Sideways

by Rex Pickett

  Jack threw me a dismissive backward glance. “I don’t think so, Homes. This isn’t funny, so cut the play-by-play already.”

  We ascended the stairs and then skulked down the outdoor corridor toward our room bent at the waist like two grade-school boys trying to elude the teacher. One room away from ours, I stopped. Jack turned and looked at me and I gave him a little wave to signal that I had gone far enough. He nodded understandingly, then moved grimly ahead to meet his fate.

  He continued down the corridor, stepping cautiously, as if it were booby-trapped. When he finally reached the door to our room, Jack knocked instead of using his key and just going in, which I thought was a little odd—maybe he knew something I didn’t.

  “Hello? Terra? It’s me, Jack. Are you in there?” he called out. There was no answer from inside. Jack turned and shrugged at me.

  I made a little pushing motion with my right hand as though it held an imaginary electronic card and gestured with my head toward the inside, pressuring him to go in.

  Jack dug a hand into his back pocket and found his card. He inserted it into the lock, pulled it out, then pushed down on the handle. He cracked the door open circumspectly and barely poked his head in. “Terra? Are you in there?” he said.

  The initial absence of a response made me optimistic, and I closed the distance to take a position behind Jack as he pushed the door open wider and risked a step inside.

  It all happened with lightning speed. I got a quick glimpse of a fully-dressed Terra leaping up from the bed.

  Jack was glued to my tail as we spun around with a flurry of Oh shit! Oh shit! and hauled ass back down the corridor. When we reached the top of the stairs we skidded to a stop to reconnoiter what we were up against. What we saw terrified us down to our scrotums. Terra was standing out in the corridor in front of our room, which she had commandeered, aiming Brad’s Remington directly at our cowering, cowardly selves. Her blond hair was in a tangle and her eyes were wild with rage.

  “You fucking bastard,” Terra screamed. “Liar! Motherfucker! Liar!”

  “Terra,” Jack said, lifting his hands up slowly in apparent surrender. “Put the gun down. Someone could get killed.”

  “You better fucking believe it, Loverboy.” She angled the rifle just above our heads and discharged another round into the twilight sky. The firearm bucked against her tiny frame and she staggered in place briefly before recovering her balance.

  From my inadequate cover, I started to back away, but Jack brazenly began inching slowly toward her, a step at a time. “Come on, Terra,” he pleaded, putting a brave face on. “Put the gun down. Please.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were getting married?” Terra shrieked, becoming more enraged the closer he got to her.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack said lamely, continuing to advance one tentative step at a time. “I’m really sorry.”

  “So, it’s true? You are getting married this Sunday?”

  Jack, now less then ten paces from her, stopped and hung his head in ostensible shame, instinctively adopting the protective posture of a sympathetic character and ventriloquizing through him. “I’m sorry,” Jack repeated, attempting to soft-soap her. “I’m really sorry.”

  Terra jutted her head forward. “You’re sorry? What was all that shit you said to me? You fucking bastard.” Her voice became a frenzied scream. “You motherfucking liar!”

  “Okay, okay,” Jack tried to calm her. “I lied to you. I apologize. Now, put the gun down. Please, Terra, don’t do something stupid.”

  Terra slowly leveled Brad’s boar annihilator at Jack and sighted down the barrel, a modern-day Annie Oakley. A couple of curious motel guests peeked around the curtains of their nearby rooms to see what all the commotion was about, their expressions suggesting they were too petrified to come out for a better view. I suspected the cops weren’t too far away.

  For a protracted moment I truly feared for Jack’s life. Then, with the two of us frozen in place, waiting for Terra’s next move, tears suddenly sprang to her eyes and flooded her cheeks. Her arms collapsed to her sides and the gun clattered to the cement. Terra’s hands rushed to her face and she wept openly.

  Jack, seizing the opportunity, moved toward her cautiously, much as one might approach a wounded animal. “Come on, Terra, it’s all right.” He closed the gap between them, moving stealthily. Still wary, he sidled even closer, all the while extending a tentative hand like an insect’s antenna. When he reached her, he quickly clutched her by the forearms and attempted to pull her hands away

  “No,” she wailed in a new adrenalin-rush of fury. “You’re a liar! A motherfucking dirtbag liar!”

