Wild Thing: A Novel

by Josh Bazell

  “You know that from working on cruise ships?”

  “I’m pretty sure I knew it before.”

  “From your years as a man-whore?”

  “We prefer ‘drifter.’ ”

  “Hot. Not as hot as ‘You’ll never see me again after next week,’ but hot.”

  “You don’t think it’s true?”

  “I think there’s a U-shaped curve. Some people, you meet them, you want to fuck them for their fancy mysterious shit, then you don’t want to fuck them cause you’re sick of them, then you do again. Because you actually know them.”

  “Must be nice.”

  “I’m not saying my experience supports that. My experience supports the gradual recognition that whoever I’m dating is a complete asshole. But still.”

  This is precisely the kind of topic I should be avoiding. I’m not about to tell Violet Hurst any real thing about myself, so why should I ask her questions? But women who look like Wonder Woman and say drunk shit to me in a car aren’t something I’ve spent all that much time around.

  Maybe I should drive more.

  “Something recent?” I say.

  “More recently than that, actually,” she says.

  “Ongoing?”

  Or have a talk show.

  “I don’t even know. It’s the usual male thing: extreme interest, sudden bolting. Which gets old after a while. Okay, now you just think I’m a slut, cause I’m being all flirty and I have a semi-boyfriend.”

  “Now you just think I’m judgmental.”

  She turns to me. “You’re slightly smarter than you look.”

  “It’s a U-shaped curve. After five minutes I start seeming stupid again.”*

  “Ha. Well I’m not a slut. Not in a bad way, anyway. I’m just slow to acknowledge the obvious and admit that my semi-boyfriend is a non-boyfriend.”

  Yes, but I’m smart enough to stop. Or jealous enough that some dipshit out there has a chance that I and most other people on Earth—on the run or not—will never have, and doesn’t even appreciate it.

  I’ll never know.

  “I’m not sure. Depends what’s on the radio,” I say.

  “You know, you’re funnier when you don’t talk.”

  I laugh.

  “Laughing counts. Anyway, how’s your love life?”

  See? You should never say anything to anyone.

  “It isn’t.”

  “Since when?”

  “A long time.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought the idea was to stay mysterious.”

  “Mysterious and creepily avoidant: not the same thing.”

  “Hey, at least I’m not on a secret paleontological mission for Rec Bill.”

  “Other than this one.”

  “Good point.”

  “Thank you. What did you do before you worked on cruise ships?”

  “Went to medical school. Shit like that.”

  “In Mexico. I Googled you. Why there?”

  “Didn’t get accepted in the U.S. Still wanted to go.”

  “You were a bad kid?”

  “Bad everything.”

  “How was it?”

  “Fine.”

  She sighs. “It’s kind of like pulling teeth, talking to you.”

  “I do that sometimes. On cruise ships.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s part of the job.”

  Nothing derails a conversation like medical grotesquerie.

  “Where are you from?” I say.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “What subject?”

  “You.”

  But we both know I’ve worn her out. It’s something I’m good at.

  “Holy shit,” Violet says.

  We’re on the main drag of Ford, a couple of hours later. Not the same highway exit as CFS Outfitters and Lodge, which we’re due to check into tomorrow—the exit before that. Ford proper.

  Ford proper looks like someone’s used it to test-market the Apocalypse. Everything—the houses, the VFW hall, the strip malls, the low brick office buildings—is boarded up, broken down, or grown over. The only people we see are a few crypt-lichs in down vests and baseball hats, who drop their cigarettes and lurch off in different directions when they see us coming.

  I have the same prejudices about rural Americans that most urban Americans do,* but this place is nothing anyone chose. When we pass a guy in his twenties on a bicycle, it seems like a brash piece of athleticism until I notice the two-liter Pepsi bottle bouncing off the top of his rear tire and realize he’s single-batching meth.

  “This is horrible,” Violet says.

  “I thought you were from Kansas.”

  “Fuck you. I’m from Lawrence. It’s not like this at all.”

  “I was about to be impressed.”

