Deadroads

by Robin Riopelle

  Over and over, and the frantic clawing slowed, the fight went out of her, and her breath came in ragged gasps. Finally, Sol deemed her ready for release, hoped she didn’t have another weapon close by, and he loosened his arm. She darted away, back against the wall, eyes taking in the room, the glass, the broken picture in its frame. Her gaze circled, landed on Sol. The moment was still, and daylight had broken enough that Sol could easily read her face, the limp features fallen into despair.

  “Why?” she asked in English, hollow. “I never bother you. Why you take away my work?”

  The time wasn’t quite right yet for Sol to relax. Adrenalin sluiced through every vein in his body, buzzed in his ears. “It’s not right, Madama. They need to be at peace.”

  “I protect that boy,” she hissed, eyes flashing.

  Sol shook his head slowly. “No,” he said after a moment. “No, that wasn’t a boy. That was a ghost of a boy, and it needed to move on.”

  Her voice shook. “He was so scared.”

  Sol found a slight smile, brief. “The ghost wasn’t scared. Not at the end.” He looked around the demolished room. “Do you have a broom?”

  Together, they cleaned up the glass, and then Madama Lopez poured him a small shot of dark tequila while Sol stacked the broken table into a bundle of kindling. He apologized for that, offered her what was in his wallet for replacement, then sat with her in the kitchen. She pointed to his brow, and he ducked into the bathroom to clean the cut and hold it closed with some butterfly bandages he had in the small kit in his pocket.

  He studied himself in the mirror, wondering if he looked different. He had just become the kind of traiteur who could put away a fortuneteller’s ghost, and he ought to be taller or appear wiser, he thought, but instead he just looked tired.

  Before he left, he gave Madama Lopez his phone number, in case she needed anything. “You know,” he said, finally, “you don’t need a ghost to tell a fortune. Half the time, they’re not telling you the truth anyway.”

  She stood in her doorway, salt still marking the threshold, line broken now, merely a seasoning that needed to be swept up. By daylight, she looked ragged, depleted. “But the other half?” She wasn’t smiling, wasn’t the sort that was made for easy company. “I can still make money. But the readings will not be as…true.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, drawing on one glove, and she took his bare hand, and he knew she was going to read it. He made to take it back, but she held firm and he knew this was a test for her, to see what she could tell without a ghost helping her. Relaxing as much as he could under the circumstances, he allowed her to turn his hand over, one finger running up and down his lifeline as though she was a junkie trying to find a vein.

  “Bah,” she said after a moment, letting the hand go.

  With some regret, Sol put his other glove on. What he didn’t want her doing was going out and getting another ghost, and a decent reading now might have made a ghostless path easier for the psychic. She was too old for catching ghosts; they’d make dogfood out of her. “Maybe with a little practice,” he suggested.

  Her gesture then was one of contempt. “Practice.” Like it was a chore. “You need to treat your woman better,” she accused, surprising him.

  The air was warming slightly, still cold, and so dry that a hand could strike sparks from car doors. Sol huffed a chuckle, shook his head. “See? Like riding a bike, Madama.”

  He drove slowly back to Aurora, the streets quiet at this early hour, new year’s morning, and he was half-asleep and half-wired and deep underneath it, elation wound a complicated path around his heart, warming him in a way few other things could.

  The clock couldn’t possibly be right. Baz shook under the covers, too cold, yet slick with sweat. It said that it was eight in the A.M. and that somehow meant that they’d been here for only an hour, and Baz knew that wasn’t right, because he could have sworn he’d been here a lifetime.

  He sat up, dizzy, needing something to drink. The room was tilting, a fuzzy orange, but he ignored that. Wait. This wasn’t the North Platte room. This was somewhere else. Where was Sol?

  Thought that and then Lutie came out of the bathroom, wiping her face with a towel. They stared at each other and Lutie put down the towel, disappeared back into the bathroom for a wet cloth, some Ibuprofen in a bottle. He nodded to her, wiped his face with the cloth, swallowed three pills with the help of a can of iced tea that had been brought from the McGregors’ pantry.

  “Thanks,” he croaked.

  “You don’t look so good,” she told him.