  With difficulty, Jack managed to pry her hands from her eyes. They were puffy with raw emotion and smeared mascara. “Listen to me,” Jack beseeched, not making headway, but merely holding the situation in check.

  “No!” she screamed. She tore her hands out of Jack’s grasp. Then, in a blazing moment of ferocity, she wind-milled her right hand and slashed at Jack’s face like a frantic animal.

  Jack brought a hand to his face and cried out in pain. “Ow! Jesus!” His knees buckled a little and he quailed to protect himself from further blows.

  Terra scuttled backward, jackknifed at the waist, her pretty face contorted with rage. “I thought you loved me. You’re getting married on Sunday?” She cackled like a movie witch. “You fuck! I hope you die!” She straightened up, pivoted, and stormed down the opposite end of the corridor, then surged down the stairs. I heard the door of her red Cherokee slam shut and the car gun to life. Squealing tires marked her swerving, swearing, smoking exclamation point of an exit.

  I hurried over to where Jack was slumped against the doorjamb, still clutching the right side of his face. When he moved it away, I got my first glimpse at the rake job Terra had delivered, and it wasn’t an improvement on an already woeful-looking mug. “Fuck,” he groaned.

  “Man, that’s deep,” I said.

  “It’s fucking bleeding,” Jack said, staring in consternation at his hands.

  “She swiped you pretty good,” I concurred. “Don’t look in a mirror for a while. Maybe a month.”

  “Fuck, that chick’s nuts.”

  “Aren’t you glad you didn’t move up here and marry her?”

  “Shut up, Homes,” Jack snapped.

  “You should have told her,” I said in Terra’s defense.

  “Told her what?”

  “The truth. Instead of feeding her all that lovey-dovey hornswoggling nonsense. She might have gone to bed with you anyway.”

  “I don’t need a lecture from you. I’m hurtin’ here.”

  I was ready to launch into an argument when I heard the wail of a police siren, rising in volume. We both stiffened.

  With a surprising presence of mind, Jack commanded, “Get the gun. Take it to the car. Get the fuck out of here.”

  I squatted down, grabbed the rifle lying at my feet, and sprinted off. I got a quick glimpse of the elderly couple who had probably placed the call to the cops, their heads fused together like Siamese twins, gawking through their narrowly parted curtains.

  I made it back to the 4Runner just as a sheriff’s dispatcher was rounding the parking lot into the rear of the motel, its overhead warning lights alternately pulsing blue and red. I stowed Brad’s rifle in the car and then walked back. Several guests, hearing the siren, had ventured out of their rooms and had congregated on the balcony and down in the parking lot, whispering and pointing, trying to reconstruct what had happened.

  I climbed the stairs and went back to the room to check on Jack, acting like I was coming back from the Clubhouse with a couple of drinks in me—a role I could easily handle.

  “It was just a fight with my girlfriend,” Jack was explaining, trying to paint a harmless domestic picture.

  “What’s going on, Jack?” I asked ingenuously. “What happened to your face?”

  “Oh, Michelle and I got into a little fight,” Jack replied, playing the fau
x-naïf to perfection.

  “Who are you?” the big one asked suspiciously.

  “He’s my friend,” Jack answered.

  The sheriff pointed a warning finger at me. “Stay there.” Then he turned his attention back to Jack. In the dim light Jack’s injury didn’t look quite as horrifying as it really was. “Where’s your girlfriend now?” the sheriff asked.

  “Ex-girlfriend,” Jack corrected. “Fuck if I care. I hope I never see her again. I mean, look what she did to me.” He pointed at his face, seeking their sympathy.

  The little one stepped toward Jack to get a closer view. “Looks pretty bad. Do you want to go to the emergency room?”

  “No,” Jack said, clearly alarmed at the prospect of a third visit. “No, I’ll live.”

  “Someone reported shots,” the taller one continued. “Do you have a weapon in your possession,”—he glanced at Jack’s driver’s license—“ … Mr. Cole?”