  “Get over it. But this place shouldn’t be like this either. Bob Dylan’s from around here.”

  “A long time ago.”*

  “And they elected Al Franken, sort of.”

  “And Michele Bachmann.”

  “These people didn’t have anything to do with Michele Bachmann. Her district’s way south of here.”

  The convenience store with gas pumps out front is open, at least. I recognize it from the documentary that got sent to Rec Bill. It still has an optical-orange Budweiser poster of an elk in some crosshairs in the window. And two blocks farther up I can see a diner called Debbie’s that has a car in front of it.

  I turn into the lot. Maybe Debbie’s is open too.

  Cat bells go off when Violet and I open the door, the glass of which has been partly broken out and re-backed with plywood. There’s no one in the dining room. But the fluorescents are on, and there’s an “OPEN” sign in the window.

  “Hello?” Violet says.

  At the other end of the room, a blond woman in a white T-shirt comes partly out of the kitchen. Forty-five the hard way.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Uh… are you serving food?” Violet says.

  The woman stares at us well past long enough for it to be weird. “This is a restaurant, Sugar. Sit where you like. I’ll be out in a minute. Menus are on the table.”

  Violet and I take a booth at the front. We’ve spent so much time side by side that it’s startling to look her in the eyes.

  “What?” she says. “Do I have something on my face?”

  “No.”

  She checks her reflection in the mirror anyway. To stop looking at her I take one of the menus. It’s sticky, like it’s been sprayed with atomized syrup.

  From the kitchen, we hear something metal bang something else. Then a woman, possibly the same one, shouting “LEARN TO FLIP THE GODDAMN SIGN.”

  “Huh,” Violet says. “Do you think maybe we should leave?”

  “We probably should. I wouldn’t mind giving it a minute, though.”

  Her eyes go wide, all playful and excited. “You mean as part of the investigation?”

  The door from the kitchen bangs open harder than you’d think the glass of its porthole would stand—which, maybe, is what happened to the front door—and the woman stalks back to our table like she’s ready to slap us.

  “You kids made up your minds?” she says.

  “Are you sure you’re open?” Violet says.

  “That’s what the sign says.”

  “Right, but we can—”

  The woman smiles grimly. “What are you having, Sweetie?”

  “French toast, please,” Violet says.

  “A hamburger and a chocolate milkshake,” I say.

  “We don’t do milkshakes,” the woman says.

  “What are you, five?” Violet says to me. To the waitress she says “Do you do beer?”

  “Pabst and Michelob Light. We may be out of Pabst.”

  “Two Michelob Lights, then.”

  “You still want that burger?”

  “Sure, thanks,” I say.

  “Hey, are you Debbie?” Violet says.

 
“Can’t no one help who they are.”

  On her way back to the kitchen, she stops at a horizontal freezer along the wall. Takes out a cellophaned pack of prefab French toast. Violet doesn’t see it happen.

  It’s interesting. I’ve been in restaurants this hostile before, but most of them have been in Brooklyn south of 65th Street, or Queens east of Cross Bay Boulevard, and have existed for purposes other than serving food.* This place isn’t necessarily that—I’m sure the world is full of restaurants that come by their shittiness honestly—but it’s strange.

  “Check it out,” Violet says.

  I follow her eyes to a sign on the wall: “KEEP COMPLAINING. IF THE LIGHTS GO OUT, I’LL KNOW WHERE TO AIM.”

  Violet says “What the fuck is wrong with this place?”

  EXHIBIT C

  Debbie’s Diner

  Ford, Minnesota

  Still Thursday, 13 September*

  Slamming back into the kitchen, Debbie Schneke wonders if you are for fucking serious. First Dylan and Matt fuck up the run to Winnipeg—come back lit up, they’re on so much fucking meth—then JD forgets to flip the “OPEN” sign, and two goddamn cops come into the restaurant.

  Just as she’s got three thousand tabs of pseudoephedrine ground up, washed, and mixed with brake cleaner in an Erlenmeyer flask on the counter.