  “I don’t feel so good, either,” he snapped, and immediately apologized. This wasn’t her fault; he knew more about this than she did, should have at least tried to talk her out of it, or phoned Sol to let him do it. “Hé, T-Lu, you wanna get that cardboard box from your car? The one with Dad’s stuff in it?”

  She raised an eyebrow, but there was no explaining it, his need to have his father close, his father’s medicines and safeties beside him now that his father was gone. Before Lutie came back, Baz stood up, went to the bathroom, and washed his face, spat into the sink, willing the medicine to stay down so it could do something for his splitting head. More than that, though, his heart felt shaky, like it had come loose within his chest cavity.

  He whirled at the first rattle from the shower.

  Lutie’s choice of motel wasn’t four star by any stretch of the imagination; it was the sort of place Baz had crashed in numerous times on an endless cycle of tours. A cheap 1960s construction on the old highway, discounts applied weekly or monthly. Of course, a bathroom here would have no bathtub, only a shower stall with a glass door rippled by hard water marks.

  Behind the frosted door, Baz watched a dark mass move, sideways with a swing, like it was loose in the joints. “You know, your father was a real piece of work. Such a hard-ass.” The close confines of the shower stall made its voice echo. It drew breath, rank and clogged as a sewer pipe. “But you? You’re just a peach, aren’t you? Think of the fun we’ll have.”

  Without thinking about what he was doing, Baz staggered forward, grabbed the handle of the shower door, yanked it open in one movement. He made some kind of noise as he did it, a cry, a negation, but there was nothing there, just the single-form plastic stall, streaked with black mold. Baz’s breath came in painful gasps, and he sank to his haunches, then to his ass, and Lutie was at the bathroom door, hammering it hard.

  “Are you okay, Baz?” She sounded concerned, scared.

  Blinking rapidly, Baz cradled his head in his arms, hoping his skull wouldn’t explode. “I’m okay,” he forced out.

  After a minute and only with the assistance of the counter, he stood again and came out. Lutie had put the box on the bed, but hadn’t opened it. Baz walked carefully across the floor, like there were secret explosives hidden under the carpet. Once at the bed, he opened the box, rummaged around the plaid shirts to find the small hex bags underneath. His father had used them to secure the cardinal points of a room when he was feeling particularly paranoid, and Baz supposed it wouldn’t hurt now.

  He had to lie down first, though. Lutie had placed his duffle bag on Baz’s bed, and he crawled gratefully under the covers, shivering again because this goddamn motel didn’t have any goddamn heat. “Lutie,” he said, and she came to the side, but didn’t sit down. “Take those,” and he waved a hand to the bags, “and figure out your north and west. You know. The compass points. Put one at each, okay?”

  She turned them over in her hands. “Why?”

  Baz laughed, but it was phlegmy and he ended up coughing instead. “Because I said so, Mademoiselle Je-sais-tout. Damn it, you always have to know why?”

  Her eyes flashed, and Baz dissolved into laughter, which sounded mostly like coughing, loose heart banging, head sparking with pain. When it had subsided, the job was done, but Lutie didn’t look too pleased about it. She stood at his bedside, arms crossed. “You should get some sleep, Baz. Let that medicine do its work. I�
��ll get us some supplies, okay? Some food and water.”

  “Where are we?” Baz asked.

  “Ogallala, goddamn armpit of a town, and they call this the Prairie Paradise Motel. Ha.” A hard one, his sister. She’s so scared. Some people get all clingy and shrieky. She’s not one of them, eh?

  “Okay. What’s your number?” He tried to take his phone out from the coat he still wore, but couldn’t work the zippers, and then Lutie hauled him up to a sit, took off the coat, covered him with two blankets, and retrieved the phone. She turned it on, checking the charge, maybe, and then entered in her number. “There. It’s on speed dial. Just in case you need anything, okay?” She flicked a glance to him. “I’ll only be a half hour. You’ll be okay.” More to reassure herself than him, Baz thought.

  “Sure thing, Lutie,” he murmured. He’d be fine if the hex bags worked the way he hoped they did, because he’d seen that weird thing in the shower, and he wasn’t seeing it now. That must be a good sign. He thought about how it must have been for Lutie, growing up and seeing what she could see. Enough to make you think you were crazy.