  “No, absolutely not. I support gun control,” Jack said,

  “Why was she so angry with you that she would do something like that?” the little one followed up.

  Jack let his chin settle on his chest, dredging deep for some Stanislavsky. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” Jack began sheepishly, shifting uneasily in place.

  “Just tell us,” the bigger sheriff said.

  “She claimed I gave her herpes,” Jack said in a low voice. He looked away in credible disbelief.

  The short sheriff looked up at him and said challengingly, as if to humiliate him, “Well, did you?”

  Their rapport was deteriorating and I was sure Jack was about to say, Fuck you, midget, but he reined himself in, recovering his composure just in time to answer in unctuous politeness, “No, sir.”

  The two sheriffs looked at each other like a Mutt and Jeff combo. “Check out the room,” the tall one said, obviously in charge.

  The little one disappeared inside. Jack gestured subtly to me.

  “I got to rinse a kidney badly,” I said to the taller one.

  “All right,” he said, excusing me to go to the bathroom.

  I went inside, walked past the one-not-in-charge, and quickly emptied my bladder. When I came back out, the short sheriff had his attention focused on all the cases of wine stacked against the wall.

  “What’s with all the wine?” he said with an air of suspicion, lifting the lids on some of the boxes and poking his nose inside.

  “I’m a wine writer,” I said. “I’m doing an article on Santa Barbara County wineries for Wine Spectator.”

  He nodded briefly, as if my fabrication had satisfied him. Then he looked up at the ceiling where Terra’s shot had blasted a small hole. His head panned down to the plaster on the bedspread. It wasn’t as noticeable as I had imagined it would be. “What’s that?” he said, gesturing to the ceiling, suspicions rekindled.

  “Champagne cork from a vintage ’90 Krug,” I answered. “Fuckers get tight when they’ve been in that long. A guy was killed by one of them once.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he replied, unimpressed. He narrowed his eyes, gave the room a second quick once-over, then went outside to report to his superior. I followed him out and dawdled in the doorway.

  “Didn’t see anything,” he said. “Except a lot of cases of wine.” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder at me. “Claims he writes for wine magazines.”

  The one in charge didn’t seem interested. He turned his attention back to Jack’s face. In addition to the four bleeding slash marks, my punch that morning had severely swollen his nose and given him raccoon eyes. “Looks like your girlfriend really got the better of you,” he said to Jack in a belittling tone.

  The two sheriffs shared a snicker at Jack’s expense. Then they got back to business and copied down information off our driver’s licenses.

  As they returned our IDs, the taller one warned, “There better not be any more ruckus around here, because if we have to come back, we’re going to haul you in.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jack assured them. “She’s long gone.”

  The tall sheriff laid an avuncular hand on Jack’s shoulder as if he sympathized with his plight. “Next girlfriend you manage to land, may I suggest it be someone you can beat up.”

  The sheriffs marched off, chuckling, their scanners directing them to another small-town crime of no doubt equal hilarity.

  Jack and I retreated into the room and closed the door, completely exhausted. I went into the bathroom and took my long-awaited shower. When I came out, clean and somewhat refreshed, Jack was lying on the bed, holding a makeshift ice pack to his scarred face, staring sullenly at a baseball game on TV.

  “I guess the Latour dinner is out,” I said wistfully.

  Jack didn’t say anything, his expression downcast. At a commercial break, he shuttled impatiently through the limited selection of channels, skipping past them over and over, as if trying to obliterate all thought and all feeling.

  I pulled on my pants and shirt and sat down on my queen, hungry, tired, and in need of a glass of wine. “So, what do you want to do?” I asked.

  Jack didn’t answer. He crawled wordlessly off the bed and lumbered slowly over to the dresser mirror. He withdrew the ice pack from his cheek and examined his face. “What’s it look like to you?”

  I took a long thoughtful look at my friend. “Looks like you were in a car accident.”

  He nodded, weighing the positives and negatives of the bogus story that he was beginning to script.

  “Except for the scratches,” I added.

