaying exit with his bloodshot eyes.
Then he plopped down next to me, fatigue and exhilaration competing in his sagging frame. He signaled to the bartender, who automatically brought over the Firestone Cab and poured him a glass. I pointed to mine and he freshened it to almost overflowing, no doubt remembering Jack’s generous tips and our inclination for multiple orders.
When he had drifted away, I turned to Jack and mimicked acidly, “Baby?” Jack shrugged and displayed a lopsided grin. “What the fuck are you doing, man?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Jack said, in between healthy sips, “She’s just fucking hot.”
I shook my head back and forth with my tongue pushed crossly against one cheek. “Are you going to blow off this wedding?”
Jack drank a third of his glass in one gulp, then clinked it down on the bar. “I might have to put it on hold,” he replied.
I flushed with anger and squared around on my stool to face him. “You think in one month, when this torrid sex peaks, that you’re going to want to drive up here, hang out
“This chick drives me crazy. She’s all over me. Smells different. Tastes different. Fucks different. Screws like an animal.” He was as animated and fervent as I had ever seen him, as though he had just witnessed the Second Coming. I stared at him until he met my gaze. He looked at me uncomprehendingly and asked, “What?”
“What? W
hat do you mean, What?”
“Yeah, what?” Without waiting for the bartender, he reached for the bottle and refilled both our glasses. I didn’t touch mine.
“Yeah, I’m saying what. As in, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“What is your problem, Homes?” he replied, without looking at me.
“I’ll tell you my problem,” I started, gathering my thoughts. “I’m shanghaied off to a wedding where I’m not wanted. I’ve got a rep as an impecunious writer who’s prone to going off the deep end—a potential reception wrecker if ever there was one—and you’re about ready to blow the whole deal sky-high and you don’t think I’m going to be the guy everybody points the finger at?” I switched to a mocking tone: “Miles took Jack up to the wine country and got his brains fucked out and convinced him that getting married was tantamount to a stretch in Sing-Sing.”
“Oh, bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit, it’s how they’re going to interpret it,” I pleaded, reaching for the moral support of my wine.
An uneasy silence fell between us. Maudlin classic rock from the ’70’s saccharined the emptiness with its plangent strains, further sickening me.
“So, what are you going to do?” I said, the edge in my voice gone. My whole being, with three nights of little sleep and emotional strain, surrendered to weariness. “Piss on it? Shock a nice, respectable family down to their pantaloons?”
Jack wheeled on me. “I need some understanding from you, brother. And I’m not getting it.” He almost sounded like he was going to cry.
I stared at him in astonishment. This was no time for weak-kneed blubbering and male-bonding empathy. “What’s there to understand?”
“Like I’m telling you I might be in love with another woman.”
“Oh, man.” I raked a hand through my hair. “Twenty-four hours and you’re in love?” I scoffed. “Well, hotdiggity.”
“Don’t fucking condescend to me, Homes. You’ve been there.”
“Yeah, I’ve been there. It’s like being in a sewer main without a flashlight.” I tapped my temple. “I was so fucking messed up in the head once over this woman I used to cruise past her apartment just to see if I could get a glimpse of her, while meanwhile I had a beautiful, loving wife pacing around in a fucking frenzy wondering where her sex-crazed, soon-to-be ex-husband was!” I waited until he leveled his eyes at me. “You don’t think you’re going to regret this?” He didn’t say anything, but I could tell I wasn’t getting through. “You’re just playing out some propagate-the-species-the-grass-is-greener-genetic-imperative, and you have the temerity to call it love. You’re fucking apeshit, man.”
“What are you getting all worked up about? You don’t even like Babs.”
This was a curare dart designed to skewer my argument. I turned away. “That’s horseshit.”
“When I met her you told me she was a shallow, bubble-titted costume designer.”
“I did not. Besides, I have long since reversed my opinion. And you know that. You’re just lamely trying to get me to fall into the conga line. But, fuck that. The $64,000 question is: Are you willing to risk everything you’re about to bring down on yourself over this Buellton wine pourer?”
“There you go again with your fucking elitism,” he said, flinging an arm into the air.
I bobbed my head up and down. “Okay, fine. She’s stimulating. Knows her wines. Points for that. In fact, knows a lot more about wine than you do, which is why I should be with her instead of you. But do you really think she’s worth destroying a long-term relationship over? One that I promise you, from experience, you’re going to rue until your cock shrivels into dust.”
Jack stared intensely into his glass of wine. “I’m just seeing things in a different light right now.”
“Duh. That’s because you’re getting hosed. But, after a while she’s going to seem as commonplace as all the other pussy you’ve diddled, and you’re not going to be able to serial monogamize the rest of your life. Look at me. Okay, George Clooney maybe, some others, but not you. Not me. We need to find an oasis of womanhood. Otherwise we will wither on the vine. You’ve found it. And now you’re about to abandon it,” I finished in a grave tone.