  The whole fucking kitchen’s a disaster. What’s the special today—Frankenstein? And she’s supposed to cook a fucking hamburger for a cop?

  Debbie goes to the screen door that leads out back. Through the mesh she can see a bunch of the Boys sitting on crates and trash cans and shit, but she knows they can’t see her. If they could, they wouldn’t be lounging around like monkeys.

  “FUCK YOU!” she screams, sending some of them scrambling.

  Debbie doesn’t even know if it’s safe to turn on the gas for the grill. She doesn’t think the mash has reached the stage yet where it plus propane turns into that shit they gassed people with in World War I,* but how the hell is she supposed to know for sure?

  Her decision: the gas stays off. Fuck the cop. She’ll microwave his hamburger. If he even is a cop. Him and that lady look like FBI or DEA or something. They’re too sexy for regular cops. Debbie wonders how long they’ve been fucking each other, and whether their spouses know.

  Oh, and—Oh, no way. No fucking WAY. Even if she microwaves the burger, how is she going to cook the fucking BUN? Or the French toast for the lady-cop? God DAMN it!

  Debbie goes beyond herself with fury. Yanks open the door of the walk-in refrigerator: Matt Wogum and Dylan Arntz, both bound and gagged with duct tape, blue and sluggish looking from the cold. Not even shivering anymore. One more thing she has to worry about.

  “God DAMN you!” she screams, and slams the door. This is all their fucking fault. She can’t believe she ever trusted them.

  What would be enough for these goddamn kids? She already feeds them, fucks them, and buys them cable. What else do they need? Debbie to jam an Xbox up her cunt, so they can multitask?

  And all she ever asks of them is to be one slightly fucking bit cool—and DON’T SNORT THE MOTHERFUCKING PRODUCT.

  Matt Wogum she’d known was hopeless. Even though he’d done the Winnipeg run with Greg Bierner a dozen times, he’d claimed he never noticed Greg was using. For that alone Debbie would have had him killed along with Greg, only then there’d have been nobody alive who had made the trip. At the time it seemed smarter to keep Matt around.

  Wrong, what else is new. Dylan, the best one she had, the most trustworthy—the one who sometimes still goes to high school, who Debbie gives handjobs to because he’s too shy to come in her mouth—goes on one fucking trip with Matt Wogum and comes home too fucked up to blink right. Him and Matt Wogum telling some bullshit story—which, now that Debbie thinks about it, is probably true—about how Wajid, the fucking Yemeni kid, hadn’t been able to get the pills from the warehouse of his cousins’ pharmacy on time because the cousins were getting suspicious, but wasn’t willing to let Matt and Dylan wait at his apartment because he was holding a goddamn religious meeting there.

  That’s the problem with the goddamn Yemenis. They’re only in it to send money to Hezbollah or whatever. It’s not their money, so it’s not their problem. They don’t act like professionals.

  And of course Matt and Dylan then had to go to some bar to hang out, where naturally a couple of Canada Skanks asked them if they had any cocaine. And Matt said yes because he had some fucking meth on him, then made Dylan snort some too so the skanks wouldn’t think it was some kind of date rape drug.

  Which, to be fair, Matt probably had to do. Debbie sure as hell wouldn’t accept a suspicious white powder from someone who looked like Matt Wogum—and Debbie makes suspicious white powders.

  But whatever happened up there in Canada, Debbie now has no one to send to buy more pills. The mashed-up three thousand are the last of it—unless she lets Dylan live, the idea of which makes her feel sick. But what’s the alternative? Deal with the fucking Sinaloans?

  The thought makes her want to scream and then repeatedly slam her hand in the oven door.

  Debbie hates the fucking Sinaloans. Always sending some gold-tooth midget wetback around, all “Joo is workin for us now, lady.” Wanting her to sell finished product up from Mexico at one quarter the profit she gets from cooking it on her own.

  So far she’s gotten away with kicking them the fuck out. But if the Sinaloans ever get their shit together and stop killing each other, they could be a goddamn nightmare. They all work in the meat-processing plant in Saint James as cover, so they’re good with knives. Just out of nervousness, Debbie’s had to buy a bunch of new guns for the Boys.