  He shot me a forbidding look in the mirror.

  “Unless …” I snapped my fingers. “There was a cat in the car!”

  Jack wagged a reproving finger at me. “I’m warning you, Homes.”

  “Sorry.” I straightened from the bed. “Come on, let’s go get something to eat.”

  Outside, the weather had deteriorated and only a few patches of starlit sky peeked through the ragged clouds. We drove a short distance east on a rain-slicked 246 to A. J. Spurs, a tacky tourist barbecue joint that served huge portions to mostly huge diners.

  Inside, the décor was all timber and resinated-wood tables and hard pine chairs under raftered ceilings. The upper part of the walls was festooned with taxidermic heads of trophy game of all sizes and species who gazed down on the diners out of blank glass eyes, while classic rock assaulted them over the stereo system.

  We were gratefully tucked away in a crescent-shaped booth that faced away from most of the other diners. I had elected to go light on the grape, not only because their wine list was appalling, but because I was saving myself for the Pinot festival the following day. Jack was in a somber mood and not into drinking either. All things considered, I could hardly criticize his lack of enthusiasm. We both had a glass of the house red, an oaky, Raid-rancid Merlot that was a far cry from the ’82 Latour we had planned on earlier.

  Walking out to the car after dinner in a drizzly rain, Jack insisted on driving. He had the keys and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  We got in the car and Jack fired it to life. Out of the parking lot he turned east on 246 and pointed the 4Runner in the direction of Solvang.

  “Where’re we going?” I asked, exhausted, wanting to get back to the room and hunker down.

  “I don’t want to go back to the motel. In case that bitch comes back. Let’s get a glass at that bar in Los Olivos where you said they have a good wine list,” he proposed,

  “Okay,” I said reluctantly. “But I’m driving back.”

  An impish look—the first I had seen in a while—glinted in his eyes, and he depressed the accelerator.

  We cruised through a deserted, shuttered Solvang waiting in hibernation for the next schlocky tourist Christmas, then hung a left on Alamo Pintado Road and headed north toward Los Olivos. Without streetlights, the surrounding topography was pitch-black, illuminated only by our headlights. A peaceful feeling came over me suddenly as we drove silently along. We were closing in on the Sunday wedding an
d I really was ready to cut the big guy loose. It had been an eventful, emotional week, and I was relieved to see the end in sight.

  About a mile from the turnoff leading into Los Olivos, Jack pulled over onto the gravel shoulder of the road directly in front of a massive, gnarled old oak. As the car idled, he turned to me and instructed, “Buckle up.”

  “What?”

  “Put your damn seat belt on.” He raised his voice. “I don’t want to get pulled over. Okay?”

  “Okay, okay. Jesus.”

  I pulled the shoulder harness across my chest and clicked it securely into the fastener. “Okay, let’s go,” I said.

  Without hesitation, Jack slammed his foot on the accelerator and smashed head-on into the oak tree. I heard a loud crash, and at the same moment I lurched violently forward. But the seat belt prevented me—thank God!—from hurtling through the windshield and somersaulting over the hood.

  “What the fuck!” I cried.

  “Don’t worry,” Jack said calmly, “I’ll pay for it.”

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  He pointed at his ravaged face. “How am I going to explain this? Huh? Got in a fight with some chick and she beat the shit out of me because she found out I was getting married and she wasn’t the bride?” His voice steepened an octave. “Visited the zoo and fell into the bear’s den and went one-on-one with Smokey?” He jammed the shift lever into reverse, backed the 4Runner up about twenty paces, the tires spinning in an attempt to grip the gravely shoulder. Then, before I could protest, he dropped his foot on the accelerator and slammed into the oak a second time. Again, I lurched forward and whiplashed back like a crash dummy.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” I shrieked.

  Jack spun the tires in reverse again, ground the shift lever into drive, and fishtailed onto Alamo Pintado Road before anyone could report us to the cops.

  I sat with my arms folded across my chest, staring out the windshield, seething.

  “It still runs,” Jack said to break the tension.

  “What a consolation.”

  “How come the air bags didn’t deploy?”