  Well, you would. You would think you were out-of-your-mind crazy.

  Her car started up outside, and he held his breath for a few minutes before consulting his phone. With a sigh, he dropped his hand to the bed, stared at the ceiling. The wind rattled the storm windows in their aluminum frames and Baz’s heart thudded along with them. Goddamn.

  Sliding open his phone, the keypad glowed in dim motel light, and the windows shook, and he was scared, he’d be the first to admit it. Lutie’s number was there on his speed dial, and he supposed that it signified something, that she’d wanted it in there. Women did it all the time, but never a sister. This was different. There were a bunch of numbers on his speed dial menu, some recent, some past their expiry date, some he didn’t even recognize. There was the one at the top, though, the one he punched in now, knowing it was past time.

  The dog barked, but Sol was prepared for that and silenced him with a few well-timed words through the door before he’d even gotten his keys out. As he opened the door, Renard tried to make an escape, of course, but Sol grabbed his collar, dragged him back inside whining before he’d had the chance to chase the birds chattering on the fence. Sol shut the door quietly behind him, murmuring to the dog, tossing his parka onto a teak and leather chair, unlacing his boots by the door. The house was warm, and smelled of whatever Robbie had last cooked there.

  Their bungalow only had the one bedroom, plus an extra room they used as office-storage, no wiggle room at all, made for what miniscule post-war family Sol could only guess. It was possible to stand just inside the front door, as he was doing now, and see into every room in the house. His heart sinking, Sol realized the place was immaculate, a seething discontent running under the good housekeeping loud as the Titanic’s engine. With caution, he opened the bedroom door and peered in. The bed sheets were wound round Robbie, duvet pulled to her chin. She was fast asleep. Sol chanced a visit to the bathroom, shed his clothes there, and returned to the bedroom, knowing that his skin was wintery and first contact would wake her.

  Every bone ground against the other, chalky with exhaustion, and he wanted nothing more than sleep, just that, no argument, no recriminations or accusations. He was fairly sure it wasn’t going to happen, that Robbie would be ready for him. He parted the sheets, slid in, tried to remain contained and remote for a few minutes as his body adjusted to the temperature change, but Robbie was an inveterate tosser, extended her foot to touch his and he knew they were ice.

  She moaned and turned to him, and he studied her face in the half-light, hair still suggesting some fantastic backcomb, makeup dusting her closed eyes. She’d been out, and come home too late or too drunk to put herself right before bed. She smelled boozy and smoky, as though she’d been to a good party, which he hoped she had. Despite himself, Sol grinned. Last piece of good fortune for the night: Robbie was trashed. Freckles scattered across her face, her shoulders, like some chef had sprinkled her with pepper for the oven and then forgotten to put her in. She had fallen into bed without taking off her party dress, Sol noticed as he gathered the duvet over his own shoulders. He started to laugh.

  “Oh, Roberta Mack,” he whispered.

  With rapidly warming fingers, he reached behind her and undid the zipper of her strapless dress, rolling her gently out of it, and she was going to wake up, Sol knew it, but he couldn’t leave her like that, with lace and wires sticking into her. At least she hadn’t come to bed in her heels, taken out the sheets. Satisfied that nothing short of an explosion was going to wake Robbie, Sol tugged the dress from underneath her dead weight and a flurry of sparkled sequins fell like black snow onto the linens. Smiling, he draped the dress onto a 1940s overstuffed chair that Robbie prized. He continued into the bathroom to pour her a glass of water and shake out a handful of aspirin, put both on her bedside table, and then curled up against her, nose tucked into her hair, prepared to sleep for hours.

  He got maybe three of them, and that was pretty much useless as far as nourishing sleeps went.

  Surfacing from a dream of knots and bindings, Sol heard, “Oh, God, please kill me,” and Robbie shifted ungracefully, one elbow breaking the sea of blankets like a shark’s fin. Sol quickly closed his eyes, wondering if he could fake sleep long enough to go back under. Not a chance.