  And now she has to hope one of those dwarfy fuckers comes back? And brings product with him, so at least she’ll have something to sell?

  Debbie rips a handful of tinfoil off the roll and caps the beaker of mash with it, puts the whole thing in the fridge. Fuck else is she supposed to do with it?

  Starts the electric toast belt that runs through the top chamber of the oven. Turns on the propane. Thinks to the potential mustard gas, Oh, you just do me the favor.

  At least with the mash out of the open air she can smoke. Debbie’s been smoking too much lately, thanks for reminding her, but right now it feels like the only usable air in the room is on the other side of a lit cigarette.

  As she inhales her first puff she puts the bun and the French toast on the belt, and the hamburger in the microwave. Screw that pig, even if the propane’s on. Then punches the door to the back parking lot open.

  The Boys, now arranged on the low back wall and a couple of cars, fall silent. They look sulky and afraid.

  “Soon as the cops are gone, take Dylan Arntz out of here and beat holy hell out of him,” she says. “Matt Wogum I haven’t decided on yet.”

  The older ones, the ones who matter—probably the rest of them too—will know what this means.

  Regarding Dylan, it means he gets one more chance.

  Regarding Matt, it means someone better goddamn start digging a hole.

  6

  Ford, Minnesota

  Still Thursday, 13 September

  Debbie, assuming that is her name, puts our plates down. Mine has a burger on it, Violet’s the previously frozen French toast. Otherwise both plates are blank.

  Garnish: the life crutch you never appreciate till it’s gone.

  The burger looks good, though. Or at least the bun’s toasted, which gets you halfway there on its own. “What else for you guys now?” Debbie says.

  Violet says “Can you tell us anything about White Lake?”

  Debbie turns outraged so fast it’s like a split-second werewolf movie.

  “What? Motherfucking WHAT?”

  “Uh…” Violet says.

  “WHAT did you just say? You people come in here pretending to be cops, and—what are you, anyway? Goddamn reporters?”

  “No,” Violet says. “We’re scientists.”

 
“Sure you goddamn are. And you just happen to come in here, asking who I am, asking about the goddamn White Lake Monster—”

  I’m out of my bench seat by then, but I stop. “Did you say—”

  “I didn’t say shit. And I sure as hell didn’t say it to you people.”

  “But—”

  “You two just get the hell out of my restaurant. Get.”

  “Can I just—”

  She picks up my plate and smashes it to bits on the table. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY RESTAURANT!”

  By the time the burger parts hit the floor I’ve got Violet out of her own seat and am scanning it in case she’s left a purse. She hasn’t. Violet Hurst, alone among women wearing cargo pants, actually uses the pockets.

  At the door I turn back for one more try. “Can—”

  “You want a monster? Go find Reggie Trager!” Debbie yells, winging the other plate at my head.

  I get the door shut just as the plate bursts against the plywood.

  “Jesus fuck,” Violet says as we back toward our rental. The car’s a chunky station wagon from a division of GM that I thought went out of business five years ago. “What the fuck was that about?”

  “Lady doesn’t like scientists,” I say.

  “No shit. It’s too bad: the French toast looked good.”

  “It was frozen.”

  “Really? That bitch! How do you know?”

  “I saw her take it out of the freezer.”

  Violet stops with her hand on the handle of the passenger door. “Were you going to tell me that?”

  “I thought you would enjoy it more if I didn’t.”

  “That’s some kind of joke, right?”

  Luckily, just then there’s a noise from behind the restaurant like someone knocking a bunch of garbage cans over while they or someone else shouts in pain.

  I slide the keys to Violet over the roof. “Start the car and stay here.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “Do it. If I’m not back in three minutes, call the cops.”

  Out back there are a dozen or so teenage boys stomping the shit out of what looks like another teenage boy, though it’s hard to tell because they’re packed around him pretty tightly and his face has blood all over it. Not a lot of technique happening, but the enthusiasm’s good.