“I didn’t realize you were so fucking puritanical,” Jack responded.
“You made a commitment to Babs when you asked her to marry you!”
“The rest of my fucking life.”
“Yeah, I think that’s the definition, Jackson.”
“It’s not normal.” He attacked his wine with a childish vengeance. We had both arrived at that moment I called The Switch. When it snapped on, we would soon find ourselves free-falling together into that rollercoastering void of alcohol’s blissful nepenthe. I could already feel it lifting me out of my weariness.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” he asked.
“Yeah, she’s a doll,” I conceded, having shot my wad on Babs’s behalf.
“Kisses like you wouldn’t believe.”
“She recently got dumped by some guy. What do you expect? She’s lonely. Hungry for affection.”
“Whatever the reason,” Jack said blithely, unable to shake the memory. “Feels awful damn sweet.”
“And worse. She may have already fallen for you. And that’s going to be a problem. You know why?” Jack turned and looked at me. “Because down the serpentine road of sex and more sex, of heavenly cock sucking and marathon pussy licking … she’s going to want the same things Babs wants.”
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Jack interrupted. “We move up here, you and me, get a groove going with Terra and Maya, maybe buy a vineyard, establish a winery …”
“Jack,” I said, chopping him off, “you’re fucking nuts. You’ve flipped. You have got to dry out and see this for what it really is.”
“Raymond Cole Estate. We’ll make awesome Pinot. Think about it,” he said, as though I were calling out to him from deep underwater.
“I don’t want to think about it. It depresses me.” I turned away, scowling.
“There’s just like, this thing …” Jack balled up his fist and shook it to himself. “I can’t describe it.”
“Are you going to come to your senses?”
He was getting drunk now and his face took on the sad look of a basset hound. “I’m coming into a whole new realization of who I am.”
“Oh, don’t give me this sententious alcoholic hogwash,” I shot back.
“What?”
I didn’t feel like defining sententious. “Look, call Babs before she has a fucking cow.”
“No,” Jack said defiantly.
“She called me, for Christ’s sake!”
“I don’t think I’m ready for marriage,” he said, petulant.
“Oh, fuck me with a hot poker.” I drained my wine, pivoted off my stool, and blazed a trail to the bathroom.
When I returned, Jack had vanished. I reclaimed my stool, my brain throbbing indignantly. Across the sea of pool and lounge tables, near a pinball machine, I could make out Jack on his cell. I inhaled deeply and then let it all go in a weary sigh, wondering what my next move was going to be. I sipped my wine, casting for answers, but I kept drawing a blank.
On my right flank I heard a vaguely familiar voice and I turned to see who it was. It was the pimple-faced boar hunter from Saturday night, though with all that was happening, it seemed like ages ago. He had another big, frothy pitcher of straw-colored beer in front of him.
“Hey, what’s happening?” he said when he caught my eye.
“Not much,” I said, the understatement of the year. “No karaoke tonight?”
“Nope,” he said.
“What was your name again?”
“Brad.”
“Brad, right,” I said.
“You’re the writer?” he recalled.
“Miles. Yeah.”
“Right,” he said, his face vacant. He was one of those beer drunks who grew dully introspective as they got wasted.
“Going boar hunting tonight, Brad?”
He took a drink of his beer and turned to me. “Thinking about it. Want to come?”
I was intrigued. “Maybe. I have to see what my friend’s up to when he gets off the phone.”
He nodded once. “You’d dig it.” He refilled his mug from the pitcher in a slow deliberate pour, as if measuring precious potions.
“What do you shoot em with?” I asked distractedly, the wine having sharpened my low-common-denominator conversation skills.
“Thirty-ought-six. Some guys I know hunt ’em with .45 magnums. Wait till they charge right up to them, and then, POW. Right between the eyes.” He touched his index finger to the top of his nose.
“No shit?” I said, genuinely impressed, trying to picture a bearded pipe fitter standing in the dark undergrowth of a canyon in the middle of nowhere aiming a high-caliber handgun at a charging boar.
“They’re insane,” Brad said.
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Yep,” Brad repeated, as if speaking to a Doppelgänger. “They’re insane.”
“Now, do you haul ’em out, skin ’em, and eat ’em?” I asked, not really wanting to know.
The boar hunter turned his head slowly and stared at me for a moment with dark thumbtack eyes. “Yeah, I fucking eat ’em.”
“How do they taste?”
“Like pig.”
“Makes sense.”
Jack returned and sat down on my left, sandwiching me between Brad and him. He was beaming.
“Did you call Babs?”
“Yeah.”
“How is she?”
“Fine.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing. What do you mean nothing? What does she think’s happening?”
“I don’t know what she thinks. I don’t care,” Jack said defensively. “So, we’re invited to dinner over at Terra’s.”
I turned away. “Not interested.”
“Come on, Homes. They’re going to bust open some high-end Pinots. You saw that cellar. Don’t be a killjoy.”
“I don’t care. I’m not going to be a part of it.”