  A long moment passed, and Sol felt Robbie’s eyes on him as she pulled blankets to her, adjusting the duvet and sheets, leaving his torso uncovered and cold, maybe assessing the location of her dress, the peace offering of water and aspirin.

  Then Robbie’s fingers found the bruised spot on his ribs where the ghost had dropped him on the table; she pressed hard. Sol came up on one arm, gasping at the pain. “Damn it, Robbie,” he wheezed, and collapsed back onto the pillow.

  Beside him, he felt Robbie move to a sitting position, and the light clicked on, flooding the room with painful clarity. Sol moaned. “Rob, merde, I just worked a full shift.”

  She cleared her throat, and he heard her drink the water, get up, bang around the room a little. No use. Sol rubbed his face with a hand, encountered the cut and bruised brow, and winced, which made it worse. He looked up to see Robbie, a flannel housecoat now drawn around her curves like a weapon. She dropped back on the bed, a knee swung perilously close to his groin as she straddled him like a schoolyard bully, one hand to either side of his head, staring at him with mascara-smudged eyes. She reminded Sol of one of those vintage beauties from the black and white era after an exceptionally hard night at the cabaret.

  “What the hell happened to you? A fight?” she barked. Under it was worry, but Sol didn’t want to indulge that. Better for her to be mad at him than for her to worry about him.

  “Just a call that got a little hairy. No big deal. Part of the job, chère.” He reached out with one hand to smooth down her hair, smooth her down, but she jerked away.

  “You don’t phone, you don’t say when you’re going to—”

  “But I did phone.” It was futile. She was just getting started. The housecoat wasn’t tied properly, and the plaid pattern moved around enough to daze him. It was possible that he had a concussion. That would have been an excellent piece of self-diagnosis to have made earlier, since he’d been driving and sleeping already. “Oh, Robbie, please,” he begged, and he didn’t know what he was pleading for—quiet, sleep, forgiveness—but Robbie settled on his hips and it became obvious which way she was going with this.

  “You leave a stupid little message at, like, five in the morning. You don’t know how to use a phone at midnight?” She held him down with her light weight and Sol sank back into the pillows.

  “I was babysitting an overdose at midnight,” he explained. “Ow.” Because her knee had found the spot where he’d hit the floor with his hip. “You’re hurting me.”

  “Good.”

  It hurt a lot more before it was over, between Robbie’s inquisitive fingers and her weight on him and
the movement required to turn hurt into pleasure and back again. Sol was feeling every bruise the fortuneteller’s ghost had raised. But in the end, Sol, still dazed and nearly comatose with fatigue, didn’t regret missing sleep, not for her. It was the flannel, he knew. Moreover, Robbie knew it, always had.

  The room was bright with morning and the dog scratched at the door, whining. Sol ignored it. After subsiding, returning from glory, Robbie cautiously uncoupled from him, now heedful of his bruises, and Sol couldn’t stand being even that far away from her. He wrapped his fingers through Robbie’s dark hair, tipped with purple at the moment, kissed the bow of her shoulder, one arm inviting her to stay beside him, fit to his side like a puzzle piece. Only then did he fully relax, eyes closed, spent.

  He’d almost drifted off again when Robbie’s cold nose ran up his cheek.

  I am the kind of guy who can put down a fortuneteller’s ghost, he thought.

  “What are you smiling at?” Robbie asked.

  “Bizarre night,” he said, peering at her with one eye shut. He paused, thinking of Madama Lopez, and his hand, and her words. “Are you happy, Robbie?” A dangerous question, because he didn’t really want the answer.

  “Right this second?” she answered with a low chuckle.

  He grimaced. “In general,” he prompted, not looking at her, eyes to the ceiling.

  He felt her shrug, one arm across his belly. “In general, you drive me batshit crazy, Sol.”

  Comes with the territory, he thought.

  “You don’t tell me what’s going on up there,” and she touched his temple. “And you don’t tell me what’s going on in here,” and she touched his chest. “You could walk out that door one day, not come back, and it wouldn’t really surprise me, you know?” Her voice caught on a rough edge and she stopped. Sol was sorry he’d asked. Stupid fortuneteller. “What do we have, that it wouldn’t surprise me?”